Nearly seven years after she fled for college, then her master’s degree, Joan stepped off the train at Grand Central with all the fanfare of a slowly deflating balloon. Her duffel bag felt like the heaviest thing on earth, and her ratty sneakers nearly twisted her ankles as she trudged up the stairs from the platform. Moving with the approximate grace of a bike with a flat tire, she wove through the crowds flowing out onto the street.

There, she found no car waiting, no parents loitering, no sister waving amid the swirl of New York City.

This was no great surprise to Joan, but she had expected better anyways. When her father had said he’d send a car, she’d believed him. She scanned the street and hoped to see his ghost chauffeur idling by the curb.

Her mother had offered to take her out for lunch, and Joan had browsed restaurants in the area.

Her sister had said they’d meet up and take the witch subway back home together.

Joan had believed each of them.

Her aunt was too busy to even pretend, and that, in the end, meant she was the only one who had not, for the millionth time, let Joan down.

People shouldered past her to exit into their splendid lives. With a huff, Joan found a corner to wait on, out of the way, in case they were running late. But her phone held no notifications, and the minutes aggregated into despairing blocks of time. Joan didn’t even want to be back; she hadn’t ever really wanted to come back. Everyone assumed she would return, and as she ran after jobs ­post-graduation at respected witch architecture firms, she was repeatedly met with surprise.

I just thought you’d be returning to the city. An endless variation on this, until Joan began to suspect that it wasn’t so much that everyone had made assumptions as it was that her father, Merlin, had spread the word behind her back.

Joan was returning to New York. Period. End of sentence.

She allowed her eyes to prickle and burn for precisely four seconds, breathing in the smell of food vendors and car exhaust and dirty cement, hating that it felt like home in a way New Haven and Yale hadn’t, even though she’d only been back nine times in seven years. Hating that it felt like home because it was home, and no matter how far she ran, for how long, she was always going to end up here.

Alone.

At Grand Central.

Disappointed.

You should have known better, she thought, because this also meant she owed CZ five bucks.

“So? I assume if you’re calling, it isn’t good,” CZ said on the phone as Joan gathered herself, telling her eyes to unprickle and unburn, even though they did neither, because nothing ever went the way she wanted it to.

“No one showed,” Joan replied, crossing the street and really starting to sweat in the growing June heat. She valiantly fought the strap on her shoulder as it began to slip off. Her bag held her entire life.

“I’m sorry, Jo,” CZ said. “I can be there in like five. No, two—the light just changed.”

“Two? Why are you around Grand Central?”

CZ was suspiciously silent.

Joan stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and was rewarded with several pissed- off heckles from the people around her. “CZ—”

“Forty- five seconds!” he said, and then hung up.

Less than a minute later, CZ had located a bewildered Joan on the sidewalk and was weaving toward her, a wide grin on display, slightly elongated canines betraying his vampire heritage. A smile split her own face, wide enough to make her cheeks burn. That was the kind of guy CZ was; he smiled and you had to smile back.

“Jo!” he said, throwing his arms wide— they were really blocking the sidewalk— and Joan responded with a laugh, opening her arms so he could scoop her up, lifting her off her feet like she was a child, like she still housed every innocent thing she’d already lost.

“CZ,” she said into his neck, and if it was a little teary, who could blame her? And if she squeezed tight enough to choke out anyone whose heart beat faster than twelve beats per minute . . . well, then he was kind enough not to comment on it.

He swung her a little before setting her down, patting her shoulders. He was tall and Black, with his hair cropped close to his head.

“I know this is a terrible day for you, but for me? Personally?

It’s so nice to have you back in the city,” CZ said sincerely, which reminded her of how quickly he’d arrived.

She punched him in his extremely well- toned bicep, earning herself a set of stinging knuckles. He rubbed at the spot, pouting.

“It’s one thing to bet on my family not coming; it’s a whole other thing to be so confident I’m going to be abandoned that you show up and wait for my inevitable call,” she scolded. They’d been friends, best friends, since freshman year of undergrad, and each of the nine times Joan had visited New York in the last seven years, it’d been to come home to him.

“You keep enough faith for both of us,” he said, tucking Joan under his arm so they could continue walking. “Not my fault I can’t stand the thought of you out on these streets, alone and so, so small.”

“I’m not that small.”

“Small and weak.”

“Is this supposed to help boost my spirits?”

“You’re a cat that I have lovingly taken home from the shelter. Oh! Bonus to returning— you can finally get a cat.”

“A cat as small and weak and abandoned as me,” Joan said, and flicked another tear from her eye, because even though the joking was fun, it kind of didn’t matter how old you were, fifteen or twenty- five— abandonment was still abandonment.

CZ planted a kiss on the top of her head, furthering his small theory, but only because he was over six feet and she was merely five ten.

“You hungry?” he asked. “We can go somewhere, or we can go to my new apartment. You owe me five dollars.”

“Yes to everything,” Joan said.

“They’re not going to be furious you didn’t go straight home?”

CZ asked, knowing better than to pose such an obvious question but asking anyways, to be polite, because CZ was a LaMorte vampire the same way Joan was a Greenwood witch; they both lived at the whims of their families.

“They absolutely are,” Joan said, disappointment morphing into annoyance in the safety of CZ’s arms. “I just don’t care at the moment.”

CZ squeezed her shoulder. “So bold! Bets on how long it lasts?”

She huffed a laugh. “One hour, max.”

“I’ll be the optimist this time, then, and say two.”

An hour later they were leaving the café they’d stopped at— because even if her mom hadn’t remembered her, Joan’s restaurant research didn’t need to go to waste— so Joan could have a huge, late lunch and CZ, who did not consume human food, could watch her eat with a vaguely disgusted look on his face. It was familiar and comforting and meant absolutely everything to Joan as she tucked into her messy sandwich.

Once she finally reached her family, she would not be allowed to dine so sloppily. There would be napkins in laps. She’d have to fix her posture. All meals would be spent contemplating which utensil would best allow her to gouge her own eyes out. She hadvto enjoy it while she could as the minutes counted down.

The café had been almost entirely human, though there were plenty of magical creatures who worked service roles, hidden in plain sight. CZ was chattering in that way he did to keep Joan’s mind off things. About his pack, something his brother, Abel, had said, and a fae he’d met recently at the magical underground market run by Moon Creatures, a classification of magical species encompassing the fae and vampires that were tied together by fabled connections to a single mythical ancestor, Empusa.

“Do not hang around Times Square. There’s a new information broker there who frolics with pigeons— nasty— and the pizza place on 42nd that you liked closed.”

“Kill me now.”

“And there’s a new witch family gaining power, the Proctors or something. They’re cutting deals left and right in the Night Market, but jury’s out on if anyone likes them or just their money. Oh, and that witch who can create new spells— Grace something— she’s being courted by all the New York elite, but she’s based in Brooklyn.”

“Dad can’t be happy about that,” Joan murmured. Merlin collected interesting people like they were coins, keeping them in drawers until the time was right. The ability to create new spells was quite rare, and Merlin would be extra pissed off if Grace ended up working for Wista Redd, the High Witch of Brooklyn, rather than Merlin’s sister, Valeria, the High Witch of Manhattan and Head Witch of New York State.

“Your dad isn’t happy about anything,” CZ said. “That’s what happens when you’re a dickbag.”

Joan didn’t correct him— Merlin was the king of dickbags, and half of Joan’s life was playing out fictional arguments with him in her head, thus keeping her therapist in business— and CZ continued, cycling through the most pertinent changes to the witch world before swapping into the vampire one, then the fae one.

There were myriad magical creatures, but only three factions with populations large and organized enough to hold political sway. Witches, who were the smallest group at thirty million worldwide, set the laws that kept the magic world hidden and regulated trade across the human- magic border. Then there were vampires, who numbered sixty million, and the fae, who were over eighty million, both with lobbyist groups and microgovernments. The rest, the ancients— dryads, harpies, banshees, a thousand other creatures with different names across different cultures—were old magic, and mainly unconcerned with the human world. They kept to themselves and ranged in population from only a few dozen to less than a hundred thousand worldwide.

CZ had moved on to a story about his brother’s new boyfriend when time ran out for Joan.

Her phone vibrated incessantly, and the caller ID showed her sister, Molly, which was smart, because Joan might have been a bitch and sent her father to voicemail if he’d been the one to call.

“Mol,” Joan said by way of greeting. CZ raised an eyebrow, checked his watch, and then dug in his wallet to hand her back her five.

“I’m so sorry,” Molly said, loud over the din in the background. “I just realized.”

Over an hour late? CZ mouthed at her with exaggerated movements.

“CZ met me,” Joan said in reply, turning from CZ so she wouldn’t laugh outright on the phone.

“Of course, oh good,” Molly said, and the noise started to dim.

“I’m really sorry, I mean that. It’s, well, it’s been kind of a morning at work. With the family.”

“It’s midafternoon,” Joan said.

“It’s been kind of a morning and midafternoon, whatever. Are you close? Aunt Val’s— um— well, I think you’d better come.

There’s been an event.”

“And people want me there?” Joan asked incredulously, and she hated the note of wanting that seeped into her voice. She was the child who refused to come home, the one who had received all the finest training at witch prep schools but still couldn’t cast actual spells.

“Well.” Molly drew out the word.

Which answered her question perfectly.

“Tell me even a single one of them remembered I exist and I’ll come home right now,” Joan said. “Tell me Mom or Dad or Aunt Val said, just once, ‘Where’s Joan?’ and I’ll sprint uptown. Gods, an event. Whatever the fuck that means.”

In the high-drama world of Joan’s family, that could indicate truly anything: Someone had gotten the wrong napkins for the latest witch soiree. Merlin’s watch had gone missing and tracking spells weren’t working to locate it. Perhaps New York was caving into a magma bath and the Greenwoods, as the family in charge of the state, were responsible for pulling the earth back out.

Molly’s silence was a death knell. No one would leave Molly at a train station. She had recently started a position at the family’s investment firm.

She sighed loudly over the line. “Jo—”

“Don’t make excuses for them,” Joan said, and CZ wrapped a hand around her arm, squeezing sympathetically.

“Joan, I’m only saying this over the phone because I suspect the news is going to hit everyone else in like an hour, and CZ’s going to know, and he’s going to tell you anyways, and I know he’s listening right now with his super vampire ears, and I’m evil and rotten and my ancestors are ashamed of me, but, Joan, come home now. There’s been a rumor—”

Joan snorted. “A rumor.”

“That we’ve spent all morning verifying,” Molly continued. “A human who managed to ascend to witchhood via some kind of spell. The whole magic world’s talking about it.”

A wave of horror smashed through Joan’s body, leaving the hairs on her arms standing upright in its wake.

That was impossible. A complete nonstarter— witchhood was inherent, not gained. Credited to a single shared ancestor, Circe, earning them the classification Sun Creatures. And only witches could cast spells or channel magic; ancients and Moon Creatures had innate magic that tended to manifest in physical abilities, like speed, heightened senses, or fae shape-shifting.

Humans were entirely unmagical— the softest, weakest species and nothing more to witches than moneymaking sheep to herd. The magic world operated beyond the sight of humans to hoard resources, not out of fear.

Hearing this was like being told the sheep had turned into Godzilla. It was just not possible, not without threatening every structure and hierarchy that witches held so dear.

But impossibilities didn’t earn her a call from her sister. Impossibilities didn’t send her family scrambling to verify it.

CZ drew back and pulled out his own phone. Joan knew who he was calling without seeing his screen— his older brother, Abel, heir to the powerful LaMorte pack in Queens.

“You’re sure?” Joan whispered.

“Every source we have is saying the same thing: A human managed to become a witch and is now casting,” Molly said.

CZ whipped around, eyes wide, before responding to his brother on the phone, too far away to be audible. That was all the confirmation Joan needed.

“Come home, Joan,” Molly said. “Now.”

“On my way,” Joan reported, and the line went dead.