Prologue
When Jasper Hawk was young, his family lived in Bridgeport. Their father, a wealthy businessman, met their mother Esmeralda, a witch from Moonlight Falls, on a trip to document the supernatural population there. He fell in love with her fiery hair and eyes and midnight blue skin and she agreed to come back to live with him in Bridgeport. They married and she was expecting within a month. She gave birth to twins, a girl and a boy. They were named Amber and Jasper.
When you looked at them, you would never know they were twins. While Amber had inherited her father’s straight black hair, brown eyes, and pale skin, Jasper got his mother’s dark blue skin and fiery orange hair and eyes. Neither of them showed any signs of witching ability, though it was of course possible that it would show up later.
When the twins were eleven years old, their mother contracted a mysterious illness. She was bedridden and none of the doctors in Bridgeport could help her. She slowly wasted away, spending most of her days asleep. She could no longer tend to her small garden and it became overrun with weeds. The alchemy station in her storeroom stood neglected, its wooden legs rotting from the mildew. Her husband, once loving and devoted, threw himself into his work like never before, trying to distance himself from this strange new version of his wife.
Amber also tried to do what her father did: she joined more clubs and honors classes, making it so she had to spend as little time at home as possible. But Jasper couldn’t do that. He had always been close to his mother, certainly more so than Amber, and had few other friends. His mother taught him the best way to plant alchemy ingredients and vegetables. She took him to the witching shop and showed him how to put an elixir on consignment. She even showed him a few spells, although they never seemed to work for him. So when she died, he was distraught.
Jasper was ostracized by his peers and beat up in the schoolyard weekly. His father would send him to his room when he had company to avoid making them uncomfortable with his son’s extraordinary features. Jasper spent his teenage years alone. At graduation, Amber was voted most likely to be a successful businesswoman, an accomplishment she was immensely proud of. Jasper was voted most likely to die early.
When Amber went off to University, Jasper decided he needed to do something with his life. He was finally old enough to fend for himself. Before dying, his mother had described her birthplace– a small town by the name of Moonlight falls. She told him stories of witches and faeries and green-skinned women– it was a place where he could feel accepted and learn to become a witch like his mother. He decided now to move there to begin his life. And, although he felt a strong dislike for the idea of children, he knew he had to continue his mother’s legacy by passing her extraordinary features through many generations to come.