This book is a work of fiction. All characters, names, places, and events are the product of the author’s imagination or are used in a purely fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events is purely coincidental.

Cover by Viola Estrella,
estrellart.com

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in critical articles or reviews.

ISBN: 978-0-9960578-8-2

Chapter 1

An overflowing parking lot, crowds of people in the aisles, and long lines at the register. Kenna snorted. Her grocery store looked like a Black Friday rehearsal. What had she been thinking? Sunday midday was always a madhouse. Probably everyone stopping by the grocery after church. Early Sunday mornings were much more her style—fewer shoppers, fewer screaming kids, fewer people. The press of humanity alone should have been enough to send her home. Even worse, she’d woken up in a foul mood and hadn’t been able to shake it all day.

And yet she braved the masses—soccer moms to the left, mother with fussy infant to the right, and manic cart pushers on all sides—held hostage by her rabid mint chocolate chip ice cream craving. She booked it to the checkout lane as fast as she could. She suspiciously eyed a small child in front of her. Picking his nose, wiping it—she looked away. She really wanted some creamy, minty, chocolaty goodness. Needed it.

Kenna wasn’t tolerant of noisy crowds on a good day. And today, she’d been bombarded since she stepped into the grocery, by the sounds and the crush of people. By the time she reached the cashier, she was ready to open her fave ice cream and start shoveling creamy, yummy mint into her mouth.

“I’m so sorry. We have to close this lane.” The perky teen working the register delivered her nugget of misery with a cheery smile. “The register’s not working.”

Kenna’s vision narrowed for a split second. She could feel her nostrils flaring. A brief glimpse of hazy red followed. Kenna debated an appropriate profanity, heedless of the young cashier’s innocence. Her crankiness had reached a level that no longer allowed for rational thought to prevail.

And then her day took a turn for the worse.

The cashier held a roll of register tape in one hand while she fiddled ineffectually with the inner workings of her register. Little wisps of smoke drifting up into the air caught Kenna’s eye. She followed the thin trail of smoke to the source, the register tape in the cashier’s hand.

She must have made a sound, because the cashier turned to Kenna, her gaze following Kenna’s to the smoking paper.

“Aah!” The cashier dropped the smoking roll.

A mysteriously smoking wad of paper provided just enough distraction for Kenna to slip out unnoticed, the unpaid-for mint chocolate chip ice cream clutched in her hand.

Escape being her primary concern, it was only after she’d made it safely to the parking lot that she stopped to consider the who, where, and how of the smoking receipt tape.

A few months ago, she’d have been just as surprised as the cashier. She huffed. Not now. She was in on the massive cover-up. Magic, werewolves, spell casters? All real. A car horn beeped at her. She checked left, then right, and hotfooted it through the crosswalk with her booty. She looked down at her mint-chocolate ice cream and suffered a small twinge of guilt.

Theft—really? Dammit. She’d make sure to pay for it the next time she came to the grocery. She could hear her best friend, Lizzie, telling her “turn around and pay for it now.” She growled. She yanked her car door open, climbed in, and told imaginary Lizzie where she could go. She slammed her door shut. She would not feel bad. These were exceptional circumstances. And it wasn’t like she wouldn’t come back and pay. Right now she needed her damn ice cream.

Kenna sat in her car and gathered the tattered remnants of her patience. The parking lot was a zoo. A very small, very quiet voice tried to reason with her that it was no surprise. But she refused to hear that voice. She wanted to go home and eat her freaking ice cream. She checked her rearview mirror, looked over her shoulder, put her little Fiat in reverse, and backed out of the spot. She shifted into drive, traveled a few feet, and—thwack!

Looking behind her, she saw a man exiting a large truck. A diesel pickup had tapped her rear bumper.

Seriously? Now of all times? And it was a busy parking lot. What the heck was that guy doing zipping around in his big-ass truck?

Desperate to get home, almost in tears, she rolled her window down. She rarely cried, dammit. What was wrong with her? Grabbing her proof of insurance card from the glove box with her right hand, she swiped impatiently at the tears starting to fall from her eyes with her left. And as she was straightening back up in her seat, she saw little pieces of ash floating to the floor of her car. And no insurance card. She rubbed the gray, powdery remains of her proof of insurance between her fingers. Shit!

Seeing the apologetic man approaching her car, she blinked to clear her eyes and hiccupped. She leaned out of the window and said, “It’s fine. I’m fine. I’d just like to leave.”

He shoved a card in her hand and told her to call him if she found any damage. Kenna heard the words faintly as she drove away.

Kenna drove with a single-minded purpose. Home. Get home and she could eat her ice cream. Get home and she could cry until the tears wouldn’t come. Get home and everything would be all right. She made it as far as the garage. And then she cried. And cried some more. Her throat burned, her nose dripped, and her face had a tight, stretched feeling—and still she cried.

Kenna must have fallen asleep, because she woke slumped over her steering wheel with a crick in her neck and mascara smeared across her face. Ice cream! Where was that damn ice cream? She found it next to her, mushy around the edges but in otherwise surprisingly good shape.

First order of business, eat that ice cream. Then a shower. Then—then she needed to give her grocery outing a long think.

Ice cream consumed and thoroughly enjoyed, wet hair wrapped in a turban on top of her head, it was time to consider certain important facts. Weird, smoky, fiery things were happening. Two weird, smoky, fiery things—but two was more than enough. Her proximity to the two events was highly suspect. And since her best friend read magical books, created invisible force fields, and dated a werewolf, Kenna knew that magic was real. Magic had invaded Kenna’s life in some terrible and wonderful ways, not the least of which was her best friend Lizzie’s recent kidnapping by a magic-wielding, over-ambitious ass named Worth.

If she’d learned anything in the past few months, it was to pay attention when weirdness happened. Weird and unexplainable probably meant magic. She made a mental note to speak with Lizzie, preferably before anything larger or more important started smoking. Shit. Or disintegrating. She picked up her cell. The possibility of something disintegrating by accident required immediate action.

“Help.” The word ended on a hiccup.

Dammit. She was teary. Really, really teary. Bizarrely teary. Again. She thought she’d cried all her tears out. What was wrong with her?

“What’s wrong, Kenna? You sound kind of funny. Are you crying? Are you hurt?” The last few questions Lizzie asked with increasing volume and speed. “Hang on. I’m on my way right now. Where are you? Are you at home?”

Given the mild panic in Lizzie’s voice, Kenna must have sounded as bad as she felt. She covered the phone and took a deep breath. By the time she answered, she sounded somewhat more like her normal self.

“Hang on. I’m fine. I mean—I’m not fine. But there’s no emergency.” Kenna frowned. Disintegrating stuff was actually an emergency. “I mean, I think something funny—you know, funny—is happening.” She put the phone on speaker so she could blot her face with a cold washcloth.

“Are you being stalked? Or seeing suspicious-looking guys lurking around the house?” Lizzie asked.

“Not that kind of funny. You’re the big kidnap target. I’m talking about—you know, the magic kind of funny.” Kenna plopped down on her bed and wrapped a cold washcloth around the back of her neck.

Good Lord. Just what she needed, to become the next big kidnap target. Lizzie had spent more cumulative hours in the trunk of a car than any rational human could fathom. She’d been the object of two separate, but related, kidnappings orchestrated by an evil spell caster. Seriously. That shit had really happened.

“You still there?” Kenna asked. Either she’d lost the connection or Lizzie had gone quiet all of a sudden.

“Hmm. Yep. Still here. What exactly are we talking about?”

Kenna considered for a moment then decided fast was best. She blurted out the whole supermarket receipt story without taking a breath. “And then some guy hit me with his huge-ass truck and my insurance card disintegrated into ash.”

“I should stop by. Do you want me to come over now? I’m coming now. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.” Lizzie’s voice was rushed and breathless. “Wait. Did you steal that ice cream?”

Kenna frowned. “Seriously? That’s what you’re worried about? I’ll pay next time.” Kenna could feel the judgey vibes in the silence that followed. “Really, I’ll remember. I swear.” She even drew a little cross over her heart with her index finger.

“Oh, hell. We have bigger issues. I’m on the way.” Lizzie hung up.

Okay, that was weird. She knew Lizzie would be worried. Heck, Kenna knew Lizzie would be freaked by the crying. But there was a level of panic that was surprising. This was Lizzie—kidnap survivor, werewolf dater Lizzie. A little smoke and ash shouldn’t have sparked nearly that level of concern when Kenna considered the crazy, messed-up shit that her friend had experienced. Maybe Kenna had underestimated how scary she was when she cried. Whatever. She’d find out shortly—she glanced at her watch—in less than thirteen minutes.

Chapter 2

Thirty minutes later, Kenna’s suspicions that Lizzie had overreacted were confirmed. Lizzie stood on her doorstep with a sixty-year-old woman in a leather jacket. What the hell was Lizzie thinking? Bringing her to a powwow on magic? She’d lost her ever-loving mind.

“Mom! What are you wearing?” Kenna exclaimed.

Her staid, knitting, crafting, home-body mother stood there in skinny jeans, a black leather biker jacket, and—Kenna’s chin dipped down—red All-Stars.

Kenna crossed her arms and blocked her front door. “Have you both lost your minds?”

Lizzie’s eyes were wide. “Can we come in?”

Kenna stood up taller and didn’t budge. “I’m not sure.” She did her best to glare menacingly—and she could do a nasty glare. “Why is my mom here?”

Lizzie turned bright red and wouldn’t meet Kenna’s eyes.

“Darling, you need to let us in.” Her mom pushed gently on the door. “The neighbors probably think you’ve gone off the deep end.” Her mom tipped her head to the right, in the direction of the Mathesons’ house.

Her mom might look different in her trendy-meets-badass getup, but she was still the same practical soul at heart. And wouldn’t you know, there was Mr. Matheson standing in his driveway, jaw slack, staring at her. He elbowed his wife, standing next to him, and pointed at Kenna.

Oops. Kenna squared her shoulders, smiled, and waved—but she held firmly to the towel wrapped around her body while she did it. Not exactly suburban-friendly attire.

She smirked. It would serve him right if her towel did fall. He’d stare, and his wife would probably put laxative in his dinner for a week.

Good Lord. She wasn’t normally quite this juvenile. “Okay, already. Come in,” she said. She opened the door wider and stepped to the side, but she couldn’t keep her eyes from bugging when her mom walked past.

“Are those sparkles on your ass, Mom? Who are you and where did you stash my mother’s lifeless body?”

Her mom breezed right on by. “I like sparkles. They make me happy.”

Kenna blinked at the strange woman standing in her hallway who sounded like her mom, but looked like a stranger. “Uh-huh.”

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