Any Witch Way (The Witch Next Door Book 3)

by Judith Berens

  Lily turned slowly toward Romeo with wide eyes. “He’s really hungry.”

  For the first time, Rosalía looked nervous. She looked from one adult to the other and said something that prompted another conversation between her and Romeo. Fortunately, it was much shorter than the others. He chuckled at the end and the girl frowned at Filipe and shook her head. He didn’t seem to notice anything but the food.

  “What’s wrong?” Lily asked.

  “Nothing.” He stood to serve her a plate first, then one for himself. “I think she was worried you’d change your mind.”

  “Change my mind?”

  He nodded. “About being her teacher. That you wouldn’t want a student with, and I quote, ‘a pig for a brother.’”

  She snorted and clapped a hand hastily over her mouth. “I totally shouldn’t laugh at that.”

  “I did,” he said with a shrug, stood at the end of the short kitchen counter, and started eating.

  “He’s her brother?”

  “They are twins.”

  When she turned to look at the kids again, Rosalía’s gaze darted away from her as the girl turned back to her food with a hidden smirk. “I can’t blame either of them for being hungry. And I’m reasonably sure manners are the last thing on the list after being—” She hunched forward and whispered, “Kidnapped.”

  “I’m totally with you on that one.” He swallowed and coughed a little. “Hey, could you hand me a—”

  “Yep. Got it.” She retrieved two more bottles of water.

  “Thanks.” When he’d washed his food down, he held her gaze for a few seconds longer than normal. “I think he’s having a harder time with what they went through over the last few days. At least he’s eating, so it could be worse. Honestly”—he chuckled and leaned over the counter toward her—“I think she was more upset that being kidnapped didn’t make him more polite.”

  Her eyes widened. “Did she say that?” She wanted to laugh but that would have felt so completely wrong.

  “More or less. She said he always eats like this, and I…had to remind her it’s because he’s a boy.” He held her gaze as he scooped a heaped spoonful of rice into his mouth, and they both had to fight their laughter.

  “If eating habits were a deciding factor in who I spend my time with, I’m sure I would’ve kicked you out of the Winnie when we were on our way to Canada.”

  “Fair enough.” They turned their attention to the food for a while, and the Winnie was completely silent beyond the sounds of chewing, swallowing, and silverware on plates amidst the background melody of the constant rain.

  Nine

  Rosalía could hardly reach the faucet at the sink, but she’d cleared both her and Filipe’s plates and made an admirable effort to wash them. Romeo stopped her gently and showed her how to load the dishwasher. That was all it took to get them talking again.

  Lily glanced at Filipe and thought she’d maybe sit with him at the table and try her halting Spanish with him. His silence was a lot more her speed. But the boy slid out from the booth and walked on the tips of his toes back to the couch. His damp shorts had soaked through the bottom of her oversized gray shirt but he apparently didn’t care. Without even a glance at her, he curled in the corner of the couch again and went back to sleep.

  “Okay.” She turned toward Romeo and Rosalía. “I’m gonna go and try to think of a way to make sure we can all understand each other. I’ll be right back.”

  “That sounds good.” He gave her a thumbs-up. “We got it.”

  Rosalía spun away from him and mirrored his gesture with a huge grin.

  Laughing, Lily moved down the short hall into her bedroom but she didn’t close the door. It was a little after 7:30 p.m. which would hopefully give them enough time to satisfy Rosalía’s excitement and curiosity. Hopefully, it’s not anything like mine was when I was her age.

  Romeo had left the duffel bag of books in front of the bed, the waterproof canvas still covered in beaded drops of water. She tried to shake most of it off, wiped a spray from her face, and unzipped it. “Okay, it’s admittedly not the best place to store books,” she muttered. “It’s not like I have room to stack boxes, though.”

  The contents were scattered inside the bag and a few pages had bent under others, but at least they were all still dry. She found her mom’s old book of spells at the bottom—the one she hadn’t been allowed to touch until she graduated high school. “Not that her literal electric-shock wards ever stopped me from trying.” Even three years after she managed to open it for the first time, her ingrained reaction was to hesitate before she touched this particular grimoire.

  She snorted at herself and pulled the large dark-purple hardcover from the bag, climbed onto the bed, crossed her legs, and got to work. Boy, I really haven’t had to look spells up in a long time.

  Margaret Antony had always specialized in revelatory magic—unlocking secret doors, discovering hidden secrets, clearing illusions and wards and whatever stood between her and what the woman wanted to see or know or understand. Like mother, like daughter. Or maybe it’s one of those nature-versus-nurture things. She skimmed through the pages of the spellbook. Most of the spells, wards, and charms she already knew, but seeing them laid out like this in her mom’s handwriting—feeling like she was studying again with the goal of uncovering one more unknown—helped her put the pieces together.

  Twenty minutes later, she thought she’d found three spells she could use together to achieve what she wanted. She closed the book, set it on top of the bag, and leapt off the bed to rejoin the others.

  Romeo and Rosalía now sat cross-legged in the center of the living area, facing each other and talking. Of course, Filipe hadn’t moved from his position on the couch, and the sound of his sister’s excited chatter and the man’s deep voice obviously didn’t bother him.

  “We’re almost ready.” The girl spun on the floor and they both looked at her as she stepped into the kitchen to fill a bowl with a little water from the sink.

  “Verdád?” the girl squeaked in excitement.

  “Yep.” Lily brought the bowl with her and wondered where she would sit.

  Romeo pushed himself off the floor with a sigh. “Yeah, I want a good seat for this.”

  “Well, don’t get too excited.” She flashed him a sideways glance and smirked before she replaced him on the floor in front of Rosalía. “I gotta make sure it actually works, first.”

  “It always does.” He stretched his legs out in the swiveling armchair and folded his arms.

  “Eventually, yeah. Sometimes, though, it’s not on the first attempt.” She set the bowl down between her and the girl, who squirmed over her own crossed legs and pressed both fists into her lap and grinned at the bowl. “Can you tell her not to do anything until I’m finished?”

  Romeo frowned. “Like what?”

  “Like try to copy me or work her own spells. I’m already not a hundred percent sure how this is gonna go, and the last thing I need is a kid witch too eager and too headstrong for her own good.”

  “Did you really say those words?” He laughed. “Because you know who you actually described, right?”

  Lily stuck her tongue out at him. “I said kid witch. So obviously, I’m not talking about myself.” But yeah. That did sound exactly like me. She shook the thought out of her head and smiled at the girl.

  Romeo translated and Rosalía’s eyes widened before she said something hastily in response. “She wants to know if it’s dangerous.”

  Trying to look serious, Lily bit the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing. “Not what I’m doing, no, even if it doesn’t work. But if she starts tossing around her own unstable spell or doesn’t know how to manage something, then yeah. It could become fairly dangerous.”

  When he relayed all that, Rosalía blinked at her and shrugged before she responded again.

  Fighting back a snort, he gave Lily an exaggeratedly somber expression so he wouldn’t crack up. “She said she’s not afraid of
a little danger.”

  She took a deep breath and nodded. “Well, tell her that if she tries anything before this spell works, whether or not it’s dangerous, I’ll change my mind and won’t be able to teach her anything.”

  He cleared his throat to interpret but Rosalía instantly stopped fidgeting and a thin-lipped, grim determination replaced her smile. She nodded. “Listo.”

  “Ready.” He nodded, still playing the part of the formal, humorless interpreter.

  If I look at him right now, I’m gonna lose it. Instead, she glanced at the bowl of water. “Thank you.” She took a deep breath and prepared to start. She dipped two fingers into the liquid, raised her other hand in a fist, and twisted it like turning a key in a lock before she opened her hand quickly. With her water-dipped fingers, she tapped the center of her forehead. A sharp, cold tingle spread outward along her face and almost instantly disappeared. She moved her fingers immediately to Rosalía’s brow and repeated the motion, and although the girl made no sound, her eyes widened at the sensation.

  The next spell was as close as she could get to the desired effect without any potions of her own, but she gestured again for this one and touched her own lips before lightly tapping Rosalía’s. This time, the girl’s only reaction was to study every tiny motion of her hands, her eyes flickering up to search the older witch’s as she filed everything she saw away in her memory. Because that’s exactly what I used to do.

  Smiling, Lily readied the final spell and clapped her hands. When she pulled them apart again, a thin, transparent pink film stretched between her palms. She raised her arms above her head and drew her hands farther apart. The pink film now glowed and stretched wider before she let her arms fall at her sides. The pink light burst all around them, filled the entire RV, and shimmered and faded.

  “Hey, that looked like that purple-dome thing in Colorado that made us invisible.” Romeo stared at the last of the pastel light before it disappeared.

  “It didn’t make us invisible,” she muttered and looked around the RV for any sign of having missed or part of her spells backfiring. So far, so good, she decided and wiped her fingers off on her leggings to sever the thread that connected everything she’d done. “But yeah, it’s almost the same thing but in reverse.”

  He smirked. “So if an invisible person was standing here right now, we’d see them?”

  She looked at him slowly and pushed her tongue against her cheek, fighting the urge to laugh again. “More like if someone had cast an illusion in here, it would now be broken.”

  “Huh.”

  They both looked at Rosalía, who hadn’t moved an inch and stared unblinkingly at her.

  “Did it work?” he asked.

  “I have no clue. I’ve never woven three spells together for a magical DIY translator before, so I guess we’ll have to see.” After a few awkward seconds of waiting, she was about to have him ask the girl if she’d noticed anything different but Rosalía beat them to it.

  “I thought you only knew a few words in Spanish.”

  Lily barked out a laugh.

  “Okay, that doesn’t make sense.” Romeo frowned. “She said—”

  “Oh, I know what she said.” Lily grinned at him. “It totally worked.”

  “Hey, cool.”

  Turning back to the child, she raised an eyebrow. “And I didn’t know you could speak English at all.”

  The girl glanced at Romeo. “I can’t. Where’s the magic?”

  Chuckling, he started to reply in Spanish and Lily cut him off. “Okay, I probably should’ve included you in this spell too because you’re the only person I can’t understand right now. So cut it out. Please.” He laughed again when she batted her lashes at him and leaned back in the armchair.

  “Oh, wow.” Rosalía glanced from one to the other. “What kind of magic was that?”

  She smiled and focused on the child. “Three spells, actually. The first one drew the focus to our thoughts and kind of…revealed what we’re thinking.”

  “Like we can read each other’s minds?”

  “Uh…no.” She frowned and searched for a way to explain the way stacking spells worked. “That could’ve happened if it was the only spell I cast, but this was only taking certain pieces from each and mixing them into something completely different. It’s a bad idea to start reading each other’s minds. Neither of us wants that.”

  Rosalía laughed. “What were the others?”

  “Well, the second was basically a weak version of a truth potion. But put with the other, it’s actually much better than a truth potion. It’s the same thing with mind-reading, I guess. We’re not thinking or speaking any differently than we normally would. We simply got rid of the language barrier, which was what that last spell did.”

  “Your illusion-busting spell?” Romeo asked.

  “Well, yeah. If you think about it, that’s basically all language is, right? An illusion. Okay, certain words have more power than others, but most of that power comes from the intention behind them. And you don’t become a different person or want different things depending on what language you speak.”

  Rosalía’s mouth dropped open in awe.

  Romeo sank farther into the armchair and puffed out a breath. “That is some deeply philosophical spellwork, Lil.”

  “What?” She laughed and gestured at the bowl of water. “Okay, if my magic’s philosophical, so is cooking ʼcause I basically put ingredients together.”

  He shrugged. “And it turned out delicious.”

  She snorted and rolled her eyes. “Whatever.” Then, she looked at Rosalía. “So. What do you wanna learn first?”

  The girl’s open-mouthed gape morphed into a grin almost bigger than she was. “Everything!”

  Ten

  Lily couldn’t start teaching the girl everything, of course, so they began with the basics. “Show me something you already know.”

  Rosalía’s shoulders slumped. “That’s boring.”

  “Everyone has to start somewhere, even Romeo. I guarantee you he wasn’t born knowing everything he knows now.”

  He straightened a little in the armchair and smirked. “That kinda sounds like an insult, you know.”

  “You know what I meant.”

  “Yeah, but I’m not sure what you two are doing and what I do are really the same thing.”

  “The point is”—she turned back toward Rosalía—“that no matter who you are, what you are, or what you can do, everyone starts at the beginning. Or you wouldn’t have asked me to teach you anything, right?”

  The girl narrowed her eyes. “I guess.”

  “The beginning’s super-important. It sets up what the rest of your magic’s gonna look like, and it’s the safest place to discover what your strengths are.” Finally, the girl nodded. “Okay. So…Romeo told me your family—your village—are farmers. Is that right?”

  “Sort of.” Rosalía wrinkled her nose. “We do some farming, but it’s only for us.”

  “Okay.”

  “My people grow things. I can’t remember what my mom calls it but that’s basically what we do.”

  “Like keeping plants healthy during bad weather or…are you only really good at gardening?”

  The child threw her head back and laughed. “You ask funny questions.”

  “I’m only trying to understand a little better.” She smiled at her pupil’s open sense of humor. “Can you show me?”

  “Um…” She bit her lip and glanced at Romeo. He simply shrugged and gestured to Lily on the floor.

  “It’s okay if it’s something small,” Lily said. “Only to show me what you can already do.”

  “Okay. Something small…” The girl licked her lips and stared at the floor for a second, then leapt to her feet and went into the kitchen. She opened the pantry and scanned the shelves, stood all the way on her tiptoes, and stretched with a grunt to retrieve a bag of piñon nuts. The adults exchanged a glance as she opened the bag, grabbed a small handful, tied the bag closed again
, and returned everything to its rightful place. She tossed a few of them in her mouth as she walked through the RV and munched away like their previous conversation had never happened. Then she sat, crossed her legs again, and glanced at them. “Oh, sorry. Do you want some?”

  “Um…no thanks.”

  Romeo shook his head and smiled.

  Rosalía shrugged, took one piñon nut out of her hand, and dropped the rest of them into her mouth. When she finally stopped chewing, she held the single white seed in her palm and looked at Lily. “Something small.”

  “Okay.”

  Smiling, the girl focused on the seed, covered it with her other hand, and closed her eyes. A small, green glow illuminated between her palms. Lily’s skin prickled with goosebumps and the light grew brighter. Rosalía spread her hands apart a little at a time and a tiny green shoot poked from between her fingers. It grew in seconds into a crooked, curving sapling before three small branches split away and sprouted a handful of soft green pine needles. It stopped but only because Rosalía cut her magic and opened her eyes. She grinned at the sapling piñon tree and removed her top hand from the base of its trunk to reveal the intricate pattern of tiny roots that had wound themselves around her other palm, pushed between her fingers, and clung to the underside of her hand.

  Lily stifled her surprise and cleared her throat. “That’s what you meant by ‘grow things.’”

  “Yes. I could’ve made it bigger, but…” She glanced at the RV’s interior and shrugged.

  “No, I…” Romeo’s eyes rolled back in his head and his nostrils flared. “I think that was…a good…” He sneezed violently, swallowed, and blinked heavy eyelids.

  The girl burst out laughing, but she soon stopped herself when she realized he wasn’t laughing too. “Are you okay?”

  “Oh, yeah.” He raised a finger and turned his head away to lean forward and fight the dizziness. Thankfully, he managed not to sneeze again.

  “Yeah, I felt it too, actually.” Lily gave him a sympathetic smile. “Do you want me to go get—”

  “No, I got it.” He pushed himself out of the armchair, stumbled a little, and swayed to the bedroom to open the drawer of the built-in nightstand on what was now his side of the bed. When he returned, he’d already popped one of the little purple flowers into his mouth and chewed it vigorously. “I only need to give it a minute.” With a sigh, he sagged into the armchair and tossed a little plastic bag onto the center console. Inside was what remained of the blossoms Melissa Bore had given him before they left her house in the werewolf neighborhood in Chihuahua.