Chapter 1.
My kitchen, which on good days managed to look like a cheerful op-shop display and on bad days looked like the aftermath of a cupcake explosion, currently fell into the cheerful category. The table was scattered with Halloween cupcake sketches Thyme had drawn, Arabella’s crayons, and one empty plate that had previously contained chocolate chip biscuits. The afternoon light came in across the bench, turning the sugar canister lid into a tiny disco ball.
Across from me, Marina Mercer leant both elbows on the table and said the words I had been dreading since the calendar flipped to October. “I, of course, am here for the yearly spell.”
I sighed. She pushed on. “I want you to give me luck.”
I put my mug down very slowly. “Luck.”
“Yes.” She nodded with great seriousness, as if we were discussing investment strategies rather than her yearly dash at catastrophe. “Good luck. Lots of it. The sort of luck that changes lives. The sort of luck that follows me around and corrects everything that’s gone wrong.”
“That sounds like quite a lot of luck.” I picked up a pencil and turned it in my fingers. “You do remember what happened the last time you thought something sounded like a simple idea?”
“That wasn’t my fault.” Marina sat back. Her hair was pinned up in an elaborate twist, but three sections had already escaped and were waving about in sympathy with her mood. “Anyway, this is different. Turning into a cat was a very specific request. This is just luck.”
“Luck isn’t just luck.” I tapped the pencil against the table. “Luck is slippery. It’s vague. It gets into things. A spell needs to know what it’s meant to be doing. If you tell magic to give you luck, it might decide that stubbing your toe is lucky because it means you don’t leave the house and so don’t get hit by lightning.”
Marina waved that away. “That would still be luck. Painful luck, but luck. Besides, you’re the one doing the spell. You will make sure it’s the right kind. You always do.”
I thought of every Halloween since my grandmother had signed that ridiculous agreement with Marina’s grandmother. “Always” was doing a lot of work in that sentence.
“I’m absolutely serious, Marina. Luck can go horribly wrong. It can backfire. Or it can try to balance itself out.” I made my tone as stern as possible.
“That’s why I need it,” she said. “Because my life has been full of that kind of balancing-out lately. I’ve had a run of bad luck that would make a soap opera writer feel embarrassed.”
I folded my arms. “Define bad luck.”
She took a breath and started counting off on her fingers. “The airline lost my luggage on the way back from visiting my cousin. For three weeks. I had to go to work in the same outfit five days in a row. Then the shop downstairs from my flat flooded and somehow all the water ended up in my bedroom. My phone fell down a drain. The coffee shop near my office changed the brand of coffee beans I like. My latest fiance left me for a younger woman. Oh, and I was matched on a dating app with someone who turned out to be my former driving instructor.”
“None of that sounds life-threatening,” I pointed out.
“It’s cumulative,” she said. “Imagine trying to rebuild your emotional resilience while wearing wet shoes and explaining to your boss that you’re late because you had to report a drain-related phone loss to the council. I can’t go on like this. I need a season of good things happening to me. I want a streak of wins. I want parking spots and promotions and finding fifty-dollar notes in coat pockets and meeting someone charming in a queue at the post office.”
“You realise parking spots and promotions and mystery fifty-dollar notes all affect other people, too,” I said. “If you get all the good things, that means there’s less to go around. Luck doesn’t appear from nowhere. It’s more of a redistribution situation.”
“Fine, then redistribute it to me.” She raised her chin. “You owe me a spell.”
That was the problem. I did owe her a spell. Every Halloween. My grandmother’s handwriting in the back of her grimoire was unhelpfully clear on that point.
“I can limit it,” I said at last. “I can make something short term. Contained. So if anything does go wrong, it stops. I’m not giving you an open-ended luck spell. I’m not doing it.”
Marina’s shoulders dropped, and for a moment she looked less like the woman who turned up in Bayberry Creek every year expecting the impossible and more like a person who had simply run out of energy. “How short term?”
“Until midnight on Halloween,” I said. “That’s it. After that, the spell ends and everything goes back to normal. I’m not altering the entire course of your life.”
“Midnight on Halloween,” she repeated. “So, a few days.”
“Enough time for some small improvements,” I said. “Nothing massive. Nothing dramatic. No winning the lottery. No meeting the love of your life and deciding to move to Florence. Think parking spots and not losing your luggage.”
She pursed her lips. “Parking spots and not losing my luggage sound excellent. Can I also have not spilling things on myself in public?”
“I can try to phrase it in general terms,” I said. “But I’m making no promises about spillage.”
She leant forward again. “I’ll take it. I want the spell. I accept your conditions.”
I shrugged. “You didn’t even ask how complicated it is.”
“I don’t need to know. I trust you.” She paused. “Mostly.”
“That’s very touching,” I said. “All right. Wait here while I get the book.”
I stood and moved through to my study. My grandmother’s grimoire waited on its lectern. The pages still had that thin, fragile look that made me nervous every time I turned them. I lifted the cover and started searching for anything about luck, chance, or probability that did not involve rabbits.
Behind me, in the kitchen, the television in the living room roared to life. Someone yelled, a crowd shouted, and a commentator announced something enthusiastic about a warped wall.
“House, can you keep it down?” I called. “We can hear it in here.”
The volume dropped a little, then nudged itself back up. American Ninja Warrior had clearly joined our household for the season.
I found what I wanted near the section on charms. A spell for gathering and binding favourable outcomes, directing them towards a specific person for a set period. It involved focus, a personal object from the recipient, and a vessel that could hold and direct the luck.
I ran a finger down the page, checking the ending. It mentioned time limits and the need to seal the binding cleanly, otherwise the luck would flow outwards and attach itself to whatever or whoever it reached first.
I paused. Then I nodded to myself. “All right. Vessel. Time limit. Clean binding. We can do this.”
The house turned the television volume up a fraction. I ignored it.
Back in the kitchen, Marina had rearranged the biscuit plate into a pattern that looked like an accurate map of disappointment.
“Good news,” I said. “There’s a spell for what you want. With an expiry date.”
She clapped her hands. “I knew it.”
“It has some requirements.” I set the grimoire on the table. The pages rustled as they settled. “I need something personal that you carry all the time. Something that can act as an anchor so the luck knows where to go.”
“Like my handbag?” she suggested.
“Smaller,” I said. “And preferably not something you’ll want to put down. A ring. A bracelet. A watch.”
She reached for her necklace, then shook her head. “I broke the chain last week. Bad luck. Do earrings count?”
“Earrings would be fine if we had time to sit here and thread them through spell circles. We don’t. You do wear perfume. Is there anything small that you always have on you?”
Her expression brightened. “I know.” She dug into the pocket of her coat and produced a tiny silver compact. “My mother’s.”
The compact was scratched but clearly looked after. The hinge worked smoothly when she opened it and showed me the mirror. “I always have this. She said it would remind me to check that I’m presenting myself to the world in the way I want.”
“That’s perfect,” I said. “Except the spell needs something hollow to contain the luck. I don’t want you putting your face on with liquid gold swirling about.”
“Then what sort of vessel does it need?” she asked.
I tapped my finger on the table. “A small bottle, or a locket, or something similar. Glass is good. Metal is all right. It needs to be able to be sealed.”
Marina scanned the kitchen as if expecting a shelf of enchanted items to present themselves. “You don’t just have something lying around?”
I did, of course. Glinda’s existed for a reason, and Ruprecht had supplied me with more than one odd object over the years. I opened the drawer that held things I had never quite found proper homes for and moved a set of Halloween cupcake toppers aside.
Near the back was a tiny antique glass bottle, barely bigger than my thumb, with a rounded base and a short neck. It had come from a box of old apothecary items that Ruprecht had given me. It was clear and clean, with a cork that still fitted tightly.
“This will do,” I said, holding it up. “You will need to carry it with you at all times until midnight on Halloween. If you put it down or lose it, the spell will have nothing to follow.”
“I can do that.” Marina reached for it, then pulled her hand back when I did not let go. “What?”
“The spell isn’t on it yet,” I said. “Let me set everything up first.”
We moved to the end of the kitchen table, where there was enough clear space for the grimoire, the compact, the bottle, and a small dish of salt I fetched from the pantry. I lit a candle and placed it near the top corner of the book, careful to keep it away from the pages.
Marina watched, her fingers knotted together. “What do you need me to do?”
“Sit. Think about the kind of luck you actually want.” I placed the compact in front of her. “In practical terms. No wild swings. No miracles. Just a steady run of things not going wrong. Imagine how that would feel. Focus on that. This spell gathers that intention and binds it.”
She drew in a breath and shut the compact, placing both hands on top of it. Her shoulders relaxed a little.
I set the glass bottle in the centre of a circle of salt and rested my fingertips lightly on the grimoire’s margin. The words on the page felt familiar in that way old recipes do when you have watched someone else use them for years.
American Ninja Warrior escalated into a crash and a shout from the living room. I reached back with one hand and pressed the volume button on the remote without taking my eyes from the bottle.
“All right,” I said. “Here we go. Remember, this ends at midnight on Halloween. After that, the luck disperses and everything resets.”
“I understand,” Marina said. “I’ll make the most of it.”
I began the spell.
Warmth started in my hands and moved along my arms. The air around us felt thicker, as if the world had slowed down just a fraction. Marina’s breathing steadied. A faint shimmer, almost too faint to see, rose from her hands where they rested on the compact. It hung there for a moment, then drifted towards the bottle.
I held my focus on the glass, guiding the shimmer in. It slipped through the narrow neck and gathered in the bottom like mist. The bottle took on a soft gold tint.
“So far so good,” I said.
The grimoire’s instructions for the final stage were very clear. When the vessel was full, I needed to lift it, speak the last word of binding, and press the cork in all in one smooth movement. No hesitation. No distraction. That was the moment the luck became attached to the person we had chosen, and that was also the moment it was most likely to go wandering off if anything went wrong.
The shimmer in the bottle deepened, turning from pale gold to something richer. Tiny sparks moved within it. I waited until the level reached the narrowest point of the neck.
“All right,” I said. “Last step. Keep your hands where they are. Don’t think about anything except the feeling of everything finally going your way.”
“I’m trying very hard,” Marina said. “You have no idea how much I want this.”
She shut her eyes.
I slid my hand into the circle of salt, closed it around the bottle, and lifted it. The glass felt warm against my fingers. The golden light inside swirled.
At that exact moment, something outside the front door crashed so hard it made the plate of biscuit crumbs jump.
Marina let out a small shriek.
I flinched. The bottle slipped.
I grabbed for it, but my fingers were already tipping it. The neck struck the edge of the grimoire. The cork rolled sideways. The bottle tumbled from my hand and hit the wooden floor.
For half a second, nothing happened. Then a hairline crack ran from the mouth of the bottle to its base.
The glass did not shatter. It simply opened.
The golden shimmer burst out and filled the air between us. It lifted in a thin, fast-moving cloud, spinning as if deciding which way to go. I lunged for it, hand outstretched.
“Wait,” I said, which was not exactly advanced magic.
The shimmer darted sideways and slid towards the front door like sunlight under a curtain.
Marina’s chair scraped back. “What was that crash? What was that?”
I jumped up, ran into the hallway, and stared at the door. The last traces of gold were disappearing under it. “That was your luck,” I said.
Marina stood and pressed her hands to her cheeks. “Where did it go?”
“Out there,” I said, pointing at the door. “Anywhere. Everywhere. It isn’t attached to you any more. It’s loose.”
“The spell still ends at midnight on Halloween,” she said. “You said that. Does that part still count?”
“Yes.” My stomach felt very heavy. “Time limits are time limits. Whatever that luck does, it will stop then. But until that point, it isn’t bound to you. It can attach itself to whoever or whatever it reaches first. Or it can spread.”
“Spread.” She sagged back onto her chair. “So my one clear run of good luck is about to become Bayberry Creek’s community bonus.”
“In theory,” I said. “Assuming it behaves like standard gathered luck and not like something with ideas.”
We both looked at the door.
The crash that had started all of this had not been repeated. No one had called out. No one had knocked. The house remained quiet except for the distant roar of contestants failing to climb walls in the living room.
“I should check that,” I said. “Stay here.”
“I’m not staying anywhere,” Marina said. “I’m coming with you. That sound might have been my good luck arriving early in physical form.”
She followed me into the hallway.
As we reached the front, I saw something else. A faint dark glow hovered to the side of the door frame, about the height of my knee. Alder had woven a ward there yesterday, muttering about our annual pattern of near-death experiences whenever Marina arrived. It looked like a smear of shadow against the timber.
Yesterday, when he had set it, it had been quiet and invisible. It was not quiet and invisible now.
The ward glowed black.
My breath caught. “No.”
“What,” Marina whispered. “What does that mean?”
“Alder set this ward to react to danger,” I said. “Specifically danger connected to us. If there’s violent intent nearby, it changes colour. Black means murder. Or murder that has already happened. And the glow is strongest when the source is closest.”
We both stared at the door.
“It’s on the other side,” I said.
Marina’s hand found my sleeve. “Amelia. Don’t open it.”
“I have to,” I said. “Someone might be hurt. Or worse.”
The ward pulsed, the colour shifting like ink. I wrapped my fingers around the doorknob, then stopped. “Stand back.”
Marina stepped away, pressing herself against the wall. I turned the knob and pulled the door open.
The golden shimmer was nowhere to be seen. There was only the front step, the small section of veranda, and the body of a man lying half on the mat.
I recognised him at once.
His suit was too expensive for the way he treated people, and his hair looked as if it had been styled to look casual.
“Barnaby Snicklewick,” I said.
He did not answer. He also did not move.
Marina peered around my shoulder. “Is he all right?”
I knelt on the edge of the mat, careful not to touch him. The position of his body, the way his limbs lay, the stillness of his chest, all told the same story. My stomach dipped.
“No,” I said. “He isn’t.”
