Page 4 of Twice Bitten

I wiped my hands on my apron. “Well, I need to get back. Please let me know if you need anything else.”

Fleur peered up at me, a curious expression on her face. “What about you?”

I blinked. “Umm. What about me what?”

Fleur snorted. “Do you belong to a coven? I can smell the green on you, Alex. You’re either a natural witch or a hedge.”

My chest tightened. I offered her a polite smile. “No. I’m not really a group kind of person. I prefer solitary witchcraft.”

Fleur studied me for a long moment. “Alright then. Fair enough. If you ever change your mind, let me know. Hedges aren’t as common as they used to be, and we’d love to add one to our group.”

She slid a card over. I did the polite thing and tucked it into my apron pocket, but I think we both knew I’d never call her.

I nodded and hurried back to the register, as if that small wooden barrier could protect me from probing questions from other witches. I’d been approached before about joining a coven and had always demurred, pretending to prefer my solitude. The truth was, I’d always trusted my mother to steer me right, and if she was warning me against covens, I wouldn’t go against her.

After they’d finished their coffees, Emma and Fleur passed by the register. The younger witch, Emma, reached into her purse and pulled out a fiver. “Mind giving this to the foam artist?” she asked shyly.

I plucked the bill out of her hand. “Not at all. We keep him in the back, so the girls don’t throw themselves at him. He’s way too handsome for the masses.”

She laughed and gave G, who was still standing at the window, a shy wave. “Tell him he’s the best,” she whispered.

“I will.” I waved the bill at her. “Thanks for stopping by!”

Six hours later, a nitro coffee was looking pretty good. We were busier than usual today, which was odd for a Tuesday. Addy mentioned something about a peace council coming to town, so our little city had triple the number of supernaturals for the next several days. I paid little attention to supernatural politics. Nine times out of ten, whatever was happening was none of my concern. Witches, just like the other main branches of supernaturals, had a hierarchy, but unlike others, especially vamps and wolves, they stayed peaceful but solitary, choosing to stay out of the political spotlight and govern their own people.

While most witches preferred the safety of covens, others chose to practice alone. My particular choices meant I couldstay so far under the radar that I barely registered at all. To all the supernaturals, I wanted to be known as…oh…that chick in that coffee shop. Brown hair? *Squint* No. Blonde. Hell, I dunno. She just takes my money and hands me coffee. That’s how I wanted to present to another supernatural: completelyunmemorable.

To anyone with even a hint of magic, I’d register as a lower-level hedgewitch. Human with earth magic. Nothing earth-shattering or concerning. They’d believe I grew herbs in my backyard and sold them on Etsy, or something similar, to supplement my income as a barista.

They’d be right. Sort of. But they’d also be very wrong.

At my driver’s license appointment years ago, Mom had walked me in with my paperwork and warned me to keep my mouth shut no matter what she said. I remembered staring up at her, a twisting feeling in my stomach at the thought of lying, and watched her face soften.

“Oh, Alex,” she whispered, brushing my cheek with the back of her knuckles. “I wish I could tell you everything.”

“You can,” I insisted.

People milled around us, a mix of magic and excitement in the air, but it felt like it was just the two of us in that entryway that day. “One day, when we are safe, I will tell you everything you wish to know.”

I wanted to beg, nodemandshe tell me everything right then, but there was a haunted look in her eyes, and I couldn’t bear to press. Whatever this was, Mom would tell me if she could. She’d never broken a promise to me. Not until the day she disappeared and my life had crumbled into years of hope mixed with despair.

When I nodded and saw the flash of relief in her eyes, something inside me broke even as I felt reassured knowing I hadn’t caused her more pain. She’d marched me right up to the desk with my paperwork—falsified, I later realized—handedit to the woman and lied through her teeth when they verified the magic classification, placing me into the category of a lower-level hedgewitch, meaning I used the world’s bounty to work my spells. Accurate, but not the complete story.

Mom’s deceit allowed me to live a somewhat normal life. When we walked out that day with my temporary license stamped with the little green leaf identifying me as a hedgewitch, she handed me the keys and asked if I wanted to go for ice cream.

We had chocolate sundaes that day, and Mom stole my cherry because she knew I hated them. The memory made my throat thicken.

I still hated cherries, but I always had a jar in the fridge because they reminded me of that day and how far she’d been willing to go to protect me. Even back then, I knew I was far more powerful than I should be, given my identity as a green witch. To conceal how much magic I actually had, I wore a talisman implanted underneath my skin to disguise my power, designed and refueled by my mother every few years. Mom always cautioned me to never tell anyone about the implant and to never miss an appointment with her to repower the talisman.

Later, during a typical teenage moment, when all I wanted was to be normal, I asked her how long I had to wear the thing. Her lips had thinned and sadness had filled her eyes. She touched my hair gently, the way she always did, and said, “Some things are a necessary evil, darling. When you’re older and ready, I will remove the thing myself.”

Once again, Mom had failed to answer my questions, but the haunted look in her eyes lasted several days afterward, and I’d simply stopped asking to make that look go away. I tried a few times to access the implant, to see what it was and how it worked, but the magic always slipped from my fingers, as if I were trying to grab a piece of tiny shell in a cracked egg white.

Like most kids who grew up with something differentabout them, the talisman became part of who I was, and I eventually stopped asking Mom questions about it. The implant was a part of me, and since my life was good, I saw no reason to keep pushing my mother over its purpose.

Out of sight, out of mind. Sometimes I forgot the implant was there—right up until the time to recharge it came around again.

But now I wish I had pressed Mom more for answers before she’d gone missing. Maybe if I had begged an answer out of her, she wouldn’t have left me alone with no idea what I had living under my skin and how long I had to keep up the maintenance. What repercussions or consequences would there be if I removed it? Would it be such a big deal if my power level was higher than documented? Mom seemed to think so. For now, that had to be enough.