Hex

by Kali Emerson

  “I was just getting ready to go to the grocery store... I didn't know what it was, but I started to feel cold. Then the apartment was filled with ice." He looked down at his hands and laughed again.

  “At first I thought someone came here, for me…maybe the grey haired man. Then, when I looked out of the bathroom, I realized I was standing in the only room it didn't effect…” He paused, looking at me.

  "I was the one who did it.” The floor creaked behind me, Fiona was standing there and heard everything. The floor had completely thawed, though there were still some spots left on the walls, and a few icicles hung from the archway to the kitchen.

  “Did you talk to them?” Her shaken voice hung stale in the air.

  “No.” I kept my focus on Alex. I didn't want to tell her about the interaction I had in my dream anymore. She already knew too much, and obviously didn't agree with how Alex was reacting. I already felt the judgement between us. She wouldn't understand.

  “You can't talk to them. They must have done this to the two of you.” She was lost in thought abruptly.

  “You can't just have magic like that…it's…it's impossible.” She was more taken back by Alex's power, than mine. Of course, the display was much more esoteric.

  “I've never heard of even the most gifted witches…to have power like that.” She lifted her phone out of her pocket and gripped it tightly in her shaking hand. She undeniably knew something we didn't.

  “Obviously it's possible.” My tone sounded more stern than I intended and her concern grew further. I stood up, and reached down for Alex to take my hand. He didn't take it but got up on his own and we moved out of the bathroom doorway to the kitchen. The table and chairs were wet, but I wiped them off to sit down. We needed to figure it out.

  Alex followed me, and Fiona stayed in the hallway. She was typing vigorously. She chose to text rather than calling, for a reason. I'd known her for long enough, and that meant she wanted to keep what she was saying a secret. I had to confront her about it. If Alex and I were involved with whatever she knew we deserved to know.

  “What do you know?”

  “I don't know if I'm supposed to tell you.” She admitted, while finishing up her text. She was being more honest than I thought. Whatever she was hiding from us, came from The Witches Council.

  “You have to tell us, Fiona. This is happening to us too.” I pressed further, but she shook her head.

  “That's exactly why I can't tell you." She grabbed a chair and reluctantly sat down at the table with the two of us. I picked out a cigarette from my purse.

  “I thought you didn't smoke in here.” Her face twisted to disgust.

  “Things change.” I flicked the lighter and inhaled sharply. The smoke billowed to the ceiling and the cool breeze sucked most of it out the window still open earlier from that morning.

  “The only thing I can tell you…is that The Coven of the Witches is bad news. You can't contact them."

  “But, why?" I took another drag.

  “None of them seemed like they wanted to hurt us. Even in my dre-” I thought I caught myself in time.

  “They came to you in your dreams, too?” Her eyebrows burrowed further.

  “That's the first thing you should have told me.” She pulled out her phone and started typing again. All I could do was nervously get up and wipe the counters off waiting for her to say something else.

  “This has already gone too far. I should have just been honest with you from the beginning.” She finished typing her sentence. It was against what her mother had said, but she was going to tell us anyway.

  “I'll have to talk to my mom tonight but, I”m guessing they're going to have to start involving you."

  “What do you mean?”

  “You guys are part of some kind of prophecy, I guess. That's why those people are after you. It's a mess, but don't worry I'll help you figure it out. Just don't talk to them again.”

  “I don't understand you're going to have to give me more than that before I just drop this and go with you. Nothing about them screamed anything that was evil, or bad.”

  “Look! I just can’t tell you right now. My mom knows everything you just told me and we'll work it out. It'll all be fine, you'll know what you need to know eventually. I'm not even supposed to know.”

  “Maybe we should hear them both out.” Alex looked at me and took the cigarette from my hand.

  “What?” Fiona shook her head in shock.

  “She knew about this.” I could see it in her changing expression that she remembered when we were kids, and she had asked her mom about my unique gift, coming back empty handed. She stayed silent, torn between believing her mom fully like she always had, or trying to go with her gut.

  “So then will you hear her out too?”

  “I guess, so.”

  9

  The fear of what was happening didn’t set in right away. It flowed through my veins like a worm with nowhere to go, so it stayed. I watched it bubble out of my skin, and attempt to be freed but nothing could free it. So, I sat there in agony as I watched the fear spread all over, and multiplied to the point where I didn’t know if I was going to be able to exterminate the infestation.

  It was hard, because Alex didn’t feel the same. He was actually quite the opposite. In the few months I had known him, it was the most excited I had ever seen him beside the release of his first comic. Part of me felt like I couldn’t talk to him about it in fear of judgement, because I should be happy about it. I should be happy that we’d come into these amazing powers that made us more magical than we already were. We were extraordinarily gifted witches.

  But instead I kept my mouth shut about how I was feeling. I wanted so badly to be able to make myself open up to him. It had been so easy before, telling him everything that I wanted him to know about my past. We had a rooted connection that apparently came with some stipulations.

  Fiona arranged for her mom to drive out to Boston so she could talk to us privately. I didn’t know much about The Council, but I knew she was breaking the rules. Fiona explained that what was happening was a high clearance, that’s why Maria was involved in it. She was one of the highest ranking witches in Massachusetts, probably the United States. It hadn’t been an accident that they moved to Rockport. Her bloodline was even longer than mine was.They had thousands of years of Latinx spirituality and magic running through them.

  I still wasn’t convinced she was going to tell us everything, but whatever she did tell us would be more than what we already knew. Alex was much more skeptical, but chose to trust me. He was too practical to have jumped into something without hearing both sides.

  I was mid sweep when the door buzzed, so I stopped and quickly swept it up into the dust pan before running over to let them in. I listened for their footsteps walking up the stairs, waiting by the door to open it before they could knock. The door swung open and Maria and Fiona were standing there together. Maria had a large book tucked under her arm. She was shorter than Fiona, and had her dark hair cut just under her chin which was always curled into immaculate spirals. I had never seen her leave the house without a full face of makeup. She was regularly dressed up more than the circumstance would have asked for.

  I added a few chairs to my kitchen table so we could all sit down. There wasn’t really a lot of space for us to fit comfortably in the living room, which is where I preferred to sit.

  I got out five glasses,lining them up on the counter and pouredsome alcohol in each one,emptying the bottle into the last one. It was a good thing I kept an entire cabinet full because I wouldn’t be stopping after that first drink.

  Maria sat down first, thumping her bag onto the table, shaking it and almost spilling the drinks. Fiona took a long sip from hers, and made a face then slammed it down on the table.

  “What is this?”

  “Whiskey.”

  “Plain?”

  “Yes.” I didn’t think there was a better alternative.

  “So I suppo
se we could start with the basics.” Maria pulled out an old book from her bag and scooted her drink away from her.

  “This book has everything we need to know and more about everything big that’s going to happen to the witch community. This book is filled with all of the prophecies ever recorded.”

  “What does that have to do with us?”

  “Well, you are a prophecy yourself.”

  “How can we be a prophecy?”

  She sighed, and flipped the book open to the middle, stopping at a page that had been ripped out and sewn back in again. I thought it was strange, but understood that a book of that age could have gone through anything.

  “You are part of a prophecy called The Amoris Permanens.”

  “Permanent love?” Alex questioned a little bit harder than I would have. He was more skeptical of the information Maria was giving to us. By the way I talked about her, he didn’t have much trust for her.

  “Yes.” Maria slid it to the middle of the table.

  “It tells of two of the most powerful witches in existence, to be born of the same energy meant to come together and change the existence of witches. No one knows exactly what that means, and that’s why it's so difficult to explain... or prepare for.” She tapped her fingers on the book.

  “I know what The Council is planning, but I don’t know what The Coven is planning. So it would be best for us not to find out.”

  “Why?” Alex questioned again, drinking the rest of his drink and setting the glass back down on the table.

  “Because they represent chaos, and we represent order. We can’t let this get out of hand. We don’t know what’s going to happen.”

  It seemed better to side on the er of caution, but by the way Alex was looking at Maria he had something else in mind. He was concentrating on her every movement and breath.

  “No one ever got by, following the rules. I want to know what they have to say.”

  “I understand, but this is bigger than just you.”

  “The prophecy is us. Mara and I. You don’t even know what the ending is.”

  “That’s right but we’ve been waiting for this for thousands of years, we’ve been waiting for this very moment of uncertainty. I’m breaking the rules even telling the two of you. It should have been kept a secret.”

  I turned to Alex and placed my hand on his knee. At least for the time being, we needed to go along with it so we could process what was happening. Maria looked worried for us, like something bad was going to happen. But if we were supposed to be the most powerful witches, it would make it easy for us to choose the way we wanted.

  Alex was completely unfazed. He made it clear in the bathroom that he wasn't upset about the power, and honestly neither was I. It was hard to wrap my head around it at first, but the more I thought about it the more I felt comfortable with the idea. I wanted to learn more. Making things move with just my energy was just about as appealing as sex or drugs to me.

  “What does it mean ‘born of the same energy’?”

  “Soul mates...twin flames actually. Soul mates can be anyone you’ve met in a previous lifetime. Twin flames are a deeper connection because they exist as the same energy, and are much more rare to come by.” She moved the book, pointing her finger to a spot on the page that outlined the intensity of a twin flame relationship, and stated that not everyone could handle such a thing.

  I was right about the feeling that I had for Alex, with absolute certainty the moment I laid eyes on him. It was why we were able to coexist so perfectly together. We had been flying through time and space, surfing through other galaxies and existing in other bodies, while still connected through our same specks of dust. It was why when he touched me, my body was set on fire. It was because we were once one energy, and then were two.

  “It’s very important to remember what I said. You should not talk to them, I know they’ve tried to contact you but it would be very bad for everyone if you did.”

  “We understand.” I shot a look at Alex, because I knew he wanted to. In the best interest of the situation we needed to stay quiet about our intentions at the moment. We had to lie, even to Fiona, about what our intentions were. We had to look out for ourselves and make sure who we trusted were absolutely in our favor.

  As I shut the door behind Maria and Fiona, Alex got up and walked over to the couch lighting a spliff as he went. He was so calm about everything it almost made me angry. I didn’t know why, because I was freaking out and he would be able to keep me level headed. I suppose that the purpose of being twin flames was to balance each other out. I remembered reading something a long time ago on the internet about it but brushed it off as bullshit.

  There were a lot of theories about what could happen after death, and theories to justify strong connections between people. When I read it I didn’t believe it because I hadn’t felt it. I didn’t know then what was to come, or I would have bookmarked the page or tried to read more about it.

  Although, I didn’t know how truthful finding things online would be since anyone could write anything and label it as the truth. The only things I trusted with obtaining information about witchcraft were other witches. I knew that Maria had been telling part of the truth at least, because she wouldn’t have come all this way with her book to tell us a lie.

  Then, I thought about the ripped out pages in my mother's spellbook. The only person that would have been able to tear pages out were her. Which meant it either happened during a psychotic episode or, she did it when she was lucid and was hiding something.

  I picked up the book off the shelf under my TV and opened it to the ripped out pages, and looked at the pages before and after. One was a spell for Astral Projection, and the other was a ritual for summoning a ghost. Nothing in the book was in order of anything, and because there wasn’t any kind of index, I had no idea what could have been torn out and hidden. It would be foolish to think it had something to do with me, because the world didn’t exactly revolve around me. I had to remind myself that a lot because I often got trapped in my mind, forgetting about everyone else around me.

  I closed the book and put it back on the shelf. I was going to try and remember to look at it later after we were done looking through our own box of past life memories. It didn’t seem like it was important, but it could be important for later.

  “I ordered pizza.” He plopped onto the couch and flipped the TV on, patting the cushion next to him.

  “Okay.”

  He turned his head up and looked at the ceiling. His face was smooth with his brown eyes twinkled in the dim light. I watched his lips move slightly with every breath. He was deep in thought.

  I walked over to him and I turned my body to face him directly, his eyes were still fixed upward. Each life lived gave different experiences, and lessons. They all shaped us into who we were by the time we left the earth and went into the next cycle.

  “Tell me what you're thinking.” I demanded, but he would have given it up easily. He was always so easy for me to read, but in that moment I had a hard time pinpointing what exactly was going through his brain.

  He didn't move his eyes but pulled his lips into his teeth. I waited a few seconds, and he still had no response. He was afraid of my reaction, what I would think about what he had to say. I kept my face toward him, so he would know that I was eager for what he had to say.

  “I've always dreamt about having power like this…” He breathed in deep, opening his eyes.

  “Not…this…power. But a power. I never thought it could be…but it is.” He turned his entire body toward me, leaning on his elbow.

  “That's why I kept researching magic after my parents died. I wanted to know more…be more.” He closed his eyes again, thinking back to when he was younger. He hadn’t told me what happened to them, only that it was complicated. I was sad that he hadn’t confided in me, that detail of his life like I had. We both had experienced the trauma of a dead parent, but his was times two. I wished so badly I could have been there f
or him for it.

  “If you want to know what I'm thinking…" He trailed off, lost in his thought again. His eyes were full of heartbreak and I couldn’t do anything about it. I knew how he felt, I knew what the pain felt like and there wasn’t anything I could do to help him.

  "I've never been more excited for something in my life. I mean…could you ever imagine…did you ever imagine being able to harness something like that? I turned your apartment to ice. Solid. Ice.” He laughed at himself. He giggled like a child. His smile fell, but happiness remained on his face.

  “And then there's you." He turned to look at me. The way his eyes bore into mine, I felt weightless. Our eyes had a conversation that could have never been said out loud. It was only something said between two souls of the same, destined to be together.

  “You are gifted. I mean…I knew that already.” He touched my cheek sending energy through me. His fingers vibrated against my skin, the frequencies between us were getting stronger.

  “But, this thing we've been given is different. Your power is so attractive.” He leaned forward and kissed my cheek, then my lips. I kissed back, but pulled away quickly. As soon as I did, I craved his lips on mine again. It was an alluring urge. But I resisted.

  “We have to find out who these people are, and how to contact them then.”

  He didn’t expect me to pull away. I never turned away an opportunity to kiss him. But, we needed to figure everything out.

  “Just kiss me right now.” He begged, and pulled gently at the collar of my shirt.

  “No.” I got up, against the pressure of my entire body. He reached his arm out to stop me but I walked away just before he could grab my sweater. I walked over to his pants on the floor in the bedroom and pulled out the blank card. I flipped it over in my hand a few times. How would we be able to figure it out? There was nothing embossed on it, and there were no words hidden when I lifted it to the light. The only thing we hadn't tried was using our magic on it.

  That was it. I laid my hand out flat and let the card rest on my palm and concentrated. I blindly shuffled back into the living room where Alex still was, eyes still on the card.