Chapter 1 This Is Not My Story #2
Cassie arrived twenty-three minutes later, which was twenty-three minutes of me hiding in my kitchen while Jimmy Kowalski paced my front yard and occasionally called out questions like “Did you change your hair?” and “Is that a cat? I didn’t know you had a cat!
” and, most concerningly, “Why does everything look different? Did your neighbors get new houses?”
She brought Liam, who looked like a man resigned to his fate, and Margaret, who looked intrigued in a way that made me deeply nervous.
Also Luna, because apparently the talking cat was a package deal now.
“He’s still out there,” I hissed from behind my curtains. “He’s been doing calisthenics. I think he’s trying to impress me.”
Cassie peered through the window. Her face did something complicated. “That’s… he’s very…”
“Eighteen. He’s very eighteen. I KNOW.”
Liam moved to the window, took one look, and said, “Right. Tea, then?” before disappearing into my kitchen like a man who’d learned that the only way to survive magical chaos was consistent hydration.
Margaret was already examining my phone, which was now sitting on my coffee table, buzzing steadily, screen filled with faces I hadn’t thought about in decades.
“Interesting,” she murmured.
“‘Interesting’ is not the word I’d use.”
“The crystal residue is here, certainly. Cassie’s energy signature.” She turned the phone over, studied it like a scientist examining a particularly unusual specimen. “But this… this is something else entirely.”
“Something else like WHAT?”
“Like bloodline magic.” She looked up at me, and there was something in her expression—curiosity, yes, but also a flicker of recognition. “The crystal didn’t create this, dear. It woke something up. Something that was already there.”
“Nothing was ‘already there.’ I don’t have magic. I have a cat whose judgmental expressions I’ve started narrating in my head, a job at a winery and an apartment that I can barely afford. I’m completely ordinary.”
“Mmm.” Margaret didn’t look convinced. “Tell me about your grandmother.”
“Which one?”
“Either. Both.”
“Abuela Rosa was a saint who made incredible tamales and thought astrology was the devil’s work. Grammy Martinez was a Methodist from Minnesota who collected ceramic cats. Neither of them were WITCHES.”
“And great-aunts? Any of those?”
I opened my mouth to say no, and then stopped.
Great-Aunt Rosalinda. Abuela’s sister. The one nobody talked about except in whispers, usually followed by the sign of the cross. I’d met her once, at a family reunion when I was maybe six. She’d looked at me with dark, knowing eyes and said something in Spanish that made my mother hustle me away.
Para la hija que gira. For the daughter who spins.
I hadn’t thought about that in decades. Why was I thinking about it now?
“There was…” I swallowed. “Tía Rosalinda. But she died when I was a kid. And she wasn’t a witch, she was just… strange. People said she could see things.”
“What kind of things?”
“I don’t know. Love things. Who belonged with who. My mom said she predicted half the marriages in her village.” I laughed, but it came out wrong. “Family legend stuff. Not real.”
Margaret and Cassie exchanged a look.
“Matchmaking magic runs in families,” Margaret said carefully. “It’s rare, but when it manifests, it’s powerful. And it tends to skip generations.”
“I’m not a matchmaker. I can’t even match my own SOCKS.”
“The gift doesn’t care about socks, dear.”
Luna, who had been suspiciously quiet, chose this moment to hop onto the coffee table and fix me with her unsettling golden stare.
“The magic is responding to you,” she said. “To your energy. It’s generating options because that’s what you’re putting out—a signal, like a beacon. Every romantic possibility you’ve ever brushed against is answering the call.”
“How do I make it STOP answering?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it.” Margaret set down my phone, which immediately started vibrating toward the edge of the table like it was trying to escape. “I’ll need to do some research. In the meantime, try not to match with anyone else.”
“I’M NOT MATCHING WITH ANYONE. THE APP IS DOING IT BY ITSELF.”
“Then try not to think about romance.”
“There’s a TEENAGER doing JUMPING JACKS on my LAWN.”
We all looked out the window. Jimmy had moved on from calisthenics and was now examining my garden gnome with great suspicion.
“Your gnome looks different than I remember,” he called out. “Did you get a new one? This one seems… angrier.”
The gnome did look angry. I’d bought it at a garage sale last spring, mostly because it reminded me of my boss Valentina—tiny, aggressive, and perpetually unimpressed.
“I need to get out of here,” I said. “I can’t stay in this house with him staring at me like I’m still sixteen and about to let him feel me up in the back of his mom’s minivan.”
“Did you?” Cassie asked.
“That’s not the point.”
“So yes.”
“THAT’S NOT THE POINT.”
More matches flooding in. 536. 547. 558. The phone was warm now—actually warm, like it was running a fever, like it was working overtime.
And then, another knock at the door. Not Jimmy’s cheerful rat-a-tat-tat. Something heavier. More confused.
“Diane?” A different voice. Older. Vaguely familiar in a way that made my stomach drop. “Diane Martinez? I got this message and I don’t… I don’t understand what’s happening. Where am I?”
I looked at Cassie. She looked at me.
“Who else did you date in high school?” she whispered.
“Just Jimmy. But the app isn’t just pulling people I actually dated—”
Another knock. Then another. Then what sounded like a small crowd gathering on my porch.
I looked through the peephole.
Standing next to my eighteen-year-old prom date was a man in a leather jacket with slicked-back hair, a cigarette tucked behind his ear, looking like he’d just stepped off the set of Grease.
Next to him, a guy in a neon pink mesh crop top and short shorts was doing something complicated with a Rubik’s cube.
And behind them both, I recognized Greg from my app—the one with the disco bio—standing in his leisure suit with truly spectacular sideburns, holding a rotary phone that appeared to be attached to nothing, looking around my neighborhood like he’d just landed on Mars.
The app wasn’t just pulling from my past. It was pulling from every romantic what-if the universe had ever generated—including decades before I was born.
The greaser was examining Jimmy’s polo shirt with deep suspicion. “What kind of square threads are these, daddy-o?”
“It’s Abercrombie,” Jimmy said defensively. “It’s cool.”
“It ain’t got no collar pop. No style.”
The neon guy looked up from his Rubik’s cube. “You guys are so totally freaking me out right now. Is this like a costume party? Are we on MTV?”
“What’s MTV?” the greaser asked.
“What’s… what’s MTV.” The neon guy stared at him. “Dude. Music Television? Videos? Madonna?”
“Who’s Madonna?”
“Far out,” Greg said dreamily, examining my garden gnome. “This little cat is giving me major vibes. Very spiritual.”
“That’s a gnome,” Jimmy said.
“A what now?”
“A gnome. It’s like… a garden decoration.”
“Wild, man. Wild.”
I backed away from the peephole.
“I need to leave,” I said. “Right now. I need to go somewhere with no men, no phones, no—”
My phone buzzed. 573. A notification popped up: Your cosmic destiny awaits! Don’t keep Greg waiting!
“The app knows he’s HERE!”
Margaret picked up my phone, studied the screen, and made a thoughtful noise. “This is quite sophisticated magic. Whoever your great-aunt was, she was powerful.”
“She wasn’t anything. She was just a weird old lady who smelled like lavender and made everyone uncomfortable at quinceaneras.”
“That describes most powerful witches, dear.”
Outside, I could hear the greaser asking Jimmy if he wanted to drag race, and Jimmy trying to explain that his mom’s minivan didn’t really “drag.”
“I need to get out of here,” I said. “I can’t stay in this house with a fifties greaser critiquing my prom date’s fashion choices.”
I grabbed my jacket. “I’m leaving. I’m going somewhere—anywhere—that isn’t here.”
“Di, wait—” Cassie started.
“I’ll be back. Probably. If I don’t get kidnapped by the ghost of boyfriends past.”
“That’s not funny.”
“I’m not joking. There’s a man on my lawn who keeps calling me ‘foxy mama’ and I need to leave before I commit a crime.”
Margaret didn’t look up from my phone. “The magic will follow you, dear. Running won’t help.”
“Maybe not. But it’ll help my sanity.”
I was out the door before anyone could stop me.
Jimmy’s face lit up when he saw me. “DIANE! You look different. Did you do something with your—”
“CAN’T TALK. EMERGENCY. STAY HERE.”
I sprinted for my car, phone buzzing in my pocket, ignoring the chorus of confused voices behind me.
“Diane? Diane, wait! I have so many questions!”
“Is she always like this?”
“Far out, man. She’s really booking it.”
I peeled out of my driveway like a woman fleeing a crime scene.
Which, in a way, I was.