It was less than a five-minute drive from the town center to Olivia’s house—or, rather, her mom’s house, since Olivia disavowed all rights of ownership. She wouldn’t even call it a house. It was “the place we have to stay.”

Olivia’s distaste was so profound, a twisted image of the house wormed its way into my imagination. I thought, for sure, it’d be a drooping mansion, full of shadows too deep for the objects that cast them, creaking stairs, rotting weeds in the garden, water-stained walls—and maybe there’d be a few bats.

So I was surprised when we pulled into the front drive of a nice-looking red brick house. It had cheerful white trim around its many windows and stylish navy-blue shutters that matched the door. The door had a winter wreath and a bright brass mail slot. The build-up of snow prevented me from seeing the garden, but the bushes that lined the drive were trimmed and covered in burlap to protect them from the wind. All the walks had been carefully shoveled.

The shadows were normal for a February afternoon. No bats.

We were still getting out of the car when the front door opened and a man and woman stepped out.

The man looked like he was in his early sixties. There were weathered laugh lines etched into his expressive face. He had bold blue eyes, receding white hair that was neatly combed, and a well-kept white mustache. He wore slacks, loafers, and I could see a folded collar peeking out from his tasteful sweater. His grin was broad and bright.

The woman behind him didn’t look nearly so excited to see us. Her mouth was set in the deadest neutral expression I’d ever seen, and her eyes were slightly narrowed. She was in her early twenties, and she had dark brown hair with a hint of red that you could see when she was standing in sunlight. She wore a fancy pair of slacks, high-heeled boots, and either she was exactly the right shape for her fashionable top, or she went to a tailor.

My jeans and sweatshirt ensemble was starting to look pretty shabby.

Come to think of it, even though Olivia wore skirts and dresses, most of them were casual, and she had a lot of jersey tops. That made her the rebellious goth-punk of the family.

And she still dressed nicer than I did.

I tried not to think about it.

The man walked up to Jacky with his hand extended.

“Mr. Noctis! I’m so glad to meet you at last. Thank you a thousand times for looking after my daughter.”

Olivia and I walked around the car to get closer to the conversation.

As he and Jacky shook hands, the man said, “I’m Rall Axton, the token male. They don’t really need me around here to further the plot, but in this day and age, you have to have that diversity, don’t you?”

Olivia rolled her eyes.

Mr. Axton reached his hand out to me next. “And who might you be?”

“Emerra Cole,” I said. “You’re Rall…Axton?”

“Oh, I know what you’re thinking. But the Axtons are just old enough and respectable enough I was allowed to keep my last name when I married Ellis.” He leaned in and raised his thin white eyebrows. “Either that, or the Oliversens didn’t want me.” He winked.

I smiled. The token male did well in his role of comic relief.

Axton’s grin shifted to Olivia. He'd already been glowing with joy, but when he looked at his daughter, his face achieved a whole new level of radiance. I should have brought sunglasses.

“And there you are, my beautiful little girl. A year taller and more womanly than ever.”

“I’m the same height, Daddy.”

“Then it must be all those brains you’ve been developing. They make you look taller. If you’re not careful, all that extra gray matter will burst right out of your skull.”

Olivia rolled her eyes. Again. I was beginning to understand how she’d developed the habit.

“Would it humiliate you to death to give your old man a hug?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Then I’ll weep over your grave.” He put an arm around her and squeezed. She grudgingly squeezed him back.

Axton turned and motioned for the woman to come over. She stepped forward.

He said, “This is one of my other beautiful not-so-little girls, Nylah.”

She shook hands with Jacky first. “Nylah Lauren Sofie Emma Tara Grace Oliversen.”

“Jack Noctis, but most people call me Big Jacky.”

She shook hands with me.

“Emerra Cole,” I repeated.

Nylah Oliversen’s eyes moved down and back up as she looked at me. It was hard to tell from her quiet “huh” if I’d passed her inspection. She tucked her hand back into her folded arms. They were pulled tight to her body to keep her warm.

“Blast, it’s cold out here,” Axton observed. “Is there a lot of luggage?”

“Only two large pieces and a few bags,” Jacky said.

“Is that all? Then I’ll help get them up to your rooms. Nylah, why don’t you take Olivia and Emerra in where it’s warm and see about some hot drinks.”

Nylah nodded, then turned and walked back into the house.

“Dad—” Olivia started to say.

“You have to let me at least pretend to be a gentleman, Olivia.”

“But—”

“You’re not going to say I’m old, are you? I’ll have you know, I have a daughter who’s only an apprentice. And I’ve been working out.”

Olivia glared at him.

“If you want, I could take off my shirt and flex to prove it.”

“Oh my god! You win!” Olivia turned and stomped off toward the house.

I ran a few steps to catch up to her.

“Hey,” I muttered, trying to keep it quiet enough that Nylah, who was waiting for us at the door, wouldn’t hear me, “do the men around here usually take the names of their wives?”

A small grimace appeared on Olivia’s face. “Yes, but you’re asking the wrong question. It’s traditional to keep the name of the family with the most powerful bloodline. Most of the Axtons are about the same level as the Oliversens.”

I noticed her conscientious use of the word “most.”

“So it’s about power?” I said.

“Welcome to Craftborough,” Olivia bared her teeth in a forced smile, “where it’s always about power.”

Once we were inside, we stopped to take off our wet shoes, and Olivia swept off her witch’s hat.

“Oh, you do take it off indoors,” Nylah noted. “I wondered about that.”

Her tone was a little too innocent for my comfort. I made sure to focus all my attention on untying my laces.

“Of course I do,” Olivia replied, her voice a bastion of perfect calm, “it’s rude to wear it inside a house.”

“And here you are, giving up a chance to annoy Mother. My, you have matured.”

“I don’t wear it only to annoy Mother.”

Nylah scoffed.

“It annoys you too,” Olivia said.

I put my boots on the boot tray near the door and took my time making sure they were lined up. It wasn’t required—Olivia’s boots were haphazardly laying on their sides—but it kept me from having to stand up in the middle of the family drama.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“What kind of hot drink do you like, Miss Cole?” Nylah asked.

I couldn’t put it off any longer. Like a soldier peeking out of a fox-hole, I rose. “Do you have cocoa?”

She nodded. “Olivia?”

“Mint tea please.”

Nylah said, “Janice is working on dinner. I’ll take care of the drinks. You can wait in the sitting room.”

With every step Nylah took away from us, Olivia’s shoulders eased down by another quarter inch.

“Is Janice another sister?” I asked.

Olivia motioned for me to follow her down the hall. “Janice prefers to be called a housekeeper, but she makes all our dinners too. Lindsey doesn’t live here anymore.”

“Lindsey?”

“She’s Nylah’s older sister. My half-sister.”

There was some hasty mental erasing and scribbling as I tried to draw out the Oliversen family tree. “Is Nylah a half-sister?”

Olivia sighed with annoyance, as if nothing in the world could be more tedious than describing her family.

“My mother married Samuel Oakwell when she was young. They had Lindsey and Nylah. He died, she married my father, and they had me.”

“See,” I nudged her with my elbow, “that wasn’t so hard.”

Olivia gave me a look.

When we stepped into the sitting room, I could tell that every furnishing, decoration, and paint color had been selected by Mrs. Oliversen. Every color had a gray undertone—which created a classic, muted look—and the whites were closer to cream. Every piece of furniture shared the same ornate style. Everywhere I looked, the details complimented the decor. When everyone was in bed at night, I wouldn't have been surprised if some of the livelier ornaments turned to each other and talked about how well they all looked and how wonderful it was that they worked so nicely together.

The whole house had that aura. It was as if Mrs. Oliversen’s natural taste in interior design had unwittingly created an environment that was perfect for her.

Against it, Olivia’s all-black ensemble stood out like a screaming raven at a dove conference.

I sat down on the couch. Olivia stayed standing.

“Does that make you the beloved baby of the family?” I asked.

“No.”

I grinned. “Aren’t you Daddy’s beautiful little girl?”

“You might have noticed, my father’s main hobby is trying to embarrass me in public.”

“And he’s very good at it. Your sister…”

Olivia's shoulders rose as they tightened. The corners of her mouth pulled back into a straight frown. “What about her?”

“She had the same middle names as you.”

She relaxed. “About a hundred and fifty years ago some witch thought it’d be really clever to name her daughters after the line of witches in their family, and now it’s tradition. Grace was the first. Then Tara. Then Emma.” Olivia waved her hand around to demonstrate and-so-on.

I mentally checked my way through Olivia’s crowd of names. “There’s no Ellis in that lineup.”

“Oh, you wouldn’t name your baby after yourself”—(more sarcasm)—“That would be boastful and uncouth.”

I braced my elbow on the arm of the couch, rested my cheek on my knuckles, and gazed at her. Could black eyes glint? If they could, mine were probably glinting.

“What?” she said.

I’d been thinking about the first time I’d met Olivia and how proud she’d looked as she recited every one of those names. How could she have that much scorn for the tradition, yet be so fond of her names?

But maybe that wasn’t it. Maybe Olivia disliked how two-faced it was to do something as conceited as that but stop short out of modesty.

“Oh, nothing.” I moved my hand from my face. “Are you going to tell your family why you’re here?”

“I don’t tell my family anything if I can avoid it.”

An old wound reached its long fingers around my heart and squeezed.

“Your father loves you,” I said. “His face lit up when he looked at you.”

Olivia frowned. “Daddy is sweet, but he wouldn’t understand.”

“He wouldn’t understand what?”

“Anything. Me. Or…” She waved her hand as she struggled to think of another example. “…anything.”

I tried to keep a straight face, but some of my incredulity might have leaked through.

When she saw my expression, she said in a rushed whisper, “Look, he’s nice, but he’s nothing but my mother’s doormat. I don’t tell him things.”

I lowered my eyes and faintly shook my head.

“It’s family dynamics, okay!” Olivia said. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“I can’t argue with that,” I grumbled.

“Just don’t take their bait. Don’t do anything to stand out, don’t challenge them, and, please, don’t say anything weird.”

“Weird how?”

“You know—weird.”

Dang. That was quite the set of rules. And that last one wasn’t going to be easy to obey. I’d never been good at keeping my mouth shut.

“Do you have any super glue?” I asked.

“No.”

“Then I make no promises.”

“See? That. That kind of stuff is weird. Pretend you’re a snobby rich girl trying to get into an elite country club and you’ll do fine.”

“Oh, but darling, without the super glue, I’m simply helpless, don’t you know.”

She closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead.

I bit back a smile.

It wasn’t that I tried to embarrass Olivia, but there was some small imp that lived in my soul, and it cackled every time I did. I thought about setting up a competition between me and Mr. Axton to see if either of us could actually make Olivia explode from humiliation—but that would break the rule about not challenging them.

We heard Axton’s voice carrying through the hall, getting louder as he came toward us. Olivia turned to face the doorway.

As Axton and Jacky came into the room, Axton called out to his daughter, “I’ve been quizzing your master, but he says he doesn’t know how long we get to keep you for! If it’s undecided, can I put in a vote that we keep you forever?”

“I don’t think that’ll work for Mr. Noctis,” Olivia said with what I thought was an unusual amount of diplomacy for her.

Rall snapped his fingers and arranged his face in an expression of disappointment. “Then at least until Tuesday, surely? Your mother worked very hard on this year’s festival.”

Nylah came into the room carrying a tray loaded with cups, a tea pot, and some cookies. “Please, Father. It’s not like Olivia’s ever cared about that.”

“That”—the celebration, or “that”—how hard her mother worked, remained unspecified, and I was pretty sure it had been done on purpose.

Olivia knew the rules; she didn’t take the bait. She accepted the tea from her sister in stony silence.

Nylah passed her step-father a mug. He sat down after snatching one of the cookies.

“I thought you were trying to be healthy,” Nylah said.

“I am.” Axton raised his mug to her. “That’s why you made me decaf.”

“Since when do you drink decaffeinated coffee?” Olivia asked.

Axton swallowed a bit of cookie before he answered. “It’s all a part of your mother’s plot to keep me alive forever.”

Noctis refused any drinks or refreshment and went to stand by Olivia.

Nylah picked up one of the mugs and passed it to me. “Do you mind if I ask what your powers are, Miss Cole? You’re not a witch, are you?”

The question hung in the air for a moment, then faded, leaving only a vague sense that a trap had been set. When I glanced toward Olivia, our eyes briefly met over the rim of her mug, and when my gaze passed over Rall Axton, I saw a slight down-turn at the edges of his mouth.

Something was definitely up, but it seemed rude to ignore a direct question.

“You can call me Emerra.” I gave her what I hoped was a winning smile. “I don’t mind. And no, I’m not a witch. I don’t have any powers.”

Jacky’s jawbone moved, but Olivia elbowed him, and he shut his mouth.

“Hmm.” Nylah put the tray down on the coffee table and sat across from me. “Well, it’s always interesting to meet one of your friends, Olivia.”

There was something about her tone that bothered me—a hint of the same high, syrupy sound that she’d used when she mocked Olivia as we took off our boots. Anyone who was less socially defensive probably would’ve missed it, but my ears were always on alert for tones.

It was a darn shame my brain didn’t always know what to do with them. It rifled through option after option, trying to find one that might explain her comment. Something occurred to me…

My thoughts dribbled away, leaving my head empty of everything but my shock.

No.

She wouldn’t.

No one in their right mind would judge Olivia because she was friends with someone who had no power.

Would they?

But this was Craftborough, where it was always about power.

I was surprised no one heard the glass break when I took all of Olivia’s rules and threw them out the window.

“Welp!” I cried. “You caught me! We’re not friends. Olivia didn’t even want to invite me—honestly, she’d probably rather see me at the bottom of the ocean than anywhere within ten feet of her—but I had to come.” I pointed to Big Jacky. “Wherever he goes, I go.”

When Nylah recovered from her surprise, she said, “Why?”

“Well, that’s the problem with power, right?” My hands went out to the side in a shrug. “I’m sort of his handler. The Torr likes someone to keep an eye on him. I’m supposed to call in if anything big happens.”

Nylah looked sideways at Jacky. I could almost see her mind churning over what I’d said, trying to figure out what kind of power would call for that type of an appointment—or how much power.

There. I had absolved Olivia of any association with me and upped her credibility by making her master out to be some barely controlled superman.

Funny though—when I glanced at Olivia, she didn’t look grateful. She looked mortified.

Jacky said, with perfect honesty, “I have been told I’m hard to handle.”

Bless you, Iset.

Nylah turned back to me. “And you have access to the Torr?”

“I have two enforcement units on speed dial.”

I was stretching the lie a bit to claim Darius and Conrad were each their own enforcement unit when they usually worked together, but I figured I could get away with it since they were both strong enough to be one-man units in a pinch.

Her eyes narrowed. “Then you must know the torrmen.”

It didn’t sound like she believed me. The poor fool.

“Sure do,” I said. “Thorburn, Ashworth, Uhler, Reynall. I don’t know Klara Reynall all that well, but we’ve met. Rabbi Dafna’s great, but I don’t think most people count her as a torrman. Strange, considering all she does.”

“It’s tradition, Emerra,” Jacky said. “Father Thorburn is the torrman, Dafna acts as an adviser.”

“There you have it. Tradition.” I leaned forward and snatched up a cookie. “These look fabulous.”

Nylah sat back and crossed her legs. She steepled her fingers in front of her chest. “And how did you get this appointment?”

“Oh, they dug me up somewhere.” I dunked my cookie in the cocoa and took a slurping bite. Mouth still half full, I said, “It wasn’t like I was doing anything else.”

“But—”

“Sorry, I can’t really talk about it,” I said as sweetly as possible. “It’s classified.”

Our staring contest was interrupted by Axton’s chuckle.

“It seems you’ve gotten yourself into something deep, Olivia,” he said. “I’m proud of you.”

Olivia’s cheeks went from pink to crimson.

“Now tell me about your studies!” he cried. “Or is that classified too?”

The conversation wandered on as we finished our drinks. Axton offered to take the dishes and tray back to the kitchen while Nylah showed us to our room.

She led us upstairs, walked down the hall to the second door, and went inside.

Olivia stopped in front of the doorway. “This is my old room.”

Nylah went over to the window and threw open the inner curtains. “Yes, but it’s a guest room now. We didn’t think you’d be coming back.”

She turned to face us, crossed her arms, and waited.

Olivia finally went inside. I was a step behind her.

The room matched the rest of the house, and it was devoid of any personal touches. It might as well have been plucked out of a classy bed and breakfast. Sure, it was welcoming, but it also gave the impression it was only meant for temporary occupation.

Nylah uncrossed her arms and walked toward the door. “Janice has made the bed and brought in new pillow cases. There are spare blankets in the trunk, and you can find clean towels under the sink in the bathroom. Mr. Noctis is in the room next to yours.” She gave me a hard look. “In case anything ‘big’ happens.”

I grinned. “You can never be too careful.”

Nylah shut the door as she went, leaving Olivia and I standing side by side, alone, in the sterile room.

“I kind of hate you,” Olivia said.

“Only kind of?” I put a hand on my hip. “Huh! I’m doing better than I thought!”