Chapter One
I was being stalked by an enchanted broom. It had been shuffling around the shop for weeks, delighting the customers and driving me crazy. I only had myself to blame. A month ago, I’d insisted on
The Sword in the Stone for our family movie night, and when Merlin magically animated the kitchen to clean itself, my parents took it as a challenge. (There is always a great deal of wine involved in family movie night.)
I barely managed to convince them that flying dishes were a bad idea, so the broom was a consolation prize. As the only one of us sober enough to be trusted with a blade, I used my boline to carve the runes into the broom handle while Mim gave instructions over my shoulder. Even when she was drunk, her spellwork was unparalleled. Mama, who at her most sober still found runes too fiddly for her taste, had chosen to contribute by dancing around and singing the evil Madam Mim’s song from the film. Our Mim was unamused.
I had hoped the next day’s hangover would dull the excitement and they would decommission it, but instead I found the broom to be my new companion in the shop. My parents insisted that the novelty would be good for business, and I couldn’t deny that the customers enjoyed its whimsical dancing down the aisles while they browsed. I would have been more impressed if it had kept the floors clean, instead of just getting in the way while I went about my chores.
This particular Saturday morning, it was more underfoot than usual. I’d come downstairs an hour early to set up a spell, and the broom dogged my heels while I gathered ingredients, until finally I slipped into the work room and shut the door. While I set out a shallow clay bowl, a saltcellar, and a glass bottle of Florida Water, I could hear the broom scratching at the door like a forlorn puppy. I couldn’t believe a nonsentient aggregate of wood and straw had me feeling sorry for it.
By the time I finished setting up, the broom had given up on the door to continue its ambling circuit around the shop, and I was finally able to concentrate. The worktable was piled with paperwork and random inventory that needed to be reshelved, so I knelt on the floor in front of the bowl. Decades of Sparrow family spells had imbued the floorboards and walls of the stock room with a permanent smell of smoke and burnt herbs that most customers found unpalatable but to me was the scent of home.
First, I took a length of thin red ribbon from my pocket and tied it around my wrist in preparation for the casting, and then I turned my attention to the bowl, which was about the size of a dinner plate. I spooned in salt until there was a thin layer covering the bottom.
I flipped through the pages of the leather-bound book next to my knee. The spine was so well-worn that it rested open without any trouble when I found the page I needed. Mama had taught me the white fire limpia when I was in high school, but I still liked to read over the instructions I’d penned into my grimoire at fourteen, to reassure myself that I wasn’t going to make any terrible mistakes. As if after thousands of iterations, I was one day going to accidentally use sugar instead of salt or forget how to light a match.
I settled back on my heels and closed my eyes to meditate. My family had a few different cleansing and protection spells that we performed periodically to benefit Chanterelle Cottage, but this was a special one-off. We’d been forced to keep the shop closed yesterday, after waking up to find that someone had broken the transom window and reached inside to unlock the front door. You’d think three witches under one roof would be enough of a theft deterrent—it had been for the past two centuries. Even in this day and age, Owl’s Hollow was the sort of small town where people left their purses unattended and kids were allowed to roam unsupervised. Our sheriff spent all his time writing parking tickets and taking naps in his office.
Once we’d taken stock of the damage, we didn’t even bother calling the sheriff to report the break-in, because the loss was nowhere near our insurance deductible. The cash register, surprisingly, had not been touched, and only a couple hundred dollars’ worth of merchandise had been stolen: some spell jars, wands, books, and all but a few of our specialty hand-packed tea bags. The incident was more odd than troubling, as long as I didn’t dwell on the thought of a stranger rifling through the shop while my parents and I slept upstairs. But that thought had been hard to put out of my head with negative energy permeating the shop, seeping into the edge of my consciousness last night while I tossed and turned. Hence the early-morning cleansing ritual.
I realized that my meditation had morphed into obsessing about the burglary, and I took a deep breath to recenter myself. Mentally, I gathered all the anger and fear and confusion. I picked up the bottle of Florida Water and poured some into the bowl, imagining that I was pouring out all my negative emotions with it.
I lit a match and tossed it in. As the flame burned, I picked up the bowl and made my way out of the work room. I expected to be ambushed by the broom—not ideal when I was holding a live flame—but it was oscillating in the corner by the cauldrons.
I walked up and down the aisles, letting the limpia cleanse the bad energy left behind by the burglary. The walk was meditative in itself, as I basked in the comfort of familiar surroundings.
Chanterelle Cottage was not just my job—it was my birthplace and my lifelong home. The walnut floors were scratched and stained with generations’ worth of use. Overhead, dried herbs and various wards and blessings hung from the exposed wood beams. The shelves and bins were haphazardly packed with the tools and ingredients of our trade, as well as items meant to make magic more accessible to mundane folk.
We sold a little bit of everything here, not least of all the spellwork that couldn’t be captured in jars or tea bags. We specialized in small cures, good-luck charms, and blessing crops. The sort of little things that made a big difference in a town like Owl’s Hollow. We usually left the flashy work like telekinesis, transmutation, and summoning to magecraft firms, which were overpriced and overrated but better suited to ostentatious displays of magic.
Thinking about mages was darkening my mood again. I didn’t want to ruin the limpia before it was even finished, so instead I did my best to calm myself by envisioning a pure, bright light expanding to fill the shop and our home. As the light grew, so did my sense of peace, until at last the foreboding was edged out by a deep sense of serenity.
As the fire burned out, I heard voices and footsteps coming down the stairs. I set the bowl on the front counter. It must be almost time to open, so I would have to tidy up later.
“Morning!” Mim was the definition of bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. She had curled her honey-blond hair like a forties pinup star today, and her floral sheath dress hugged her thick curves. Her daisy earrings were truly enormous.
Behind her, Mama made a vague grunting noise that was the night-owl version of “Good morning.” Her jaw cracked with a yawn, and she clutched her travel mug of coffee like a lifeline. She was dressed more formally than usual, presumably for their appointment at the bank. But that is not to say she was particularly formal. Her dark jeans were rip-free, and her black shirt was only one size too big. In the past few years, streaks of silver had appeared in her dark brown hair, which she enjoyed calling evidence of her advanced and superior wisdom, even though she was only two years older than Mim.
“Tonight,” I said, in lieu of a greeting, “we are having s’mores, and I’m using that broom as kindling.” I jerked my thumb toward my nemesis, which was wobbling around uselessly by the wand display.
“What has Broomhilde ever done to you?” Mim asked.
On cue, the thrashing handle knocked several wands to the floor.
“Don’t be jealous, Charlie,” said Mama. “You’re still our favorite child.”
“I’m your only child.” I stole a sip of her coffee. “And I’m not jealous of a broom.”
“Speaking of,” said Mim, as she went to scoop up the wands and redirect the broom that I guessed we were calling Broomhilde now. I didn’t like that it had a name. You can’t throw things with names onto a bonfire. “Tandy DiAngelo has been wanting to take a look at it, so she might stop by today.”
“And if she does, you should tell her to kick rocks,” Mama said.
Copyright © 2024 by D. L. Soria. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
