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CHAPTER ONE

“ RELAX. REMEMBER TO brEATHE,” TREVALYAN murmured.

I kept my gaze upon the scattered leaves on the earth between us, containing my frustration. I took a breath. Let it out. Then I spoke the words of the spell. Just in my mind. At the same time, I circled my fingertips over the leaves.

Today’s exercise was to arrange the leaves in neat, sorted stacks, while not speaking the spell aloud.

“It’s just a matter of concentration,” Trevalyan had assured me when we settled on the dirt forty minutes ago. “You speak the words in your mind, close the circle, and let the power emerge.” As he spoke, he moved his hand in a slow circle over the ten leaves he’d plucked from the trees around us and let drop to the ground.

The pale green maple leaves had lifted as though a breeze was stirring them, then flipped and dropped into three piles; small, medium and large. Even the stems were all facing the same way. Each stem showed a white dot of sap, and the slightly sweet, fresh scent rising from them was a strong reminder that winter was over.

“I couldn’t do that even if I was speaking it aloud,” I’d protested, as Trevalyan picked up the stacks of leaves and let the green flakes drop to the ground once more, rocking through the air like miniature swings with invisible ropes.

“Couldn’t or won’t?” Trevalyan shot back. His eyes always looked sad, but he pinned me with an intense gaze that refuted the impression. He was a short, painfully thin man, with long dirty blond hair and a drooping mustache. Everything about Trevalyan sagged. Especially his face, which was wrinkled and filled with hollows and crests. He wore thin-framed glasses.

From only a few paces away, he appeared to be in his late sixties. He was, in fact, much older than that. Haigton was an unusual town, and Trevalyan had lived here a long time. I didn’t know how old he was, but I knew he’d left seventy behind a long time ago.

It was only when you got close to him, and after you’d grown accustomed to the musky smell of cannabis that wreathed him like cologne, that you realized his eyes were those of a much younger man. That is, if he let you get that close. Trevalyan was, like nearly everyone in Haigton, a private person. Also, like everyone in Haigton, he had good reasons for staying aloof with people.

He was staring at me now, which didn’t make it any easier to concentrate. I didn’t think it was possible to stumble in pronouncing a word in your head, until I had tried today’s “simple” exercise.

That had been forty minutes ago, and I was still trying to do this straightforward thing and failing. It was driving me crazy.

So were my knees, hips and ass. The ground was not even close to cushion-like. The new blades of grass in the little clearing were thin, and the earth compacted from the winter’s snow.

The light here was filtered and cool. Too cool. I shivered and realized I’d stopped speaking the spell once more. I sighed and dropped my hand.

“One more time,” Trevalyan said, his voice that of an old man’s – wavering and deep.

“I’d rather speak it aloud first. I’m not even sure I can do the spell, let alone cast it silently.”

Trevalyan looked at me steadily for three heartbeats. “Very well,” he said. “Cast it aloud.”

Relieved, I arched my back. Hard. It was aching from sitting without back support for too long. I wasn’t twenty-something anymore. And the last time I’d sat cross-legged on the ground was in high school.

Then I resettled myself.

“Now, clear your mind. Relax. Breathe. And say the words,” Trevalyan coached me.

I took a deep breath and spoke the words I’d carefully memorized.

“No, bring the intensity down,” Trevalyan cautioned me. “They’re just leaves.”

I started again, while glaring at the leaves. It was a short spell, which was why it was annoying that I couldn’t say the whole thing in my mind without my thoughts wandering, or mentally stuttering.

I turned my fingers in a circle over the leaves. Power, silvered and cold, tore through me and out through my fingers.

The leaves didn’t just lift gently and sway back and forth as they sorted themselves out. They whipped about as though they were in a mini cyclone, snapping and cracking.

Trevalyan threw up his arm to shield his face. “Too much !” he cried. “Turn down the volume, Anna!”

“I don’t know how to do that!” I had to raise my voice because the little tornado was whistling.

Trevalyan lifted the hand that wasn’t shielding his face, but before he could start the circle, the tornado evaporated. The leaves, now desiccated and brown, as if the energy and power of spring had been sucked out of them, all burst into flames. They drifted back down to the ground, trailing ash and smoke.

I waved the smoke away. “ Damn it!”

My phone vibrated against my hip. Thank you , I told whoever was listening for the timely jolt and got slowly and painfully to my feet.

“You must try again,” Trevalyan insisted. “You must keep at it until it works.”

“Later,” I told him, brushing off my jeans and the hem of my short coat. “Unless you don’t want to eat lunch today.”

He leaned back on one hand. Unlike me, he seemed to be quite comfortable sitting on dirt. “You can’t keep ducking this, Anna. You must get control of your power.”

Something in me cringed. “Yep,” I said heavily. “But right now I have over a dozen people to feed.”

“You cannot continue to half-ass this,” Trevalyan snapped.

“I’m not!” I shot back, stung. I threw out my hand. “I have massive debit, the bills keep showing up, while supplies don’t , because normal people keep forgetting about us. My daughter is eight months pregnant, and I still don’t know what happens when she goes into labor! I have a hotel to run, and people who keep showing up three times a day expecting me to put food on the table. Frankly, I’ve got far—” I realized what I was about to say and clamped my teeth together, cutting it off.

“Far better things to do than play with magic?” Trevalyan asked softly.

I rubbed my temple. “No, that’s not what I mean.” Tiredness was making my face ache, and it wasn’t even noon yet. But it was getting far too close to noon for me to linger here. I swung away. Then back to face Trevalyan, who hadn’t moved. “I’ll…see if I can practice, this afternoon.” I couldn’t bring myself to promise it, and that made me feel guilty, too.

“You’re vulnerable until you master your abilities.” Trevalyan’s eyes were back to sad. I think, this time, they were sad. “And you won’t master them until you take this seriously.”

“I do take it seriously.”

Trevalyan got to his feet. Unlike me, he rose gracefully, without effort. He stood with his hands at his sides, not fidgeting or brushing off dirt. He was that comfortable with nature. “You think you take it seriously, but in the back of your mind, where you won’t allow yourself to wander, magic still feels like fairy-tale nonsense to you. Even though you’ve summoned the Will of the Town and helped your daughter through a high-risk pregnancy, you still do not believe .” His voice dropped down to the lower registers, and he pronounced each word distinctly.

Was that true?

“You feel foolish, when you speak of magic, or when I do,” Trevalyan added.

I rubbed my face, feeling a hot mix of indignation, temper and embarrassment that swirled through my middle and made me want to squirm. “I have to go,” I said. It was both the truth and an evasion.

I could see from Trevalyan’s face that he knew that, too. Which didn’t help me feel any better.

I stalked through the oaks and maples and the odd spruce, heading for the crossroads. We hadn’t been deep inside the woods. Not even close to the town’s invisible and guarded borders. Just far enough to take us out of sight of anyone who might be looking for me.

Someone was always looking for me, these days.

I emerged from the trees only a few paces away from the crossroads and moved up to the corner. Sidewalks didn’t exist on this side of the crossroads.

Kitty corner to where I was standing was the Haigton Crossing Hotel. My hotel, willed to me by my mother.

I took in the lovely old building with its white walls and black timbers, steeply pitched roofs and three floors of mullioned windows. It could have been picked up from somewhere in England and dropped here. And it was mine. In the four months I had been in Haigton, I had come to love the place…and loathe it.

I didn’t bother looking for traffic before stepping into the intersection and crossing over to the hotel’s corner. It was rare for cars to drive through.

It was a warm April day. Warm for the northern end of New York, that is. I was still acclimatized to California’s weather and wore a sturdy jacket, while the true locals seemed to be comfortable in shirt sleeves.

I strode down the sidewalk in front of the hotel, then headed inside, while figuring out what I would serve for lunch. I always built a weekly menu—it was the only way to contain costs—but we had a few unexpected paying customers staying in the rooms on the second floor and that was playing havoc with my supplies and my careful planning.

Until a week ago, no one had stayed overnight in the hotel since I had arrived in Haigton. Now we had three guests.

As I stepped into the welcome warmth of the foyer, my daughter, Ghaliya, ducked around the curtain that covered the doorway into the bar, moving carefully. Her hand was on her distended belly beneath the stretchy blue tunic.

“Are you okay?” I asked, moving over to her.

“I’m fine. I’m fine .”

I stepped back. “Okay…”

She shook her head. “I just have to pee. Again . That’s like the fifth time in the last twenty minutes. And everyone keeps asking me if I’m okay. Hirom won’t let me sit on the stools at the bar. He makes me sit at a table and brings things to me. And everyone at the locals’ table wants to pat my stomach…and listen to me bitch.” She rolled her eyes and blew out a breath that made her hair lift over her brows.

The hair was an odd combination of blue and golden brown. When she had fallen pregnant, she’d had blue hair, two inches long. Now the natural brown was growing out, but it wasn’t long enough yet to just cut off the blue, which I knew was another irritant for Ghaliya.

“You’d better go and pee,” I told her. “You won’t be able to hold it. And I have to start lunch.”

Ghaliya gritted her teeth and drew in a breath that made her nostrils flare. “I had that figured out,” she muttered and headed down the corridor that ran alongside the wide stairs. I followed, for the kitchen entrance was under the stairs, closer to the back door.

I ducked under the stairs while Ghaliya went into the washroom on the other side of the corridor.

The kitchen was clean and sterile, for I had left it that way. I was the only one who worked in here. So far. If guests became common, I would have to rethink that, but for the last three and a half months I’d only had to feed Haigton residents. That was a whole ten people, including those who lived in the hotel, which was me, Ghaliya, Hirom and Frida. But Broch was a vampire and didn’t eat. I was only cooking for nine.

After surviving as a short order cook in a super busy diner for two years, feeding nine people was a piece of cake.

The kitchen was large and had a long steel table running down the middle of it. I always kept the table clear between meal prep. The big white envelope sitting on the end of the table stood out.

I picked up the stiff envelope. My name was on the front. The logo on the top left of the envelope made my heart jump.

The Judicial Branch of California. The Family Court was included in that branch, and I’d had my share of experiences with the Family Court.

I knew better than to put the envelope aside and get on with lunch prep. The unopened letter would burn a hole in my skull, and I’d make mistakes and ruin the meal. Six of the nine locals who ate in my dining room paid me to deliver edible meals. So did the three guests.

The nice thing about reaching fifty is that I was finally starting to understand my own nature a little better and sometimes, occasionally, I took notice of that awareness.

I opened the utility drawer and took out the paper scissors and sliced the end off the envelope and pulled out the thick wad of pages and opened them up. My heart raced as I read the headline on the first page.

ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE AND AFFIDAVIT FOR CONTEMPT

I drew in a shaky breath and read on. My brow ached and I realized I was frowning hard enough to make the muscles protest.

It took a few tries to make sense of it. I put the packages of pages down on the end of the steel table. My hand was shaking.

Jasper, my odious ex, was suing me for failing to pay the taxes on his house. The obligation had been a part of the divorce settlement, and at the time, a way for me to avoid having to pay maintenance, which I couldn’t afford. But he’d sold our family home and bought a two-million-dollar-plus mansion on the Brentwood edge of the Hollywood Hills. I’d covered the November payment. Just.

Now I owed the City of Los Angeles seven thousand dollars.

Plus interest.

The payment had been due on the first of February, and officially became delinquent on April tenth. Today was the sixteenth.

Jasper hadn’t waited a week to sic his expensive legal barracuda onto me.