Chapter 1

One

Lia

“Lia, Sam’s here!” Flo calls up to me from downstairs as I finish touching up my mascara.

“Coming!” I shout back to her, step back from the mirror, and take in the rest of my outfit. With my pink tie dye shirt, high waisted jean shorts, and brown cowgirl boots, my costume may not be immediately recognizable to most. But as I don the black knee length coat and grab the white to-go cup of coffee from the counter, my Lorelai look is much more distinguishable.

There is a pep in my step as I gallop down the stairs to where Sam is standing by the front door in her jeans, open flannel, and backwards baseball cap bouncing on her toes. She even colored in a five o’clock shadow that makes me chuckle. The Luke to my Lorelai.

“Bye Flo,” I holler as I open the front door and pull Sam through it without missing a beat. Before I close the front door behind us, I hear Flo yell out to be home by curfew.

Ugh.

It’s a school night so curfew is ten. It’s already seven thirty, so that means Sam and I won’t have much time at the Halloween party our friend Ryan is throwing.

Which will put Sam in some type of mood because she’s got a little bit of a thing for Ryan. Since we were young, but he’s either too blind to see the hearts in her eyes when she looks at him or he’s uninterested. Either way, it’s a bit of an unrequited love at the moment.

We stick to the sidewalks and set off on foot to Ryan’s house. It’s about five blocks from my aunt’s so Sam always parks at my place before we head over there.

“Did your aunt do her usual festivities?” Sam asks as she looks both ways before we cross the street.

“She did,” I say with a smile. Today’s my birthday. Halloween. Every year Flo starts the morning with a homemade german chocolate cake that we both eat a slice of for breakfast. Then she gives me a small gift. Never anything ostentatious or overpriced. One year she gifted me a blanket she learned to knit. One year it was an old looking book full of bedtime stories and fables from another time, another land. She told me it was my moms. An antique gifted down through generations and one of the only things my mom gave Flo to give me before she died.

The other is hanging around my neck. A dainty gold chain with a circular pendant. The pendant has some writing in another language I’ve never been able to find a record of. Regardless, it’s beautiful, and I never take it off. Not even to shower. “She gave me another pendant, too,” I tell Sam, lifting my chin and pulling the necklace towards her so she can see the second pendant I slid onto the chain this morning.

“Wow, that’s gorgeous.” Her eyes are wide as she stares at the rectangular pendant with a bright red ruby dead center.

“Right? The weirdest thing happened to me though. As soon as I put it on, I got this feeling of rightness. Sort of dejavu-y.” Sam looks at me like I’m crazy when I say it, but I don’t know how else to explain it. When I slid the pendant on and reclasped the necklace, it was like a cool breeze washed over me. A sort of full-body shiver and whisper of wind embraced me.

“That’s odd,” she remarks and her brows furrow until a little v appears between her eyes.

“Very.”

“Maybe Flo hexed it,” she grins, wiggling her brows, and I laugh. Ever since I can remember, Flo has made comments here and there about her witch heritage. Ancestry harkening back to a time of magic and power and history. Oftentimes I find her hiding things around my room. Under my pillow or bed. A crystal here, a piece of rosemary there. It never bothered me, even if I’m not much of a believer, and it gave her peace of mind, so I ignored anything I found. Left it where she put it until she was ready to replace it.

“Damn,” I say as we turn the final corner to Ryan’s street and it’s immediately apparent we are arriving fashionably late. There are already a dozen cars parked both in his driveway and up and down the street surrounding it. “I can’t believe his parents agreed to a party this big.” Any other party was always ten or so of our closest friends.

“Well he found their stash a few weeks ago so I think they’re trying to bribe him into not saying something to Liam.” Ryan’s younger brother. Ryan, Sam, and I are all eighteen. Liam is much younger, only eleven, so I can understand their parents trying to keep him in the dark a little longer.

“Better for us,” I chuckle. “Not great for their neighbors though.” We live in a suburb, so houses are very close to one another. As Sam and I walk up to their open garage door to head in the house through it like we have a million times before, music assaults my ears.

Sam opens the door and the music gets even louder. There are already bodies everywhere. The garage door leads to their laundry room and then straight into an open concept kitchen, dining, and living room. There are a dozen people standing around the kitchen island as Ryan pours them each a shot into little plastic red solo shot glasses.

Tom and Pam–Ryan’s mom and dad–took Liam up to their lake house for the weekend. There is apparently much better trick-or-treating up there. So they left the house to Ryan and told him specifically no alcohol. Which means Sam and I will be here tomorrow after school helping him clean up the mess before his parent’s get back Saturday night.

“Hand me two more!” Ryan shots over the music to Jack as he sees us walk in. Jack pulls two more shot glasses from the plastic bag and a clear liquor is poured into them.

“Cute.” I gesture to his costume as I take up the spot on his right and Sam grabs the one to his left. The cocky asshole is Baywatch . Which means he’s just in a pair of tight, short red swim trunks with a whistle around his neck. I roll my eyes at the oil he has slathered onto his broad, tanned chest to give him that semi-sweaty look.

He’s a handsome motherfucker, I’ll give him that much. Bright blue eyes, shaggy dirty blonde hair, tall as hell and huge. Sam is having a hard time keeping her eyes on his face from his other side. But handsome as he is, he’s never been my type. I’ve always looked at him like a big brother.

“I know,” the cocky jerk laughs in response and slides us both our shots. The three of us cheers and I throw back what I find out is the world’s worst vodka. I grab the closest bottle of gatorade, take a healthy swig, and swish it around to get rid of the foul taste.

“That was disgusting,” I gag and Ryan slaps me on the back.

I swat his hand away. “I’m about to vomit, not puke, dumbass.”

“My bad, I didn’t know how else to help.” He shrugs, unperturbed.

“Maybe point us in the way of something that doesn’t taste like battery acid.

“Jungle juice is in the garage.” Ryan obliges and hands us regular sized red solo cups. I grab Sam’s cup from her hand, silently offering to fill hers up, too so she can talk to Ryan without me hanging around. Her grateful smile has me playfully rolling my eyes at her and I stack the cups in one hand to open the door leading to the garage.

As I swing it open, it comes at me faster than I’m expecting because on the other side, a man is pushing it to come inside.

“Shit,” I blurt out as I lose my balance, the soles of these boots slippery against the tiled floor. Quick, calloused hands dart forward to grab my forearms and yank me back up before I can fall on my ass. My own hands grip the strangers forearms in return.

How are they so muscular?

My eyes travel from where my hands grip him, up his chest to his face. The man is in a medieval looking costume. A white tunic tucked into black loose fitting trousers and a belt that holds very real looking daggers and a broadsword with a gold lion shaped pommel.

Jet black hair falls effortlessly over his forehead, framing dark brown eyes that are staring at me in what appears to be shock. Probably at my two left feet.

The grin I give him is sheepish, but he doesn’t smile back at it. He’s still gaping at me in a way that would probably worry me if it were anyone else.

Something about this man feels safe though. Safe in a way that has me wanting to step into him, not away from his embrace like I manage to do.

As I pull away, he drops his hands. Damn, he’s gorgeous. Nerves start to overtake me and butterflies kick off in my stomach.

“Thank you,” I tell him to fill in the silence. My voice must shake him out of his stupor, because his eyes refocus, mouth slams shut, and the way he looks at me changes. Almost like he was looking through me before, but now that he’s staring at me, it makes it hard to breathe.

“Sorry,” he starts and it’s my turn to focus on keeping my mouth closed. A deep, throaty voice is not what I expected to hear. “You just look so much like a woman I used to know. A long time ago.”

A nervous laugh escapes as I give him a small smile. “A long time ago? What are you, twenty?”

A dazzling smile spreads across his face, making him impossibly more attractive. “Something like that.”

Silence stretches on as we stand in the doorway staring at each other before I finally break out of my lust-stricken daze. “Lia,” I offer the strange man my name and hand to shake.

But he doesn’t shake it. He grabs my fingers to turn my hand, brings it up to his mouth, and plants a kiss on my knuckles.

“Ambrose.”