Last year, Gran took me through a complex lesson in alchemy and spellcasting during the Running Sap moon, in March when the trees began to wake from their wintry slumber. After a half day of careful witchcraft, she coaxed me into producing my first tonic of shifting. Instead of casting a glamour, it’s a physical formula, blessed by magic and infused with centuries of McEwan experience.

  It worked.

  “Oh. Hi, new me,” I said to the mirror. I was no longer Carlie I was now a couple inches taller with dirty blonde hair, freckles, and a round face that was rather cute. Gus watched me with narrowed eyes, but then again, he’s a cat, so his suspicion is a natural default. “What do you think?”

  “Mrowt.”

  “Fair enough. It’s only until this afternoon. Wears off quickly,” I explained, ruffing the fur on his neck which he tolerated with patient indifference. “I have to be honest. I’m a little excited about being a spy.”

  Gus said nothing, but he did start purring, which I took as approval at my general state of shape-shifted espionage. With a final scratch of his long back, I slipped out the door into the bright sun of an October day, wearing the face of a girl who had never been and would never be again. It was a surreal moment, and I steadied myself with a few long breaths of the crisp air.

  It was time to do some snooping.

  Walking through my town as a stranger was liberating and weird. I saw people I knew, and they smiled, but in a general friendly way, not the kind that I was used to. I was removed from the inner circle of Halfway, relegated to a status where the kindness of my town was still present, but not personal. The trip to The Pines was a lesson in kindness, and if nothing else, drinking the tonic taught me that protecting Halfway was more important than ever.

  My phone vibrated, and I checked to see if it was Wulfric trying out his texting skills, but it was just Alex informing me he was in place one booth away from Eli’s clandestine rendezvous. I slipped into the restaurant with a nervous grin for the hostess, who knew me but said nothing because I was wearing a different face, although if I didn’t know better, I’d swear she gave me a mild stinkeye. It gave me pause to know I was hiding in plain sight, but underneath it all was a strange sense of liberation, even disconnect with the world around me.

  I was floating, but my feet were on the ground.

  “Hey,” I told Alex, who looked at me like he’d seen a ghost.

  “Hey yourself. Have a seat. . .?”

  “No first names, nerd. It’s not that kind of date,” I told him, looking past to where Eli sat, nervously twiddling with an array of straw wrappers, silverware, and anything else he could get his hands on. His eyes landed on me, he smiled politely, and moved on. My cover was secure.

  “What are we eating?” I asked Alex, who started to roll his eyes just a bit too much like Anna.

  “Garlic rolls. A calzone. Then some garlic rolls. Maybe spumoni,” he reported.

  “I approve of all these things.” I cleared my throat, then realized my voice was different, too. “Sorry. Took me by surprise.”

  “What did?” he asked, his voice low. The Pines was busy, but someone could still hear us if they were snooping. Like we were.

  “All of this,” I waved at myself with what I hoped was negligent grace, but my hand felt jerky.

  “You mean your Becca Buchwalder suit?”

  “My—what did you just say?” I asked him, frozen in my seat.

  His smile was pure evil. “I think you heard me, Buckin’ Becca.”

  My hand went to my face without thinking, and I traced the round chin, the full lips, even imagining I could feel the freckles sprayed across my nose like stars on a summer night. Slowly, the sensation of dread settled into my lungs like a case of bronchitis, and I felt my cheeks flush scarlet in the borrowed body.

  “Oh. My. Stars,” I whispered.

  “Oh, yes indeed. You’re her spitting image. It’s a wonder you can keep your pants on,” he snickered.

  “I didn’t—I mean, Gran didn’t—we made the spell and I just told her to make it someone pretty, but not to—”

  “Avoid using the face of a girl who got caught stark naked with the quarterback on the fifty-yard line? Yeah. I kinda think she forgot to tell you that detail,” Alex said. His smile was brilliant. “I’m sure she just saw Becca’s picture in the paper—”

  “I’m gonna die.”

  “Probably, of shame based on your cheeks,” he agreed with good cheer. “How long until it wears off?

  I stared at my placemat, wondering if I could wrap it around my head. “Four hours or so.”

  “Four hours of infamy. You know, young lady, being Becca isn’t all that bad. It’s just her response to the,” he wiggled his fingers with distaste, still smiling, “unfortunate event that makes her so noteworthy.”

  Becca was from one town over, and the previous summer, her escapade on the football field had garnered national attention because she chose to confront the hideous rumors head on. She took out an ad in the Syracuse newspaper, confirming the romantic event because the boy—a handsome, stupid goober who had gone into the army—encouraged his friends to harass her online.

  His move backfired. Horribly.

  Becca didn’t just fight back, she started her own whisper campaign about his alleged shortcomings, culminating in an online firestorm of nuclear proportions. I was proud of her for standing up for herself, but I wasn’t thrilled with wearing her face.

  “Gran’s going to get it,” I said.

  “You think she knew? Or this is a vicious, unprovoked attack by the woman who loves you more than life itself and could, by the way, turn you into a frog?”

  “Toad, but—no. It’s stupid luck.” I tugged at a blondish curl, feeling the heat fade from my cheeks one degree at a time. “I do kind of like her hair.”

  “See? Silver linings,” Alex said, grinning.

  “I can turn you into a squirrel, you know,” I told him, my voice low with what I hoped was menace, but he just laughed.

  “I like squirrels, even though they have a spotty relationship with the planet. I—hey, showtime,” he said, looking toward the door.

  “Got it,” I said, not looking, but expanding my peripheral vision to detect a shape moving through the dining room.

  “She’s tall. Pretty, too,” Alex muttered. Our server brought the garlic rolls, gave me a double take, and left, looking over her shoulder like she’d seen bigfoot.

  “Gah. So this is infamy,” I said, biting a roll that dripped with oil and garlic. “At least her taste buds work.”

  “If not her sense of taste. Hand me the crushed pepper. She sat down, you can look now,” Alex said.

  I turned discreetly to look at the magical thief, whose face came clear when the door opened, illuminating The Pines for a moment of golden light.

  I dropped my roll, staring, then picked it up when the woman made eye contact and nodded, polite but cool. She wore a black skirt and bone colored blouse under a jacket that cost more than my bike. Her jewelry was excellent, her makeup perfect. Dark brown hair was pulled away from her face to reveal excellent cheekbones and a pair of luminous brown eyes that missed nothing and revealed even less. She was a woman used to getting her own way, and her radiant smile bathed Eli with the power of persuasion and cultured sexuality that had him perspiring seconds after she took his hand in a warm, practiced embrace.

  “Damn, she’s good,” I growled.

  “You know her?” Alex asked, swallowing his roll with haste.

  “I think I do. I mean, I know I do, but from where, I don’t know. She looks nothing like Bridget, if that’s really her sister,” I said. “Listen,” I said, my voice low.

  We listened.

  After a moment, I knew it was Makenna, and she was well on her way to charming Eli into anything up to and including his first-born child.

  “Not putting up much of a fight, is he?” Alex remarked. He was busy stuffing a fourth garlic roll in his mouth, which made me flash with anger because in that regard, he was just like his sister. I wondered if being a shifter meant you never got fat. I mean, who has ever seen a fat jaguar?

  “No, he’s not. Is he—listen,” I said, playing with my napkin for something to do while eavesdropping. Our angle was perfect, but still, I felt compelled to at least pretend I wasn’t openly taking in every word Eli and Makenna were saying.

  I listened, but I also watched Eli’s face, at least in profile. He was genuinely confused at her questions, which were so vague I wondered if she was ever going to get to the point, but then she did, and I felt a chill of uncertainty.

  Makenna was asking about magic, and magical things. Then she reached out to pluck a hair from Eli’s sleeve, laughing and teasing him in a musical tone.

  I knew, in that instant, that her presence was bad news. There’s no reason for anyone to discuss magic unless you know it exists. People rarely have casual conversations about the nature of the Everafter, and they never ask specifics that only a witch could answer. Magic is too elegant, too complex for someone to understand it unless they have an idea of what the answers will be.

  Makenna was fishing, and she was asking one of the only humans who could accidentally tip her off to my family, our magic, and the whole truth about Halfway. The people of my town know me and trust me with their innermost needs and fears, but the relationship is a two-way street. They also protect me, and Gran, and the nature of Halfway lands. It’s an unspoken compact that has existed for nearly three centuries, and yet this television producer from somewhere else was easily painting Eli into a corner, where he would have to answer her questions or leave the table.

  It was a beautiful performance on her part, and if it hadn’t made me so angry, I would have been able to admire how her rambling questions led to one inescapable point—did Eli know the magical history of Halfway, and would he show her?

  “Easy, Carlie.” Alex brought me out of my angry haze. “Might want to fix that.” He looked down at the fork in my hand. It was bent nearly double.

  “Oh. I—right.” I stumbled over the words as the red haze cleared from my eyes. My charms were hot on my wrist, and I blew out a breath to calm the buildup of random magic that had risen in me like a column of lava. “Sorry. She’s really good.”

  “I know. I’m listening too, and the answers matter just as much to me. And Anna,” he added.

  “Sorry,” I repeated. My anger made me selfish. Anna and Alex were magical beings, and shifters would certainly be among the revelations if anyone ever cracked the truth of Halfway wide open. “I think we should leave.”

  “I think you’re right.” He motioned to our server while pointing to the door with his chin. “I’ll meet you outside.” His tone was gentle.

  “Thanks,” I mumbled, stepping unseen past Eli and Makenna, who was winding up another luminous smile. I fought the urge to kick her, and she ignored me when I slipped past into the open space of the sidewalk.

  If it was going to be a war, I needed to speak to a warrior.

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Two Steps Back

  Wulfric ran the sandpaper across a plank of redwood one final time before turning the wood in his hands, looking up and down the wood with a critical eye. The air was speckled with floating motes of dust, the scents of lumber so powerful it made my charms warm of their own accord.

  Only Wulfric himself could trigger such a powerful reaction in my spirit, and I reached out to take one of his hands, hoping his touch would calm me. It did.

  “She asks questions because she wants something,” he said, eyes unfocused. “She wants something that will hurt other people, here in Halfway.”

  “That’s what I think. I don’t know why.”

  “I do.” He frowned. It didn’t fit him at all.

  “You do?”

  “It’s power. It’s always power. Some humans—I mean, some people want money, or sex, or even revenge, but all roads lead back to power in some form. Even during my years in the forest, I knew that to be true. People have not changed. Only the means by which they seek to lever themselves higher.” His frown turned to a rueful grin. “They are, you might say, basic.”

  I laughed and kissed him, inhaling the smell of sawdust. It filled my senses, like an unspoken prayer. “I accept your terminology, but only because you didn’t say it was me this time.”

  “You’re anything but basic.” He looked at his hands for a long moment, falling so still that I thought he was a statue. When he moved, it was to hold his hands out to me, palms up. They were huge, calloused and brown from the summer sun that was a memory until next year. When we touched palms, he smiled, but there was a fierceness to it I hadn’t seen before.

  “About a century ago, a man passed through my lands. He was—running. From something he had done,” Wulfric began.

  “What was it?”

  “He killed a man. He didn’t mean to, but he let his horses break away, and crushed a man with his wagon. He was a carpenter; the wagon was heavy with tools and things that he needed to earn his way. The man was in a doorway, quite alive, and then he was crushed against a stone wall through no fault of his own. The carpenter was bad with horses. He whipped them, and they feared him. He was bad with horses, and bad with people, which was one of the reasons he had to stay on the move.”

  “Did he face charges?” I asked.

  “No. He ran. That made him a killer.” Wulfric drew in a breath, then exhaled slowly. “I was a killer, but I hated it. Not that I am forgiven. I may never balance the scales, but I will try, until my last breath. The carpenter ran, and by the time he spoke to me over a campfire, he had twisted his own memory into a lie. He did not see himself as a killer, and yet, I knew that given the chance, he would cause someone else to die in the future. It was his nature, do you understand? Murder suited him, because he did not care for anyone other than himself. And now, you tell me of this woman who asks of magical things, and does so in the open, without fear of what might happen should she expose you, and Gran, and your magic. If she has not killed yet, she will. When she does, she will find a way to make the crime anyone’s fault except her own.”

  I nodded, understanding. He was right, and he hadn’t even seen Makenna. “What happened to the carpenter?”

  Wulfric’s eyes flicked to the mountains. “His bones are under a rock. His horses went free. I did not feel any shame about his death, because he would never take responsibility for his own crimes. Ever. This. . .Makenna?”

  “That’s her.”

  “Do you think she understands what magic can do?” he asked.

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Then she is dangerous, and not just to your family. She’s dangerous to Halfway, and the wider world. How many times have you heard of vanity leading to pain?”

  “Too many times,” I admitted.

  He shook his head slowly. “Everything that is happening is because of her. The only question is how.”

  “I know. I have to figure out why she’s here. Why the girls are here from out of town, why giant mushrooms are yelling at me and why someone wants to steal—”

  “What?” he asked when he saw my stricken expression.

  “She stole the photographic plates. I should have known. It was right here all along.”

  “The grove? But you ended that threat. You collapsed the bridge, killed the wyrm, and brought Erasmus back from the past, to put him to rest. There is no reason to find trees surrounding a muddy hole in the ground,” Wulfric said.

  Without the supposed fountain of youth and an ancient sorcerer, I wouldn’t know Wulfric. I would not understand his love, and what my purpose was. Even though the spring was evil, in its own way, it had served to make my life something new. Something beautiful.

  “I did, but what if I didn’t destroy is completely enough?”

  “How could you have done anything more? The spring is gone. The place is a memory,” he said.

  “Is it?” I stood, knowing what had to happen next.

  Wulfric’s sigh was that of an old man, but his face was determined. “I’ll go with you. I won’t have it any other way.”

  “I wouldn’t ask for anything else, love.”

  “I have something to get before we leave. Morning? Or tonight?” He lifted me with ease, his corded arms around me in a circle.

  “Morning. Gran needs to know, and some other people. It’s a different kind of trip this time.” I thought about Jim, and how nice it would be to have him along. So much had changed in a short time. I wasn’t the same, nor was Wulfric or Halfway, for that matter.

  “Alex?”

  “No, not this time. I want the next time I see him to be for something other than his use while shifted.”

  “I understand. People like to be needed during times other than war,” he said, seeing the heart of the matter.

  “I don’t like leaving town unguarded, not with Makenna running around. Gran can do a lot, but she’s not as mobile as we are.”

  “Anna is.”

  “You would ask her that?” I said.

  “She will agree to help. Her child lives here too, and she is a being of magic. The logic is too powerful, even for her occasional bursts of petulance,” he said.

  “True. Then we’re in as good a place as we can be. Town will hold for a couple days, and we know where we’re going this time. Should take half as long.”

  “We will go in from the south. The water is low in the creek, and the ground is dry. With any luck, we’ll be at the—at the site in a full day, no more.” Wulfric pulled me closer. “It will be different this time, Carlie.”

  “I know. I’m just worried about what comes after.”

  “So am I, but only because you are. I fear little with you by my side, love,” he murmured into my hair.

  “With you I fear nothing.” I kissed him, and his smile was everything. “Not even the past.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Stank You Very Much