That night I dreamed of stars.
Not the ones hung in clean constellations across a velvet sky, but ancient stars—twisted and braided together, burning with green flame and set into a circle of iron. They pulsed in time with something inside me, something old and long asleep. I stood in the center of them, barefoot, wind lifting my hair like smoke, while the trees around me whispered secrets I couldn't understand.
When I woke, my heart was pounding and the room was cold.
I sat up slowly, blinking into the predawn gloom. Outside, the rain had stopped, but the fog had rolled in thick and silver, blanketing the street like a forgotten spell. I rubbed my arms and padded to my desk, where the notes I'd written last night sat in uneven piles. Some were scribbled so quickly I could barely read them. Others had neat stars drawn in the margins, symbols I now knew were called sigils.
And there, next to my laptop, still smudged with graphite and warm from memory, was the eraser.
I picked it up, thumbed the worn edge, and felt that odd sensation again—a low, tingling hum at the base of my fingers. Not painful. Just— present.
It didn't feel like a crush anymore. Not exactly. There was something about Hayden that tugged at me deeper than any daydream or high school fantasy. Something I couldn't name.
At school, I looked for him everywhere.
Not in a creepy way—I told myself—but in that quiet, anxious, "I-might-die-if-I-don't-see-him" kind of way. And yet, he was absent from the usual halls, the places where he and his friends loitered like gods on Olympus.
Miranda noticed.
"Don't bother looking," she said, brushing a lock of hair behind her glasses. "He wasn't in first period. Or second. Someone said he was absent today."
I nodded, but something inside me twisted.
I kept thinking about that bolt of energy that had passed between us, about the look in his eyes afterward. Shock. Recognition. Like he'd felt something too.
During lunch, I ducked back into the library, but I didn't read. I pulled my notebook from my bag and flipped to a blank page. I wasn't even sure what I was doing until my pencil began to move, tracing the same star—five points enclosed in a circle. This time, I added a twist: vines wrapped through the lines, thorns blooming from the intersections. A flower at the center. It wasn't from any website. It came from somewhere else entirely—somewhere within me.
When I looked up, Linda was watching.
Not glaring, not huffing, just… watching. Like she knew something.
Her voice was quiet when she finally spoke.
"You should be careful with symbols like that."
I froze.
"It's just a doodle," I lied.
She gave a faint nod, eyes unreadable. "Even doodles can have effects on the world."
Then she turned and walked away, leaving me chilled and confused. At that moment the bell rang and I had to pack up my things and get to my afternoon classes.
It started with the book.
Not the one I was looking for. Not the one I asked Linda about.
I'd come in after seventh period, backpack still slung over one shoulder, trailing dried leaves from the quad across the polished floor of the library. The fog had lingered all day, and the windows glowed with its ghostly haze. Miranda had gone home early with a headache, leaving me to my own devices—dangerous, given my recent obsession with Wicca. I put it out of my mind, and decided to see what books— if any— the library had on Wicca, or anything relating to the Occult.
"I'm looking for something on herbs," I'd said, not entirely lying. "Something… botany adjacent?"
Linda's brow lifted just slightly, her owl eyes narrowing behind her bifocals. She said nothing, only turned and disappeared into the stacks, her shoes silent on the carpet like she'd trained her whole life to be a ghost.
I waited. Five minutes passed.
When I finally followed her path, she was gone.
But a book sat in the middle of the aisle, its leather cover cracked with age, the title pressed in faded gold leaf I could barely read: The Green Path: Ancestral Practices in Plant and Spirit Work.
I reached for it—and felt the air change.
It was subtle, like a drop in pressure. The soft buzz of the fluorescent lights faded. The air smelled… richer. Earthier. Like damp moss and candle smoke and crushed petals. I blinked, heart suddenly loud in my chest.
The book was warm.
That should have been my first clue. The second was the way my fingertips tingled the moment they brushed its spine, as if the thing had recognized me. Claimed me.
I cracked it open and the scent deepened—sage and rosemary and something metallic beneath, like rust or old blood. The pages were hand-bound, flecked with pressed flowers, handwritten in looping script that changed slightly from one section to the next, as if it had passed through many hands.
One passage leapt out at me:
{Some gifts sleep until they are named. Others only wake when found by their rightful bearer. Magic is not learned. It is remembered.}
A shiver passed down my spine.
I don't know how long I stood there, turning pages, breath shallow. Time felt unmoored. When I finally emerged from the stacks, Linda was waiting at the front desk, hands folded, watching me like she knew exactly what I had found.
"Take it," she said simply, before I could ask if I was allowed.
I hesitated. "It doesn't have a barcode."
"Not everything does."
I opened my mouth to protest, but she turned away, muttering something under her breath as she shelved a stack of books. I caught only three words: "She's found it."
The she, I assumed, was me. Before I could call out to her, and ask what she was talking about about, the bell rang. Once again cutting my library time short. I sighed heavily and quickly added the book to my pile of binder and notebook, then stuffed the stack into my backpack and hurried off to the parking lot.