Payback's a Witch (The Witches of Thistle Grove #1)

by Lana Harper

That was the thing about growing up with magic. Until you left it behind for good, you had no idea how incredible it felt just to be around it.

The night air gusted against my face, smelling like an absolute of fall; woodsmoke and dying leaves and the faintest bracing hint of future snow. And right below that was the scent of Thistle Grove magic, which I’ve never come across anywhere else. Spicy and earthy, as if the lingering ghost of all the incense burned by three hundred years of witches had never quite blown away. A perpetual Halloween smell, the kind that gave you the good-creepy sort of tingles.

Caelia Blackmoore conjured a spectacular lightning storm, Margarita Avramov summoned spirits from beyond the veil to serve as witnesses, Alastair Thorn called down the birds from the sky as his congregation, and Elias Harlow drew forth his mighty quill and . . . Took a bunch of notes.

At best, we’d been fellow celestial bodies whose orbits coincided at regular intervals.

“To fucking Gareth Blackmoore,” she pronounced, lifting the glass toward me, “whose heart is darker than even his ancestral name. May he step into a puddle and ruin his uninspired and overpriced Italian footwear every day for the remainder of his life. Which will hopefully be as brutish and brief as the poets promise.”

And I had always been the kind of ambitious that demanded the culmination of becoming Someone. I craved the validation of high achievement, the sense of wielding control over your own life. The fulfillment you could find only through setting up lofty goals for yourself, then knocking them down one by one.

“You know what, fuck it.” I slammed my hands flat on the table, my fingers flexing. “I’m in, witches. Let’s run amok.”

There was something uniquely magical about sleeping cozied up with a best friend, a primal sense of safety and contentment that couldn’t really be explained.

“You know what Yoda said about trying,” she said, muffled. “It’s for fucking losers.”

“Because that’s what it means to be a Harlow, my Emmy. Thistle Grove is where we become who we are. Which means that no matter where you turn, where you visit or escape to, this will always be the place that calls you back.”

“You, Emmeline Harlow,” she said, eyes locked on mine, “are so extremely fucking beautiful it hurts my soul.”