Chapter 1
One
Avery
The night before the ritual...
Avery’s mother always said it was her who should have been eaten in the womb. That the twin Avery ate would have been a more successful student. Today, Avery was inclined to believe her because she was about to be expelled.
The watered-down whiskey tingled as it met her lips, leaving a fiery trail of cinnamon sliding over her throat and settling warm in her chest. Drinking wasn’t the healthiest of coping mechanisms, but for now, it would do.
As the warmth of the alcohol spread through her limbs, her dorm room became a little hazier.
The dark wood of the furniture blended with the sunset, and the crackle of the fireplace was the only sound apart from the maddened rise and fall of Maya’s breathing across from her.
The valedictorian sprawled out on Avery’s bed, her usually pristine uniform loose and in crumples.
She had one sock on and one off; she had given up on propriety three drinks ago.
Even her bra lay lonely on the chair after she flung it away mid-rant, declaring it was as useless as the men in the reality TV show they were watching.
“Boooo,” Maya slurred, throwing chocolate almonds at the flickering projector.
She’d paused it because she had become so angry that her favorite couple had just broken up.
“He couldn’t resist putting his dick in a new arrival for twenty-four hours after he had publicly declared that he loved the girl? ”
Avery caught the almond midair and popped it into her mouth. “Men.”
The human TV show was inane enough to leave you clinging to waning brain cells at the end of it. But it was a pleasant distraction from the reality she found herself in.
Thunder rolled outside the window, flickering the projector on and off; the electricity at the university was at the weather’s mercy.
You would think, as witches, they could solve that problem, but no, instead they spent their energy on more useless things, like watching reality TV. It was kind of addictive, though.
“Gimme some more of that,” Maya said, stirring. She made a half-hearted grab toward the bottle in Avery’s hand.
Avery held it straight up out of her reach, with a surprisingly quick motion for a tipsy person. “No, no more for you. I don’t want to clean up your vomit off my floor again.”
“That was one time!”
“Was it, though?” Avery raised a pointed eyebrow at her because it was definitely more than once. The piece of bleached wood stood out like a sore thumb from their celebration a year ago. One that she now knew was entirely premature.
“Fiiiine.” Maya flopped back against the pillows, staring at the ceiling. “I should probably stop drinking now, anyway. Two days isn’t enough time to sober up for class.”
The very thing Avery had been drinking to forget slapped her in the face like a flaccid cock. Two days to summon a familiar or probably be expelled. It was literally the only requirement for their final year. She was going to kiss her magical education goodbye.
Maya’s face crumpled as soon as she said it, a hand flying to her mouth. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to…”
“It’s fine,” Avery said, waving her off. “It’s something you should be proud of. You worked your ass off.”
“Yeahhh, but so did you.” Maya shook her head in disbelief. “I can’t believe Julian fucking Ainsworth got a familiar before you. The man is as dumb as a doorknob.”
Avery let out a bitter laugh, taking another swig from the bottle. A delightful burn coated her throat.
Maya propped herself up on one elbow, her dark braided hair falling messily over her face. “You were, like, at least five points ahead of him in the final theory test.”
Maya attempted to brush a piece of hair away and failed miserably. “He and his new familiar can go. Fuck. Themselves,” she said, punctuating each word by poking her finger through a circle she’d made with her other hand.
It was hilarious seeing Maya like this. She was usually so reserved and determined not to say a bad thing about anyone, but drunk Maya had opinions. Loud ones.
The sound of wings beat overhead, the force of them enough to rattle the windows.
Maya sighed. “Ugh, I hate dragon riders; they really need to introduce a no-fly policy past midnight. The number of times I’ve woken up from one of those dumb beasts…”
“What if you got one of those dumb beasts?”
“Nah, I’m way too cool for a dragon. That’s why I got a crow.”
As if on cue, the black shadow perched on Avery’s window let out an ear-screeching caw.
Avery snorted at Maya’s statement. Dragons were known as the most powerful familiars you could summon; anyone would be lucky enough to have one.
Crows, foxes, cats, bats, horses, etcetera, etcetera, were all considered normal.
They gave you power, but it was nothing compared to the mythical beasts.
The only person to summon anything mythical in their year was Julian fucking Ainsworth and his griffin.
They say familiars look like their owners, and both looked like pompous pricks.
Maya had summoned her crow a year ago, as soon as we were allowed to perform the ritual.
It was a given that she was the first to get a familiar.
In theory, it was easy. You drew a summoning circle, set up the candles, read the incantations, and offered the goddess a token in exchange for a familiar; out popped a crow, and Bob’s your witchy uncle.
However, Bob was not her uncle, nor was he helpful at all in summoning a fucking familiar. Maya had done it all perfectly. The rest of her class followed over the following months. It was now a fucking petting zoo and Avery still had manifested nothing but perpetual disappointment.
Jealousy festered within her. It was a wound that wouldn’t heal. She tried not to give a fuck, but unfortunately, she gave too many; she was a slut for them. She was happy for Maya to be the first. But selfishly, she would like to be a little happy too.
Maya sighed again, stumbling as she made her way out of the bed, half sliding, half crawling like a cat that missed its jump, hanging onto the duvet for dear life. “I should go back to my dorm before the wicked witch notices me gone. The woman has a second sense for me, I swear to the goddess.”
The wicked witch was wicked indeed. Their housemother was the epitome of what humans thought of witches…
well, how their movies displayed them anyway.
Warts growing on a protruding nose, wrinkles forming lines where they shouldn’t, hairs on her chinny, chin chin.
It was a crude depiction, even though humans were well aware of how witches actually looked.
And usually, they looked normal. The only giveaway that they weren’t human was a magical signature that set off alarms if they crossed the wards without permission in the human territories.
Witch enclaves were designed to keep witches in and humans out.
Step through the barrier without clearance, and as Avery had discovered when her cabin fever became particularly bad, you were magically flung back.
Still, better than being burned alive at the stake, which humans had done at one point.
Even shifters had more rights than witches.
The humans let them walk around and travel wherever they wanted, and it was said that they could turn into literal monsters—but she wasn’t sure if that was a myth or not.
Back in the distant past, shifters played nicer with the humans, working with them rather than against them.
Witches, on the other hand, preferred to stay in their hidden enclaves, only interacting when it benefited them.
Turns out the humans took that personally.
They shouldn’t; most witches just wanted to stay near the ley lines that ran under the enclaves, where they were most powerful.
However, Avery didn’t care, and she really wanted to taste some chicken nuggets. Tragically, there was not one chicken shop on the whole island. Maybe see a few of the world’s wonders too. Anything but the same university and town skyline.
Maya paused, one foot touching the floor. “There’s still time for you to summon a familiar, you know.”
Avery’s hand tightened around the bottle.
She wanted to believe her, she really did.
The subtle hope still simmered like embers in her chest long after she had doused it.
The small child in her refused to believe that her dream was long over.
Hope was cruel. So she shoved that little light as far down as she could, locking it in a dark box and starving it of oxygen where the fire couldn’t rage inside her.
She took another swig of the bottle, the contents of it almost empty.
Fourth-year started in two days. She had two days to somehow produce a familiar out of her ass and present it to the university council.
A seemingly impossible task, when she had tried and failed so many times before.
And as her close, personal friend, Charlotte Lucas, from Pride and Prejudice once said: I’m twenty-seven years old (twenty-two actually), I have no money (true) and no prospects (if she didn’t get a familiar), I’m already a burden on my parents (parent), and I’m frightened (the truest of all).
“Avery—” Before Maya could finish, a massive thump shook the ceiling. They both scrambled back against the bed as roof tiles clattered overhead, sliding down and shattering on the balcony with dramatic clangs.
“What was that?” Maya said, suddenly far more sober. She clutched a pillow to her chest, as if it would protect her from whatever had just landed on the roof.