The screen was filled with the face of a pretty young woman, in her early twenties probably. Her blonde hair was pulled back by a black scarf that had little cartoon ghosts on it. She grinned at the camera as the video started playing.

  “Hey fam,” she chirped, her head tipping to one side. “This is me, Kenzie Chase, here with Chasing the Paranormal. I’ve gotten your DMs, and I wanted you to know that I’m here, in Haven Hollow, to give you exactly what you’re asking for.”

  The scene then shifted to a location with more shade, the shadows falling over Kenzie’s face. “Yep, you heard right. I’m here in Haven Hollow, Oregon, following the story of a town where random objects have begun to turn to gold. Is this a paranormal event, or just a hoax the locals have put on for the tourists? Either way, we’re in for a trip, right? So, join me, while I get to the bottom of what’s going on in this supposedly sleepy little town. Could Haven Hollow be a hotbed of paranormal events? You can soon decide for yourself.”

  The camera zoomed out, showing Kenzie standing in front of the Haven Hollow sign that welcomed people into town, with Kenzie framed right in the middle, and ‘Chasing the Paranormal’ scrawled across the top.

  No one said anything.

  Instead, we all sat there in horrified silence for a long moment. Then Roy swore so viciously that I was surprised it didn’t peel the varnish right off the wooden table. His phone creaked in protest as his hand clenched around it.

  Wanda stared down into her coffee mug, like she was thinking of adding a splash of something stronger, and I couldn’t blame her.

  “What are we going to do?” Fifi asked in a tight whisper.

  “Well, look on the bright side,” Wanda said, a humorless smile on her face. “Maybe we’ll get lucky, and she’ll end up turning into gold.”

  ***

  Kenzie Chase descended on Haven Hollow like one of the biblical plagues, but somehow more annoying.

  It seemed every time someone turned around, there she was, poking her nose and her camera lens into everything. The council group chat was lighting up with sightings of her: at the cemetery, the woods, some of the older and closed, even condemned buildings. I’d even seen her myself, poking around at the spot where the gold tree had been, before Roy had relocated it.

  The girl was a menace.

  But what could we do? She wasn’t doing anything wrong, other than occasional trespassing, but Taliyah could only give her a warning—not arrest her. And we couldn’t exactly boot her out of the town, especially without making her even more suspicious than she already was. Sure, we could drum up some spells that might make her want to avoid certain locations, but those spells weren’t permanent. And as soon as she returned to her hotel, she’d no doubt make note to herself to investigate said locations again.

  And if Wanda performed a spell to wipe her memory, all it would take was one of her fans reminding her of her newest investigation into Haven Hollow and I was sure she’d return, probably even more determined. No, using magic in this case was going to be too dangerous.

  Henner had been doing his best to make sure any videos Kenzie took ended up corrupted and unusable as soon as she attempted to upload them to the web, but that just seemed to make her more determined.

  I was rushing around the kitchen, throwing things together in Finn’s lunch bag early one morning, trying to get us both out the door in time, when I got a notification on my phone that there had been an update on Kenzie’s channel.

  Caught somewhere between fear that she’d actually found something worth mentioning, and hope that she was finally giving up and leaving town, I opened the video.

  In it, Kenzie was standing just outside of Stomper’s Creamery, using the striped red and white awning to frame her. She was smiling, but there was something about her eyes that made me nervous.

  “Hey, fam,” she chirped to the camera. “I haven’t been making much headway in this case, as people are surprisingly quiet and don’t seem to want to talk to me. I’m not giving up, but there might be more going on in this town than I thought.”

  Uh, oh. My stomach sank.

  “You’ve probably noticed that I’ve been a bit sparse with my posting? Well, funny story about that. Yesterday, I wanted to document the place where some of the possible paranormal phenomena occurred, but the tree that turned to gold is now gone, of course. In fact, it looked like it was pulled right out of the ground, not even roots left behind.” She raised her brows at that. “In fact,” she lowered her voice then, and glanced around like she was worried about being overheard while making a video she was going to post online for hundreds of thousands of viewers. “The video ended up so corrupted, I couldn’t even upload it. Weird, right? Truth is, most of my videos are ending up super messed up. They work on my camera when I watch them, but as soon as I attempt to upload them, they’re destroyed. Coincidence much?”

  She brought the camera up close to her face, and I could see irritation warring with excitement in her eyes. “It’s probably just a matter of time before something happens to this one,” she continued, as I immediately texted Henner to let him know he’d missed one. And an important one, at that. After I’d texted him, I returned to Kenzie’s video.

  “I think something is going on in Haven Hollow. Something big. And someone doesn’t want me to find out just what that something is. But don’t worry, fam. No way am I giving up. Keep checking my channel for updates and don’t forget to heart and follow. See you on the spooky side.”

  I sighed and rubbed my forehead. This was beyond annoying. It was hard enough trying to figure out what was going on in town without some supernatural Nancy Drew sneaking around and spying on everyone. Not to mention, more and more objects were showing up turned to gold. I’d started driving a weird, zig-zag route to and from work, trying to spot any rocks, mailboxes, or anything else that might show up gilded. In one situation, I’d had to call Roy about a board sign that was now gleaming gold. The thing easily weighed over two hundred pounds, and there was just no way for me to lift it and stick it in my Jeep.

  And I wasn’t the only one. The council was going out of their way to scour the town, trying to keep ahead of the gold plague, before a pesky ghost hunter could catch sight of them. But we still couldn’t figure out what was causing it all. Or why. Or how to stop it.

  And the pattern of things turning to gold... well, it wasn’t happening in a pattern at all! It was more like someone had been walking through town, spying this and that and then zapping those things with a gold-making gun.

  It did seem like there was some weight to my theory about how the spell worked, because Taliyah mentioned that the police station was being flooded with reports of thefts from all over town. Haven Hollow residents were finding gold items stolen from their homes in more and more bizarre ways.

  Jewelry. Fillings. Candle holders. One baffled woman reported that the gold inlay at the edges of her mother’s fancy China had vanished overnight. And how in the world was that possible? It was getting more difficult to explain it all as one burglar. And we weren’t getting any closer to finding out who was doing it, or how.

  Everyone was stressed and snapping at each other, and with all the difficulties that Haven Hollow had faced over the past few years, the threat of being exposed by such a bizarre bit of magic was a stress no one needed.

  I leaned back against the cabinets and stuffed my phone into my purse. I just couldn’t bear to hear the ping of the group chat for one second longer. All the accusations and the sniping back and forth, it was twisting my stomach into knots.

  I hated all the suspicion, and I hated what it was doing to us. Because doubts had started to worm their way into my head, I kept thinking back to that bottle of Gypsy Gold I’d made for Andre. It still seemed like it was too big a coincidence—that the moment I’d made the potion, suddenly we were under attack by a golden curse?

  Ever since Alecto the Fury boiled into town, I’d been even more nervous about the idea of my own magic being out of control. She’d turned my own powers back on me like a curse, a fitting ‘punishment’ for breaking Marty’s heart. Fortunately, Marty had defended me, and told the Fury right to her face that he didn’t want me punished. And that had pretty much been the end of that.

  But my magic had still ultimately been the source of my own misery, reaching out into every aspect of my life and turning my life against me: potions going wrong, accidents, misfortune and strife. So, I couldn’t help but be a little paranoid about every roil and gurgle of power running through my bones.

  Was I the one responsible for this gold business? Had my subconscious somehow done it? Had the potion, one I hadn’t made in years, gone wrong and this new magic of mine had fueled it? But if that was the case, how was it happening? And why were some objects turning to gold randomly throughout the town—objects that seemingly had nothing to do with me?

  The only other option was that someone close to me had taken the Gypsy Gold potion, and had somehow changed it and was now turning things to gold deliberately. But who would do such a thing?

  I’d only made one potion, and Finn hadn’t even touched the bottle. The only other option then was Andre. But even the thought of that hurt my heart.

  I suddenly felt sick. As a Magician, I believed Andre had the power required to borrow the gold from one item in order to turn another object into gold. I mean, I wasn’t sure about that, but Magicians possessed magic. It wasn’t witch magic, true, but it was still magic.

  Furthermore, Andre had had the potion in his possession, and he’d definitely been out of town. Hadn’t he? I mean, he’d sent me pictures, but how could I be sure if those pictures were new? He could have taken them years ago—but why would he have taken shots of gold items? The other answer was—he could have forged them with his own magic. But the question still remained: why? Why in the world would he sneak back into town with a bunch of made-up stories about his travels, and fake images, while secretly turning random things to gold?

  He wouldn’t. No one would. It made absolutely no sense. But what else was I supposed to think? The accusations in the council group chat were getting wilder and wilder, and their paranoia was starting to get to me.

  I didn’t think Andre would do anything like that, and he certainly wouldn’t lie about it—I mean, I didn’t think he would, anyway. I knew him, in a way I’d never known anyone in my life. I knew him down to his soul—I knew him almost like I knew myself. But that was a soul connection. As to our own separate experiences and the stories that made us both us, I didn’t know him as well. In fact, I didn’t know him that well at all. But even so, our soul connection was such that I could feel the truth—and that truth told me there was no way he’d done this.

  Andre took his job as a Magician seriously. He spent his life helping children, and inspiring hope in people, making the world a brighter place. Yes, there was no way he was responsible.

  But what if I was wrong? My track record with men was hard to ignore.

  The clock on the stove ticked over, and I yelped when I saw the time. If Finn and I didn’t leave in the next two minutes, we were going to be late dropping him off at school.

  “Finn,” I called up the stairs. “Come on. We have to get a move on.”

  As it was, he wasn’t going to get a proper breakfast. I grabbed a couple of granola bars for him to eat in the car that would hopefully tide him over until lunch. But when Finn came down the stairs, not only was he not ready to go, he was still in his pajamas.

  “Mom,” he croaked, his face flushed and a bit sweaty. “I’m really not feeling well. Can I stay home today? I just want to go back to sleep.”

  “Of course.” I hurried up a few steps to meet him. When I laid the back of my hand on his face, his skin was warm and a little clammy. He also had dark circles under his eyes, making him look a little like a raccoon. While I wouldn’t have thought Finn was warm enough to be considered ‘feverish’, he did look run down and overall, miserable. He’d been so quiet and distracted lately, I couldn’t help but wonder if he was having trouble at school, and maybe that was the reason why he wanted to stay home.

  He didn’t look well, though, and he was clearly exhausted—he obviously needed a break, for whatever reason. So, I smoothed his hair back off his sweaty forehead. “Finn… is everything okay?” I hesitated, because I’d asked him this question now over ten times. Whatever it was that was going on with him might have just been teenage stuff; not wanting to talk to his mom about everything, the first signs of independence. But I just couldn’t quiet that worried little voice in the back of my head.

  “You know you can talk to me about anything, right?” I meant every word. I’d do anything for my son and I hoped he knew that.

  He looked at me, his face flushed. For a second, I thought he was going to spill whatever it was that was bothering him. But the moment passed, and he shook his head. “It’s nothing. I just don’t feel good. I’m really tired.”

  It was a struggle to hold back my disappointment, but I managed. “Okay. Do you want me to close the store today? I could stay home with you.”

  Finn shook his head. “I’ll be okay. I’m just going to go back to sleep.”

  “Okay.” I made myself smile. “You head back upstairs then, and I’ll bring you some water and juice, okay?”

  Finn nodded heavily, and then padded back up the stairs in his bare feet.

  I couldn’t push him to tell me more. That would just backfire. So, I grabbed a bottled water and a bottle of orange juice from the fridge. Something was clearly bothering my son, and I didn’t have any idea what that something was. All I could do was hope he’d confide in me soon.

  I took the drinks upstairs, and made sure Finn was tucked in and comfortable, and that his phone was in easy reach on the nightstand.

  “I’ll check in with you while I’m working at the store.” I started fussing with his blankets and pillows, and I couldn’t seem to make myself stop. “If you need anything, you just let me know and I’ll be right back home, okay?”

  Finn smiled, small, but genuine. “Okay, Mom. I’ll be fine. Promise.”

  I hated to leave him. I wanted to stay, and make him soup, and to get him to talk to me. But from the way his blinks were getting longer and longer, he really was going to be asleep any second.

  He’d be fine, I told myself. And he could reach me any time.

  That didn’t make it one ounce easier to leave him, though. I crossed my fingers that the day went by quickly.

  Chapter Eleven

  Of course, the store was dead all morning.

  No customers to distract me, or make the time go by faster. And there were only so many times I could rearrange a shelf, or dust, or straighten things. I had some potions bubbling away in the back, but they were easy recipes that didn’t require much thought. Being really distracted while brewing or working magic was such a terrible idea that I couldn’t bring myself to work on any of the number of things that I could have been restocking.

  Normally, the shop was a comfortable place for me. I’d built up Poppy’s Potions with my own two hands, and everything from the heavy, old wooden shelves and display cases to the fairy lights and the multitude of rainbow-colored potion bottles filled me with pride as much as it relaxed me.

  But today, all it did was put me on edge and reminded me that I wasn’t home with my son.

  It didn’t help that Finn wasn’t exactly quick to answer my texts every time I checked in on him. He apologized, and reminded me that he was just sleeping, but it didn’t do anything for the anxiety churning in my stomach.

  I knew if I let myself dwell on it, I was just going to work myself into a mess, and with no customers out on the street looking like they might want to come in and try out a potion or two, I was going to need to find a different distraction.

  So, I picked up my phone, and after a minute of chewing my lower lip and hesitating, I dialed Andre’s number.

  Recent doubts aside, talking to Andre made me feel a lot better ninety-nine percent of the time. Just hearing his voice, with that thick, British accent, over the phone, was enough to have some of the tension easing out of my back.

  “Poppy,” he said, voice warm even across the line. “What can I do for you?”

  And just like that, I felt like I could take a full breath again. Like if I tripped and stumbled, there would be hands reaching out to catch me.

  “It’s a slow day at the store, so I thought I’d see what you were up to.”

  “Well,” I heard the click of him putting something down on a table. Maybe a cup or a bowl. “I was actually working on a new trick, but it isn’t going well, and I was just thinking I needed a distraction to get me out of my own head.” His voice was wry, like he was laughing at himself. “And then you called. Isn’t that... well, perfect timing?”

  I had to laugh. It was odd, to be syncing up to someone else’s moods like we were, but odd in a good way. I wished there was someone I could talk to about it. I didn’t feel like I could approach Roy, with our history and with how snappy and on edge he’d been with everything lately. Fifi for the same reasons. But they were the only other people who were soulmates that I knew of, and the internet search I’d done had been even more disappointing than I’d expected.

  “I’m sorry. I’ve just been worried about this whole,” I waved my hand around. “Thing. And now Finn isn’t feeling well, and he’s sleeping, and I don’t want to bother him, but he’s not really answering my texts.” I blew out a heavy sigh. “It’s just, a lot, you know?”

  “I do.” I heard a bit of a creak over the line, like he was taking a seat. “I’m sure Finn will be fine. It’s good for him to rest, if he’s under the weather, right? There’s a bit of a bug going around, I’m led to believe.”

  “I know I’m being ridiculous. Unfortunately, knowing that doesn’t help me to stop being ridiculous.”

  “Poppy, you’re not being ridiculous. You’re worried about your son. I’d be concerned if you weren’t.”

  The counter was digging into my spine where I was leaning against it, so I straightened up and turned around to face the front door instead. “Thank you. I’m just not sure what to do. I could close up the store and go home, but I don’t want Finn to think I’m babying him or anything.”