Chapter 1

-ood witch Azura stood before the snarling beast, staff smoking with mystical prowess. With a tremblin- nd she-

The page was covered in mud and splattered with rain.

The girl picked it up, and then kept running, her flashlight waving around wildly.

Her camp outfit was not made for this weather. It was cold and rainy, and Camp Pure N’ Straight was made for people who had to handle New England autumns – but not New England storms. The rain was coming down sleeting and thick, pattering through the thick forests that felt like they had been untouched for centuries.

The girl, holding the paper to her chest looked around and shouted.

“Kat! Kaaaaaaat!”

There was no response.

She kept running.

She found another page. Then the cover and half the book – The Good Witch Azura and... but the rest was covered with mud. She didn’t even pick it up, because she could hear the sound of crying, cracking branches, rumpling brush. She ran forward and caught on a branch, stumbling. She almost fell forward onto Kat, who was hunched over next to a huge old tree. In the darkness and the thickness of the rain, the beam of the flashlight was visible and shone directly into her face. Kat lifted one hand, hiding beneath it and hissing, like an animal.

“K-Kat! Kat, I found you, Kat!”

“Go away!” Kat shouted, her voice thick.

“I-” The girl stood there, the beam of the flashlight trembling in her hands. She bit her lip, then stammered. “I- ... I’m...”

Kat glared at her. In the shadows of the trees, protected by the rain, her eyes – mismatched blue and gold – were nearly feral with tears and anger and fear and sadness. She grabbed onto the lowest branch of the tree, dragging herself up, her camp outfit even more scraggly. She wasn’t wearing a jacket for one thing. She didn’t shiver, though. She was too busy shouting.

“You’re what? You’re sorry?” Kat grabbed onto some mud and flung it. It splattered on the girl’s chest and face, making her step back. “You’re always sorry! But you never do anything, Adora!” She almost choked as tears stung at the corners of her eyes – bright in the flashlight, impossibly visible against the rain. “You ... you...” She trembled, then closed her eyes.

“I-I ... I was gonna ... I was gonna s-say they were my books...” Adora whispered.

“You were gonna,” Kat choked out. “You...” She put her hand over her face.

Adora stepped forward, hesitantly.

She put her hand on Kat’s shoulder.

Kat reacted exactly like she had when she was eleven, and Olivia had tried to bully her on the playground. Except this time, there were no teachers, and there were no other kids. There was just her and the woods and the rain, and her fingers scraped at Adora’s face and cheek and hair as she shouted. “I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!” Kat shouted. “You’re always right! You always get everything!” She sobbed, her shoulders shaking.

Adora, her arms raised up to protect her face, whimpered.

“I wish ... I wish I’d never met you!” Kat shouted at her, then stood. “I wish I was dead! I wish ... I wish ... I wish I was...”

She turned and then ran. The flashlight flickered and went dim – the water from the rain seeping into the housing, cracked against a rock. Adora felt blood stinging in her eye. She ignored it. She stumbled to her feet, and shouted. “Kat!” She started to move through the woods. “Kat!”

Then...

The dream always ended the same way.

She stumbled through the woods, emerged between the trees – and there was something in the darkness beyond her, lit by a thin slip of the moon peeking through stormclouds. It was big whatever it was. Then two eyes, huge and bright and reflective, turning to face her, catching the moonlight and flashing it into her eyes. Then the shriek – and then...

Adora’s eyes opened. She was panting and trembling in her bedroom, her face beaded with sweat. She sat up, slowly, in her bed, her body quivering. She could hear her mother’s voice, echoing from down the stairs – she sounded like she was on the phone. “I see. I understand. Of course. I see.” She was using the clipped tone that meant she was angry. Very angry. Adora groaned softly, then looked out the window of her house. Across the way, she could see their neighbor heading out for her day job, humming cheerfully. The family – a married couple without any kids – had moved in after...

She shook her head, trying to cast off the dream. Instead, she slid from her bed and looked around the room. No matter what Mom had to say, she couldn’t find fault with this room: Her Azura books were hidden, her old comics were tucked away. In their place were textbooks on every STEM subject, a few weights for her lacross training, and there ... she smiled, a little sheepishly. There was her wooden practice sword, sheathed and hanging up in the corner. Mom was a stickler that Adora get into the same fancy pants college she had gotten through – but Adora had managed to finagle in her HEMA studies by finding a few examples of HEMA clubs at the same college.

It’ll help me get in, I swear.

It was one of her few tiny victories.

The door to her room opened without a knock and there stood Mom, dressed in her red business suit. Adora’s mother had been in a car accident when she had been young – the same car accident that had killed Dad. Adora, who had been safely in a car seat at the time, had no memories of it. Apparently, she hadn’t even gotten a scar from it. On cue, the notch on her eyebrow twinged. She ignored it. Mom, meanwhile, had come away with ... well, she had grown her hair long to cover what the plastic surgeons had managed to correct. Her lips were pursed as she looked down at her nose at Adora.

“We need to talk,” she said, firmly.

Adora sighed, softly. “W-What is it, Mom?” She asked, sitting on the bed. “My grades are doing okay, right?”

Mom stepped into the room. “Oh. No. No.” Mom shook her head. “It’s not your grades, Adora.” She frowned. “According to the phone call I received, you were at the local ... GSA.” She brought out the acronym with clear disdain. Adora felt her heart sink. Cold, clammy fear prickled along her body. No. No. No. No. She had talked to the teachers involved, no one would have reported her, Miss Bright was a good teacher, she’d never call in. Adora froze still and her hands clasped on her lap. She remembered the stinging sensation on her wrist – back at Camp, they had given her rubber bands, and if she ever felt impure thoughts she was supposed to snap it. The pain came back fierce and hot, despite the camp and the rubber bands being far, far behind her.

“W-Who, I ... w...” Adora stammered.

“Mr. Horde,” Mom said, pronouncing the name as if it were French, despite no one else doing the same. Adora’s sting of betrayal became furious rage and even brighter fear. The old crotchety man was one of the most nosy people that went to their church – he wasn’t even going to school! He just ... lived nearby. She looked down at her lap.

“Explain yourself,” Mom said, her voice flat.

“I-It’s ... it’s f-for straight people too, I just ... I just-”

“Ah, yes, well, I see!” Mom said, her voice prim. “You don’t mind if every college campus learns that you’re a political activist. You know with the current climate, how extremely damaging politics like that can be.”

“T-They say ... they want politically active people...”

Mom sighed. “For reasonable politics, Adora.” Her hand reached down, and she stroked Adora’s hair, tucking it back behind one ear – neatening her up as her words made her feel so pathetic and small. Her voice dripped into Adora’s ear, gently. “Not for running around with a bunch of queers. And you don’t want your colleges, your future workplaces, to think you’re some lesbian. Do you?”

Adora clenched her hands even tighter. Her knuckles showed.

“Now, you’re going to go to school and tell the GSA that you were mistaken when you signed up. You will dedicate yourself to your studies and ... if you want a political opportunity, we can have you join up with something sensible – how about the Young Republicans? They can always use new members.”

“Y-Yes, Mother,” Adora whispered.

“Here,” Mom said, reaching around from behind her back and holding out a pamphlet for the Young Republicans. She had it printed already. Of course she did.

“Now,” Mom said, smiling thinly. “You have to get to school, don’t you?”

She isn’t smirking, Adora thought. She doesn’t smirk. Her scars just make it seem that way. They just make it seem that way. They just make it seem that way. She thought the words over and over and over as she threw on her red jacket, slung on her backpack, got her textbooks, and took the flier. She forced her hands to not clench and crumple it up, her heart lumping in her chest. She walked out to the sidewalk, the crisp air biting her lungs as she looked around herself, then headed for the spot where the school bus would come and pick her up and take her to Gravesfield High School. She looked back down at the pamphlet.

There was a smiling blond woman and a smiling black man, both in suits, shaking hands.

The future of the right ... today!

She looked up. Across the street, she saw the house that had once been Kat’s house. Her foster parents had moved away after she had ... Adora shook her head.

She has to have died, you know, her mother’s voice, echoing from the past, whispered into her ear. It was nearly freezing, in the rain, without a jacket, off into those woods. People can still get lost in those woods. And it is not as if she was a particularly rational girl – ah well.

No. She had to believe Kat was alive. Somewhere. She had to have run away, and now she was-

The pamphlet tugged out of her hands. She blinked, looking down, and saw ... a tiny owl had snagged onto the printed paper and had taken advantage of her distraction to steal the ... the thing that would lead to her mother immediately murdering her if she lost it! Adoraa jerked, shook her head and started to hurry after it. “Hey! Give that back!” She exclaimed, even though she knew it was absurd, even though she knew it was just an owl. But the tiny owl hopped into the air, wings flapping, and skimmed across the street, heading for the woods that clustered around Gravesfield.

Adora rushed after the owl as it hopped, skipped, scampered, and came into the clearing beyond the woods – to ... to...

Adora froze, her jaw dropping.

I thought this place fell down. Mom said it fell down!

And she had never checked. Not because she trusted Mom, no. But because every second of being inside the old, run down house in the woods – the abandoned building that had stood near her street since she had been a little girl – would remind her of Kat. She would see the little scribble of her face and Kat’s face, with A+K drawn next to it. She would find the corner where they had tucked their sleeping bags, before Mom had started to come down hard on them both, before ... before she had started to whisper to Kat’s foster parents.

It’s not normal, she had said. They should both go. Here, I’ve already found the camp.

Adora shook her head, realizing that she had frozen long enough for the tiny owl to scamper into the house.

“Get back here!” She exclaimed, rushing towards the door.

She opened the door, scrambled in, then dove for the owl – but he had already hopped behind her grasp. She skidded along ... dirt? She blinked, slightly, as the owl hopped onto a boot, then got snatched up by a pale hand. The hand was attached to an arm, which vanished into a set of robes, which covered a pair of bright, bright eyes. “What do we have here, Owlbert!” The figure snatched the Young Republican flier. “Yeesh! They have this stuff in the human realm too?”

“Give that back!” Adora said, scrambling to her feet.

The robed woman blinked at her, throwing her hood back. She was pale and old, with a sharp featured face, bright golden eyes, silvery hair that bloomed around her head as if she had never even heard of styling her hair. She had a few wrinkles here and there, but otherwise seemed quite healthy. She smirked slightly at Adora.

“You want some trash?” She asked, as the owl hopped up onto ... onto her walking stick. That was the name that stuck stubbornly into Adora’s mind. But she knew it was not a walking stick. No walking stick was that long. No walking stick was so well carved. No walking stick ... would have the owl settle into place, close its wings around its body, close its eyes and shimmer into wood. What had been flesh turned to smooth wood, and the woman, with the flier tucked under her arm, reached over and twisted the owl into place with a smooth click. And now her walking stick had an owl shaped head.

But it wasn’t a walking stick.

It was a staff.

“I-It’s not trash!” Adora said. “It’s, I, for me! That is! I ... that’s my ... mine.”

“Well, it’s trash in the human realm,” the woman said, chuckling as she did so, tucking her staff against her shoulder with a smirk, and sliding the rolled up parchment into a bag that hung near her hip which itself was full of more things that Adora recognized: A few magazines, a pair of glasses, a bra, other things buried beneath. Adora blinked at her.

“Human ... we’re both human!” she said, hurrying after the woman as she walked towards the ... the other door out of the house. Except it wasn’t a house. It was a tent. The floor was dirt. And when Adora turned back, she saw the doorway leading out to the familiar, orange and brown dusted woods of Gravesfield was floating in the air, a solid two inches off the floor. She would have noticed, had she not dove through it. With a click, the door closed, then folded in on itself, snapping shut until it was nothing but a closed briefcase, which drifted through the air like...

Like magic.

... to the woman’s hand. She snagged it from the air and gave her a toothy grin.

“Are we, blondie?” she asked, brushing her hair back to reveal that her ear had a single sharp point.

Adora’s jaw dropped.

Then the woman slipped out of the tent flap, leaving her alone in the dimness.

Adora blinked several more times.

This is impossible. I’ve gone insane. Mom was right, I was gay, and thus, crazy. I have gone insane crazy gay! The kind of gay that makes you crazy!

She walked to the tent flap, then reached down and swept it up – and saw that she had, indeed, gone completely insane crazy gay. She was not in Gravesfield anymore. She was not in Connecticut anymore. She was, in fact, not on Earth anymore. She was standing in a market stall, full of tents that had been set up with tables showing off wands, statues, paintings, gemstones, pulsating organs (wait, organs?), strange flowers, vines, captured beads of glass hanging suspended in flames, glowing potions, staves, robes, hats and what appeared to be floating balloons made up to look like eyeballs. Adora goggled at those – until one of the ‘balloons’ swung its iris around and glared at her.

“Eaugh!” Adora screamed and stumbled backwards into something broad and tall. She spun around and gaped at the huge, muscular and very purple woman glowering down at her. Adora wasn’t sure if she should panic because she was mortal and killable or panic because she was very gay. She stepped back, stammering. “Sorry, sorry, sorry!”

“Hey, I wasn’t complaining,” the woman said, grinning.

“Huntra, back off!”

“Oh, I didn’t know you had your eye on her, Eda the Owl Lady,” Huntara said, grinning, while Adora spun around to see the old lady from before was gesturing her over. She rushed to her side, hissing.

“Where the heck am I?” she whispered.

“The Demon Realm,” Eda said, cheerfully. “Now, quiet, I need you for something.”

“Are you going to eat my soul!?” Adora asked, horrified.

“I, what? No!” Eda said, laughing. “I’m a witch, honey, not a demon.”

“Witches can eat souls too!” Adora squeaked.

“Well, I’m not gonna eat your soul, just ... stand there. No, a little to the left.” Eda waggled her finger – and a spark of golden magic shimmered around her fingertip. She swirled a circle into the air – and then, with a flash, a table appeared from nowhere and the ground beneath Adora’s feet shifted, then rose an inch, then two. She yelped, flailing her arms, but managed to remain standing as she was hefted up above the crowd, while Eda tossed her various bits of trash out onto the table and spread her arms wide.

“Come one! Come all! And marvel at the artifacts ... of the Human Realm! With one genuine, actual, factual, human! Watch as she demonstrates her eerie human powers!” Eda said, waving her hand wide. “What powers are those? Why you have to spend a snail to find out!”

People who had been drawn by the call were perked up by the promise. They started to walk forward, murmuring excitedly as Adora saw some were witches, like Eda. Some were definitely not witches, some were definitely not even remotely close to human. One was a huge snail, for crying out loud. The snail waggled his eyestalks at her and spat a golden coin onto the table, which Eda picked up and started to wipe clean.

“I wanna see what cool powers a human has,” the snail said, in matter of fact, totally understandable English. Adora had no idea why, but she just never expected a snail to know English.

“Well, show away, blondie!” Eda said.

Adora froze. Her brain whirled through every possibility she could think of. She stammered. “B-Behold!” She said, reaching into her pocket and yanking out her smartphone. “My ... r ... rectangle ... of power!” She waggled it, terrified that the demons and witches would soon grow wrathful and furious at being scammed – since more of them were throwing in gold coins by the moment. The demons and witches kept blinking at her. “Uh, by the power of ... Ge-Ohmm-Etry!” She said, holding it up and tapping randomly and blindly at the touchscreen, until the songs finally hit shuffle and it started to play I Kissed A Girl And I Liked It by Katy Perry.