Evie says I should turn the poster-on-the-door incident into a plus and spread my own rumor around Golden Academy that my subscription service is nudes. Get people to fork over cash, then kablam! They subscribe and get photos of all my signs instead. Fleece the Goldens.

Tempting as that scam may be, I don’t need that kind of energy in my life right now. Besides, I’ve picked up eight new online subscribers this month without resorting to trickery. I have a strong suspicion it may be members of the Karras family, but maybe one day Levi Summers himself will subscribe. I still haven’t given up on convincing him to let me do photography to pay him back for the department store window. One of these days, he’s going to say yes.…

The door to the bookshop swings open, and Kat Karras’s dark head pops inside. “He’s here, Winona. Ready to go?”

Mom looks as if she may faint. So I duck away from Lucky for a moment to walk over to her, and I squeeze her hand and smile, nodding. “You can do it,” I whisper. “We Saint-Martins are not cursed.”

“Not cursed,” she whispers back. “Definitely not cursed.”

Mostly not cursed.

But it’s okay. We can break the curse ourselves. No magic spell needed. No special charm. All we have to do is decide that we’re ready to smash down a few invisible walls.

And that’s exactly what we do.

Acknowledgments

Oh, reader. This book nearly broke me. Not even kidding. It took many drafts, some blubbering, a lot of self-doubt, and the very fine skills of the Amazing Nicole Ellul, the best of all the caped superheroes—editor!—to bring this story to life. So first off, thank you, Nicole, for being so patient. I’m sure you wanted to slap me silly on more than one occasion.

Other people of note who have my gratitude: Laura Bradford, my agent. Taryn Fagerness sells my books to beautiful publishers across vast oceans. Laura Eckes created the beautiful cover for this book. I don’t even know all the countless people behind the scenes at Simon & Schuster who champion my books, but some of them are Mara Anastas, Lauren Carr, Savannah Breckenridge, Emily Hutton, Emily Ritter, Liesa Abrams, Rebecca Vitkus, Elizabeth Mims, Clare McGlade, Lauren Forte, Jessi Smith, Tom Daly, Caitlin Sweeny, Alissa Nigro, and Anna Jarzab. There’s even a team of Simon & Schuster folks in the UK who do wonderful things for me, and they include Olivia Horrox and Laurie McShea.

Fist bumps to my personal support team: Brian, Luna, Iorek, Karen, Ron, Gregg, Heidi, Hank, Charlotte, Patsy, Don, Gina the Survivor, Shane, and Seph.