Prlogue

     He’s coming.
     Who?
     There was no answer, but Art didn’t expect one. There wasn’t anyone to answer. The words hadn’t come from a person, but from some deep-seated instinct. A feeling, in some part of his brain that was more animal than man, and could therefore recognize things he could not. (According to most of his brothers, that was every part of his brain, but they were idiots, and thus their opinions did not matter.) It was a heightened feeling of anticipation, with no clear source. There was only the certainty that something was going to happen soon, and the thought that bubbled to the forefront of his mind over and over again.
     He’s coming. He’s coming. He’s coming.
     Who? Who? Who?
     Art asked the same question again and again. It reminded him of the summer the twins turned four, when their favorite word was why. Only this time, he was the restless toddler. Somehow, it was no less irritating. Maybe he owed Cas and/or Paul an apology.
     The feeling persisted all morning. He heard the words as he poured himself a bowl of cereal with no nutritional value whatsoever. When he brushed his teeth. When he put on his shoes. Even as he snapped at Tory and Dre to hurry up before they were late.
The whole drive into Queensville was a litany of he’s coming, he’s coming. Art tried to drown it with headphones but to no avail. By the time they arrived at the university, his head was throbbing. It didn’t matter if the feeling was good or bad, he wanted it to stop.
     “You seem off this morning,” Torey said, stepping out of the driver seat of his old hand-me-down Honda. Until recently, it had been the only car the coven had owned, used only for grocery runs and medical emergencies, like that time Marcus had gotten an apple seed stuck up his ear.
     Before Art and his cousins-slash-brothers, the Aster coven had left the safety of their compound as little as possible. Their parents had been sheltered by their parents, whose parents had sheltered them and so on. Generations of Asters were hidden away from the world - safe, but never experiencing life to the fullest. 
     Neither of Art’s mothers had set foot off the compound. They’d never gone to school. They’d never made any friends outside the coven. Never went to the movies or shopping trips or family vacations. They didn’t understand technology like computers and cell phones. They didn’t know anything about the outside world. All to keep them safe from the Witchfinders.
     Sometimes, Art wondered if that had backfired. His mothers were scared of the Witchfinders, but in the way one might be scared of the monster in a horror movie. No matter how terrifying it was, it couldn’t hurt anyone. It wasn’t real. Maybe the Witchfinders weren’t real, either. Art had never seen one. He and his brothers had mingled with humans all their lives, and they’d never once come under attack.
     “Nah, Artie’s just like that,” Dre said. He was leaning with one arm against the roof, and the large sunglasses he wore made him look extra douchey.
     Art loved all of his brothers. He would lay down his life for any of them. But they were all assholes. All, except for Torey, with his big brown eyes and soft, gentle voice. It was impossible to hate Torey. Art had tried. For the sake of equality.
     “I told you not to call me that.”
     “Suck it up buttercup. We’re all stuck with dumb names, and none of us are happy about it. You’re not special, Artemios.” Somehow, it was worse when Dre said his full name in that tone.
     In what was a stroke of either brilliance on their parent’s part or pure dumb luck, although they were all named after celestial bodies, their names could all be shortened into normal “human” names. Originally, their parents had intended to only use these names outside the coven, but eventually, they had stuck. It was, after all, easier to ask Torey to pass the remote than Antares, easier to call Ryan an idiot instead of Orion, and it was easier to make fun of Peter, rather than Jupiter, for being a pretentious asshole.
     Torey frowned over the hood of the car. “I’m trying to have a serious conversation here.”
     “When it comes to our names, I’m always serious.”
     Art ignored him. “Do you ever feel like… your magic is acting on its own? Like maybe it’s trying to tell you something?”
     “We’re not supposed to use the M word in public.” Torey’s eyes darted across the parking lot, like he expected to see a legion of witchfinders jump out of a minivan, instead of a bunch of sleep-deprived and hungover college kids stumbling toward the campus.
     “No one’s paying attention to us.” It was true. In high school, they’d been the weird kids, the ones who didn’t have any friends outside their family. Art was too flamboyant, too loud, and so competitive that, eventually, everyone had stopped playing any games with him. Torey was too quiet, too shy, and too nervous. As for Dre, well, he was an asshole. Everyone had noticed them. They’d all pointed and gawked and spread rumors about those Aster kids. 
     Here, things were different. Maybe it was the piles of worksheets and research papers and discussion boards (dear goddess, the discussion boards) that were due at any given moment. Maybe it was the constant parties and the amount of alcohol these kids were ingesting. Or maybe it was just that there were so many people that everyone blended together into a vaguely human soup. Art could name maybe a couple of kids in one class, personally. Whatever the case, nobody looked twice at Art’s nail polish or Torey’s oversized sweaters, or Dre’s scowl.
     Still, Torey did not settle. He hunched his shoulders, as though by making himself as small as possible, he could become invisible. Then again, he was always like that. It probably didn’t have anything to do with witchfinders or the dreaded “M word”.
     “You’re making that up,” Dre said. “Your… M-A-G-I-C is part of you. It’s not some separate entity that can act out on its own. Stop making excuses for your shitty control.”
     Art could have argued that he wasn’t making excuses. That he could control his magic just fine, fuck you very much. But what would be the point? Clearly, Dre didn’t know what he was talking about, and Torey was more worried about his own shadow. Art suppressed a sigh. He was so misunderstood.
     “Do you really think witchfinders can’t spell?” He said instead.
     “That was for Torey’s benefit.”
     “Oh, fuck you.”
     “Gross.” Dre wrinkled his nose and grabbed his bag from the backseat. “Well, this has been fun and all, but now I’m late for class. Good luck with your… situation. If you feel like you’re gonna blow the place up, try to give us a heads up, will ya?”
     “It was one time,” Art said, but Dre was already walking to the building behind them.
     “Shoot, I’m gonna be late, too. Bye, Art. I hope you feel better soon.” 
     Great. So Art was going crazy, and no one had any explanation. He considered asking his mother, before rejecting the idea entirely. She would lecture him about not keeping up with his meditations and prayers. Something about maintaining a connection with their goddess and his constellation or whatever. He stopped listening as soon as she started using her High Priestess Voice. Mother Number Two was also out, because she would tell him to ask his mother. (It was her favorite joke. Strangely, it didn’t get funnier the more she said it.) He refused to consider asking Ryan for help. That went double for the rest of his brothers.
     That left one option - Art’s go-to solution to all life's woes. Which was, of course, to ignore it and hope that it would go away on it own. Sometimes, it even worked. Like how that tooth in the back of his mouth had stopped hurting one day. No dentist required.
     He shoved the feeling down, into whatever deep recess of his brain it had crawled out of, and made himself go to the class. Dre was right about one thing - they were late as fuck. That brought the total number of things he’d been right about up, to a whopping one. 
     Art sat through both of his morning classes, but could not remember a thing that happened. His notes were similarly blank. His ears were ringing and his head throbbed. The feeling had not gone away. With every second that passed, it got louder and more insistent. It was all very Tell-Tale Heart, except that Art couldn’t rip up the floorboards of his brain to discover what lay underneath.
     He meant to attend calculus. He didn’t have much of a choice, given that they had one car. He didn’t have many qualms about abandoning Dre an hour away from home, but if anything happened to Torey, Art would never forgive himself. As he stepped outside to cut across the front lawn, something tugged on his chest. It was so hard and insistent that he stumbled, drawing curious stares from a group of students sitting on a blanket in the grass.
     He stood, unable to move as the feeling tugged and tugged and tugged at his heart. This way, it seemed to say. Art wasn’t sure when he decided to give in to the feeling, only that one moment, he was fighting his own legs on the lawn. The next, he had gone across the street, to the little coffee shop that Torey treated like a goddess-given gift.
     Art liked to believe that the goddess would have better taste than this. He stood in the doorway, wondering what he was supposed to glean from the mismatched chairs and hideous yellow curtains. There were no more tugs, no more whispers. Even his headache lessened. What he supposed to order a coffee? Is that what this had been about?
     Maybe if he’d paying attention, he would have heard the door open behind him. Maybe he would have moved out of the way before another, just as oblivious, boy collided with his shoulder. Or maybe that had been Fate’s design all along.
     “Oh my god,” the boy said, yanking one headphone free. There was an open textbook in his other hand, something about economics. “I’m so sorry. Are you alright?”
      He was tall, and handsome, with the kind of tanned skin and curly dark hair that suggested a mixed heritage. He frowned, brow pinched in concern, as though he actually thought Art might be injured.
     None of that was what held Art’s attention. His entire world had narrowed to the tiny, glittering star embedded in the hollow of the boy’s throat. The feeling that had haunted him all day swelled and burst in a rush.
     Mine, it seemed to say
     Mine, Art agreed.