Chapter 2

2

CAROLINA

W hen I was a witchling, I used to “cast spells” in our family’s magic room. To the outside world, the room was a doorway into the pantry of the apothecary (now coffee shop), but to a Castillo, it was our most sacred of places. A place where you could be completely yourself.

On the floor in front of the worn, red couch, I’d write scribbles of verse I thought would grant me invisibility…or, at the very least, get Cami to stop stealing my clothes. The stanzas were harmless and, more often than not, didn’t work. Magic without careful intent and desire is not magic at all.

The first spell that did work gave Suzie Carmichael, a girl who bullied Camila in middle school, a terrible acne problem.

Blemish here, blemish there

On skin so soft and fair

Only kindness can repair

When I cast it, the candlelight that burned the parchment with the spell inscribed flickered black, and my magic felt tight around my bones.

I knew then it had worked. I never cast another spell like it again, but I remember the uneasy feeling of it—the tightness and the darkness that washed over me when I saw Suzie the following day with raised bumps scattered over her chin and jaw.

Dark magic, magic crafted with harm, retribution, or punishment in mind, steals something from the witch when used—bits of their goodness, pieces of clarity, and, in the worst cases, their sanity.

Dark magic steals, but it also leaves behind its traces.

It’s the memory of those traces I feel when I wake the next morning, having forced myself back to sleep after drinking the entire mug of Camila’s tea.

I try to ignore the dread in the pit of my stomach as I flip the shop’s hanging door sign to OPEN .

It would do us no good to feed into the panic when we were already preparing for whatever was causing it. Camila had left just after sunrise to go into the city and stock up on our harder-to-get herbs from a horticulturist, Esme.

We’ve known Esme and her family since we were small. Her mother worked in my grandparents’ shop. Abuela said she could sense a weak Wiccan line in them, and they became part of our family. Most beings with dormant witchcraft in their lineage could use inactive magic. While Esme and her mother couldn’t cast or wield an active power, they could brew potions and make weak charms.

Esme had once asked Camila and me what our magic felt like, which was the first time I had considered how different we were from our friend. Camila and I described the hum beneath our skin when our magic woke and the feeling of strength in our bodies even when it wasn’t active. When we trained or overused our magic, our bones ached, and we could sleep for days without waking.

Magic was a muscle for us but not for Esme. She didn’t feel the presence of power in her veins like we did, but she was quite apt at potions. Perhaps that was her specialty.

Growing up, Esme would help us practice our incantations, and we’d help her identify various plants and mix elixirs. She moved to the city a few years ago to start a botanical shop. Now, when we need to restock our witch’s cabinet, one of us drives into the city.

With the omens Camila and I have been noticing around town, I would have gone with her to see Esme, but it would have left the town vulnerable to whatever was coming (or might already be here). Not that the town wanted our protection. They preferred to blame every suspicious event on us.

Our ancestral history with Grove Meadow is not long but undoubtedly tumultuous. Our mother’s family emigrated from Mexico when she had started her witch training. She fell in love with a mortal, much to our grandparents’ dismay, but not just any mortal. Our mother, a Castillo, married our father, a Mason, making Camila and I descendants of a Grove Meadow founding family.

To say there was a lot of…uproar about their union would very much be an understatement. But we were a family of witches, so…the gossip and isolation? It was second nature.

For a long time, I wondered why my father would willingly accept that fate, becoming a black sheep in his family and town. Love is the answer I got back then from my parents, but I couldn’t imagine loving anyone so much that you might be willing to change everything about your life to be with them. To have kids with them. To be part of a magical family when there wasn’t a drop of Wiccan blood in your line.

Camila thought it was romantic . Giving up all you’ve known for someone else. To love someone irrevocably and so overwhelmingly that you would do anything to be with them.

To me…it seemed like a prison sentence, and Grove Meadow was prison enough.

No matter how many times I tried to leave this town, I always found my way back here. Sometimes, I wouldn’t even remember it happening. Falling asleep in a bed somewhere on the West Coast and waking up here. On a cross-country road trip, only to end up on a highway that led right back home. Talk about Route 666. Most horrifyingly, boarding a plane to Italy and emergency landing in a field outside Grove Meadow.

I’d finally stopped trying to escape it when our grandparents got sick about 5 years ago, moving back into the apartment.

On the other hand, Camila had never left. She loved the town that avoided her like the plague.

What’s worse, Camila truly believed one day, this town would love her back, and I’d given up arguing with her about it a long while ago.

Despite my disdain for the town, I knew my family had good reason to come here. I just didn’t have to romanticize it like she was so inclined to.

Before Grove Meadow, my mother and grandparents lived in Veracruz, Mexico. The witch trials had been over for centuries, but witches remained in hiding, practicing their magic discreetly. The people of Veracruz were still wary of witchcraft and unexplained occurrences, and they grew more cautious with every passing year. It was no longer safe for them to live there.

Many witches moved to new places after the trials had ended. Typically, they chose to relocate to larger cities where they’d be unlikely to be detected based on sheer population density, but not our family. No, our family moved here. To Grove Meadow. A town with less than 5000 people back then and not many more than that now.

Our grandparents, both magical, opened the apothecary to provide homeopathic options to the town. It was risky, but abuelo said it called to him.

A Castillo witch trusts their intuition above all else.

Abuelo’s intuition had spoken to him; that was all he and abuela needed to know.

It was magic that brought us here, and it’s magic that forces us to stay.

Like my abuelo , my intuitions were strong. I was used to my dreams and the prickling of suspicion that lingered in the crevices of my mind, but Camila’s dream had me more on edge than usual.

If she was seeing darkness, then there was undoubtedly something amiss. I was pretty sure all she dreamed about were rainbows, puppies, and being Mrs. Glen Powell.

Gathering a small bundle of sage and tying it with twine, I hang it beside the other bundle in the window. We needed all the clarity we could get.

The bell above the door clangs as Dr. Darrien Hendrix comes in for his daily coffee and tea. One of each.

Dr. Hendrix runs the private practice in town and is one of the founding families. He’s also one of the few townspeople who regularly comes into the shop. My grandparents got along well with him when they were alive, and Camila and I maintain a good business relationship with him.

“Dr. Hendrix, good morning,” I say with a smile, walking behind the counter to ring him up. “One coffee and one medicine ball?” I ask, already pulling the to-go cups from beside me.

His wrinkled smile is kind but tired. The dark circles under his eyes tell me he didn’t sleep well, but Camila opened the shop yesterday, so I’m not sure if this is a new development .

“Better make it two medicine balls. There’s some sort of cold going around town, but I haven’t figured out what it is yet. Better safe than sorry,” he says, pulling out his wallet.

If the town knew Dr. Hendrix was supplying his patients with a cure-all potion, they’d probably have him hung in the town square…or worse, have his medical license pulled, if you asked him.

I nod. “Of course. I’m going to give you a sleeping draught for tonight. Mix half the vial with tea, and you should get some sound shut-eye.”

He gives me a grateful smile. “Thanks.

With a “thank you,” his coffee, and a few vials of potions, Dr. Hendrix leaves the shop. I return to my daily cleaning routine, but something tugs at my chest.

I pause in my wiping down tables, glancing at the door. Silas slinks between my legs, accompanied by a soft meow and perked ears.

A warning .

Someone is coming.