Just as she knew they had the oil and spices because her mother and a witch from a neighboring farm had culled out three acres, and had cast a spell to turn it into the tropics. They’d planted olive trees, Piper nigrum for pepper, coffee beans, banana trees. Figs, dates.

Her dad had worked with others to construct olive presses for the oils, dryers for the fruits.

Everyone worked together, everyone benefited. She knew that.

And still.

“Why don’t you go ahead and take those out, tell your dad to start the chicken?”

Leading with her foul mood, Fallon stomped out of the house. Lana watched her daughter, her own summer-blue eyes clouding. She thought: More than one storm’s coming.

They ate at the big outdoor table her father had built, using colorful plates, with bright blue napkins and wildflowers in little pots.

Her mother believed in setting a pretty table. She let Ethan light the candles with his breath because it always made him laugh. Fallon plopped down beside Ethan. She didn’t consider him as much a pain in her butt as Colin or Travis.

Then again, he was only six. He’d get there.

Simon, his mop of brown hair streaked from the sun, took his seat, smiled at Lana. “It looks great, babe.”

Lana lifted her wine, made from their own grapes. “Credit to the grill master. We’re grateful,” she added, with a glance at her daughter, “for the food grown and made by our own hands. We hope for the day when no one goes hungry.”

“I’m hungry now!” Colin announced.

“Then be grateful there’s food on the table.” Lana set a drumstick—his favorite—on his plate.

“I helped Dad with the grill,” he claimed as he added potatoes, vegetables, an ear of just-shucked corn to his plate. “So I shouldn’t have to do the dishes.”

“That’s not going to fly, son.” Simon filled Travis’s plate as Lana did Ethan’s.

Colin waved his drumstick in the air before biting in. He had his father’s eyes, that hazel that blurred gold and green, hair a few shades darker than his mother’s going bright from the summer sun. As usual, it stood up in tufts that refused taming.

“I picked the corn.”

Travis, already eating steadily, elbowed Colin. “We picked it.”

“Irrelement.”

“Vant,” Simon corrected. “Irrelevant—and it’s not.”

“I picked most of the corn. It should count.”

“Instead of worrying about the dishes—which you will do—maybe you should eat the corn,” Lana suggested as she helped Ethan butter his ear.

“In a free society, everybody has a vote.”

“Too bad you don’t live in one.” Simon gave Colin a poke in the ribs that had Colin flashing a toothy grin.

“The corn is good!” Ethan, though he’d lost a couple of baby teeth, bit his way enthusiastically down the ear. He had his mother’s blue eyes, her pretty blond hair, and the sunniest of dispositions.

“Maybe I’ll run for president.” Colin, never one to be deterred, pushed forward. “I’ll be president of the Swift Family Farm and Cooperative. Then the village. I’ll name it Colinville and never wash dishes again.”

“Nobody’d vote for you.” Travis, nearly close enough in looks to be Colin’s twin, snickered.

“I’ll vote for you, Colin!”

“What if I ran for president, too?” Travis asked Ethan.

“I’d vote for both of you. And Fallon.”

“Leave me out of it,” Fallon rebuked, poking at the food on her plate.

“You can only vote for one person,” Travis pointed out.

“Why?”

“Because.”

“ ‘Because’ is dumb.”

“This whole conversation is dumb.” Fallon flicked a hand in the air. “You can’t be president because, even if there were any real structure of government, you’re not old enough or smart enough.”

“I’m as smart as you,” Colin tossed back, “and I’ll get older. I can be president if I want. I can be anything I want.”

“In your dreams,” Travis added with a smirk.

It earned him a kick under the table, which he returned.

“A president is a leader, and a leader leads.”

When Fallon surged to her feet, Simon started to speak, to shut things down, but caught Lana’s eye.

“You don’t know anything about being a leader.”

“You don’t know anything about anything,” Colin shot back.

“I know a leader doesn’t go around naming places after himself. I know a leader has to be responsible for people, make sure they have food and shelter, has to decide who goes to war, who lives and dies. I know a leader has to fight, maybe even kill.”

As she raged, shimmers of light sparked around her in angry red.

“A leader’s who everybody looks to for answers, even when there aren’t any. Who everyone blames when things go wrong. A leader’s the one who has to do the dirty work, even if it’s the damn dishes.”

She stalked away, trailing that angry light into the house. Slamming the door behind her.

“Why does she get to act like a brat?” Colin demanded. “Why does she get to be mean?”

Ethan, tears swirling in his eyes, turned to his mother. “Is Fallon mad at us?”

“No, baby, she’s just mad. We’re going to give her a little time alone, okay?” She looked over at Simon. “She just needs some space. She’ll apologize, Colin.”

He only shrugged. “I can be president if I want. She’s not the boss of the world.”

Lana’s heart tore a little. “Did I mention I made peach pie for dessert?” Pie, she knew, was a no-fail way to turn her boys’ moods around. “That is, for anyone who clears his plate.”

“I know a good way to work off that pie.” In tune with Lana, Simon went back to his meal. “A little basketball.”

Since he’d created a half court on the side of the barn, basketball had become one of his boys’ favorite pastimes.

“I wanna be on your team, Daddy!”

Simon grinned at Ethan, gave him a wink. “We’ll wipe the court with them, champ.”

“No way.” Colin dived back into the meal.

“Travis and I will crush.” Travis looked at his mother, held her gaze a long moment.

He knows, Lana thought. And so did Colin, even if anger and insult blocked it away.

Their sister wasn’t the boss of the world, but she carried the weight of it on her shoulders.

Fallon’s temper burned out in a spate of self-pity tears. She flung herself on her bed to shed them—the bed her father had built to replicate one she’d seen in an old magazine. Eventually the tears died away into headachy sulks.

It wasn’t fair, nothing was fair. And Colin started it. He always started something with his big, stupid ideas. Probably because he didn’t have any magicks. Probably because he was jealous.

He could have her magicks, then he could go off with some stranger to learn how to be the savior of the whole stupid world.

She just wanted to be normal. Like the girls in the village, at the other farms. Like anyone.

She heard the shouts, the laughter through her open window, tried to ignore it. But she rose, looked out.

The sky held blue on that long, late summer day, but like her mother, she felt a storm coming.

She saw her father, with Ethan perched on his shoulders, walking toward the barn. The older boys already raced around the curve of blacktop in the basketball shoes their father had scavenged.

She didn’t want to smile when her dad nipped the ball from Colin, held it up for Ethan, then walked Ethan to the basket so he could drop the ball through the hoop.

She didn’t want to smile.

The older boys looked like Dad, Ethan looked like Mom.

And she looked like the man on the back of a book.

That alone often cut more than she thought she could stand.

She heard the soft knock on her door, then her mother came in. “I thought you might be hungry. You barely touched your dinner.”

Shame began to push through the sulks. Fallon only shook her head.