“I’ve always been a therapist. You just couldn’thear me judging your life choices until recently.” Luna stretched, claws catching on the grimoire’s leather cover. “For what it’s worth, I think you’re making a mistake. But I also think you need to make it. Sometimes the only way out is through.”
“That’s almost supportive.”
“Don’t get used to it.”
At 11:47 p.m.,Cassie sat cross-legged in the middle of her living room with the grimoire open before her, thirteen candles arranged in a circle, and the silver spoon from her great-aunt’s package clutched in her hand.
The spell was complicated. Layers of words in languages she didn’t fully understand, gestures that felt awkward in her untrained hands, visualization exercises that required her to picture the binding as a thread and herself as scissors.
She’d read it seven times. Practiced the pronunciation until her tongue stopped tripping. Memorized the gestures until they felt almost natural.
It wasn’t enough. She knew it wasn’t enough. Margaret was right—she wasn’t ready, wasn’t focused, wasn’t emotionally clear.
But she was desperate, and desperation had its own kind of power.
“Okay,” she whispered to the empty room. “Let’s do something stupid.”
She began.
The words felt strange in her mouth—old and heavy, like stones worn smooth by centuries of use. The magic rose slowly at first, a gentle warmth in her chest, then built as she continued through the incantation. The candle flames stretched taller. The air pressure shifted.
She pictured the binding—that invisible thread connecting her to Liam, the magical tether that had held him to her property and then to her. She pictured scissors. Sharp. Silver. Final.
Sever, she thought.Let go. Set him free.
The magic surged?—
And the grimoire burst open to a page she’d never seen.
Not burst like an explosion. More like itinsisted. The pages flipped of their own accord, riffling past spells and recipes and hand-drawn diagrams until they stopped on a section near the back that Cassie could have sworn was blank the last time she’d looked.
There was a letter.
Folded, aged, tucked into a pocket in the binding that hadn’t existed before. The paper was yellowed but the ink was still dark, and the handwriting was achingly familiar—the same looping script that filled the rest of thegrimoire.
The candles guttered. The magic she’d been building dissipated like smoke in a breeze. Whatever spell she’d been attempting had been interrupted, redirected, replaced by something else entirely.
With shaking hands, Cassie unfolded the letter.
My darling girl,
If you’re reading this, you’ve made a mess. Good. Magic isn’t for the tidy.
I spelled this letter to appear when you needed it most—which, knowing our family, probably means you’re sitting in a circle of candles at midnight trying to break something that doesn’t need breaking. We Morgans have always been better at destruction than patience. It’s both our gift and our curse.
I don’t know exactly what you’ve gotten yourself into. That’s the trouble with prophetic correspondence—all very vague and mystical, no practical details. But I know our bloodline, and I know our patterns, so let me take a guess:
You’ve fallen for someone. Or you’re about to. Or you’re actively running from the possibility because feeling things is terrifying and you’d rather set yourself on fire than be vulnerable.
Am I close?
Cassie laughed despite herself—a wet, broken sound. She was crying, she realized. Had been since the letter appeared.
The spell that brought him to you—and I’m assuming it’s a him, though correct me if I’m wrong from beyond the grave—wasn’t random. The summoning spell I wrote doesn’t pluck just anyone out of the ether. It finds someone who can help. Someone whose skills match your need. Someone who, on some cosmic level, fits.
But here’s the part most witches get wrong: the spell brings them to you. It doesn’t make them stay.
The binding isn’t a cage, dear. It’s a question. The magic asks: “Will you remain?” And every day they don’t fight it, every day they choose proximity over escape, they’re answering.
