The Mind Witch: The Magi Series

By Nicole Demery

A wayward seeress. An arrogant wizard. A mysterious box that just might be Pandora's—and contain a secret the fae world has been seeking for hundreds of years.

 

My plan was simple and…mostly ordinary. Finish my PhD. Teach Celtic mythology in a tiny college town. Stop hearing the thoughts and feelings of every person I happen meet.

 

As a seer just coming into her powers, I couldn't avoid the last one.

But the first two were just within my reach when sorcerer-particle physicist Jonathan Lynch appeared one chilly winter morning along two other shocks:

 

The death of my grandmother, the most powerful seer in a generation;

And the mysterious box she protected, which just might have belonged to Pandora.

 

Suddenly I was tangled in a secret that had been unraveling for years, and my unruly talents and complicated inheritance were at the heart of it all.

 

Ordinary life would have to wait.

The extraordinary was coming for me after all.

 

______________________________________________

 

A hot debut series in the tradition of Deborah Harkness, Diana Gabaldon, and Anne Rice weaves magic, scholarship, and romance for readers who crave a little adventure. 

 

Do mind the cliff! But never fear—the next part is available in just a few weeks.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Raglan
• Release date: Mar 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781950663217

Book preview

1

Torn Apart

O ye! whose Ears are dinn’d with uproar rude,

Or fed too much with cloying melody—

Sit ye near some old Cavern’s Mouth, and brood

Until ye start as if the sea Nymphs quired!

John Keats, On the Sea

T he chapter needs to be scrapped.

Dr. Horace James, the Emmeline E. Palmer Professor of Anthropology and Irish Studies, intolerable curmudgeon, and chair of my dissertation committee, launched into his weekly diatribe about the paper bleeding red on his desk.

I just tried not to slump.

I had been expecting this all week, ever since I’d dropped off the draft last Friday. The same tirade I had received approximately every other week for the past year and a half while I wrote my dissertation on the evolution of the Brigid myth in early Celtic literature. Almost six years I’d been at Boston College, working on this degree. Less than four months left until I was finished. Or supposed to be.

I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply through my nose.

Aren’t you hot in those things?

I looked up again to find Professor James glaring at my hands, which were gripping the beaten arms of the office chair.

It’s distracting, he said in a Hepburn-esque New England drawl that only people over the age of eighty seemed to have anymore. You must know that.

I frowned. Most of my peers wrote off my habit of wearing gloves wherever I went as a quirk. We all had them. Academia drew oddballs like moths to a dusty, library-filled flame, and none more than the department of Irish Studies at BC. My roommate, Aja, only wore one pair of shoes—brown combat boots with bright pink laces. Another classmate had an armful of Ogham tattoos.

But for a moment, it was as though Professor James knew my secret. That my obsession with hand accessories went a bit further than a peccadillo. That it wasn’t about vanity, but protection. From him. And from myself.

I pulled my hands into my lap, but made no move to remove the black leather.

Poor circulation. I cleared my throat. So, the chapter?

Professor James shoved his smudged spectacles up his mushroom-shaped nose. Hmm. Yes. But first, are you ready for the seminar tomorrow? It’s an extremely important event for the department, you know.

I swallowed, then nodded. We’d been over this at least four times this week alone. The department was hosting Rachel Cardy as part of a series of talks on druid history. As the field of ancient Celtic studies was growing, the college was coming under more and more pressure to diversify its faculty members beyond the typical James Joyce and W.B. Yeats drumbeaters. Dr. Cardy wasn’t just coming to share her latest research—she was here to be wooed. And Professor James had put me in charge of hosting her.

I considered suggesting that if it was so important, he shouldn’t have handed it off to a grad student. But, of course, that was the tradition at these sorts of things. Demonstrate the availability of free labor and the depth of students she would be mentoring as part of her tenure. I was on display as much as the mahogany-trimmed lecture hall and the Hogwarts-style campus.

I supposed it was a compliment.

Don’t worry, Professor, I said. You’ve already signed off on my intro. And I’ll be at the center bright and early to get everything set up and greet Dr. Cardy.

Professor James grunted, then adjusted his enormous body in his chair, which creaked in response.

Along with me, he said. He looked again at my gloved hands. I hope you’re planning to leave those in your bag when you arrive.

This time, I didn’t answer. The silence started to yawn, but I didn’t avert my gaze. Eventually, Professor James looked away. Just like most did when my sort looked for too long.

He cleared his throat awkwardly. Right. Well. I don’t have all day. Let’s go over this travesty you call a final chapter.

I tried to listen. I really did. But you can only take being told how terrible your best work is so many times. Too much speculation. Not enough evidence. Disagreeing with every conjecture I made, to the point where I wondered if it wasn’t because they weren’t ideas he had come up with first.

Besides, everything he said would be scribbled up and down the margins of the paper in a torrent of vitriolic red gashes of ink, and on top of that, I knew that we would tussle at least two more times before I could wear him down enough to accept the chapter. And then I’d be that much closer to freedom.

So my mind couldn’t help wandering to other things around the tiny office that were suddenly a lot more interesting than the torrent of abuse. Like the Scottie-dog-shaped gash in the side of the desk, just above my knee. So much mystery in a mark. The desk, like so many ancient pieces floating around campus, was a behemoth, taking up nearly half this glorified broom closet. Its mahogany veneer shone in some places, damaged in many others by the trespasses of time.

I floated a gloved finger over the dog. What might it tell me, if I could find