Chapter 1

      â€œThunder Moon comin’ tonight. Yer life is fixin’ to change.”

      Grandma Tia called the August full moon “Thunder Moon” and proclaimed it a time of enchantment. Annie had to admit tonight did appear magical and mysterious. The forest beckoned with its thick canopy of trees draped in long tendrils of Spanish moss that fluttered in the sea breeze with a silver shimmer like a living veil of secrecy.

      And so they had burned tiny scraps of paper where they’d written what they wanted purged from their lives. As she’d done every month for most of her life, Annie had written only one thing. The same thing. She held the paper to candle flame, watching it catch fire and curl in on itself before the wind carried it away. It splintered into tiny embers that flickered like fireflies before turning to ash.

      Annie sat on the bed, hugging her knees to her chest and staring out the window, pondering her grandma’s words. She could use some change. Lots of it. If only she could get rid of... No. No point agonizing over that, when she was so close to sleep.

      A green glow skittered erratically in the swampy darkness.

      Very pretty. Annie turned away from the bedroom window, yawned and slipped into bed, pulling a thin cotton sheet over her head like a cocoon.

      Wait a minute... She jerked to a sitting position and peered out the window across the room. Each glass pane framed squares of refracted moonbeams piercing through tumbles of tree limbs. A patchwork quilt of the macabre.

      But on second glance, no green, glowing orbs of light dotted the night’s landscape. Must have been a trick of the eye or the flash of a dream. Perhaps it was merely that Grandma had planted the suggestion of something magical happening tonight when they had gone outside after dinner and held a brief lunar ritual. Full moons represented death and change, a time for powerful magic.

      A ball of light again materialized at the tree line, not more than twenty feet from their cottage. It burned blue at the center and green at the edges. Annie instinctively touched the silver cross nestled in the hollow of her throat, palm flattening above the rapid thumping of her heart.

      A teal stream of light broke away from the orb, forming a tail like a comet hurtling across the night sky. The pixilated specks of color were magical as fairy dust, coalescing into the shape of an arm, beckoning her closer.

      Dare she?

      Annie scrambled off the bed, feet touching the rough-hewn pine floorboard, still sun-warmed from the day’s ferocious heat. She raced to the back door and slid into flip-flops she kept at the entry. Hand on the door, she paused and glanced to her left. Grandma’s bedroom door was open, and her deep, labored