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  Later, the girls’ mothers reamed Morgan out for allowing me to dampen their crafts. Morgan stood her ground, claiming I did what needed to be done for the sake of the coven’s protection. It didn’t satisfy the other witches, and they pulled their children from festival tasks for the rest of the week, leaving me with less help than I started with.

  Despite my troubles, everything started to come together by Saturday. I could feel the pull of the spring equinox, the invigorating feeling of newness and rebirth. The air in Yew Hollow still bore the chill of the lingering winter, but the pale sun began to stave it off. The paradoxical weather turned out a blessing. When the sun beat too intensely upon my shoulders, the crisp breeze arrived to provide relief. Sweat poured off my skin as I put the finishing touches on the decorations in the square, nailed tents into the ground to make sure they wouldn’t blow away in the wind, and supervised the craftsman as he installed the stage’s support system. By the end of the day, everything was in place for the festival tomorrow, and I went home exhausted and satisfied.

  “Have a drink,” Karma said, handing me a mug full of mysterious liquid as soon as I walked into the house that evening. The four sisters lay about in the living room, their limbs and auras relaxed.

  I sniffed the bright pink beverage. “This is the festival punch, isn’t it?” I studied the sisters’ various states of repose. “How much moonshine is in this?”

  “It’s not the moonshine that does the trick, my dear,” Malia said, her words slurred ever so slightly. “It’s the craft.”

  “My craft, to be exact,” Karma added proudly. Her pupils were dilated, and she wore a slightly manic look. She lifted the mug to my lips. “Drink it!”

  “Okay, relax.” I took the tiniest sip, and the liquid shocked my lips like an electric eel. The craft buzzed through my body, zipping along in my veins. I shook my head to clear it. “Whoo! Yeah, you’re going to have to tone that down a bit, Karma. The mortals won’t be able to take that much.”

  Karma stuck out her tongue. “Mortals, shmortals. I wouldn’t waste good craft on them. This batch is for us.” She lifted her mug. “To the Summerses at the spring equinox!”

  Morgan added her drink to the toast. “To new beginnings and fresh opinions.”

  “To the blossoming buds on the trees and in our lives,” Laurel chimed in.

  “To our annual renewal,” Malia added, less drunkenly.

  All four sisters looked at me. Not one of them doubted that I was the fifth member of this sisterhood. I lifted my glass.

  “To all of you,” I said. “For whom I am eternally grateful.”

  “To Gwenlyn,” Morgan said.

  “To Gwenlyn!” the other three chorused.

  We all clinked our glasses together. I tipped back the punch and downed all of it in a few gulps. As the fire of Karma’s moonshine and craft tumultuously took over, I sat among the Summers sisters and pretended to be one of them.

  The weekly town meeting the next morning was the shortest one I had ever attended. Everyone was too excited for the festival to bother listening to Pilar as she talked about the weird two-inch law height requirement that no one cared about. Children whispered in the crowd and tugged on their parents’ hands, begging to let them get a head start on the games and treats outside. The adults were restless too, many of them jiggling their legs or tapping their hands on their knees to restrain their excitement. As soon as Pilar called the assembly to an end, the hall roared with the sound of scraping chairs and hustling feet. The crowd burst through the double doors and rushed down the high street, the coven along with them.

  I brought up the rear, taking it all in as the locals descended upon the town square and reveled in the celebration. The first of the bands I’d booked took the stage and struck up a lively tune. The booth owners began haggling as soon as the first customers approached them. The school kids beelined for the giant play parachute I’d arranged for them. They each took hold of the edges and followed the elementary gym teacher’s instructions to wave it up and down. The rainbow fabric undulated with every movement and projected the children’s laughter high into the sky.

  “Great job, Gwenlyn!” someone called as they passed me.

  Another local patted me on the back. “This is beautiful. You should be proud.”

  “Thanks,” I said, beaming as more residents came over to shake my hand and compliment my festival effort. “It was fun.”

  I spent most of the day checking on various details of the festival and making sure everything went according to plan. The lemonade stand ran out of ice early, so I recruited our local ice queen, Noelle, to produce more under the radar. When the rainbow parachute ripped due to a particularly animated six-year-old, I repaired it with a quick sewing spell. Since the tear was in the green section of the fabric, no one was the wiser. Most fabulously, the mayor tried her luck with the punch and stumbled right into my arms. The crowd cheered as I set her back on her feet.

  “Easy on the punch, Pilar,” I told her. “My sister was a little heavy-handed with the liquor.”

  Pilar tapped my nose affectionately. One sip, and she was a goner. “You are the cutest little button, aren’t you? This festival is a hit!”

  I replaced her plastic cup of punch with another one full of water. She didn’t notice the difference. “Don’t worry. I remember what you said. No funny business.”

  She threw the water back like a shot. “Funny business? Who cares! Make all the funny business you want.”

  As Pilar sauntered off and joined the other adults on the dance floor, Karma came up behind me. We watched Pilar gyrate along to the music.

  “I halved the recipe, I swear,” Karma said in my ear. “These mortals are lightweights.”

  “It’s fine,” I replied. “Let the mayor enjoy herself. She deserves it.”

  “And it keeps her off your case.” Karma raised an eyebrow. “Morgan told me what she said to you last week. You think something’s going on with Pilar?”

  Pilar struck a disco pose, her finger pointed diagonally toward the sky. I grimaced with second-hand embarrassment, but the Yew Hollow locals were all on the same level of uninhibited. They mimicked Pilar’s ridiculous dance and howled with laughter.

  “Nah,” I told Karma. “I think she’s smart and perceptive. Anyone with half a brain and a good level of instinct would pick up on Yew Hollow’s ‘funny business.’ We’re lucky it’s Pilar and not some other jerk like Dominic.”

  “Ew, don’t say his name.”

  “Sorry.”

  The events of Yew Hollow’s past regarding the D-word were reviled. Though the coven had made it out alive, it was a close shave. Nine years later, we still weren’t over it.

  “Hey, don’t you have a birthday coming up?” Karma swung her hips in time with the music. Punch sloshed over the lip of her cup. “How old you again? Forty?”

  “Nope, that’s you.”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  I let out a laugh. “Twenty-six.”

  “Almost ten years since you first got here,” Karma mused. “Time flies, doesn’t it?”

  “Nine years,” I said. “I was almost seventeen when I met Morgan.”

  She waved a hand dismissively. “Time is relative anyway. You were part of the family from the very beginning.”

  Aunt Thelma passed by the tent under which Karma and I were resting. She eyed the bowl of punch with glee, but when she found me standing over it, her expression turned sour. She whispered into the ear of another elder witch, who also turned to behold me. I pasted a sarcastic grin on my face and waved cheerfully. Aunt Thelma and her companion sneered and shuffled away.

  “Not everyone thinks that,” I muttered.

  The exact moment of the equinox happened around four o’clock in the afternoon. Though the locals were oblivious, every witch felt the alignment of the sun with the earth, and we all tipped our heads up to acknowledge it. Though we could not celebrate the moment during the daytime, we enjoyed it nevertheless. Auras flare
d, but the colors could be passed off as mirages in the heat. A second later, we all went back to what we were doing with slightly wider smiles.

  It never failed to surprise me how dedicatated the Yew Hollow locals were to enjoying every last second of a celebration. The festival raged on throughout the afternoon, past dusk, and into the evening without a single lull in participation. As darkness fell and the moon rose, the witches’ impatience grew palpable. Until the square was empty of mortals, the coven would not fully enjoy the results of the equinox or gather around the Yew Tree for our rituals without question. Morgan sidled up to me.

  “Well?” she prompted. “When are the fireworks scheduled? No one will go home until after the fireworks.”

  My heart palpitated. “Oh no. I forgot to schedule the fireworks.”

  Morgan’s eyes went wide. “You forgot?”

  “I was so busy with everything else.” I unearthed my crumpled notebook with all of my plans for the festival written inside and flipped through the pages. “Fireworks, fireworks. Nope, not a single word of them. Morgan, I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” Morgan said. “You’ve done so much already. I can take care of this. Give me ten minutes, then have someone make an announcement that the show is about to start.”

  At past events, the mayor of Yew Hollow was meant to introduce the firework finale of the spring festival, but when I found Pilar, she was hardly in any shape to stand on a stage and give a speech. She flung her arm around my neck when she saw me, her eyes bright with the effects of Karma’s craft.

  “Do you want to know the secret to staying young?” she whispered conspiratorially. “I’ll tell you. I made a deal—”

  “I’m sure it’s a lovely story,” I said, balancing the mayor on my shoulder, “but I need you to introduce the firework show.”

  She laughed outright. “I couldn’t possibly.”

  “Then I need you to find someone else,” I told her. “Someone important to the town.”

  She tapped my head. “I have found someone.”

  “Who?”

  “You,” she announced. “You do it!”

  “Me? No, I’m not—”

  “Why not?” Pilar insisted. “You planned this entire festival on your own. It’s a great feat! You deserve to take the final bow in front of the fireworks. Besides, there are two of you and only one of me, and I might need an extra pair of feet to stand up straight. More punch!”

  I rerouted the cup someone offered to her. “Believe me, you don’t want any more of that, Pilar. Your hangover will be awful enough as it is.”

  Pilar patted the front of my T-shirt as if I wore a fancy jacket with perfectly trimmed lapels. “Go. Announce the show. Take the credit. You are a magnificent member of this community, Gwenlyn Summers. I believe in you!”

  I didn’t bother to correct her regarding my last name and handed her off to a well-meaning local who hadn’t spent the day chugging Karma’s punch. With jitters in my chest, I waited for the band to finish their set then climbed onto the stage. The crowd cheered as I took the microphone.

  “Uh,” I said. “Hello. How’s everyone doing tonight?”

  Despite the awkward greeting, the locals replied with a roar of appreciation.

  “Good, that’s good.” I glanced behind me toward the lake in the distance where we were supposed to shoot off the fireworks. There was no sign of Morgan or anyone else. “As you all know, the final leg of the evening concludes with fireworks. I hope you enjoyed your day at the spring festival, and we’ll see you all soon for the solstice later this month. Without further ado, here are the fireworks.”

  One silent moment passed as the crowd turned their eyes to the sky and nothing happened. Then, a great crack! echoed through the trees. A small flare flicked across the darkness then exploded in a shower of blue sparks identical to the color of Morgan’s aura. A moment later, two more fireworks—one lilac and one a deeper shade of violet—followed Morgan’s. Lastly, the biggest firework of all, bright blue, illuminated the sky. The Summers sisters were putting on the final show all on their own.

  Laurel’s work was the star of the show. She pulled out all the stops, gathering wood nymphs and fairies and fireflies to dance among the crowd like miniature versions of the fireworks. The nymphs and fairies were crafty, darting out of eyesight if anyone looked at them too closely. They rose into the sky and sang sweet lullabies to the earth, a serenade that you felt rather than heard. The mortals paid little attention to the magic right in front of their eyes, except for one elderly man I spotted near the left corner of the stage.

  He stared right at one of the wood nymphs, a youngling who hadn’t quite perfected the art of not being seen. Then the man clasped his hand to his heart and keeled over.

  3

  The howl of an ambulance siren ripped through the trees as the crowd cleared a pathway to the fallen man. Morgan and her sisters, oblivious to the chaos, kept the fireworks going. They cracked overhead, showering the locals with harmless sparks. I pushed my way through the throng to reach the elderly man. He gasped on the ground, his hands still clutching his heart.

  “Move!” I said, shoving people out of the way. I got on my knees, pried the man’s hands away from his chest, and replaced them with my own. I had no idea how to perform compressions, but I did know enough healing magic to keep the man’s heart from going completely haywire. I muttered Latin phrases under my breath to strengthen my magic while keeping my aura at bay. If any of the mortals saw the green glow, it would be the end of the Summerses’ secrecy spell.

  The man’s breath came in short, raspy gasps. He grabbed my wrists. “I don’t want to die,” he gasped. “I can’t leave without my wife.”

  “You’re not going to die, sir,” I promised him, pumping his chest full of magic.

  “What are you doing to me?”

  “Helping,” I said. “I hope.”

  The sirens rang in my ears as the ambulance arrived and pulled onto the curb closest to us. A team of paramedics stepped out of the rig, carrying bags of equipment and a stretcher.

  “We got it from here, ma’am,” said one of the paramedics, a beefy guy with dark hair. He gently took my hands from the man’s chest and started performing compressions himself. The elderly man had passed out. “Great job, ma’am. You might have saved this guy’s life.”

  As the rest of the paramedics rushed to put the older man in the ambulance, they ushered me out of the way. I watched helplessly as they fixed an oxygen mask over the man’s face and loaded him in the rig. The ambulance drove away right as the Summers sisters put the final touches on the grand finale of the fireworks show. The entire sky lit up with their magic, one enormous boom after the next, followed by the crackle of embers fizzling out. When the fireworks faded, silence fell over the town square. Then the crowd erupted in cheers.

  With the fireworks show done and the ambulance out of sight, the night’s excitement had passed and the townspeople finally began to vacate the square. They meandered off to their homes with slow steps, as if to prolong the fun of the festival for as long as possible. As I began sweeping trash, the sisters emerged from the tree line around the lake.

  “How was it?” Laurel asked eagerly, bouncing on the balls of her feet. “Did they like the fairies?”

  The elderly man’s wallet lay on the ground. I picked it up and pulled out his driver’s license. “Everyone except Paul Holland. He saw one of the wood nymphs and collapsed.”

  Morgan examined the driver’s license, and the other sisters crowded around her for a look too. As the square emptied of mortals, the witches lingered behind. We had more to do tonight.

  “Are we in trouble?” Malia murmured in Morgan’s ear.

  “I don’t think so,” Morgan said, handing the license back to me. “Paul has dementia. The police have had to take him back home more than once because he can’t remember where he lives. He shouldn’t be driving anymore, let alone getting his heart rate up at a festival firework show.”


  “That’s not fair,” I said. “Just because he’s old doesn’t mean he shouldn’t get to enjoy the remainder of his life.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that.” Morgan lifted her head to the sky and checked the position of the moon. “Let’s get ready for the ritual. Paul is probably no danger to us, but the sooner we renew the secrecy spell, the better we’ll all be for it.”

  The witches swept the square, searching for any mortals that might have lingered after the festival. If anyone caught wind of our rituals, it would mean a lot of metaphorical paperwork for Morgan and the rest of the coven. I covered the square itself, checking the thick bushes around the yew tree for any sneaky teenagers who might be hiding from their curfew. Once everyone reported back with the all-clear, we gathered around the yew tree.

  As was tradition, all of the witches made it out to the town square for the seasonal rituals, despite their age or abilities. Even Aunt Alberta, who was half out of her mind, showed up to participate. It was both a powerful sight and feeling to have over forty witches in so little square footage, ready to bring their craft out for the evening. Like at the party last night, there was a palpable energy in the air. It buzzed and popped like static electricity, bouncing from witch to witch as it gathered steam.