by E J Elwin
Harriet handed me a stack of magazines and I chose one at random to sift through, an old issue of Entertainment Weekly. I wondered what I should wear. I had never actually been to a bar, despite having been drinking regularly since starting high school. The planned weekend in Portland with Connor would have been the first time.
Many of the pictures of men that I came across in the magazine featured them wearing suits, and I felt that was excessive for this little bar called The Purple Haze. I was about to toss the magazine aside and pick up a different one when I saw it.
It was a two-page spread about classic movies from the 1950s, and on one page, there was an image of a poster for Rebel Without a Cause, featuring James Dean in his iconic cherry-red jacket paired with blue jeans, wearing that famously angsty yet handsome expression. I remembered Connor’s excited face as we sat next to Harriet’s cauldron, his astonishment as he looked at himself in the mirror after he had transformed into a James Dean lookalike…
I tore the page carefully out of the magazine and handed it to Harriet. “This one,” I said.
She looked down at it and smiled. “Very good choice,” she said, and I remembered it was exactly what she had said to Connor after he had chosen James Dean. She started to detach only the portion of the page that bore Dean’s clothes, when I remembered something.
“Should we maybe do my face too?” I asked.
“You want to go out in town looking like James Dean?”
“Well no, but shouldn’t we disguise my face in some way?” I asked. “I’m kind of a fugitive, with Sheriff Murphy looking for me and all. And I also stole a car, and ran from the cops… And I’m pretty sure making Molotov cocktails is illegal too…”
She laughed and it was nice to see her look more like her usual self. “I think you’ll be fine for tonight,” she said. “There aren’t wanted posters of you up just yet, and I have a long-term plan for getting Sheriff Murphy off your back, at least.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“It’s a surprise,” she said, with a sly grin. “You’ll see soon enough.” She started to tear James Dean’s clothes from the page but then paused. “How about the hair? We can give you his hairstyle.”
I looked at Dean’s hair which was combed into that classic greaser style from the fifties.
“Okay,” I said. “Just the style, though. I’ll keep my own color.”
She smiled as she finished tearing out the outfit and then the hair, putting the small bit of paper with Dean’s face on it aside. She folded the two slips of paper over and over until they were as small as they could get and then turned to the cauldron.
“Do you want to do it?” she asked. “You’re a witch, you have the ability. It’s really easy.”
I looked down at the bits of paper and then at the dancing blue flames in the cauldron. “You’d better do it,” I said. “We don’t want to mess it up tonight.”
She nodded and closed her eyes, took a breath, then tossed the pieces of paper into the cauldron. The pulling sensation on my head was familiar as my hair grew and shaped itself into a different style, but the one on my body was entirely new. I had never been to a tailor, but my mom had made Halloween costumes for me when I was little. She had walked around me, a sewing needle held in her teeth, pinning different lengths of fabric to my body, folding and tugging at them until the costume fit just right. That was how this now felt, except there was no one doing the pinning and folding.
Jasper’s clothes morphed and changed colors before my eyes, shrinking in most parts but then growing in others, with entirely new fabric sprouting out of nowhere. Bright red burst across my chest and down my arms as James Dean’s famous Rebel Red jacket came into being. The motorcycle and Harley Davidson logo on Jasper’s t-shirt vanished to be replaced by pure white fabric. The loose-fitting sweatpants grew closer to my body and then changed into richly colored blue jeans. I felt myself rise slightly off the ground, and looked down to find shining black leather boots on my feet. After a few seconds, everything was still and I looked up to see Harriet watching me with appreciation.
“Fantastic,” she said, examining the red jacket.
“The boots weren’t even in the picture,” I said, looking down at them in wonderment.
“Well, that’s what he wore,” she said, smiling.
“Thank you,” I said. “It looks great.”
She pulled me into a hug. “Have fun and be safe. The Brotherhood is out looking for you. I have no doubt that together, you and your sisters will be able to defend yourselves against them if they attack, but be careful anyway. There may be fireworks when the four of you meet…”
“You’re not coming with us?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “It’s most likely that these girls don’t know they’re witches yet, and I think the fewer people that are there to meet them for the first time, the better. We don’t want to overwhelm them. It’ll give you and Jessica a chance to bond. I’ll also be keeping the flames going for your clothes. You can all come back here later and read the prophecy together.”
We left the cauldron with its blue flames burning, and walked back into the living room just as Jessica came down the winding staircase. “Well, hot damn!” she said when she saw me. “You look absolutely fabulous, sweetie.”
“Thank you,” I said, with a smile. “You look great too.”
She wore a black leather jacket, a pair of short bright white shorts, and black stiletto heels. Her wavy blonde hair was up in a bun, with some loose strands hanging here and there. She had put on bold black eyeliner, which made her eyes look even more vividly bright green, and on her lips she wore cherry-red lipstick that was the same color as my James Dean jacket. Sparkling silver earrings dangled from her ears and a thin silver necklace chain shimmered over the black top she wore beneath her jacket. Both her long legs and the leather jacket had a slight shine to them, like she had dusted herself with glitter. The whole effect was extremely striking, and she exuded a sort of effortless glamour.
“I have this for you,” she said, holding out a thin silver necklace like the one she wore.
I took it and saw that a small bright red crystal hung from it, almost the same shade as the Blood Crystal from the resurrection spell.
“Cloaking Crystal,” she said. “I have some for the girls too.” She held up three more silver chains, each with crystals hanging from them, one purple, one blue, and one black. I looked closer at her own chain and saw the bright green crystal that hung from it, which matched her eyes. I put the necklace on and tucked the small red crystal into my white t-shirt.
Jasper stepped forward and patted me on the shoulder with his heavy hand. “Good luck.”
“You’re not coming either?” I asked.
“I’m not one for crowds.” His hand lingered on my shoulder and he closed his eyes for a moment. “Beware of vicious men,” he said.
“You mean the Brotherhood?” I asked.
“Not just them,” he said grimly. “You’ll see what I mean. Watch out for each other.” I nodded uneasily as his stare became a little distant and I half-expected for his eyes to turn into those infinite black holes they had been when I first saw them.
“Gee, Jasper, could you possibly make that just a little more cryptic?” said Jessica, but she stepped forward and hugged her brother all the same before turning to me.
“We’re off to meet your sister witches!”
CHAPTER 12
The Purple Haze
Jessica and I walked out into the lush green forest in front of the house, then turned left into the thicket of trees, away from the rumbling of the ocean waves. I wondered how so many tall thick trees had managed to grow so close to the front door, or else who had decided to build a house in such a spot. The trees looked old and firmly set into the ground, and yet they were perfectly spaced to allow a comfortable passage between them.
We came through a gap in the trees and arrived at the car garage. It was a large wooden shed separate from the house b
ut painted the same pale violet color with white and gray accents. Jessica waved her right hand over the wide white door, and it suddenly jolted to life and began to rise as if she had used a regular old garage door remote. She smiled at my expression.
“Pre-set spells, remember?”
The door rose to reveal three shining vehicles parked alongside each other. There was a large black Range Rover, a sleek silver Mercedes Benz, and a gleaming black and blue Harley Davidson motorcycle that had to belong, without a doubt, to Jasper.
“We’ll be taking the Benz,” said Jessica.
**
We pulled out onto the driveway and the garage door shut itself behind us. The Benz wound smoothly and silently through the trees and across the vast front lawn, where I could glimpse the ocean to the right under the light of a soft crescent moon, and the city of Seaside just visible in the other direction. We made a wide curve down the sloping lawn and came to a tall wrought iron fence with an ornately designed gate. It looked like it was made up of intertwined curling vines, with finely detailed leaf and rose carvings. Jessica waved her right hand again and the gate swung open.
I had been to Seaside maybe twice in my life before now. I knew that it was a beach resort city and that many of its residents lived very comfortably, but I was still astounded at just how big Jessica and Jasper’s property was. It wasn’t just a house, it was an estate.
“Have you always lived here?” I asked.
“Yup,” she said. “My whole life. It was my mom’s house.”
She pulled forward and the gate creaked shut behind us.
“What about your dad?”
“He was a jeweler,” she said, “which makes it sound like he was rich, but he wasn’t really. My mom paid for this house. She became a very successful film actress when she was only eighteen.”
“Really?” I asked, as we drove onto the dark road. “Would I have seen any of her work?”
“Probably,” she said. “Voices We Hear, The Thrall, The Impossible Riddle…”
I jumped because I had seen those movies. They were thrillers from the sixties that all starred a beautiful blonde actress who, I now realized, did look a lot like Jessica…
“Lana Appleby?” I asked, amazed. “Your mom was Lana Appleby?”
“So you’ve seen them,” Jessica said with a smile.
I had watched The Impossible Riddle with Connor only a year ago, during one of the nights when our local movie theater screened old movies. It had been one of the rare occasions when we told our parents we were going to the movie theater and then actually saw a movie. I had been watching the mother of two real-life witches on screen without knowing it, and without any idea that a year later, I would be teleporting into their house in a cloud of ash.
“She was a witch too, right?” I asked.
“Yup,” said Jessica. “She was always very careful about keeping the secret, what with being in the public eye and all. She told me how dangerous it would be if the world found out about us, that there were people out there like the Brotherhood who would kill her and me and Jasper— Beatrice, at the time— without a second thought. She used to tell me that she worked hard so that Jasper and I wouldn’t have to, so we wouldn’t have to go out into the world and work in jobs surrounded by bad people and possible witch hunters. I thought, as I entered my teens, that she was maybe a little paranoid… and then she was killed.”
I stared at her in shock. “I’m so sorry.”
“It wasn’t witch hunters,” she said. “It was a stalker, one of her deranged fans. She was away filming a movie in Paris. The guy ran her off the road.”
I felt sick in my stomach and remembered waking up with blood in my eye, upside down in the middle of the highway, and then turning to see what looked like Connor sleeping…
“She had a point,” said Jessica. “Her worries about the big bad world didn’t seem so paranoid in the end. I try to keep a hopeful view of people, but… she had a point. Jasper took it much harder than I did. He closed himself off to a lot of the world after that.”
I looked out the window at the dark outlines of trees shooting past. Like me, Jessica and Jasper’s lives had been profoundly impacted by a car wreck. It was terrifying and sad that a person could end so abruptly, that no matter how good they were or how much they were loved, their lives could be extinguished in the blink of an eye.
“She would have been so excited to meet you,” said Jessica in a much brighter tone.
I remembered Harriet saying almost the exact same thing about her mom only a few hours ago. Then something occurred to me.
“So, since I’m a witch,” I said, “does that mean my mom is a witch too?”
“Usually, it would,” said Jessica, “but your case is different. Magical blood is usually passed from mother to daughter, but one of the peculiarities of the Sacred Four is that you aren’t immediately descendant from witches. The magic in your blood leapt across generations to reach you. There have never been any other witches like that, and it’s part of what makes you so powerful. There’s a lot more magic in your blood than there would be if you were an ordinary witch born from another witch.”
Her voice had that reverent tone that Harriet’s had when she talked about the Sacred Four. I started to feel overwhelmed. That I couldn’t even remember turning to ash and appearing in Jessica’s living room, my only show of Sacred Four magic so far, made me very nervous.
“Just wait ‘til we get the four of you together!” said Jessica excitedly.
As she said it, we emerged into a brighter, less residential area of town and I could see tall buildings and the twinkling lights of a busy downtown area in the distance.
**
Seaside was alive with Friday night activity. It was a stylish city with an artistic, bohemian feel. We drove past chic little coffee shops, vintage clothing and antique stores, winery tasting rooms and art galleries, independent bookstores and surf supply shops. There were stores with names like Bath Salt Heaven, Seaside Candyman (“Best saltwater taffy in town!” read a sign on the window), and Sharky’s (“Home to the Great White Shark mechanical bull ride!”).
The smell of freshly grilled fish wafted out onto the street from a busy seafood restaurant where people were enjoying their dinner on the patio. Laughter and loud music poured out of a place called Billy’s Beer and Burger Haus, and it reminded me of McFadden’s Irish Pub, the one in Portland and the one in the Halfway Place. I wondered what Connor was doing there now all by himself…
“We’re just about there,” said Jessica.
She turned a corner and I recognized the flickering yellow streetlights, the cars whizzing past the building with the glowing neon sign. It was exactly as I had seen it in the crystal ball, the place where one or two or all three of my sister witches currently were: The Purple Haze.
Jessica parked the Benz in the small lot next to the building and moments later, we stood in front of the windowless building beneath the glowing purple sign.
“After you!” she said eagerly.
I pulled the door open and we walked inside. The first thing I saw was myself— both Jessica and I were reflected in a long mirror that hung on the wall behind the bar. There were about eight people sitting there, all of them men, and every one of them looked up as we entered. As one, they did a double-take when they saw Jessica, then proceeded to stare shamelessly at her, eight pairs of narrowed eyes looking her hungrily up and down. She seemed completely unfazed as she looked around.
The place was lit by metal lamps that hung from the ceiling and emitted a dim golden light. There were two pool tables to the left of the bar and a large retro-style jukebox in the corner similar to the one at McFadden’s, its metal frame outlined with thin LED lights that blinked faintly purple. The familiar opening strains of Phil Collins’s “In the Air Tonight” issued from the speakers. There were two men at each pool table, pool sticks in one hand and pints of beer in the other. The sound of pool balls smacking into one another, like cracking eggs
, accompanied Phil Collins’s voice like a backup chorus.
On the opposite side of the room, there were four booths upholstered in bright red vinyl set back to back along the wall. An old man sat in the one in the corner, hunched over his beer.
I noticed that no one in the bar appeared to be younger than their forties and also that they were all men. There was not a single woman in sight apart from Jessica, and certainly not any teenage girls. I guessed it was a place that probably just didn’t appeal to many women. The men all shared the same air of tiredness and gloom. The eight sitting at the bar stared off into space with sullen, vacant expressions. It all begged the question: where were my sister witches if they weren’t here?
“I don’t see any girls,” I said.
Jessica frowned as she looked around the room. “She, or they, will be here soon,” she said. “The crystal ball is never wrong.”
“Maybe they’re in the bathroom?” I suggested.
“Let’s get some drinks,” she said.
We walked to the bar, where the bartender immediately put down the glass he was wiping and stepped up to help us. He was middle-aged, with a round belly and a shiny bald head. He wore an all-white outfit that looked like a chef’s, with white pants, white shirt, white apron, and even white shoes.
“How can I help you?”
“Gin and tonic, please,” said Jessica. “And…” She turned to me and so did the bartender.
“Whiskey, please,” I said. He gave me a suspicious look, and I was sure Jessica would have to use the Persuasion Powder she had in her purse, but he just nodded and turned to make the drinks.
I glanced at our murky reflections in the wide mirror. Christmas lights were strung up at the top of it even though it was April, the tiny colorful bulbs duplicated in the reflection. A man with wispy white hair reflected in the mirror stared bleary-eyed into the depths of his cocktail, which was made of a liquid so dark that it was nearly black.
The bartender returned with our drinks and placed them on the counter in front of us. I reflexively reached for my pocket but then remembered that all my money was now ash. Jessica asked the bartender to open a tab and then turned to me.
