ONE
AVINE
The GPS had been lying to her for the last forty miles.
Avine Bell gripped the steering wheel of her beat-up hybrid, watching the screen flicker and reroute for the sixth time.Recalculating. Recalculating.The robotic voice had taken on a vaguely panicked quality, as if the technology itself knew it was being outmaneuvered by forces far older than silicon chips and satellite signals.
“I know you’re messing with me.” She glared at the dashboard. Or maybe she was talking to the empty car. Or the boxes stuffed into the backseat—labeled things she’d thought clever at 3 a.m. while packing:Kitchen — Actually Important,Books I’ll Definitely Read, and her personal favorite,Emotional Baggage (Literal). That one held photo albums, her grandmother’s tarot deck, and a wedding ring she couldn’t decide whether to pawn or throw into the ocean.
The Pacific Northwest coastline stretched beyond her windows, all dramatic cliffs and moody skies and the kind of scenery that belonged on postcards. Fog clung to the treetops in wispy fingers. The air tasted of rain and possibility.
Hope. It tastes like hope.
Ugh. Shut up, brain.
She took a sip of her gas station coffee. Cold. Had been cold for the last hundred miles. The mascara she’d cried off somewhere around mile marker 147 had dried in tracks down her cheeks—not from grief, but from the sheer overwhelming weight of what she was doing. Two thousand miles. Too many years of life packed into a hybrid with a questionable transmission.
The tears had been half joy, half terror. Mostly terror. But the good kind—the kind that came with jumping off a cliff and hoping you’d learn to fly on the way down.
A seagull appeared out of nowhere and dive-bombed her windshield.
“Crap!” She swerved, the hybrid’s tires skidding on damp asphalt. The bird wheeled away with what she could swear was a cackle, and her phone chose that exact moment to blast the next track on her playlist.
“I Will Survive” filled the car. Gloria Gaynor’s voice, triumphant and fierce.
Avine laughed—the sound surprising her. The playlist was titledDivorced Witch Road Trip, curated during a late-night wine-fueled packing session.
The GPS surrendered. The screen went dark, flickered twice, and displayed a simple message:DESTINATION AHEAD. Then, as an afterthought:Good luck.
“That’s not ominous at all.” Avine rolled her eyes at the screen.
She crested a hill, and there it was.
Haven Shores spread before her in golden hour glory, tucked into a crescent-shaped bay that curved protectively around a harbor full of fishing boats. The town climbed up from the waterfront in layers—shingled roofs and painted storefronts and streets that wound between buildings old enough to remember when California was still Mexican territory. High basalt bluffsrose on either side, embracing the town, hiding it from the rest of the world.
And there, on the eastern cliff edge, catching the last light of day?—
The Siren’s Rest Inn.
Avine’s breath caught. The photos hadn’t done it justice. Three stories of weathered Victorian architecture, painted the pale green of sea glass worn smooth by decades of waves. A wraparound porch with gingerbread trim. A widow’s walk perched on top, its railing silhouetted against the amber sky.
The building looked tired. Neglected. The paint was peeling in places, and even from this distance, she could see where shutters hung crooked on their hinges. Wild roses had overtaken the porch rails, their blooms a riot of pink and white against the green.
But it also lookedpossiblein a way nothing had in years.
Mine. That’s going to be mine.
The word lodged beneath her sternum, foreign and fierce.
The hybrid’s engine made a noise she’d been ignoring for the last two hundred miles—a grinding wheeze that promised expensive repairs—as she navigated the narrow road up to the cliff. Gravel crunched under her tires. The fog was thicker up here, rolling in from the ocean in slow waves, carrying the smell of seaweed and power. Power that tingled at the edges of her awareness, brushing against senses she’d spent years learning to suppress.
Magic.
Old magic, complex, woven into the very air. Ward magic, if she wasn’t mistaken. The kind that had been reinforced so many times over so many centuries that it had become part of the landscape itself.
She pulled into the circular drive and cut the engine. Silence rushed in, broken only by the distant cry of gulls and therhythmic pulse of waves against the cliffs below. The inn loomed before her, its windows catching the sunset, turning them into eyes of flame.
For a long moment, Avine sat there. Her hands trembled against the steering wheel. When had that started?
