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Sandy plowed her head into my gut, tongue lolling. I rubbed her behind the ear as her tail beat out a happy rhythm against my leg. “Let me guess. An earthquake woke you up?”

“Something like that.” Donovan scratched between his shoulder blades. “But can you really call it an earthquake if it only moves under your house?”

Well, hell. Donovan lived in the middle of a residential neighborhood. If he’d felt it, but none of his neighbors had, that couldn’t be pinned on messed-up fault lines. The only other explanation was Audrey’s. Magic. I almost smiled thinking about how happy this would make her, and how much shit she was about to give me for it.

“We both felt it too. I was at home, but this one“—Finn jerked his thumb at me—”was out spying on Audrey while she skinny-dipped in a hot spring behind her condo.”

“Really?” Donovan gave me a shit-eating grin.

“Again. Not what went down.” I shoved my hands in my pockets as I glared at the brother I had just disowned and my former best friend. “If you two clucking hens are done obsessing over my love life, maybe we could get back to addressing the big ass earthquake that just rolled through our island, and why only a few of us experienced it.”

“It’s the damnedest thing.” Donovan’s expression sobered as he ran a hand over his beard. “I’ve got broken glass all over my house from shit falling off the shelves, and my neighbors didn’t even turn on their lamps.”

Finn looked at me and shifted his stance. “Anything else weird happen?”

Donovan let out a humorless laugh. “Other than watching the earth roll under the foundation of my house while it missed every single one of my neighbors in a tightly plotted residential community? I mean, I got kind of a weird feeling after, but that was probably just a happy-to-be-alive adrenaline rush or some shit.”

“Did you feel like you found something you’d been missing?” I asked, unsure of how else to describe it. “Cause Finn and I got that too, except mine came with an extra side of glowing green hand and the ability to produce lightning.”

No longer able to deny the existence of magic, I filled him in on the powers Audrey and I had unleashed. Donovan and Finn shot each other looks, but neither of them seemed to think I was going crazy or making the whole thing up. Part of growing up on the island, with its legends, I supposed. Even if we didn’t believe, there must’ve been something inside all of us that just naturally accepted the unexplainable.

When I finished giving Donovan the full story, he punched the air, like he’d been given a walk-on role in an action movie. “This is badass. The earthquake must’ve released something radioactive in the woods and now the two of you are turning into the X-Men.”

“Hell yeah,” Finn said. “Audrey is Storm, and you’re…Mr. Storm.”

“Storm’s Little Helper,” Donovan said.

I flipped them both off as their shoulders shook with laughter and turned my gaze toward the center of the island. The legend wasn’t bullshit. Which meant a curse had been bound by the magic of my great-times-twelve-grandfather and the original descendants of the zodiac. Looked like I’d be paying Audrey a visit soon, whether she wanted to see me or not. I needed to know everything Selene had told her about Ophiuchus, the curse, and the cave.

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