Chapter 1
brODERICK
“I don’t see why this spell requires me to take my shirt off.”
My younger sister, Ame, continues to light the necessary fires as she answers, “You wouldn’t have to if you agreed to let me perform the spell.” She pauses and tilts her head, as if in thought. “I might have to then. Take my shirt off. Jack will be grumpy about missing that.”
“Nope. No. Never mind.”
It is in everyone’s best interest that Ame’s werewolf boyfriend stays un-grumpy.
Or at least less grumpy than his normal amount.
“We need skin-to-skin contact for you to draw on our magic. Closer to your heart, the better,” Mor, my older sister, explains as she reads through the steps in the grimoire. “I can’t believe you performed this on your own, Ame.”
The youngest of us stands up and offers a mild shrug, her long red hair sliding over her shoulder with the gesture.
We all share the shade, along with our pale skin, and magical heritage.
Our current group is missing the fourth sibling, but even though Anthony, my twin, is in town, none of us expected him to join. The man hates magic.
“It was uncomfortable,” Ame admits.
Which probably means it was agonizing. Ame is not a complainer.
With a sigh, I reach for the buttons on my shirt and prepare for multiple discomforts.
Along with whatever magical bothers I’m about to deal with, there’s also the fact that it’s cold.
Georgia might stay warm longer than England—where I just spent the last few years—but this full moon night in December is only just above freezing.
As I slip the buttons free, my eyes seek out the reason we’re all out here on this frigid night.
In the center of a chalk-drawn diagram sits a fluffy rabbit. The creature is the color of milk chocolate with ears that droop and an overall aura of fear. The tiny thing quivers.
Guilt hits me hard in the stomach and hurries my fingers.
I’m an ass, bemoaning my momentary discomfort, when there’s a person trapped in the wrong body only feet from me.
A few years ago, Ame found a black cat on the side of the road.
Instantly, she knew there was something other about the feline, and she spent all her time trying to figure out what.
Eventually, she broke the curse placed on him, freeing Jack Lim.
A werewolf. A man who now is thoroughly in love with her.
Turned out, Jack had been captured and transformed by a sorcerer—also known as a human who utilizes twisted spells to steal magic from mythical creatures. He’d been feeding off of Jack for years before the guy managed to escape.
When Ame, Jack, and a group of other powerful mythics sought out the sorcerer who had cursed him for retribution, they found the evil man had taken another captive.
Tonight, we free them.
And I volunteered as the curse breaker this time around.
“Okay. That’s everything.” Ame stands up, wiping her hands off on her overalls. A small fire burns with pungent herb-filled smoke, matching three more she lit around the circle. “Moon is high. Time to do this.”
The aptly named Cold Moon is round in the night sky, its full glow blotting out the surrounding stars.
Energy seems to spill from the orb, encouraging our casting.
A shadow flits across the spotlight of the moon, and a soft hoot alerts us to the presence of an owl.
Hopefully, it’s not eyeing Bunny for a midnight meal.
One more reason to get this over with. The world is a dangerous place.
Despite how tiny the rabbit is, I feel like I can hear the animal’s panting, terrified breaths from where I stand. Goose bumps trace over my skin, but not from the cold. There’s a tug on my magic I normally only feel around distressed humans.
Calm them, the urge whispers in my mind.
Instead of staring directly at Bunny, I focus on the space around them. In the air where auras sometimes appear. When I relax my eyes, I spy the vivid orange of anxious terror.
Power pinches along my shoulders, a sensation born of my natural magical aptitude. All of us Shelly witches have abilities tied to emotions. Ame is desire, Anthony is jealousy, Mor has a more general connection to all emotions.
I sense fears and have the ability to soothe them.
I want more than anything to comfort this rabbit.
But before I can ask if that would interfere with the spell work, a black cat lopes into the circle, straight for Bunny. The feline curls its dark body around the shivering animal and starts up a soothing purr that rumbles through the quiet clearing.
“Thank you, Lucky,” Ame calls out to her familiar. “She’ll keep Bunny calm while we work.” My sister points to a spot on the edge of the circle, sitting equally between two fires. “Here’s where you go, Broderick. Probably best to kneel.”
I do as she directed, and when Mor places the grimoire on the ground in front of me, I review the spell once more. An invention from sunder witches.
The curse breaker.
There’s a hiss behind me, and I glance back in time to see blood well on Ame’s thumb, where she nicked herself. Mor takes the knife and cuts her thumb too, then wipes the blade clean and hands it to me.
Each of them places their hand on my bare shoulder. They speak a string of words in the witch language, and I gasp as a shot of electricity races down my spine. Suddenly, my skin feels overly full of an abundance of power.
“Now,” Ame, normally the softest spoken of us, commands.
As I read from the tome, I mimic her unwavering attitude. I chant the spell in an unrelenting tone I would never use in my daily life.
But tonight, I cannot waver. Cannot doubt or shy away.
“Take of my body. My blood to break,” I say as I reach for the silver dagger lying innocently next to the grimoire.
The blade is warm when I drag it in a stinging slash across my palm. I hiss through my teeth at the painful bite of steel. With the flow of my blood, I feel the draw on my power. On all of our powers. Energy from Ame and Mor feeds into my body from where they clasp my shoulders.
“A curse before me,” I say in the witch’s tongue, “break it.”
Then, I repeat myself, over and over, as the pain intensifies.
The injury on my hand burns more than a cut should, as if a hand were pressing hard on the wound. A corner of my brain is horrified at the realization my younger sister did this alone, no magical assistance. This agony would only have been amplified.
I’m determined not to bow to it.
“Break it,” I growl in a voice I’ve never used before.
Fury rises fast in me, toward the dead sorcerer who forced this on an innocent mythic. The vile man made my sister suffer so she could free them.
Wind rustles the tree branches, the spindly limbs looking like grasping fingers in the night sky. The flames grow brighter as magic seeps from me. The scent of smoke and burning herbs is thick in the air. Lucky lets out a yowl and sprints from the middle of the circle.
But still, the rabbit doesn’t change.
I will not fail in this. I will not fail them.
“Break it!” I snarl. “brEAK IT!” The words scream out of me with a rush of power, and the world goes white.
And like a switch being flicked, everything shuts off. The surge of magic, the bonfires, the ringing in my ears—it all ceases.
We’re left in the forest clearing, under the light of the full moon, and the only sounds are an owl hooting and four people panting.
Four.
I push myself to my knees, having fallen forward in that last wave of power, and I cast my eyes to where the animal was once crouched. Bunny is gone.
A woman remains.
She sits on her knees, back bowed, head bent, hands held in front of her with fingers stretched wide. I watch as she flexes each one, as if testing their authenticity. Long blonde hair trails over her shoulders, only partly covering her nudity.
“Hello,” I say, my voice cracking on the greeting.
Her head jerks up, gaze clashing with mine, and I swear her irises have their own golden light.
My sisters and I didn’t discuss this. What to say when the curse was broken. We brought clothes because Ame had explained Jack was naked when he transformed. She also warned that there might be some attempted kissing, but that also could have been particular to Jack.
Honestly, if this woman wants to kiss someone, I volunteer.
Stop that. She is obviously terrified.
I can still see the toxic orange aura of fear around her.
Or wait … is that her aura?
“You’re safe,” Ame informs her from over my shoulder.
“The sorcerer is dead,” Mor adds.
The woman’s eyes widen, and trembling overtakes her body. Just like when she was a rabbit. I want to say something to ease away that fear.
“I’m Broderick,” I offer with what I hope is a disarming smile. I clear my throat, vocal cords ragged from screaming out spell words. “Nice to meet you.”
She doesn’t respond. Only shakes.
“We have clothes. And blankets.”
The sound of movement behind me is probably one of my sisters grabbing those things, but I don’t want to look away from our new arrival for even the moment it would take to check.
“We’re here to help. Whatever you need. You’ve actually been living with us for the past month,” I babble, not sure if my words are helping the situation.
But something in me needs to keep her attention my way.
“We live in a library, not far from here. There’s room in the house, if you’d like to stay with us.
Even with you taking up more space than you used to.
” I try for an easy smile, but the joke falls flat.
Most of my jokes do. “I just meant, since you’re a person now.
Not a bunny. That’s what we called you—Bunny.
Only because we didn’t know your name. You were a very cute bunny. ”
She flinches, and I immediately regret the comment. I should’ve left the talking to Ame and Mor.
“I’m not”—her voice crackles like the logs on a fire—“a bunny.”
“No. Of course no—”
She bursts into flames.
Mor, who had stepped toward the woman with a blanket, stumbles to a stop. Meanwhile, I scramble forward, desperate for a way to put out the consuming fire.
“The flames are hers.”
Ame’s warning shout stops me when I’m inches away, hands stretched toward the fire, as if I could simply pat it out. Blood oozes from my open wound, dripping onto the grass between us.
The freed woman stares at me as she burns, but her skin doesn’t char or melt.
“You’re a phoenix?” I gasp the question, heart beating at a rapid, irregular rhythm.
As close as we are, I watch the emotions play across her face. Anger, pain, devastation, fear, fury…
“Not a phoenix.” Her eyes leave mine to stare into the sky. “I am free.”
She launches herself into the air, body changing as she rises. A flaming creature with wings that spread wide.
Mor walks up to my side, my shirt in her hand as her eyes watch the mythic disappear over the spindly, leafless treetops and spires of pine. “Phoenixes only catch on fire at the beginning and end of their life cycles.” My librarian sister educates me in a distracted voice.
“Then, what is she?”
The farther she flies from my sight, the more my chest aches at what feels like a sudden loss.
“A firebird.”