Chapter 1 #2
“This is our chance, girls. We can snag you husbands!” Mom threw her arms around Lydia and Kitty, and the three spun in a circle.
“Did you see that he was voted sexiest man alive last year?” Lydia sang.
“And he hangs with the fae prince, so he’s sure to be loaded,” Kitty added.
“Hello, sugar daddy.” Lydia giggled.
I opened my mouth to remind them that no highborn fae would ever want us, then closed it with a sigh.
They’d heard my lecture as many times as we’d heard Mom’s.
But their ignoring it didn’t change the fact that even though we were firmly middle-class in Austen Heights, we were also witches.
And not even regular witches. Thanks to Mom being a witch and Dad being a fae, we were half of both races, which meant we never truly belonged to either.
We were just a step above vampires or werewolves, who were illegal in society and could be arrested on sight if they were discovered.
Many of the highborn fae in town never let us forget the difference in our social statuses.
Mom wanted nothing more than to see us accepted by the rest of the town, and I was pretty sure that in her eyes, marrying a highborn fae would guarantee it.
“Sorry,” Jane whispered to me while watching our sisters and Mom with wide eyes.
“It’s not your fault.” I rubbed my forehead, not sure where the others got all their energy. “I should’ve been more careful.”
Jane gave me a small smile. “At least your potion is done.”
The liquid had thickened into a viscous violet paste that smelled faintly of lavender.
Perfect.
I pulled a package of ballpoint pens from my purse and dropped them into the mixture, where they sank with a soft plop.
After soaking all night, they’d be ready to go tomorrow.
While a veritas potion could be drunk, I found it much more useful to soak my pens in.
If someone agreed to answer a question and picked up one of my magical pens, the potion forced them to write the answers to my next five questions truthfully.
The small flame under my cauldron hissed and sputtered as I smothered it, and I shivered in the sudden chill. Now that it was fall, the basement was getting colder at night.
Jane yawned and put her pictures in her bag. “Ready to go home? I’m beat.”
“Me too.” I covered the cauldron with a lid to make sure nothing got into it, then reclaimed my phone. After bidding the rest of the family goodnight, I followed Jane up the creaky wooden stairs. We navigated around the worn armchairs and threadbare couch in the dark.
We checked on Dad, who was resting in a room on the main floor. It was too hard for him to go up and down the stairs these days. His quiet snoring reached us as soon as we cracked open the door. I stared at his gaunt, pale form in the moonlight cutting through the window for a long moment.
Like the other victims, Dad always needed rest. No one knew what started the Moonrot, but some called it a curse since it never affected the humans, or those unmarked by magic.
Only the Marked ever contracted it, and there was no known cure.
It was impossible to mistake since all the victims had a silver mark the color of moonlight over their hearts.
The larger it grew, the more lethargic the victims became.
They had trouble eating and slept more and more while their magic and body withered away.
Once the swirl grew large enough to cover their entire chest, they died.
“Let him sleep,” Jane whispered and shut the door.
Before leaving, I headed toward the bakery to make sure everything was prepped for tomorrow—old habits died hard, and after years of working here, Cupid’s Confections was a part of me.
To get to the bakery from inside the house, I twisted the knob above the door so the dial turned blue.
If it showed red, that would bring me to our family kitchen instead.
It was a fairly complicated spell, but one that had held for the last seventy years since Grandma started the bakery.
Moonlight trickled in from the glass display cases along the front, casting silvery shadows over the mismatched chairs and wooden tables, and the scent of cinnamon and vanilla lingered in the air like the ghost of the day’s labor.
The faint tick from the grandfather clock, usually covered by the hum of conversations and the clatter of trays, counted down the moments.
It was nice to be here when it was closed.
It reminded me of the newsroom after printing, when the rush of meeting a deadline had faded.
A box of baked goods labeled Second-Day Delights sat on the back counter, the leftovers from today that were ready to be sold at half price tomorrow. I snuck a croissant from the box, a classic but still one of my favorites, and split it with Jane before devouring the flaky goodness in three bites.
“Let’s go home,” Jane said.
We grabbed our jackets from the hook by the back door before stepping onto the porch. Jane locked the door behind us, and we pulled on our jackets to ward off the cold fog that had rolled in from the ocean and clung to us like a damp hug.
The small apartment Jane and I shared with Charlotte Lucas was close enough that we could walk there in minutes.
While the fog obscured the familiar streets and muted our steps, we never had anything to fear in a town as small as Austen Heights.
Although tonight the fog seemed especially thick, almost ominous.
“It would be nice if someone married rich,” Jane said when we were almost home.
“Not you too!” I gaped at Jane.
“I’m just saying it would be nice because Mom would stop worrying about money so much. You know it’s always weighing on her now that Dad’s sick.”
I pressed my lips together instead of bursting her bubble.
She knew as well as I did that the odds of any highborn fae wanting anything to do with half-witch, half-fae like us were practically nonexistent.
Technically, we were half-fae, half-human since witches were just humans with magic, but no one in the magical community considered witches the same as humans.
“I would never fall for a highborn fae, no matter how handsome or rich they were,” I said.
“What if they were thoughtful and sweet?” Jane pressed.
For the sake of our hypothetical situation, I refused to point out that they were highborn fae and so, by definition, not sweet nor thoughtful.
“I would need more than that. Someone with passion, who will argue with me but stand by my side. Someone to tell me when I’m wrong and admit when I’m right.
” I sighed and shot a sideways glance at her.
“There’s so much more to life than looks and money. ”
“They’ll need plenty of passion to keep up with you, Lizzy.”
I smiled at her but let the conversation drop as we made it to the small cottage where we boarded. The sweet scent of vanilla and pumpkin filled our basement apartment.
Charlotte must’ve been making something again.
She was always working on some craft or another, whether it was a new recipe for chocolates, a candle scent she wanted to try, or a holiday craft.
It was one reason I often brewed my potions elsewhere.
Our apartment was too small for both of us to be making concoctions.
I followed Jane across the braided rugs covering the floor and down the hall to the room we shared, not bothering to turn on the lights.
We changed into our pajamas and brushed our teeth, while thoughts of Dad’s sickness, my family’s money situation, and the highborn fae chased each other around my head.
Despite myself, I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.
In my dream, I stood in the middle of a wide, tree-lined street that cut between large yards.
Leaves fell from the branches overhead, drops of ink and ivory drifting to the ground.
I sucked in a breath, but instead of a crisp autumn scent, the air was sterile.
It was like someone had captured Austen Heights in a series of old photographs, colorless, soundless, and empty.
I rubbed my itching nose—a sure sign that magic was happening nearby—and sighed.
This wasn’t a dream, it was a Portent brought on by my fae magic.
While most fae had a host of magic at their fingertips, they usually specialized in one.
But my sisters and I had each received only a single fae magic.
Mine was the Portents, or the ability to see things happening in the present.
Since many of the Marked in town considered our fae magic “tainted” by our witch magic, I refused to practice mine.
If I did, maybe I could train it to show me things before they happened instead of just as they happened, like other fae could with their Portents.
An owl swooped across the sky before landing on a tree branch in front of me. One always appeared to guide me to whatever my Portent wanted me to see.
The owl swiveled its head to stare at me, then it blinked its yellow eyes and ruffled its wings. It hooted—the only sound in this silent expanse—and stared me down another second before launching from the tree and flying down the street.
I walked after it, my footsteps silent on the leaf-covered sidewalk. Better to get it over with, since I couldn’t stop it.
White houses with pitched roofs and black shutters sat back from the road, lined up like books on a shelf. When I turned my head to look at them, they blurred out, a pearlescent mist blocking the details.
I continued walking, keeping an eye on the owl, which frequently circled back to make sure it hadn’t lost me. Once I focused on whatever the owl wanted to show me, details would bloom to life.
At the end of the street, I followed the owl again and turned down another, then another. I listened for a noise, a sign of life anywhere, but it was silent. I was still too far from wherever I needed to be.