“Yeah, she is.” His eyes darted towards the oven. “How long until pizza?”

  I laughed. Even with all the strange things in our lives, covens and faeries and magic and vampires, a teenage boy was still a bottomless pit when it came to food.

  “Just a few more minutes. Then we can start on that one while the second one is cooking.” His face lit up as I continued, “So, the judges liked your project?”

  I finished washing up and dried my hands as we then sat down with our hot slices of pizza and I did my best to very inconspicuously shift most the mac n cheese off the top.

  Finn took a big bite of his, chewing and swallowing before he answered, thank goodness. “Yeah, they did. But there was one guy who actually powered a little clock with a potato, and someone who made a really cool terrarium.” He looked down at his ribbon. “Hence, runner up.”

  I chewed my own slice carefully, strands of mozzarella cheese stretching out. “And Sophie won first place. Good for her. The judges must have been really impressed.”

  That little flicker of something moved over Finn’s face again, and he took a bigger bite. “Yeah, they did. Especially after Mr. Lannister left.”

  “Left?” I put my pizza down, confused. “Why would he leave? Isn’t he the science teacher who was in charge of everything?”

  Finn shrugged, his eyes on his slice. “I don’t know why he left. I mean, he said something wasn’t agreeing with him or his stomach or something, so the other judges filled in. After that, people’s scores got a lot better.”

  Hmm. Mr. Lannister was a new teacher to Haven Hollow High. And he apparently was a pretty hard one. He might not have been Finn’s favorite teacher, but he was good at what he did, from what I’d heard from other parents, anyway.

  Finn was most of his way through a third slice of pizza by the time I’d started my second. He dabbed at the grease on his chin with a napkin and then served himself up another one, eyeing the mac n cheese on my plate with interest.

  “You aren’t going to eat your mac?”

  “Have at it,” I answered as I pushed the plate toward him.

  “So,” he glanced over towards the stove. “You said something about a second pizza?”

  I had to put my slice down, because I started laughing too hard to hold on to it.

  ***

  I was just settling down at the kitchen table with my first coffee of the day early the next morning when my phone dinged with an alert from the council group chat.

  The council had existed for as long as Haven Hollow had, with members joining and leaving as people moved and moved on. The council was meant to help protect the secrecy of the supernatural members of town, to allow them to live in peace with their mundane counterparts, and also with each other. The entire point of a Hollow was safety, so there was no infighting allowed. If one faction had a problem with another, they had to leave it at the proverbial gate and play nice.

  I’d joined the council not long after moving to town, and I enjoyed helping out and pitching ideas. The constant meetings, though, were a bit draining, so eventually, I’d proposed the idea of a group chat. Finn had one all the time, for friends, group projects, events, and it had seemed like a good way to keep in contact without having to find a meeting place that was secure all the time.

  Of course, we still needed a degree of secrecy, so we’d turned to Henner Tayir, our local Technomancer. Henner was the grandson of a witch (Betanya Tayir), and while he wasn’t a witch or warlock himself, he’d inherited the gift of magical tech. That meant he could practically make any electronic device sit up and sing for him. Mostly he used his gift to build gadgets for his amateur ghost hunting business that he had with his friend R.J, and my ex-boyfriend, Marty, but he’d been happy to help us out. So, the council had ended up with a group chat that was secure enough that no one was going to be able to hack into it, even if they got ahold of one of our phones.

  Still waking up, I tugged my phone closer and frowned at the message preview. It was from Roy, and it started off with a ‘Very funny’, which didn’t exactly bode well for whatever came before.

  Roy was Haven Hollow’s resident Sasquatch, and he’d been on the council since I’d moved to town. We’d dated briefly, before I’d realized he had his own soulmate in Fifi, the succubus. It had stung, at first, but they were so happy together, and he and I wouldn’t have worked long term, so I was just glad for him that he’d found his other half (and I was equally glad I’d found mine).

  I knew Roy, and he wasn’t the kind of man to use the council chat for sending funny pictures or anything, so something was up.

  The message was a long one, and it was more of a rant, really.

  Okay, whoever thought this was a good idea needs to smarten up. I spotted it on my way to work, and guess what? I wasn’t the first person to see it. There were mundanes standing around taking pictures that I had to chase off.

  I frowned, confused, but then I noticed that he’d included a couple pictures, so I opened one up and almost spit my coffee onto the table.

  The images were obviously hastily taken from a smart phone, but the pictures were clear enough. Roy had gotten a shot of what looked like a shrub on the edge of someone’s property, but the entire thing was made of gold.

  “Crap and a half,” I whispered to myself.

  Chapter Four

  The gold metal glinted in the sun, casting dazzling light across the grass.

  There was no way the bush could have been made or cast, not with each of the leaves coated, every vein detailed in bright and shiny gold. Even the tiny blossoms that clung to it were gold, not to mention the dead buds. I very much doubted that someone would have such an expensive thing cast and then just planted it in the yard where anyone could damage it or steal it.

  As I sat there, staring at the photos, my stomach sinking down somewhere close to my knees, another message dinged through from Roy.

  Can someone ask Henner to scrub any photos or videos that ended up online while I deal with this? And Wanda, seriously, keep your people in line. We don’t need this kind of crap right now.

  I glanced over reflexively at my carefully arranged potion making equipment on the counter, chewing my lower lip. There was no way, right? I’d only made one Gypsy Gold potion, and Andre had taken it with him. I knew he had, because he’d told me about how the kids had loved it. He’d even sent me pictures of the kids with the items they’d turned into fool’s gold.

  And even if Andre hadn’t taken the potion with him, even if he’d spilled it on a shrub or something and been too embarrassed to tell me, the potion only worked for an hour or so—an hour and a half max, depending on how much of the potion was used. And Andre had been gone for most of the month, so there was no way this gilded bush could have been from my potion.

  But it was too close to be a coincidence, wasn’t it?

  Unless… my magic had been unstable lately, growing and changing into something new that I wasn’t really familiar with, and definitely not comfortable with. But still, magic wasn’t something that could be done accidentally, and definitely not without even noticing it. I’d never heard of anyone casting spells in their sleep. And I didn’t even know where that bush was so how could I have accidentally turned it into gold?

  But what else could it have been? I guessed that Roy was technically right in that witches could have done such magic. But really, if they had, they would have done so their own shrubs, and not left a fortune in gold on some random person’s yard. And, furthermore, why would a witch want to turn a bush into gold? Especially when everyone was well aware that supernaturals in Haven Hollow needed to keep a low profile. It just didn’t make any sense. And I was quite sure that as soon as Wanda read Roy’s message, she wasn’t going to be happy.

  Sure enough, another message chimed, this time from an irritated Wanda.

  Excuse me? It wasn’t anyone in the coven, thanks. As if we have the time to go around turning random bushes into gold. That’s completely ridiculous! I mean, really, Roy—maybe you should be looking for Rumpelstiltskin.

  Roy replied fast enough that I was worried he was going to crack his phone screen.

  Very funny, Wanda. Whoever the hell is responsible for this—I want them to know it’s not funny. I just had to rip a three-hundred-pound bush out of the ground and then I had to hide it in my back yard so no more mundanes would see it.

  Funny that you chose your own back yard for a gold bush that must be worth thousands, Wanda responded.

  If you want it, come and get it, Roy texted back. The point is that someone is screwing around with magic. Again. If you know someone else in town capable of creating this kind of magic, feel free to say so.

  Guilt chewed at me. I didn’t know if I should say anything about my potion, or if it would just muddle things more. It really was too much to be a coincidence, that I dragged out an old potion recipe and something random turned to gold. But…

  I squinted at the pictures Roy had sent again. It was hard to tell from a photo, but the gleam didn’t look like Pyrite, which was pale and almost watery. That luster looked like real gold, and if the shrub was as heavy as Roy said it was, then that made sense, since real gold was ridiculously heavy. Pyrite wasn’t.

  There wasn’t a potion I’d ever heard of that could turn something to gold, real gold, permanently. Or everyone who was anyone would have been doing it.

  But I couldn’t shed my nerves. Especially not since a couple months back, an entity with a grudge to settle had manipulated my own magic against me into a kind of bad luck curse. I’d thought that curse was gone—I mean, I hadn’t seen any more signs of it recently, but what if it was still lingering? What if it had just gone dormant or something, and the curse was going to start causing problems for me and everyone in Haven Hollow again?

  The blare of my phone jerked me out of my thoughts, the display announcing that it was a call from Wanda. She must have still been awake from the previous evening, to be calling this early.

  Ever since Wanda had been accidentally blooded by her now husband, Lorcan Rowe, she’d been in kind of a precarious position. Being blooded by a vampire, who in his defense hadn’t known she was a witch, only that she’d been in a bad car crash, had turned her into a Blood Witch, with some seriously scary powers. No one was a fan of Blood Witches, not the vampires, or the regular kind of witches, and they’d both been kind of up in arms about the situation.

  They were pretty insistent that Lorcan finish the job and turn Wanda completely, but that would have stripped her of her magic, so no way was he doing it against her will. The solution had been an elaborate hoax where they tricked everyone into thinking Wanda was a full vampire, and that meant she’d had to take on a kind of permanent nocturnal schedule.

  I answered before my phone could ring again, but I didn’t even manage to get a hello out before Wanda started talking.

  “What the spell crawled up Bigfoot’s backside?”

  “I don’t—”

  “—and why the spell are we getting blamed for every magical mishap in town? Last time I checked, the coven members were the only people who actually knew what they were doing when it came to magic!”

  “I’m sure—.”

  “—If Roy stubs his toe, blame the witches. If Stanley has the worst gas known to man, blame the witches. If those rotten teenagers cherry bomb Haven High’s toilets, blame the witches! I’m so fed up with this crap!”

  “Stanley had gas?”

  She paused a moment. “Yeah, it was like a week ago—apparently, he wasn’t paying attention when he was mixing up his sweet cream recipe and put too much of something in it which didn’t agree with his centaur half and the result was the entirety of Main Street had to be evacuated because of the stench.”

  “What?”

  She paused. “It was at night and you were already home with your Mr. Darcy.”

  “Oh.”

  I pulled my coffee mug a little closer to me, cupping it with my free hand. “To go back to this gold bush business, I think Roy’s just frustrated—I don’t think he meant to blame you.”

  “Well, it sure sounded like he meant to blame me and us.”

  “Try not to take offense.”

  “I swear, I would love to take that sasquatch down a peg or two.”

  “Wanda, don’t get any ideas, please.”

  “Too late.”

  “Wanda...”

  “Fine. I’m not going to do anything to Roy.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  “Are you crossing your fingers?”

  “Ugh, you’re impossible to lie to.”

  I laughed. “The point is: this kind of thing could bring a lot of trouble for us, and Roy doesn’t know much about magic.”

  “He knows jack-all about magic.”

  “Right. So, who else would he think of, other than Circle Scapegrace?”

  Wanda sniffed, clearly not mollified at all. “And Taliyah’s been harping at me about this, too. Can you believe that? Like I didn’t grow out of random pranks a hundred years ago. Besides, if I could make a solid gold bush, it’s not like I’d leave it in someone’s yard! I’d keep it for myself and I wouldn’t be making three-hundred-pound bushes either! I’d be making jewelry or something I could sell in my store.”

  “I believe you.”

  “I swear to the Goddess I’m going to hex that ape-man with jock itch.”

  My lips twitched, and I pressed them together to make sure I didn’t laugh.

  The phone crackled as she gave a gusty sigh. “Honestly, I haven’t seen a witch hunt like this since the eighteen hundreds.”

  “Maybe it was just a fluke,” I hedged, casting a worried look towards my potion making supplies. “An accident. The point is: I’m sure it will all blow over.”

  “If you think I’m letting this outrage, this, this, profiling go without an apology, you are very sadly mistaken, Poppy Morton.”

  Wanda was my BFF. I hadn’t even known that friends like her could exist before I came to the Hollow. So, I closed my mouth and very carefully did not mention all the times that Wanda’s Blood Witch powers had sparked out of control and she’d done something that most people agreed just couldn’t be done. Like when she’d raised Libby, the zombie. Or when she’d brought Darla, a ghost, back to life and given her a physical body again. Or the time she and Maverick had accidentally turned a mannequin into a shapeshifter girl named Sybil who was currently living as Maverick’s daughter.

  Though, in Wanda’s defense, her magical mishaps always seemed to revolve around bringing things to life, not turning living things into statues, gold or otherwise. Thank goodness it was just a bush—it would have been terrible if it had happened to a person or an animal.

  “And I’m certainly not going to lend Roy my decades of experience and fantastically powerful magic and sheer brilliance until I’ve been appropriately groveled to, I can tell you that much,” Wanda continued without pausing for breath. “I can’t believe the nerve.”

  I didn’t get a chance to make any kind of response, before I could hear a low male voice murmuring too quietly for me to make out the words.

  Wanda cleared her throat. “I have to go. Lorcan just offered to make things up to me, which means really naughty sex.”

  “Oh, God, Wanda, I could have done without that.”

  “Once you start getting some from your Mr. Darcy, you’ll understand what I mean.”

  “Thanks for that.” Yes, I’d talked about my sex life, or lack thereof, with Wanda. And she’d told me, just like I’d known she would, that I was wasting time and I should ‘jump Mr. Darcy’s bones before he realizes you’re not Elizabeth Bennett’. Thanks, Wanda.

  “I’ll talk to you later, Poppy.”

  And then she was gone.

  I had to laugh a little. It was nice to see Wanda so happy with Lorcan. They’d had a really rough road to get to where they now were, and they deserved to be happy. But still, if Wanda hadn’t turned the shrub to gold, and none of the other coven members had done it, then who had? And why? It seemed to me to be the strangest of pranks.

  Finn stumbled into the kitchen then, rubbing his bleary eyes, his blonde hair, so like mine, sticking up in places. He yawned, wide enough to make his jaw crack. “Who were you talking to?”

  “Wanda.” I stood up and went to the fridge to grab the orange juice for him as something occurred to me—even if it was still a longshot. “Hey, Finn, you didn’t touch any of my potion making equipment, did you?”

  He blinked at me, frowning. “No. Why?”

  That was what I figured, but I sighed anyway. “No reason, just curious.” I didn’t want to overwhelm him first thing in the morning by explaining what was going on with the golden bush. And I also didn’t want him to get any ideas about getting involved, because that’s exactly what he did whenever he got an inkling of something going down in this town—he wanted to get involved. And I very definitely did not want him to get involved.

  He smiled at me sleepily as I passed him the orange juice and went to prepare him some cereal, and I smiled back automatically.

  As to Finn playing around with my potion making equipment, I didn’t think he would have. He didn’t know how to make potions—and he’d never been much interested in making them or even watching me make them. Furthermore, I’d only made the one Gypsy Gold potion, anyway. And, I reminded myself, that potion was with Andre. I made a mental note to call Andre later, and make sure he still had his bottle with him. Which was a silly thought, because what—his bottle just decided to take the next train back to Haven Hollow? Yeah, ridiculous.

  The point was, I just didn’t know what was going on in Haven Hollow. With any luck, this gold bush business was just a fluke. The kind of magical hiccup that happened in a town with a significant paranormal population—with magic practically in the air.

  Yes, this would all blow over and turn out to be nothing at all.

  But the sinking feeling in my gut told me I didn’t really believe that.