Charms: Book One of the Tempest Trinity Trilogy

By Leslie Calderoni

Charms is the first book in Leslie Calderoni’s Tempest Trinity, a smart new Young Adult trilogy packed with mystery, girl power, and the magic of science.

“I’m really excited to get Charms onto the shelves…With its themes of Girl Power and family bonds, it’s a fun book for a wide age range

• Language: English
• Publisher: Leslie Calderoni
• Release date: Oct 27, 2015
• ISBN: 9780996704618

Leslie Calderoni

Leslie shares a home in the Santa Cruz mountains with her three dogs, one cat, and a hamster named Jack White. A self-confessed Nerd Girl, she was over the moon to be able to edit much of her most recent book in an office across HWY 101 from NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, CA.

Book preview

CHAPTER

1

EVEN IF I WERE BLINDFOLDED, I could tell you exactly where I am right now just by the sounds, the smells, and the warmth of the sun on my face. Screams of fear and delight mean the Boardwalk is behind me. The smell of fried fish comes from the Wharf restaurants stretching out to my left, and the mix of saltwater and suntan lotion means Cowell’s Beach is in front of me. The smooth wood of my favorite bench, warmed by the sun, follows the curve of my back.

As usual, my sisters are late to meet me.

My name is Emerald, but everyone calls me Em. Mia and Terra, my sisters, are twins who graced the world sixteen years ago, a year before I did. We’re not sure which is older, because Mama can’t seem to produce the birth certificates as proof of the first one on scene. We’re pretty sure it’s her way of keeping them on a level playing field. My sisters are always reminding me that they’re two years away from legal adulthood. I agree with the legal part, but the adult part, not so much.

As close as we are in age, we’re very different. When Mia’s on the warpath, Terra goes about mending fences so people feel like they can make up and move on. I just try to stay out of the fray and ponder things.

We were little when our parents split up. All I remember from that time is Mia doing whatever she could to get attention, even if it meant breaking things or running around our yard naked. Terra would play quietly and give everyone she met a genuine smile that melted even the hardest hearts. I observed the world with watchful eyes and kept my thoughts and innermost secrets to myself.

As we grew, our personalities blossomed and our individual charms became powers. Although we tried to hide them, especially at school, we’ve slipped a few times, kids noticed, and a rumor started that we’re witches. It isn’t true, at least in the sense that we don’t practice witchcraft. What is true is that we discovered there’s real magic in the world: the magic of physics. Once you understand how matter, motion, and time work together, you can use it to your own advantage. If the other kids think we’re witches, so be it. It keeps us from being bullied and has given us a certain amount of authority on campus. Of course, if anyone knew that the leader of our coven is Albert Einstein, I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t be so intimidating.

My power is the relativity of time. Depending on how you feel, time can be your best friend or your worst enemy. One day you look at the clock and it always shows plenty of time for everything you’re doing. Other days, minutes and hours seem to fly by as if you have no control of it. Here’s the secret: it’s all the same time, and you make as much of it as you want or need. It takes practice, but it’s possible.

Mia’s power is the ability to interact within the multiverse. Multiple times and places are all occurring at once, every minute and everywhere. Very few people experience it, and if they do, they think they’re being haunted. It’s like tuning into a radio station, and Mia knows how to adjust the frequency.

Terra can feel and impact the vibrational energy of people and objects. She’s never been able to make an entire place vibrate—unless you count her habit of slamming doors—but she can sense a negative vibration and will it into the positive. She can mend a broken heart and diffuse an angry outburst. She can also increase the battery life of your cell phone.

Most of the time we use our abilities for good, although I’ll admit to speeding time up to get through a boring class or finish my chores early. I’m pretty sure Mia has used information from her ghosts to gain the advantage in an argument, and Terra can use her ability to gauge Mama’s mood to avoid her if it’s not great.

The girls and I take off for the beach on days when it’s beautiful outside. We love Cowell’s Beach because we can see the boys surfing near the lighthouse, see the Wharf, and the Boardwalk, all without moving our towels. I slow everything down so the afternoons in the warm sun seem to last for hours. We lie in the sun, trade stories, and laugh until our sides hurt, but we’re never late getting home. Like I said, time is my friend.

Just above our beach is Sunrise Vista, a home for people who are old and have long since lost any family or friends to care for them. Mia works there. The residents love her. She relays messages to them from the people who’ve moved on. When she does, the comfort goes both ways. She also has a knack for keeping the less-than-nice people on the other side, or the jerk ghosts, as Mia calls them, from bothering the people still here because they’re not ready to move on just yet.

Terra waits tables at Woodrow’s Diner on the Wharf. Sometimes I’ll help her speed up a shift that seems like it’s never going to end, or help her stretch one out when the tips are good. Of course, I charge her for that: cash or free calamari, depending on how I feel.

I work at Martini’s downtown on Pacific Avenue. It’s crazy during the summer, but there’s never a dull moment. We only work enough to pay for the things Mama won’t pay for, like cell phones. She likes to say, Don’t drop the dime if you can’t pay for the time. I’m pretty sure the last time phone calls cost a dime, dinosaurs roamed the earth. I should have Mia check into that.

Mama’s always saying old-timey things. She’s older than all of our friends’ mothers. We’re not sure how much older, but we decided she got a late start—a very late start. She’s always playing salsa music just a little too loud, and it gets embarrassing sometimes. But since we all know how to dance, we just go with it.

Mama’s younger sister Eva is so much cooler, and we love when she visits. Auntie Eva always has the newest music ready to play. She likes to shop at the places we do, and see the movies we like. She’s like a fourth sister. Things will be good for a few days, but then Eva disappears for weeks or months. It’s usually because she and Mama got into an argument over clothing Eva bought for us, or that she kept us out too late. But we don’t care, we’ll take what we can get, even if it’s short-lived. It’s always fun and exciting with her, like we’re up to something we shouldn’t be. When Mama and Eva fight it’s always in Spanish, because the girls and I don’t speak it. We know enough words to understand the basic gist of the fight, but not the details.

Auntie Eva told us that several generations ago our last name was Tempesta, but somewhere along the way the a got dropped off the end. Our family is a mix of Mexican and European, but people are always mistaking us for something far more exotic. Mia will tell people she’s from Bali, or Tahiti, but we’re from San Jose, California. Our dad lives in Hawaii and we see him every couple of years on winter break, but both Mama and Eva made it clear years ago that he’s not welcome back on the mainland. Mama jokes she’s got a broom with his name on it. He’s okay with that. He’s a lot younger than Mama and likes to play golf. Hawaii has nice golf courses. He also likes to drink Mai Tais, and Hawaii has plenty of those too. I’m sure that has something to do with why Mama has the broom. Eva doesn’t like to talk about Dad at all, so we don’t bring him up to her.

We came to Santa Cruz when we were in grade school. Mama moved us here after one of her epic fights with Auntie Eva. We all fell in love with this little beach town. It’s casual, liberal, and fun. Summers are too crowded with the constant stream of people driving over from the valley. But once the season ends and the beaches clear out, it’s great. We have warm weather and good surfing through the fall and even into the winter some years.

We spend the evenings around bonfires with our friends and the seemingly interchangeable surfer boys. They’re all cute and funny, but none of them seem particularly interesting to me. They all fall in love with the twins, Terra with her heart-melting smile and Mia with her rebellious streak. The girls are never without dates and I’m never without a book. I’d rather spend a Saturday night with a good book, losing myself in the story, than spend it pretending to care about how great the waves were or who got sponsored. The local surfers never bring up their sponsors. Everyone already knows anyway. If a boy tells you who he’s sponsored by, he’s not from here and he’ll be gone by the end of the summer. Of course Mia and Terra don’t care about that. They both have closets full of hoodies from Quiksilver and Billabong to prove it. I do too, but I get all of mine at the local thrift stores. I prefer vintage clothes anyway.

That’s how I learned to stand apart from the twins: I found my own style and cultivated it. Auntie Eva loves my style, calling me dollface and sugar. She sends me pencil skirts and bandanas from the vintage stores she finds in whatever town she’s calling home at the time. Needless to say, with the girls being nearly identical and me walking around campus looking like someone from a ’50s movie, we definitely stand out.

We’re okay with the other kids thinking we’re witches and stepping aside when we walk by. Bullying in school is rampant. When you stand out, you have a target on your back. But because of the witch rumor, no one bothers us. They also don’t bother the kids we look out for. Everyone is on their best behavior when we’re around, and it’s been that way since we moved to town. Bullies are nothing more than cowards, and we learned at an early age not to let them get the upper hand in any situation—not only to protect ourselves, but to protect anyone else in a vulnerable position.

Our abilities make it more fun to regulate the harassment. Once, in junior high, Terra made Mitchell Anderson wet his pants for bullying a kid with Down’s syndrome. She sat next to him, could feel he needed to go, and increased the vibration on his bladder enough that he couldn’t make it to the bathroom in time. I slowed time down a little in every class Mitchell had so he got a good taste of his own medicine. But it was really Terra who did the social damage. Mitchell never bothered the kid with Down’s after that. He also never sat next to Terra again.

Most people would have blamed Mia. It’s her style to get mad and cause a scene, but she couldn’t make a cup of tea vibrate if her life depended on it. This time it was all Terra. Her heart breaks any time she sees an injustice; she can’t let it go. A cruel dog owner may find everything he touches to be just a bit painful to him. A bad boyfriend might feel his heart about to break in his chest for no reason. Terra won’t harm anyone; she just gives them a little of what they’re handing out to others.

Mama calls our abilities charms. She’s always cautioning us to mind them, to not abuse what we’ve developed. Charms run in the family, but until the twins and I came along, no one wanted to talk about them, much less use them. I think that’s why Auntie Eva is so sad all the time. She seems stuck in a dream she can’t wake herself up from. I guess denying such an important part of yourself makes you lose your way in life with no clear road back—at least not without a ton of wrong turns, and Mama says Eva’s taken every one of them. She always finds her way back to us, though, and each time we all get a little closer. She’ll argue with Mama, but the girls and I chalk it up to their being sisters with too much of an age difference to be able to relate to each other.

My sisters and I don’t have that problem. We know we can always depend on each other. If you need someone to back you up in a fight, Mia’s your girl. If you want to borrow money or need someone to cover your shift at work, call Terra. If you need someone to listen to your darkest secrets, I’m the one. I’ll tell you what you should do, why you should quit a job or dump a boyfriend. I just can’t always see what’s best for myself. That’s why I love my charm so much. I can slow time down to think. I need to be able to see an issue or problem from all sides before I make a decision. A person can’t really do that without plenty of time.

The sun blazes overhead,

Reviews for Charms

[linda.bass · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I freely chose to review book one, and now I have to see how the story ends! Three teenage girls are born with magical powers and are untrained, only learning what they can do with a hit and miss effort. The kids at their school called them witches not knowing in a sense that's what they are. Once their aunt Eve returns from her frequent trips when situations don't go to her liking, she brings a difficult puzzle to solve with two teen age boys from New Orleans following her to retrieve what she took from them.