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“But—”

Queenie fluttered her hand. “We’d still have had the party even if you’d said no. Asmoday loves any opportunity to use his smokers.”

“She’s not wrong,” Asmoday piped up.

“I just…” Cassandra trailed off and then finally admitted, “I’ve never had a party thrown in my honor before.”

Queenie gasped again. I never realized how often she did that until now.

“Well, now it’s really a party,” Asmoday announced. “I’ll let Vito know.”

“Vito?” Cassandra echoed.

“The vampire,” Daruka said, as if that explained why Asmoday had pulled the owner of the wine shop—who was also responsible for most of the holiday decorations around town—into the conversation.

“Come on, let’s go,” Asmoday said. “I have to get the sides started.”

“And you need to clean up,” Daruka said. “You’re the belle of the ball, after all.”

“I’ll bring you over a cute party dress to wear,” Queenie tossed over her shoulder before hurrying out of the destroyed coffee shop.

As Daruka linked arms and tugged her toward the B&B, Cassandra glanced over her shoulder, her gaze snagging on me.

Not the shop. Not the destruction.

Me.

I hated how much it warmed my insides.

Chapter

Five

Cassandra

It wasn’t me. It wasn’t me. It wasn’t me.

I continued this chant in my head while I stood in the shower and scrubbed all the dust out of my hair.

I hadn’t caused that explosion.

Yes, the fact that the coffee shop I was supposed to take over was now effectively destroyed was an issue. But, truly, the most important aspect of that whole experience was, it wasn’t me.

Let me be clear: my magic had caused explosions. Plural.

It started out small. When I was a toddler, everybody thought it was cute that I could create tiny fireballs and bursts of energy that were like trivial firecrackers.

My first year of middle school, when Donnie Ebarre’s lips mysteriously managed to get stuck to a pole—in New Orleans, where the temperature never dipped low enough for that to happen organically—my family realized I had zero control over my magic.

It didn’t matter that Donnie had been harassing me, that he’d cornered me and copped a feel, that he’d grabbed my hand and tried to press it to his groin—the fact that EMS had to be called, that Donnie was out of school for a week while his tongue (but, really, his ego) healed was what everyone focused on.

I was pulled out of the nice, normal human school I had attended since kindergarten and plopped into this weird homeschool situation with a bunch of other misfit supes.

I learned a whole lot about the supernatural world, I memorized every spell in every spellbook that ever crossed my desk, but I never learned how to control my magic.

Knock, knock.

Lost in my own thoughts, I’d managed to finish my shower and wrap myself in the super-soft robe that had been hanging on the back of the bathroom door.