Truly Madly Magically brings readers back to the cosy town of St. Cyprian, Missouri where evil is once again stirring beneath the charming, small-town surface.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Hazel Beck’s Truly Madly Magically, which is out August 27th 2024.
Cursed by her own mother to always tell the truth and one of the only half-witches around, Ellowyn Good has never considered herself an equal part of the Riverwood coven. But when the Joywood, the evil rulers of the witching world, target her directly, she begins to wonder why they want her gone.
She’ll need to work with her newly formed coven to survive, which includes dealing with her first love, past wreckage and a whole new complication she didn’t see coming. With their fates in the balance, Ellowyn will have to learn to trust Zander again—or be doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past. Assuming they all survive the Joywood’s latest bid for absolute power over the witching world…
Tonight the glamour takes a lot more muttered spells than usual to hide my little bump from the outside world, and when I’m done, I don’t look as bright and energetic as I wish I did.
I guess that’s fair enough in the middle of the night.
Though I’m seeing an ex, so obviously I’d rather gleam.
Instead, I strap my trusty athame to my hip. I tell myself, piously, that vanity has no place here on this night of great virtue and overdue truth-telling.
It’s not that I lied. I can’t tell a lie to save my life. I literally, physically, can’t form the words to lie. It’s a curse.
An actual, very real curse, courtesy of my well-meaning mother.
But omission hides a host of sins, and magic helps.
I step out the little door onto the second-story balcony that runs along outside my apartment. Half of why I picked this building for my tea shop when I inherited my grandfather’s little nest egg was this balcony. I can look down St. Cyprian’s pretty Main Street in the middle of the night and lose myself in the way the quiet streetlamps glow, the graceful trees stand like sentries down by the river, and the Missouri starlight dapples over the bricks. Magical bricks. Protective bricks.
Because this is the one place all witches and magical beings are supposed to be safe—even half witches keeping all-too-unmagical secrets.
I breathe in the night air. Summer is hanging on even though we’re in September, but autumn is there too. The soft scent of gently letting go underneath that stubborn Midwest humidity that doesn’t want to lift. I close my eyes and let the magic take over.
Then I fly.
Up above the buildings and into the stars. The night pulses around me, bright with starshine magic. I hover for a moment, high above the river, and follow the gleaming line of it with my gaze to the place where three separate rivers—only two to human eyes—merge and mingle and meld. The reasons the witches chose this place to settle after the ravages of Salem.
Power. Magic.
Wild as the stars, thick as the night, and almost lost to the dark.
I helped save that confluence. Me, a piddling half witch with a questionable ability to control her magic, the past, the spirits, or any of the things a Summoner is supposed to do with ease. Still, I fought. I always fight and I always will. To help my friends. To save my family.
But that word hits harder tonight.
Because as soon as I share my secret, family means more than my mother, the slightly notorious Tanith Good of the more-than-slightly-notorious old Good family of witches going back centuries. Currently tucked away in her historic house with her partner, Mina Rodriguez.
Does she suspect the little secret I’ve been carrying around since Beltane? I’m not sure. Tanith is not the kind of woman to keep quiet, especially if that’s the wiser course of action.
But it’s hard for me to believe that the mother who knows me so well doesn’t have some inclination that there’s something different going on.
I run my hands over my little bump. Then I fly away from my view of the confluence. Ruth soars lazily beside me, down along the Mississippi toward Zander’s place. The stilts it sits up on are a nod to the capricious nature of the rivers and the determination of river town residents. Floods are in our bones, even when we’re fighting against them. Maybe especially then.
The lights in his windows are on, and I see him moving around inside. He’s probably exhausted, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he was a little drunk. God knows he hasn’t been eating right or taking care of himself since Zelda died.
Out here in the dark, I allow myself to feel the intense sympathy I never let him see.
The only good news about Zander’s grieving this summer is that he hasn’t been partaking in his usual string of human one-night stands. Don’t ask me how I know that or, better yet, why I track it so I can stick my fingers in that unhealable wound.
I land on the rickety porch, also on stilts. I can hear the sound of birds huffing about up above. No doubt Ruth greeting Zander’s eagle familiar, Storm. I don’t know what familiars get up to with each other, or even how they communicate, but I know Ruth and Storm have never had any of the animosity toward one another that I felt they should.
Traitor, I think pointedly at Ruth, but she ignores me.
So I take a deep breath. I knock, hard, before I think twice.
There’s a beat as I stand there on the porch. Then Zander hauls opens the door. Maybe someday the punch of him won’t wind me, or so I like to tell myself—but tonight it does, the way it always has, since we were young and stupid. Even though his dark, wavy hair is disheveled and a touch too long, his moody gray eyes are shadowed, and the beard that I know hides a moon-shaped birthmark just under the right corner of his lips is getting a little wild these days. He reeks of alcohol, which I know could be the bar or his choices lately.
I think it’s probably both.
He looks behind me as if expecting the rest of our friends, clearly not believing I’d come here on my own. And I wouldn’t. Not for any other reason. Not on a random night in September, anyway.
“Can I come in?” I sound weird and formal, but it’s the best I can do.
“Uh. Sure.”
He moves out of the way, and I step inside.
Zander’s never been known for being particularly neat or tidy. He’s a typical guy, but this is a new low even for him. Paper plates litter every surface. Empty beer cans, stacks of mail, dirty clothes everywhere with random socks scattered across the floor, T-shirts tossed over the backs of furniture, and a half-empty bottle of whiskey on the counter in the small galley kitchen. Next to a whole lot of empties. The air is scented with the sharpness of hard alcohol and the heavy staleness that comes with grief and depression.
He’d refuse to admit to feeling either of those things if I asked.
I don’t ask.
I’ve spent a decade hardening my heart to this man, but the past few months have made my previous attempts at iron-clad resistance wear thin. I feel for him. I worry about him. I want to comfort him.
I have allowed myself almost none of these indulgences. There’s a reason our historic deal remains in place. We’re weak when it comes to each other. That’s always been true.
But we’re also fucking toxic.
Our friends think we’re bad now, with our bickering and general harshness toward one another. They have no idea how we’ve grown and matured.
The fact we can even share space these days is a testament to that. And how much we love Emerson Wilde, I suppose, because watching out for her after the Joywood wiped her magical memories at our high school graduation ceremony forced those of us who love her to grow up. Fast.
Emerson’s sister and my best friend, Rebekah, had to choose exile to survive, but the rest of us stayed for Emerson. Zander. Me. Georgie, her best friend, always right by her side. Jacob, too, but with enough emotional distance to stave off what I think must have been inevitable—given that they’re engaged now.
Maybe I hate the Joywood for that as much as anything else.
Which is why, along with the fact I love my friends, I’m part of this whole coven thing in the first place. Made up of cast-outs, grumpy Healers, former spell dim witches, the most feared once-immortal witch of all time, and Zander. We’ve decided we want a chance to ascend—to become the ruling coven ourselves. A decision that has earned us all targets on our backs. Not to mention the enmity of the most powerful witches alive or dead, and ample opportunity to fight off their dirty, too-dark magic
In the meantime, Zander and I are going to be parents.
Excerpted from TRULY MADLY MAGICALLY by Hazel Beck. Copyright © 2024 by Megan Crane and Nicole Helm. Published by Graydon House Books, an imprint of HarperCollins.
