Page 13 of Summer L.A.W.

Since Crystal was their best, she lined up her first shot, exhaling slowly. The cold weight of the pistol in her grip felt comforting in its simplicity. Point. Squeeze.

The report cracked across the bluff, but halfway to the target, the bullet shivered, blurred, and transformed into a glowing blue seabird the size of her fist. Its wings flared, scattering refracting light, and it banked hard toward the open water.

“What the—” Crystal lowered the weapon.

“Magic flare,” Magda said, shielding her eyes as the bird vanished over the surf. “Triggered by adrenaline. Or irritation. Or both.”

She tried again. Same thing. Another bullet-bird burst into being, cawed once like it had an opinion about her aim, then arrowed seaward. A third followed, bright enough to make the air smell faintly of ozone.

“Okay,” Crystal said, setting the gun down. “That’s new.”

Five minutes later, the birds came back, not flying so much as gliding on currents of shimmering air. One by one, they circled her, leaving faint trails of salt mist in their wake.

“They’re reporting in,” Sahara said. “Pay attention.”

Crystal closed her eyes. The impressions weren’t words, exactly, but flashes: churned water under a black sky; a deep, dragging pull; the bone-deep thrum of old magic; singing; coordinates burned into her mind’s eye.

The birds dissolved into sparks. The sea-glass pendants the witches wore lit up in unison, a chorus of pale green and blue flares that echoed the sheen of the seabirds’ wings.

Sahara pulled hers off and squinted at it. “I think they agree. Whatever’s out there is moving closer.”

Crystal bent to pick up a discarded water bottle from the grass. “Let’s see how close I can get to it.” She tossed it up, and in one quick flick of her wrist, drew the water out of the bottle where it formed a narrow, rippling spear.

It shot straight through the bullseye, quivering in the wood before collapsing back into harmless droplets. She hadn’t aimed. Not really. And it still nailed dead center.

She blinked at the dripping hole. “Huh.”

Magda smirked. “You meant to do that, right?”

Crystal let out a laugh. Her first in days, maybe weeks, and crushed the empty bottle. “Obviously.”

Back at the mansion, the witches converged in the library like the world’s most overdressed search party. Magda spread out nautical charts across the big oval table, while Sahara balanced her laptop on a stack of atlases and began cross-referencing coordinates.

Crystal leaned against the mantel, still in her windbreaker, arms folded. “Tell me you found something ominous, so I don’t feel like I wasted perfectly good bullets.”

“Bullets that turned into birds,” Brianna reminded her, flipping through a tide almanac. “You’re welcome for the moral support.”

“Think we should call in the rest of us?” Magda asked.

Joell tapped a pencil against the chart. “Coordinates first. If your feathered friends were accurate, that puts the mystery… here.” She circled a spot in the North Atlantic, a good thirty nautical miles offshore.

“Deep water,” Magda said. “Shipping lane adjacent.”

Sahara’s brow furrowed at her screen. “And, according to NOAA, absolutely nothing of interest is supposed to be happening there.”

Crystal straightened. “Define ‘nothing.’”

“No storms, no anomalies, no fishing vessels reporting trouble,” Sahara said. “Weather is listed as ‘calm.’”

“Which is a lie,” Crystal said flatly.

Brianna peered over Magda’s shoulder at the charts. “What about the date? The one your mystery man whispered?”

Sahara’s fingers flew over the keys. “Tide tables match normal lunar patterns for that week. The only thing even close is a routine Coast Guard exercise out of Halifax, but that’s hundreds of miles north.”

Joell frowned. “No hurricane predictions? I know it’s early in the season…”

“Nothing,” Sahara said again, clearly unhappy about it. “No tropical depressions on the radar. No storms are even forming off of Africa.”