Chapter One

A Wizard, a Seer, and a Raccoon Walk into a Room

RILEY

Chief Inquisitor Riley King killed the engine of his black sedan and sighed as he picked up the bouquet of vervain flowers, briar shrubs, and a handful of sorry-I’m-late-for-Christmas-Eve-dinner-Mom, from the passenger seat.

His father had died years ago, leaving his mom a relatively young widow. And Riley felt immensely guilty whenever he let his mother down. Even if only by being forty-five minutes late for dinner—hence the flowers.

He got out of the car, taking in Glenda’s apparently quiet residential neighborhood. It was a dark night, threatening snow and the end of the world. A breeze was crying down the street, whisking along battered newspapers and pieces of loosened Christmas decorations while the streetlamps overhead flickered most ominously. Riley hoped it wasn’t a magic crackle storm in the making. He already had enough of a bad day as it was.

He locked his car and crossed the street toward Chiron Manor. His mother’s house was considered radical, even in the witching community, both for its lack of conventionality and for its in-your-face disregard of intermixing guidelines. Upon looking at it, there was no mistaking it for a human house with its black paint and its many floors and winding turrets—one with an eight-pointed star painted just above a window. No human architect could have made such a building stand without the help of magic.

The only time of the year when the house blended seamlessly into the neighborhood was during the month of October when his mom was free to leave all her magical trinkets out in the open and pass them off as Halloween decorations.

Two months later, apparently, she had neglected to recover quite a few of those “ornaments” from the front yard. As he walked up the driveway, Riley noted at least five different violations of the Conformism Act of 1792. Good thing he didn’t work for the Intermixing Department and that tonight, he was finally off duty.

Riley rang the bell, pondering the right amount of groveling and charming he’d have to unleash on his mother.

But he needn’t have worried. Like every other woman on the planet, not even Glenda King—the most renowned and trusted seer on the East Coast—could stay mad at him for long.

In fact, when she came to answer the door with her lips pressed into a thin, stern line, her expression melted in a second flat at Riley’s first dashing smile.

“Mom.” He pulled her into a bear hug and then gave her the bouquet. “Sorry I’m late.”

Glenda gracefully accepted the flowers, taking a sniff at the blossomy scent mixed with filial guilt.

She arched an eyebrow. “Work again?”

“Yes, you wouldn’t believe the amount of crazy I had to deal with today.” Riley walked into the house and shut the front door. “It’s like every witch and wizard in town decided to settle their personal feuds around the holidays.” He hung his coat on the rack behind the door. “This year, Christmas is turning out worse than Halloween. Revenge hexes, illegal potions, bootleg charms, sanctionable curses… You name it, I had to deal with it all in the past week.”

Glenda sighed and shook her head as they walked down the hall toward the dining room. “You work too much, my dear son, just like your father.”

“Don’t worry, Mom.” Riley wrapped an arm around her shoulders and squeezed. “I have it all under control.”

“That’s not why I’m sighing.” Riley’s mother stopped next to the round dinner table, which was laid for three, and shrugged his arm off.

Before Riley could sit, she took his hands in hers. “But, for once, I hoped you were late because of a woman.”

Without waiting for a reply, she dropped his hands and moved into the kitchen, coming back two minutes later with a steaming casserole filled with a whole turkey crisped to golden perfection.

Glenda dropped the turkey in the center of the table. “You know the last girlfriend you introduced me to was Amelie in high school?”

Riley knew all too well since his mother took great pains to remind him exactly that only every single time they saw each other. And to keep in line with the tradition, he gave her the same answer he always did. “That’s because I haven’t met anyone special yet, but I promise you’ll be the first to know when I do.”

Riley had no intention of ever getting tangled in a serious relationship, not after the way his parents’ marriage had ended—death, pain, solitude. But he was wise enough not to share that intel with his mom. Instead, he kept humoring her desire for a daughter-in-law.

The script went on with Glenda’s next line—they still had a few to cycle through before they could eat. Glenda would remind him he wasn’t getting any younger, and that if he kept waiting any longer before becoming serious about finding a wife, all the good witches his age would be taken. To which Riley would joke he’d find a witch of a different age. And finally, Glenda would conclude he’d better find one of witchling-bearing age because she wanted grandwitchlings and she also wasn’t getting any younger.

Once all of that was taken care of, they were finally free to move on to the dinner.

Riley changed the subject as fast as he could, regaling his mother with a story about a spell gone wrong he’d been saving all week exactly for this purpose. A witch had tried to curse her date to fall in love with her but ended up making herself irresistible to all manner of insects and pixies.

He was delivering the punch line about how the witch they’d subsequently arrested had sprouted distress antennas while in interrogation from all the itching when Myron, Glenda’s raccoon familiar, sauntered into the room and took the last empty seat at the dinner table.

“The prodigal son returns,” the raccoon said. “I fell asleep waiting for you.”

His story ruined, Riley clenched his jaws. “Sorry, Myron, but some of us actually have to work for a living. Mom understands how important my job is.”

Myron snickered. “Why the flowers then?”

“Enough,” Glenda cut them off. She sliced a piece of turkey and dropped it on Myron’s plate. “Can’t the two of you go two minutes without bickering, not even on Christmas Eve?”

“Apparently not,” Riley replied, stuffing another bite into his mouth.

Myron, momentarily distracted by the food, didn’t reply at all. He used his paws to tear the meat apart and chewed on a few scraps before he spoke again. “So, Inquisitor King, what’s new at the Department of Magical Justice?”

The title of inquisitor was usually used, if not with downright fear, at least with a healthy amount of respect. But not when it came out of Myron’s muzzle. He somehow made the appellation sound derogatory.

“I already told my mom all the good stories. Sorry you were asleep and missed out.”

Myron snickered, his black beady eyes twinkling. “Then perhaps we should talk about your love life.”

And Riley had walked right into that trap. If he’d already excluded his job as a topic of conversation, his personal life was fair game.

Riley kept quiet, and Myron winked at him.

The raccoon raised his glass, asking Glenda for some Dragonfire ale, and, after taking a sip, he went on torturing Riley, whom he saw as his only competition for Glenda’s affection. “Seriously, Riley? Still single at your age?” Then he turned to the woman of the house again. “You know what, Glenda? I think it’s past time you gave him a reading. At least this way we’ll know for sure how long we have to wait for grandwitchlings.”

Between gritted teeth, Riley said, “And you know perfectly well I don’t let my mother read into my future.”

Myron, appearing mock-shocked, brought his clawed black paw to his chest. “Oh, but I thought that since you were almost an hour late for Christmas dinner, maybe you’d make an exception tonight.” Myron bared his fangs in a vicious smirk.

Glenda rarely took sides in their verbal sparring, but she’d also been nagging Riley for ages, desperate to delve into his future with a tarot spread.

“Riley,” she said. “Why don’t you let me? Just this time? It’d be the best Christmas present.”

“Mom, you know I don’t like the idea of knowing my future. Whatever you told me would make me go about things in a different, forced way and probably screw everything good I had coming to me.”

Riley could see his mom was ready to concede to his point when Myron delivered the kiss of death. “Then let her read the cards and not tell you anything… just for her peace of mind.”

Glenda’s eyes shone with so much hope that Riley didn’t have the heart to say no. And if his mother really told him nothing, what difference would it make what she did or didn’t see in his future?

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll do it!”

Glenda cleared the table at the speed of light, and not even Myron protested when she took his plate away before he could finish his dinner.

Plates and cutlery were replaced by candles and crystals, and Glenda brought to the table the silver chest where she kept her most special tarots, displaying the same pride in carrying them she had shown when she’d brought over the perfectly roasted turkey not an hour earlier.

Riley’s mother took the tarots out, set the chest aside, and began to shuffle. When she was satisfied, she dropped the deck of cards on the table, saying, “Cut for me please, darling?”

Without giving it too much thought, Riley split the deck into two neat halves and laid the top one next to the other.

Next, his mom made him pick three sets of three random cards from the deck. Clairvoyancy had never been one of his favorite subjects in magical school, and he’d dropped it the second the mandatory credits were over. But even he remembered three was the number of harmony. One for unity, plus two for disorder. And that nine, or three times three, was considered the number of perfect harmony.

But beyond that basic understanding of the process, he had no way of telling what the spread before him meant.

His mother kept a perfect poker face. Riley wasn’t sure if she was just keeping true to her word or if it was a tactic to bait him into asking what she was seeing. Myron, instead, kept nodding and making “ah” and “oh” noises each time a new tarot was revealed. Riley ignored him. Without Glenda’s interpretation, the raccoon was just as clueless about the meaning of the spread as Riley was.

Just as Glenda turned Riley’s ninth card, his phone went off in his pocket. Feeling already more than guilty for his tardiness, Riley let it ring. Someone else could take care of whatever loose jinx the call was about.

But when the phone started ringing again mere seconds after it had stopped, Riley shifted in his chair, uncomfortable. The office never called twice unless it was something serious.

“Go ahead,” Glenda said. “They wouldn’t disturb you tonight if it wasn’t important.”

“Inquisitor King,” Riley said into the phone, then his jaw tensed at what the voice on the other side said.

His only reply was a one-word question. “Where?”

“I’ll be right there.” He concluded the phone call and looked up at his mother. “Mom, I—”

“You have to go,” she anticipated him. “I know.”

“Mom, I’m really sorry. I wouldn’t leave… but it’s a murder investigation. They need me.”

Glenda stood up. “Riley, dear, I completely understand. Don’t worry. Your job is so important. I’m glad for all that you do for the community.” She had a weird softness to her voice and looked like she was making her best effort not to smile. “Don’t worry about your decrepit old mother.”

In all the times Riley had had to leave her earlier than planned on a work call, tonight’s was by far the weirdest, most unusual reaction. No complaining, no guilt-tripping, not even genuine sorrow to see him go. Glenda seemed elated that Riley had to go investigate a murder.

But he already had enough mysteries to solve for one night, so he simply gathered Glenda’s frail form into his arms and cajoled her a little, “You’re not old, Mom.” He dropped a kiss on her forehead for good measure. “And are you sure it’s okay if I go?”

“ Si , yes, oui … go!”

She practically pushed him out of the house. Riley barely had time to pull her into another quick hug before Glenda shoved the front door in his face.

Riley was even more puzzled but had no time to dwell on his mom’s strange behavior. The moment he stepped out of her house, he left behind his doting son role and assumed that of Essex County Chief Inquisitor.

A bell in the distance rang ten strokes.

Two hours until Christmas, and what a lousy holiday it was going to be this year.

***

MYRON

Myron watched Glenda escort her son to the door and then come back into the living room, humming Jingle Bells under her breath.

The raccoon stared at his witch, a little perplexed. Usually, whenever her hotshot son left on a work assignment, which happened often, Glenda got all droopy and moody, but tonight, she was dancing on air.

“You seem awfully chirp for a mother whose son arrived late for Christmas Eve’s dinner and left early on top of that.”

“Myron, Myron,” she sing sang. “Have you looked at the cards?”

Of course, he had. But Glenda also knew that he lacked the powers of divination to correctly interpret the spread without her help. He took another look at the three tidy rows. “Care to enlighten me?”

“Look at the last row, Myron.” Glenda sat back down at the table and tapped the line of cards at the bottom of the spread. “Can’t you see why I’m so happy?”

The raccoon studied the cards lined on the last row: Justice, The Lovers, and The Moon.

“What do they mean?”

Glenda clapped her hands, smiling. “That my Riley is going to arrest his one true love before the night is over.”

Myron furrowed his brow, even more perplexed. “Should I remind you he just left on a murder investigation?”

“Oh, please. Have a little faith, you old, grumpy raccoon.” With one last adoring look at the tarots spread on the table, Glenda collected them in her hands and put the deck back into its honorary silver chest. “I bet it’ll be a great story to tell my grandwitchlings one day…”

“Will they be born in prison?” Myron snickered.

“Don’t be a Scrooge, Myron,” she chided him. “Love is in the air tonight. I can feel it in my old witch bones.”

And even Myron knew not to contest Glenda’s premonitions, not when her old witch bones were called upon.