by Scott Rhine
Audra looked politely bored until I bragged. “Winning in the languages I knew was too easy, though, so I tried one in Turkish.”
My Aunt sat at attention. “Interesting. How did you do?”
“I still won, but not by as much. The patterns are the same in every language.”
“You’ve learned to trust your intuition. That’s an admirable trait. Your father said something about a stressful volleyball game.”
I related the highlights.
She fixated on my analyzing the weaknesses of the opposition. “I do some of the same things in my business.” She sat next to me and patted my hand when I told her about my serving streak. “This sounds very promising but not worth such a long drive. Was there something unusual about the game?”
I explained about the head-butt that should have won the game, the near riot, and the fire alarm.
Audra’s face was as alert as Dad’s had been when Mom read an IRS letter aloud. “A wash of peace followed by a flash of light you say?” Without asking permission, she grabbed my jade pendant and closed her eyes. “It still has a residue.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t take it with me into the shower.”
“Did your father happen to take any photos of the incident?”
I held up the memory card. “Dad stole this right after he pulled the fire alarm.”
She scooped it up. I followed her into the home theater where we watched the game. The first thing I noticed on the six-foot-high screen was that my hair wasn’t the same gorgeous blonde as hers. Mine was a sort of greasy, dirty dishwater. I also didn’t have breasts yet. She fast-forwarded. I warned her to slow down just before the final play. Then she was able to witness the glare of light at the critical point, the penalty, and the school fire alarm. She rewound and rewatched it, freezing it at the instant the flash went off.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
She hugged me. “Darling, something is incredibly right. This is evidence of a supernatural manifestation. Unlike most men, your father isn’t completely useless.” She held me back to look at me. “Now, this is very important. Have any nice women been visiting your daddy on a regular basis?”
“No. Ew!” I should show her the call history on Mom’s phone to show how much he loved her.
“You keep the amulet with you at all times?”
“Yeah. It lost me the game.”
“No women at all on the premises?”
I thought for a moment. “No. Except for our tenants sometimes. They have a separate entrance to their apartment, and the people change every month.”
“He collects money for people living in your house?”
“Not a dime. They’re usually from the homeless shelter or refugees being settled in this country. Once, the mosque sent us a professor. The FBI was really crawling up our drainpipe that month.”
“The ancient code of hospitality. That has to be it. You own the house, so the blessing for caring for widows, orphans, and strangers falls upon you.”
“Wait. I own the house?”
“All of your mother’s estate, dearest. He’s just a glorified maid.” Aunt Audra placed the necklace back over my neck.
Too many questions. I pointed to the screen. “What kind of manifestation?”
“One caused by your mother’s protective amulet. The Archangel Jehudiel watches over those who serve God and keeps them from harm. You know, the whole ‘lift them up lest they dash their foot against a rock.’ You were such a handful growing up, so fearless. Thank God Althea had ballet training with all the jumping she had to do to catch you. Eventually, she just put her amulet on you and recharged it every time you jumped off the garage roof.”
Overloaded, I plopped down on one of the theater seats. A box of Mike and Ikes spilled onto the floor.
“That’s why I never got hurt? Angels were watching over me?”
“That and some excellent disease resistance you inherited from your father. Did you know he’s immune to HIV? I think it’s the only reason the council approved your mother’s petition to marry him.”
“Who is Jehudiel?”
“The Angel of Mercy. Haven’t you read the Book of Enoch?”
I waved the question away. “So you’re saying I broke my arm last year because Mom wasn’t around to power the amulet up? Are you saying my mother was some kind of witch?” A lot of weird things started to make sense.
“The ignorant have called us that for centuries, but that’s not the question you should be asking. If no other practitioners visited to do it, who reset the amulet?”
I blinked. “I’m a witch?”
She picked me up and spun me around in joy. “Of course, the Craft follows the mother’s bloodline. The council will be so pleased. I’m sure they’ll make a place for you in our private school immediately. We’ll send for your things. You don’t have to go back to that plebeian town.”
4. Entrance Interview
I played with the stupid memory card while I waited for Aunt Audra to return. When she did, she handed me a fruit-flavored mineral water. “I just made the phone call, and the Council is sending the headmistress of Colony Prep. I want you to be on your best behavior when she arrives. Do you have anything a little nicer to wear?”
“Yeah, Dad made me pack my Christmas church dress.”
“Mmph, it’ll have to do. Go get it, and come back here for me to fix your hair and nails.”
I held up a hand. “Whoa. Who says I want to go to your stuck-up old school? I don’t want to lose all my friends and everything I’ve worked for.”
She blinked. “Darling, you must. Apart from the fact that your existing school would probably kick you out for cheating or burn you at the stake, I’m not giving you a choice. I’m your guardian now that you’ve manifested. A mundane man can’t be trusted with such matters. I’ve already dispatched him to bring the rest of your belongings.”
“Wait. You can’t take my dad from me. He’s all I have left.”
Audra crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow. “You seem to be using the word ‘can’t’ a lot. I am a captain of industry, and I know how to get my way.”
“I’m a spoiled brat, and I know how to get mine.” I snapped the memory card in half. The loud noise startled her for an instant, giving me time to get my threat out. “If you kick Dad out of my life, I’ll say you made the whole story up. I’ll curse like a sailor and fail any test they give.”
She paled a little. “If I allow him to stay on the estate?”
“I’ll greet this headmistress in fluent French, curtsy, and knock her socks off. I’ve also been thinking. I might be able to show her how I powered up the amulet.”
Audra snatched the broken memory card from my hands. “Fine, but I won’t feed him.”
“I think he’d prefer it that way.”
“He pays his own electric bill and kicks any freeloaders out of your home in Holy Oak.”
“We need someone to mow the lawn and bring in the mail.” Actually, Abdul Baatin only had one arm and couldn’t mow, but I didn’t want to kick him out on the street. “He can keep the lights on so no one robs the place.”
“We’ll keep the caretaker on a probationary basis, but Mr. Morris needs a real job.”
I winced. Photography had always been viewed as a hobby to Mom’s family. “We’ll work on that.”
She shook my hand to seal the deal. “Now, how did you manage the recharge?”
“I’ll need a rolling chair and Mom’s music from her phone so I can demonstrate.”
“Wait for Mistress Bradstreet. I want her to witness it.”
Now I feel like a dog-and-pony act. “Will the tests hurt?”
“We don’t harm our own kind. Now, fetch your good clothes.”
I lobbed the next question as she reached for the front door. “Did my mother die because I was wearing her protective amulet?”
Audra missed the door handle and snapped a nail on it. “No, dear. Never blame yourself for that. She knew the risks.”
�
�She sacrificed herself for me. How’s that not my fault?”
“She had other, better protections. We’re still not sure why they failed. Our operating theory was that she was pregnant again and didn’t realize it. These things happen near change-of-life.”
I was speechless, so Audra continued. “The time spent carrying a child is the only time a master practitioner is vulnerable. It’s how the Puritans were able to seize our ancestor and put her on trial.”
“Does Dad know?”
“We hid that theory. He was grieving already. Despite what you’ve been told, we’re not monsters.”
The phrase stirred something in me. “He’s never said a bad word about any of you, Aunt Audra, but Mom did hint about the romantic way she met him overseas.”
“Ah, yes. I heard rumors about that mission. They couldn’t mind-wipe him. Althea thought his resistance was due to all the languages he spoke growing up, but he’s always been stubborn. They couldn’t pay him off, either. We were going to commit him to the Colony’s asylum until your mother interceded. That was her, always bringing home strays.” She opened the door and patted my behind. “Hurry up. You never get a second chance to make a good first impression.”
As I stumbled to the cottage, I whispered, “Mission? Mind-wipe? Asylum?” Who are these crazy witches? And what did my parents really do for a living?
****
Audra must have pulled out half my hair raking it in a hurry.
“Ouch.”
“Suck it up, Buttercup. If you had done this yourself, I wouldn’t have to.”
“You sound like my volleyball coach.”
“In French,” she demanded.
I rolled my eyes and translated, adding the greeting I had planned for the headmistress.
She repeated it with a different inflection. “Enchante. You accent is atrocious. Haven’t you been to Paris?”
“I haven’t been out of my hometown except to come here. My accent sucks because Dad’s from Lebanon and my teacher high-school teacher is from Haiti.” Come to think of it, Dad got him that job. So basically, I learned to speak the language from a homeless guy and a lovesick journalist. I might done been better studying with Pepe Lepew. “Maybe I should wait until you ask me a question and just give a witty answer. Do I have to participate in devil worship or anything?”
Audra blew a raspberry. “Our ancestors founded the Colony in the New World to escape the chains of patriarchy. Anne Hutchinson was a minister whose sermons drew more listeners than the Puritans’, so they accused her of witchcraft.”
“Was she?” I asked.
“She taught that a woman’s intuition to hear the Spirit has more power than arbitrary commandments made by men.”
“So, witch: yes, Satan: no,” I summarized.
She was saved from further grilling by a knock on the door.
When the headmistress breezed into the regal parlor, I curtsied. “Mademoiselle Bradstreet. Welcome to our home. May I get you some refreshments?” Those were my father’s manners.
She grunted, handing Audra a gray jacket emblazoned with a navy-blue school crest. She wore a navy skirt, beige shirt, and hair clenched tighter than a fist. She looked down her nose at me through classical librarian glasses. Bradstreet wasn’t ugly, just severe and snooty. “Offspring of the famous Althea. I still hear the teachers talking about her. We’ll see.” She put a heavy black case on the table.
Flustered by someone asking her to do the butler’s job, Audra hung the jacket from the doorknob after she closed it. “She has pattern-predictive talents and possibly some in language. Best of all, she’s a natural at defensive wards.”
“I can demonstrate,” I said.
“Don’t presume, child,” said Bradstreet, taking out a clipboard burdened with a thick sheaf of papers. She forced me to put Mom’s phone into something called “Do Not Disturb” mode, where a crescent moon figure appeared in the top corner. “I have a few questions. Do you ever feel like people are watching you in your own home?”
I snorted. “All the time.”
“Yes or no.”
“Yes.”
She ticked a box. “Have you ever hung in midair longer than normal after a jump or fall?”
“Does a bicycle ramp count?”
“No.”
I shook my head. “Naw.”
“Have you ever been able to predict significant events on the news?”
I shrugged. “We’re not allowed to watch the news. It makes Dad cranky.”
“Did you ever see your mother perform magic?”
“Only once directly. She covered by calling it chair-dancing. That’s how I recharged the amulet, by copying her moves.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Indirectly?”
“She sent me encouraging notes folded up in my lunchbox. After I opened them, the writing would disappear. I always wondered how she managed that trick.”
Giving no information away, Bradstreet bulled through to the next set of questions. They grew increasingly bizarre. “During times of stress, do you see things moving in slow motion?”
“No.”
“Do you have any invisible friends?”
“No.”
She held up a Tarot card. “What do you see?”
“An infinity symbol.”
“What’s the next card in the deck?”
I shrugged.
“Guess,” she demanded.
I was wrong the first five times and then something clicked. “This one is a number,” I predicted.
“Why?”
“Probability. Low number. Odd.”
She flipped over and Ace of Wands before scribbling a note on her pad. The cards drained my concentration. After she put them away, Bradstreet passed me a crystal rod. “What do you feel?”
“Hungry.”
Aunt Audra said, “Answer seriously.”
Bradstreet cleared her throat. “This artifact came from a practitioner who starved to death in the Rockies.”
I saw a yellow flash. “The artifact, does it have something to do with sunlight?”
She scribbled another note.
Next, she tapped a tuning fork that hurt my ears. “Count backwards from one-hundred by sevens.”
My aunt collapsed onto the floor at seventy-nine.
“Ignore her,” ordered the headmistress. “Interesting.”
The old librarian fired questions at me faster than ever. Did I like boys? No. Could I control what people felt or manipulate them? No, but I knew which topics teachers were going to put on tests. Did I play with dead animals? No. Live ones? No.
She laid three plants on the table. “Which of these would you eat?”
“None of them.”
“Take all the time you need.”
“Still no.”
“What might you use them for?”
“I might use that one to make a whistle with my thumbs. It’s a kind of grass. This one to make that jerk Tommy itch if he made fun of my friends. The third… no clue.”
She read off a math problem that I wasn’t allowed to use paper to solve. It took me a couple minutes, but I did it. Over the next two hours, she hit me with logic puzzles and ethical dilemmas. We threw strange dice made of bone. Then, she pricked my finger and ordered me to heal it.
“Hey, I thought we didn’t hurt our own kind.”
“Do you want to hurt me?”
“Noo.” I wouldn’t mind putting that itching weed in your panties, though.
She glared at me.
Maybe I can’t think so loudly around her. I started humming the My Little Pony song.
Flipping the clipboard over, she woke Aunt Audra. “Now, Miss Isa, you may demonstrate.”
“I’m kind of tired and hungry.”
“A Colony Prep girl does not rely on excuses.”
“Yeah, but I was hoping that influence stuff would work on you. No dice.” I pulled out Mom’s phone and scrolled to her favorite song. “I’ll need quiet.”
“Hold on,�
� Bradstreet gave me a pair of gloves. Once I tugged them on, she tucked the crystal rod into a narrow pocket on the back of one.
I pushed play on Peter Gabriel’s “Mercy Street.” Closing my eyes, I copied my mother’s dance moves, shoulders, hand waves, and finger flutters. I must have looked like a freak, but no one was laughing. When the last eerie synthesizer note faded, I opened my eyes. Glowing yellow lines were floating in the air, like 3D string art. The overall pattern resembled a tiara with a few lines connecting to the amulet in the center.
Audra’s jaw hung open.
“How?” I asked.
Bradstreet pointed to the crystal rod. “You activated the rune stylus, and the crown is Jehudiel’s symbol.”
My aunt leaned closer to examine the amulet. “Are you going to check the charge level?”
“No need.” She pointed to the weed I’d been unable to identify. It was withering. “Her spell killed the belladonna because it’s poisonous. Young lady, I’m going to have to ask you not to do active magic again until you’ve been trained. It could have dire consequences.”
I stared at the curling brown weed. “Sure.”
“So she’s in?” asked Audra, excited.
“One last question. Isa, if you could accomplish anything with magic, what would you do?”
Audra mouthed the words “World Peace.”
This isn’t a beauty contest, and that wasn’t realistic. “I’d want to know how my mom really died.”
Bradstreet asked, “What have you been told?”
“Last December eighteenth, we had just sat down to dinner, and Mom got a work call.” I took a deep breath. I wasn’t going to cry in front of this woman. “When police arrived at a scene and the person was too shaken to talk, they brought in Dr. Althea to calm them down and get information. Only that night, the cops hadn’t cleared the scene properly. The criminal had hidden in the house and choked her to death.” My voice squeaked a little. “But she made sure her patient escaped.”
Bradstreet’s perfect veneer cracked for a moment. “That’s mostly what happened. Why do you suspect there’s more to the story?”
“Because we had a closed-casket ceremony. Only Dad got to see her body, and he won’t talk.”
“I only know a few more details.”
