Five Charm Fire Read online

  Five Charm Fire

  Western Woods Mystery #5

  Samantha Silver

  Blueberry Books Press

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Also by Samantha Silver

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  “Do you see what I see?” Ellie asked, the blood draining from her face. I nodded mutely. I absolutely could see it too. One of the athletes in the broom competition, Karen Voda from the coven of Titan, looked exactly like me.

  I don’t mean we had the same color hair and a similar nose. I meant that if she came to Western Woods one day and pretended to be me, odds were most people would be fooled. We were practically identical.

  Even on stage, Sara, the friend we were here to see, had turned to Karen and was staring openly, her mouth having dropped open. She turned to the crowd, her eyes scanning the faces; she was obviously looking for me to see my reaction.

  I didn’t know how to react. My legs suddenly felt like jelly, and I collapsed onto the seat beneath me. In my pocket, my phone buzzed, and I didn’t need to look at it to know it was Amy, back in Western Woods, undoubtedly texting about the same thing from in front of the TV.

  Ellie suddenly sat down next to me and wrapped her arms around me. “It’s going to be okay,” she told me. “Whatever comes from this, it’s going to be okay. After all, it could just be a coincidence. That’s how DNA works, after all. There is always a chance that two people who aren’t related to each other at all look exactly the same.”

  I nodded. After all, I had seen the human world pictures of Nicolas Cage and some guy from the nineteenth century that looked exactly like him. But still, I couldn’t help but wonder if this was different. What if we were related? What if I really was from the coven of Titan?

  “I just don’t want you to get your hopes up, and then get disappointed,” Ellie explained. “But I think this is a good place to start.”

  “What do you know about the coven of Titan?” I asked.

  Ellie frowned. “To be completely honest, almost nothing. You’re probably way better off asking Amy about that sort of thing. But they’re one of the more isolated covens, more secretive than most of us.”

  “Where are they from, mainly?”

  “Their home is Kilokilo, an island of Hawaii that humans don’t know about.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “So I might actually come from Hawaii, and my parents abandoned me in Seattle of all places? Talk about moving down in the world.”

  Ellie laughed. “Yeah, just think. Instead of spending the entire winter drenched in rain, you could have spent them all sitting on the beach, learning how to surf, and basically living in a bathing suit year-round.”

  I smushed up my face, and despite this being a serious moment, I couldn’t help but laugh at Ellie’s depiction of my potential life. I did like Seattle, but Hawaii definitely had an appeal to it as well.

  I turned back to look at Karen Voda. She had the same brown hair and blue eyes as I did, but her hair was longer, reaching down to her waist. Her skin was a little bit—okay, a lot—more tanned than mine, but that could easily be explained by the fact that she lived in a year-round summer paradise while I lived in an area where it was safest to assume the weather was going to be overcast on any given day.

  But yes, apart from her darker skin, we looked exactly the same. We had the same nose, the same chin, the same everything. And to be honest, I couldn’t help but let my mind wander to dark places.

  What if we were sisters? That meant that she would have grown up here in the magical world, instead of being abandoned in the human world like I was. What was the difference between us? Why would I be abandoned and she be raised in a presumably loving home, with no idea that she had a sister out there who looked exactly like her?

  What had I done wrong as a tiny baby to deserve being abandoned, and not even told about who I really was?

  As tears welled in my eyes, everything suddenly felt incredibly overwhelming. I jumped up from my seat and rushed toward the exit, making my way to one of the stadium bathrooms, locking myself in a stall, and bursting into tears.

  “Tina?” I heard Ellie’s voice say a minute later. “Tina, it’s going to be okay. Come on out here.”

  I tried to reply, but all that came out was a hoarse sob.

  “You want to know—if you are related—why you were abandoned and she wasn’t, don’t you?” Ellie asked, and I burst into tears once more. Goodness, I loved my friends. I loved how Ellie knew exactly why I was upset without me needing to tell her. I opened the door and collapsed into her arms, a heap of ugly crying and misery.

  “Why me?” I sobbed. “What did I do so wrong to deserve to be abandoned like that?”

  “Hey, hey, hey,” Ellie said, stroking my hair. “We don’t even know that’s what happened yet. You might not be sisters at all, but cousins maybe. Or maybe it’s a fluke, and you’re not from that coven at all.”

  “You don’t believe that, though, do you?” I asked, and Ellie shook her head.

  “No, I don’t. The fact that the coven of Titan is a coven of water and the similarities between you two make me think that we have found your coven. But the similarities don’t mean you’re sisters. Not necessarily. And even if so, if for some reason you were abandoned as a baby, it’s obviously nothing you did. Whatever this is, it’s not your fault. No days-old baby deserves to be abandoned, for any reason.”

  I knew Ellie was right, of course. But this had been so emotionally overwhelming that I just flew to the most upsetting option I could find and broke down completely.

  “Thanks,” I told her with a smile. “I appreciate you trying to make me feel better.”

  “What are friends for?” Ellie said. “Now come on. I know you have a lot of questions, and you’re going to look a lot better while you’re asking them if you let me cast a spell on you to get rid of those red eyes.”

  I nodded and let Ellie work her magic—quite literally—while I sat in place obediently and tried not to think too hard about what situations might have led to my abandonment by someone in the coven of Titan.

  “The coven of Titan is a strong one,” Ellie told me. “To be honest, before I saw Karen Voda, when they announced that one of the broom flying competitors was from that coven, I was just worried for Sara. They’re well-known as being extremely powerful witches and wizards, but because they’re so secretive, it’s also pretty difficult to get a lot of information about them.”

  “How can a coven be so secretive?” I asked. “I mean, can’t anybody just go over to—what did you call it—Kilokilo and see what all the fuss is about?”

  Ellie shook her head. “You might think so, but no, definitely not. Most covens do operate like that, with free travel between their towns. After all, almost everywhere has more paranormals living there than just witches and wizards. There are vampires, shifters, fairies, and elves in almost every paranormal town, and if one group wanted to seal off their town to visitors, the others would almost certainly object. But Kilokilo is different. Because it’s
so isolated, a lot of the other paranormals never inhabited it, and they closed it off to other paranormals before anyone else moved there.”

  “So Kilokilo is a paranormal town with wizards and witches only?” I asked, and Ellie nodded.

  “That’s right; they’re extremely different from the rest of the paranormal world in that way. And because of that, they’re able to stay a lot more isolated than the rest of the covens. You need special permission to visit Kilokilo, for example, and the portal will not allow you to travel to Kilokilo if you’re not authorized.”

  “Oh,” I said, suddenly feeling dejected.

  “They also don’t allow visitors that aren’t witches and wizards. It’s an extremely tight-knit group, and that’s why I know almost nothing about them. But I do know that every time they enter any sort of paranormal competitions, they’re always strong contenders.”

  “Can people from Kilokilo travel around the world at will, like we can?” I asked.

  “Sure,” Ellie asked. “There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. It’s just that the coven there wants to protect their own from intruding eyes. Anyone who wants to leave definitely can.”

  I nodded slowly. “Okay, so how would we go about getting permission to enter the coven of Titan?”

  Ellie shrugged. “To be honest, I have absolutely no idea. That’s definitely something to ask Amy.”

  “Okay, thanks,” I replied. I had to admit, I had a little bit of an unsettling feeling in my stomach over this. After all, this was the first time I had ever heard of a coven that stayed this private, and the first time that I had heard about a coven that Ellie knew nothing about. Something weird was going on, and I didn’t know what.

  Still, I reminded myself, there was lots of time for answers in the future. I had already gone well over twenty years without knowing where I had come from, and I had only in the last few months discovered that I was even a witch. I could definitely handle a few more hours before I learned about a coven that may or may not be the one I was born into.

  “Let’s go back out there,” I said. “After all, this is Sara’s night. I want to be there for her.”

  “Are you sure?” Ellie asked, tilting her head to the right.

  I nodded, wiping my tears one last time and looking in the mirror to see that Ellie’s spell had made me look completely normal again. Boy, where was magic when I was back in high school?

  “I’m sure. Let’s go out there and cheer for her like crazy.”

  Ellie grinned, taking my hand, and the two of us made our way back to our seats to find Eli Ring urging the crowd to cheer for their favorite competitors. When Sara’s name came up, Ellie and I screamed ourselves hoarse, and even from here I could see the blush rising up Sara’s face, matching her fiery red hair. She was definitely not used to the attention, but she was basically a magical celebrity now.

  I couldn’t be more proud of her. I knew she was going to be the best broom rider the magical world had ever seen.

  But I also couldn’t stop my eyes from darting over to Karen Voda constantly, either.

  Chapter 2

  “Did you guys see that?” Sara hissed to Ellie and me as she left the dressing room and made her way into the little hallway where Ellie and I were waiting for her. “That girl from the coven of Titan, she looks exactly like Tina.”

  “Yeah, we noticed,” I replied. “Ellie says it doesn’t necessarily mean anything, but we don’t know for sure yet.”

  “Are you joking?” Sara said, shooting a look at Ellie. “I might be the worst witch in the world, but even I can tell that Tina and Karen are related. There’s absolutely no way in the world that they aren’t.”

  “I’m not saying they aren’t, I’m saying there’s no guarantee that they are. I don’t want to get Tina’s hopes up and then have her find out that once again Titan isn’t the correct coven.”

  “It makes sense, though,” Sara said. “After all, I know Amy has been looking into potential covens that Tina might have come from, and I think Lita probably has been as well, and neither one of them have made any headway. The coven of Titan is so private compared to a lot of the others. That could be why neither one of them has seemingly gotten anywhere with it.”

  Ellie nodded. “It’s possible. In fact, I do agree that it’s likely. I just don’t think it’s a good idea to let Tina get her hopes up, only to have them shattered later. She’s already gone through enough when it comes to discovering who she is.”

  “Fine, you’re right,” Sara admitted. “Sorry. I just got really excited there, thinking that we finally found the coven that Tina belongs to.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said to Sara with a smile. “I totally get it, believe me.”

  “Anyway, if you guys want to come along, there’s going to be a big party at one of the bars nearby with everybody in the broom flying competition joining, along with a bunch of their family and friends who are here.”

  “Absolutely we want to come,” Ellie said with a grin. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  As the three of us made our way outside the stadium, I took out my phone and checked the text from Amy.

  I’m sure you’ve noticed, but you bear a great resemblance to Karen Voda. I’ll see what I can find out about that coven and its history.

  I smiled at the words on the screen. Amy was definitely the world’s biggest Hermione, and I was super thankful that she was one of my friends. I knew she would be much happier going into the library late at night and looking up everything she could about the coven of Titan rather than joining us for drinks at the bar. It wasn’t like her joining the party was an option, anyway. Amy had stayed home in the first place due to her fear of travelling outside of Western Woods through the portals, and so she had never in her life left town, even when she was invited to study at a prestigious university.

  The three of us hopped into one of the magical chariots that carted people around the desert here in Desert Plains, and as it whisked us away toward the bar where everybody was going to hang out, I congratulated Sara on her amazing entrance.

  “You looked so good,” I said. “What Randy did with that outfit, making it look like you had thunderbolts running up and down your body, was crazy. It looked incredible in the dark stadium, and it made you look super intimidating.”

  “Thanks,” Sara said, blushing and looking at the ground again. “I was so scared that entire time. It was so weird, knowing that everybody was looking at me, and knowing that they expect me to be good on the broom. What if I’m not? What if I completely panic and mess it all up, and then find myself completely humiliated in front of the entire paranormal world?”

  “That’s not going to happen,” Ellie said firmly. “Come on. When have you ever, in your life, messed up on a broom? Literally never. It’s not going to happen now, because you belong in that group.”

  “You’re right,” Sara said with a sheepish grin. “I know deep down that you’re right. I’m just not used to actually being good at anything useful. This is just my way of coping so that when I’m inevitably bad at it, I’ve already lowered my expectations.”

  “Well, stop it,” Ellie ordered. “You’re absolutely good enough that you deserve to be there with everybody else. After all, there were a ton of auditions. What was it that Eli told you? That he got thousands of video submissions and had to pare them down to a hundred in-person auditions?”

  “Something like that, yeah,” Sara said.

  “Well, he’s not the type of person who would have taken you out of pity. You were one of a dozen people selected out of thousands of auditions, and you one hundred percent deserve to be there. Nothing bad is going to happen, and if you believe you can beat the other people that you’re competing against, like the rest of us know you can, then you will do it.”

  “I hope so,” Sara replied.

  “I know so,” Ellie said.

  “I’m with Ellie on this one,” I replied. “I might not know much about the magical world, but if th
ere’s one thing that has blown me away more than almost everything else, it’s seeing how elegant you are on a broom. You absolutely know what you’re doing, and you totally deserve to be there with everybody else.”

  Just then, the chariot screeched to a halt, obviously having arrived at its destination.

  “Looks like we’re here,” Ellie said. “Sara, I don’t want to hear anything else about how you think you’re not good enough to be here. You absolutely are. Now get in there and celebrate the fact that you have found your calling.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Sara said with a mock salute. “I’m certainly not going to disagree when somebody orders me to go in and start drinking.”

  I piled out after her, laughing, and the three of us made our way into the bar. While the outside had been one of those large saloon-style mock façades, the inside of this bar was not only huge, but also a little bit classier than I had expected. The bar against the back wall was made of dark mahogany, and a deep red wallpaper with an abstract gold pattern lined the walls. The floor was carpeted, a plush black with gold spots. Warm lights hung from the ceiling, and the dark wooden tables were surrounded by comfortable-looking black chairs.

  In the back corner, a number of tables had already been pushed together, and a handful of people were seated at them ordering from a fairy. I recognized one of the men as one of Sara’s competitors, a wizard from the coven of Deimos, an earth coven. He was tall, and to be completely honest, kind of terrifying. His large beard and round face, combined with a large scar on his neck, had given him a real intimidating look, but here at the bar he was casually leaning against the back of the chair he was sitting in, laughing while taking a sip of beer.