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“You’re really going through with this,” Bellamy McAllister’s father Kirby said, and she somehow managed to prevent herself from rolling her eyes. It wasn’t that she was annoyed with him for caring. No, what irritated her was how he’d been like a dog with a bone about this whole thing, and even now, when she was getting ready to load her stuff into her car, he didn’t seem able to let it go.

“Dad, we’ve been over this, like, a million times,” she replied as she zipped up her overnight bag. “It’s not even permanent. I’m just house sitting until the place is sold, and then I’ll be right back in Jerome.”

Or maybe Cottonwood or Clarkdale, depending on what was available when she was looking for a place to land. That day could be a month or six months from now —impossible to say for sure, since she had no idea how quickly the sprawling ranch property she’d lucked into would be off the market.

“We’re not supposed to live in Sedona,” her father said, a factoid he’d also helpfully brought up a rough dozen times over the past few weeks.

And yes, it was true enough that witch-kind weren’t supposed to spend too much time in Sedona. The McAllisters and the Wilcoxes had managed to hammer out an agreement more than a hundred years earlier that neither witch clan should lay claim to Sedona’s red rocks…which supposedly possessed their own power…so no one from either clan had ever lived there full time, although magical folk certainly visited to shop or dine or hike. Frankly, Bellamy thought all the talk about Sedona’s mystical powers was mostly a bunch of hooey designed to bilk tourists out of money for vortex tours when they came here to achieve their version of enlightenment, so she wasn’t about to let herself be too troubled by the way she was ignoring a century-plus of tradition.

“The ranch isn’t even inside Sedona’s city limits,” she said, unperturbed. “So I don’t think I’m breaking any rules. Besides, staying there makes my commute a lot easier.”

Only a month earlier, she’d gotten an awesome job as assistant manager at Sedona Vines, a wine bar in West Sedona, and although she’d been thrilled by the step up in responsibility and pay, she had to admit that commuting there from Jerome five days a week had been kind of a pain. Now she’d only have to drive ten minutes to get to work, and she was going to enjoy every second of it, even as she understood her current situation wasn’t going to last forever.

Her father frowned. Although he was pushing fifty now, he still looked as boyish as ever, with wavy brown hair and laughing blue eyes. Bellamy knew she didn’t resemble him very much, with her coppery hair and gray eyes, and assumed she must have taken after the woman who’d donated her egg to the process and also acted as a surrogate. The red hair was definitely a McAllister thing, though, and she figured the recessive gene had shown up in her after skipping a couple of generations.

“I’m still not sure I like it,” her father said slowly, and she stepped away from the bed so she could go over to him and give him a quick hug.

“I had to move out sometime,” she replied, which was only the truth. It had been easy to remain at home while she was getting her enology certification at Yavapai Community College down the hill, but no one could have expected her to live in the apartment over the candy shop forever. The place was a decent size, just a hair over eighteen hundred square feet, and yet being here with her two dads, she’d thought it was starting to feel a little tight.

Time to grow up and move on. She was twenty-two, after all.

Her father cracked a grin. Her other dad Jordan was downstairs watching the store so Kirby could say goodbye to Bellamy since she and Jordan had already shared a goodbye breakfast earlier that day, but she knew Kirby couldn’t linger here in the apartment forever, not on a busy August day with lots of tourists hitting the former mining town.

“You’re right, of course,” he said. “You’re sure you don’t want any help taking this stuff over to the new place?”

He’d already made that offer multiple times, and her answer was still the same.

“I’m good,” she replied, even as she sent him a smile she hoped would communicate her gratitude despite not needing the assistance. “Bree’s going to take some of the bulkier things, since she has a bigger car.”

A huge gas-powered Suburban that was a hulking relic from the time before smaller, more efficient vehicles. But Brianna McAllister was always hauling a bunch of instruments and amplifiers and whatnot from one gig to another and needed the room, and she’d offered to help Bellamy move her things since Bree was going to be playing at one of the resorts in West Sedona that evening anyway.

Kirby seemed to realize any additional arguments he put forth would also get shot down, so he shrugged, saying, “Well, it looks like you’ve got it all figured out. You make sure to call if you need anything, though, okay?”

“I will,” she promised.

The doorbell at the back entrance to the flat rang then, and Bellamy sent her father a smile. “Gotta go.”

“But you’ll be back for dinner on Sunday.”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” she said.

Seeming to understand that it was time for him to go, he ducked his head at her before heading downstairs, and Bellamy hurried over to the door to let in her friend.

Bree was about ten months older than Bellamy and spectacularly blonde, with the kind of looks that always seemed to lead to at least one person each day asking her whether she was a model or an actress. Those inquiries seemed to embarrass her more than anything else, although she did her best to act as if there wasn’t anything out of the ordinary about her looks.

Of course, the people asking could have no way of knowing that her amazing beauty was a gift from a father who just happened to be an otherworldly creature summoned to this plane to be the consort of the de la Paz clan’s prima more than two decades ago.

Not that Bree’s mother Hayley was exactly a slouch in the looks department, either, but still, it was Levi who’d contributed the most to his daughter’s genetic makeup.

“Ready?” Bree asked as she stepped inside the apartment. No point in her looking around, not when the two women had been friends since they were little girls and the flat where Bellamy had grown up was almost as familiar to Brianna as her own house.

“As I’ll ever be,” Bellamy said, reaching for her overnight bag so she could sling it over her shoulder. “I want to make a quick getaway before my dad tries to come up with yet another reason why I shouldn’t be living in Sedona.”

Bree grinned and grasped a couple of suitcases. “Well, it is kind of breaking tradition.”

“Yeah, and Angela and Connor cleared it, so there’s nothing to worry about.”

Because after Bellamy had gotten to talking with that one patron at Sedona Vines and he’d told her he was looking for someone to be a caretaker at his house while it was on the market, she’d made sure to speak to her clan’s prima and her consort, just to make sure she wouldn’t be stepping on any toes by going to live at the ranch. Both Connor and Angela had agreed that, while the tradition might have had some merit back in the day, neither of them could think of a single reason why it wouldn’t be okay for Bellamy to live in red rock country for a while, especially since the situation wasn’t permanent.

And if the leaders of both the McAllister and Wilcox clans couldn’t come up with a reason for her not to hang out in Sedona for a few weeks or months or whatever, then she didn’t see why she should turn down the chance to live in the lap of luxury for a bit.

This reassurance seemed to be all Bree needed to hear, because she nodded and said, “Sounds good to me. Then let’s get going — I have to be at Enchantment by five to set up.”

The two women headed down the back stairs, where they loaded Bellamy’s suitcases into the cavernous cargo compartment in the Suburban. In direct contrast, her own vehicle was a small Fiat convertible, something she absolutely loved zipping around in with the top down but wasn’t exactly the best thing in the world for transporting her wardrobe.

Once everything was loaded in the big Chevy, Bree closed the hatch. “I’ll follow you over there,” she said.

“Okay,” Bellamy replied, then paused. Although they’d been good friends for most of their lives, she knew Bree had been dancing around her own issues this summer, and she wondered whether she should bring it up now or pretend the whole thing hadn’t happened.

Well, sometimes you just had to go for broke.

“So…you’re really for sure not going back to college?”

Bree’s full mouth set, and she paused for a second to look around them. They were utterly alone back here, in the small carve-out designated as parking for the apartment over the candy store, but it was clear she didn’t want anyone overhearing them.

“If I were going to head back to Flagstaff, I should have been doing it by now,” she said lightly. “Classes start on Monday. But no — I tried college, and it just wasn’t for me. It’s fine. I’ll figure something out.”

Although her expression seemed casual enough, Bellamy could practically sense the tension radiating off her friend. No one could ever accuse Levi McAllister of being a hard-ass, not when he’d always seemed like one of the most open and accepting people she’d ever met, but Bellamy had a feeling he’d still given his only daughter some grief over dropping out of college, and she knew Hayley had, since she’d overheard her friend’s mother talking about it with her dad Jordan only a week ago.

Well, not her circus. Her job as Bree’s friend was to be supportive, and she supposed eventually this would all blow over. Honestly, she had no idea how much of a difference a degree would even have made for her friend — she’d still play her gigs around the Verde Valley and teach guitar and piano and voice on the side. A diploma wasn’t going to change any of that.

“Let’s go,” she said. “And if you have time, I’ll give you a tour of the new house.”

Marc Trujillo’s eyes opened, straining against the darkness. For just the barest moment, he couldn’t remember where he was…until he realized he was lying in his bed in the house he’d bought a little less than a year earlier, in the Sam Hughes historic neighborhood near the University of Arizona campus in Tucson. Cool air from the vents above his bed caressed his face, and he knew he should have been comfortable enough despite the blazing August heat that lingered long after the sun had gone down.

And yet….

He sat up and looked around. Pale green numerals glowed from the clock at his bedside, telling him it was a little past one in the morning. Everything was utterly quiet.

Well, except for the pounding of his heart.

Very little of the dream remained. Only that sense of foreboding, like a distant rumble of thunder on the horizon.

And the woman.

Her back had been to him, so all he’d seen was lush coppery hair blowing in the wind. However, even though his mother had hair nearly that shade, he didn’t think she was the woman he’d seen in his dream.

And while most people would have dismissed it, telling themselves they’d had a nightmare, Marc knew this latest dream was something more than that.

Much more.

Witchy tradition held that seers tended to be women, and his mother Caitlin had that gift. But when Marc was around eleven and he’d started to have dreams that came true, his family began to realize her oldest child had inherited that talent, even if it was very rare for a man to be a seer.

Most of the time, his visions weren’t of anything terribly unsettling, although he’d dreamed of the prima’s daughter getting into a car accident on prom night a couple of years ago, thanks to a rare and catastrophic failure of the vehicle’s self-driving mechanism. But Rosa had been fine, although the SUV she’d been riding in was a total loss.

This dream, however…it worried him, even if there hadn’t been anything about it that should have caused such disquiet. Only the red-haired woman standing with her back to him, and vague shapes in the distance that made him think of Sedona’s red rocks.

Well, he would talk it over with his mother tomorrow. Caitlin McAllister had been dealing with prophetic dreams for most of her lifetime, and if she didn’t have any helpful advice to offer, then no one would.

With any luck, it would turn out to be nothing at all.

Holding that thought in his mind, Marc rolled over onto his side, pulled in a few measured breaths, and told himself to go to sleep.

Unfortunately, his mother only seemed troubled when he recounted the dream to her. They sat in the living room of the house where Marc had grown up, with its breathtaking vistas of the Catalina Foothills beyond a wall of glass that gave the space such a sensation of light and air, while the swimming pool sparkled a cool blue-green under the bright August sun. Even though the patio was shaded and had multiple ceiling fans, it was still far too hot to sit outside, so they remained indoors, drinking iced tea and discussing the dream that had awoken him the night before.

“She had red hair, but you don’t think it was me,” Caitlin McAllister said. A few threads of silver had started to show in her copper-hued locks, but her face was still fresh and youthful, and she didn’t really look old enough to have a son who would be turning twenty-four in less than a month.

He shook his head. “No, she seemed taller. And although her hair was red, it was a couple of shades darker than yours.”

Yes, after he’d thought about it, he realized the dream-woman’s hair had been a dark copper, not the paler, almost strawberry blonde shade his mother had always sported. Marc had no reason to believe she’d ever helped it along with any sort of dye, or she probably would have been covering up those silvery strands that had begun to make their appearance over the last six months or so.

“A witch?” his mother asked, and he shrugged.

“I don’t know for sure. But…maybe.”

“Well, a red-haired witch would be part of my clan,” she said. “We always had a redhead sprouting here and there, although there are a lot more McAllisters who’re blonde or have light brown hair. I suppose I can ask Angela who in the clan has red hair — I’ve been kind of out of touch down here in Tucson, and haven’t been paying much attention to what’s going on with the McAllisters.”

No, Caitlin McAllister had made her choice decades earlier to go and live among the de la Paz clan, and although their family had traveled north here and there to visit and check in, their last trip had been several years earlier, just as he was about to start his final year of college. She’d never seemed too worried about missing Jerome, which made sense.

Her life was here, after all.

But something told Marc it was probably foolish to be bothering the prima about a dream that didn’t even have any real details, just a general sense of foreboding. And although everyone agreed that his talent was real, it still didn’t mean that some of his dreams weren’t just that — dreams and nothing more.

Before he could say anything in reply, though, his mother gave a shake of her head, looking rueful. “I swear, I don’t know where my brain is these days. I don’t need to contact Angela — I’ll just give your grandmother a call. She’s got her finger on the pulse of all things McAllister, maybe even more than the prima does.”

Marc supposed his mother was right about that. Tricia McAllister had been a clan elder since before he was even born, and she lived in Jerome full time rather than dividing the months between the touristy former mining town and Flagstaff, the way Angela and Connor did, doing their best to split their time evenly between their two witch families. Maybe if you sat down and calculated the numbers, they probably spent more days in Jerome, but still, they didn’t live the entire year in any one place.

“Sure,” he said, trying to sound unconcerned about the whole thing. Although he’d been dealing with dreams and visions for the past thirteen years, he still didn’t feel entirely comfortable with the concept, partly because even in witch clans, people tended to look at those sorts of gifts with some serious side-eye.

Especially when they came from a man.

His mother probably knew all too well what he was thinking, but she looked utterly at ease as she got up and went into the kitchen, where she’d left her cell phone sitting on the countertop. As she walked back to resume her seat in the living room, she was already typing away.

It seemed nothing too pressing must have been happening in Jerome, since her phone pinged a moment later. His mother gazed down at the screen and nodded.

“Your grandmother says the clan has a few redheads right now, but only one who would be around the right age.”

Marc didn’t know if he could even have assigned an age to the woman he’d seen in his dream, considering how she’d been turned away from him. Still, she was obviously an adult, not a child, which he supposed could narrow things down a bit.

“Who’s that?” he asked. Maybe it was a bit strange that he knew so little about his relatives in Jerome, but his family just hadn’t visited there all that often.

His mother smiled.

“Her name is Bellamy.”