Pitch:

WINTERWOOD x PRACTICAL MAGIC

17-year-old Wren Guthrie takes every precaution to protect her best friend from her family's devastating curse. But when she manifests powers that freeze a man to death, Wren must untangle her family's past and control her magic to save her loved ones from threats both magical and mundane.

Excerpt:

Today is the twenty-second of September and by tomorrow, Hansom Williams could be mine forever.

There is a promise in my family: if you kiss your love along a divide and bridge it, then they’re yours. Protection from a curse waiting quietly for us to forget, to slip up, so it can creep in and turn everything sour. And across the street is a boy with questions tucked in his cheek. I know what he’d ask me if given the chance, but I can’t cross that street and drag him into my arms like I’ve thought of for years—yet.

Breezing downstairs, I head for our sunny kitchen with purpose. My sister sits on our butcher block countertop with a book sideways in one hand. She’s got a crow’s nest of honey blonde hair piled on her head and a pencil hanging out of her mouth. Her blue-rimmed glasses have fallen all the way down her nose and her slippers kick the cabinet below her with a steady dum–dum–dum.

“Morning,” I mumble, even though it’s pushing noon.

She replies with a distracted hum.

An appliance chirrups, but Jedda ignores it. Her coffee’s in the microwave. It will stay there until she gets a caffeine headache. I pop the door and slide the cup beside her before selecting my own from a hook. It’s yellow with an acorn carved into the clay. Magic made by Aunt Olive decades before we were born.

My sister’s feet pause, then find their rhythm.