Chapter 1
Nova
The train jerked, and I lunged forward, knocking my paperback to the floor.Wicked bats and flying monkeys, I cursed in my head. The erratic jolt shook me like some seismic shifting. When I ricocheted back in my seat, I bumped into the twenty-something guy in full manspread mode beside me.
“Hey, take it easy,” manspread guy said in a thick Brooklyn accent. He raised his hand as if to punctuate his point with a silentwhatsamattawidyou?
“Sorry, the subway shaking knocked me off balance.” I gave him a sheepish look before picking up my book, using as little as possible of two fingers, and then tried to shake off the quintillion subway germs that leaped onto it. I then reached for the hand sanitizer in my bag.
I glanced at the other passengers. No one else seemed to react. Odd. Then again, this was New York City, and trains lurched all the time. Still, I would think there would be some grumbling or outright swearing with the movement causing instability. It was sure to disturb others, maybe even cause chaos with coffee spills.
“What are you talking about, lady?” Brooklyn guy asked with disdain.
Good question. A few people nearby flashed a wary glance, castigating me as a weirdo before returning to the customary vacant train stare.
“Never mind,” I replied.
Maybe where I was sitting gave me the most impact. Yet, manspread guy hadn’t reacted, and neither had the woman on the other side of me whose incessant phone-scrolling hadn’t ceased since she’d boarded the stop after me.
Strange tingles buzzed inside my body. What was causing them? They seemed to drift, falling like some sort of vibrant confetti. I placed a hand on my chest. The heat of an electric buzz intensified.
Within a red hot New York minute, a sheen of perspiration coated my skin. It was October. I shouldn’t be sweating like this. Sure, I had my happy yellow peacoat on, but it wouldn’t turn me feverish.
That mysterious sensation diminished and disappeared by the next stop. Crap, I probably stank. What a way to roll into work.
I pictured Mary Katherine Gallagher sniffing her pits onSaturday Night Liveand told myself not to do anything so obvious. Instead, I bent my head to take an inconspicuous sniff. When I was hit by a whiff of subway and people on subway, I blocked my nostrils with my forearm. What did I expect considering where I was? Sweaty people and B.O. weren’t a rarity.
Brooklyn dude stood and walked to the far end of the train, shooting me a look of disgust. What a peachy start to a Monday morning—gaining consternation from fellow passengers.
I put the incident aside as I climbed out of the subterranean world and lost myself among the columns of buildings stretching to the clouds. I’d been living here for a year and loved it, most of the time. The pulse of the city left me energized. The downside was the constant struggle to scrape up money for food, rent, and school loans each month. My low-level job as an editorial assistant didn’t pay much, so I had a part-time waitressing job. It seemed all I did was work. So much for moving here to experience all that New York had to offer.
The rest of the day proceeded like the many before. I worked a double, first at the children’s publishing house dealing with the grunt work of spreadsheets and slush piles, and then at the diner near Broadway. At least I had my dinner half-price that night. I thought it should have been free, but management didn’t consult me on my preference.
It wasn’t until a few days later that everything changed. I had a voice mail from a lawyer with the Salem Supernatural Network. Her name was Lorna LaRue. She asked me to call her back as soon as possible.
Salem.
I exhaled and stared off into the distance. I hadn’t been there since I finished high school and had no desire to return. A witch without magical talent had as much value there as a prince in a castle cursed to live as a toad.
An incident when I was a kid flashed in my brain, when I’d almost burned the family house down. My throat clogged as if still filled with smoke.
Shuffling into the tiny galley kitchen, I filled a glass with ice water and gulped it as if it would douse the flames in my mind.
And what the heck was this Salem Supernatural Network? I groaned. The name pretty much spelled it out for me—it had to be a network for supernaturals in Salem.
The strange fluttering in my chest that originated when the train jolted me returned. What the what? It was like someone pressed a button to turn it back on.
I snorted. The one pressing the metaphorical button was me, and it had to only be nerves. I leaned forward, bracing myself with the edge of the counter for support, and tried deep breathing to rein in my anxiety or whatever it was that agitated me.
Suck it up, buttercup.With one more deep inhale, I tried to summon courage.
Carrying my water over to the living room, I sat on the tattered brown couch of unknown origin one of my roommates had brought home. After one more sip, I picked up the phone to call the lawyer, Lorna LaRue. What alliteration.Lawyer Lorna LaRue. Lawyer Lorna LaRue.
Focus.
When Lorna answered the phone, she relayed information that would knock the stripes off a tiger. “Your aunt, Margaret Goodwell, recently passed away. She left some of her estate to you, including her house in Salem.”
I pulled the phone from my ear and stared at it like I’d detect something to indicate this was a prank. Raising the phone back to my ear, I said, “That can’t be right. I barely knew her.” The last time I’d seen her was when I was a kid.
