“Nice to meet you, Amethyst—like the crystal?”
Ames laughed. “Yep. And Oakley like… the tree?”
“Um, well, yes, but actually like Annie Oakley? My parents adored her.”
Embry winced but decided it was best to keep to herself the fact thatOakleywasn’t the famed sharpshooter’s actual last name. (The correct answer was Mosey or Moses but never Oakley.)
“Oh, she was a witch.” Ames narrowed her eyes. “But something tells me you aren’t?”
Oakley gulped, clamped her mouth shut, and shook her head.
Ames sized the girl up. “Not a Witch, so…” She ticked off the cliques on her well-manicured fingers. “Bitch, Stitch, or Glitch?”
Oakley’s bloodless lips dropped into a little O. “I’m sorry, what?”
Embry smiled while Ames laughed at herself.
“Oh right, homeschool. None of the usual cliques, I’d imagine? Let me show you.” Ames grinned and hooked an arm aroundEmbry’s shoulders. “First andmost exclusively, you have the Witches. We’re the best, obviously.”
“Obviously,” Embry echoed with a laugh.
Ames waved an arm across the dining courtyard, moving from left to right.
“Over there you have the Bitches—shifters like werewolves, kelpies, selkies, et cetera, basically all the big animal energy. And there are the Stitches, aka zombies and Frankenstein’s monsters, and ghosts when we have them, but you know how that goes—ghosts are always busy trying to fulfill their final tasks and usually that task is way bigger than high school.” Ames laughed. “The Glitches are basically a catch-all group for everyone else.”
Oakley mouthed all the names of the groups again.Witches. Bitches. Stitches. Glitches.“So in the Witches is it just the two of you or…?”
“Oh no. There are at least a dozen of us,” Embry assured her. This was part of the reason the Witches were an elite group at Raven’s Head—they held major pop culture cachet and their numbers were low enough to be considered exclusive. “Fairfax and Alistair and all the baby witches from the coven, too.”
As if on cue, the boys appeared a few steps away, balancing lattes and lunch trays.
“Alistair is technically a Glitch because he’s a diviner but he’s hot, so it works,” Ames amended in a whisper. And when she caught Embry’s smirk, she added in a rush, “Look, just because I have a boyfriend doesn’t make me oblivious to how fine that transatlantic piece of magic is. And, honestly, Fairfax is probably admiring him right along with me.”
The boys sat down; introductions were passed around.
Tall, dark, and totally suave, Fairfax Mirza was Ames’s longtime boyfriend with the unfortunate ability to make any interactionseem like flirtation. He was the type of witch who didn’t need to spell anyone to like him; he had charm in spades, and exactly no interest in turning off that charm ever. Which was a problem if you were the one dating him. Embry was half-certain Fairfax had a spell that gave his Desi James Bond vibe an invisible boost. Especially because he was actually from Texas.
Meanwhile, Alistair Elton-Bentley was exactly as his name implied at face value. Old money, well-groomed, exquisitely mannered, and, as Ames had said, totally hot. Soft hazel eyes, aristocratic features, and a body built by hours of laps in the pool, which Embry could appreciate even though they werejust friends. His out-of-school activities included gallivanting about Europe, blowing the oodles of cash his moms sat upon, using their skills as diviners to place bets on everything from the newest technology to racehorse stock, because why not?
“So, are you two a thing?” Oakley wiggled a finger between Embry and Alistair.
“Oh, us? No!” Embry waved her hands so dramatically she almost knocked over her iced cardamom latte. “That’s a common mistake because we’re together all the time.”
“And we look extremely good together, too, of course,” Alistair told Oakley with a wink for her, and a shoulder nudge for Embry.
“Embry isn’t interested in dating high school boys,” Ames clarified, unfolding her napkin. “It’s a nonstarter and everyone knows it.”
Alistair smirked. “As unobtainable as possible, our Raven’s Head queen bee.”
“That’s me,” Embry agreed with a self-effacing shrug.
She’d spent three years here already and had never once been tempted. No mess of gossip was worth that—and for as high as she sat on the pecking order at Raven’s Head, the whispers alone would be deafening. Most especially as a senior, it made nological sense. Setting people up, however? That was another matter entirely. Embry thrived on giving couples a shove in the right direction. Successful matchmaking was its own magic.
Ames grinned expectantly at Oakley over her cold brew. “Sooo, not to be rude, but…”
“But what am I?” Oakley asked, brow raised. “Well, I’m a vampire.”
“A vampire? Seriously?!” Ames squealed, maybe a little too hard. People were suddenly staring again. “That’s so cool! Why didn’t you just say so?”
