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1

It was the perfect night for a mess, and Morgan Greenwood was precisely the sort of witch who couldn't resist a good mess.

Surrounded by her two closest friends, and with lively music filling her ears, Morgan had no worries. So even though some potions were powerful enough that they ought to be forbidden, she swallowed a mouthful of liquid and damned the consequences. To do otherwise would be a waste of a sultry Friday evening. Or at least a Friday evening that was as sultry as it ever got in Maine, which wasn't saying much.

Morgan knew her potions. A talented witch could create one that would make a person spill their darkest secrets or one that could erase their most traumatic memories. But no witch had yet found a way to combine those two effects. No, leave it to the mundanes to have discovered the power of the one she held in her hands.

Tequila.

If it were magical, surely the Witch Council would have banned it. Like a truth potion, tequila could make a person blab all of their secrets. Like a memory elixir, it could make someone forget their pain. And if you were really unlucky, tequila might convince you to dance naked around a bonfire beneath the full moon. Not that Morgan would know about that last one. She'd never done it herself.

Or had she, and tequila being what it was, she couldn't remember?

Best not to ask.

August evenings at the Empty Chalice were a blur of people and sound, even if one was abstaining from tequila. Summer meant the coastal town of Harborage was packed with tourists, and Fridays in the summer meant many of them joined the locals at what was generally known as the town's "witch bar," so called for the uncreative reason that it was owned by a couple of witches. There wasn't a whole lot else to do in the evenings in Harborage. If it wasn't the Empty Chalice, it would be another bar, and the Empty Chalice was the best of the bunch, even for the witches who didn't come to gawk at the overpriced magical cocktails on offer.

Along the far wall, the windows had been removed to let in the salty ocean breeze, and in the opposite corner from where Morgan sat, a fiddler played a jaunty tune. Morgan could hear but not see her through the mass of bodies circulating beneath the bar's open-beam ceiling and the enchanted lights that twinkled above like stars. Those lights moved nightly to reflect the changing constellations, creating the impression that what was indoors was actually out.

But in they were, and despite the Atlantic's cooling gusts, the bar was warm with people and the air thick with barely contained chaotic energy. It was on a summer evening like this that the first witch had probably been born. On a summer evening like this, it was easy to believe anything could happen.

Especially when tequila got involved.

Morgan's head swam, though this was her first drink, and she grabbed another lobster nacho from the plate she was sharing. The lobster nachos were the reason actual witches flocked to the Empty Chalice, and they were twice as addictive on her empty stomach. Still, it was easier to blame the tequila for her head feeling like it was stuffed with cotton rather than accept that forgetting to eat lunch hadn't done her any favors. Or the fact that she'd stayed up too late last night because she'd gotten sucked into watching cat videos. It was totally not her fault that cats were cute.

Come to think of it, why hadn't she adopted a new cat after her beloved Charlie had died? She should do that, then maybe she wouldn't waste time watching other people's cat videos.

Wait, what had she been thinking about a moment ago?

"Are the drinks extra strong tonight?" Morgan asked, desperately seeking validation of her blamelessness from Hazel and Andy. In a pinch, Andy's boyfriend, Trevor, who was also at their table, would do.

Hazel quirked a red eyebrow in her direction. "Mine seems normal, but maybe Rory was being nice to you."

Her tone was as sticky sweet as the strawberry syrup in Morgan's margarita, and Morgan poked her in the shoulder. She would not rise to the bait.

Would not.

Damn it. She glanced at the bar.

Rory Sandler was putting on a show as she made a drink for a couple of tourists. Amber liquid flowed from her shaker, spiraling and twisting in the air before landing gently in the martini glass. With another flick of her wrist and a light tap on the glass's side, the pair's faces alighted with delight. Morgan couldn't see what Rory had done yet, but she could guess. She'd frozen half the drink, and knowing Rory, she'd turned the ice into something more than boring cubes. Sure enough, a golden heart slowly rose above the rim, then settled into place, floating on top of the cocktail. Rory slid the glass over to her customer.

Elemental magic was simple magic, in theory. Any halfway competent witch could do it. Boiling or freezing water, lighting or extinguishing candles-they were the first sorts of spells a young witch learned. Making a complex liquid dance to her tune, like Rory had, or freezing only part of the drink and doing so in complicated shapes-that was another matter. Although for someone with Rory's skills, no doubt it was child's play. The sort of thing she could do in her sleep. One did not become the youngest national spellcasting champion ever by performing Magic 101.

Morgan had seen Rory compete several times before she'd ever met her, and the amount of power she hid behind her dark, often downcast, eyes was astonishing. How she'd ended up in Harborage a year ago and why she was slinging drinks at the Empty Chalice instead of competing for world dominance were both mysteries that no one in town had the answers to.

In fact, now that Morgan considered it, the possibility of being served a drink by the Rory Sandler was almost certainly another reason tourists beelined for the Empty Chalice. Rory had probably autographed hundreds of cocktail napkins over the past year. And while Harborage's witches might have gotten over their fangirling, speculation over Rory's sudden departure from the competitive spellcasting world remained rife in the witch media. Witches were a nosy bunch.

Rory's dark eyes finally glanced Morgan's way, and Morgan whipped around in her seat, her cheeks flaming.

Hazel sighed with something that sounded uncomfortably like sympathy, and the snake tattooed around her left arm circled her light skin in agitation. "You could just ask her out."

The mere thought of it made Morgan want to crawl under the table, and she sipped the dregs of her margarita to cool off. "Not happening."

"She's really nice."

"I know."

It was simply irrelevant. Rory had joined the local coven when she moved to town, so Morgan saw her plenty. Talking to her, on the other hand . . . Morgan's tongue had a tendency to tie itself in knots if Rory was within earshot, and looking at her caused Morgan's stomach to do the same.

Objectively, Morgan would have sworn Rory was not her type. She was too quiet. Her hair was too boyishly short, and the contrast between it and her pale skin was too stark. She dressed too plainly, her mostly black and gray wardrobe too dreary for Morgan, who loved bright colors. But there was something about the few freckles around Rory's nose that made Morgan long to kiss them, and she could waste hours daydreaming about running her fingers through the crop of dark hair on top of Rory's head. She wanted to know if Rory ever truly laughed as loudly as she did herself, and what it would take to make that happen.

She was a fool, and so was Hazel for suggesting she ask Rory out. A nobody like her did not ask out Rory fucking Sandler.

"I don't know if she'd be interested in that sort of thing," Morgan mumbled, the same lie she used to deflect whenever her friends teased her about her ridiculous crush.

It was a lie, because Morgan was nothing if not slightly obsessed, so she knew Rory had been in two semiserious relationships before moving to Harborage-one with a male witch and another with a female witch. Over the past three decades, the Witch Council had begun heavily marketing competitive spellcasting to mundane audiences-usually comparing it to figure skating-so even the non-magical press had paid attention to Rory during the U.S. national championships a few years ago, making that sort of research easy. And too hard to resist.

So yes, the possibility of dating Rory, in theory, was there. But a chasm the size of the Milky Way existed between theory and reality, even for people who performed magic on a daily basis. Morgan could no more conjure world peace than she could imagine Rory being interested in her.

"You never know unless you try," Hazel said, which was how these conversations always went. Hazel was the optimistic friend everybody needed in their life to goad them into making an ass out of themselves occasionally, but there were limits to Morgan's willingness to do so.

Let Hazel dare her to dress up as a sexy Glinda from The Wizard of Oz one year for mundane Halloween? Why not? Morgan had decided she was born to wear a sparkling pink bikini top and matching skirt. Go along with Hazel sweet-talking Morgan and Andy into a karaoke version of Olivia Newton-John's "Magic" during a coven fundraiser for the Harborage library? Who cared that Andy was the only one of the three of them who could belt out a tune when it was for a good cause? Morgan had been game.

But this was different. Her head might be fuzzy from the margarita, but all common sense hadn't fled her body yet.

"What's the worst she can say?" Andy added from across the table. "No?"

"Actually, yeah. 'No' sounds pretty terrible now that you mention it." Morgan snatched the last nacho in retaliation for the encouragement.

As different as they were, the three of them had grown up together-the inevitable result of their shared magical heritage and small-town existence. Hazel and Andy looked at Morgan and saw the same girl they'd known their whole lives. The first to volunteer for a wild scheme, the first to jump in someone's face when they threatened a friend, and the one who always got yelled at in class for never shutting up. Seven years post high school graduation, Morgan liked to believe she was still those things, or she tried to be.

Just not in this particular case. After her last disastrous relationship, Morgan had learned her limitations, and she had zero desire to subject herself to further romantic humiliation.

Trevor, the only non-witch at the table, glared at Morgan. "I had my sights set on that nacho, witch. That nacho was mine."

Morgan grinned at him. She liked Trevor, who was a physics doctoral student at the nearby university and who enjoyed deep, geeky conversations about the underlying so-called science of magic. Everything he said went way over her head, so Morgan had no idea if he was really smart or really full of shit, but he never got weirded out around her friends the way some mundanes did. And Andy really liked him, so that was something, too.

"Never get into a competition with me when it comes to food, especially when I'm hungry." Morgan popped the gooey nacho in her mouth. In spite of the congealing cheese and cold lobster, it tasted amazing.

"Fine. Another plate and another round." Trevor started to stand, then he turned Morgan's mischievous grin back on her. "Unless you'd like to go order so you can talk to Rory."

"Beat it before I turn you into a toad." She pointed a finger at him, and Trevor left, laughing. "And the two of you, stop staring at me with your pitying eyes. I mean it."

Hazel and Andy exchanged innocent expressions.

Oh, fine. If that's how they wanted to play it. This table needed a change of topic, fast. "Festival talk," Morgan said, slapping the wood and setting the candle in the center rattling inside its hurricane glass. "Am I the only one who has to work the whole time?"

She suspected she was. Her family's shop maintained a vendor booth at the New England Witches' Trust (aka NEWT, because weren't they clever?) biennial festival. Morgan wouldn't be working every shift, but she would need to be there every day. Something about responsibility and having bills to pay, blah blah blah. As far as jobs went, Morgan liked making potions, and having learned from two generations of witches, she was good at her work, but adulthood was overrated.

"I booked a few appointments Friday and Saturday," Hazel said. "I wasn't going to work, but . . ."

"But you're so in demand," Andy finished for her.

Hazel gave a modest shrug, which suggested Andy had been right. People had probably begged Hazel for tattoos at the festival, and Hazel, being the sort of person who couldn't say no, had capitulated. Morgan got it. She'd been saying "no" for Hazel their whole lives. That's what best friends were for, when they weren't goading each other into acting like fools or practicing spells by magically curling or straightening each other's hair (and, on the unfortunate couple of occasions, removing each other's hair entirely).

"Well, I won't be working," Andy said. "I'm not arriving until Friday afternoon, because I've got bookings through Thursday. I promised my cousin's friend I'd do an assessment on this house she can't sell."

"It's early for haunting season to pick up, isn't it?" Hazel asked.

Andy shrugged and tucked her black braids behind her ears. "Yeah, but it's New England. There's no shortage of ghosts any time of the year. I just hope this is a we-can-negotiate kind of situation, and not an I-need-to-banish-this-thing one. If that's the case, I'll seriously be delayed."

"Eh, the festival doesn't get good until Friday," Morgan said, trying to console her, and it was true enough, depending on your reasons for attending.

Officially, the NEWT Festival was supposed to be an opportunity for the region's witches to strengthen inter-coven bonds and learn from one another. Unofficially, it was four days of partying and magical fun in Western Massachusetts. The festivities kicked off Wednesday afternoon, and there were networking events, workshops, concerts, and shopping available every day, but the crowds didn't really descend until Friday and Saturday. Naturally, the best of everything was saved for those days, whether it was the most famous musicians, the most sought-after instructors, or the most popular magical games. And it was all topped off by what was (in Morgan's opinion) the festival highlight-the spellcasting exhibition on Saturday. Which, coincidentally, was the first place she'd ever seen Rory perform in person. Back when Rory was just some witch from Boston, and not Rory fucking Sandler.