Hopefully they’d be able to make it for the bonfire lighting. I knew the Summer Solstice was a big deal for witches. Not as big as Samhain or Yule, but still important.

  As far as I could tell, it looked like a good turn out, so that was one worry off my back at least. Lots of tourists, just like we’d hoped, but I also caught more than a few locals enjoying the festivities.

  Roy and Fifi were killing it at the Half-Moon food truck. It had been Roy’s idea to expand, to offer lunch to places that were a bit too far away for a sit-down meal at the bar, and the festival was the food truck’s maiden voyage, so to speak. If the crowd waiting for their burgers, hot dogs and fries was any indication of its popularity, then things were looking great.

  Roy was handling the cooking while Fifi helped the customers, and of course, even in a Half-Moon staff T-shirt, with her long platinum hair piled up into a messy bun, with sweat dewing at her temples, Fifi looked amazing—amazing as in: if there were a magazine for food trucks, she could have been the cover model.

  Of course, the beaming smile on her face that made her skin practically glow probably had more to do with her beauty than any succubus powers. She and Roy were really happy together, and I was so glad for them.

  A call of, “Hey, Poppy!” had me looking around, and I spotted Darla bouncing up onto the balls of her feet to wave at me. She was there with Henner, the two of them dressed nicely and obviously on a date. I gave her a wave back before the crowd surged between us and I lost sight of her.

  Darla had been through a lot, and I was glad she was getting her second chance at life. She’d been as much a victim of the poltergeist haunting as Finn and me. More, since it had been her ex-boyfriend who’d killed her, right before turning the gun on himself. I hadn’t been happy when she’d stowed away in our luggage to start haunting us in Haven Hollow, but she never meant any harm. And there were worse things for Finn to pick up than some wildly out of date slang terms.

  After Wanda’s blood magic had gone haywire and accidentally un-ghosted Darla, she’d grabbed hold of her new life with glee. From what she’d told me, she was doing really well down at Spook Society where she worked as a medium, and she and Henner seemed to be finding their way together. I was happy for them.

  Seeing so many happy couples made me think of the special man in my own life and glancing around, I noticed there was still no sign of Andre’s dark hair or charming accent.

  I did catch sight of Marty, which made my heart give a little bruised twinge. He’d volunteered to run one of the games, and Roy mentioned he’d had to move Marty to the fishing game—one where everyone who played won a prize. It seemed that Marty was sneaking prizes to everyone who played at the previous booth he’d been stationed at.

  Roy had been annoyed, but I’d had to laugh. It was just so Marty. He loved kids, and he was kind of a big kid himself. It didn’t shock me at all that he’d been handing out little toys and candies to everyone. Part of me wanted to go over and check in on how he was doing. But the other part of me thought it maybe wasn’t the best idea. He’d asked for space, after all. And he hadn’t reached out to me, yet. The idea that maybe he never would hurt in ways I couldn’t find the words to express, but I wanted to respect his request. I just hoped we’d find a way back to each other, someday—something I was fairly sure would be further threatened if Andre and I started dating.

  You can’t worry about Marty any more, I firmly told myself. It’s been eight months and now you need to focus on your own happiness.

  I hurried away before he saw me, so I didn’t make things awkward.

  I’d put off examining the bonfire until last, and even just approaching the pile of carefully arranged wood had my palms sweating. The dreams were getting worse and more vivid, but I didn’t know why. I’d never been afraid of fire before, and I worked with candles and open flames all the time while making potions. I’d never even been badly burned.

  The back of my neck crawled as I thought about lighting the bonfire, my stomach souring. Even the delicious smell of burgers and fries suddenly had me feeling almost seasick. It didn’t make any sense. Everything was going well. Everyone was in the right places, things were running smoothly, and guests seemed to be having a blast from what I could see. There were plenty of laughing, smiling faces going around.

  So, I didn’t understand why it felt like everything was going to go horribly wrong and yet, I did. Ever since I’d woken up, I’d felt that nagging worry. And it had followed me around for the entire day—just this kind of persistent sense of dread hanging over me. And it just kept getting worse. I couldn’t make myself stop thinking about all the ways everything could go wrong, because everything had been going wrong for weeks. And I still didn’t know why.

  Wanda had just called it bad luck. And, of course, I’d experienced bad luck before, but it had never lasted this long, nor had so many things gone wrong. Yet, I wasn’t cursed. I was pretty darn sure of that after Wanda had tested me twice. So what was the deal? Maybe there was no deal and it was exactly as Wanda had said—bad luck and nothing more.

  Yet, why didn’t it feel like that was the answer?

  Finn was mad at me. Things were up in the air with Andre still. Marty was avoiding me. My shop was just barely limping along, and it was only due to Wanda coming to my rescue that it was limping at all. Without her, it would have been dead in the water.

  I really wished I’d gotten a chance to talk to Finn. I kept an eye out for his familiar head of blond hair, but I hadn’t managed to catch sight of him. After the other night, we needed to talk. Things would be calmer, and maybe we could go for breakfast like we used to. There was a spot in town, Sunny’s, where they had amazing pancakes. It felt a bit better, to have a plan in place. It helped me stomp down on my nerves about something going wrong at the festival. Everything was fine. All the planning and hard work was paying off.

  If I kept telling myself as much, maybe I’d even be able to believe it.

  I must not have been very good at the self talk stuff, because when I made it back to my little booth, Imani took one look at my face and her smile slipped away.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing, everything’s going great,” I said quickly, embarrassed that I was as easy to read as a book. Wanda had always said as much, but I’d never believed her. “Thank you so much for keeping an eye on things. And selling a lot of it, wow.”

  There was less than half the stock from when I’d stepped away. All the candles and a huge amount of the bottles were gone. I was completely out of zest potions, and Dreamtime Oil.

  Imani grinned and buffed her nails against her shirt. “I’ve always been fairly good at sales. Mama always called it a gift.”

  “Well, thank you again.” I handed over the coffee and funnel cake I’d swung by the food truck to bring back to her.

  It seemed the least I could do, but I’d forgone getting my own. By the time I’d gotten to the window to give Fifi my order, I was afraid that anything I put in my stomach was going to make an immediate reappearance, owing to the troubled state of my nerves.

  “I’m happy to help, but I do take bribes.” Imani grinned as she pinched off a bit of funnel cake and popped it into her mouth. “But seriously, Poppy. Are you okay? You look three shades paler than white paint.”

  I tried for a smile, but stress twisted it more into a grimace. “I’m okay, I’m just feeling… off.”

  “Off? Like how?”

  “Like something is going to go wrong.”

  Imani watched me for a second, chewing thoughtfully. Then she set her bounty down on the table and dusted her hands off against her skirt. “Can I have a strand of your hair?”

  I looked at her, taken aback. “Sure. Why?”

  It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Imani, but when a witch starts asking for hair or blood or anything like that, it’s not normally for fun reasons. And before Wanda, I had a kind of instinctive fear of witches, since they tended to be both territorial and vindictive and they didn’t usually like non-witch magic users in their territory. And they really didn’t like gypsies. But that was a long time ago and it was before Scapegrace had ever been a thought. Now things were very different and that was a good thing.

  “Nothing bad,” Imani promised. “I just have something that might help you, but it needs to be primed to the person.”

  I figured, why not? Imani was probably the nicest witch I’d ever met. I mean, Wanda was my best friend, but ‘nice’ probably wasn’t the first word that came to mind if someone asked me to describe her. Meanwhile, even Maverick seemed to enjoy Imani’s company, even if it was against his own will. And frankly, if Imani had something in mind that would help me, I was all for it.

  So, I plucked one blonde hair from my head, and handed it over. Imani grabbed her purse from underneath the stall counter and pulled out a little square cloth bag. She coiled up my hair and slipped it inside before pulling the drawstring tight and looping the thread around the top.

  She then offered me the little pouch, and I saw that she’d secured it with a bit of leather cord. “Now, the gris-gris works best when you tuck it into your left shoe, but…”

  We both glanced down at my sandals.

  “Just maybe wear it like a necklace.” Imani pressed the gris-gris into my hands with a smile. “It will help.”

  The bag felt warm, which was neat, since other than hair, all I’d seen in there were some herbs and a stone, nothing that should be giving off any heat at all. It was probably Imani’s magic, it always felt like warm sunshine to me, like she’d brought a little bit of the heat from her home town, New Orleans, with her.

  “Thank you,” I said. I’d have taken anything that might have helped.

  I slipped the leather cord over my head and tucked the cloth bag under the neckline of my shirt, and I honestly did feel a little better. At least, that feeling like I was going to jump out of my skin at any moment had faded. Though the feeling of being watched lingered, and had me glancing over my shoulder every once in a while, searching the crowd.

  A few hours later, I was on my own and the sky was already streaking with red and gold as the sun sank behind the trees. I started breaking down what little stock I had left, placing the potions in bottles and the candles in their own boxes, along with the few dreamcatchers that hadn’t sold. Once it was full dark, there wouldn’t be much more in the way of sales to be had. At that point, the festival really switched to more of a party, with the bonfire and music and food. So, I packed everything away and lugged the boxes back to my Jeep before it got too dark to see clearly.

  I was just stashing the last box in the back of my car when Jake, one of Louisa Rutledge’s older sons came jogging up. The Jeep’s interior lights hit his eyes, and they backwashed yellow in the gathering shadow like a predator’s. It wasn’t unusual, he was a werewolf after all, but for some reason just that one little thing had the back of my neck crawling.

  I shook myself. That was completely ridiculous, I’d known Jake for years. He was a good kid. A little mischievous, sure, but not any trouble. What was wrong with me?

  “Hey, Poppy,” he said, not noticing my little internal argument. Jake shoved his shaggy dark hair back off his face with one hand. “We’re having some trouble getting the bonfire to light. Can you come give us a hand?”

  I swallowed, hard. The idea of getting close to the fire made me feel like my skin was going to slither off. My heart broke into a sprint, sweat beading at my temples.

  Jake frowned, his nose twitching.

  “Sure,” I said, trying to distract him from my reaction. “I’d be happy to.”

  The lie coated the inside of my mouth like ashes.

  Chapter Fourteen

  There was already a bit of a crowd gathered, waiting for the bonfire, and the happy chatter began to drift into muttering the longer the volunteers took to actually ignite the pile of kindling.

  My anxiety took another bound forward as I tried to help everyone figure out why the starter wasn’t working. I just wanted the stupid thing lit so I could get away from it. The disquiet of the crowd wasn’t helping, either. Somehow, over the sounds of the crowd, the music, the dinging of the games and the music coming from various stalls, I could hear people starting to complain.

  Standing there, trying to coax some sparks to life felt like torture, like knowing a monster was going to jump out at you in a haunted attraction, but not when it would happen. The anticipation drew out and out and out until you were jumping at every creak.

  I just wanted it over. My heart was beating so heavily that I could feel it in my mouth. If the blasted fire would catch, I could get away from it and stay away from it until it had burned itself out. My head was full of dreams of twisting gold and scarlet flames, and all the ways everything could go wrong.

  The world went still for a second, or at least it felt that way. There was a pause, like something huge taking in a breath, and then with an enormous, echoing humph, the fire caught.

  But it wasn’t the slow, gradual climb up the stacked tower of wood and kindling that we’d carefully planned. Instead, the fire exploded upwards, swarming over the pile like the entire thing had been soaked in gasoline. Flames ate at the wood like a starved creature, devouring in huge, ragged gulps. Dark wood turned gray and scaly before crumbling away into ashes.

  I flinched backwards with a scream, throwing myself away from the sudden burst. The flames shot upward, raining burning embers down onto the grass and lashing out at the closest stalls. A few cloth awnings caught, smoking and sparking in the dark. People screamed, trying to get clear as little points of fire started burning in the grass like a sinister field of stars in the dark.

  No! I thought, shaking my head. It’s all coming true!

  My hands clasped over my mouth, horrified as the flames stretched, higher and higher still, as though reaching for the skies. Smoke burned my eyes, and hot air slapped me in the face, like a dragon had exhaled its fiery breath on us all.

  Then Roy was there with a huge bucket of water. The muscles in his arms bulged as he threw it, not at the fire like I’d expected, but at the grass, soaking it and making sure none of the burning bits floating down from the bonfire would catch. Others joined in, with water and sand, some putting out the smaller flares using blankets they’d brought to sit on. Still other people took off jackets and beat the fires out on the little shop stalls, making sure it didn’t spread.

  I couldn’t breathe. There was a ringing in my ears that drowned out everything around me, the shouting, the running, the people yelling back and forth to each other as they tried to keep the fire from reaching the tree line.

  Finn. Where was Finn?

  It was the only thought racing through my head. Last I’d seen him, he was eating hot dogs with his friends at Roy’s truck. But where was he now? I turned around, searching for him and then round again, when I didn’t catch any hint of his blonde head.

  The bonfire had already calmed down to something controllable, burning merrily in the confines we’d set for it, and the other stray fires were in the process of being put out, but none of that could calm the panic clawing at my insides.

  Finn was here, somewhere. I needed to find him, to make sure he was okay. The fear was a drumbeat inside my head, driving me forward. I just needed to find Finn.

  People were crowding close again to see what was going on since the immediate danger had passed, and I searched the crowd for blonde hair and freckles, but I couldn’t see my son anywhere. Someone jostled me, crowding closer. The heat, the people, it was suffocating. I couldn’t breathe, but more importantly, I couldn’t see my son.

  I stumbled through the crowd, gasping out apologies when I shoved through a gap too narrow for me. My skin was crawling with each touch, the fear ratcheting higher and higher. I finally burst free of the crowd and doubled over, coughing and trying to suck air into a chest that felt crushed flat. It was like there were bands of metal wrapping around me, squashing my ribs.

  When I finally caught sight of Finn off at the edges of the main clearing, standing unhurt with a group of his friends from school, a couple of those iron bands fell away. He was fine, and it looked like he was keeping his friends from getting too close to the fire and the efforts to keep it controlled. A little sliver of pride wormed its way through the fear that was still eating at me. Finn was still looking out for others.

  He was okay. I finally managed to get a little trickle of blessedly cool air past my lips. I wanted to go over to him, hug him, check him over, but I knew he wouldn’t be thrilled with his mom fussing over him in front of his friends. Just the thought of heading Finn’s way made my anxiety take a leap forward, because it suddenly dawned on me that he was safer away from me.

  The thought brought me up short. I would never put Finn at risk, he could never be in danger from me. But everything near me lately had been going up in metaphorical and literal smoke, and even if Wanda said I wasn’t cursed, I didn’t want to risk being around Finn until I figured out what the heck was going on.

  So, with one last longing look back to make sure he was really okay, I staggered away from the crowd. More people were coming closer, trying to see what was going on. Pushing through them felt a bit like being a salmon spawning against the current of a river, but I eventually found a clear space between two stalls where I could stand and get out of the way. The evening breeze picked up, drying a bit of the sweat on the back of my neck, and I shivered.

  I should have been in that crowd, trying to organize the efforts to put out the fires, keeping things under control. But I just couldn’t force myself to go back over there, so I just watched the people crowding closer, and the sense of dread filled my belly with ice that climbed all the way up the back of my throat.

  It was then that I remembered the gris-gris around my neck and reaching up, I ran my fingers past it, feeling suddenly calmer. Movement in the wrong direction suddenly caught my eye, and I turned my head just in time to see Andre slipping away from the crowd and into the trees at the edge of the field. When had he even arrived? I had no idea, because it wasn’t as though he’d come up to see me. Maybe he’d arrived at the exact moment the fire had broken out of control?