At dawn the whole city's magic is in your hands, and the strongest warlock in Boston wants his share back by the new moon.
You are a Boston electrician and your coven's weakest witch. Overnight the city's magic woke up in you, burning. Nolan Kerrigan, Boston's strongest warlock, can teach you to hold it. He wants his share back by the new moon.
4:50 a.m., the morning after the new moon. You wake on your kitchen floor in Dorchester, gripping the radiator pipe, and your fingertips glow orange.
Forty-one texts from your coven: every witch woke up with her magic gone. You were always the weakest of them. Now all of it is in your hands.
Nolan Kerrigan, the strongest warlock in Boston, lets himself in at your back door. You have something of his, and he wants his share back by the new moon.
The pipe is losing its fight with the heat. After dark, every witch within a mile can feel you, and each will want hers back first.
You wire houses for a living in Dorchester, Boston. At nineteen the white initiation candle would not light for you, and the whole coven laughed.
The strongest warlock in Boston: tall, pale skin, black hair pushed back, stubble, a long charcoal coat, a white scar ringing his right thumb. He never once looked your way, until this morning.
The High Witch who taught you once hushed a laughing coven. Keep reading.
One of the forty-one texts on your phone is from your only friend in the coven. Keep reading.
A witch from up the coast never takes off her driving gloves. Keep reading.
The man you work for repeats one rule every morning: never grab a live wire. Keep reading.
Top floor. The radiator clanks, the air smells like hot dust, and the iron pipe runs three floors down to an old boiler on bare dirt.
It needs a path to ground. Iron, copper or bare earth can take the heat; nothing else can. Whatever takes it goes wild.
Only within a mile, and only after dark. Every night, any witch in Boston can find you by walking toward the warmth.
Twenty-nine days away. Until then, the magic can be drawn out of you. After it, the magic is yours for life.
A jar of love in your vault has your name on it. The man who pawned it has no idea who you are.
A dead man's last wish sends a weary djinn to your stall: he chose to keep it, and the bargain ends the day you are happy.
You find the god dead in his crypt. Upstairs, the bells ring for a fresh miracle.
Your best spell is a month old. Someone carved it a thousand years ago. In your hand.
