do you remember those summer days of going on short trips and never wanting to go back? what about strong feelings of sisterhood and unity? or the doll in the Owain field? maybe if you think of all that stuff, your impending doom won't hurt so much

Mercy Barbanson, the middle daughter of a reverend and schoolteacher wasn't the ideal southern child. No, no, Mercy had big big plans and the wrong kind of look in her eyes. Mercy never got the same fear of the good lord that the other children did, she stood defiant. The stories of devils and hell never scared her one bit, even her father's booming voice and her readiness to discipline his children didn't set the fear into her.

Nellie Calloway was the first of many things. The first daughter of Noah and Karen Calloway, the first student in her small Nebraskan town to ever do a foreign exchange program, the first Calloway to travel further east than Chicago, and the first witch to meet Alexander O'Rabhartaigh. But for as many things she was the first of, there were dozens of things she would only ever be second best at.

Nothing's ever really the same after you die, but in death there's a chance to learn about the origin of everything and who you really are. Then maybe you can return. Angora May did.

Beatrice Octavia Langsley III was destined for greatness, if greatness included a swarm of beautiful girls and a successful bakery then Bea was in, but she and her father had very different definitions of greatness.