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Chapter One

The silver bell above the door chi from the café’s small kitchen

I looked down fro roohts The woman who entered was tall, brown-haired, and wrapped in a vivid red coat so bulky it hid the shape of her body Her coular and, aside from the color of her coat, she looked no different to the half dozen other women who’d entered the café since we’d opened yesterday

But the psychic bit of me—the bit that had caused so an to stir

This wo from for the past twelve years

Her gaze swept the rooht prints and old plates that covered the walls, and the small teapots of flowers that decorated each table

What she thought of it all, I couldn’t say, because when her gaze finally uish The force of it was so strong, it wrapped a fist around ht

I don’t need this, I thought Not now, not again

I hardly think this wo to be that bad, Lizzie The coht well have been said out loud It surely can’t hurt to at least hear what she has to say

Isabelle—the singer in the kitchen and ifted with telepathy, but also my familiar, and that hts Not all witches had familiars, of course—only those of us born to blueblood families I had no idea why that was, but I suspected it had soreater power most bluebloods could call on Familiars were usually of the anie blueblood witch, so of courseso far south of the norm it was yet another disappointment to my family

I had a very long history of letting my family down—one that had started with my birth

You say that with such surety, I replied, nition was one of your gifts

Her sharp snort echoed through nition to o, re

The woman took several tentative steps forward and then stopped “I’ for Elizabeth Grace”

Her voice was as uncertain as her steps I hooked the unstrung portion of fairy lights onto the ladder and then climbed down “Please, just call me Lizzie What can I do for you, Mrs—?”