Solan (Northern Ohio Shifters #6)
Chapter 1
Chapter One
Kaeli Shaw tasted salt and copper before she even realized the spell had gone awry.
The salt circle was still humming, the tiny grains glowing like twinkle lights. A dull red haze shimmered like a heat wave on asphalt for a brief moment, and just beyond it, a vase lay shattered against the far wall, the flowers singed, curtains smoldering.
Her chest hurt, like something had tried to claw out of her heart.
Four witches stared at her across the polished wood floor of the North Corner’s home, their faces void of emotion.
They weren’t shocked that the spell had gone haywire. They didn’t even seem disappointed.
They just looked exhausted, so very over Kaeli and her brand of non-magic that never did what it was supposed to.
She was a north power, and that meant the element of earth.
But not even a tiny earthquake shudder had happened when she’d cast the spell.
Instead, she’d set a flaming vase of flowers careening into the far wall and cracked the old stained-glass windows.
“Utterly, utterly unstable,” Elle, the West Corner, said with a dismissive sigh as she rubbed her temples like Kaeli was a stubborn headache.
Next to her, Gretchen, the South Corner, waved her hand, and the smoldering curtain stopped smoking. “We’ve tried everything.”
Kaeli swallowed hard, her mind spinning. “My north magic shouldn’t flame out like that. I don’t know what happened.”
North Corner Lydia, the most powerful witch in their coven, cut Kaeli off coldly. “It shouldn’t, but here we are.”
Kaeli’s pulse stuttered. Lydia was the head of the coven for a reason. She drew power around herself like a cloak, and she never had spells go bad. She was the kind of witch that Kaeli had once dreamed of becoming.
Her gray eyes pinned Kaeli in place. “You know what this means.”
She knew. Deep in her bones, she knew this call to cast a spell for the Corners had been a test, and she’d failed. Spectacularly.
“You’re sending me away.”
The words carried a finality of sorts, like the nails in a coffin lid.
Lydia didn’t bat an eye. “We can’t risk the coven’s safety any longer. You were warned to get your magic under control. Several times. We’ve been more than generous, but someone we care about will get hurt because you can’t control the magic you were born with.”
She wanted to fight for herself, but the words stung deep. The Corners were worried someone they cared about would get hurt, and that didn’t include Kaeli. “I didn’t do it on purpose.”
“Irrelevant,” Carmen, the East Corner, said. “You could kill someone.”
“What am I supposed to do?” Kaeli asked as she slowly rose to her feet and scrubbed the toe of her shoe through the salt circle to open it.
“Maybe the coven in Northern Ohio will take you. They take anyone,” Gretchen said.
Kaeli knew just how far they were suggesting she go. From Illinois—the only home she’d ever known—to Northern Ohio, a place that witches whispered about with pity or disgust.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket, and she realized that Elle had her phone in her hand. The screen on Kaeli’s phone showed a bus ticket to Cleveland. One way.
One of the other witches in the coven walked in, pulling a rolling suitcase behind her, and Kaeli realized it was the suitcase from her bedroom closet.
“You set me up,” she said, staring at Lydia. “It was a test, and I failed, but you already had my bag packed and a freaking bus ticket ready to go. Why test me at all? Why not just exile me?”
Lydia gave her a cold look that would have made Jack Frost shiver. “I don’t owe you an explanation; however, I will say that we gave you one last chance to prove you could master your magic. You are no North power wielder, you are the burden of the coven, a disgrace just like your mother.”
Now that hurt like a son of a bitch.
Lifting her chin slightly and tightening her emotions so she didn’t cry in front of them, she grabbed her suitcase and walked out of the room. When she was outside in the crisp September air, she used her phone to order a car and walked toward the outskirts of town to wait for it.
Alone.
As she waited for the car to pick her up to take her to the bus station, a memory surfaced: of another bag packed and another goodbye she didn’t choose.
Her mom, with smeared lipstick and laughing breathlessly, shoved clothes into a suitcase while the man, married to the West Corner, whispered in her ear with a lecherous gaze. Kaeli was sixteen. She hadn’t even had her first kiss yet. But she’d instinctively known what was going on between them.
“You’ll understand one day,” her mom had whispered with wild, selfish eyes.
But Kaeli had never understood her mom walking away from her before she was an adult and tearing apart the very fabric of her life.
She’d sworn that day that she’d never walk away from people who needed her and loved her, but the problem was that all these years later, she’d never found those people.
Someone had taken her in until she was old enough to live on her own.
But she’d never had love again. Family. Loyalty.
She’d been a dog begging for scraps, and happy with crumbs.
The car arrived, and she checked the app details against the car and the driver. Then she set her bag on the seat next to her as she settled in the plush seat and shut the door.
“Bus station?” the woman asked as she pulled away from the curb.
“Yeah.”
“Where are you headed, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Cleveland.”
“Oh? The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is there, well worth the time. How long will you be gone?”
Kaeli’s magic hummed restlessly under her skin as the car passed the town limits, the bus station a bright red dot on the GPS screen, blinking like a warning light. “For good.”
“Ah, well. Ohio is pretty great. Mind if I put on some music?”
“Go ahead.”
As music filled the car, Kaeli looked out the window and watched the scenery blur by. She was half on the edge of a mental breakdown, half ready to storm back into the Corner’s home and show her a thing or two about taking care of people.
But she didn’t cry or ask the driver to turn around.
Instead, she opened her phone and looked up the Cleveland coven.
She knew she didn’t have to go there; she could go anywhere she wanted.
Something spoke to her, though, in a quiet, reverent voice that Cleveland was the right choice for her.
As she stared down at her hands that had not too long ago attempted to wield magic and had failed, she wondered if there was any place for her anywhere.
Maybe she was destined to roam, a witch who couldn’t cast the simplest of spells, a woman without a place to call home.
Rubbing at the ache in her chest, she realized the ache had been there since she was abandoned at sixteen and had only scarred over and never truly healed.
She was so used to being discarded that she hadn’t even seen the call to the Corner’s house as anything sinister. But they’d planned it all along. She wasn’t welcome there any longer, and whatever lay ahead…she just hoped that fate would be kind to her.
As she thought about fate and how shitty the hands that were dealt could be, something sparked, glowing and soft, inside her, and she closed her eyes and held onto it.
Hope.