Chapter 1

The woman, Mrs. Critz, handed me a crumpled wad of cash, then held her hand palm up. A half blink later, her other palm slid in next to it as though she expected I was about to give her something sizeable enough to require both.

“Where is it?” She stretched her hands further over the wooden garden gate.

I patted the satchel hanging over my shoulder, then made her wait. Beneath the glow of the half moon above us and aided by the small light clipped to my shirt collar, I first smoothed the wrinkled and slightly damp bills and then counted them, twice, to make sure the full agreed-upon fee for my service was there. It was. Satisfied, I pulled a small brown-paper bag, sealed with pewter-gray wax and stamped with a witch’s knot symbol, from the satchel. My mother had encouraged me to never show up at the orchard gate with a bag in hand.

“Keep it hidden,” she implored. “You’d be shocked by how many people try to grab and dash. Cash first. Repeat the instructions. Then give them the bag.”

Mrs. Critz frowned as I held up the little sack. “That’s it? I was expecting something more substantial.”

“Never judge anything by its size,” I advised. “It’s what’s inside that matters.”

She eyed the bag greedily, her fingers twitching to take it. “What exactly is in there?”

“Enchanted herbs, essential oils, crystal chips, and detailed instructions that you must follow to the letter, or the spell won’t work.”

She leaned over the fence this time, snatching the bag out of my hand and ignoring the little pulse of energy that indicated the magic had activated, then immediately began picking at the brittle wax seal as though she was going to perform the spell right there in my apple orchard. That was how this worked: I assembled the proper ingredients. The customer actually performed the spell.

“Not yet,” I demanded, stopping her from breaking the seal. “Wait until you’re home or someplace you won’t be disturbed. I encourage you to carefully read the instructions a minimum of three times. You will need to come up with a statement of intent—”

“Yeah, I made one.”

“Look it over once more before you begin. Mrs. Critz?” I waited for her to turn her focus on me. “I can’t emphasize strongly enough that you need to be very specific when stating your intent. What is the precise outcome you want from this spell?” I paused, waiting for her response. “Mrs. Critz, are you listening to me?”

“Hmm?” She looked up and pushed the section of hair that hung over her eye behind her ear. “Yeah, I heard you. This will take care of him, right?”

She had approached me to create a gray spell that would make the boy currently madly in lust with her daughter lose interest and leave her alone. Mrs. Critz insisted her amazing, beautiful Olivia had a brilliant future ahead of her, and this boy was distracting her.

“It will if you follow the steps exactly as I have written them. And remember that the enchantment on the contents of that bag will only last forty-eight hours.”

“Mm-hmm.”

My other customers looked me in the eye at this point and nodded in understanding when I explained how things could potentially go wrong. Mrs. Critz was focused only on snapping that seal and digging in. Note to self: Always review the warnings before removing the bag from your satchel.

“What did I just say?” I challenged her.

“Read carefully. Be specific. Two days.”

“Forty-eight hours from the moment you took possession.”

This was when most customers paused. They realized they were standing at a crossroads and, whether their intended outcome was good or bad, if they actually performed the spell, life for their target would never be the same again. That was what happened when magic was used to alter someone’s path.

I expected this moment to be drawn out even further with Mrs. Critz. She was, after all, about to cast a spell that would affect her daughter’s life. Instead, she turned and disappeared down the path, saying, “Got it. Thanks, Dusty . . . Ms. Hotte. This is going to make a huge difference for my Olivia.”

A second later, a black squirrel jumped from where it had been sitting like a shadow on the gate post to my shoulder and gave me an assuring pat with her hand-like paw.

“Thanks. I did my part, Pearl,” I told my familiar, then spun to return to The Sanctuary, my witchy workshop, to add Mrs. Critz’s payment to the rest of my steadily growing stash.

We Warren Witches had three rules for gate magic, so called because we met our customers at the gate that led to our apple orchard. Usually in the middle of the night because Ordies, the non-magical people who lived in our town, didn’t want other Ordies to know they’d come to us for help. They’d be shocked to learn how many of them were sneaking around in the dark. Some nights scheduling pickups so no one crossed paths was a real challenge.

Rule #1: Give the customer exactly what they ask for. Don’t ever alter a request based on personal feelings.

Rule #2: Make them wait a minimum of a week after discussing their desire to make sure the thing they want to do isn’t a spur-of-the-moment reaction to something that could be handled without magic.

Rule #3: Set the price high enough to be worth our time and effort, and make the customer decide if the hit to their bank account is worth it.

These rules worked for my aunts who only provided remedies—spells that would aid with simple health, beauty, homemaking, or cooking-related problems. The deeper, darker requests came to Mom and me, which was why I added an addendum to the first rule: I refuse to provide spells that have the intended purpose of killing or permanently maiming another being.

That was a line I would not cross.

“But remember,” Mom replied when I told her that, “we are only supplying the ingredients, not casting the spell. The outcome is not our responsibility. We can’t control someone’s intention.”

Except there was always a consequence for performing magic, and it was especially harsh for our type of magic. My mother and I were gray witches, which meant we had the ability to do the wrong thing for the right reason. Mom called it restoring justice. I liked that definition better but still wouldn’t assist with a murder. There were other people who could be hired for that.

What I knew was that the abilities I was born with helped people, and that made me feel good. It also brought in a lot of money. Two weeks ago, I helped a young woman stop the man who had assaulted her and other local women. Word spread, and I received a lot of requests for gray gate spells. In ten days, I made enough for six months of mortgage payments (. . . on my house that had burned down last month. Because it was ruled arson, my insurance didn’t cover it.), so I gladly took on all the spells to enhance focus, amplify love, instill courage, and increase chances of impregnation, to name a few, that I could get.

This also pleased my mother. She was determined to make up for lost time and teach me all the things she never taught me as a kid. With each new spell, she guided less but critiqued more, insisting I needed to be able to do these on my own. This one for Mrs. Critz I’d prepared with no input from Mom. Maybe that explained my uneasy feeling surrounding it. I sure hoped she’d tell me if I’d done something wrong. This was not a situation where learning via mistakes was a good thing.

As I reached the top of the stairs of the little carriage house that held my workshop, I found Mom asleep in her rocking chair by the fireplace. I tossed the cash into the steamer trunk in the corner and then touched her shoulder.

She startled awake, her eyes barely able to open from the heavy wrinkles weighing on her lids. Her entire body was covered in creases and bent in different directions. She resembled the letter S with too many bends. That was her consequence for performing gray magic for most of her life.

“How did it go?” she asked in her dust-dry voice.

“Got the money. Delivered the bag. Gave her the necessary warnings—a couple of times—but I’m pretty sure she wasn’t listening to me.”

“You can only do what you can do.”

“Hopefully her daughter or this boy doesn’t pay too big a price.”

With a great deal of effort, Mom pushed herself upright in her chair. “Okay, now—”

“We go to bed. It’s one-thirty in the morning. Cricket wakes me up at seven.” My granddaughter was always up early and ready for breakfast at the same time every day. She was the best, most reliable alarm clock I’d ever had.

“But you need to know—”

“Mom, we have time. You can teach me more tomorrow. I need sleep. And so do you.”

She mumbled something about sleeping when she was dead but stopped fighting me. I helped her across the courtyard and through the house to the elevator the property had tucked into a corner of the family room. The aunts—all octogenarians except for Jett, who wasn’t far behind—insisted they didn’t need the thing, but since there was no way Mom could climb stairs anymore, they gave their blessings. Now that it was installed, they decided they might as well use it. All the time.

“So it stays lubricated,” Pepper suggested.

“Don’t want the thing to seize up,” Aunt Comfort added.

“Like my left knee,” Aunt Gwynne said while patting her leg.

Jett and Pepper weren’t blood aunts but were practically family, so we included them under the “aunt” umbrella.

“See you in the morning.” Mom pushed the button labeled Attic. She finally agreed to sleep in the house, instead of in the shack out in the orchard, but refused to use the room she and my dad had shared . . . until he stopped coming home, claiming he was too busy with work.

Being basically abandoned by my parents was only one of the reasons I’d left Blackwood Grove thirty-two years ago. The beautiful four-year-old girl sleeping in the bedroom next to mine was the reason I’d returned.

I fell into bed and was out before I had time to think another thought.

Five and a half short hours later, something soft gently jabbed my nose, cheek, and forehead. I opened my eyes to find Eggplant, a purple stuffed elephant who resembled the fruit that grew in our garden, an inch from my face. That’s what I got for forgetting to lock the door.

“It’s time to wake up, Lola,” Cricket said in Eggplant’s silly voice.

Lola was the Filipino word for grandmother, and I loved that Cricket’s mother taught her to call me that.

“Time to get up?” I asked while pulling Cricket and Eggplant into bed with me. “Why do I have to get up? What if I want to stay in bed all day?”

“Silly, Lola. You hafta eat breakfast and take me to school.”

I let out a dramatic sigh. “Oh, okay. You’re the boss.”

She sat on the mattress next to me, her little shoulders pushed back. “I’m the boss?”

“Silly, Cricket,” I echoed. “I was talking to Eggplant.” I pulled her in to kiss her neck, then rolled out of bed with her in my arms and set her on the floor. “Go ahead to the kitchen. I’ll be there in a little while.”

I showered quickly, got dressed, and then called out, “Lucia? Can we talk?”

The first time I summoned Lucia Valentina, The Council’s legal representative for witches, I’d been a bit too forceful. The woman appeared in my bedroom with curlers in her hair, pink piggie slippers on her feet, and a toothbrush in her mouth. I had been gentler with my requests since then.

She appeared two minutes later in her standard business suit, this time a gorgeous autumnal coppery shade that matched her hair perfectly. Or rather, she magicked her hair to match her outfits. Lucia was coordinated in every way.

“Good morning, Dusty. I was going to contact you later today. I presume you’re looking for an update on the kids.”

My son, Micah, Cricket’s father, was twenty-nine years old. His girlfriend, Josie, was twenty-six. Neither of them would be considered a kid, but I liked how she called them that.

“Do you have an update for me?” Please, dear goddess, have some good news. Josie had gone missing almost two months ago. Micah was arrested and imprisoned for her kidnapping (they had no body or would have charged him with murder) a week later. If we could find Josie and she stated that Micah wasn’t involved, they’d have to release him.

“Unfortunately,” Lucia began, “I haven’t been able to find anything but Josie’s birth certificate, which indicates she was born into a magical household in the Philippines.”

“My suspicion that she’s a witch is correct, then.”

I was certain I’d seen her manifest a toothbrush when staying at my house one time, but because of the strict laws surrounding magic in the Ordinary town we lived in, I was afraid to ask her about it, lest I out myself as a witch or scare her off.

“It’s a very safe bet that she has powers,” Lucia agreed. “The questions I haven’t been able to answer yet are who took her and why?”

The same two questions I’d been asking every day for the past two months. Was Josie involved with something I didn’t know about or didn’t want to know about? Was Micah? Was that why I’d found that note on my windshield threatening Cricket’s life?

Her mother was first. Then her father.

It would be a shame if she lost her entire family.

Then who will take care of her?

My life, too, apparently. And the rest of my family? That’s how we ended up back here, at enchanted Applewood Farm where nothing could touch us as long as we stayed inside the blackthorn hedge surrounding our property. We were relatively safe inside Blackwood Grove’s border as well.

“What now?” I asked, numb.

“I keep looking,” Lucia assured. “This feels like more than an abduction and imprisonment. I don’t know what that means yet, but it could be something big, deep, and dark. Summon me again if you learn anything, and I will do the same. Don’t worry if you don’t hear from me. I promise I’m on top of this. I’m clearing out existing business but won’t take on anything new until we’ve figured this out.”

Big, deep, and dark was not what I wanted to hear about my son’s incarceration. “Wish I could say you’ve eased my mind, but honestly the opposite feels true.”

She laid a hand on my arm. “I understand. We’ll talk soon.”

In the big kitchen at the back of the house, I found all the aunts and Cricket at the equally big dining table, either eating breakfast or simply chatting with each other.

“Good morning, Dusty girl,” Comfort greeted, but her bright smile faded quickly.

“What’s the matter, child?” Pepper asked.

I stood behind Cricket and pointedly said, “I was just talking with Lucia.”

Jett caught on immediately. She stood and, in her mild Scottish accent, asked Cricket, “Are you done eating, lassie? We need to gather eggs before you go off to wee witch school.”

“Wee witch,” Cricket parroted. “One more bite.” She scooped all the oatmeal out of her bowl and shoved the too-big spoonful into her mouth. “Let’s go, Auntie Jett!”

“Get your barn boots,” Jett instructed. “I’ll meet you by the back door.” To me, she said, “Real quick, what’s the latest on Josie?”

I filled her in and then asked, “What’s the status of the revealing spell?”

Gwynne, Comfort, and Pepper recently started creating spells to help with issues around the property and potentially other places in town too. The problem with that was, their magic went wonky sometimes, so their spells needed to be thoroughly tested before being used. Jett was the spell tester.

“We did another run yesterday,” Jett said of their newest project. “We rewrote our intention statement to give a better definition of what reveal means. Unlike the first time when the four of us ended up standing in the middle of the attic in our birthday suits, we all remained clothed.”

“No reports of any walls or anything else disappearing from houses or shops?” I verified. That was the result of the first attempt. We let Officer Beau at the police station know what they were doing after that one. My phone number was the first he called when something odd happened in town. Fortunately, the townies were used to the aunts’ wacky behavior.

“Not a one,” Jett verified. “No long-held secrets came to light. No embarrassing supposedly private conversations were overheard. I believe it’s good to go.”

“Good. Lucia hasn’t had any success finding Josie.”

Jett nodded. “So it’s up to us.”

“Nothing is more important.”

“Except for blood, fire, or dismemberment,” Jett quipped to break the tension.

I blinked at her. “Sometimes your sense of humor borders on morbid.”

“My ancestors would be so proud.” She pushed her shoulders back and stood tall. “When we’re ready to cast, we’ll need you there as well. To have someone close to Josie involved should help amplify the energy.” She paused, clearly wanting to say more.

“What? Do you need something else?” Someone close to Josie. There was no one closer than a mother’s child. “Cricket?”

“Not necessarily her . . .”

“Just say it, Jett.”

“Her blood. Even a drop on a tissue will work.”

I blinked. “I’m not going to purposely impale my granddaughter. And I will be upset if there are any accidentally skinned knees today.”

Jett sighed. “I figured you’d say that. A few strands of the lass’s hair should do. And a picture of Josie if you have one.”

“Hair and a picture I can do. When should we do this?”

“We’re ready anytime.”

“Perfect. Let’s plan tonight after Cricket has gone to bed. Tell the aunts to take extra-long naps today. I want them to be clear and focused.”

“Grand idea. I’ll do the same. So, eight o’clock in the attic?”

I gave a decisive nod. “We have a plan. Thank you, Jett.”

She patted my shoulder, then went to gather eggs with Cricket.

“What’s going on, Dusty?” Gwynne asked.

I gave them a slightly longer version of my conversation with Lucia and then explained the plan for tonight.

“Find Josie.” Gwynne clapped her hands. “This is what we’ve been working toward.”

“Don’t worry, child,” Pepper said in her lyrical Cajun accent.

Finishing the thought, Comfort said, “We’ll find her.”