Before she was the witch in the woods, before she was Cassandra, she was—

Poppy

It was supposed to be just another job. The stranger hired me to be his maid and, though something about him made me twitch, I couldn’t pass up the money. So I traded Harlem for Manhattan, knowing that this decision might change my life.

I couldn’t have been more right.

I should have listened when he warned me away from that mirror, but I didn’t, and I somehow landed my fool self into a whole new world.

I’m not alone, though. He’s there.

He says his name is Apollo, like the theater. And he has the absolute nerve to expect me to believe that I’m meant to be here, in this place, with him. A city girl like me, living out in the woods with some golden-haired white boy?

He must’ve lost his dang mind.

But Apollo has a dark side, too. A temper. When I brush him off, desperate to get back to New York, he curses me. That’s right. Curses me—with her name and her fate. He says I’m Cassandra. And so I am.

Because of his curse, I see the future. I know what’s going to happen. I don’t believe it.

And that, perhaps, is the worst part of the curse.

*The Witch in the Woods is a novella set in the Mirrorside world. It features the story of Cassandra, the witch in the woods who helps Noelle in the second Mirrorside novel, Hunt the Stars.

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