Wild Scottish Magic (The Enchanted Highlands #9)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

Liora

“The Heartbreak Witch?” Zara screeched through the phone, and I collapsed back against my scratchy hotel pillow. Covering my face with one of my hands, even though Zara couldn’t see me, I tried to push back the panic that was wrapping its ropes around my chest.

“I know, Z. I knoooow.” Humiliation washed over me, my skin flushing with the heat of it.

“How did this even happen? You’re viral?

On WitchTok of all things?” My older sister, Zara, was almost blind, far better at magick than me, and Had Her Life Together.

With capital letters, like that. She’d just taken a job at the local vet’s office in Loren Brae—a small town I’d briefly lived in and run away from—but Zara had insisted on moving back there despite my reputation.

In her words, she was there to “un-sully” our name.

I’d left Loren Brae after a particularly chaotic astrological disaster, determined to never look back, and now I feared I had no choice but to return.

“Everyone is talking about you,” Zara hissed, and I winced.

“I … I know. Or so I heard before I logged off WitchTok. And every other social media app that I have.”

“I thought you weren’t going to do readings anymore.” Zara’s voice held more sympathy than censure, and that somehow stung even worse.

She knew, more than anyone else, how much I hated with every ounce of my being that I couldn’t seem to make my magick work. Not like hers, at least.

Maybe the internet was right—it was time for me to hang up my hat, so to speak—and finally admit the one truth that I’d been avoiding for a very long time.

I was an absolute shite astrologer.

Even thinking it made my gut churn in pain, because somehow, somewhere, along the way I’d become convinced that astrology was where my magick was meant to manifest. I loved it.

And it loved me, I was certain of it, but something hadn’t quite clicked yet for me.

At least to make accurate predictions, that is.

I’d spent endless hours poring over charts, reading astrology books, researching Astro cartography and other iterations of astrology, and still … somehow I managed to land myself in hot water.

“But she was so excited, and she was offering so much money,” I said, groaning as I tugged at my mousy brown hair. “Rent was due. I swear, Z, I’ve been working really hard. I know astrology inside and out. It’s not my fault that the prediction came out the way that it did.”

“You …” Zara took a deep breath before continuing. “You told the girlfriend of one of the most popular rugby players in the world that he wasn’t her soulmate and she was destined for unhappiness.”

“I would never!” I sat up, outraged. “That’s an exaggeration. I swear people don’t listen when I tell them what I see.”

“Liora.” This time it was a sigh of resignation, and my shoulders hunched.

“Astrology is meant to be used to look for personal traits or forecast good times in the year ahead to make a move or start a new job. You know, to look at when the planets are favorable to act. You can’t predict a love match from astrology. ”

“I mean, you can see if someone is a good match or not based on their birth chart,” I mumbled.

Zara sighed, again, and I pinched my nose. A horn sounded outside, and shouts carried through the grimy window of the only hotel I could afford to stay at after I hadn’t been able to make rent and my roommates had ousted me from our tiny flat in Glasgow.

“Even so, it doesn’t determine love. You know that, Liora. People can be horrific matches but still decide to work it out. To figure out a way to love. It’s not on you to predict the outcome of a love match for someone. When will you learn? I thought after …” Zara trailed off.

My stomach roiled. I knew what she was referring to.

The entire reason I’d left Loren Brae.

I’d been younger. Convinced I knew the way of things.

And I’d given an impassioned reading, certain I was in the right of it, and had ruined a relationship with the blame landing squarely on my shoulders. It had been the talk of Loren Brae for months.

“In fairness, it’s not my fault she ran back to her boyfriend and told him he wasn’t her soulmate,” I said, pulling my thoughts away from memories past. “I never said that.”

“What, exactly, did you tell this WAG?” Zara asked, referring to the term for wives and girlfriends of sports stars in the UK.

“I told her, that based on her chart, it looked like she might be destined for more than one great love in her life.”

Zara gasped. “Liora, you didn’t.”

“It was true though.”

“But you can’t say that to someone who is head over heels for her boyfriend. They’ve had a big row now. Broken up over this.”

“Well, in theory, wouldn’t that make me right?” I pulled my stubbornness around me like a cloak. I hadn’t been wrong in my reading. “If they were so much in love and perfect for each other, an astrology reading shouldn’t have been able to tear them apart, right?”

“Be that as it may … it’s landed you in hot water, again, and without a place to live from what I can gather.”

I glanced to the pile of luggage in the corner of the room. It wasn’t much, but it was mine.

Tears welled.

“Aye,” I said, defeat filling me.

“Come home, Liora. We’ll sort it out. It might do you some good to take a break from this and focus on what you really want out of life.”

I gulped back a sob. It wouldn’t do to cry to Zara.

She’d always known exactly who she was and what she wanted out of life, while I’d clung to astrology because it was what I loved.

But it appeared that it didn’t love me back.

Maybe it was time to admit defeat and set my sights on becoming employable in a different profession.

“I can’t—”

“You can. I’m delighted to be back in Loren Brae. And you will be too. Things have changed, Liora. It’s a good place to land, at least for a little while. Come back. Mitch misses you.” I grinned as Mitch, her guide dog, barked in the background when he heard his name.

“I …” I looked around the tiny hotel room, largely taken up by my luggage, and sighed.

“Okay, Z. I’ll take some time off. I’ll come back to Loren Brae.”

Loren Brae. The incredible town I’d once thought would be my forever home until I’d royally screwed that dream up. Surely, nothing like that would happen again though. History couldn’t repeat itself. Right?