Little Witch (Seasons Of Sin #1)

Chapter One

There was a magic to mornings in Autumn's Hollow that never quite faded, no matter how many years I'd lived here. The world woke slowly, breathing itself into color one inhale at a time. Today should've been no different.

The streets outside were still and quiet, the early light barely filtering through the maple trees arched over Main Street, casting soft shadows on the cobblestones.

The leaves had turned fully gold last week, bursts of crimson and burnt orange scattered through the canopy, like someone had thrown the sun across the ground and left it to smolder.

It made the whole town look stitched together from warm, glowing hues — the kind that made me not want to blink, in case I missed a second of it.

Only I always blinked. Because I was a whore for pretty things, but still, unfortunately, human.

Inside Halloway's Hearth, the bakery my family had run for generations, the air was thick with cinnamon, nutmeg, and clove — the only scent that had ever mattered to me. It wrapped around me and made me want to sing halloween songs and play in leaves like I was a kid again.

Okay. I had played in leaves this morning. But like... that was a reasonable thing to do.

Everyone would have done it, had they been in my place.

The bakery had always felt like a second skin.

A place where time slowed while the rest of the world kept moving without me.

Our shelves held pastries that looked like prize winning entries: pumpkin scones drizzled in spiced glaze, apple turnovers with crusts gone perfectly golden, gingerbread cut into jack-o'-lanterns with crooked, grinning faces.

Everything we baked carried a touch of the season, a dash of love, a sprinkle of something that had always felt like magic.

Today, that comfort didn't reach the uneasy thing curled low in my stomach.

Nothing did. Even the shot of whiskey in my coffee earlier on.

The ovens hummed steady behind me as I checked the batch of cinnamon rolls I'd prepped at dawn, dough risen soft and golden, tops kissed with sugar. I breathed the scent in, trying to ground myself in the routine. But as I set the tray down, my mind slipped backward — to the dream.

The Whispering Pines.

Everyone in Autumn's Hollow knew the woods. The ones that wrapped around the whole town, like they were as much a cage as a shield. Not the kind of place you wandered into after dark. Not if you valued your soul.

And also your shoes. The woods were always muddy.

The stories went back further than anyone could remember.

Some said the forest was cursed, its trees carrying old magic — the kind too wild for human hands.

Others said the woods were alive in ways people didn't say out loud.

The whispers that gave the forest its name weren't wind, they'd tell you, leaning in close, voices dropping.

The trees told you things. Things you weren't meant to know.

I'd heard it a thousand times. Knew magic existed in our town and beyond...

Never believed it.

Until now.

In the dream, the trees had pulsed like a heartbeat, breathing in time with my breaths.

The leaves burned red and gold overhead, casting everything below in a light that didn't belong to this world.

And the whispers — God, they'd been so clear.

A soft, persistent murmur, curling around me, pulling me deeper, toward a massive oak in the northernmost part of the forest. Bark rough and dark.

Roots thick and gnarled, digging into the earth like claws.

Leaves made of gold and orange light flickering and singing, a siren call dragging me toward them.

Then the voices had said my name.

Amber.

It was the sound of it, sharp enough to raise every hair on my arms, that had thrown me awake — heart slamming, orange sheets twisted around my legs.

And even now, standing in the safety of the bakery's kitchen, the feeling hadn't let go.

Like the dream had followed me out of sleep.

And the trees were still out there. Still calling.

The voice in the back of my head said their claws were already in me, and nothing was getting them back out.

I shook the thought off and tied a pumpkin-print apron around my waist, the same ritual I'd had since I was small enough to beg my dad to let me skip school and stay here instead. The only place that had ever felt like home.

Before he vanished.

And I grew up, realized life was shitty, and that baking could help me pretend it wasn't for an hour or two.

The leaf-shaped clock ticked steadily toward seven. Opening time. The same opening time we'd had since I was a little girl. i'd used to hate it but now... I was a fan.

The earlier I got to work. The fast I got out of the house.

Away from my... my step-brother.

I hadn't even heard the front door yet when the back one banged open — that particular scrape of boots that meant Orias had let himself in like he owned the place, which, unfortunately for me, he practically did these days.

"You look like hell, Halloway."

I didn't turn around. "Good morning to you too."

"I mean it as a compliment." I heard the grin before I saw it, and when I glanced over my shoulder, there it was — all teeth and trouble, black hair still damp and pushed back off his face.

His eyes caught the low light and glowed faint neon, pink bleeding to violet at the edges, the way they always did before he'd properly woken up.

The tips of his pointed ears peeked through his hair, sharp enough to nick a finger on if I wasn't careful.

Half a demon didn't leave much room for subtlety.

And my step-brother was... was nothing. At all. Just a person.

"Rough night," I admitted, because lying to him never once worked.

"Pines again?" He said it lightly, but his eyes didn't match his tone.

"Pines again." I admitted.

He came around the counter without asking, stealing a cinnamon roll off the tray with fingers too warm for someone technically part hellspawn.

"You know, most girls just get anxiety dreams about exams. You get personally serenaded by a haunted forest." He snapped a bite and continued talking like a heathen. "You ran out of the house very fast this morning, too."

"I contain multitudes." I huffed. "And I don't run. I just walked quickly."

"You contain a death wish, little witch." He winked at me, like he knew exactly what it did to my pulse and enjoyed doing it anyway. "One of these days that forest's going to get what it wants if you keep letting it in your pretty, little head."

"I'm not a witch." My hazel eyes rolled.

"Not yet. One day though... I think you might decide to stick on a pointed hat and hex me." He said it soft enough I almost missed it, already reaching for a second roll.

I let it go. I always let the odd things he said slide past me, the ones that sounded more like promises than jokes.

He might have been magic, but I was not. He knew that. I knew that. It was just...

Something in my head occasionally liked to listen to unknown voices and sentient trees. That was fine, though. A regular thing that regular women in their twenties did.

"Want me to help out today?" Orias asked, and I shoved aside all other thoughts and nodded.

It was easier, some mornings, having him underfoot instead of the quiet that used to fill this kitchen.

Three years now since our mothers had left us — ice on a back road, the two of them laughing about something stupid right up until they weren't laughing anymore.

Three years since the bakery had gone from hers to just mine, and Orias and his brother had gone from classmates who'd married into my family when I was in college, to the only family I had left standing.

Grief had a strange sense of humor. It had traded me a mother for a half-demon with wandering hands and a mouth that never stopped running, and some mornings I still didn't know whether to laugh about that or cry.

Some mornings, it was easier to think of this version of the half-demon. And not the other one.

The one that had left town and his twin brother, the same way he'd left me.

"Earth to Amber." Orias waved a hand in front of my face, close enough that I caught the low, smoky scent that clung to him no matter how much he showered it off. "You went somewhere. Perhaps with the fairies."

"Just thinking."

"About the festival? Or something more fun like how pretty my hair looks now that I'm using that conditioner you bought me." He leaned against the counter, arms crossed, eyes still doing that thing where they watched me a little too closely.

"Festival." I said. "I don't think about you or your hair."

Liar. Liar. Liar.

He grinned like he could mind read. "It's a big deal this year. Everyone's expecting the best from us."

"When do they not?" I shrugged, sliding the tray of cinnamon rolls in beside the muffins. "But no. It's not that. I just feel off this morning. Bad dreams."

His grin faded a fraction, and for a second I thought he might actually push.

Then he reached out instead, tucked a loose pink strand of hair behind my ear, his fingers lingering half a second too long against my jaw.

"Dreams have a way of telling us things we're not ready to hear," he said. "Especially here."

"Comforting." I frowned. "Who doesn't want their terrors coming to life?"

"I never said comforting." His mouth curved. "Careful, though, little witch. Whatever's calling you out there — it's patient. And patient things always win eventually."

Then, because he was Orias and incapable of leaving a moment sitting heavy for more than five seconds, he stole a third cinnamon roll and sauntered off toward the front of the shop, whistling something far too cheerful for a conversation about a haunted forest wanting to eat me alive.

I watched him go, skin still warm where he'd touched it, and told myself very firmly that my heart wasn't doing something complicated about a man with a demon's eyes and his brother's face.

It was unfair, really. Handsome men should not have been allowed to have identical twins.

Least of all ones who kissed you then left town.

The door chimed, and soon the bakery filled with the usual morning rush.

Familiar faces drifted in and out — Mrs Hartley picking up her usual ginger cookies, a few teens from the high school grabbing muffins on the way to class, and Mr Carson, a vampire who always insisted on two black coffees, no sugar, followed by the sweetest slice of cake we had that morning, which he only ever seemed to enjoy the smell of.

Vampires didn't eat human food. They survived on blood — donated, willing, or otherwise.

That never stopped Mr Carson from coming in every morning for the same order he'd had since my great-grandfather ran this place.

I used to wonder what he did with the cake and the coffee after he left.

Eventually I stopped asking, and just let him have his strange, melancholic little ritual.

With all of it, the bakery still felt like a sanctuary most days.

But today, even with the steady stream of customers and Orias's laugh carrying from somewhere near the register, I still couldn't shake the sense that something was off.

The whispers from the forest tugged at the edges of my thoughts, pulling me back toward the dream every time I let my guard down.

Into the magic. The lights.

That rush of something exhilarating I couldn't put a name to.

A few hours later, in a rare lull, I found myself drawn to the window.

Soft golden light bathed the street, the trees swaying like they moved to some rhythm only they could hear.

Beyond the rooftops, I could just make out the edge of the Whispering Pines — dark and inviting, twisted branches beckoning like hands just eager to reach out and throttle me.

For as long as I could remember, those woods had been a source of fascination and fear in equal measure. The ones who ventured in were usually magic themselves, chasing something I could never quite understand. Or they were teenagers, drunk and daring, hunting a story to tell later.

None of the humans who went deep enough ever came back the same. They always said they felt different. Off. I used to think that was just story dressing. Now I wasn't so sure.

Now I wondered if there was a reason humans came back wrong. A reason none of them ever touched a single leaf of that forest again.

A reason why most of them killed themselves. Or died in odd ways. Or... or just vanished.

Like my dad.

Like Orias and his twins older brother.

I watched the treeline a while longer, until the wind picked up and swirled leaves into little eddies on the street outside. It was strong enough to slip through the cracked door, catching my hair and tangling the mass of pink, sending my fringe sideways.

And in the distance, carried on the breeze, I could've sworn I heard it again.

A whisper.

Amber.

I blinked and stepped back from the window, the noise of the bakery closing in around me all at once. My arms prickled with a sudden chill, even though the room was warm.

I was being ridiculous. It had just been a dream.

A nonsense dream. A nothing dream. A thing that meant nothing at all.

But even as I went back to work, trying to convince myself it was nothing but make-believe, the pull of the forest didn't loosen its grip. And somewhere underneath it all, I knew it was only a matter of time before I found myself standing beneath those trees.

In the middle of the woods that swore they knew my name.

In the same place my father was last seen alive.