The mirror showed me a petite brunette shopping in a small boutique. She chatted amiably with another customer as they compared dress styles. Her sunshine yellow aura sat atop her head like a halo, but the mortals in the store were completely oblivious to the fact that she was different from them. Instinct prodded me along. She was not the healer.
Along the high street, sitting at the outdoor table of an expensive French restaurant, a leggy blonde hooked her high heel around the calf of the well-dressed man sitting across from her. Her aura was siren red, and she was hunting. Definitely not who I was looking for.
Nearby, an unusually tall redhead manned the hostess stand at the restaurant’s front door. I bypassed her completely. Her aura was so faint that I could barely make out the orange glow of it around her hands as she penciled in a reservation. A super-powered witch would not suppress her magic for the sake of the mortals around her.
I broadened my search. Private roads let outward from the high street, up into green rolling hills decorated with mansions, equestrian yards, and extravagant swimming pools. One witch swam lazy laps under the stars. A trio of young sisters lured a woodland nymph from the trees to sing them songs beneath a string of fairy lights. An older woman with a teal aura reclined in bed, levitating a book at eye level so that she didn’t have to hold it.
A bout of nausea overwhelmed me. Time was running short. I’d have to pull out of the mirror soon or risk imprisonment in the illusionary world of Windsor Falls, where I would observe everyday life without ever being a part of it. I squeezed my eyes shut.
Focus, Gwenlyn. Focus.
A new image appeared: a girl on a white mare racing bareback through a meadow of wildflowers. Her rosy pink aura was a cloud of happiness and freedom. She laughed as she bent low over the horse’s neck, entwining her fingers in its mane. Together, the pair vaulted over a small stream. The girl slipped on the mare’s silky coat, and my heart skipped a beat thinking she’d fall, but they landed neatly on the other side without breaking stride. The horse gave a satisfied whinny, looking over its shoulder to check on the rider. The girl whooped and grinned, adjusting her precarious seat as she tugged on the mare’s mane to slow her down.
“Atta girl,” she panted, patting the horse’s neck affectionately. “Nice job.”
As they slowed to a languorous walk, I got a better look at girl. At first glance, she reminded me of a younger version of Morgan’s mother, Cassandra. Her fair hair was white-gold, contained by a neat plait that rested along her spine. She had almond-shaped green eyes, high cheekbones, and a delicate jawline cut from glass. She was small but strong, her lean muscles standing out against the fabric of her clothes as she guided the mare toward a massive estate house.
“No,” I whispered. “It can’t be her.”
Because she was no more than sixteen years old. I had not been looking for a child—which was why the scrying mirror had most likely led me to so many dead ends—but there was no doubt in my mind that this skinny teenager was the witch I needed. She projected her aura at an impossible level of luminance. It touched everything within a twenty-foot circumference. Wildflowers stretched their petals toward her essence, the horse nickered happily beneath her touch, and the moon itself seemed to kiss the girl’s skin like a blissed-out lover. I had never seen anything like it.
I retched suddenly. My body was rejecting the fake world around me, begging to go back to the real one. The girl looked up, catching my eye as I floated in the nonexistent ether of her dimension, almost as if she could hear my struggle. Her lips moved.
“Gwenlyn.”
I swallowed hard. Something wasn’t right. The warped voice didn’t match the girl’s crystalline features, but it sounded familiar.
“Gwenlyn.”
With a feeling like the plug being pulled out of an overflowing bathtub, I was ripped away from Windsor Falls. The stars and moon vanished, the green grass faded to gray, and the rosy pink glow of the girl’s aura dimmed to nothing. I slammed back into my body in the clearing of the woods and immediately toppled over. As my cheek pressed to the cool dirt of the forest floor, a tear trickled out of the corner of my eye and soaked into the ground.
Morgan knelt next to me, rubbing my back in slow, comforting circles. I saw a flash of light as she stored the scrying mirror in an inner pocket of her long overcoat. Winnie hovered behind her, peering down at me with worried eyes. I turned my head to the other side, avoiding their lingering gazes.
“What happened?” I croaked.
“You started disappearing,” Winnie reported. “It was the strangest thing I’d ever seen, like the mirror was sucking you in piece by piece.”
“That’s what happens when you aren’t cautious,” Morgan said. I couldn’t ignore the scolding tone to her voice. “You stayed too long, Gwenlyn. Why didn’t you wait for me? I can’t believe you would do something so irresponsible.”
I groaned and rolled over on my back. Yew Hollow’s vacant sky haunted me from above. It was no wonder why Windsor Falls was so tantalizing. At least I could actually see the stars there.
“Gwenlyn—”
“Can you just give me a minute?” My head spun as I sat up. I couldn’t admit to Morgan that I didn’t want her help, so I put my head between my knees and focused on breathing evenly.
Morgan, of course, was not so easy to dissuade. She combed her fingers through my hair, brushing away leaves and twigs. She was the one person I could never be mad at, even if she had kept me in the dark about the coven leader elections.
“Well?” Winnie prompted, oblivious to the loaded silence between me and Morgan. “Did you find her? You were in there forever.”
I wiped dirt and tears from my cheekbones, but the mud on my hands only smeared what was left on my face. “Yeah, I found her.”
“And?”
I looked up at Winnie and Morgan’s expectant expressions, unwilling to instill false hope. “She’s just a kid. Fifteen or sixteen. There’s no way she has complete control over her ability already.”
Morgan sat back on her heels. She looked better than she had when I’d left her earlier. Her cheeks weren’t so hollow and her eyes not so dark. Her sisters must have helped her recover from her outlay of power. She didn’t seem as put out by my information as I thought she’d be.
“We don’t necessarily need her to be in complete control,” Morgan said thoughtfully. “There are enough of us to lend a hand if she needs it. No, I sense a bigger problem with her age.”
“What?” Winnie asked.
“Her coven,” Morgan replied. She picked up a small twig and began tracing Latin words into the dirt in loopy, flawless cursive. “A girl like that is bound to have a lot of witches watching over her, especially if they know how valuable she is. Did you see anything else, Gwenlyn?”
“No, she was alone.”
“Hmm. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean much. Scrying only allows you to see what’s happening at that exact moment. Unless she was with her family at the time, you wouldn’t have noticed them.”
I brushed off my palms, trying to dislodge most of the dirt. “Should I go back? Maybe another glimpse would help us—”
“No,” Morgan and Winnie chorused.
I glared at Winnie, who balked.
“I’m sorry, Gwen,” she said, wringing her hands. “But you didn’t see it. You didn’t even look human anymore. I don’t want you to go back in there.”
“She’s right,” Morgan added. “You’ve had enough for the day. Let’s get you back to the house. I think a hot bath would do us all some good.”
“I wish,” Winnie muttered.
I suppressed a laugh at Winnie’s downtrodden tone as Morgan offered me her hand. I clasped our fingers together, and she pulled me up out of the dirt. As we began our walk through the woods, she didn’t let go of me. Instead, she tugged me closer, wrapping one arm around my shoulders. She planted a kiss on my temple.
“Don’t do things like that,” she murmured, hugging me tighter. “Do y
ou know how much I worry about you? You’re too important to me.”
I stooped to rest my head on her shoulder. “Why? Because you want me to take over the coven? That’s one way to piss off your cousins.”
Morgan stopped short, jostling me from her grasp. “Is that what you think? That the only reason I care about you is because I’m trying to prove a point to the rest of the coven?”
I dropped into sullen silence, plodding determinedly through the woods no matter if Morgan was following or not. She quickly caught up and looped her hand through the crook of my elbow.
“Hey,” she said, pulling me to a stop. She cradled my face in her hands, forcing me to look at her. “Gwenlyn, you are not some sort of political ploy to me. I can’t believe that you would even think that.”
To my utter humiliation, my chin wobbled in her grasp. “Then why would you spring something like that on me? You never asked me if I wanted to be coven leader, Morgan. You just let Camryn sucker punch me with that information.”
“I never meant for that to happen,” Morgan insisted. “Camryn got lucky. She guessed correctly. But I do owe you an apology, Gwen. I should’ve told you as soon as I started considering the possibility.”
“Why me?” I asked her, lifting away from her touch. “You heard Camryn. I’m not even a Summers.”
“You,” Morgan began, “are my daughter.”
My composure broke. My waiting tears spilled over, tracing clean lines down my dirty cheeks. Morgan pulled me into a hug, and I rested my chin over her shoulder, trying not to completely lose myself.
“It doesn’t matter that we don’t share blood,” Morgan murmured as she gently collected me in her arms. “It doesn’t matter that your last name is Bennett or that we didn’t meet until you were sixteen or that the rest of the coven might not understand how deeply I care about you.” She drew away to look at me, and I saw that her eyes shone with emotion too. “What matters is that I love you to the moon and back. You matter, Gwenlyn, and I don’t think enough people in your life have told you that.”
“Honestly, I only ever needed to hear it from you.” I wiped snot from my nose with the sleeve of my shirt. Classy.
Morgan laughed and conjured a handkerchief out of thin air, which I used to mop up the rest of my face. “You’re a mess. Come on.”
Winnie lit the way as we continued out of the dark woods. Morgan and I walked arm in arm. Were it not for the missing moon, stagnant air, and general lack of good fortune as of late, it would’ve been a nice evening.
“Is it true?” I asked Morgan as we emerged from the tree line. The lights in the windows of the Summers house beckoned us home to its cozy interior.
“Is what true?”
“That you’re planning on stepping down as coven leader soon,” I clarified. “Because, to be honest, it doesn’t make any sense to me. The Summerses would be lost without you, Morgan. You’ve done this for ten years without any trouble, and I know that most coven leaders only last for five or six years, but do I need to remind you about your mother’s two-decade reign? Just because one challenging circumstance pops up doesn’t mean you should give up—”
Morgan held up a hand to cut me off. “While I appreciate your rousing pep talk, it isn’t necessary. I have no plans to abdicate my position anytime soon.”
“Then why did Camryn make such a huge stink about it?” I asked. “Isn’t it up to you to decide when the next leader ascends?”
“Yes and no,” Morgan answered. “Traditionally, the coven leader chooses her successor. However, in the event that a majority of the witches consider the current leader unfit to make that decision, they can hold an official vote to determine the next leader on their own.”
“Do you think Camryn would try something like that?”
Morgan’s expression hardened as we stepped up to the back porch. “I’m going to make damn sure she doesn’t.”
11
The atmosphere in the Summers household grew tense and taut in the days following Camryn’s coup. There was a palpable difference in the way some of the witches behaved around Morgan. The coven divided into two mindsets: those who believed Morgan was and would always be the best leader in recent history, and those who were easily swayed by Camryn’s negative influence. Each group was plainly recognizable. Morgan’s supporters worked tirelessly to combat the effects of the curse. Malia, Karma, and Laurel headed this charge, parsing out duties and tasks for each witch to complete. They fortified the ward, distributed healing spells, and held energy renewal rituals to invigorate each other. In addition, they picked up extra responsibilities to keep daily life running as smoothly as possible. With no mortals to run the fresh market and no supplies going in or out of Yew Hollow, we were running low on food and other necessities. The age old ideas of hunting and gathering weren’t going to help either. The curse had killed all of the vegetation and driven the animals away.
Laurel was the one who came up with a solution. As an elemental witch, her ability was connected to the earth. She spoke with nature in a profound way that the rest of us could not understand. In less than a day, she constructed a greenhouse as close to the edge of the ward as possible, where the sunlight almost permeated the invisible force field to brighten Yew Hollow. Everything inside was fed and fertilized by Laurel’s witchcraft, from budding lettuce bibs to flowering soybean plants. Soon, the Summers coven would embrace a plant-based diet, a thought that made my stomach rumble for a cheeseburger. Of all the things I expected out of this curse, reluctantly becoming vegan wasn’t one of them.
Other witches followed Laurel’s example in order to keep daily life as normal as possible. Our resident water witches constructed a well and a mill to ensure the coven always had something clean to drink and bathe with. The mothers of the coven’s children banded together to create a bizarre home school that encompassed everything from arithmetic and mortal literature to useful potions and witch history. Clean-up crews cleansed the town. It had been over a month since the locals had inexplicably abandoned their homes, which resulted in a lot of moldy laundry and rank refrigerators. The witches swept through like a professional maid service, leaving each home pristine and ready for its family’s uncertain return.
In contrast, the lesser known witches made themselves scarce. They stayed in their homes, tending to the sick on their own. They grudgingly contributed to the coven’s survival efforts, doing the least amount of work possible to guarantee food and fresh water for themselves. Otherwise, Camryn’s followers kept to themselves. Morgan and her sisters hardly noticed their absence, but I kept a wary eye open for trouble. The way they looked at their coven leader had changed. A month ago—before this dreaded curse derailed our peaceful small town lives—every witch in the coven viewed Morgan with respect and admiration. Nowadays, they whispered behind their hands when Morgan walked by, throwing looks of dissatisfaction in her direction.
Camryn herself seemed to have taken Morgan’s warning seriously. She did not make another misjudged public attempt to preach injustice, though I had the feeling she was feeding her followers plenty of misinformation under the table. The shift in perspective had happened too quickly, and I wondered if Camryn was somehow using her supposed “intuition” ability to convince the lesser witches of her leadership qualities. Morgan repeatedly requested that I ignore Camryn. She wasn’t the biggest threat to the coven right now, and we needed to focus on more important things.
My main goal was to find out more about the girl on the horse in Windsor Falls. It wasn’t as simple as it sounded. I was no longer permitted to use the scrying mirror without direct supervision, so I had to make do with a bowl of water, the fickle and commonly mocked crystal ball, or the small pond in the woods behind the Summers house. No matter what visual medium I used, the images were muddled. The most important aspects of the girl’s history remained a puzzle to me. There were no hints that she belonged to one of the three covens in her hometown, which left me wondering who had trained her to hone her aura at such a r
adiant level. She lived in one of the biggest estate houses in Windsor Falls, which indicated a radically different upbringing than the children of Yew Hollow.
Not for the first time, I realized how selfishly ensconced the Summerses were in their own history. They believed that their rules of witchcraft and way of life were the only rules, but Winnie and the mysterious teenaged healer had taught me otherwise. This was not Morgan’s fault. She was simply raised by women who upheld archaic ideas and traditions. While this was admirable in preserving the Summerses’ rich history, it hindered my research of our super-powered witch. Without an idea of how other covens operated, I had little to no hope of discovering additional information about her abilities. As time passed and I made infinitesimal progress, it became apparent that our plan would not move forward while I was trapped within the ward that encompassed Yew Hollow.
“Let me build a door,” I insisted to Morgan one morning over a breakfast of homemade wheat toast and fresh peanut butter. “It doesn’t even have to be a door! It could be a window or a tunnel or whatever, something just wide enough for me to pass through.”
Morgan wearily sipped black coffee. She was in need of another dose of healing energy. I was beginning to think that the dark circles under her eyes were permanent fixtures on her face. “Out of the question. The ward is the only thing keeping us safe right now. I can’t have you poking holes in it.”
“The coven isn’t getting any better, Morgan,” I reminded her hotly. “You’re getting weaker every day. Your sisters too. And has anyone checked on Alana lately? Is she even still alive? How much longer can we survive in this perpetual quarantine?”
“Yvette and Yvonne have assured me that Alana’s condition is severe but stable,” Morgan replied, kneading the bridge of her nose between her fingers. “They’ve seen no distressing changes in her.”
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