Page 1 of Harvest Magic

Prologue -- Nora

Six weeks ago…

I stood at the end of my driveway until my daughter’s taillights disappeared from view. My last little chick was finally leaving the nest. After graduating with honors from Indiana University and spending a full summer sprawled on my couch watching reality TV and eating my food, Laura was finally off to start her new job in Chicago.

I couldn’t be happier.

I knew a lot of mothers would have felt depressed right now, but not me. After putting my life on hold for twenty-five years, I was finally heading into my second act. And it was going to be incredible.

Don’t get me wrong. I loved my kids. If I’d had to live my life all over again, even knowing all the grief I’d get from being a single parent long before I kicked the man-child I’d married to the curb, I wouldn’t have hesitated to make the same decisions. Except I’d probably divorce David sooner.

Now all three of my kids were grown up and on their own, and I didn’t have to chase my ex-husband down to argue about child support or how he’d once again managed to ‘forget’ it was his weekend to take the kids.

The realtor was coming tomorrow morning. Hopefully, the house would sell quickly, and I could get out of here in a month or two. I’d been practicing that ‘Swedish Death Cleaning’ technique for long enough that the house was pretty sparse. All I needed to do was have the movers drop all my furniture off at a local charity that gave furniture to people leaving homelessness, then I could pack up what was left in my Subaru and hit the road.

My destination was Greysden, Colorado, a small town in the mountains that some people called magical. All sorts of non-humans lived there, from shifters to demons, as well as a large contingent of witches. My family had an ancestral homestead there and when my Aunt Sage called me out of the blue one day to invite me to come stay with them, I knew it was a sign.

Sage wasn’t technically my aunt. I think she and my mother were second cousins or something, but I’d always called her my aunt. She was the de facto leader of the local coven, and two of her daughters, Cami and Pepper, were also practicing witches. Her third daughter Meri was a psychic like her father, although from what I’d heard, that gift was a little hit or miss.

I came from a long line of witches, but somewhere along the way my grandmother had renounced witchcraft and moved to Indiana. My mother had been raised to suppress her gift, and by the time I came along, our magic was mostly dormant. I had flashes here and there that might have been something, but mostly I felt ordinary. Human. The Rosewater blood in my veins was diluted, but Aunt Sage assured me that it wouldn’t take much to awaken my magic.

“It’s like when you hear a song that you haven’t heard in twenty years and as soon as you hear it, all the words come back to you,” she told me.

That would have made more sense if I’d ever seen or practiced magic though. My grandmother had talked about it during her last days in hospice, but I’d brushed it off as confusion brought on by pain and dementia.

But then my cousin Jane had shown up at my mother’s funeral six months ago. I hadn’t expected to see her, didn’t even know how she knew about Mom’s death, but she’d come to the service with her husband Gabriel. I hadn’t seen her since we were kids, but there was something different about her now. Something that made my own body hum with recognition. It was almost like I could see energy moving around her.

We’d had breakfast the day after the funeral and she explained about how she’d found out she was a witch when a suppression spell that her mother put on her when she was a baby started to fade right after her fortieth birthday. She’d come to Greysden to find answers about what was happening to her, and not only did she discover her magic, but she’d fallen in love with a shifter as well.

“Supernatural creatures all live out in the open in Greysden,” she’d explained. “I went there hoping to learn more about what was happening to me, but then I also found my fated mate. I’ve never been happier.”

Fated mates sounded like some kind of shifter fairy tale. Humans mostly pretended that the magical species didn’t exist. For their part, the supes tried to stay under the radar so we didn’t end up in some kind of a species war. I’d heard there were a few communities where all creatures lived together openly, but I wasn’t sure it was true until Jane told me about Greysden.

With my last child leaving the house, I’d spent months trying to decide what to do next. My job was fully remote so I could work from anywhere. I wasn’t particularly close to my neighbors, despite living in this house for twenty years, so I wasn’t going to miss the house. Besides, it was too big for just one person. There was a lot of upkeep, and I often felt lonely rattling around here all alone.

When Aunt Sage unexpectedly invited me to stay with her in Greysden it was like a light turned on in my brain. Even though I’d never been there, it felt like it was calling to me somehow. I figured I’d spend a few months there learning about witchcraft and figuring out what I wanted to do with myself now, then I would figure out my next move. If I liked the town I’d get a little place of my own, if not, I’d head for some place new. Whatever happened next was completely up to me, and it was a heady feeling.

It would be hard though, moving away from my kids, not being so involved in their lives anymore. Hard, but good for all of us. I’d never been a helicopter parent, but I’d often fallen into the trap of doing things for them because it was easier than arguing with them or watching them mess things up. But they were all in their twenties now, it was time for them to grow up.

My kids were predictably upset when I told them I was moving across the country. I waited until Laura was all moved to her new place in Chicago and the ‘for sale’ sign was in the yard before I asked for a family meeting on Zoom.

“Greysden, Colorado? Do they even have Uber or DoorDash up there?” Laura had asked.

I resisted pointing out that I never used either of those services anyway. I did okay with my job, but the expense of raising three kids meant there was never enough left for luxuries.

“Are you having some kind of a midlife crisis, Mom?” This was from my oldest, Caitlin.

Of the three of them I thought my son, Scott, who was usually the peacemaker in the family, would be the voice of reason. I was wrong.

“You can’t sell our family home!” he’d said indignantly. “That’s our legacy.”

“I paid for this legacy,” I reminded him. “Including buying your father out after the divorce.”

That had really chapped my ass. I’d been the one to pay the mortgage payments and household expenses the entire time we were married, but the man who’d frittered away any money he made was entitled to half of our marital home.

“Where are we supposed to go for Christmas?” Caitlin asked.

“You haven’t been home for Christmas in three years,” I reminded her. There was always a boyfriend or a ski weekend with her girlfriends that took precedence.