_The_very_secret_society_of_irregular_witches_-_Sangu_Mandanna
Praise for The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches
“Mandanna crafts a cast of winningly quirky characters, each with their
own part to play in Mika’s path to belonging. . . . This charming romantic
fantasy is a gem.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Sangu Mandanna spins a bewitching tale of found family, magic, and the
power of love. Dark humor and bright writing abound in The Very Secret
Society of Irregular Witches, and readers are sure to be charmed.”
—Award-winning author Suleikha Snyder
“Full of endearing characters, romance, and found family, it’s the cozy
magical romance you’ve been waiting for. I absolutely adored it!”
—Tasha Suri, author of The Jasmine Throne
“Adorably witty, and features an endearing cast of characters and a
wonderfully tricky and romantic plot.”
—Louisa Morgan, author of A Secret History of Witches
“This gorgeously cozy romantic fantasy sparkles with real magic, love, and
joy. A perfect comfort read.”
—Stephanie Burgis, author of Scales and Sensibility and Snowspelled
OceanofPDF.com
OTHER TITLES BY SANGU MANDANNA
THE CELESTIAL TRILOGY
A Spark of White Fire
House of Rage and Sorrow
A War of Swallowed Stars
The Lost Girl
Color Outside the Lines
Kiki Kallira Breaks a Kingdom
Kiki Kallira Conquers a Curse
OceanofPDF.com
OceanofPDF.com
BERKLEY
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
penguinrandomhouse.com
Copyright © 2022 by Sangu Mandanna
Readers Guide copyright © 2022 by Sangu Mandanna
Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices,
promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of
this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any
part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random
House to continue to publish books for every reader.
BERKLEY and the BERKLEY & B colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House
LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Mandanna, Sangu, author.
Title: The very secret society of irregular witches / Sangu Mandanna.
Description: First edition. | New York: Berkley, 2022.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022001449 (print) | LCCN 2022001450 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593439357 (trade
paperback) | ISBN 9780593439364 (ebook)
Subjects: LCGFT: Fantasy fiction.
Classification: LCC PR6113.A487 V47 2022 (print) | LCC PR6113.A487 (ebook) | DDC 823/.92—
dc23/eng/20220113
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022001449
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022001450
First Edition: August 2022
Cover art by Lisa Perrin
Cover design by Katie Anderson
Book design by Nancy Resnick, adapted for ebook by Kelly Brennan
Illustration by Tanya Antusenok / Shutterstock.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the
author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,
business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
pid_prh_6.0_140667116_c0_r0
OceanofPDF.com
Cover
Praise for The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches
Other Titles by Sangu Mandanna
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Acknowledgments
Readers Guide
About the Author
OceanofPDF.com
To Steve, because it’s past time I dedicated one of these to you
OceanofPDF.com
he Very Secret Society of Witches met on the third Thursday of every
third month, but that was just about the only thing that never changed.
They never met in the same place twice; the last meeting, for instance, had
been in Belinda Nkala’s front room and had involved freshly baked scones,
and the one before that had been in the glorious sunshine of Agatha Jones’s
garden. This meeting, on a cold, wet October afternoon, happened to be
taking place on a tiny, abandoned pier in the Outer Hebrides.
A pier. In the Outer Hebrides. In October.
Of course, they weren’t actually called the Very Secret Society of
Witches. They weren’t called anything at all, which was why Mika Moon
had decided to come up with a name for them herself. She had cycled
through several alternatives first, like the League of Extraordinary Witches
and the Super Secret Society of Witchy Witches. She was still rather fond of
the latter.
The ridiculous names were mostly to annoy Primrose, the ancient and
very proper head of the group, a position Primrose had presumably
bestowed upon herself at some point in the past hundred years or so. (This
might have been something of an exaggeration on Mika’s part, but it was
impossible to tell how old Primrose really was. She wouldn’t say.)
Now, huddled as deep into her coat as she could get, Mika rocked
impatiently on the balls of her feet as twenty other witches joined her on the
pier. This, she supposed, was another thing that almost never changed: their
number. Mika was one of the newest additions to the thing-that-was-
definitely-not-a-society, and she’d been part of it for almost ten years,
which meant it had been a very long time since they’d welcomed anyone
new. This was not to say that there were only twenty-one adult witches in
all of Britain; witches were uncommon, certainly, but Mika knew that there
were others out there. Primrose, who had appointed herself the duty of
finding and inviting new witches to the not-society, had mentioned that
some had turned her down over the years.
Mika found it difficult to believe anyone had been able to resist
Primrose’s persuasions (which an uncharitable person might say better
resembled genteel bullying), but still, it was rather comforting to know that
this small, soaked group on the pier wasn’t all that was left of them.
Not that their numbers mattered. These meetings were the only time any
of them were ever supposed to speak to one another. Primrose Beatrice
Everly would never dream of telling anyone how to live their lives (so she
said), but she was of the firm opinion that Rules would keep them all safe
and so those Rules really ought to be followed. Too much magic left
unchecked in one place, she said, would draw attention. For the sake of all
of them, they had to lead separate lives. There could be no connection
between any of them, no visits, no texts, no emails—nothing, in short, that
could lead anybody from one witch to another.
(Primrose, of course, was an exception to the Rules. Mika supposed it
was just one of the many privileges of being the oldest, most powerful, and
most bossy.)
Consequently, any sense of community and kinship in the group had to
be crammed into these short hours once every three months, which made it
a very nebulous sense of community indeed.
As rain dripped steadily down from the cold, muddy-grey sky, Primrose
cleared her throat. “How are we all, dears?”
“Wet,” Mika couldn’t resist pointing out.
“Your contribution is noted, thank you, poppet,” said Primrose,
unperturbed.
“We’re pretending to be a book club, Primrose,” Mika replied,
exasperated. “We don’t need to hide in the middle of nowhere! Why
couldn’t we just meet for a sodding coffee somewhere with central
heating?”
“I, for one, think our safety is worth more than our comfort,” Primrose
said, and then went straight for the jugular. “But, considering the most
irregular way you spend your time, dear, I am not in the least surprised that
you don’t seem to feel the same way.”
Mika sighed. She’d walked right into that one.
At thirty-one, she was a rather young witch in a group that mostly
skewed older. While she didn’t exactly have a handy spreadsheet with each
witch’s age on it, she was quite sure that she, Hilda Kim, and Sophie Clarke
were the only ones this side of forty, so she should perhaps have been a lot
more intimidated by Primrose than she actually was. But the truth was, she
knew Primrose a lot better than most of the other witches here, and she and
Primrose had had a wobbly relationship since before Mika could remember.
The problem, really, was that witches were always orphans. According
to Primrose, this was because of a spell that went wrong in some bygone
era. Mika was certain this tale was a figment of Primrose’s imagination, but
she also had no better explanation because the fact remained: when a witch
was born, she would find herself orphaned shortly thereafter. It didn’t
matter where in the world the witch was born, and the cause of death could
be anything from innocuous illnesses to everyday accidents, but it was
inevitable. Some witches were then raised by grandparents or other relatives
and, in time, came to discover the existence of their own magic. All things
considered, assuming that they weren’t catastrophically reckless with their
spellwork, they grew up to lead quite normal lives.
But some witches, like Mika, were the daughters of witches. And some
of those witches, like Mika, were also the granddaughters of witches. It
was unusual, certainly; most witches, only too mindful of the axe over their
heads, chose not to have children of their own, but it did sometimes happen.
And so, when Mika Moon, the orphaned child of an orphaned child of an
orphaned child, found herself left in the care of an overworked social
worker in India in the early nineties, Primrose found her, brought her to
England, and deposited her in a perfectly proper, comfortable home with
perfectly proper, comfortable nannies.
Mika remembered none of this, of course, but she remembered growing
up in the care of nannies and tutors of all genders, ethnicities, and
temperaments, each of whom was only permitted to stay for as long as it
took to catch a glimpse of something magical (which was not long) before
they were replaced. So Mika remembered having plenty to eat, a warm bed,
and all the books she could possibly read, but very little in the way of
companionship or love.
And she remembered Primrose, who visited from time to time, usually to
hire a new caregiver or to remind Mika of the Rules. Mika’s feelings about
Primrose were, thus, mixed. Primrose had kept her safe, for which she was
grateful, but she also resented having such an inconsistent, autocratic figure
in her life. Once she reached adulthood, the nannies and tutors went away
and Mika declined Primrose’s offer to stay. She moved out of the house
and, for the past thirteen years, she had more or less only seen Primrose on
the third Thursday of every third month.
While it seemed to Mika that she had never done anything Primrose
approved of, she had not done anything Primrose especially disapproved of,
either. At least, not until last year, when Mika had started uploading videos
to her social media accounts.
Witchy videos.
Hence their present feud.
For the moment, Primrose seemed to have moved on. “Is anyone having
any trouble?” she asked the gathering.
“I’m having a hard time not telling my fiancée the truth about my
magic,” Hilda Kim offered. “I feel like I’m hiding so much of myself from
her, and I hate it.”
“You could always try not getting married,” said Primrose, who felt it
was everyone’s duty to make sacrifices for the greater good. “And while
you ponder that, dear,” she went on as Hilda opened her mouth and then
shut it again as if she’d thought better of whatever she was about to say, “Is
anyone having any actual trouble? Any inquisitive neighbours asking too
many questions? Any uncontrollable magical outbursts?”
There was a round of shrugs and heads shaking. Primrose shifted her
gimlet eyes from one witch to the next, lingering a little too long on Mika.
She looked rather disappointed when no one spoke, like she’d been hoping
to be able to chastise someone for being careless.
“Then,” Primrose continued, an enormous spellbook materialising in her
hands, “does anyone have any new spells to share?”
There were a few: a spell for more restful sleep, a potion that would
temporarily turn cat fur pink (only cat fur, and only pink), a spell for the
finding of a lost thing, and a spell to instantly vanish dark circles under the
eyes. (Upon hearing this last one, Primrose, who hoarded her own spells
like a dragon hoards gold, looked incredibly annoyed that she hadn’t been
able to figure it out first.)
When the spellwork part of the meeting was complete, Primrose cleared
her throat. “Finally, does anyone have any news they’d like to share?”
“It’s okay to say it’s time to gossip, Primrose,” Mika said merrily. “We
all know that’s what comes after the spellwork.”
“Witches don’t gossip,” sniffed Primrose.
This was patently untrue, however, because gossiping was precisely
what they proceeded to do.
“My ex-husband wanted to get back together last week,” said Belinda
Nkala, who was in her forties and never had time for anyone’s nonsense.
“When I turned him down, he informed me that I am apparently nothing
without him. Then he left,” she added calmly, “but I fear he’s going to be
suffering from an inexplicable itch in his groin for a few weeks.”
Several witches laughed, but Primrose set her lips in a thin line. “And
have you been playing such petty tricks lately, Mika?”
“Oh, for the love of fucking god, Primrose, what does this have to do
with me?”
“It’s not an unreasonable question, precious. You do like to take risks.”
“For the millionth time,” Mika said, irked beyond belief, “I post videos
online pretending to be a witch. It’s just a performance.” Primrose raised
her eyebrows. Mika raised hers right back. “Hundreds of people do the
same thing, you know. The whole witch aesthetic is very popular!”
“Witchcore,” Hilda said, nodding wisely. “Not quite as popular as
cottagecore or fairycore, but it’s up there.”
Everyone stared at her.
“I didn’t know fairies were real!” shouted Agatha Jones, who was almost
as old as Primrose and tended to believe all young people needed to be
shouted at lest they miss the import of her pronouncements. “Whatever
next!”
“You see, Primrose?” said Mika, ignoring this interruption. “People call
themselves witches all the time. I’m not putting myself or you or anyone
else at risk. Nobody who watches my videos thinks I’m actually a witch.”
It was unfortunate for Mika, then, that at that precise moment, over five
hundred miles away, in a big house in a quiet, windy corner of the Norfolk
countryside, a skinny old man in a magnificent rainbow scarf and enormous
fluffy slippers was saying exactly the opposite.
“Absolutely not!”
This came from Jamie, the scowling librarian, who was not in fact the
skinny old man in the scarf and slippers. That was Ian. And the third person
in the library was Lucie, the housekeeper, a chubby, round-cheeked woman
in her fifties, who sighed as if she knew exactly how this argument was
going to go. (She did know, and she was right.)
Ian smoothed down the tail of his scarf and replied, in the deep voice
that had charmed audiences in many a small theatre over his eighty-odd
years, “Don’t be difficult, dear. It doesn’t become you.”
Jamie was unmoved by this criticism. “You can’t seriously be
considering bringing that”—and here he jabbed a finger at the dewy,
sparkly face on the screen of Ian’s phone—“into the house?”
“Why not?” Ian asked.
“Well, for one thing, there’s no way she’s a real witch,” Jamie said
irritably. This was not unusual. Most of the things Jamie said were said
irritably. “What kind of witch would show off her magic on a platform with
millions of viewers?”
Mika would have been immensely gratified to hear this, had she been
there, but it looked like her double bluff had not hoodwinked Ian.
“She’s a real witch,” he insisted.
“How the hell can you possibly know that?”
“I have excellent observation skills. Just watch part of the video.” Ian
wiggled his phone like he was dangling a lollipop in front of a toddler. “A
minute. That’s all I ask.”
Jamie’s glare stayed firmly in place, but he crossed his arms over his
chest and leaned back against his desk to look over Ian’s shoulder. Gleeful,
Ian tapped the screen and the video started to play.
The woman on the screen looked like she was in her late twenties or so,
and was pretty in the way most people with bright eyes and merry smiles
are pretty. Jamie narrowed his eyes, trying to figure out what had caught
Ian’s attention. Nothing about the woman seemed out of the ordinary. Her
hair was a very dark brown, long and curling loosely around her bare
shoulders. Brown eyes, large like a doe’s and framed by thick black
eyelashes, blinked cheerfully out at them from a dewy face that had been
dusted with some sort of sort of shimmery powder, presumably to make her
look more otherworldly. She obviously wasn’t white, but it was hard to
pinpoint her ethnicity beyond that: her skin was a peachy, browny, goldeny
something, but maybe that was the glitter. The name at the top corner of the
video, @MikaMoon, didn’t offer any answers, either.
“The secret,” she was saying, her smile full of mischief, “is to harvest
the moonlight at exactly two minutes past midnight.” Her accent was
English, but he couldn’t pin it down to any one part of the country. She held
up a bowl of liquid silver. “Take a tiny spoonful of the harvested
moonlight,” she went on, stirring the silver substance with a glass spoon
that tinkled pleasantly against the sides of the bowl, “and add it to your
cauldron.”
As she emptied a spoonful of the supposed moonlight into a cauldron,
tiny sparkles drifted up from within, dancing in the air like fireflies before
fading away.
“And there you have it!” she said triumphantly. “The perfect potion for a
wounded heart.”
Ian paused the video. Jamie looked at him in confusion. “Was I supposed
to be impressed by the special effects she added to the cauldron? The
nonsense about a wounded heart?”
Ian scoffed. “The cauldron? No, I’m not interested in the cauldron. She’s
what interests me. Don’t you see it? She’s practically aglow with magic.”
At this, Lucie spoke for the first time. “You’re using your stage voice,
love,” she said sensibly, patting Ian’s hand. “It never works on Jamie. But,”
she added, this time to Jamie, “I reckon we should hear Ian out. You know
he has a knack for this sort of thing. If he says she’s a witch, he’s probably
right.”
“See?” said Ian, looking rather pleased with himself. “She’d be perfect!”
“Ian!” Jamie was incredulous. “Even if she’s a witch, her face is all over
the fucking internet! The risk—”
Rolling his eyes so dramatically that they practically vanished into the
back of his head, Ian said, “She has fourteen thousand followers. I’m more
famous than that and you don’t seem to mind me being here. Of course,” he
added quickly, lest Jamie take the opportunity to inform him otherwise,
“we’ll make it clear that if she does come to stay, neither Nowhere House
nor the girls are to appear in her footage in any way.”
“And what makes you think this woodland sprite will even want to be
involved?”
“We won’t know until we ask.”
Lucie stood, obviously fed up. “A vote is the only way to settle this,” she
said.
Ian shrugged. “Then we’ll need my husband, won’t we?”
“Ken must have gotten the girls to bed by now,” said Lucie. “I’ll fetch
him.”
“I get the tiebreaker,” Jamie reminded them.
“Which is only useful if there’s a tie, dear,” said Ian.