I’ll say it. Being a witch is freaking awesome. True, a lot of spells that seem innocent actually aren’t, and I’ve learned the hard way that magical ethics matter. But generally speaking, magic is fun.
At least, it is when something from that world isn’t trying to kill you. I had the bad feeling one of those somethings was on its way to Doyle.
Usually, these feelings showed up as a prickling at my scalp, or a tremor deep in my veins. Today, it came as an insistent ringing in my skull, like a telemarketer who wouldn’t give up.
It was super annoying.
I scanned my coffeeshop, Ground, on the off chance the ringing was coming from one of the pockets of my customers. If it did, no one answered.
Coffee drinkers chatted at tables and tapped at laptops, oblivious to the clatter of mugs, laughter of customers, whoosh of the espresso machine.
I glanced down the aisle behind the long wooden counter. My assistant manager, Darla, filled a small white cup. Her pale brow furrowed with concentration. We take our java seriously at Ground.
The bell jangled above the red-paned front door, and my head whipped toward the noise.
My sister, Karin, hurried inside. She glanced around the crowded café, then strode to the cash register.
“Hey.” Karin scraped a strand of auburn hair off her smooth forehead. Her face had taken on a sort of “mom” softness over the last two years. My sister hated the extra few pounds, but she wore them well. “Is everything okay?” she asked anxiously.
My stomach butterflied and not in a good way. If I wasn’t the only one who felt it, then this was no mistake. Something bad was coming. “Yeah, but— So you hear it to?”
“Hear what?” She adjusted the massive purse over her shoulder, wrinkling her navy cotton blouse. I tried not to notice the spit-up stain above her heart. Keeping shirts neat was tough when you had a new baby.
I shook my head and came around the counter. “Never mind. I just thought— Why wouldn’t everything be okay?” Maybe I was getting tinnitus. My aunt had warned me not to listen to loud music in my youth. And I hadn’t listened. Ha. That’s irony for you.
“I don’t know…” She trailed off, staring absently at one of the ferns hanging above the counter.
The bell jingled above the door. Blond-haired Lenore strode inside, her long, wheat-colored vest wafting behind her. Our sister Lenore usually seemed to float—or maybe it seemed that way because of the cloudlike clothing she favored—but she moved with purpose today.
Lenore scanned the room, an anxious expression on her face. She took in the customers, the hangings on the brick walls, the blue and white curtains between the counter area and the kitchen.
Frowning, she joined Karin and me at the counter. “Hi. Is everything... all right?”
Karin met my gaze. “I guess not,” she said, “since I came here for no good reason and just asked Jayce the same thing. What are you sensing?”
“It was Crow.” Lenore’s blue-gray eyes seemed to darken. “He sent me a warning.”
Lenore was a shamanic witch. Ghosts and messages from animal spirits like Crow were her groove. Since she also saw creepier, human spirits, she was welcome to that world. I loved my own earth witch magic, thank you very much.
Lenore, Karin, and I were triplets, but we each had different talents. Karin worked with knot magic, which made sense since she was the tightest wound of the three of us. I mean, I loved her to pieces, but only Karin would wear a silk scarf around her neck when it was eighty out.
“What sort of warning?” I asked.
“Death. And a trial.” Lenore bent her head, her blond hair cascading over the shoulders of her pale tunic.
My chest tightened. Death? I ran my fingers along the chain of my short necklace and gripped its pentacle charm.
“When Crow said trial,” Karin said slowly, “I’m guessing he didn’t mean the legal kind.”
“Forget the trial.” I jammed my hands on the hips of my green apron. “What about the death? Who’s going to die?”
“You know Crow’s never specific,” Lenore said. “He didn’t give me a name.”
“Well, this bites,” I said and shuttled them to a table.
“Have you heard anything from Mrs. Steinberg?” Karin asked, pulling out a chair.
I shook my head and sat. Mrs. Steinberg was an elderly ex-witch who lived in Doyle. She usually had the inside track on magical happenings. She’d also promised to get us a trainer so the next time we had to deal with a magical baddie, we’d be better prepared.
We were still waiting.
The bell trilled above the door.
A man walked into Ground, and I cocked my head, an odd sense of familiarity cascading through my veins. He wore new-looking hiking gear, and his hair was the color of mine—mahogany. The man did the same scan of the crowd Lenore and Karin had, finishing at the counter.
His brown eyes lit, and he waved at us. “Jayce!”
I blinked, incredulous, finally realizing who he was. “Mac?”
Laughing, I scraped back my chair and stood.
He strode toward me and pulled me into a rough hug. Mac thumped my back. “You have no idea how good it is to see a familiar face.” He released me and stepped away. “How are you?”
“Surprised.” I grinned. “What are you doing back in Doyle?”
A coffee cup crashed, and I winced. Darla hurried from behind the counter with a broom.
“I had to come home sometime,” he said.
I turned to my sisters. “Lenore, Karin, you remember Mac? We went to the same college for a little while.” We’d been the only two students from Doyle. Marooned on the faraway East Coast, we’d become close friends, though we’d barely known each other back home.
“And then Jayce changed majors and colleges and ditched me,” he said.
“You were studying folklore,” I said. “Did you keep it up?”
“I’m about to defend my PhD thesis.” He rocked back on the heels of his hiking boots. “And I have other news.”
“Oh?” Karin asked.
“I got married.” He raised a hand, displaying a simple gold ring.
I gaped. “Congratulations!”
He glanced at my own hand. “I see I’m not the only one.”
My face warmed. “Brayden Duarte and I tied the knot. So who and where’s the lucky girl?”
“She’s antique shopping in Angels Camp. I can’t believe how much that town’s changed since we lived here.”
“Since we lived here?” Hold on, he wasn’t talking about me. My eyes widened. “Don’t tell me you found a girl from Doyle? Who is she?”
“Oonagh Francoer.”
“The Francoers,” Lenore said, expression thoughtful. “Her father liked spy thrillers.” Lenore owned a bookshop and had the town’s reading habits memorized.
“She’s a couple years younger than us,” he said. “You might not remember her. She wasn’t in our cla—” His face reddened. “Oh, you weren’t in my class either. I forgot you three were homeschooled. Anyway, I’m back for a research vacation.”
“Research?” Karin asked.
“On Doyle,” he said. “It inspired my thesis.”
The ringing noise clanged like a firehouse alarm. I gritted my teeth and fought not to clap my hands over my ears. It wouldn’t help when the sound was coming from inside me. I rubbed my head.
Karin folded her arms across her navy blouse and shifted her weight. “In folklore?”
“So much ground has already been covered,” he said. “You have to get pretty granular with a PhD thesis these days. This town’s got interesting legends attached, but they’re not well-known outside of Doyle. Or inside of it, for that matter. Anyway, I figured more research would be a good project while I’m here.”
“Interesting.” Lenore’s lips pursed.
“I thought you’d find it so,” he said.
“Oh?” She cocked her head. “Why me?”
He nodded. “Your name came across my computer a few times when I was looking for rare books on the subject. Unfortunately, your prices are slightly out of a poor PhD student’s range. I was sort of, um, hoping you might let me take a look at a few of them? I know you’re not a lending library, but—”
“Of course,” Lenore said. “Let me know which ones you’d like to read.”
The lines in his pale face relaxed. “Thanks. That could be really helpful.”
“Well, it’s great to see you again,” I said, “no matter what the reason. How about a welcome coffee on the house?”
He grinned. “I won’t say no to that. Like I said, poor PhD student here.”
“What’ll it be?”
He ordered a mochaccino, and I busied myself at the espresso machine.
“Who’s he?” Darla whispered, nodding toward Mac. “He’s cute.”
“That’s Mac Davidge,” I said, “and he’s sadly taken.”
She laughed. “All the good ones are.”
I picked up a wooden stirrer and smiled. Rooting myself, I let earth energy flow through my feet, up my spine, and into my arms. The ringing faded, as if the earth had absorbed it, and my shoulders relaxed.
I nudged the energy through one hand and into the stirrer. A memory rose before my eyes, a black cat with a nocked ear and bent whiskers.
I looked down. The cat floated in the coffee foam, knocked ear and all. My heart bubbled. It was stupid magic, silly magic. But it made people happy, and that made it worthwhile.
“Here you go, Mac.” I brought him the cup. “One mochaccino.”
He looked into the paper cup and gasped. “Crowley. I haven’t thought of him in years.” He squinted. “I can almost see his bent whiskers. Do you remember when we found him? Dripping wet on that fire escape?”
I laughed. “I remember he didn’t want anything to do with me.”
“Amazing.” Still staring into the mug, he shook his head. Mac met my gaze. “Thank you for that memory.”
See? Totally worthwhile.
I glanced at the long line trailing down the counter.
“I’d better let you go,” he said. “I’m just going to do some reading in the corner for a bit.”
He moved off to an empty table.
“Doyle folklore?” Karin muttered. She rubbed her arms and looked around the café. “That can’t be good.”
I sucked in my cheeks. Mac was a good guy. He wouldn’t cause us or anyone else trouble.
“Maybe he’s the teacher we’ve been waiting for,” Lenore said in a low voice. “Mrs. Steinberg said their arrival would be unexpected.”
“I’m pretty sure she also said the teacher she had in mind was a woman,” I said. But if Mac had magical intel on Doyle that we didn’t…
The ringing increased in volume, and I swayed. If this didn’t stop soon, I was going to lose it.
“Still,” Lenore said, “he might be a good source of info. We haven’t had any fairy eruptions for a while, but who’s to say it won’t happen again? Jayce, are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I gritted out.
“I’ll talk to him.” Karin drew her brows together. “I can ask for his contact info for future book research. Not that I’ve written anything in months,” she said mournfully. “I was barely able to get away from Mitch and Emmie today. Do you know how hard it is to find a sitter on short notice?”
“No,” I said. “And I’m in no hurry to find out.”
Karin tugged the hem of her blouse lower over her curvy hips and strolled to his table. They exchanged business cards.
“Mac was also going to raid your library,” I said to Lenore. “You could have got his contact info then. Or I could have.”
“But Karin obviously wanted to interrogate him, and she has been pretty tied down by the kids lately.”
I nodded. I loved my niece and nephew to pieces, but they were a handful. An adorable handful, but a handful.
Karin returned to the wooden counter. “His specialization is nature spirits,” she said flatly. “Fairies.”
My mouth went dry. I brushed a crumb off the counter. “That’s not so weird, is it? Doyle has a fairy spring and a fairy well. If Doyle was going to inspire him, it’s either that or Gold Rush ghost stories.”
Karin drummed her clipped fingernails on the counter. “I don’t know. We all were... called to Ground, and then a folklorist with a special interest in nature spirits just happens to show up? It seems a little too coincidental.”
Yeah. It did. But it was Mac, one of the nicest guys I’d ever met. I slipped my hands into my apron pockets. “Maybe something is up, but he’s a good person. And I don’t sense any magic on him, do you?”
My sisters stilled, their faces going blank. Then they drew deep breaths and shook their heads.
“No,” Lenore admitted. “Not a thing.”
“So he’s not in a Black Lodge,” Karin said quietly. “That was what we were worried about, right?”
Black Lodge? “Seriously?” I hissed. “You had to go straight to the worst-case scenario? A gang of evil magicians?”
Karin flushed. “I can’t stop thinking about them. The last time a black lodge rolled into town, they caused a lot of trouble.”
“Understatement much?” I arched a brow “They caused a magical riot. The town still hasn’t recovered.” Some of the businesses on Main Street hadn’t come back. Innocent and not-so-innocent people had died.
“The point,” Karin continued, “is that I don’t think we’re off their radar.”
I shook my head. “Okay, this is getting ridiculous. We’re freaking each other out over nothing.”
“Jayce is right,” Lenore said. “Panicking isn’t going to get us anywhere.”
“Who’s panicking?” Karin asked. “I’m not panicking, I’m wary. There’s a difference.”
Mac rose and set his mug in a bin at the end of the counter. “I’ll see you around, Jayce. Let’s meet up and get dinner or something. I want you to meet Oonagh. And bring your significant other.”
“Brayden and I would love that.”
“Great. I’d love to catch up.” He glanced around the café. “I noticed a lot of businesses have closed on Main Street. But you seem to be doing well.”
“I try.” And my morning good-vibes spell didn’t hurt.
He waved and ambled toward the door.
“See?” I said. “Normal. Just an old friend, dropping by. No dark magic. Nothing sinister.”
Thunder rumbled, and we looked toward the windows. Sunlight streamed through the glass.
“That wasn’t an omen,” I said quickly. “It’s only dry thunder. It’s not at all unusual in the mountains during the summer.”
“If everything’s totally normal,” Karin hissed, “why did we all show up here thinking something was wrong? Wait. Jayce, you never said what you felt.”
The air in the café compressed, squeezing my lungs, raising the hair on my arms, and we stiffened. Magic. An oily membrane of dark magic smothered the café, and dread clutched my heart.
The ringing grew piercing. I clenched my jaw to keep from crying out.
And then the ringing stopped. There was a tearing sound.
The bell above the door jingled.
Mac stood aside, pressing the door open with one hand, for a slim female tourist.
She nodded her thanks, walking past him, and said something to him too low for me to hear.
He smiled and stepped onto the wide sidewalk.
There was a loud crack. A woman outside shrieked. The woman with the shoulder bag crouched and whirled toward the door. Mac staggered backward and fell on his back, one arm flung outward.
The door closed slowly on Mac’s limp hand, shuffling it sideways across my floor.