Spell Maven From Spell Haven

by Megan Marple

  I rushed over to her, not caring that I turned my back to the intruder, and not having time to inspect anything but Fi’s breathing. I ran my fingers up along her neck to make sure she was okay before looking back over my shoulder at the woman.

  She stood there regarding me with layers of different emotions peeling away in her eyes. She wrung her hands tightly and slowly extended her arms out in front of her, the skin across them not having aged a bit since I last saw her. I mean sure, there were a few more crinkles around her face helping to support the large bright glasses that made her amber-colored eyes seem even larger. But she was still ageless, timeless, really. A slow, hopeful smile spread across her face as she reached up to gingerly pat her pale blue bouffant, and I caught sight of the many rings on her long, spindly fingers. I used to obsess over them when I was little, pretending to dress up as a fairy princess. Of course, the real fairy princesses were rather bratty, even back then. . . .

  “Gwennie?”

  Her familiar voice brought me back to the present. It’s funny how easily all the things you’ve worked so hard on for so long can come crashing down around you in a million sharp pieces when you least expect it.

  I swallowed hard. “Oh, crap.”

  2

  Neither one of us made a move—both of us were waiting for the other to say something. It was hard not to reach out for her, especially after all these years of being apart. The last time I’d seen my Aunt Bedelia, tears were streaming down her cheeks as she begged me not to leave. That was almost fifteen years ago.

  Her hand fluttered up to her throat as she took a tentative step forward, her eyes darting between me and Fiona-Leigh’s crumpled form on the couch. “Is she going to be okay?”

  I nodded, unsure of whether or not I had it in me to speak just yet.

  We stood there staring at each other until Aunt Bedelia let out a frustrated noise and closed the gap between us, throwing her arms around me and squeezing me tight. “None of this, now!” There was a sniffle. “Oh dear, I’ve missed you more than I could ever say.” And when she pulled back, her eyes were brimming with more tears, not unlike the last time. “Look at you—you’re just as beautiful as ever.”

  Despite being thrown for a complete and total loop, I leaned into the hug. I took in the familiar scent of Aunt Bedelia—evening primrose and the tartness of magic—and inhaled deeply. “I’ve missed you too, Aunt Bee.” A million questions rose up in my mind as I let go of her.

  “Well, now. Let me get a good look at you!” She adjusted the large glasses perched on the bridge of her beaky nose, narrowing her eyes at me as she stood back a little. “You look so much like Maureen when she was your age . . . Except the hair, of course.” Her gaze drifted to Fiona-Leigh behind me, the corner of her sad smile quirking up. “But the apple really didn’t fall far from the tree. What did you do to your hair, by the way? It looks so . . .”

  A soft groan interrupted her. “M-Mama?”

  I spun around and knelt in front of Fiona-Leigh, grabbing her hands in mine as she stirred on the sofa. “Yes, sweetheart. I’m right here.”

  Jax hopped up on the sofa next to her, anxiously licking her face all over, his tail wagging like crazy.

  “Jaaax,” she whined, but she was smiling as she finally pushed him off her chest and slowly sat up. “I think I fell asleep reading or something. I had the weirdest dream . . .” Her voice trailed off as Aunt Bedelia stepped forward. “Whoa.”

  My lip was sore from biting it so hard. “Sweetheart, I want you to meet my uh, aunt. Bedelia Brady. Aunt Bedelia, I mean,” I gestured to her as I stood up, gauging Fiona-Leigh’s reaction.

  Her dark blue eyes swept over Aunt Bedelia, studying her. “I don’t understand. How? I thought you didn’t really have a family.”

  I winced as Aunt Bedelia clucked her tongue.

  “Darling I do get why you took her here, but did you have to tell her such a thing? No family . . . How miserable!” Aunt Bedelia took no time in settling onto the sofa next to her, an anxious smile overtaking the rest of her features as she leaned forward. “You can call me Aunt Bee, darling. Your mother had the hardest time trying to pronounce my name when she was little. Remember that, Gwennie? How you used to stutter?”

  I shook my head as I tried to process the past few minutes, taking multiple steps back until the backs of my knees hit the grate around the fireplace. “This is completely insane,” I muttered.

  “So. You’re my mom’s aunt?” Fiona-Leigh said, trying on the words for size.

  Aunt Bedelia nodded. “Her father was my youngest brother. I also have another brother—Gardner. I’m the eldest of the three of us.”

  I sucked in a quick breath. “I don’t suppose you’d care to tell me why you’re here?” It was almost impossible to keep the rising panic out of my voice.

  Aunt Bedelia leveled a look at me before turning back to Fiona-Leigh. “You are such a gorgeous young lady! Fourteen, correct?”

  Fiona-Leigh licked her lips, nodding. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Oh, and such perfect manners!”

  Oisín picked that time to stroll into the middle of the room, taking an easy leap up on to the coffee table in front of the pair of them.

  “Well, well, well,” Aunt Bedelia chuckled. “Still alive and kicking?”

  The great black cat sat back, his fluffy tail swishing from side to side as he opened his mouth full of razor-sharp teeth and smiled. “One could ask you the same.”

  Fiona-Leigh did a sort of twitching convulsion before she whipped her head toward me, her jaw practically scraping the floor. “Did he? Did he . . . just talk?” she shrieked, her eyes wide. “My cat can talk?”

  “Oh dear,” Aunt Bedelia sighed. “It seems she’s kept everything from you, indeed.”

  I could already sense the tone in the room changing. “Now is not the time, Osh.”

  He chuckled, shaking his head at me. “Looks like the cat’s out of the bag now. And if you think for a moment I’m going back to playing the dumb house pet again, you’ve lost your dragon eggs.”

  I groaned, slumping into the armchair and staring up at the ceiling. “This cannot be happening.”

  “Oh, I’m just getting started,” Oisín chuckled again. “Now I can live my life as I was meant to—not cooped up as some animal.”

  “You are an animal, Oisín,” Aunt Bedelia replied in a bored tone. “You were, even when you weren’t.”

  “You’ve always been jealous of my ambitions,” Oisín hissed back at her. “That’s why you wouldn’t keep charge of me.”

  I watched as she just waved him off, rolling her eyes. “Please. I didn’t keep charge of you because you’d conduct meetings with your other horrid friends in the dead of night, always trying to terrorize some forlorn village somewhere . . .”

  Oisín hopped down from the coffee table, his paws padding softly on the rug as he paced back and forth. “You mean esteemed colleagues. And our aims were much higher than some pathetic old village. I could have had the life I’d always dreamed of!”

  “Oh, what? Being served dead fish in a diamond-studded bowl while barely-clad pixies cleaned up your hairballs for you?” Aunt Bedelia retorted. “What a life!”

  This was obviously going nowhere fast. “Stop it, now,” I replied, looking between my aunt who was sulking on the sofa, and my cat who was licking at his paw innocently.

  Fiona-Leigh blinked. “Wait.” She sat forward slowly. “Why do I get the feeling like you knew all of this was happening? Our cat can talk. He may or may not be some sort of pirate in another life, and I’m pretty sure your aunt just dropped in from the sky or something! Mom. Mama!”

  “Please, Fi, just give me a minute,” I said softly, pinching the bridge of my nose between my forefinger and thumb.

  “Me a pirate? Pfft,” Oisín mumbled to himself from somewhere around my feet.

  Aunt Bedelia cleared her throat. “I did come here with some news, Gwendolyn.”

  Of course she did. And I’m willi
ng to bet it isn’t anything good. “The last time there was news, you dumped Oisín on my doorstep and told me my father was dead. I told you, I can’t have any more surprises like that. We live here, now.” I pointed to the ground as if to stake my hold on our house.

  “Mama, just let her tell—”

  I held up my hand, stopping her. “Fi, I love you, but please hush up.” I turned my attention back to my aunt, pulling myself up to a stand again, my legs wobbly from the shock. “Whatever it is, I don’t need to know. When I came here, this was what I told you. That I didn’t want to know because I would never be able to fully integrate here with Fiona-Leigh if you kept telling me about home.”

  “Home?” Fiona-Leigh whispered.

  Aunt Bedelia’s amber eyes narrowed at me from behind her glasses. “Yes. Home. And yes, dear, I remember that night like it was yesterday. Unfortunately.” She rose all at once, her colorful long skirt smoothing out as she did. “But the situation in Spell Haven has changed. There’s been some . . . activity in the Dark Market that I think you should know about.”

  My chest tightened. I stared at her, my mind whirring along slowly as if stuck in molasses. I wanted to know but I didn’t want to know. Deep down, all I wanted was to hear from home. Every time I read Fiona-Leigh fairytales when she was little, or whenever she begged me to watch Hocus Pocus during Halloween, the words lassoed a rope around my heart and yanked.

  Spells. Magic. Witch.

  The fairytales I’d told my daughter ever since she was little—they’re mainly true. I would know, because I’m one of the so-called mythical creatures you’d only find in those stories. Maybe without the striped tights and green warts, though.

  My resolve was crumbling under the weight of my aunt’s stare. I knew that she was probably able to see my thoughts, especially if I wasn’t guarding them from her. She was a Siren, and mind-mapping was her particular talent.

  “You can’t just drop into my life—our lives, like this Aunt Bedelia.”

  “I wouldn’t have if it weren’t extremely important. You know that.”

  I sighed, watching Fiona-Leigh take in the situation before her. She reached out to pet Oisín’s silky fur automatically, stalling when she looked down at him, unsure. “Am I okay to pet you, or are you too busy with world domination?”

  Oisín snuggled up into her palm anyway. “I’m not going to be taking over the realm any time soon, so don’t worry, kid. I’ve always liked you, at least.”

  My favorite of her smiles broke across her face as she settled into the sofa with him in her lap.

  “Except for those stupid bow-ties you force me to wear during our holiday pictures. Those can burn in the fiery depths of hell.”

  3

  I was glad to have the space I needed for at least a little bit while Aunt Bedelia went to lie down in our tiny spare bedroom, apparently exhausted after such a taxing day. That's nothing compared to the kind of day I was having, of course, but it gave me a chance to get away from the chaos and regroup. It was all I could do to keep myself from hyperventilating.

  Oisín's and Fiona-Leigh's voices drifted upstairs, followed by her peals of laughter. Well, at least the two of them are getting along.

  I quietly shut my bedroom door, letting my shoulders slump. As much as I wanted to plug my fingers in my ears and pretend none of this had happened, it was time to face the facts.

  The box in the back of my closet hadn't been pulled out in so long that it had easily collected a decade's worth of dust along the dark varnished lid. The emblem still stood out on top of it, though—an iron-forged handshake with stars circled all the way around it. The emblem of the Shadow Hands.

  The feel of my feet as they pounded the ground, my heart racing as I slipped through the trees in pursuit of the next clue.

  I sighed as I sat back on my knees, heaving it from under the pile of old shoe boxes full of photos and a couple of baby books of Fiona-Leigh's. Placing it in front of me, I looked over my shoulder before facing my fear and opening it one clasp at a time.

  For such a heavy box, there was hardly anything left inside. I'd used up most of the non-magical items inside of it as my way of starting a new life in Georgia. The museums and pawn shops alike were hungry for more of them, but I’d cut myself off from the world I knew and there was no going back. The Human Realm, as we liked to call it in Spell Haven, was a complicated place where we couldn’t use most of our magic, so I had to do what anyone else here would. I had to have money in my pocket and somewhere to raise my child.

  A carved and varnished wooden rose gleamed at the end of a stick that barely went the length of my forearm, catching my attention before I lifted it up, feeling the wand’s familiar weight in my hand.

  Magic has always coursed in my veins, it’s just natural for a witch—always one chromosome away from being full-on human. But I remembered the first time I picked up the wand, looking up at my father with a big grin on my face. It had been my mother’s wand, and at ten years old, I was finally allowed to practice honing my power with a real magical tool.

  It was easier for people like my Aunt Bedelia. Sirens never had to focus their powers into a magical tool or amplifier like a wand. Their power came from their mind, and they were always among the most magically inclined in Spell Haven.

  Which was why, when I decided to challenge myself to study harder and push to become a Shadow Hand, my Uncle Gardner had put me through my paces. I didn’t want to feel like I was less than, so I became more than. I got the best grades and was the first to finish each trial during training. I learned to fight hand-to-hand and not just with my magic. And I was the first one in line that day at the Inner Sanctum to sign up for the final trial, ready to walk out of it no longer a Shadowling, but a real Shadow Hand.

  Handling the wand and its slight pulsing under my fingers took getting used to after being away from it for so long. For a witch like me, living without magic is sort of like having to go from teleporting wherever you want to in space, to relying on horse and buggy—frustrating as crap. It’s not that I can't do magic at all, but my powers are severally hampered by my environment.

  Back when I was studying at the Danann House of Magical Mastery, Spell Haven’s version of a middle and high school all rolled into one, we learned that there was some sort of interference from something called electromagnetic waves, and they made the energy and technology possible in the Human Realm that couldn't work nearly as well in the Other Realm, and vice versa with the energy found mostly in the Other Realm to produce our magic. It was something I'd found incredibly interesting when I was studying to become a Shadow Hand, so it was only fitting that I found myself stuck without my magic.

  But leaving Spell Haven behind to live in the Human Realm was my choice alone, so I could hardly whine about it.

  There were other bits and pieces of my former witchy life in the box, but the footsteps that were quickly thumping up the steps made me pause, and I tucked the wand back into its spot and pushed the box back into the closet.

  I waited until I was sure Fiona-Leigh was in her room before I knocked on her door.

  “Come in.”

  The door creaked under my hand as I pushed it open, unsure of pretty much everything at this point. “Hey.” I was hardly inside the room before I noticed the way she was pacing, already bouncing on the balls of her feet.

  I took in Fiona-Leigh’s small bedroom, the buttercup-yellow walls she’d begged me to paint when she was four years old, and the cute white wicker furniture that went so well with her old white crib. Even the bedspread was made of pastel flowers with little colorful birds printed all over it. So naturally it all clashed horribly with the posters Fi had stuck up on the walls recently—some of her favorite bands, lineups of animals with vegan-friendly slogans plastered on them, and a couple of infographics on feminism in the twenty-first century that she’d made herself. Redoing her room is a constant argument in the Brady household.

  Sighing, I took a seat on the edge of her bed
. “So. I guess we have a lot to talk about.”

  There was an almost manic look in her bright eyes that left me anxious. “Do we ever. I can’t believe all this stuff is real! It’s like waking up and finding out all the coolest books were true the whole time.”

  “You probably have a lot of questions . . .” I began.

  She tossed a small hacky-sack up into the air, catching it without even looking. “A ton. Like, I might have to sit down and write them all out before I can even begin to go over them. But this is seriously the coolest thing ever, Mom. I just wish you would’ve told me before! I mean I kinda want to be super mad at you right now, but I’m just so excited that I don’t even care,” she laughed, shrugging. “I guess the first thing is the most obvious.”

  “And that is . . . ?”

  “Oisín, of course. He’s been around forever, and I’m only just now finding out he can talk? Is he like some kind of magical cat?” Her hunger to know more about my world scared the bejeezus out of me.

  “Maybe you should let him tell you about it. I’m sure he’s dying to, anyhow.”

  She just laughed, drawing her knees up to her chin as she sat down next to me. “Yeah, probably. Maybe just the Cliff Notes, then? It’s going to bug me like crazy until I know.”

  I settled my back against the wall. “He’s your uncle. Or, your great-uncle to something like the sixteenth degree. Oisín’s been around the block. And he wasn’t your average witch to begin with. He was what we refer to as a cait sidhe—a shape-shifting witch with the ability to turn into a cat.”

  “Wait, wait, wait. You mean like a werecat?” she said, raising a brow.

  I snorted. “I wouldn’t call him that, if I were you. But then again . . . maybe you could get away with it. He adores you of course, and it would do him well to get knocked down a few pegs from time to time.” I winked at her and shook my head. “His main goal in life was to pretty much do whatever the heck he wanted. Which often included ruling over different dominions. I think at one point, he was a dear friend of Napoleon’s. Oisín is a pretty complicated being for the most part.”