Charlotte Abbott had a distinct case of house envy. Or perhaps it was life envy.
As she wandered around her cousin Becca’s new house and ran a hand over the counter that divided the kitchen from the living room, she tried to get a handle on the strange mix of jealousy, anger, and ridiculousness roiling in her solar plexus.
In truth, the house wasn’t that amazing. It was small and a couple of decades old. Becca had already taken her through all the upgrades they wanted to make to it. Was she jealous of house renovations?
Or was she jealous that Becca was the second of her cousins in as many months to fall head over heels in love?
“That’s a hell of a counter.”
Charlie spun around to see Becca’s love Dan with their one-year-old child in his arms. She fought down a feeling ten times as big and ten times as complicated as her counter envy.
She held out her arms. The baby cocked her head, not afraid, but not enthusiastic. They’d only met a few months ago because Becca had hidden her away out of fear.
This was a simpler feeling: regret.
Magic stirred in the air, the baby seeking something. Charlie tried to figure out which talent she was using, but it was something receptive so it was hard to tell. Witches came into their magic around their first birthday and cycled through the twelve talents until puberty when the rest fell away and their main skill came into focus.
Amelia’s first talent, or the one they noticed first, was telekinesis, and that still seemed to be her favorite. But it was interesting to feel her branch out into the more receptive talents like Charlie’s divination.
She leaned down to whisper in the baby’s ear, “Did you know it’s an aunt’s job to toss you in the air as high as you can go?”
Amelia cocked her head.
“And also slip you candy whenever your papa isn’t looking?”
“Hey,” Dan said.
Charlie ran her fingers over the child’s belly and delighted in her explosion of laughter. The baby allowed Charlie to pull her into her arms. She spun in a circle. Charlie had seven little brothers, so she was well used to juggling babies. Her mother had been determined to have another girl and never did.
She felt magical tentacles pulling her long, dark hair into Amelia’s reach. The baby yanked. Charlie wasn’t used to magical babies. She used her own magic to disentangle her hair as she put her forehead to Amelia’s and silently said, Keep yanking on the world, little girl. Don’t try to peer into the future. It’s not the talent you want.
And suddenly she had a wolf pup in her hands. She winced as sharp claws dug into her forearm.
“Just put her down,” Dan said, making no move to reach for his daughter.
This was the reason Becca had hidden for so many months. This baby was witch and shifter both, and covens and packs had forbidden contact with each other for centuries.
Charlie had never asked why; it was just one of those unquestioned rules growing up. Hide from the humans and avoid the shifters. Staying away from a bunch of slobbering carnivores had seemed like a great idea.
But when one had crashed into their lives and stolen her cousin’s heart, the real, messy history had come out. Witches made shifters, carving out a piece of their magic and imbuing normal humans with the ability to turn into predators to be their protectors.
After centuries of servitude, the shifters had broken their leash, and war had followed until they’d created a treaty to carve up the world into different territories and never mix again. It had been in place so long that both sides had all but forgotten why it was there.
Amelia was living proof that they didn’t have to stay enemies. In fact, she had become a hope for both sides. Fewer and fewer shifters were born with animals. Fewer and fewer witches were born with magic. Here was a baby with powerful magic and a powerful wolf.
Charlie crouched down, and the wolf scrambled out of her arms. The pup immediately grabbed hold of the rug and yanked.
Charlie’s mom walked into the room and squawked as the rug she stepped on moved. Charlie reached out with her magic to steady her mother. Divination was a receptive talent, but all witches had bits of other skills. She held her mother as she got her balance, and Dan dove for his daughter.
Unfazed, her mother crouched and bopped Amelia on the nose.
“You’re a menace,” she said with delight.
“Are we ready to go?” Charlie asked her mother. They’d come to help Becca set the wards around her new house.
As intriguing as the power Amelia wielded was, there were a great many witches and shifters who were less than thrilled with her existence and with the thought of witches and shifters together in general.
Charlie was happy and afraid for her cousin and the baby. Becca was in love and had a beautiful child and another on the way. And she would probably live her entire life looking over her shoulder, warding every place she lived, and sticking to as much neutral territory as possible.
“When do I get grandbabies?” her mother asked Amelia in a singsong voice, so it took Charlie a second to realize she was talking to her and not the baby.
“Mom!”
Sonia spun around with an eyebrow raised.
Charlie rolled her eyes. “There’s another suitor coming.”
Until her cousins had started shacking up with wolves, the usual way a witch found a spouse was an intricate dance of visiting covens and arranged matches. If you were a powerful witch, they offered the sons of other powerful witches to pick from, hoping to preserve the magic for another generation.
Charlie was a very powerful witch. The most powerful in her family, except for the baby who was currently trying to chew off the leg of a chair.
Her mother squinted at her.
“I’m going to pick one,” Charlie said.
She’d been enduring a revolving door of suitors for the past couple of years, but her divination magic had stayed strangely silent on all of them. Normally, she saw hints, portents, and omens every day, but the moment she shook hands with one of her suitors, her brain went blank and her magic went silent. And wasn’t that just a convenient excuse? She hadn’t clicked with any of them.
Her mother crossed her arms and said, “You’re not gonna run off and find a wolf?”
Dan looked between them and said, “I’m going to take this wild one outside to chew on a tree instead of our new dining room set.”
He picked up his daughter by the scruff of her neck. It made Charlie wince, but he insisted was how wolf mothers carried their pups all the time. He skedaddled out of there at double time.
“Of course not,” Charlie said automatically.
“Why ‘of course?’” her mother asked, and Charlie realized she was being serious.
“What are you talking about?”
Her mom shrugged and traced a pattern on the counter.
Charlie watched her mother hesitate, and it was like looking into the future. She was a few inches taller than her mother but had the same dark hair and pale skin as most Abbotts. Her mother’s hair was silvering at the temples, and wrinkles crinkled the corner of her eyes.
“You don’t want a wolf?” she asked the counter.
Charlie scoffed. “When has this ever been about what I wanted?”
Sonia nodded. “You don’t think you should try out a wolf?”
“Dear god, Mom. ‘Try out?’”
Her mother kept looking at her swirling fingertips and not her daughter as she said, “Date. Chat with. See if you have that strange connection that both of your cousins speak about.”
Charlie snorted. Her mother was single-minded in her pursuit of power. To her credit, it wasn’t nefarious. She wanted to protect her family, and she thought the best way to protect her family was to have as many powerful witches as possible.
Charlie was her one shining glory in life. Her firstborn was the most powerful witch in three generations. That Sonia had never managed to repeat the feat was the major failure of her life. She would do anything for more power, including offering a hundred sons of witches to Charlie and perusing a thousand bloodlines for the best chance at powerful granddaughters.
And now she was talking about a wolf.
“I think they got lucky. And I don’t think the rest of the coven is going to go for their future leader shacking up with a shifter.”
I am different, Charlie thought with exasperation. She had always been different. The magic brimming inside her had defined every moment of her life since she was younger than Amelia.
“You don’t even think it’s worth exploring?”
“This is a hell of a shift.”
Finally, her mother looked at her. “Pun intended?”
Charlie frowned and played back her words. And rolled her eyes. “Mom. Be serious.”
Her mother squinted at her. “What have you Seen?”
“Nothing. Nothing’s changed.” She’d never seen a hint of who her partner would, should, or could be.
“Maybe you need some more data.”
“And data is a euphemism for—”
“You felt it. What they bring. It’s our magic.” Her mother got in her face and said, “I want it back.”
Charlie blinked. In all their research about shifters and witches and war and freedom and territorial disputes and the treaty, there had been no hint of taking the magic back. Taking it back meant destroying the wolves.
“Never say that again,” Charlie said. “Do you wanna start another war?”
Sonia shook her head and glanced around.
“Also, they have super hearing, so maybe talk a little quieter next time. Except never say that again.”
“I’m not talking about some horrible spell. I am talking about Amelia.”
Charlie closed her eyes. Of course, her mother was talking about Amelia. Her answer to everything was more babies.
Unbidden, her mother’s entire plan fell into her mind. Shack up all her nieces with a bunch of shifters and have babies who were both witches and wolves, reuniting magic that had been torn asunder for centuries.
“To which I say, I am the leader of the coven,” Charlie began, “and that plan you’re not explaining is just as likely to cause a feud. I can’t move to Virginia and hang out on the sidelines like Becca.”
“When they understand the power, they will forgive anything,” Sonia said, and Charlie stepped back. She had learned over the years to fear that light in her mother’s eyes.
“Look, even if I said absolutely. It’s not that simple. Becca and Dan are both healers. Elliot and Andie are both plant people.”
“Plant people?”
“You know what I mean. Do you think it’s going to be easy to dig up a wolf that does divination?” Wolves could not control the power within them like a witch could. Aside from the shift, the magic was wild. But they still seemed to gravitate toward specific talents.
“You’ve seen a hundred sons already. You’ll just have to meet a hundred shifters.”
Charlie nearly doubled over laughing. “Break the treaty. Wander into enemy territory and ask if anybody has… What? A weird fetish for crystal balls?”
Even as she tried to fob off her mother, she couldn’t deny that she was curious. The connection her cousins described sounded completely addicting. The idea that there was one wolf in the world meant for her who could meld with her magic and increase its power tenfold sounded awesome. Both sides had used and abused that connection for centuries. But when you added love, magic became power freely given and freely shared. Who wouldn’t want that?
“What about that one?” Sonia asked, pointing out the window.
Charlie leaned toward the window and looked at Lucas Duke, Dan’s brother. He was taller and thinner with harsher features than his brother but with the same sandy blond hair. Dan was uncannily beautiful with the face of a supermodel. Luke’s had more character.
If only the rest of his character wasn’t so questionable.
He’d abandoned the alpha position in his pack under his father to move to DC and play the stock market as a lone wolf. She wasn’t exactly sure what he did for a living, but she knew it resulted in a swanky penthouse and a swankier roadster.
Okay, the car was awesome. She could get behind the car. Charlie loved automobiles. They were so wonderfully responsive and predictable. In a life full of half-glimpsed prophesies of possible futures, a machine that did exactly what you told it to when you told it to felt so good to her brain.
“Lucas Duke is not going to settle down in Harpers Ferry and father a bunch of witch babies. Look at the man.” The denim jeans he wore cost more than Charlie’s entire wardrobe.
Sonia sighed. “Okay, maybe not that one. But think about it.”
Think about it. Think about it. Her thirtieth birthday was in a month. In previous times, that was the deadline when the aunts would choose for you if you didn’t choose for yourself. That practice had fallen out of favor when so many of those arranged marriages fizzled, burned, and, worst of all, didn’t result in any powerful girls. But truthfully, Charlie could feel her biological clock ticking. There was no way on earth she was having eight children like her mom, but a couple?
She cocked her head as she watched Luke chase his niece. What would be the harm in experimenting? She could take him out for a night on the town, have some fun, and see if mythical matching was a thing. And if not, no harm. She could just go back to Harpers Ferry, raise one finger, and have another dozen sons of witches to look at.
A part of her quailed. She was so tired of those dates where she could be engaged at the flick of a finger to whomever she wanted, never knowing if she was truly wanted for herself or for the power levels of her children.
“Okay, fine.”
Her mother’s eyes glittered in triumph, but she knew better than to crow whenever her daughter did something she wanted.
“But we will never speak of this again.”
Sonia put up her hands and rushed out the door. Charlie followed.
“I’m heading out,” her mother said.
Becca lay in the grass staring up at the sky, but she raised her head. When Charlie didn’t follow her mother, Becca asked, “You’re not going?”
“No.”
“I can drive you back later?” Dan asked.
“No,” she said firmly. One defense she’d developed against a life of ambiguous hints of the future was decisiveness. She could spend her life waffling and waiting for a sign, so she tried to act with as much certainty as possible. Well, in everything except choosing a partner for life.
But choosing a partner for the night? No problem.
Luke straightened, looking between his brother, her cousin, and her. “Am I supposed to volunteer?”
“You’re supposed to come along for the ride. I’m driving.” Her gut clenched, waiting for his response, but when a smile teased the corner of his lips, Charlie relaxed.
He crouched and gave his niece a scratch. “Bye, Amelia.”
The puppy ignored him.
Charlie leaned down and patted her cousin on her head and said, “Bye, Becca.”
“I’m not a wolf,” her cousin said, batting at her hand, and Charlie laughed.
“Bye, beautiful,” Charlie said to Dan, who blushed and waved her off.
Luke made for the gray sports car in the driveway. Charlie knew she should have recognized the little crest on the hood, but who built the things had never been the draw.
Luke tossed her the keys. She slid into the leather seat with a groan of pleasure as he got in the passenger seat.
“Just a guess, but we’re not going back to Harpers Ferry, are we?”
She had a hot date and a hotter car. Of course, she was not going home. “What are you, psychic?”
