Page 31

Relief pounds through my body. “Stop flirting with me. I already said I’m not going to kiss you right now,” I say, more to annoy her than anything else, but I only succeed in making myself cranky.

Because when she smiles like that, so carefree and dimpled, I can see why all four of her exes out there fell for her so fucking hard. Why they’re here when they could be home, still snuggled up fast asleep in their nice, warm beds and not sore and stiff from the cold, hard ground.

Kiara’s smile wavers. “What? I’m being serious. Why are you giving me that look?”

Because I know she would never have said that to me if we were back in Prior’s End.

If she’d never burst into Aurora’s tent at the exact wrong moment, at the most catastrophic timing.

If my four-leaf clover wasn’t still squished in her smallest zippered pocket.

Her compliment compounds my guilt, and I hate it .

I hate the way she makes me feel. How I try so hard to pretend I don’t care when caring seems to be all I do when it comes to Kiara Mistry. I can’t pull off fake nonchalance even when I try because apparently my willpower has all the strength of a Twizzler.

I’ve never felt closer to my dad than now, in this place of magic and superstition and legends.

What would he make of a petty hex and a pretty girl and a perilous quest to save her?

I might never know. What I do know is that I am here.

For her sake. I might have started this journey with my own agenda, desperate for a partner to go with me into the woods to find my dad, but it’s no longer just about him.

In my world of neat and tidy boxes, all appropriately labeled and shelved, Kiara is the wildfire that’s scorching through everything I believe in, one devastating smile at a time.

My perfectly ordered little world is ablaze for her. The worst thing is that she’s worth it.

“No one’s ever called me their lucky charm before,” I say finally. “I’m not so sure it’s true. I’m more like the last desperate sandbag standing up to your wave of bad luck. It’s not the same thing as being your good luck charm.”

“You’re so down on yourself. You shouldn’t be. You’re a good person. I don’t know anyone else who would agree to come on a—let’s be frank—pretty dubious trip with a bunch of people they hate.”

“I don’t hate them.”

Kiara snorts.

I scowl. “Not three-fourths of them anyway,” I say.

She leans forward so her brown hair spills over the thin straps of her white tank top. “What about me?”

I study her face like it’s a trap. “What about you?”

“I know you want to kiss me. But other than that, how do you feel about me?”

Now I know it’s a trap. And I’m not about to walk into it when I still feel so discombobulated. I need to…recombobulate? I shake away the errant thought.

“Ask me later,” I say. “First, I need to brush my teeth and drink about a gallon of coffee so I don’t look and feel like a total zombie. Do you have any toothpaste I can borrow?”

I couldn’t find it last night, even though I remember packing it in my toiletries case, squished between the SPF and bug spray. But I was in such a rush, maybe it’s still at home.

With a disappointed tilt to her lips, she reaches for her backpack and tugs at a zip.

Alarm bells peal through my head. No, not that pocket!

Kiara pulls out a tiny clear baggy of chewable toothpaste tabs. They’re small and round like mints. Clinging to the bottom of the baggy is my clover. Without a second thought, she uses her nail to flick it away. It’s dried up, shriveled, the edges curling in. More brown than green.

She offers me the baggy. She must have misread the dismay on my face because she explains, “Oh, it’s not hard. You just pop it in, take a swig of water, crush it all up until it starts to fizz into toothpaste. When you’re done brushing, spit it out. Don’t eat it.”

“I know how to—”

Before I can finish my sentence, the tent collapses. Not in a gentle flutter, either, or the slumpy sag of one corner, but every single pole gives out at the exact same time in one giant whoosh , as though we simply breathed wrong.

I can’t help the undignified shriek.

As the heavy canvas pins us to the ground, Kiara winds up on top of me, toothpaste tabs crushed against my chest between us.

Even through our clothing, I can feel her softness and warmth.

I bring my hand up to brush her hair over her shoulder.

My thumb grazes the strap of her tank, the curve of her shoulder.

“I promise this isn’t me sabotaging the tent to try and get that kiss,” she whispers into the crook of my neck. Her lips curve into a smile against my skin.

I don’t know whether to laugh or shiver. In the end, I settle for both.

Kiara retreats but only a little. She hovers a space above my mouth.

Neither of us blink. Our chests graze, and my breath hitches when her loose hair falls in a curtain around us.

Her hair smells like the sweet summery juiciness of her strawberry shampoo, the same scent I’ve inhaled when she tosses her hair in front of me in class.

I’ve never really thought about it before, but she does seem to be seated in front or behind me quite a lot.

It takes everything I have not to pull her even closer and bury my face in the crook of her neck and inhale the alluring scent I’ve come to associate with her and only her. Nova Marwood, Queen of Restraint. Who knew?

“See? My lucky charm after all,” Kiara says, bringing her hand to my cheek.

“Cushioning my fall.” Soft as butterfly wings, knuckles graze my skin.

The bubble of laughter in my throat pops, and my entire body turns into one giant goose bump.

She doesn’t linger, but the ghost of her touch remains even after her fingers fall away.

“I know the truth, Nova Marwood,” she says quietly.

My breath catches, strangles . I stare at her, not trusting myself to speak.

“You,” says Kiara, minty breath floating across my face, “are secretly really, really—to a ridiculous degree—into me, even though you give a great impression otherwise. But I see you.”

Too stunned to refute that bold assertion, I owlishly blink at her as she hoists herself up.

Just in time, too, since Tayla’s head pops under the tent as though she’s pressed herself to the ground. “What happened? Are you okay?”

She’s only looking at Kiara, not me, but I answer anyway. “We’re both fine.”

Kiara nods.

Tayla’s gaze sweeps the tent. “Didn’t you check the tension before going to bed?”

“It’s not a big deal,” says Kiara. “It could happen to anyone.”

“Wait. You let her do it?” Somehow Tayla’s head roving around a foot above the ground is no less scary than Tayla at her full height.

To me, she asks, “Have you ever even put up a tent before? Without your dad’s help?

You’re lucky the tent collapsed in the morning and not in the middle of the night! ”

“It was my fault,” Kiara says quickly. “My bad luck strikes again.”

I squelch down the spike of guilt that her covering for me elicits. If I was braver, maybe I would have said, No, Tayla’s right. I didn’t know what to do, and I was too embarrassed to ask .

But I’m not brave. I’ve never been brave enough. I’m still so afraid to admit when I’m responsible for something bad happening.

“Right,” says Tayla, clearly disbelieving. “Well, the others just woke up, so we should eat and get a move on.” Her head disappears but not without one last look of disapproval aimed at me.

There’s a pit of certainty in my belly that this is not a simple case of my pride; this is the hex rearing its ugly head once again.

I throw a despairing glance in the direction of the four-leaf clover.

Whatever protective properties it had are long used up.

It only lasted a day. Less than I’d anticipated.

It didn’t help that Kiara flicked it away the second she saw it.

Either way, whether the tent collapse was due to my inexperience or the wilted magic or her discarding the clover…

the fault for hexing her, ultimately, still lies squarely on my shoulders.

I kind of wish I hadn’t rejected the horseshoe for being too unwieldy or the rabbit foot too icky.

On the fly, I could always find a ladybug or a dotted red-and-white toadstool.

But my chances of finding cute little beetles?

In this weather? They’re probably sneaking into the cracks of people’s houses to hole up and hibernate for the winter. Then there’s the red-capped mushroom…

Even though it’s adorable and fairy-tale charming, the Amanita muscaria is a hallucinogenic, highly poisonous mush-room.

Still, coming across one is considered pretty lucky.

While the species can be found here in Tennessee, usually flourishing under a pine tree, my dad only saw them rarely, and I haven’t spotted any so far.

Ugh, who am I kidding? I would make a terrible partner for Kiara. Clearly, I suck at hunting and gathering, if I can’t get over my own squeamishness to touch a rabbit’s foot or keep a lookout for bright red mushrooms.

Quit it, Nova. This is not the time to catastrophize.

Dad would want me to change my perspective.

A lot of his lessons and sayings were inherited from his aunt, who brought him up after his parents died in a car accident.

My great-aunt Eloise lost her fiancé to the wishing well.

She never married or loved anyone else the rest of her days.

A broken heart that never healed , I overheard Dad telling Mom, even though that wasn’t the official cause.

Everyone said Eloise hung on long enough to see Dad happy and settled and her wine bar in good hands.

She died before my third birthday, and my memories of her are fragmented, mostly stitched together through half recollections and the stories my parents told to keep her alive.

Dad’s favorite story was the one about how Eloise, always so forgetful, developed inventive ways to recollect important things.

I’d forget my own name if it was possible , she always said with a laugh that sounded like a secret.

Dad wrote six letters on a sheet of paper. ELOISE . I was nine and enamored with the idea of proving how clever I could be, too. Can you figure out her trick in remembering her PIN, Nova?

I could not. Suddenly, nine seemed very small.

His smile took the sting away. He turned the paper upside down so I couldn’t read the letters anymore. Only now I could! Excitedly, I told him they were numbers! 35I073 .

In the face of seemingly insurmountable challenges, North Star, it always helps to look at your problem in a different way. Change your perspective, and you’ll find everything changes.

Okay, time to put his lesson into practice. So what do I have left? I still have an antique brass skeleton key, rumored to be spelled by a shunned witch who lived in Prior’s End long ago to bring good luck to thieves. She apparently had little love for her neighbors, and no wonder.

There are also the tarot cards that belonged to Petra’s mother, who started the tradition of offering divination to the Mortar & Thistle clients.

I have the Sun, the Wheel of Fortune, and the Six of Cups.

I don’t know much about tarot, but from what Petra told me during our reading, these cards symbolize fate, good fortune, and wishes coming true.

In other words, luck is supposedly on my side.

But I’m also the person who hexed Kiara. My own reckless words boomerang into my brain.

Bad luck will plague your footsteps…The very ground you tread will turn treacherous…You will suffer this reversal of fortune until you summon the strength to sacrifice what you want most.

Kiara’s confession changes everything.

When I went to Madame Aurora’s tent, there was a question I wanted to know the answer to. There’s a girl I like. That I’ve liked for a really long time.

With this context, what if it was our closeness that collapsed the tent? Our attraction?

What if I’m making things worse? After all, I’d also said…

The closer you get to what you want, the worse off you will be.

My body physically hurts at the thought of me being the unluckiest charm of all.

I can’t risk it. Can’t be selfish. I need to take a step back. Like, a lot of steps back.

I roll my thumb over one of the green beads on my bracelet and blink back tears. It definitely doesn’t feel like luck is on my side.

“I’m sorry,” I say as we both crawl out, bringing our belongings with us. And then helplessly, because I can’t apologize for what I really want to, I repeat again, “I’m sorry.”

As I flee with my toothbrush and a tab clenched in my fist, I hear an amused Keiffer—a bright red brush sticking out of the side of his mouth—shout, “Spit, don’t swallow!”