Bewitched (Bewitched, #1)(5)

Probably not the best habit to drink alone, but whatever, I’ll call this my celebratory drink for standing up for myself and getting a foot in the door.

I set the bottle down and pull out my notebook before reading over the two requirements I scribbled down back at Henbane.

It’s the second one that’s going to give me hives.

Get a familiar.

I drink half the bottle of wine while I ponder how the fuck I’m going to do this. It’s not as though I haven’t already tried. The thing is, a familiar isn’t just any animal. It’s a particular creature whose spirit resonates with your own and literally binds itself to you. Supposedly, familiars are the ones who find their witches, but that hasn’t happened to me yet, and I’m increasingly skeptical that it will happen anytime soon.

Okay, screw number two for now. I take another swig of the bottle, feeling the first stirrings of a buzz. I’ll focus on the other requirement, the magic quest.

Every witch has to participate in one of these quests. The idea is you go out into nature, connect with your magic on a deep, spiritual level, and then you write about your experience. In theory, it’s supposed to be life changing, but now that it’s a requirement for coven membership, it’s been cheapened and commodified.

But whatever, the coven wants me to give them an exciting quest?

Fine.

I open an airline site, musing over where exactly I should go. I’m sure the admissions board believes an exciting quest begins with an unusual destination.

Siberia? The Kalahari Desert? The Gobi Desert? I could go to the North Pole, ride a narwhal, and call it a day.

Only, when I scroll through international fares, everything is so damned expensive. My god. I’d need to sell a kidney to afford the airfare alone.

Oh, wait. They have deals on flights under this little tab.

I click it.

Oklahoma City—that’s…hmmm. Could I make that work?

Nah, probably not.

I filter the results to just international flights and begin looking again.

Reykjavík—don’t they have natural hot springs? Sounds nice.

Venice—I don’t know. It seems magical, but not in any sort of wild, natural way.

London. Paris. Athens.

I rub my head. All these are faraway destinations, but none of them fit the bill.

I take another swig of wine. Perhaps tonight is not the night.

I’ll sleep on it and hopefully come up with something tomorrow.





“Great Goddess’s left tit.”

I stare at the receipt for the nonrefundable plane tickets and the nonrefundable cruise I booked to the Galapagos Islands.

I mean, high-five drunk Selene for finding a destination I would legitimately love to visit.

But also, what in the actual fuck, drunk Selene?

A cruise? How did we even afford this?

One look at my credit card alerts me that we did not, in fact, afford this. Drunk Selene simply decided that future Selene would have to figure it out.

I spend a good ten minutes trying not to hyperventilate.

Maybe I can work overtime until kingdom come so I can pay this off. Or I could try to find more magical odd jobs. Those helped pay the bills this past year when money from my restaurant work didn’t quite cover it.

I take in the trip itinerary again.

This is what I get for drunkenly buying myself a magical quest.

It’ll be all right—I’ll fly to Ecuador, board the boat, enjoy the hell out of the cruise, try desperately to bond with some creature—any creature—willing to be my familiar, and then return to the States, where I’ll present my magic quest and my newly acquired familiar to the coven. Wham, bam, thank you, ma’am.

I write all this information down in my journal and blow out a breath.

South America, here I come.





CHAPTER 3





I gaze out the airplane’s window, taking in the thick mass of clouds stretching off in the distance. Now that I’m actually in the sky and on my way, my excitement is sinking in.

I’m going to the Galapagos Islands. Forget travel expenses or magical quests—these largely uninhabited isles have been on my bucket list for a while.

When the view of clouds, and more clouds, and oh, look, more clouds, gets boring, I let my mind drift back to when I first became a witch.

Over three years ago, shortly after I began attending Peel Academy, a boarding school for supernaturals, I—and every other new student—went through an induction ceremony: the Awakening. For supernaturals this is an age-old tradition, one that manifests our latent powers.

We’re given a draught of bittersweet, and the potion brings to life our paranormal aspects. That’s when I first felt my magic stir within me, and it was when I learned of the steep cost it demands.

I return my attention to the book in my lap—Multifunctional Magic: Ingredients and Rhymes to Apply to Everyday Spellcasting. Because my mind is not always reliable, I have what I fondly like to call adaptive magic. Fancy for I’m just going to feel things out and wing it. I don’t mean to brag, but it has about a 62 percent success rate.

And honestly, that’s better than nothing.

But I’m hoping the more I study and learn, the more I can actually ease off my innate abilities and draw on things like lunar phases, crystals, spell ingredients, and incantations. I have to believe that the more knowledge I commit to my mind, the harder it will be for my power to completely erase it.