Prologue
Thirteen Years Ago, Penhaven College . . .
Given that the spell had been “Turn this leaf into something else,” and Gwynnevere Jones had indeed turned that leaf into something else, it seemed extremely unfair that everyone was now screaming at her.
Okay, so it was less that they were screaming at her, more they were just screaming in general, and yes, all right, maybe the leaf now resembled some kind of small dinosaur with very pointy teeth currently clamped around the toe of her professor’s pointy boot, but had the spell been specific?
It had not!
Had everyone else made completely boring shit like a pen or a slightly bigger leaf?
Yes!
Was Gwyn’s the only spell that had this deeply cool locomotion effect, and therefore they should all be thanking her and telling her what a badass witch she was instead of saying things like “Make it stop!” and “What the fuck?”
Honestly, Gwyn thought so!
This, she thought as she once again tried to gather enough power to turn her bitey creature back into an oak leaf, is why I didn’t even want to come here.
Penhaven College in Graves Glen, Georgia, taught both regular students and witches, the witchcraft classes secretive and hidden from everyone else who just thought the kids who went to those weirder buildings on campus were pursuing esoteric degrees in Folklore or something. Advanced Hedge Making, maybe.
Gwyn had grown up in Graves Glen, but it had never occurred to her she’d actually be sent to Penhaven. Her mom was cooler than that, she’d thought, way less traditional than most witches—or moms for that matter—and Gwyn had assumed she’d end up at some normie school, drinking beer in red Solo cups and practicing magic on her own.
But no. On this one thing, her mom had decided to get super traditional and insisted she go to Penhaven.
Gwyn’s mom, Elaine, was pretty much the least traditional person Gwyn knew. She’d raised Gwyn all on her own, making a living selling bath salts and special teas at various festivals and Ren Faires, reading tarot cards in the cozy kitchen of their cabin. Gwyn had loved that life, had assumed she’d get to follow in her mom’s footsteps, doing her own thing, and then, as high school had wound down, Penhaven had reared its ugly head.
“It’ll be good for you,” Elaine had told Gwyn, her blond hair glowing in the sunlight in their kitchen, her eyes kind, looking like a saint, or, even worse, like Stevie Nicks, because how were you ever supposed to say no to Stevie Nicks?
That’s how Gwyn had ended up at Penhaven, taking classes like Ritual Candles and Phases of the Moon.
And Simple Form Conversion, a class she had already been suspicious of due to how math-y it sounded.
“Miss! Jones!” her professor shouted, and Gwyn shook her head, still trying to pull together as much magic as she could. It was hard, though, seeing as how she’d really put her back into it, magically speaking, to turn the leaf into the very thing now chomping Dr. Arbuthnot’s admittedly fierce boot.
You don’t always have to be a show-off, you know.
Gwyn’s cousin, Vivi, wasn’t there in the classroom with her—she still had two more years of high school to go before Elaine, no doubt, sent her off to do this same thing. But Gwyn knew that’s exactly what she would’ve said, and at the thought, she screwed up her face, trying to concentrate harder.
Her hands were placed flat on the table in front of her, the surface trembling slightly, the ends of her long purple hair pooling next to her palms.
The dye had been a flash of rebellion before she’d started classes, her normally red hair turned deep amethyst, but of course her mom had only smiled and smoothed a hand over the back of her head, telling her it suited her.
That was the problem with having a Cool Mom.
“Have you got it?”
Gwyn’s concentration broke for the barest of seconds as her lab partner, a pretty brunette named Morgan, edged closer, dark eyes wide.
“Yeah,” Gwyn said, making herself smile even though she very assuredly did not have it. “Almost there!”
The thing had, thank the Goddess, let go of Dr. Arbuthnot’s boot.
Except that now it seemed to be looking kind of hungrily at her dangling scarf, and Gwyn gritted her teeth, her sparkly blue nails digging harder into the table’s surface. She was not going down as the first student in Penhaven College history to accidentally get a teacher eaten.
All right, so when she’d done the spell, she’d placed her hands on the leaf and just thought very hard that it needed to change. She hadn’t given it any more direct instructions than that. Maybe that was the issue?
Lifting her head, Gwyn focused on the scene at the front of the classroom.
There were no windows here, everything lit with sconces against the wall, the heavy wooden tables the students sat behind all on a slightly raised platform, almost like they were in a Victorian operating theater or something.
At the front of the room, Dr. Arbuthnot stood behind an old-fashioned wooden lectern. Well, she normally did. Right now, she was in front of it, holding on to the edge as she sent blue bursts of light from her fingertips toward the thing currently crouching and growling at her feet.
But Gwyn’s little leaf monster was clever, darting out of the way, and if Gwyn hadn’t been worried this whole thing was going to get her expelled or burned at the stake—if they still did that—she almost would’ve felt . . . proud of the little guy.
Like Gwyn, he was scrappy.
Dr. Arbuthnot could, Gwyn knew, decimate the thing with a simple spell, but she wanted Gwyn to be able to control it or, better yet, turn it back into a leaf. That was the point of the class, after all, and Gwyn was determined to get this right.
She might not have wanted to come to Penhaven College, but she’d be damned if she became the Class Screw-Up.
Determined, she focused on the creature, lifting her hands, and she could feel it start to shift.
Start to change.
Almost there.
Her fingers flexed just as the leaf creature jerked its head toward her.
At the same time, the classroom door flew open, banging against the wall.
Gwyn didn’t pay that any attention, her gaze locked on the front of the room, her power building, and then—
There was a sudden flash of light, and a smell that reminded Gwyn of campfires and autumn nights filled the room.
At the lectern, Dr. Arbuthnot suddenly stood up straight, and Gwyn watched as little bits of smoke and flaming debris—fiery bits of leaf—drifted up toward the ceiling.
Gwyn’s hands dropped, her mouth falling open. Shit.
Shit.
She’d overdone it somehow. She’d put too much power behind the spell and instead of transforming the thing back into a leaf, she’d just . . . obliterated it.
And then she heard Morgan sigh just as Dr. Arbuthnot looked toward the door.
Gwyn followed her gaze.
A boy stood there.
No, a man. Older than Gwyn, but not by much, his dark hair shaggy, his blue eyes bright even from a distance. He was dressed all in black, his hands still raised toward the front of the room, and Gwyn had no doubt that whoever he was, his ancestors had absolutely once stared down the business end of a guillotine.
You didn’t get cheekbones like that without oppressing some peasants.
“Penhallow,” Dr. Arbuthnot said, adjusting her scarf, and Gwyn’s gaze sharpened.
She’d called it, all right. The Penhallow family basically ran this town even though they didn’t even live here. But one of their ancestors founded Graves Glen—and the college itself—so every once in a while, a Penhallow deigned to join the lowly citizens of Gwyn’s hometown for a summer or so.
“Is everyone all right?” he asked, his eyes sweeping the classroom as he reached up to push his hair back from his face.
Gwyn opened her mouth to tell him that they were more than all right, that she’d been seconds away from having the whole thing in hand, and doing a very basic spell that just blew shit up wasn’t all that impressive, really, but Dr. Arbuthnot beat her to the punch.
“Fine now, yes. Thank you, Penhallow.”
“I was passing by,” he explained, “and heard the commotion. I thought I could help, so—”
“We’re fresh out of both medals and cookies,” Gwyn interrupted, flexing her fingers. “And you didn’t actually help. You just blew the thing up. I could’ve blown the thing up.”
The Penhallow guy looked over at her, one brow crooked. “Then why didn’t you?” he asked, and before she could reply to that, he was gone, the door closing behind him.
At the front of the room, Dr. Arbuthnot brushed little bits of leaf ash off the front of her long skirt and readjusted her glasses. “We’ll speak after class, Ms. Jones,” she said, and Gwyn rolled her eyes even as she nodded.
She and Dr. Arbuthnot spoke after class at least once a week. By the end of the semester, Gwyn was probably going to have to start paying rent on her office or something.
Next to her, Morgan was still looking wistfully at the door. “That was Llewellyn Penhallow,” she said on a dreamy sigh, and Gwyn snorted, gathering up her things.
“Llewellyn,” she repeated, because when a guy had a name like that, you didn’t even have to make fun of it. Just repeating it was enough.
Morgan elbowed her, tucking her hair behind her ear with her other hand. “You have to admit he was cute,” she pressed, and Gwyn slung her bag over her shoulder, glancing back at the door.
“Cute, maybe,” she said with a shrug. “Asshole, definitely. Probably has the word ‘Esquire’ after his name.”
“Well, you won’t get the chance to find out,” Morgan said as she started picking up her books. “Someone told me he’s not even finishing the summer semester. His dad is apparently calling him back to Wales for some family thing.”
Given that the Penhallows were a very powerful, very ancient line of witches, Gwyn figured “family thing” could mean a lot of different stuff, probably none of it good.
Not that she really cared.
No, right now the main thing Gwyn cared about was that she had to talk to Dr. Arbuthnot, somehow make it on time for her next class, which was all the way across campus, and also go help her mom out at Something Wicked, the store they ran in downtown Graves Glen.
Llewellyn Penhallow, Esquire, got exactly one more thought from Gwyn as she made her way toward the front of the classroom and Dr. Arbuthnot’s disapproving face.
Thank the Goddess I’ll never have to see that asshole again.