Prologue
SELENA
As I scrunched the soft,warm Crescent Cove sand between my toes, I had only one thought.
This is a fucking stupid idea.
On the other side of the volleyball net was a face I hated more than any other: Chase Perez. With his stupid bleached-blonde hair, his very not-sexy neck and arm tattoos, and the ludicrous five-inch-inseam board shorts he wore that sagged just enough to reveal the gutters above his hips and the veins that trailed down…
Focus!
Chase, while likely the most annoyingly hot person on the planet, was also a professional athlete. Why I felt the need to keep challenging him to these feats of strength, only the goddess could tell you. Maybe it was because I’d never known when to let a challenge go—hyper-competitive since pre-K swim school. Or maybe it was because this was MY beach, and Chase “El Tiburón” Perez and his circus of professional surfers and energy drink sponsors had invaded it during the most magically potent week of the year, throwing off everything I’d spent the last ten years building.
But I knew the truth was both simpler and more complicated than that. It was because this volleyball court was the only place I’d ever really had any power, any skill. The only place I’d ever shone, where I was someone more than just the Torres girl withthe weak magic and wasted potential. Here, on the sand, with a ball in my hands, I was unstoppable.
I shook my sun-bleached curls out of my face. I couldn’t think about that now. I couldn’t let the what-ifs and could-have-beens distract me. Right now, all that mattered was the game—the challenge. Beating Chase Perez at the one thing I knew I could.
“You ready, Selena? Or should I get another round of stretching in?” His grin was…well, sharkish—unsurprisingly.
To emphasize his point, he squatted low, hands on his knees, and twisted his torso in a way that definitely highlighted his muscular but perfectly squishy chest. He saw me looking and switched to light jumping jacks so they bounced obscenely.
Fucking focus, Torres!
“I was just giving you some extra time. I know having legs is new for you. Just wish that sea witch you bargained with had followed through and taken your voice.”
“Nah, she and I came to a different arrangement. One I think you’re pretty familiar with.” He winked, and my cheeks didnotheat. That was from the sun.
I took a deep breath, and the beach wind swirled around me, sand tickling my calves. The volleyball in my hands squeezed beneath my fingers, my entire focus narrowing to the smooth yellow-and-blue surface. I could do this. I could beat him.
“Then show me what you’ve got, Ariel.”
I bounced it once, twice, and the sand shifted under my bare feet. The hot afternoon sun beat on my arms, the ocean breathing its slow rhythm twenty yards away.
Then I tossed the ball above my head, took three quick steps, planted my left foot, and launched.
For one second—one gravity-defying second—I was airborne. My right arm swept back and then forward with every ounce of power my five-foot-eight frame could generate, and my palm connected with the ball at the apex of its arc. The crack it made as it rocketed over the net wiped that stupid, charming grin right off his face.
The ball hit the sand on the other side with enough force toleave an impact crater and bounced once before rolling to a stop against Chase’s foot.
This was my beach, and I was about to show him why.
CHAPTER ONE
Selena
The first timeI’d really disappointed my mother, I was seven years old and couldn’t summon the wind to help fly my kite. The second time, I was thirteen and chose volleyball camp over the family’s full moon gathering. By the time I hit twenty-eight, I’d racked up so many magical failures we’d both stopped counting. In a town where half the population could shape-shift and the other half could bend reality with their fingertips, I was closer to the tourists who came to stay for the summer than a witch.
It’s okay, though. What the goddess hadn’t given me in magic, she had more than made up for in ass. Put me in a pair of those “regulation” volleyball shorts and, let me tell you, I’d have every man and most women believing in magic real fast.
But nobody was watching my ass at 5:43 in the morning. Nobody was watching anything at 5:43 in the morning, because normal people in Crescent Cove were still asleep, dreaming whatever witches and shifters and perfectly ordinary humans dreamed about in our unchanging, magical small town on the Eastern Seaboard.
Me? I was kneeling in wet sand, gently coaxing a stranded starfish back toward the water of a tide pool.
“Come on, buddy,” I murmured, cupping my palms over it. “The tide pool’s right there. Like ten inches to your left. What are you even doing out here?”
The starfish didn’t answer, because it was a starfish. But I could feel it—that faint, warm hum in my fingertips that was the closest thing I had to real magic. Not the blazing power my mother wielded, not the effortless healing my cousin Lupe wove into each of her dishes. Just a whisper. The ability to sense when a small sea creature was stressed and needed someone to put it back where it belonged.
Story of my life, really.
