Content Warning for just book 1:

  SpoilerViolence and death (of people, animals, and many monsters), kidnapping and brief confinement, dealing with PTSD and grief, and lots of anxiety mixed with teenage hormones.

  [colpse]

  It was a night like any other night, but Phoenix couldn’t sleep. The cold, sterile room of the children’s hospital she practically lived in was barely illuminated by the moon shining through the window curtains as she y in the dark. Aside from the normal anxiety eating at her about her incurable condition making tonight her st, the pain was becoming extreme as she clutched at her abdomen and groaned.

  Phoenix tried to wipe the strands of red hair from her sweat-dampened face. Her hair was the only healthy part about her and she loved it, always had. One of her earliest memories was yelling at her mother when she was about three, yelling at her not to cut the chaotic curls that always made her seem wild. She had promised to sit still and let her mom brush them as long as they wouldn’t be taken away from her.

  She wished her mother was there to comfort her, but Whitney Fraser had died in a car accident almost six months ago. Her mom would never get to see her become a legal adult since that would happen tomorrow. She was a ward of the state now, with no family left. The only visitor she expected for her special day was her government-appointed case worker.

  Phoenix didn’t care about her birthday, though. Turning eighteen was never really something to look forward to, aside from marking another year and proving all the doctors who said she wouldn’t live to see adulthood wrong.

  Her father had died before she was born, killed far away in a war. She still didn’t fully understand the reasons for the war in the first pce, especially considering the amount of propaganda that surrounded it was dizzying. The amount of politics, rumors, and conspiracy theories floating around it made her avoid looking too deep.

  Her mom chose to raise her alone, but working as a nurse in this very same hospital made things easier for them. Officially, she had been diagnosed as a child with Duchenne Muscur Dystrophy, but the doctors weren’t positive that’s what it was as her body attempted to attack itself and slowly wasted away. The diagnosis just gave them something to work from for treatment pns.

  Another spike of pain made the grip of her offhand clench around her plush green turtle that matched her eyes. It was a gift that made her mind turn to wishing for her best friend as well. Jin had been a light for her among the dreary sadness that would often permeate the hospital where so many of their young friends died.

  She remembered sneaking into their room on the good days, the days she had the energy to shamble over, just to talk and tease and ugh with each other. Jin had died too, though, cimed by cancer over two years ago.

  When the pain finally got past her rather high threshold, she began fumbling in the dark for the nurse call button. She hated bothering them during the night despite knowing that was what they were there for. She hated needing to ask for help, proving yet again that she needed others to do even the most basic of tasks. She hated being a perpetual burden to everyone around her.

  The thing she hated the most, however, was getting a new nurse who would take a gnce at her chart and then proceed to misgender her. Despite the long red curls that framed her pale sallow face and the pink hospital gown she had requested, they would see that little letter M and proceed to call her “mister,” “sport,” or worse, “sir.”

  She knew they didn’t know better until she corrected them, and luckily, most of them would correct themselves immediately as best they could, but it was still a punch to her fragile scraps of ego. A stab in her heart that she would never be seen as she wanted to be.

  The worst was the rare occurrence when the newbie nurse was malicious about it. They would refuse to correct themselves and go out of their way to point out her birth assignment despite its inaccuracy. They would find any opportunity to remind her that she would never be able to transition her body because of how frail and sickly she was. This was one of those times.

  She knew her test tormentor would be on duty tonight. She knew they would sneer and poke and not be gentle about helping her… but she hurt. So Phoenix gripped the clunky pstic remote and resolved herself to press the big red button.

  Before she could, however, the door opened, and she sighed in relief. Perhaps one of the other nurses who knew and cared about her had come to check on her in a stroke of pure coincidence.

  Phoenix froze in a slight panic when a cloaked figure with a comically rge witch’s hat entered her room instead. She stared in wonder at the person’s clothing, which was shining like the night sky, like robes of twinkling starlight glimmering in the darkness.

  She couldn’t see a face under the brim of the hat that looked like it had been stolen from some fantasy cospy convention. She asked quietly as her pain was momentarily forgotten, “Are you an angel here to take me to heaven?”

  A feminine voice ughed. “No, little one. I am far from an angel.”

  Phoenix frowned, gritting her teeth as a stab in her abdomen reminded her that the pain was still there and it didn’t like being ignored. “A devil then?”

  Another ugh filled the small room. “Not quite. I’m here to help you, but do not think of it as divine charity.”

  “Help me?” she began to wonder if perhaps the agony was affecting her brain now and causing hallucinations. She had never experienced those before, but there was always a first time for everything.

  “Think of it more like making a deal,” the woman said with amusement.

  “A deal?” she asked, still distracted by the searing pain in her stomach. “I think you might have the wrong person.” She gasped aloud and groaned at another sharp stab before gathering enough breath to add, “I—I don’t have anything to trade.”

  “An investment then,” the mysterious stranger said more seriously. “I made this same offer to your friend a few years ago and am pleased by the results so far, despite the mix-up. Now I’m hoping you won’t disappoint either.”

  “My friend? Who—”

  “Never mind that,” the voice said, cutting off her question. “I have other pns for you.”

  Then the stranger—who she still wasn’t convinced wasn’t some kind of trick her mind was pying as she was finally dying—lifted an arm towards her and whispered something in a nguage she had never heard before.

  The outstretched hand glowed with a pale green light for a moment before that same light surrounded her, suffusing her, and Phoenix knew this must be a hallucination or dream now.

  The pain stopped.

  Phoenix couldn’t remember the st time she had felt like this. No pain, none at all. There was always some, usually just varying degrees of it, but now… nothing. She stared at the stranger for a long moment as the green glow vanished, plunging the room back into night’s embrace before finally asking bluntly, “Who are you, and why are you here?”

  It was eerie when she finally caught a glimpse of a wide Cheshire grin peeking out from under the hat as it rose upwards to reveal a womanly face. “I’m called Morgan now, in this world at least. I do like going by ‘The Night Witch,’ however. It has a magical ring to it, doesn’t it?”

  “This world?” Phoenix asked, beginning to wonder if perhaps the pain had stopped because she actually had died, and this was some sort of weird limbo meant to ease her into the next life.

  “Yes, little one,” Morgan replied with a nod. “There are many worlds out there in the greater cosmos, some even quite simir to this one. That’s what I’m here for and what I want with you, actually.”

  “Me? Why would you want me? I’m sick. I’ve barely seen anything outside of this hospital. Unless there’s something you need me to code, there’s not much I can help with,” she said in confusion, still distracted by the feeling of not feeling pain.

  Phoenix had managed to go to school online and even get into a technical course that filled most of her electives with computer programming. Getting a high school diploma was at her mother’s request, being told repeatedly that she would need the little piece of paper when she finally got cured and joined the rest of society. Phoenix hadn’t quite seen the point of it, but she liked learning things, and it distracted her from the daily monotony.

  Despite the limited time her mother allowed on them, video games were the only thing she might be considered decent at. She assumed this stranger wasn’t here to recruit her to some Warcraft guild or help with her virtual farm. Other than that, her main hobby and favorite use of passing the time was reading adventure books. It was a love her mother passed on to her early in life, and they would often be a book club of two, reading together and discussing fantastical stories and wishing for more.

  “I’m not in need of a website, little one. I prefer to stay in the shadows,” the witch replied as a long staff appeared in her petite hand. There was a rge sparkling diamond atop it in the shape of a star, and it seemed to glow with an inner light as Morgan began walking around the room, dragging the staff along the ground as though drawing in the sand with a stick.

  Phoenix tried to sit up more and see what was happening better but her muscles were too weak to respond to her will, despite there being no more pain. Morgan continued speaking before she could ask what the witch was doing.

  “You could say I’m a seeker of souls. Special ones. Souls with… potential.”

  “Potential?”

  “Yes,” the strange woman said, never stopping her weird movements around the room, “Everyone is born with potential. Some squander it. Some have it smothered by others. Some have more than others. Some use it all up. And some… a very rare few… are limitless. They break the rules and are the agents of change.”

  Morgan stopped suddenly and turned to look at Phoenix. Making eye contact caused her to flinch as she finally saw solid pitch-bck orbs in pce of eyes. They seemed to be endless voids threatening to swallow her up.

  “I can sense this potential,” the witch said softly, then walked closer towards her. “I can help put you on the path… but it’s you, and only you, who can choose to fulfill it. To go beyond all the others and shine brighter than the sun. To be a force of change for good or ill.”

  Phoenix paused, unsure how to reply to the unusual solemnity the conversation had turned towards. She wasn’t sure what the stranger was getting at.

  If she had to pick from the examples the woman had given, she would have pced herself in the category of having all her potential used up—consumed by the sickness that had been trying to kill her since birth. She had even died the day she was born, at least for a few minutes, when her heart had stopped and she had needed to be resuscitated. That was why her mom had named her Phoenix in the first pce.

  “I don’t have any potential left,” she murmured, sure it had all been spent.

  The Night Witch grinned again and said, “Well, I guess we’ll just have to see about that.” Then the woman cpped her hands together and added, “I best get on with it then. Don’t want anyone realizing I healed you before I send you on your way.”

  “Send me? What are you talking about? And what do you mean you healed me? I can’t even sit up straight,” she managed to sputter out, trying to understand what was happening.

  Morgan grinned wider, held out her staff in front of her, and answered, “Then I’ll send you somewhere you can. Please, don’t fade into nothingness. I’m expecting a good return on this investment, after all.”

  “Seriously, what are you—” Phoenix’s words cut off as she was surrounded by sparkling stars floating in the air around her, and a multicolored glow emanated from the floor under her where Morgan had been scratching her staff against the sterilized linoleum.

  Not believing the things she was seeing, she closed her eyes tightly. She rubbed them with her palms as if to wipe the illusion from her sight and once more wondered if she really had died despite not remembering actually passing.

  “Good luck, Phoenix Fraser. It’s time for you to make a difference in the cosmos,” the witch said as the light began to shine brighter. “Oh, and try your best not to die too much.”

  The pain returned suddenly, different this time. Her blood felt like it was on fire, and her scream caught in her throat as her body tried to cry out, yet no sound could be heard. It was like va was being injected straight into her veins through the IV that had become a permanent accessory for her.

  The only thought that entered her mind through the torture was that she didn’t want to die. Despite having nobody left, she wanted to live—wanted to experience more. Then the pain stopped just as quickly as it had begun, and Phoenix sensed absolutely nothing at all.