Witchlings_1_-_Claribel_A

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Title Page
Dedication
The Ballad of the Nightbeast
Anything but a Spare
Forever Witchlings
The Impossible Task
Roller-Coaster Ride to Despair Town
Way Too Early for Monstruo Hunting
Valley Pepperhorn Is a Bully
Beefy Gets Lost
The Trouble with Thorn
Poisons, Books, and Quarrels
Witchlings on Toast
Light as a Feather
Starlight Cottage

The Nightbeast’s Cave
So, You Lost Your Best Pal, Huh?
Boggs Ferry Raccoons vs. Stormville Lightning Forks
The Truth about Boggs Ferry
An Unfortunate Discovery
A Perilous, Chaotic, and Kinda Fun Slumber Party
Totally Spies
A Secret Potion
Little Old Witchlings
A Stolen Memory
Three Days Left
What Happened in the Woods?
The Final Night
Smell the Roses
Behold the Nightbeast
Valley, Seven, Thorn
The Long and Twisty Path
The Festival of the Holly King
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Ghost Squad Excerpt
Copyright
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In the darkness of the woods
Listen, listen well—
Every little noise you hear
Might be the thing that dwells:
Crunching leaves, a subtle breeze
Or a monster as it breathes.
Now! The monster’s hunting you—
It is too late,
We’ve let him loose.
Lock the windows, shut the lights,
Wrap your little ones up tight.
Hang the rue and heed the bells,
Beware, beware
The Thing that dwells.
—“The Ballad of the Nightbeast,” from The Twelve Towns Book of
Folksong
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IT WAS THE NIGHT of the Black Moon Ceremony, and the very last thing
Seven Salazar wanted was to be a Spare witch. Now that she was twelve,
she’d be placed in her coven, but like every ceremony before, tonight three
witches would be left over: Spares. Nobody ever wanted to be a Spare.
Seven had done everything she could think of: studied for her C.A.T.
exams, attended every witching social event she could fit on her calendar.
She’d even joined the toad racing team and gotten stuck with the slowest,
crankiest toad of the lot. At least his name, Edgar Allan Toad, sort of made
up for it. But only sort of.
It wasn’t like Seven had to do all those things either. Everyone in her
year got to participate in the Black Moon Ceremony, of course, but it was a
long-standing belief among Witchlings that the harder you studied and
worked, the more likely you were to get into one of the cool covens.

Seven tied her combat boots and slipped on her oversized purple
hoodie before securing her pointy hat on her curly hair with some pins.
They’d give her a giant black ceremonial robe when she got to the town
square, but it was thin and the night was cold. She didn’t want to freeze her
buns off. She shot a quick text to her best friend, Poppy, telling her how
excited she was for tonight.
“Duh,” Poppy wrote back. “And me too! Can’t wait to be coven sisters!”
Seven smiled at the message as she walked into the kitchen, where her
mother, Fox, was putting the celebration cake in the fridge to cool.
“Sev, you’ve got your amulet, right?” Fox wiped her slender fingers on
her apron and let down her curly red hair.
“It’s only the whole point of tonight, Mom,” Seven said, holding up the
amulet that hung around her neck. Later that night, it would light up with
the same color as the other witches in her coven. Please, please let it turn
purple. The color of House Hyacinth, the coven Seven and Poppy had
dreamed of being placed into for, oh, just about all their lives.
“Remember, things will work out okay, no matter what happens
tonight,” Fox said.
“Easy for you to say,” grumbled Seven, looking at the bright
aquamarine pendant that hung from the necklace Fox always wore. The
blue stone signified House of Stars, one of the most popular covens.
Seven would have a much better chance of achieving her biggest
dream, becoming a witching-world-famous journalist, if she was in one of
the powerful covens, like her mom. It was pretty much the opposite of
being a Spare. Because being a Spare meant your destiny and magic didn’t
match up with anyone else’s. Being a Spare meant you didn’t belong. And
Seven wanted desperately to belong.
As Fox moved around the kitchen, the moonlight hit her pendant and
seemed to adorn everything around her with shimmering stars. Seven used
to wonder if her mother had gotten her name because of her red hair, which
she always thought looked lovely with her deep brown skin and freckled
face. Seven looked more like her dad, tawny-brown skin and dark curls. But
now she knew it was more likely that her mother had been named Fox
because of how cunning she was. In their world, the Twelve Towns, a
child’s name was a prophecy, passed down from a grandmother or the Town
Gran, their leader. Seven had no idea what her name meant, not yet anyway.

But like any name given in Ravenskill, one day its meaning would be
discovered. It was just a matter of time.
Seven began tapping drumbeats on the closest object, trying to match
the beat of her fluttering heart.
“You’re still nervous about being a Spare?” Seven’s father, Talis,
asked, strolling into the room. He was carrying her baby brother,
Braucherei, who everyone affectionately called Beefy, because of both his
roundness and his unusual strength. He was also unusually tall for his age,
already three toadstools long, when Seven had only been two when she was
a baby. Beefy pulled on his father’s ear, and Talis cringed; the baby’s grip
could be painful. Seven rubbed her scalp, war flashbacks of Beefy pulling
on her curly hair coming back to her.
“I’m not just nervous, Dad. I’m freaking out. What if I didn’t do
enough, or what if the magic gets fudged somehow, or”—Seven dropped
her voice to an ominous whisper—“I get placed with Valley?”
Valley Pepperhorn was the literal worst. Valley had been bullying
Seven for as long as she could remember. Putting weird things in her
rucksack, hiding Edgar Allan Toad before a race, or giving dirty looks to
Seven and Poppy. She was mean, scary, and came from one of the families
on the Hill. They were the wealthiest witches in town and thought they ran
everything. Well, they sort of did run everything, actually. The only witches
they couldn’t go up against were the Town Gran and Uncle.
“The chances of that happening are not high, but even if it does, any
witch can be a friend if you just give them a chance,” her mother said.
Seven held back a snort. Seven was almost positive Valley was a cuco
or, at the very least, part gremlin. Her parents didn’t see the way Valley
snapped at their professors and didn’t seem to care about her schoolwork or
how she was always on her own doing sneaky, probably terrible, things.
Sometimes, when Seven thought about it, when she thought what her life
would be like without Poppy and without her family, she felt almost sad for
Valley, who had no friends and the scariest parents ever. But then Valley
would do another awful thing and Seven wouldn’t feel so bad for her
anymore.
None of it would matter after tonight anyway, Seven reminded herself,
because once she and Poppy were placed in House Hyacinth, she wouldn’t
have to deal with Valley ever again.

In all the past Ravenskillian Black Moon Ceremonies she’d researched
in preparation, not one showed an example of best friends sorted into
different covens. Tiordan Whisperbrew, the famous, coolest reporter of all
time and Seven’s idol, was sorted into House Hyacinth right alongside their
best friend and now owner of the Squawking Crow newspaper, Inkpen
Killian. They were a dynamic duo, and Seven looked forward to her and
Poppy following in their footsteps.
“Come on, then. It’s almost midnight, and the Gran will hex us if we’re
late.” Talis grunted as he placed Beefy in his stroller. The baby swung his
legs and cooed happily as he was strapped in. When he was done, Talis
kneeled down in front of Seven.
“A hug for good luck?” he asked, and Seven smiled as her dad pulled
her into a warm embrace. Talis, short for Talisman, had always been lucky.
Seven pinched his cheeks before a test for an extra boost. A brilliant blue
pendant hung from his neck, the same color as her mother’s. It’s how her
parents had met, after all: They’d been placed in the same coven as kids.
“No matter what happens tonight, we’re all proud of you,” said Talis.
Seven scrunched her face at him. “Even Beefy?”
Talis laughed. “Especially Beefy. He has no idea what’s going on, but
he’s still proud of you too. Let’s go.”
The town square was just across the cemetery, under a bridge and past
the Bruised Apple Bookshop, which had been recently taken over by a new
family in town. A shadow dashed across the night, and Seven jumped,
clutching her mother’s arm.
“It was only a rabbit,” Fox said softly.
Seven laughed nervously. “I knew that.”
She did not know that.
There had been sightings lately. Sightings of a monstruo called the
Nightbeast, a giant wolf that ate Witchlings. Or at least that was the rumor
at Seven’s school. Her teachers had assured them those were all rumors, but
she had noticed the older witches around town had begun enchanting their
garden gates with stay-away spells, hanging rue from their trellises and
above their doors, and panicking on the Ravenskill message boards. All
signs that a creature lurked near.
Seven had walked this way to town a thousand times, many times on
her own. Tonight, she was grateful to have her family with her on the cold,

dark path. Even if it had only been a rabbit.
The Salazars arrived just as the other families were gathering around
the cascading fountain at the center of town. Lanterns hung from trees
around the square in groups of five to symbolize the incoming covens. The
light cast a warm orange glow on everything it touched and left a few
corners cloaked in shadow.
Poppy and her mother were there—they waved at Seven as she took
her place in the circle around the fountain, and Seven felt a surge of
happiness. Her oldest friend ran over to her, and it seemed everyone’s eyes
followed her. Poppy had always been the more popular of the two of them:
cheerful and optimistic to Seven’s anxious determination. But they had
always gotten along.
“Seven, I didn’t sleep at all, not one wink,” Poppy said breathlessly.
“Me either. I feel like my eyeballs are gonna explode,” Seven said.
Poppy laughed.
“Cake at my place after,” said Seven.
“Pineapple?” Poppy raised an eyebrow.
“Of course,” Seven said, and smiled. Pineapple-jam cake was her
favorite, and her family’s recipe was famous.
The crowd began to shuffle uneasily. It was almost time. “No matter
what,” Poppy said hurriedly, “we stay friends. No matter what coven we’re
in, deal?” She held her pinkie out for their best-friend swear.
“Deal.” Seven linked her pinkie with Poppy’s, and they swayed their
arms to and fro three times. The pair of Witchlings devolved into laughter,
the excitement of the ceremony too much to contain.
They hugged, and Poppy ran back to her parents.
The Town Uncle, second-in-command to the Gran, walked around
handing each Witchling a long black robe. He was the most powerful witch
in Ravenskill after the Gran. Town Grans got their powers from the Stars,
while Town Uncles got their powers from nature, and could even speak to
animals. The Uncle was charged not only with being the Gran’s right hand
in everything she did, but also in being the liaison for and caretaker of all
the animals of Ravenskill—an immensely important job indeed. He wore
the customary special-occasion robe of the Uncle, adorned with trees and
various animals enchanted to scuttle about the fabric, and, of course, the
bluebird brooch he received when he became Uncle.

“Here you go, Seven Salazar, correct?” the Uncle asked when he
reached Seven.
“Yep.” Seven took the folded black robe as the Uncle crouched down
to coo at Beefy.
“Oh my, look at his fat little feet!” the Uncle said sweetly. Just then,
Beefy grabbed the Uncle’s furry green hat and began to chew on it.
“So sorry,” said Seven, pulling the hat, not without a struggle, from
Beefy’s grip and handing it back to the Uncle. The Uncle just laughed and
moved on to the next Witchling. Talis and Fox retreated to the outer circles
with Beefy in tow, giving Seven an encouraging smile and snapping
pictures as they joined the other parents.
The ceremony was about to begin.
Seven slipped into her robe, taking deep breaths and softly chanting,
“Not a Spare, not a Spare, not a Spare,” as if it were a lifesaving spell.
“Sorry!” Someone bumped into Seven from behind and nearly knocked
her into the fountain, which was now lit up with a deep green glow.
“Careful,” Seven said, straightening up to face the girl who’d bumped
her. It was someone she’d never seen before. “The Gran is watching us.”
The Gran had arrived and was standing on a floating platform at the
center of the fountain, water splashing just below her feet. Though it was
dark and foggy, she seemed to eye each of them carefully, and Seven swore
she could see inside her brain. Like most everyone else, the Gran was
dressed in all black, but the fabric of the Gran’s long black coat was
enchanted to look like the night sky. She was famous for her coat which
held magical objects and changed color like the sky. The most brilliant of
the visions was the stars and moon spinning around each other in a
glittering sky, an ode to the Gran’s real name, Knox—an ancient word that
meant night. From under her pointy hat fell a cascade of gray braids that she
always had done in the colder months, her tight curls loose and flowing
whenever it was warm out.
“I’m Thorn,” said the girl next to Seven.
Seven gave her the side-eye, taking in her straight, short black hair and
bangs, her round, pale face and flush red lips. She was much shorter than
Seven, petite in every way. Even her feet were small; her shoes looked like
they were less than half a toadstool long. Despite the darkness, she could
see her eyes were a deep, dark blue. There were tiny pins, like the kind

seamstresses use to hold fabric in place, stuck to her hat. It was interesting
her name was Thorn since she sort of looked like a rose and was also being
a real pain in the buns.
“You must be the new girl,” Seven said.
Thorn nodded so quickly, her witch’s hat almost flew off.
“I’m pretty nervous,” said Thorn.
Seven sighed. “Seven Salazar, hi. I think we might be starting soon.”
“Right, right,” Thorn said, and locked her lips up, throwing away the
key.
A few moments passed in silence.
“Nice to meet you, by the way. Which coven are you hoping to be
placed in?” whispered Thorn, almost immediately forgetting her locked
mouth.
Mercifully, the Gran raised her arms then and the crowd went silent,
saving Seven from having to fib and say whatever she got would be a
blessing. From the moment they began their magical training, they were
told, and told again and again, that their coven was their destiny, and that
being ungrateful for fate’s gifts would curse them with bad luck. Or even
worse than bad luck: If you truly didn’t accept your given house, then you
couldn’t be sealed with your coven during the ceremony. They’d stay
Witchlings. But that hadn’t happened in many years.
“Tonight marks the two hundred and fifth Black Moon Ceremony in
the town of Ravenskill,” the Gran began to say.
Everyone clapped politely. Across from Seven’s line of vision stood
Valley’s parents. They wore expensive-looking coats with sharp lines and
leather gloves. They stood rigid, looking in Valley’s direction intently. After
each one of the Gran’s proclamations, while everyone else cheered loudly,
they barely clapped, as if this was the most boring event in the world.
Valley looked miserable, but then again, she always did. She stood opposite
Seven in the circle of Witchlings, scowling, her hair tucked behind her ears
and her hat sitting haphazardly on her head.
“I am so, so, so nervous,” whispered Thorn again.
Seven had to force herself not to move away. Instead, through clenched
teeth, she warned, “Stop talking, or I’m going to hex you to be my toad’s
wife.”
That shut her up, at least for now.

“And now,” exclaimed the Gran, “for the reason we’re all gathered here
tonight. The forming of the covens.”
Where before there was a low murmur of noise throughout the square,
now everything was deadly quiet.
“Witchlings, prepare your amulets!”
With a collective ruffle of fabric, the twenty-eight Witchlings pulled
out their crystal amulets, which hung from black cords around their necks,
and held them in front of their faces.
“Now, intone the spell with me.”
All at once, voices rose, reciting the Black Moon Song they’d known
all their lives but were not allowed to sing aloud till this night. Seven’s heart
fluttered as she began:
A coven is five
In death and in life,
To believe
To protect
Never doubt
Or neglect.
Bound with our magic
Before the Black Moon
Bound by a circle
For no circle
Spells doom.
As the final words left their lips, purple smoke snaked from their
mouths to dance in the center of the circle, right above the Gran’s head.
Then, with a flick of her wand, she sent the smoke careening back and
straight into the amulets, which began to whir and vibrate. Seven’s amulet
spun wildly, and she closed her eyes, begging one final time for the thing
she’d begged for whenever she thought of this night: Please let it turn
purple. All around her, covens began to form. Five amulets turned the
bright aqua color of her parents’ coven.
“House of Stars,” said the Gran. “Brilliant, beautiful, generous to all.”
The Witchlings squealed and ran off together, holding hands in their
own circle. They would be a new wing, a five-witch coven, part of the

larger Grand House of Stars now.
Another group got a deep black the color of obsidian for Moth House.
“Mysterious, morbid, dependable friends,” intoned the Gran to
enormous cheers from the crowd, including a group of parents who looked
like they had died last week. Moth House was the creepiest coven. Their
black lipstick and pale makeup was pretty cool, Seven could admit. Seven
was a bit surprised that Valley hadn’t been sorted into Moth House, but it
was probably the dependable friend part.
Witchlings embraced and joined their new covens happily, and all the
while, Seven waited, eyeing Poppy anxiously. Next, the Witchlings for the
emerald-colored Frog House (focused, frugal, truthful to the last) were
placed. And now there were only two covens left to form before the Spares.
There would be three Spares tonight, Seven knew. Valley being a Spare
would make sense, since she was always falling behind in all her classes
and had zero friends. There were a few kids from her class, ones who never
fit in, who Seven could see being sorted into the Spare coven.
A girl named Starlight whooped when her amulet began to glow
purple. This is it, thought Seven. House Hyacinth. Her house.
Next came a boy named Cane, which Seven knew was short for
Hurricane. Seven and Poppy looked at each other, and Seven had to hold
back a giggle, excited for their amulets to go purple.
A girl she recognized from her class, one who always ignored her and
whose name she couldn’t remember, was chosen—and then her best friend
was too.
Seven’s heart gave an awful lurch as the two friends looked at each
other with delight. There was only one spot left. She glanced down at her
own dull amulet, then over at her best friend: Poppy’s amulet was a vibrant
purple.
Poppy’s face dropped as she looked at Seven, all their plans of being
coven sisters unraveling. She quickly corrected herself, giving Seven a light
smile and turning away to join her new coven. Seven knew that Poppy
couldn’t betray her assignment. Even one misgiving about what coven you
were placed in could spell disaster—could prevent your coven from closing.
That didn’t make it hurt any less.
“House Hyacinth!” said the Gran. “Valiant, virtuous, powerful in all
things!”