Chapter One
Bell House was too quiet.
I never really understood what people meant when they said a place was too quiet, not until I arrived in Savannah. Bell House, my home, was over two hundred years old and overlooked a busy city square. There was always something, inside or out. Cars rumbling by, voices on the street or the reassuring creaks and groans of my old home’s bones. But today, there was only silence.
The house knew I needed to concentrate.
Closing the double doors of the parlour behind me, I took a moment. It still didn’t seem real. I couldn’t believe this beautiful place was my home, that I actually got to live here. The walls glowed with a soft sheen from the silk wallpaper and the heartwood pine floorboards, as old as the house itself, held onto the memory of every person ever to have set foot in this room. Generation after generation of my ancestors had collected and curated everything I laid my eyes on, lovingly selecting the paintings and ornaments, every single stick of furniture, from the antique Austrian crystal chandelier above my head to the hand-knotted Persian rug beneath my bare feet. It all cametogether with breathtaking beauty. To anyone who cared to look, the parlour, like the rest of Bell House, was picture-perfect from every angle.
But as I knew all too well, looks could be deceiving.
I took a deep breath in and crossed the room to place a terracotta pot on the low marble coffee table. Inside the pot was an orchid, fully in bloom, its tall, slender stem supporting six blooms with petals that faded from a deep cerise at their heart to a whisper-soft pink around the edges. So pretty. Lowering myself to the ground, I sat back on my heels, knees pressed into the rug before closing my eyes and calming my thoughts. Present, mindful, centred. No noise to distract me. Holding my hands out over the orchid, I envisioned the change. Nothing super fancy, nothing drastic, all I wanted was to change the colour of the petals from pink to blue. It was simple magic. Persuading a plant to change colour should’ve been intuitive for an apothecary witch like me. With my eyes still closed, I saw the flower before me, pictured the shift in hue. The tips of my fingers tingled, the merest hint of a sensation, as though someone had brushed a feather over my skin. My magic manifesting.
But when I opened one eye in a squint, the pink petals were still pink.
‘That’s OK,’ I said to the orchid as I rubbed my hands together to reset myself. ‘Take your time.’
Some plants needed a little more persuading than others but knowing what could be done was half the battle when it came to magic, and I knew I could do this. I was Emily James Bell, I was a Bell witch.
As the thought crossed my mind, something inside me shuddered.
Not a Bell witch. The Bell witch.
The only one.
Without warning, my whole body was aflame and a seriesof images raced through my mind, dragging me away from the task at hand; Catherine in a white gown, standing beside a towering stone archway. A huge silver wolf, Wyn enduring his first phase wrapped in silver barbed wire and howling in agony. The full moon, a black sky, and a dozen red-haired women with emerald eyes the same as mine staring down at me as I bled out on a stone floor.
‘No!’ I said aloud, shaking off the dark thoughts, eyes still squeezed shut.
That was the past. I had survived, and there was nothing to be gained by replaying it over and over in my head. With renewed focus, I squeezed the golden locket that hung around my neck to bring myself back to the present moment, then dipped back into my magic. Present, mindful, centred.
Then something else flashed in front of my eyes, a warmer, softer memory. Green-grey eyes, with flashes of bronze. Golden sunshine skin and dark ash hair, waves curling against his cheekbones. His features were a blur, too close for me to focus, but I heard the catch of a breath in the back of his throat then felt his lips brush over mine, soft and searching, a question and a promise.
I love you, Emily James.
Smiling, my fingers rose to my mouth to press the phantom kiss to my lips. This time I shivered, my skin tingling beautifully from head to toe. This was the past too, but it was also the future. My future with Wyn.
When I opened my eyes again, the orchid on the coffee table looked exactly the same as it had when we started.
But I couldn’t say the same for the parlour floor.
There were flowers everywhere. I gazed around the room in shock. Not a single square inch of heartwood pine or Persian rug was visible under the carpet of blossoms I’d conjured. They sprouted up from between the floorboards, fighting for spaceas they bloomed brilliantly, turning towards me like I was the sun itself. Roses, tulips, violets, azaleas, lilies, peonies, dahlias and daisies, every single flower I could think of … everything except a blue orchid.
Almost a month had passed since my birthday. Four whole weeks since I turned seventeen, discovered the truth about my grandmother and came into my full magic, just in time to save my own life and the lives of the people I loved the most. It was, to be fair, not the seventeenth birthday I’d been expecting. Mostly I’d been hoping to get a car, not the manifest abilities of every Bell witch who had lived before me. And certainly not to find out I was most likely the subject of a world-ending prophecy as vague as it was terrifying. I’d gained a past I could never have imagined and a future I wasn’t ready for.
So here I was, practising. Trying to hone my skills and control my magic, only to find out that magic didn’t want to be controlled. Giving up on my orchid, I lay back in my private indoor meadow, watching as full-grown oaks, elms and a silver birch joined the flowers, stretching towards the ceiling, their branches curving this way and that in order to miss the light fixtures. They were thoughtful at least. Magic didn’t come with a guide book. Every day, I felt as though I was driving a Ferrari on the freeway without ever having taken a single lesson. Sure, I knew how to make the thing go but without someone to teach me the rules, I was hurtling into oncoming traffic with my brakes cut. All this magic, all these abilities, and I was in freefall.
A rosebud swayed close to caress my face, wiping away the single tear of frustration that rolled down my cheek. The flowers didn’t want me to feel bad. They just didn’t want to do what I asked. Plants, like people, were sometimes rebellious. Relaxing into their sweet softness, I let a trail of ivy winditself up around my wrist, and allowed my thoughts to roam, not the slightest bit surprised when they ended up in the same place they always did: replaying every last moment I’d shared with Wyn. I sighed and the flowers bloomed even brighter than before.
Then something in me shifted. Panic, fear, shortness of breath. I sat bolt upright, the flowers closest to me shirking away.
‘Emily, help!’
Half a heartbeat before I heard Ashley’s cry, a throb of terror passed through our home and into me. My feet scarcely touched the floor as I scrambled upright, racing out of the parlour and up the grand, curving staircase to the second floor, my aunt’s terrified voice carrying all the way through Bell House. The floorboards creaked in protest at my hurry, but there was no time to coddle the house if Ashley was in danger. Who or what could’ve broken through our wards? Ghosts? Witches? Wolves?
Throwing open her bedroom door, I steeled myself for whatever horrors awaited me, but the reality was so much worse than anything I could’ve imagined.
A half-naked Ashley Bell wailed at me from inside a neon orange cocoon, her arms flailing wildly against its constraints. Only, it wasn’t a cocoon, it was … a dress? Skin-tight, long-sleeved and half yanked up around her head, the garment squeezed her shoulders like sausage casing, her restricted hands flapping helplessly like an angry little T-Rex.
