I drummed my fingers over my crossed arms. Beatrix had given me a gift but then stolen my true emotions. She was too devious for her own good, and I was going to make sure she knew her little tricks weren’t okay with me the next time I saw her.

  “Does she realize I made a fool out of myself with Foster because of my lack of inhibitions? I mean, a soulmate? Why wasn’t I freaking out about that?” Now that I’d asked the question, my palms became sweaty, and my heart raced as I struggled to take even shallow breaths.

  Charlie grabbed both of my shoulders. “Calm down, Andie. What Beatrix did to you wasn’t anything that made you feel something you wouldn’t have already had stirring inside you. Yes, she took away any uneasiness you would have had after remembering everything you did and learning about Foster, but the rest was all you. Any feelings you expressed with actions were your own.”

  “Still, Beatrix had no right to do that without my permission.”

  “You’re right, she didn’t, but remember? We aren’t dwelling on the past.” Charlie smirked, and I rolled my eyes. I wouldn’t exactly consider six hours ago the past. Regardless, I let it go for the time being and brought up another important subject.

  “I do have a question about the mate thing, though.” I placed my hand over my sprinting heart. “I don’t feel anything here. Sure, I find Foster attractive, and his growls are hot, and the way he’s so damn protective is straight out of every woman’s dream, but shouldn’t there be more? I feel like I’m missing something regarding this whole soulmate situation.”

  “That’s because you are, and I think that’s due to your magic being constricted. Beatrix was able to mess with your mind, but the heart is a much different story and that’s where our magic generates from. We need you to remember the spell you and Junie used. Knowing her and how much she cared about you, she would have made it special. Do you remember a moment standing out more than the others around the time you last saw her?

  I thought back to the last day Aunt Junie had made an appearance. It had been at my birthday party. She’d been so sad when I’d hugged her. I hadn’t understood why then, but knowing what she’d had to do, her darkened emotions made more sense.

  I closed my eyes and tried harder to recall the details of that day. I’d been wearing a green dress and had on a purple crown that read, “Birthday Girl” in bright pink letters. As I searched deeper, I sucked in a breath and my body went rigid.

  Aunt Junie was at the door, holding a gift bag. There were tears in her eyes and her smile didn’t reach her eyes like normal.

  I ran to her, wrapping my arms around her waist. “Aunt Junie!”

  “Hi, my little dragon. Happy birthday.” She rubbed a hand over my then-dark red hair.

  I tugged on her free hand, wanting to show her my cake. “Come on. You gotta see what Momma got me.”

  My mother was there. She was stiff and off to the side but watching us intently.

  Aunt Junie kneeled to my level. “I’m afraid I can’t stay long. I just came to bring you a gift and say goodbye.” A lone tear shed down her cheek.

  I wiped it away, sticking my lower lip out. “Where are you going?”

  “I have to go away for work, but I couldn’t leave without saying goodbye to my most favorite person in the world. Would you mind opening your present before I leave?”

  At her mention of a present, I brightened, not understanding the severity of what was happening.

  I nodded and followed Aunt Junie into the sitting room with my mom right behind us. Aunt Junie pulled a small wooden box from the gift bag she had and held it out for me.

  My little fingers flipped the golden latch and gently pulled the lid up. Inside was the prettiest stone I’d ever seen. Shaped like a teardrop in a shiny white color with glints of blue reflecting off the surface as I moved it around.

  “Can I wear it?” I asked excitedly.

  Aunt Junie shook her head. “Not until you’re older, but I do need you to hold it for me.”

  She took the box from me and carefully pulled the necklace out, resting the stone in one hand and the long, silver chain in her other.

  “It’s glowing. Just like me,” I whispered to her, knowing that I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone what I could do sometimes.

  “That’s right, little dragon. This is special. Just like you. And I want you to keep it with you always.” She placed the warming stone in my palm and wrapped her hands over mine. “Repeat after me, okay?”

  I nodded, thinking that we were going to do one of the special tricks I was only allowed to do with Aunt Junie.

  “Celarius navatio, conservus sempra. Afuro malis, servo sempra. Abscondi supremius.”

  The words rolled from my tongue fluidly, even though I had no idea what they meant and had never heard them before. We chanted them over and over until my chest burned and tears fell from my eyes. I tried to pull away, but Aunt Junie wouldn’t let me, even though she cried harder than I did.

  By the time we were done, I was wailing, and she enveloped me in her arms. “I’m so sorry, Andie. I love you so much. I hope you always remember how special you are to me and how strong you are. Always my little dragon.”

  She placed her hand over my forehead and chest. My skin warmed, and the pain I’d just been feeling disappeared along with what we’d just done.

  My mother approached with open arms and wet cheeks. She softly thanked Aunt Junie, barely able to meet her eyes as she took me into her arms.

  Aunt Junie said nothing in reply. Instead, a painful sound left her mouth, and she exited the house in a scrambling hurry.

  Just like that, Aunt Junie was gone, along with the sadness I no longer remembered I should be feeling.

  My eyes opened and my soul ached when I came out of the memory. I wrapped my arms around myself, rocking back and forth. Aunt Junie had spelled me to forget the worst of her departure. She’d taken my feelings with her and carried them all on her own until she’d died.

  Charlie’s hand rubbed over my back while I regained my composure. “You were muttering words I didn’t fully hear. What did you remember?”

  “I heard the spell we did. I don’t think she blocked my magic. I think she put it in a moonstone necklace.”

  “Shit. Of course, she did. Where’s the necklace?” Charlie asked, looking around my neck and finding nothing there.

  “Back at my house in Montana, along with all of my other belongings. Damn it. I should have listened and been willing to leave with you. If I had, I could have packed that along with all of the other important items I might never get back.”

  Hysteria was clawing at my chest and working its way up my throat. Everything inside me burned with sorrow for things lost. Sure, I could replace most of them, but not the pictures of me and mom while growing up. Not the necklace that I probably needed more than I realized.

  My thoughts ran rampant and thoughts of more things I needed to do surfaced. “And my work. I need to call them and let them know… What am I supposed to tell people?”

  My phone hadn’t been in working order when I’d tried to order a ride home after leaving work. I wasn’t even sure I had the phone numbers I’d need. More panic exploded within, and I could only manage to gasp in short breaths of air.

  “I’m so sorry, Andie. I wish we had time for me to hug you and eat all the ice cream, but we don’t. We can’t wait a second longer to see if your necklace is still in the house.” Charlie was texting on her phone, fingers flying over the screen before she continued. “We’ll get you a new phone soon and you can tell whoever you need to that there’s been a family emergency and you’ve already left with no intentions of returning, but not until we’re done searching your house. Nobody can know that we’re going back until we’ve already left.”

  I put my hands over my face and sobbed. This was the freak-out I should have had the night before, and it felt twice as worse from being postponed. My shoulders shook and I didn’t hold anything back. I needed however many minutes I could have to pour everything out.

  Charlie’s arms wrapped tightly around me, and she rocked me back and forth. “I wish I could make all of this better for you, Andie. Even more so, I wish we had more time, but we need to go unless you’d rather I went with the others and you stayed here.”

  I took a shuddering breath and swiped my sleeves over my wet face. “No, I’ll be okay. I just needed a minute. Do you think there’s any chance the necklace or anything else important is still there?”

  Charlie grimaced. “I doubt whoever had shown up when I teleported us out of there merely knocked and left when you didn’t answer the door.”

  Damn it. This was not what I wanted to hear. I should have been asking all of these questions the moment I’d arrived. I should have done a lot of things, and not just as of last night, but a long time ago, too.

  “Where’s Beatrix?” I asked.

  “She’s on her way over here. I already let her know about what you remembered. She’s gathering the team she created to search for you now, and we need to go meet them. They’ll be coming with us back to your house to search for the necklace.”

  “And my other things. I have stuff from my mother and memories. I won’t give those things up. Not again.”

  Charlie nodded and slid off the bed. “I’ll do whatever I can to make sure we grab as much as possible, but I won’t lie. There’s a chance we won’t have time for anything other than the necklace. It just depends on what we find when we get there.”

  I wanted to be angry at Charlie’s words, but I knew it wasn’t her fault that any of this had happened.

  She disappeared into a walk-in closet, and I started to make a mental list of all the items I wanted to grab just in case things weren’t as bad as Charlie was suspecting. My mom’s old photo albums, her jewelry box where I also kept the necklace, a few pictures off the walls, some clothes I could replace but really didn’t want to, and maybe even some of the random gifts my mom had given me over the years.

  Charlie’s golden-blonde hair peeked out from the closet. “Foster is going to be a problem. You’ll want to see him before we leave so he knows why you’ve disappeared.”

  “How would he know the difference? I could still be sleeping.” I wasn’t sure I had the mindset to deal with him, especially after how I’d acted the night before. Getting so close to him the way I had and openly being attracted to him when he was a complete stranger wasn’t who I was under normal circumstances. I needed to be more in control of myself before I faced him again, and after my little breakdown, I didn’t trust that time had arrived yet.

  “He’s your soulmate and you’re his mate. He’ll know,” Charlie replied before disappearing again.

  “But how?” I demanded.

  “Magic, Andie. That’s the answer for a lot of things around here, even when we don’t want it to be.”

  Of course, it freaking was.

  12

  ANDIE

  The sun came shining through the window while I finished getting dressed. The water droplets left on my exposed skin after my earlier shower warmed before vanishing while I stared outside, adjusting the hem of my borrowed shirt.

  Pale yellows mixed with the lavender sky, and the light from the sun began to spread across the horizon, snuffing out the darkness. I closed my eyes and searched deep inside myself, hoping for answers to questions I wasn’t even sure how to ask.

  Never could I have imagined the energy I’d been trying to ignore would lead to a world like this. One filled with witches, shifters, vampires, and fae. Hell, there might be more out there that I wasn’t aware of, but that wasn’t something I could think about now. First, I needed to know who I was and what I was going to do about Foster.

  Having my memories restored went a long way in preventing me from being in constant freak-out mode, but still, I only had the knowledge of a child when it came to this life. There were still so many unknowns.

  If my magic had been locked away in a necklace, how did my hands glow and what did that glow mean? Was the little magic I did have the reason Foster was drawn to me? And how had he known where I was going to be, but not where I’d been? That was something I should have asked during our first meeting, but I blamed Beatrix for my lack of clear thinking the night before.

  The longer I stood there, the tighter the knot in my chest became. With my eyes still closed, I tried once more to access the magic within me, but there was nothing other than a gentle warmth filling my core. No tingling sensation and no glow. Those two things only seemed to appear when they wanted to.

  There was a soft knock on the door to Charlie’s bedroom before it creaked open. She popped her head inside and grinned. “Good call on rolling the jeans up. Other than them being a little long on you, everything looks like it fits.”

  I nodded. “Thanks again for the clothes.”

  “Beatrix is here. She wants to talk before we leave.”

  With one last gaze at the rising sun, I headed for the living room to meet Beatrix, hoping she was going to apologize for being so rude to Foster and what she did to me. Though, the hope was more than likely futile.

  After only a couple of hours around them both, I already knew they were too much alike. Nothing about interacting with them was going to be easy, but a girl could still hope.

  Beatrix sat on Charlie’s couch with her ankles crossed and shoulders back. She stared at the pictures on the wall. Her face was tense, but her eyes were soft until she turned toward me.

  The older witch appraised me and tsked. “We have to make you less human. It’s not right seeing you without your magic.”

  “I’m not sure how I’m supposed to respond to that,” I said, glancing at Charlie.

  “You don’t,” Charlie muttered, bringing a smirk to Beatrix’s lips.

  Beatrix stood and came closer to me. I was ready to dash to the right when I saw her hand twitch, but Charlie held me in place.

  “She’s more bark than bite when it comes to coven members. Don’t get me wrong, her bite is wicked, but you can trust her,” Charlie whispered.

  “You’d do well to listen to Charlotte. I’ve been watching her, and she’s becoming quite the witch. Though I won’t soon forget she went to Montana without telling me first,” Beatrix said, briefly narrowing her gaze on Charlie, who groaned, likely from the use of her given name.

  When we’d been about four, she’d hated that I had a boyish name and hers was so proper. Against her mother’s wishes, my best friend had somehow convinced nearly everyone in our coven to call her “Charlie” instead. When her parents had found out, I remembered her dad being so proud and her mom merely sighing in defeat.

  While I appreciated them giving me space to get settled, I was eager to see them again. Maybe after we got back, Charlie could make that happen.

  Beatrix stilled when she was within touching distance of me, then continued. “About last night. What do you want to do about that wolf?”

  Both of my brows rose. She was asking me? I hadn’t thought I’d get much of a say.

  “I don’t know. My gut says that you’re telling me the truth about this soulmate thing, but unless I’m wrong in my assumptions about what to expect, I don’t feel anything outside of physical attraction. Mostly because of whatever you did to me, which I won’t soon forget.”

  When my eyes narrowed at the old witch, she at least had the audacity to avert her gaze from mine.

  “That wasn’t for Foster’s benefit. Believe me. I wanted to make sure you didn’t attempt to run off again, and keeping your panic receptors dulled was the best way to do that. Regardless, maybe I was wrong about the wolf. Maybe he’s not your soulmate.”

  There was a pang in my chest when the words left Beatrix’s mouth. My hand covered the ache, pressing down, and warmth built in my palms.

  I closed my eyes, focusing on the energy. Normally, I did whatever I could think of to make the energy fade away, but not now. I wanted answers, and drawing out whatever was inside me seemed like the only way that I was going to get them.

  “Holy shit,” Charlie muttered.

  I opened my eyes to find a pink glow casting throughout the entire room and Beatrix holding her palms just over my shoulders. As soon as I pulled my hand away from my chest, the light disappeared.

  “Interesting. Maybe I wasn’t wrong. Pity. We should be going.” Beatrix moved away from me and toward the door.

  “How can I do whatever that just was if my magic is supposed to be locked in a necklace?” I asked before following her.

  Beatrix turned around but left her hand on the door handle. “The majority of your magic is in that necklace. Junie had to leave a small fraction of your energy so you could assist with the spell. That bit is what you’ve been feeling, but it won’t be enough to keep you safe.”

  Beatrix’s answer made sense, but still, I didn’t understand. “If I’ve had magic this whole time, then why couldn’t you find me? My mother always knew where I was when we lived here. No matter how hard Charlie and I tried to hide, our parents always found us using a tracking spell.”

  She sighed and met my eyes. “There aren’t always answers to the questions we have, Andie. Don’t think that we didn’t search for you—because I had my best witches trying to track you. The only conclusion I came to is we weren’t meant to find you until it was time.”

  “Time for what?” I asked quietly.

  “That’s what we need to figure out.” Beatrix opened the door and walked outside without turning back.

  I met Charlie’s pinched gaze. “I don’t like the sound of that.”

  She nodded. “Neither do I, but you’re not alone anymore. Whatever is going to happen, we’ll face it together. Just like we used to.”

  With a deep breath, I took her offered hand and we left her house, heading back toward the courtyard where I’d first met Foster the night before. Being there reminded me that Charlie had suggested I let him know I was leaving, so I mentioned as much to Beatrix when we found her talking to three other witches.

  She waved her hand flippantly. “He’ll be fine. Plus, he deserves a little panic after the way he acted last night.”