Chapter 1 Arrival
Anton frowned when the chants of his neighbour Wiccans drifted through the heavy curtain drawn over the terrace door. Maybe performing the memory retrieval ritual at the summer solstice night wasn’t a good idea. But candles were set, protective circles drawn in salt and runes scribbled in blood, so he’d go with it anyway.
The flames on the candles flickered from orange to blue as he proceeded with the incantation, “Spirits of the crossroads, open the Veil—”
The same words echoed back from outside, a feminine chorus rising over the hedge. His brow furrowed. This couldn’t be good.
A thunder rumbled in the distance, as if to confirm his suspicions. The weather forecast said nothing about storms tonight.
Destro, his emotional support rabbit, thumped on the carpet as the floor trembled, and a few old tomes slid dangerously close to the edge of their heavy wooden shelves. Anton blinked. This wasn’t an earthquake zone.
He was reciting the last words of his spell when the lightning struck his neighbours’ yard, the flash bright enough to light up his black curtains. The explosion rang in his ears, sending Destro into a panic escape under the couch.
Anton sighed. He’d just finished his ritual and felt absolutely no change in his recollection of the events from the Enchanted Encounters. The memory wiping spell the organizers of the dating show had used on him when he got disqualified for revealing his necromancer powers was either very strong or very complicated. Soon it would be a year since he’d been trying to reverse it, without a breakthrough.
As he drew the curtain aside, a small apocalypse came into view. A huge, burnt hole gaped in his beautiful hedge, wisps of blue flame still licking at the edges. Five would-be-witches were running in circles like frightened chickens, their white dresses, long hair, and too many ribbons floating in a colorful haze around them. It was a small miracle the girls didn’t catch on fire, either from the hedge or the huge bonfire they had lit up for their ceremony.
And in the middle of this mess, calm like a rock in a raging sea, stood a Greek goddess. Or at least that was how Anton would imagine a Greek goddess. Her midnight black hair flowed over her black cloak, open at the front, revealing a simple, long dress, cinched at the waist with a silver cord. Silver bracelets chimed in the night air when she brushed a strand of hair from her face, her dark eyes swiping over her surroundings. Her gaze fell on Anton, and her velvet lips curled in a smile that made his heart skip a bit.
He took a deep breath, opened the door to the terrace, and faced the goddess with a grin, “Welcome to our humble neighborhood.”
