Mind Your Own Magic

For fifty years Margaret Thistle held this town together. Nobody ever asked her why she was like this. The finale—read it last.

For fifty years Margaret Thistle held this town together. Nobody ever asked her why she was like this. She went to nine doors. Cassie's first, with a casserole and a diagnosis, and then Diane's and Valentina's and Gemma's and Ellie's and Kit's and Claire's and Dana's and Joey's. She taught nine women how to live with magic. She never told any of them how she learned. There is a photograph in her kitchen drawer. A shoebox in her attic full of letters she told Cassie she burned. She did not burn them. She carried them through three cities and fifty years and she never threw a single one away. Asheville. Spring of 1968. Margaret is twenty-two and pours coffee at a diner on Patton Avenue, and a man walks in and folds his coat on the stool beside him and orders apple pie without looking at the menu. His name is Paul. He keeps coming back. He brings her a peach. That was fifty years ago. This is Sunday. The casserole is made and the coven is at her table and Margaret is going to tell them all of it, from the diner to the leaving, and she is not going to soften one word of it. Nine women are about to find out what their mentor is. Please read this one last. A note before you start: the other nine books are cozy witch romcoms with a happily-ever-after you can count on. This one is not a romcom and it is not a romance. It is Margaret's confession, told out loud at her own kitchen table, and every page depends on you already knowing the nine women at it. If Fairhaven is new to you, start with Don't Hex the Handyman and come back when you are ready.