“We need to find you a man,” Charlotte said with a flip of her hair.
Dread settled in Fiona’s stomach. She glanced at her cousin as they hiked toward the rivers.
“Oh, I’m just fine,” her cousin Goldie said with a flick of gold acrylic nails and a toss of her dyed blonde hair.
“Me too,” Fiona said quickly.
They trooped onto the cement platform that overlooked the confluence of two rivers at the edge of Harpers Ferry. In the crisp November air with the first hint of true winter on the breeze, the view was spectacular. The two rivers crashed together amidst the towering hills of the Appalachians.
It was her favorite place on earth with her favorite people, and today, Fiona wanted to be anywhere else doing anything else.
Charlotte, the oldest, tallest, most powerful witch, and their leader since they were in diapers, closed her eyes and mumbled some sort of spell to keep the tourists away from the number one photo spot in town. Goldie plopped down on her favorite place on the National Park historic signs explaining the significance of the two rivers in the Civil War.
The last of the group, her sister Andie, wrapped Fiona in a hug as she asked, “You doing okay?”
Fiona shrugged her off. She didn’t like when the attention landed on her in these little gatherings. As the only Abbott girl of her generation without the gift of magic, sitting around watching her cousins work spells had been weekly torture when she was growing up. But she would be damned before she let that show.
“Right as rain,“ she said and leaned against the iron railing in the corner, her usual spot.
The absolute worst days of her childhood were when they tried to include her in Circles. It was bad enough sitting off to the side watching them mumble while their hair stood on end.
It was far, far worse when she stood in the middle of the Circle as they tried to help. Nothing ever had. Mundane reality stayed stubbornly mundane.
“Well, if we’re not wishing for love, what are we doing?” Charlotte asked.
Andie smiled. “I don’t think I have anything to wish for.”
Fiona sighed. For years, they wished for dolls, toys, phones, freedom from the aunts, and more power. Now four of the six of them had everything they wanted. Arguably, Goldie did too. She slept around with whoever she wanted and finally had a place in the main Circle.
And then there was Fiona.
Unlike her cousins, she had never left Harpers Ferry for school or found a job outside the family shop. She’d been working the register her entire life.
She had planned to go. Had planned to find a career, but there had been one crisis after another. And while everyone went off to do their own thing, the shop still needed running. It was the main source of income for the entire family.
Plus, until a few months ago, she and Andie had lived together above and worked together in the shop. If she wanted to do something, she had a built-in friend to do it with. If she wanted to go out, they always went out together.
Then in the blink of an eye, her sister jumped a life stage and settled down with a man, inherited the garden and a cabin out of town, and took her own place in the main Circle within a matter of weeks. Fiona laughed out loud. Andie had become an aunt. Overnight.
While Fiona was about to turn twenty-eight. She would officially be in her late twenties. It was the time when people stopped telling you to have fun and started telling you to get down to business. The problem was, in a coven, the only business was marrying the sons of witches and having babies.
As a magicless girl, she was expected to skip the babies and not dilute the magic any further.
Goldie cocked her head. “You should let them. They’re on a hot streak.”
Goldie had a mischief streak a mile wide, and Fiona bit her tongue rather than respond. She never won a verbal battle with Goldie. Few people ever had.
“Why don’t you let us?“ her sister Andie asked.
Fiona blinked. Andie used to be as quiet as she was, but the whole aunt-promotion gave her sister a boost of confidence. And meddling.
“Why don’t you let them?” Fiona retorted, regretting it immediately.
Goldie pointed at her. “I’m not shacking up with a wolf. If we’re not careful, we might have twelve children before the year is out.“
Charlie whistled. “I would pay money to see that.“
To Fiona’s horror, their eyes swung back to her.
“You’re too late,“ Fiona said impulsively. “I already have a date.“
Cat calls and whistles of delight followed the announcement, and Fiona clicked her teeth together.
What did she just say?
She hadn’t had a date ever. It was a dirty little secret she hadn’t even told her sister. She told them that she was having as much fun as they were when they all went away to college, but she was just too busy with the shop to go out looking. And the one guy her age in town was in love with her cousin. She never consciously planned to end up single, but she’d never been on a date in her life. Never even been kissed.
She had been busy. And she was short and frumpy and half blind, and nobody looked at her twice, especially when they had all of her cousins to compare her with.
It hadn’t even bothered her. She was young, in her twenties. She had years.
She thought people had existential crises at thirty. But somehow, twenty-eight was proving daunting.
“Who is he?“ her sister asked kindly.
She was about to declare that they didn’t know him when she cringed. They knew everyone she knew.
“He’s a shifter,“ she said impulsively.
That silenced everyone except Goldie, who gave her a slow clap. “Jumping on the furry bandwagon, are you?“
“Which shifter?“ Andie asked quietly, undistracted. The fear in her voice set Fiona’s back up. Would she always be the baby sister, magicless, protected, even from herself?
“You haven’t met him. His name is Liam.”
“I know that name,“ Charlotte said.
Fiona cringed. Charlotte had met him. He had started coming into their territory because Andie was partnered with his brother, and he was a rock hunter who was enjoying the new hunting grounds.
“He actually isn’t a shifter,“ she said grudgingly. “He is a Duke, but he doesn’t have a wolf.“
“That’s lovely.“ The compassion in her sister‘s eyes made Fiona want to punch something.
“He’s forty years old,“ Charlotte said, and Andie frowned.
“He’s not,” Fiona said. “He’s thirty-nine.”
“That’s old,“ Andie said, the fear back in her eyes.
“And he’s gorgeous and kind and likes me and asked me out. Is that so hard to believe?“ she asked, staring down her cousins.
Even Goldie didn’t meet her eyes.
For a second, she was completely offended that they were so shocked by the idea. Then remembered she was lying through her teeth.
He hadn’t asked her out. He hadn’t even looked at her.
He was gorgeous and kind and had this banked power and quiet presence that made everyone around him speak a little softer. And he spent all his time with rocks. And he was gorgeous.
She already mentioned he was gorgeous.
And he was probably going to be back in the store in a day or two, and certainly back to visit his brother and her sister. And what would she say then?
What had she just done?
“Be careful, Fee,“ Andie said quietly.
She jumped off the railing. “What if I don’t want to be careful? What if I wanna have some fun? And I can.” She made for the short stairs down to the sidewalk.
“Don’t you want to stay for the Circle?” Charlotte asked.
Fiona backed to the edge of the platform, ready to jump down the stairs and casually walk back to the store without running like a wolf with its tail between its legs. She turned back. “What on earth for?”
No one had any response to that, and she jumped. She reveled in the look of shock on their faces.
She was so proud of herself for not meekly submitting to the humiliating spectacle of standing in the middle of their joined hands as they mumbled to a power she could not see and never touch.
They insisted magic was not sentient and not to be worshiped, just a genetic anomaly, a way to listen to and touch the world beyond the five senses.
As someone who’d been stuck with five senses for almost three decades, she never understood their protestations.
But then triumph crashed into humiliation and horror again. Why hadn’t she picked some anonymous hiker? Strange men were flowing in and out of this town all day every day hiking the Appalachian Trail.
Why hadn’t she ever picked up some anonymous hiker?
She just wasn’t the anonymous hiker type.
She was the quiet, huge, built, beautiful type who was not for her and hadn’t looked at her twice, and now her cousins thought she was dating. Which meant it would take half a day for her entire family to think she was dating.
Including Elliot, Liam‘s younger brother.
Oh lord.
What if they talked? What if he came back? What was she going to do?
She pivoted halfway across the lawn to see her sisters and cousins in a Circle mumbling. Even Goldie. Maybe she was asking for a man after all.
She watched the leaves stir at their feet into a circle around them. Fiona never knew if they realized that happened every single time they did this. It didn’t in the main family Circle since most of those took place inside, but out here on the Point, it was like Harpers Ferry itself was participating.
She had to tell them. She had to confess.
Or she could go to Liam and… And what? Beg him to confirm the fiction? Beg him to break it off with her? Beg him never to come back to Harpers Ferry and keep to the old wards even though their territories were pretty much mixed now?
She knew one thing for sure, she had to get to him before anybody else did.
