Mom walked over and scooped him out of my hands before he could squirm away. “I’ll handle him,” she said. “It’s been an age since I’ve reversed a transformation spell. It’ll be fun.”
I blinked at her. Mom had always been a little kooky—a slightly gothic, lovable grump with a penchant for the macabre. My eyes landed on the bat skeleton in her lineup of curiosities on the kitchen window.
How had I not ever questioned it before?
I just thought we were a “Halloween family.” No matter where we lived, we did Halloween big every year. Now that I knew Mom had grown up as a witch, it actually made a lot of sense. And, as angry as I was at her for keeping all of this from me, I really didn’t want to accidentally turn her into a toad or newt or lemur or whatever else. . .
Or at least if I did, I wanted to know how to turn her back.
I looked around the kitchen as if I might find the answers written in the belladonna-print cabinetry.
My eyes shifted back to my mother holding the toad version of my ex-boyfriend and I croaked, “When does this witchy summer camp start?”
2
Sabine
Idropped my head into my hands. “I can’t do another whole summer of this freaking camp!” I lamented as my older sister, Iris, rubbed circles on my back. “The fact that youvolunteerto do this is insanity.”
At twenty-six, Iris was officially off the hook for her camp counselor duties, but she still came back every year. She wasn’t assigned to mother hen a cabin of young witches like me though. She got to live with a bunch of the fourth-year counselors in a giant log house beside the mess hall. Her job this summer was to help teach the potions classes since she spent the rest of the year working at Poison Apple Apothecary in Maple Hollow and knew more about potions than anyone else I knew.
“Oh, come on,” Iris jeered, leaning her shoulder into me. “Camp is fun.”
I looked at her incredulously as she swept her red hair over her shoulder. She used to joke that the red-hair printer had beenrunning low on ink when our mom had me. Both of our parents had the same bright red hair as Iris, whereas mine was more auburn. Though I did inherit the same green eyes and family freckles.
“Camp is fun?” I echoed.
She looked back at me likeIwas the crazy one. “What? It is.” She waved around us. “The coven pays us to swim in the lake and make friendship bracelets and sing songs around a campfire while eating toasted marshmallows. That’s fun.”
“The pay is barely more than a cantina stipend,” I gritted out, frowning at my mustard-colored camp shirt with the letters SCUW emblazoned across my chest. “I’d make more working at Midnight Market.”
Iris laughed. “Even Dagmar isn’t as bad as Billy Bacchus, and you won’t develop ice cream scooper’s elbow.”
She had a point. The owner of Midnight Market was a nightmare to deal with, not that the camp’s director and head witch, Dagmar, was a slice of sunshine either. One of the many curses of being a witch in a tight-knit magical town was that there were plenty of older paranormals to pester us like honorary aunts and uncles.
“You are being far too cheery for me right now.” I was normally a pretty upbeat, positive person, but my older sister made me seem like a grumpy raincloud.
“This is your last year, Sabi, and then you’ll be initiated,” she said emphatically. “You’ll be a full coven member with all the rights and privileges associated with that, and then you can do whatever you want.” She clapped me on the shoulder. “Two months. You can do anything for two months.”
This was my fourth—and final—summer at the camp. I’d spent my first two years as a camper, and last year, I was a junior counselor. The fact that I’d survived three summers without bailing was a miracle.
The truth was that I didn’t want to be a member of my coven.
I didn’t want to live in a small town like Maple Hollow, where everyone knew everyone practically from birth. The first time I’d gotten my period, the coven had already started planning the moon ceremony before I’d even gotten to the toilet.
Thatwas how much the coven was all up in my business.
And tradition was everything to witches. There was never anything new or exciting or fresh.
But I was destined to live in a place where people didn’t only live at night, but at every hour of the day. Where people had normal hobbies like club-hopping and jogging. I was meant to live where no one knew my name, who my parents were, the fact that I’d failed third-grade math, or that I’d had an intense love for theBuffy the Vampire Slayermovie poster before I’d even known I was gay.
I was meant to be in New York City.
That was why I’d spent the last three years working at Midnight Market and saving all the money I’d made. New York City was where I could go to reinvent myself and be my own person.
Anonymity. That was what I craved.
“Listen,” Iris said calmly, “you can still run off and be a big-city witch if that’s what your heart desires. You could set up an apothecary above a bodega and read palms and have a cool city life. But you never know. Maybe it won’t be until you’re in your sixties that you decide you want to move home and be part of the coven, or maybe you never will, but you lose that chance to change your mind if you don’t stick out this summer. Don’t take away your choices, Sabi.”
