A sneeze with the force of a thousand dust bunnies assaulted me right out of a deep and dreamless sleep. The inside of my right nostril twitched, causing me to sneeze twice more. I blinked against a sunbeam forcing its way through the partially open wooden slats of blinds covering the windows, dust particles caught in the light like glitter.

I rubbed sleep from my eyes. Was that… magic?

The motes swayed like a magician’s pocketwatch. They formed tiny pyramids, broke apart, and formed them again. I watched until the rumble of my stomach pulled my attention. “What’s Memaw been up to this time?”

Another growl trembled within my stomach. I realized I was famished, like I hadn’t eaten my fill at the family reunion yesterday. As the sun set over Seashadow Point, the younger cousins danced and partied like it was 1999, as Prince sang on the radio. The older ones sat back and passed jugs of various elixirs. Nobody dared call the contents moonshine. That was hillbilly talk.

My hand slid under my pillow, fingertips connecting with something hard and cold. I drew the quilt back and sat up. Was the fabric that sun-faded when I pulled it over me last night? Moving the pillow revealed a cast iron key that opened the door to The Mystic Leaf, my family’s tea shop in town.

A salty breeze crept through the window I’d left open about an inch. The tang of the Atlantic drifted into the room. Inhaling the scent of the ocean was as effective as a cup of Memaw’s morning tea, specially blended to help ease the pain of everything from migraines to menstrual cramps.

I stretched, yawned, and jumped from the bed. Dust bunnies rose and fell around my feet as they hit the carpet.

The Swatch-brand watch on my wrist said I should be smelling something breakfast-related by now, even if it felt like I’d slept past noon. I crept into the hall and tilted my head to one side. The house was too quiet.

“Hello?” I called. My voice cracked like the seal on a grimoire that hadn’t been opened in a toad’s age. Just how many drinks had I knocked back with my cousins? I called out again, but nobody answered.

As I wandered through the rooms, I noticed two things. A layer of dust covered everything in the house, and my family was missing.

Something was very, very wrong.

Chapter 1

The air in the house smelled like it had been stored in one of the old trunks full of heirlooms that Memaw kept in the attic. Old, stale, and maybe a little bit mildewed.

I made my way to the center of the kitchen, my bare feet leaving pristine prints in a gray carpet of silt that had settled over the linoleum. The last true thing I remembered was the smell of Memaw’s shrimp boil and the distant, muffled thump of a Prince song playing from someone’s boombox down by the docks. I remembered the way the humidity had curled the flyaway hairs at my temples and the way the sunset had turned the Atlantic into a sheet of hammered gold.

Now, the silence was so loud it made my ears ring.

“Memaw?” I called out again. My voice was a ghostly rasp. “Mom? Aunt Cissy?”

No answer. Not even the skitter of a palmetto bug. I moved toward the silent refrigerator. When I pulled the handle, the seal gave way with a pathetic hiss. The shadowy interior was empty, save for a shriveled lemon that had turned into a black, stony lump and a carton of milk that had long ago morphed into a structural support for enough mold for half a dozen science experiments.

I backed away, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs. I needed to get outside. I needed to see the sun.

I grabbed my denim jacket from the peg by the door and shoved the key, which I’d been carrying around, in the pocket. When I stepped out onto the porch, what I saw froze me in place.

The Legare estate sat on a rise overlooking the marsh, its view usually a vibrant tapestry of cordgrass and winding blue creeks. But the Seashadow Point stretching out before me looked like a grim imitation of itself. A sickly mauve hue cast itself over the marsh. The sky, which should have been the brilliant blue of a coastal morning, was a flat, heavy pewter with clouds that pressed down against the tops of skeletal magnolia trees.

And the silence held the echo of a magical vacuum. The ley lines that usually hummed beneath the soles of my feet like a purring cat were gone. Or hidden. Whatever the reason, the earth felt cold and hollow.

“Okay, Lolly,” I whispered and hugged my arms to my chest. “You’re dreaming. It’s a super depressing dream. Walk into town. Find your family. Someone will explain this lame joke.”

The walk into the village center should have taken ten minutes. It felt like hours. Every house I passed was a riddle. The Miller place, once a bright canary yellow, was now a peeling gray. Planks etched with faint, jagged runes I didn’t recognize covered the home’s windows. Stubborn weeds pushed through cracks in the sidewalk like fingers reaching for anyone who passed by them.

As I neared the town square, the first signs of life appeared, but they offered no comfort. A group of teenagers sat on a bench outside what used to be the post office. They were dressed up like they belonged in a sci-fi movie. Their clothes were made from slick, iridescent fabrics. The shoes they wore had thick, glowing soles. One of them held a thin pane of glass in their hand, staring at it with an intensity that bordered on worship. Their thumbs made ticky-tacky sounds on the glass. Listening to it felt like hearing someone’s fingernails raking across a chalkboard.

I kept my head down, my breath coming in short, shallow hitches. I caught my reflection in the window of a boutique that was definitely not there the last time I’d walked down Main Street. I stopped dead.

The girl in the glass shared my startling sea-glass green eyes. I ran a hand through the same wild mane of chestnut curls. The tip of my left index finger, missing since a childhood experiment gone wrong, still hadn’t grown back. I was wearing the same clothes I’d put on the last day I could remember happening—acid-washed jeans and a sunflower-print tank top.

Although I hadn’t aged a day, my clothes had clearly gone out of style. The mannequin behind the glass was wearing a dress made of what looked like liquid metal, and the price on the tag was written in a currency that had a symbol I didn’t recognize.

A wave of vertigo washed over me.