Page 1 of The Folklore of Forever (Moonville #2)
One
When it storms at midnight, brew a cup of dandelion root tea. Slowly wave the flame of a six-inch candle back and forth over its depths to glimpse a secret you’ve long forgotten.
Spells, Charms, and Rituals, Tempest Family Grimoire
Legend has it that the first sentence of a new book is always the hardest.
Although I imagine it’d be easier if I had any idea what sort of story this one’s going to be. I’ve sent four polished proposals to my editor, each neatly shot down for being either too similar to my There’s Magic in Villamoon series, or too dissimilar (“We want all the charm and excitement of Villamoon, but for it to be totally fresh and different”), so when I lower a bucket down the creative well, the only water is insecurity and reminders that I have bills to pay and no reliable prospects on my horizon. Moving to my hometown was supposed to magically (no pun intended) fix this creative dry spell, but here I am sixty-five days after returning to Moonville, Ohio, and I am still staring down a blank page.
Perhaps I could try a spin-off? There are plenty of characters in the Villamoon universe I could write about…but readers would inevitably compare a spin-off to the original and probably find it dissatisfying. I need to move on.
The thing is, readers might not move on with me.
What if I don’t have any other stories worth telling, and nobody will care about my books if they’re not about Henriette Albrittey, amateur sleuth and heartbreak vampire, who feeds on the anguish of failed relationships rather than blood?
My gaze shoots to a stack of recently procured library books, each title more fascinating than the last: Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. Get Well Soon: History’s Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them. Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness. A Grave Robbery. Heir of Uncertain Magic.
I shouldn’t.
But it’s so very irresistible.
But I shouldn’t. It’s been a while since my last novel came out, and I don’t have time to mess around. Sales have been declining, which I am told is natural to happen at the tail end of a seven-book series—and I’ve funneled a fair bit of money into my family’s shop. If I don’t get another contract in the works, I’ll end up needing to find another job (on top of my part-time work at The Magick Happens), which will leave me with even less time for writing, which will make sustaining this career that much harder.
My hand, without permission, snatches up A History of the Habsburg Empire, 1526–1918 .
I will draft yet another proposal for a cozy paranormal mystery. It will be brilliant! I promise! But first, it is completely necessary that I learn everything there is to know about the Habsburgs.
As my thumb smooths over “Chapter I: Toward the Union of the Habsburg Lands,” a soothing peace descends over me like a mist, worries sieving into a distant time and place. Writing has not come easily lately, but reading is always dependably wonderful. This sort of text is my very favorite kind, with maps and an index and appendices. The names of a few rulers—Leopold, Maximilian, Ferdinand—stick to the walls of my brain, happily repeating themselves over and over in the way that, in my experience, select words are oft to do. I look forward to getting lost in new information.
A sputter of lightning draws my attention to the window, my gaze falling eye-level with somebody else’s, looking at me through his window across the street. My heart rate kicks up at the sight of that thick, sleek black hair that tumbles nearly to his shoulders. Dark, clever eyes. Tattoos of constellations spidering up his arms. That incredible jawline alone is the food of poetry.
A slowly considering smile pulls at his mouth.
My phone rings.
Imagine Vallis Boulevard, which is our street, as a thin brick ribbon laid across a giant’s palm. On either side of the brick ribbon are all manner of shops—some of the ordinary variety, like Mozzi’s Pizza or Riddle which sits atop a creamy meringue with Pop Rocks exploding whimsically here and there: our shop. Well, I should mention that it’s technically Trevor’s shop, as he’s my sisters’ and my landlord, and he bought the property from our mother, who sold it to spite her ex-husband (our father) who’d inherited it from his mother (Grandma Dottie). I won’t get into all of that right now, though—it’s a whole thing.
Back to Morgan and the phone that vibrates itself across my desk, glowing Unknown Number . He’s called my cell before, requesting book recommendations, but always from the special line downstairs in the Cavern of Paperback Gems.
Neon colors fishtail through what I presume is his bedroom, strobing his face. He must have purchased his wall decorations from a Miami motel’s going-out-of-business sale. It’s a stark contrast to my cave: my first priority after moving back home was to paint the attic a deep indigo and adorn it with black-framed artwork: a weeping skeleton with an arrow in its vertebrae; a black goat on a shore, its hindquarters formed from seawater. Not that you can see much of anything besides my books, as they’re stacked and stuffed anywhere they’ll fit. My sock drawer. Under the bed. Sandwiched between terrariums for my vampire crabs, beetles, ghost mantises, and isopods.
My phone continues to ring. Morgan twiddles his device back and forth in a gesture to pick up . His body language is self-assured, powerful, as though he knows I’m going to do exactly that.
Today, Morgan is wearing acid-washed jeans, a matching denim jacket with the collar flipped up, and a shirt color-blocked in fluorescent pink and orange. A miniature gold sword dangles from his left earlobe. His wardrobe of exclusively 1980s vintage clothing is so opposite to my own fashion sense that he’s a UFO spotlight demanding my full attention. I have such a fondness for the different and unexpected.
We stare at each other, my vision black and sparkly at the edges from fixating on a bright white rectangle for forty unproductive minutes. And then finally, I answer the call.
My “Hello?” is cautious, suspicious, a quick peek around the corner of a dark alleyway.
His silky voice pours into my ear, coaxing every hair to stand up. “Hello to you, too, gorgeous.”
My pulse races. “It’s one in the morning.”
“So it is.”
He hasn’t said anything overtly sensual, and yet the brief words feel it. My body tightens, blood stirring. “Why aren’t you sleeping?” I ask.
“How could I possibly? It’s as if you’re in my bedroom. What did I tell you about those curtains?”
My throat is packed with sand. “You told me that when I keep them open at night, you can see me.”
A short silence falls, in which he says everything by saying nothing at all.
This is more blatant than he’s dared so far; for the past few days, Morgan has begun to look at me with a new…suggestiveness…in his eyes.
“You could close your own curtains,” I point out.
“Not even if I wanted to.” His voice is rough. “My hands wouldn’t allow it. When you dangle temptation, Zelda Tempest, I won’t say no.”
He’s seated at a desk in front of his window just like I am. Morgan lives on the second floor of a pale green Victorian house, the first floor of which is a bakery, Wafting Crescent, run by Bushra and her brother, Zaid. They probably have to listen to a lot of eighties synth pop pumping through their ceiling.
My breath catches. “Bold.”
“Bold is efficient,” he replies. “And you look like you could use some company.”
I’m at a loss for words. This isn’t new territory, as I often don’t know what to say to Morgan. He has a keen interest in the paranormal and likes to ask me questions about my books (as they are focused on the paranormal). Because of this, I tend to avoid him. My writing—and what I plan to write next—is a sore topic at the moment. But I have noticed Morgan, certainly. From afar.
And I can hardly process the words that are coming out of his mouth, like a daydream glimmering to life.
You look like you could use some company.
He is so intensely good-looking that I don’t know how to converse sensibly with him, and that is why I flounder with the weak response: “I’m busy. Reading.”
“Reading what?”
“A volume on the Habsburg Empire.”
He tilts his head, fixing on his ceiling. “Are you into history?”
“Oh yes,” I reply in a rush. “And science. Geology, geography, ancient weapons and torture devices. Bog bodies. Cairns. The lost colony of Roanoke.” I am giving too much information, but I can’t stop—I have a million special interests. My present studies are Baltic Sea trade in the Viking Age, Egyptian hieroglyphs, and listening to unsolved mysteries on audiobook. Traveling used to be a great love of mine, but I’ve tired of it (and also can’t afford it these days). “What about you?” I ask with barely contained eagerness, pulling my waist-length braid over one shoulder and nosing a pen out of it. I usually keep one somewhere on my person for easy access. “What do you enjoy learning about?”
His chair swivels so that he faces me fully, one hand running through the night-shining strands of his hair. “You.”
My heart takes flight.
He grins as though he knows what that word, in that tone, has accomplished. A man like Morgan must know how he affects people. I am not infatuated, precisely, but with a little more encouragement on his part, I could see myself getting there.
“And ghosts,” he goes on as thunder shakes the walls. “Witchcraft, magic. You already know.”
I bite my lip. Yes, I do.
I also know that none of it is real.
Not the ghost stories that have made our town famous. Not witches, which my sisters claim to be, as did my grandmother. For decades, Grandma Dottie sold candles in our shop. They were supposedly imbued with spells that helped divine a customer’s One True Love, or could speed up the romance-finding process, weeding out the duds so that you knew not to invest too much into the relationship. She passed this particular strain of magic down to Luna, who’s taken up the mantle and has filled the shop top to bottom with “bespelled” candles.
My younger sister, Romina, calls herself a flora fortunist . The magic she claims to wield is similar to Luna’s, in that it aids customers’ romantic notions. But rather than candle magic, she uses floriography, which is the language of flowers. The way that I understand it, magic tells her which flowers to give to a person in order to bring their romantic wishes to fruition (if magic agrees with the customer’s wishes, that is). If you ask Romina and Luna how they can be so sure they’re witches, that what they’re doing is truly charmed, they’ll respond irritatingly vaguely about “intuition” and “connection to nature.” When they practice witchcraft, there are no sparks, no sudden gusts of wind, no sign that anything otherworldly is happening at all. It can’t be proven. I’ll be the first to admit that I love a good witchy aesthetic. But I’ll also admit—and this is where I diverge drastically from my sisters—that it’s only a style. Nothing more.
Rats. I’ve accidentally defiled a library book again.
If it were real , I appear to have written in the corner of Appendix I, it could be proven .
“There’s something about you,” Morgan tells me lowly. “I would like to find out what it is.”
“What do you mean?”
He leans back slightly, amused. “Don’t you know?”
I truly do not. “Please be explicit, or I might misunderstand.”
“I’d love to be explicit, but for now I’ll be polite. I’m saying that you’re beautiful, and I want to spend time with you. A lot of time. Alone.”
The pen slips from my hand. It rolls off the edge of the desk, gliding across a famous tapestry—“The Unicorn in Captivity”—re-created on my rug.
“Um.”
He arches an eyebrow. “Now you’re the one who will have to be more explicit.”
I swallow a shaky lungful of air. Bats and rats and frogs, I am at terribly loose ends. “I…ah…it isn’t that I don’t want to. You are very”—I gesture to him—“but, ah, this is moving fast, don’t you think? Until this week, you didn’t talk to me much unless you were asking me to go on your podcast to discuss writing fictional magic systems.” An offer I’ve refused, since I abhor talking about myself but even more abhor talking about writing. The inevitable query So what’s next? What are you working on now? would make me physically ill. If I throw up on Morgan Angelopoulos, he’ll definitely start drawing his curtains closed every night.
“Until this week, that’s all you noticed,” he replies. “But that doesn’t mean I haven’t been noticing you for quite a while now. For me, this isn’t sudden at all. It’s overdue. But I don’t want to move faster than you’re comfortable with, so I’ll leave you with something to think about, and my phone number in your call history.”
I press my lips together, not trusting myself to speak.
He lets a weighty pause drop. The corner of his mouth twitches with a velvety “Good night, Zelda.”
The call disconnects.
Crack!
It’s the third of July, and above, an aptly named Thunder supermoon glows vividly when it shouldn’t be visible during a storm at all. The huge white rock is melodrama in the night, rain lashing sideways. Below, glow-in-the-dark footprints trace a path along the road from a murder mystery dinner theater’s door all the way to the Moonville tunnel. They were painted to give the illusion of ghosts having a stroll, trapping moonlight. Right now, they twinkle to suggest an invisible traveler is dancing in the rain. My gaze traipses from the footprints and up the front of the green Victorian, latticed with roses, to the second floor. An irresistible pull.
Our eyes meet again as lightning breaks, thunder follows, and something alive happens to the globe string lights that hang high over the road, connecting the roofs of Wafting Crescent and The Magick Happens. Like a flurry of miniature wings, dime-bright, undulating from one bulb to the next.
I shoot to my feet with a start, but before I can get a closer look, all the power drains from my lamps, the Smithsonian channel on TV—as always, muted with captions on—my row of haunted house luminaries. I’m left in darkness with only the spatter of rain.
I crank the windowpane until it pushes outward, then lean out as far as I dare. Raindrops tap the sill. Already, there’s a calm spreading across the sky, rain slowing.
The string lights have burned out, but other than that, they look perfectly ordinary. Nobody is out and about. The storm must have caused an electrical burst, or my eyes are playing tricks on me. I shake my head, forbidding myself from opening my laptop tomorrow. I need a break.
You don’t have time for a break , an inner voice murmurs. You haven’t even started.
Sighing, I grope through the darkness for my silver skull lighter and a candle. I’ve got dozens of them—normal, nonmagical tapers—that I use for my pair of candelabras with ravens carved into their bases. But instead of regular tapers, my hand finds a different candle instead. The only one in the room that claims to be enchanted.
Gilda Halifax, a cherished nemesis of my grandmother’s, gave this candle to me last week for my thirty-second birthday. It’s a cumbersome, lumpy, graying thing—nothing at all like the candles Luna creates with her lively colors and pretty molds. Gilda said that Grandma made it many years ago and would want me to have it. I’m still not sure what that means. The candle’s name, according to an attached tag, is a little cryptic.
“Here goes nothing,” I mumble, clicking the lighter.
I glance askance at the window as Let the Strange In rips into a high, thin, orange-red flame the precise color of my hair; the silhouette of Morgan flashes again in the lightning’s blaze, violin under his chin, then abruptly disappears with it in the space of a heartbeat.
Long after, my goose bumps haven’t eased, the back of my neck still prickling with the invasive tingle of being watched. It feels as if it’s coming from somewhere farther away than the house across from mine on Vallis Boulevard. The sudden, strange idea sweeps through my head that whatever is looking through my window now is something that flickers all the way up in the sky, with the lightning—and that is how I know that sixty-five days in Moonville is exactly how long it takes to start seeing things that aren’t there, once again.