Magnolia: Blood Magic, #1

By Angela Kulig

Josie Acker lives in a cage, but at night she dreams of chasing the wind. When her mother asks her for the only thing she can't give—her heart—Josie makes a choice that sends her to the one place she hopes her mother will not come looking: The rogue coven. The magical home of her father. It's one of few places that don't keep to the old rules—rules that breed hate and fan a never-ending cold war between sexes. Because witches and warlocks? They don't mix except to keep the magic alive.

When Josie learns from a menacing warlock priest that she might be the most powerful witch of the age—she laughs it off. If there is one thing she knows for sure, she has never been more powerless in her life.

But what if she's wrong?

Running isn't a possibility—and neither is romance. Dalton is the perfect son and heir to the Greenwood Coven that Josie now calls home—he's also becoming a distraction she can not afford.

In a world with clear sides, can one blurred line change everything?

Based on the short works of The Rogue Coven; Love Magic & Life Magic.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Green Envy Press
• Release date: Sep 23, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223133070

Book preview

PART I

PROLOGUE

The faster she ran, the faster her mother’s claws dug in. Even in her waking hours, she could feel them on her skin. Close enough to cut. Tight enough to choke.

Just shy of midnight, she’d been woken by her mother with a rough shake. It was not for the first time. Her bed already cold before she’d even pulled herself from it. It was as though the crisp snowy sheets had known that this, this time it was different.

She hadn’t asked questions. She’d long since given up asking questions. There was no point. Children who asked questions did so because they could hope for answers, but Josies was no longer a small girl. She knew answers to questions were as rare as stars and just as far away.

Josie had lost track of how many times she’d been pulled for beds over the years. Sleep had been lost for secrets, for duels, and even death pacts. But her favorite times were when she picked herbs with her coven under shallow, silver-lit skies. Sometimes on the seashore, sometimes off the beaten path where anyone might be lost. Where Josie liked to pretend that she might be lost, too.

Only she knew there would be no sisterly outing this time. She dressed quickly in the clothes that had been left for her. A short-sleeved cotton sundress and worn-out black flats her mother must have dug up from somewhere. She’d never seen either before. They weren’t hers, but it didn’t matter. What belonged to one could belong to all, as far as her mother was concerned.

Since Josie never knew where they were headed, she was often at the mercy of her mother’s clothing choices. She shivered, looking down at herself without checking the mirror. A lock of sleep-mussed dark hair spilled over her tanned bare shoulder. Fall was coming soon, and this hour was likely to be cool even on the Gulf Coast. Josie grimaced before she grabbed a sweater and ran down the stairs and out the open door.

The day had been as empty as teardrop, but the night was dark and just as full as the moon.

It was also strange. Josie and her mother had gone to New Orleans, and well past the witching hour. The streets had still been packed. Lights from bar signs in shades of poison bounced off the tops of puddles among the stone streets. It had rained earlier in the night, and the air still felt like rain. Heavy, but with a chill.

Josie’s mother seemed to be searching for something as they bounced from street corner to street corner. Only Josie had no idea what. They looked more like wraiths than ladies of the night, and yet Josie couldn’t help but feel there were eyes on them.

People watched as her mother stalked around, looking through lit windows of buildings but never going in. Three of them, then four, then five. Everywhere smelt like smoke and gutter.

Josie, take off that sweater, her mother barked.

You look like a frump when we both know you’re as pretty as the last magnolia standing after a storm.

Josie was startled and tried to keep her mouth from sliding into a deep frown. Each of her mother’s words was more off and off-putting than the last.

I look like a warm frump, besides? Who are we trying to impress in back allies at three in the morning?

As soon as she said it, Josie knew she should fear the answer.

There are a lot of rules to be broken at the Cypress Mill Coven—but loving a man was perhaps the worst crime there was. But surely—

Josie slid the warm black crocheted sweater off her shoulders. Folding it neatly in her arms. She told herself, grown warm anyway, racing around the French Quarter like a wet little rat. Her magic rolled inside her, but she tried to snuff it out.

Besides disappointing her mother, Josie was best at lying to herself.

CHAPTER ONE

Josie Acker stared at the reflection of a girl she didn't want to be.

Eighteen, with frightened eyes, she stood shaking behind the bars of her own cage, hating herself for it. Three coven sisters sang from the bathroom that awaited her, a chant in a language someone had tried and failed to beat into her. The women were her mother's age but lacked her power and prestige. They added numbers for circle magic and did menial tasks, but they were as grave as undertakers as they instructed Josie to get ready. For what, Josie would likely only know when she was in the middle of it. Searching for silver scorpion venom in the desert by moonlight, dancing on freshly fallen snow, anything, and everything, but last night—last night left a knot in her soul.

The Cypress Mill Coven didn't just have rules. It had the unbreakable laws of a woman who would be queen. That woman was Jocalynne Acker, Josie's mother. It wouldn't be the first time she would lock her in her own room, bricked and bare, without a word as to what was about to transpire, but Josie was past growing tired of it.

And exhausted from running all over New Orleans the night before.

The day was retreating. The black wave of night was just outside the window behind her, but Josie didn't dare look away. If she so much as flinched, she might lose the girl in the mirror entirely. There were worse things than not being the person you wanted to be.

Like not being at all.

Her eyes were finally forced away when the door soundlessly swung open, and Lily padded inside. Even the air smelled sweater when Lily was around. The wind had rushed in with her, filled with the scent of fresh grass and wildflowers.

Lily wasn't even a full year younger than Josie was, but her eyes were large and always child-like. Her white-blonde hair was up and fell half in ringlets around her face. She always wore an easy smile, but Josie thought today she seemed even further away than usual. She hoped it was a happy place, far from where they were at that moment, far from where they ever were if Josie was being honest.

Lily didn't drape herself across the lavender duvet on Josie's ember-colored canopy bed as she usually would have. She didn't bounce, or hum, and Josie hadn't the slightest idea of what must have happened to her only friend to land the girl in the state she was in now. Lily had never been so still in her life. Her face was serene, her hands clasped neatly in front of her rather odd white dress. If Josie hadn't known better, she'd have thought it was a wedding dress. All gossamer ruffles and bulging swags. It was hideous and different from anything Lily would have willingly picked out for herself. There wasn't a bird or flower sewn anywhere on it—there wasn't a single bright bead or touch of neon glass. It had sleeves skintight from shoulder to wrist and an awkward plunging neckline. The whole thing dragged the floor in a strange mermaid cut.

Only the worst part of the whole affair was the woman clutching one almost just like it behind Lily.

Your mother has sent you this, Lily said. Josie's eyes dashed to the coven sister holding the awful thing, but Lily's face didn't even flicker. The girl was an unlit candle, dull and lifeless. Gooseflesh crawled across Josie's naked body as horror welled up behind her heart.

Every syllable from Lily's lips was a hundred shades of wrong, and they all sank in Josie's middle like rocks in a river. Josie took half a step back, but where was there to go? Her same dark room was behind her, with wards on the windows. Just not to keep things out.

Shouldn't you be in the bath now, sister? We wouldn't want to be late. Lily said.

Her tone was laced with a smugness Josie couldn't begin to understand.

Then there were many hands on Josie's shoulders and back to lead her to the other room, but not one of them was a comfort. Every finger was hurried and ice-cold.

In the warm water of the bath, Josie longed to fight, but who? Her family? There was no getting to her mother, but if…

Fingers curled below the water, she sat stock still and let her hair be washed, and her neck be scrubbed. Her body was readied and cleaned, but nothing could touch her muddy thoughts or blackening soul. Something awful was closer to her than midnight, but she hadn't the slightest idea what.

It never stopped being strange, having so many hands on her. Josie knew it was meant to be demeaning, just not to her.

Before she could work anything out, out of the bath, she was pulled and dried, and someone was slipping the awful dress over her head without even putting on any underthings first. It was different on her than it had been on the hanger Josie noticed, and it wasn't at all a replica of Lily's own monstrosity as she'd previously believed. It was worse.

It weighed almost as much as she did, and every time Josie took a breath, the bones of its built-in corset cut at her like dull knives.

You look wonderful, Lily's lips whispered, but her face was an abstract rendering of what it should be. The angles were too sharp, the look too shadowed. It was like Lily was the glass someone else was looking through. Lily was flighty and less potent than a summer breeze, but she was a friend, and Josie damn well wanted to know what had happened to her. Gathering her nerves, she tried to look at the other girl long enough to figure it out, but there were too many bodies in the way. Fluffing and floundering, it took everything in Josie not to just kick them out of the way. It was a cruel thought, and it did nothing but make her feel worse.

That was how her mother thought of everyone in the coven, even Josie.

It was as if that thought took them all away from her, Lily in the middle of them, a bright sun in a sky of plain gray fabric. A puffy dress in the place of clouds. With a swish, they were all gone.

But the door hadn't shut cleanly behind Lily, and after a breathless moment, Josie lurched for it. She worried, half irrationally, that the house might take it upon itself to keep her shut in. Josie got her fingers around the edge of the wooden door. She held it in place, fingers tensed, stomach pressed flush against the floor as silently as she could for a long time.

Her corset dug in worse. Its metal parts still cold and cutting.

She expected to be caught, but the hallway was empty when she eventually pulled herself to her scuffed knees. Josie knew she'd gotten crimson streaks on her white gown, and she was glad of it. Let it be evident that she wasn't perfect. Let her mother curse her bones, but please just let her be made to change into something a little less circa 1919.

Josie's breathing became ragged even as she came to a halt before the first corner from her room. It was hard to hear anything over her own wild pulse, but she tried. The sisters were chanting in another room, and Josie crept that way, holding the hem of her circus tent. She was just rounding the second bend in the hallway when all escape plans were interrupted.

Josie could not recall there ever having been a man in the coven house in her entire life. Such a thing had simply never been. Her mother would have never allowed it. She would have excommunicated a sister for far less of an offense than letting a warlock into this space.

Yet a man stood between her and the ceremonial room. She could hear the others just on the other side of an alcove. The man was too pointed. A long thin nose sat between two dark and ageless looking eyes. He was dressed strangely in all black buttons and even black lace.

My, my, my, said the man, in a voice flat and yet achingly familiar.

It's such bad luck to see the bride before the wedding, of course, the man said, a laugh between words, bad luck is better than no luck at all.

Josie heard her own strangled breath in her ears, and at that moment, she flashed.

She was gone in a pulse of blinding light, but then she was also powerless. Flashing was dangerous, reckless, and worse. It's like pouring every bit of magic you possess into a balloon, then bursting it. It makes you fly through the air as if you are made of it. You can flash to anywhere in the world you can think of, but then you're out of everything. The nothing doesn't last, but the time it takes for your magic to return to you can vary, and so much magic used at once was far too easy to track.

There was, as it turned out, something more shocking than teleporting in the blink of an eye, and that was