Chapter 1 #2
“No, Mom, I’ll be fine,” Dessa said, forcing confidence into her voice. “You and Dad will head out in a few days just like you planned. I know you made your reservations at the national parks ages ago, and I don’t want you to miss those.”
In truth, her parents had been honing their cross-continental itinerary for the last decade, their faces rosy with the hope of adventure in far-off places.
Her parents had never been outside of Florida, and thinking about their joy so close at hand, Dessa couldn’t help but smile as well.
Their ride-off-into-the-sunset happily-ever-after was finally here.
“Then what will you do?” her dad asked. “Are you going to try to find a place in Azalea Springs? Get a job? Or do you have somewhere else in mind?” Her dad looked at her, his wrinkled expression shrewd beneath his heavy brows, and Dessa realized that he’d probably given her clarity tea bought from a Magicker café.
If she stayed, she’d have to readjust to the particulars of the paranormal community—or the PC as the locals called it.
Dessa was saved from answering when a red Ford truck pulled into the drive next to her blue Toyota. The small candle of comfort she’d been nursing guttered. “Why’s Uncle Brad here?”
“Because I told him you were coming, and he wanted to see you, of course,” her father said, waving to his younger brother.
“Dessa Blue!” Brad swaggered over to them with a good-natured grin.
At fifty, he was a decade younger than her father, his long brown hair pulled back in a low ponytail beneath a backwards baseball cap as his blue eyes twinkled above a full, gray beard.
Though Dessa saw him every Christmas, his presence never failed to remind her of the day she’d made the mistake, the one that had sent her running as far as she could go.
The mistake that had almost ended her uncle’s career.
The mistake that had ruined two of her best friends’ lives and ended the third’s.
It was a memory that lived and breathed between them as surely as a slumbering dragon. Not something to be touched, but never something that could be forgotten. Still, Brad had always been like a second father to her, so there was little she could do but rise and fall into his strong arms.
“Hey, Uncle Brad.”
After giving her a squeeze, he pulled her back, staring hard into her face. “Do you want me to kill him?”
“No.” Dessa couldn’t suppress a chuckle. “He’s not worth it.”
“Good!” Uncle Brad spun her around to face her parents and threw an arm around her shoulders. “Because we’ll be needing some more McKinney-muscle around here now that it’s your parents’ turn to run off.”
“Dessa was just saying she was looking for a place to stay and a job to hold her over until she gets her bearings.” Her father raised his eyebrows meaningfully at Brad, something unspoken passing between them, and Dessa knew she’d been set up.
“I didn’t say—” she tried, only for Brad to cut her off.
“Well, what a coincidence.” He beamed at her, looking for all the world like a mix between a lumberjack and a young Santa Claus. “Because I happen to have a room over my office, and I’d be willing to let you rent it if you’d consider helping me out again.”
“Uncle Brad.” Dessa wiggled out from under his brawny arm, putting distance between them.
“You don’t have to offer me some pity job.
After everything that happened, you can’t possibly want me working in your office again.
I haven’t worked with the PC since I left.
I probably wouldn’t even be of any use to you. ”
“Dessa Blue.” A gentleness infused her name that almost broke her.
“People make mistakes. What happened was a tragedy, but it wasn’t your fault, and you were just a kid.
We have to put that behind us now.” He propped his hands on his hips, his head bowing, and suddenly Dessa could see the six years that had passed as if they stood on his shoulders.
Even before she’d left, he’d carried his own tragedies after what happened to Aunt Carolyn.
He squinted at her with a rueful grin. “And it’s not a pity gig.
I’m asking because, selfishly, I really do need the help.
I’m getting called away to work on a federal case, and the Jowett girl is still missing. I’ve only got—”
“Wait. What?” Dessa’s spine cracked ramrod straight. “Which Jowett girl?”
“It’s Carly,” her mother whispered, putting a hand over her mouth. “I’m sorry, baby, I thought you would’ve heard by now.”
Her father nodded. “No one’s seen hide nor hair of her for a week. They think she ran away, but her parents want to know she’s safe.”
Dessa met her uncle’s gaze, and she knew they were both remembering the day Zach Whitmore had gone missing six years ago.
She could still hear the chime of his mom’s text.
Feel her phone vibrate as his dad called her.
Their urgency climbing with each passing second, until finally everything had spiraled out of control.
Brad looked away, a deeper shadow passing over his face, one that spoke of even older wounds.
For a moment, the four of them said nothing.
The fire crackled, the insects whispered amongst the long yellow reeds, and the night curled over Dessa’s bones.
She’d thought six years would’ve been enough to come back to a fresh page.
But with this new information, it felt like she’d walked out of her life only to step into the same web she’d tried to escape at eighteen.
She wanted nothing more than to get in the car and take off again until she ran out of gas. But she wouldn’t, because it would change nothing. The debt she owed the Jowetts wasn’t something that could be repaid, or run from, and they all knew it.
“What kind of help do you need?” she whispered.
“Well, I still have Melba for tech support, and I just got a brand-new legal analyst who’s wet behind the ears, but I don’t have a PC liaison or a finance manager, and honestly I could use both.
” He adjusted the sweat-stained cap on his head.
“Though technically speaking, for the first couple months, I can only bring you on as a paid intern. I’ve been called up on so many federal cases lately, the local office has been floundering, and our funding’s been cut.
Until we can show concrete results, they won’t let us fill any of our permanent vacancies. ”
Dessa pulled on the ends of her long, dark hair, feeling like she was sixteen years old again, and her uncle was asking her for a little admin help.
The Azalea Springs Records and Intermediary Office had sounded very adult back then—something she hadn’t learned until much later was a bug and not a feature.
With an AzRIO badge, she’d been so excited to soak up the ins and the outs of the paranormal world she belonged to.
She’d taken to it like a brand-new fledgling to spring air, and her future seemed to spill out before her. A permanent position in AzRIO had been all she’d ever dreamed of.
But then, when she’d failed, she’d failed spectacularly.
And if she was being honest, she still owed Brad for vouching for her. For bailing her out. Even if she did him this alleged favor, she would never stop owing him.
Just like the Jowetts.
In some ways, it really wasn’t a choice at all. Her uncle would’ve already had a federal position years ago if it wasn’t for her mistakes, and she knew how badly he wanted it.
Still, she averted her gaze to the golden moon just rising above the trees. “I…I don’t know how long I’ll be staying, Uncle Brad.”
He nodded with a bittersweet smile. “That’s okay, Dess. We’ll have you for as long as you’ll have us.”
Dessa’s gaze skated to a Magicker standing on the shore, stroking the snout of a glassy-eyed alligator, and she tried to consider A-Springs with fresh eyes.
This wasn’t just any town on the marshy edge of Orlando suburbia.
It was a place of magic and danger. The place where she was born, where her parents were born, and arguably a place that would always have its talons in her.
Even now, the magic bubbled up in her core, begging for exercise.
She reached out to Brad with her senses, the lilac scent of the gift that labeled him as an Uncanny answering hers in kind. Brad’s grin widened as his gift spooled from his essence, the magic passed down through their blood humming in a harmony only they could hear.
It was a song that held secrets they could never tell.
Secrets she could use to help people. To help Carly Jowett in a way that she had failed to help her siblings.
But they were also secrets that could destroy her.
She breathed in the dark-honey scent of their magic, the web of Azalea Springs folding her in once more.
Or perhaps it had never truly let her go.
One thing was for sure, it was certainly a good distraction.
Or maybe a really bad one.
Either way, at least it would take her mind off of Aiden.
She blew out a long breath, bracing herself for what lay ahead. Preparing for the familiar faces ready to break open old wounds that perhaps had never really healed to begin with. She could take those hits though—anything to give her time and space for her newest hemorrhage to run itself out.
Hex her to death if it didn’t all just royally suck.
But she couldn’t deny that it sucked because of her. She was the common denominator here. The one who always made the wrong choice when it mattered most. Who’d been tried and found wanting. And yet moonlight glinted off the calm confidence in Brad’s gaze.
“You really think I’m the right person for the job?” It wasn’t the real question she wanted to ask, but she had a feeling he knew what she meant. Do you really want me after what happened last time?
“Dess, I think you’re the only person for the job. No matter what trials we’ve faced or failed before, you lived to be stronger and wiser for them.” His craggy face softened into a hundred wrinkles earned through hard-won smiles. “Even when it doesn’t feel that way.”
Dessa’s lips tightened, warm tears filling her eyes all over again—wanting to believe him so badly, and yet not quite able to.
In this moment, she was neither strong nor wise.
She was a hundred shards of glass scattered in the dark.
But this was a world she knew, and a job that she’d once been good at.
A place where she could pick up the pieces.
Well, maybe.
She swallowed hard, not quite able to smile. “I can at least fill in until you get back.”
Dessa’s parents shared a relieved glance, and Dessa’s shoulders relaxed with them.
Despite her sore eyes and tear-stained cheeks, it was their peace of mind that made it worth it.
Because if she had a job and a place to stay, then they could enjoy the retirement they’d earned.
Meanwhile, she’d have time to plot out a new course…
Unless the troubled waters of Azalea Springs sank her a second time.
A possibility she couldn’t rule out.
“There are no coincidences,” her mother whispered over her tea, her contented gaze shifting from her father to Brad to Dessa to the now glittering constellations above. “Only the strings of fate glinting in the starlight.”
Dessa swallowed, the weight of the words sinking into her, mixing with the magic in her bones—with the secrets that hid there.
She imagined the threads of time tying her, the Jowetts, and Azalea Springs together in an inescapable loop.
Perhaps if she found the youngest Jowett, she could atone, in part, for the Jowetts she’d failed, and for Zach Whitmore, the missing boy who, at this point, would likely never return.
Dessa couldn’t deny the strands of providence had drawn her here, and she knew better than anyone that you couldn’t ignore such calls. Even if they did feel like a noose around her neck.
Which only left her with one more question. “When do I start?”