Page 1 of No Charm Done
Chapter 1
Two Couples, One Bed
To the opening notes of “Dancing Queen,” Luna stepped through a portal beside an upright piano. The high school orchestra pit was cramped, dimly lit, and absolutely not designed for interdimensional travel. “Sorry to interrupt!” she whispered to the startled old music teacher. He’d nearly fallen off his piano stool at the sight of her.
She clutched a small leather change purse to her chest. Inside, antique subway tokens clinked softly together, warm with an indescribable magic, powered by the accumulated hopes and dreams of the commuters of New York City.
“Luna!”
Adrienne’s voice crackled through a second portal, which was beginning to materialize onstage. “Toss it! Now!” Luna hurled the change purse toward the stage, and it vanished into Adrienne’s portal just as two magicians in expensive suits arrived through Luna’s. The men stumbled into the percussion section, sending cymbals crashing to the floor. “Hey!” one of the magicians started to say. “Where did she—”
But Luna was already gone.
She emerged through a new portal at the bottom of a shark tank at the Oklahoma Aquarium. This was, of course, a terrible place for a portal and not at all where Luna had wanted to end up; she made a mental note to work a lot harder on her aim next time. A massive bull shark glided past with a look of what Luna hoped was only mild curiosity. As her lungs screamed for air, Hector’s portal opened beside her, and she dove through it gratefully.
“—had any idea she was such a troublemaker!” Hector was saying.
Luna collapsed onto what appeared to be metal decking. “Who, me?” Coughing up aquarium water, she pulled herself to her feet and looked around. They were on the deck of an oil rig in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, water stretching in all directions.
Hector’s twin brother, Diego, stood nearby, and the men’s identical weathered faces were both creased with amusement. “Trouble does follow you,” Diego said earnestly. “After all, we’ve never—”
“Never had a visitor quite so—” Hector gestured at her.
“—unpopular with magicians,” Diego said. “Luna, why are you—”
“—so unpopular with magicians?” finished Hector.
“Come on! This isn’t my fault. The magicians are after your coins, not me.”
“They’re tokens, subway tokens,” Hector corrected. “And in the past seventy years—”
“—magicians have never shown any interest in our coven,” Diego continued.
“Until you joined us.”
Luna shrugged. “No idea, fellas. Magicians have been hassling my hometown for—” The air behind them shimmered. “Aw, nuts.”
Adrienne’s angular, no-nonsense face appeared in the shimmering doorway, and she reached out with her tough-gal, Linda Hamilton-style biceps. “They caught up to me—they’re tracking us faster than expected.” She tossed the change purse through the portal, shouting, “Get moving!”
Luna deftly snatched the purse from mid-air. “Fellas! Come with me if you want to live!”
“What the hell—” Hector began.
“—does that mean?” Diego finished.
“You know, The Terminator? Because Adrienne looks just like the actress who—you know what, forget it.” She turned her mind to the next destination. “So, where to next?”
“Don’t worry about—” Hector said.
“—us. We’ll handle these guys.” said Diego. “You just—”
“—get the tokens out of here.”
Luna opened a portal and flung herself through, barely evading the hand of a magician reaching for the hem of her skirt, and landed on a windswept plateau—maybe Peru? Bolivia? She couldn’t be sure. A herd of alpacas grazed peacefully under an infinite sky. They barely looked up when Luna landed in their midst, and she found their lack of interest oddly comforting.
“How much longer can we keep this up?” she wondered aloud. Luna wasn’t expecting an answer from the alpacas, but she got one anyway when Adrienne appeared through her own portal.
“As long as it takes,” was Adrienne’s grim reply. “Our tokens can’t fall into magician hands. The psychic power they contain would give them access to every secret in New York. Every thought, every plan, every hidden thing.”
