Rue Winters and the Legerdemain Trials

Seventeen-year-old Rue Winters wants nothing more than to get out of Eldermere. After all, there's a witch living on the outskirts of the town, and Alethea Storm knows everybody's secrets. It's not like they have to wait all that long either.

But when Alethea's familiars (a crow that can make itself invisible and a size-shifting black cat) tell Rue that Alethea has disappeared, and the pair of them have been abandoned, their plans for a future away from witches stall.

Because the last place Alethea planned to go was the witches' city of Moonwood.

It should be easy, sort of, even for a non-witch: let the familiars guide them to the city, find someone who can actually find the missing witch, and go straight back home. When it comes to Rue Winters though, nothing is ever quite so simple.

Caught off guard by the news they've been sponsored to take the Legerdemain Trials, a series of contests that seem to be done just to prove the merit of the new generation of witches, Rue quickly realises that finding Alethea Storm is going to be a lot harder than they first intended... but they know they must be on the right track.

There's more than one way to define a 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘤𝘩, after all.