Witch of Wild Things (Wild Magic) - Softcover

Buch 1 von 3: Wild Magic

Vasquez Gilliland, Raquel

 
9780593548578: Witch of Wild Things (Wild Magic)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0593548574 ISBN 13: 9780593548578
Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group, 2023

Inhaltsangabe

A USA TODAY BESTSELLER!
One of Amazon's Best Romances of September!
A People Magazine Romantasy Pick!

Legend goes that long ago a Flores woman offended the old gods, and their family was cursed as a result. Now, every woman born to the family has a touch of magic.
 
Sage Flores has been running from her family—and their “gifts”—ever since her younger sister Sky died. Eight years later, Sage reluctantly returns to her hometown. Like slipping into an old, comforting sweater, Sage takes back her job at Cranberry Rose Company and uses her ability to communicate with plants to discover unusual heritage specimens in the surrounding lands.

What should be a simple task is complicated by her partner in botany sleuthing: Tennessee Reyes. He broke her heart in high school, and she never fully recovered. Working together is reminding her of all their past tender, genuine moments—and new feelings for this mature sexy man are starting to take root in her heart.

With rare plants to find, a dead sister who keeps bringing her coffee, and another sister whose anger fills the sky with lightning, Sage doesn’t have time for romance. But being with Tenn is like standing in the middle of a field on the cusp of a summer thunderstorm—supercharged and inevitable.

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Raquel Vasquez Gilliland is a Pura Belpré Award-winning Mexican American poet, novelist, and painter. She received her BA in cultural anthropology from the University of West Florida and her MFA in poetry from the University of Alaska Anchorage. Raquel is most inspired by folklore and seeds and the lineages of all things. When not writing, Raquel tells stories to her plants, and they tell her stories back. Witch of Wild Things is her third novel.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

1

My great-aunt Nadia says it's a bad idea to reject a gift from a ghost.

It's 'cause ghosts like to slide inside all kinds of worlds. They don't just roam the land of the living or the dead. They can show up in our dream worlds to meddle. They can touch the world of shadows and eat the light from your own home, just sucking up the long, thick gold of nightlights and fixtures like dead black holes. "Just ask your prima Cleotilde," Nadia always says, her wine-red acrylic nail in my face as she points. "She once offended the ghost of her abuelo, and boom. Lamps didn't work around her for years."

The scariest world that ghosts can touch is the world of gods. The old gods. The ancient gods. The gods we've heard of and the even more numerous gods we haven't. Nadia pours one cup of espresso to these gods every single morning. This woman would rather light St. Theresa's on fire than skip this daily offering.

And if you've got a ghost haunting you, there's no way to tell if one of these gods favors that ghost. So you offend a ghost? You reject her gift?

You might be offending a god.

Apparently, it's a really bad idea to offend gods. That's how you end up with the women in our family and our gifts.

This means that when I climb in my janky-ass minivan and see the cup of coffee in the console? Yes, that cup of coffee-the mug, a gift from one of my former students, hand thrown and glazed the color of lilacs against a lightning storm. The one steaming with notes of raspberry and a hint of chocolate. The one that I most certainly did not place there. The second I smell it-because yeah, I smell it first-I throw myself into my seat and press my face into the steering wheel. "Shit," I say in a long exhale.

I hate gifts from ghosts.

In order to distract myself from the sweet steam swirling around me, I grab my phone, hitting buttons as fast as my fingers can go.

Laurel picks up even before the first ring ends. "Hey! You on your way yet?"

I glance at the back of my van. Every seat is pushed down to make way for half a dozen boxes, triple that in plants, and an antique reading chair. Most of the boxes contain books-I can see a sliver of Joy Harjo's She Had Some Horses peeking through cardboard I hadn't bothered to tape shut. It's my favorite of her collections, because it reminds me of the stories Nadia used to tell us when Teal, Sky, and I were tiny enough to squeeze onto one twin bed. I can still hear Nadia's smoky voice filling our room. "In the beginning, there were only gods. Gods and this earth . . ."

Now Teal, Sky, and I will never be all together again. I take a shuddering breath as this reality sweeps over me for the millionth time in eight years, like the garnet-sharp winds of a tornado. There and gone in a moment, but leaving behind painful, devastating destruction. That's how grief works.

"Sage Flores, are you ignoring me?"

I blink and jerk my face toward the console. The coffee is still there. Jerk. "No, of course not. I'm just about on my way. I'm in the van and everything."

"Okay, well, that's a good start. Next step, take your key, you know, the shiny silver thing in your hand right now, and push it through that teeny hole on the side of-"

"Literally giving you my middle finger right now," I say, but I'm laughing.

"Seriously, Sage. You've got this."

I glance up at my apartment-well, I guess it's not mine anymore. It's the third floor up, and the balcony still has dirt on the rails from when I watered my basil plants a little too violently. I take a deep breath, hoping the scent of that basil can calm me.

All I smell is ghost coffee.

"Want me to distract you?"

I put the phone on speaker and place it in the cup holder next to the mug. "Go for it."

"You'll never guess who I saw last night. At Piggly Wiggly of all places."

I sit back in my seat. I get the key in the ignition as I say, "Piggly Wiggly?" I think of who wouldn't be caught dead there. "Amá Sonya?"

Laurel draws out the response long and slow. "Tennessee. Reyes."

It may well be the absolute last name I'd expected her to utter. I think I would've been less shocked if she'd announced it were Amá Sonya at Piggly Wiggly, naked as birth, juggling plums in the middle of produce.

My breath's gone way too shallow, my hand gripping the key so tight it's cutting into my fingers. I turn the ignition, hard, but stay in park while clearing my throat. "Tennessee Reyes?" As though there were any other on the planet. "You're certain?"

"It was him, Sage. Trust me."

I close my eyes. "But . . . he moved to Denver and then got off social media and, like-"

"Disappeared off the face of the earth? Yeah. But I guess he's deigned to walk the earth's face once more, because he is in Piggly Wiggly, in Cranberry, Virginia. Or was, as of yesterday."

My heart's finally gone back to a normal rhythm and so I slowly begin reversing the van, angling my head back. "How does he look?" The question's out before I can stop it.

"Oh, gosh. Somehow better."

"Better?" It comes out like a squeak. Better doesn't seem possible.

"He's . . . I dunno. He's grown into those legs. And he's got this yummy almost-beard thing happening . . . hold on." Her voice gets distant. "No, hon, of course I'm talking about you! Well, I mean if you grew a beard thing!" Laurel sighs. "I think my husband just heard me verbally ogling another man."

Normally I'd laugh and keep up with their teasing each other, but my stomach keeps making stupid, roller-coaster-y loops somehow in my rib cage. Because Tennessee Reyes is back in Cranberry.

Tenn is back in Cranberry.

"Well, that's something." I've made it to the edge of the lot now without hitting any parked vehicles in my emotional state. That's also something.

"Guess that distracted you good, huh? You sound like you've morphed into some kind of zombie." When I give a flat chuckle in response, Laurel adds, "You okay, Sage?" in a soft voice. I hate that voice. It only comes out when I'm near tears. And to me? The consequences of crying are worse than those of offending gods.

I blink and blink and then respond. "Oh, yeah." I try to make my voice smooth, but it's as useless as ironing linen. "I'm just not looking forward to-you know. Moving back with Nadia." With Teal.

Laurel hears what I don't say. "Maybe she won't be as bad as you remember."

The last time I saw my sister, she cracked my lip open so wide, I needed four stitches. Later she said she didn't mean it-that she'd forgotten she'd worn such a sharp ring that day-but that just tells me that she did mean everything else. As in, the whole situation of her fist in my face.

"Oh, yeah." I finally make a right onto the main road as someone starts honking behind me. "It won't be that bad."

"I'll make you pollo a la plancha the second you get here."

I manage a smile. "Now you're talking."

"Nothing like Cuban comfort food to get settled in." There's a muffled noise in the background. "Ah, I gotta go."

"Tell Jorge I said hi."

"Drive safe and text me the second you get to Nadia's, yeah?"

"Of course. Love you."

"Love you more."

When I merge onto the highway, I do a double take at my reflection in the rearview mirror. My eyes are wide, the brown almost citrine in the sunlight, and my mascara is already smudged even though I applied it less than an hour ago. My hair-a mass of curls I'd braided and pinned up-looks like it's trying to break the hair tie keeping it from reaching down and steering this car without any of my help. I look like a twenty-nine-year-old who is freaking the fuck out.

I am a twenty-nine-year-old who is freaking the fuck out.

Why on earth is Tenn back in Cranberry?

I take a deep...

„Über diesen Titel“ kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Verlag
Penguin Publishing Group
Erscheinungsdatum
2023
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0593548574
ISBN 13 
9780593548578
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
320
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
gpsr@libri.de
gpsr@libri.de

Europaallee 1
Bad Hersfeld
36244
Deutschland