Synopsis

CALISTA MOONWATER D’WHITE is no ordinary Storm Haven girl. The eighteen-year-old is descended from the powerful Moonwater witches. The first sign of her emerging power comes when she accidentally bumps into a villager and—at her touch—learns the woman’s terrible secret. Calista’s mother never spoke of their history, so until she finally reveals their heritage, Calista doesn’t understand this unusual encounter or why neighbors have always shunned her and her family. She’s horrified to learn that centuries ago, villagers in Storm Haven burned the Moonwater witches and scattered their ashes on Vengeance Mountain. Today’s villagers don’t venture near there because the old myth says death awaits.

When ghosts in the local cemetery discover a powerful Moonwater witch has come into her magyck, the former villagers ask Calista to forgive them for shunning her. Unlike the early settlers, they never murdered anyone, so when they plead for her help with unfinished earthly business, she reluctantly agrees. To help carry out these ghostly requests, she works spells from her great-grandmother’s Book of Magyck, but with disastrous results. Her serious mistakes awaken new fears within the village about witchcraft. A local murder heightens that fear, whispered accusations against her spread, and suddenly Calista’s in the same mortal danger as the witches of old. The local magistrate is about to flog her for a supposed theft when Simon Pinehurst, who’s returning home after a long absence, rides into the square. He gives her a chance to explain and convinces the magistrate to release her. Now, the danger Calista faces is one of the heart. Simon is attractive, but by his touch, she knows he’s a rogue and a thief. She’ll have none of either.

These are not the only dangers afoot—nature’s at work, too. A quaking earth releases a hideous black ooze from the cemetery plot where the ancient and guilty villagers are buried. Left unchecked, it threatens to engulf the cemetery, Calista’s farm, and the village itself. The only way she can stop the disaster is to risk climbing the mountain to appeal for help from her ancestors. Once there, she discovers it’s her ancestors who’ve released that black ooze–the last vestige of their long-dead murderers.

When Calista asks the witches for help, her request ends an old curse and unleashes her Moonwater ancestors to avenge their murders. This is a horrifying development since the angry witches are determined to destroy the innocent along with the last resting place of the guilty. Calista must choose between siding with her ancestors and escaping their wrath, or saving the villagers who have mistreated her and her family. It’s a wrenching choice, but she stands up to the witches, demanding they spare the place she has always called home. She reminds them that true magyck is forgiveness, and the witches heed her pleas.

In the aftermath, she discovers she’s misread Simon’s secrets and accepts the love he offers her. After centuries of fear and mistrust, Calista sets out to restore harmony and peace to Storm Haven.

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Excerpt

A cluster of village women, satchels filled with produce, spotted her and drew into a tighter knot. They didn’t bother to conceal their heavy-lidded suspicion and could have been the ones from last week or last month or years ago. One leaned into the other, and Calista once again thought she heard words like wicked, unnaturally tall, and Moonwater all murmured together.

The conversations were never clear so that she could understand them—just snorts and hisses and clicks of disapproving tongues.

“Mean-spirited-ninnies,” she said under her breath. So what if she was taller than most people in Stone Haven? So what if she lived next to the cemetery? She was different, so did that make her bad? The villagers were worse than mean-spirited- ninnies, they were closed-minded, intolerant fools. She pulled her shawl closed at the neck and pushed past the women who clutched their cloaks to their bosoms and stepped back to avoid her touch.

Mr. Bennet’s bakery was next, and the aroma of sweet tarts and yeasty breads filtered outside. She peered inside at the crowded room of mourners. Her mother was right. Death stirred the appetites of those left behind, and what better way to comfort the living than hot-from-the-oven pumpkin muffins?

Calista opened the bakery door and stepped inside at the same moment Mrs. Pinehurst was on her way out. There was no avoiding each other, and Calista found herself pressed against the older woman’s broad belly.

Tiny zaps of energy discharged inside Calista’s mind. She blinked rapidly, trying to make sense of what was happening to her. Even though she stood facing the inside of the bakery, she wasn’t seeing it at all. Instead, she was seeing another place. A bedroom.

Two women. One lying in a bed. It wasn’t clear who she was. Eleanor Pinehurst stood over the woman, her face contorted, not by grief, but…glee? She held a—

“Well? Are you going to let me pass?” Mrs. Pinehurst’s irritable voice shattered the vision.

Calista stepped back, relieved she couldn’t see any more of these strange and disturbing images that seemed to be flowing from Mrs. Pinehurst’s thoughts into hers. She gazed down into the woman’s pale eyes and tried to speak, but what she’d just seen stopped her words, and only a rush of breath spilled from her lips. She had to grip the basket of muffins to steady her hands.

“What are you staring at?” The woman fumed, but her indignation was tinged with a trace of misgiving. She dodged around Calista, clutching her string bag bulging with Mr.Bennet’s breads and cakes.

“S-sorry,” Calista stammered, dropping her gaze to her covered basket, but it was too late. She’d seen something, and she didn’t know why or how, but for one moment she’d been inside Mrs.

Pinehurst’s mind, and now she shared something with her that she shouldn’t.

A dreadful secret.

About the Author

C. Lee McKenzie is a native Californian who grew up in many different places before settling in the Santa Cruz Mountains. She writes, gardens, hikes, practices yoga, and travels whenever she can. She also loves to cook—and especially loves to eat.

Her young adult crossover novels explore the contemporary issues teens face in everyday life. Her Evernight Teen publication, Double Negative, was named one of the Top Ten Young Adult Books of 2020, and her novel Shattered was a finalist for the 2022 Indie Book Award. She recently published her first young adult paranormal novel, Rattlesnake, and will follow it with That Moonwater Witch in May 2026.

She is currently serializing short fiction on Substack in a series titled A Weekly Dose of Fiction.

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