‘Phased & Confused ‘ By Jessie Lovene

Unfortunately for the Brynn sisters, the phases of the moon aren’t the source of this confusion.

It’s Halloween, and Aella Brynn is woken late at night by her sister’s goose familiar, Gary. Her little sister, Holly, stands over her bed, desperately begging for help to fix a love spell gone wrong. Begrudgingly, Aella agrees to help her adjust the original spell—on the condition that if things go awry, she will use a reversal powder to undo the spell.

In the depths of a drunken Halloween party, the sisters spot the subject of Holly’s spell, Sadie. Holly remains distraught that the spell has sent her pining over someone else. Trudging through the sea of drunken teens, Aella beelines for her sister’s crush. To her dismay, she’s distracted by Tom, a boy from her class. She manages to disentangle herself from him and intercepts Sadie before she can make a fool of herself. But when Aella reaches for the love spell powder, she finds it missing. The culprit: Tom, who swiped the powder from her hand.

Aella seeks out Tom. Using poor attempts at flattery, she distracts him enough to steal her powder back. But when she turns to leave, Tom attempts to draw her back. The momentum causes Aella to lose her grip on the powder’s jar….resulting in it falling right it into the punch bowl, where drunken teens are actively scooping the concoction into their cups.

The effects are near immediate. Partners are abandoning each other; friends are breaking away from their friend groups, having laid their eyes on someone across the party. It’s complete chaos. Aella is overwhelmed and out of ideas.

Until she sees Gary, Holly’s goose familiar.

Giving him her jar of reversal powder, Aella instructs Gary to fly over the party to let the powder spread through the wind. As no ordinary goose, Gary is successful. Slowly, everyone at the party starts to return to normal. Including Sadie, who turns out to have a crush on Holly: no magic required.

After a successful night, Aella is eager to get to a date of her own.
With her bed.

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