Chapter 1
The rain is falling inside the mall.
It’s coming straight down through the skylight above the food court, drumming against plastic tables and splashing into abandoned trays of half-eaten fries. Not a leak. Not condensation. Actual rain—cold, heavy drops—hitting tile with a sound like applause.
Martha Harper is standing on a chair, heart pounding so hard it hurts, holding a paperback book over her head like it might bite her.
“This is not what it said,” she squeaks.
Jessie Alvarez stares upward, mouth open, ponytail plastered to her neck. “Okay,” she says slowly. “Okay. I don’t think this is… normal.”
Sophie Klein is laughing.
She’s soaked, mascara bleeding down her cheek, white tank top clinging in a way that would absolutely destroy Instagram if anyone were filming. She throws her arms out wide, spins once, and shouts, “ARE YOU SEEING THIS?”
A scream echoes from the Sbarro line. Someone drops a tray. The Orange Julius kid runs.
Martha jumps down from the chair. “We have to stop it.”
“I don’t want to stop it,” Sophie says. She reaches out, lets the rain pool in her palm like it belongs there. “I want to know how you did it.”
“I didn’t do it,” Martha snaps. “I read it.”
She looks down at the book again.
It’s small. Old. The cover is black, cracked like dried mud, the title stamped in faded silver: The Practical Compendium of Minor Weather, Fortune, and Influence. No author. No barcode. No library stamp.
She found it three days ago in the mall basement, behind the employee-only door marked MAINTENANCE – DO NOT ENTER, while hunting for a working outlet to charge her phone.
She definitely didn’t expect it to work.
Jessie grabs Martha’s wrist. “Martha. Focus. People are freaking out.”
She’s right. Shoppers are scattering. Someone is crying. Security is already sprinting across the tile, radios crackling.
Martha flips pages with shaking fingers. “I don’t know how to undo it. It just said—” She swallows. “It said for rain, read aloud and mean it.”
Sophie steps closer. “And did you mean it?”
Martha hesitates.
The truth is, she did.
She meant it because she was tired of this place—the flickering lights, the dying stores, the smell of fryer grease and sadness. She meant it because for once she wanted something impossible to answer her back.
She meant it because Sophie was watching.
Lightning cracks overhead.
Inside the mall.
The skylight flashes white.
That’s when the alarms start screaming.
Twenty minutes earlier.
They’re sitting at the usual table in the food court, the one with the loose leg and the view of Forever 21’s permanently dark storefront. It’s lunch break. Sixty minutes of freedom before the Beauty Barn calls them back to fluorescent hell.
They don’t look like friends.
Martha’s hoodie is two sizes too big, sleeves chewed raw at the cuffs. She’s hunched like she’s trying to take up less space than the chair.
Jessie is all muscle and sun, wearing her community college soccer hoodie, tapping her foot like she’s itching to move.
Sophie scrolls through her phone, face perfect, bored, already mentally elsewhere.
They only sit together because the schedule says they have to.
Martha clears her throat. “I found something.”
Sophie doesn’t look up. “If it’s another coupon, I swear to God—”
“It’s a book,” Martha says.
Jessie perks up. “Like… a book-book?”
Martha nods, pulling it from her bag. She sets it on the table.
Sophie finally looks.
Her smile fades.
“What the hell is that?”
“It’s… kind of a spell book,” Martha says, hating herself for saying it out loud.
Jessie laughs. “Okay, Harry Potter.”
“I’m serious.”
Sophie leans forward. “You’re saying you believe in that?”
“I didn’t,” Martha says quietly. “But I tried one.”
Silence.
Jessie blinks. “You what?”
Martha flips to a page, points. “It said if you read it aloud and concentrate, it would rain. Just a little. I thought it was fake. I just wanted to see if—”
Thunder booms.
Right on cue.
Rain begins to fall through the skylight.
Back in the present, the mall lights flicker and go out.
Total darkness.
Then emergency lights kick in—red, pulsing, wrong.
Someone screams again, louder this time.
Sophie’s laughter dies in her throat.
“Martha,” she says slowly. “Tell me this isn’t real.”
Martha stares at the book.
The pages are turning by themselves.
Jessie grabs Sophie’s arm. “We need to leave. Now.”
Security shouts from across the food court. “HEY! YOU THREE! DON’T MOVE!”
The rain stops all at once.
Dead silent.
Martha looks down.
A new sentence has appeared on the open page, the ink still wet:
THE FIRST GIFT IS ALWAYS FREE.
She looks up—and realizes Sophie is no longer standing next to them.
She’s holding the book.
And she’s smiling like she’s just been chosen.
