by E J Elwin
“BAH!” shouted Jasper suddenly in his deep voice, sounding like a dog barking.
Lizzie screamed and then vanished completely from our sight. The place where she sat on the poofy couch bore her outline but she was otherwise totally invisible. After a few seconds, she reappeared like a light flicking on, her eyes still wide with fright.
“See, you do know how to work them,” said Jasper, with a wide smile.
“Thank you, Jasper,” said Jessica, with a very sibling-ish eye-roll at her brother. “I’m so sorry, sweetie,” she said gently to Lizzie.
Lizzie examined her hands as if checking to see that everything had reappeared alright.
“My brother does have a point, though,” said Jessica. “These powers are like second nature to you. I remember getting control of mine very quickly even as a small child. It’s instinct. And just like Ursula says, what a witch hunter cannot find, he cannot slaughter.”
Lizzie looked mildly comforted by this, then reached for her glass of champagne again.
I still saw a lot of problems in the idea of luring the Brotherhood to us somewhere in the woods in the middle of the night. It was true that we had incredible powers, and mine was a particularly offensive one, but machine guns were still not something to sneer at. I imagined the ten members of the Brotherhood creeping through the woods toward us as we chanted around a cauldron. What would stop them from getting off at least one good shot at somebody’s head? What would stop the Patriarch from firing his bazooka like he had before? I couldn’t stand the idea of one of the girls, or Harriet, Jessica, or Jasper, dying the same way Connor had.
“Instinct or not,” I said, “the Brotherhood still has guns… and a bazooka. Are we sure we should be leading them to us at night in the middle of the woods? Especially with the four of us focusing on the Ceremony?” I gestured at myself and the girls.
“Guns,” Jasper scoffed, “are beneath us. We’ve dealt with the Brotherhood and Neanderthals like them in the past. We’ll have defenses in place. We’ll keep them away from you while you complete the Ceremony. You won’t even have to step away from the cauldron. And when you’re done, we’ll finish them off.”
“He’s right,” said Jessica. “Also, you just used a key phrase, Arthur— middle of the woods. We’ll be surrounded by nature, by trees, vines, plants, rocks. That’s my terrain. They’re not besting us in that environment.”
She, Jasper, and Harriet looked unshakably calm about the idea of being surrounded by the Brotherhood in the night, and I couldn’t help but feel empowered by their confidence. I was sure that they could handle themselves, and even though the girls and I were new to this, we were The Sacred Four. Having read Ursula’s prophecy, having seen our powers, I now began to feel the true weight of those words. We could take the Brotherhood, no problem.
“I’m pretty much bulletproof anyway,” said Hortensia. “How does the Ceremony work?”
“It’s very simple,” said Jessica. “First, I just need to make sure all four of you are on board with this. We’re not exactly baking cookies here. Are you prepared to use fatal force on the Brotherhood?”
“I am,” said Hortensia without hesitation. “Anyone trying to murder us and rip our hearts out deserves whatever fatal force they have coming to them.”
“Same,” said Sylvie. “I’m in. They’re not taking me without a fight.”
Her words reminded me of Connor and the way he motivated me before our Molotov cocktail battle with the Brotherhood. If we’re going out, we’re going out fighting. This time, though, we wouldn’t be going out, and the one burning to death would be the Patriarch.
“I’m on board,” I said. “For Connor. And the people in Portland. And the twelve witches.”
Harriet watched me, her bright blue eyes shining, and she raised her champagne glass and took a sip. All of us then turned to Lizzie, who was markedly silent, gripping her Cloaking Crystal and staring down at her lap. “Self-defense,” she said, almost inaudibly.
“What’s that, sweetie?” asked Jessica.
“You said it would be self-defense,” said Lizzie. “It’s not self-defense if we lure them to us and… kill them in cold blood. I know what they’ve done, but… they’re still human beings.”
“Human beings who won’t stop until they kill you,” said Jasper, “and who can’t be contained by all the societal rules you’ve been taught would contain people like them.”
“He’s right, sweetie,” said Jessica softly. “Their purpose is to kill you, to kill all of us. It’s what the Brotherhood of Armin has done for hundreds of years. You four in particular, they likely wouldn’t just kill. They’d do… other things first.”
Lizzie looked like she was on the verge of fainting but Sylvie huffed. “Let them try,” she said in a fierce voice.
I noticed Jasper’s look of admiration as he watched Sylvie. It was clear that she was what he’d always hoped the young witches of the Sacred Four would be like. She and Hortensia had already taken so effortlessly to their new powers and roles.
“There is no witch council,” said Jessica, “no magical government or monarchy. No one will punish you for choosing not to be part of the Sacred Four, and none of us here is going to force you. You have to make the choice to be part of it. Ursula says it herself: strong souls who will choose to fight.”
“I don’t feel very strong,” said Lizzie. “Since the Seastar, I just…”
She broke off, her eyes shiny with tears. Sylvie took her hand. I imagined the horrors she had lived through at sea, how she had woken up on the shore with two of her friends dead next to her, only to realize that an entire team of people she knew and worked with were gone…
“Oh, but you are strong,” said Jessica. “Incredibly so. Your gifts came to you for a reason. Out of all the people in the world, it was you. That was no accident. What you went through was horrible. Anyone would be aching with grief. But you survived. You fought with your sister witches tonight. You’re here before us now, unafraid to show your pain. You are powerful, even if you feel you aren’t.”
A tear fell down Lizzie’s cheek, but she managed a smile at Jessica.
“So what do you think?” asked Sylvie. “Want to help us take down a murderous cult? It’s not the Sacred Four without you.”
“You are strong,” said Hortensia. “I already feel like I know you very well even though we only just met. I feel that way about all three of you.”
“I know what you mean,” said Lizzie, wiping her eyes. She looked from Hortensia to Sylvie and me, then to Jessica, Jasper, and Harriet. “I’m on board,” she said.
“To the Sacred Four!” shouted Jasper, raising his glass like he had downstairs.
The seven of us drank from our crystal glasses which had been dutifully refilled by Harriet’s hovering bottles. I felt slightly tipsy and surprisingly calm about the coming fight to the death with the Brotherhood that would happen in less than a day.
Jessica suggested the girls stay the night since it was past two in the morning, and all three readily agreed. It wasn’t an inviting notion to go back out into the night with the Brotherhood prowling around in search of us and the traitor witch creeping through town as a swan. I imagined her flying around in the dark sky, blood-red eyes combing the city for a sign of us, and felt a chill on my neck.
The girls still hadn’t called any of their parents to tell them where they were. Jessica directed them to the old-fashioned rotary phone sitting on a small wooden table near the floor-to-ceiling window. Oddly enough, none of them had a cell phone because they had all been lost in their respective near-death experiences. Sylvie’s had been lost somewhere in Tillamook Head when she fell from the cliff; Lizzie’s had been lost aboard the Seastar; and Hortensia’s had been covered in blood during the massacre in the high school music room, then taken by police as evidence of the crime scene; and none of them had bothered to get a new one yet. I’d never gotten my own back from my parents after they’d confiscated it for my skipping school.
Sylvie and Lizzie each called their parents and told them they were staying at one another’s houses, and didn’t seem to have too much difficulty. Hortensia, on the other hand, was greeted by the loud, frantic voice of her mother, and I remembered that she had gone out back behind her parents’ restaurant to take out the trash and then never returned. It made sense that her parents would be panicked. I wondered if they’d gone out into the trees looking for her and found the two would-be rapists still unconscious on the ground…
“Estoy bien,” Hortensia kept saying. “Me encontré con unas amigas de la escuela y estamos en casa de ellas. Son hermanas. Si. Si. Vale. Si. Te veo mañana. Si. Te quiero mucho. Bye.” She hung up the phone and turned to us. “They didn’t call the cops at least, thankfully. My mom said they looked for me in the trees behind the restaurant and there was nobody there. No mention of those two assholes.”
“I guess they woke up and went home to enjoy their lovely new infections,” said Jessica.
“That was amazing,” said Hortensia. “Thank you for that, by the way.”
“Any time!” said Jessica cheerfully.
“I believe you used the word sisters just now?” asked Sylvie. “If Spanish class memory serves.”
“I did,” Hortensia smiled. “I told her I ran into some friends who are sisters and that I’m at their house. That’s what we are now, right?” she asked Jessica. “Sister witches?”
“Yup,” said Jessica. “A powerful bond any day, but truly one-of-a-kind in this case.”
“Hey Arthur, what do we call you?” asked Sylvie. “Brother witch?”
I recoiled. “Oh no,” I said, “sounds too much like ‘Brotherhood’.”
“So what’ll it be?”
“Hmm…” I considered. “You know what? Call me sister witch. It just sounds better.”
“Sister witch, it is!” said Sylvie.
On our way out of the library, Lizzie stopped in front of the book of Ursula’s utterances, which was still open to the Sacred Four prophecy. “‘Four by four, and of these be four’,” she read. “What does that mean?”
“We’d always interpreted that to mean that the four of you would be sixteen years old,” said Jasper. “Four by four equalling sixteen, then occurring four times. And we were right.”
“All born over four consecutive months, no less,” said Jessica. “On the fourth days of August, September, October, and November, all at four forty-four in the morning, four hundred years after Ursula.”
Jasper let out a long whistle. “The Sacred Four…” he said, looking at each of us and shaking his head as though he couldn’t quite believe his eyes. “In my lifetime…”
**
“We’ll give you a full tour of the house tomorrow,” said Jessica, as we followed her down to the second floor. “For now, I think we should all get some rest.”
“You said this house is protected, right?” asked Lizzie, looking out at the dark ocean through the tall hallway window.
“All the protection we can throw at it,” said Jessica. “The Brotherhood can’t even see this place. If they were to follow us home, we would vanish from their sight as soon as we reached our street, and they would suddenly feel disoriented and forget why they were near here to begin with. A witch’s home is already the safest place for her to be, and most cast basic additional protections like the Invitation Only Spell, but this house has much more than that. A lot of it is thanks to our mother, who was a bit on the paranoid side, rightfully so. She worked incredible magic on this place for years, which Jasper and I have only added to. This is really the safest place in the world for you to be.”
Lizzie looked reassured by these details, and I felt the same way. It was nice to know that the Brotherhood couldn’t sneak an attack on us in the middle of the night. I shuddered as I remembered their neatly sealed death threat flying in through Harriet’s living room window before the spray of bullets began. Something like that would never happen in this house.
Jessica’s bedroom was on the second floor, and Harriet, Sylvie, Lizzie, and Hortensia all took neighboring rooms. Jasper’s room was the only one on the third floor.
“Please make yourselves at home,” said Jessica. “You’re welcome to anything in the kitchen if you like, but in the morning, we’ll all have a nice breakfast. Most importantly, relax and rest up. The Brotherhood doesn’t stand a chance, and we’ll be right there with you. We’ll go over the plan and the Bonding Ceremony tomorrow.”
She gave each of us a hug, then bade us goodnight. As soon as I entered my room and closed the door behind me, my James Dean clothes— the Rebel Red jacket, the white t-shirt and blue jeans, and the black leather boots— shifted and changed colors, like a chameleon adapting to a new environment. After a few seconds, there I stood again in Jasper’s sweatpants and Harley Davidson t-shirt, barefoot as I had been before Harriet had conjured my outfit with her cauldron. I put a hand up to my hair and felt that it was no longer sleekly styled like James Dean’s, instead back to the tousled mess I had left it in after emerging from the bathtub. I didn’t mind, although I did miss the red jacket. I would have to buy a real one or else find a way to permanently transform Jasper’s t-shirt.
I climbed into the four-poster bed with its translucent white curtains, and looked out at the thin crescent moon. I wondered what the moon looked like for Connor at that moment in the Halfway Place. Did he still sleep? I hadn’t asked him. I couldn’t wait to see him again. He would be thrilled to hear about everything that had happened. What a difference a few hours had made.
I drifted off to sleep and, to my pleasant surprise, I dreamt not of blood and gore, or being burned at the stake, but of a sky full of twinkling stars surrounding an unusually large moon.
CHAPTER 15
The Sacred Breakfast
Breakfast, witches!”
I opened my eyes to see soft morning sunlight through the bedroom window. Jessica’s voice echoed through the house, and the delicious smell of toasted bread and frying sausages wafted in through the bedroom door. Unless she was standing right outside the door with a tray of freshly cooked food, and I was sure she wasn’t, I couldn’t understand how the smell was so strong. The kitchen was all the way down on the first floor, separated from me by the sunroom, the living room, the long winding staircase, and at least two closed doors. It had to be some kind of spell, a magical way to motivate anyone still sleeping to rise for breakfast. It was working on me.
I sat up and marveled at how refreshed I felt. The bed was deliriously comfortable, the sheets sinfully soft and silky. I looked around at the white walls illuminated by the bright morning sunshine, and thought what an unlikely beginning it was to a day in which a deadly battle would take place.
I stepped out into the hallway at the same time that the three girls were stepping out of their rooms. Sylvie and Lizzie came out of the same room and I guessed that Lizzie had not wanted to be alone during her first night in this house.
“Nice shirt,” said Sylvie, pointing at Jasper’s Harley Davidson t-shirt.
“Thanks,” I said. “It’s—”
“Jasper’s,” she said. “I figured.” She took a deep sniff of the air and sighed in appreciation. “That is the best damn alarm clock I’ve ever had.”
“That’s right, you were hungry,” I said, remembering that we had gone to Huerta’s Restaurant at her suggestion.
“Ugh, yes,” she said. “It’s a shame you didn’t get to try the food at Huerta’s, it’s amazing.”
“Aw,” Hortensia smiled. “My mom would love to hear that. It’s all based on her recipes.”
“We’ll definitely go back,” said Sylvie. “For a little victory dinner.” She and Hortensia grinned but Lizzie looked troubled. We began to descend the long winding staircase when Sylvie suddenly stopped. “Hey, watch this,” she said.
She put a hand on the polished wooden banister, then leapt over it. Lizzie made a sound between a gasp and a shriek as we watched Sylvie fall past the big silver chan
delier toward the hardwood living room floor below. I knew, however, that she wasn’t falling, but flying.
She soared gracefully through the air toward the armchairs and the wood and crystal coffee table, kicking out her feet in a running motion as if she were bounding down an invisible hill. She slowed to a gentle hover before landing lightly on her feet next to the coffee table.
I was in awe of her boldness. She’d gotten these powers less than twelve hours ago and already had such command over them. Master of the air, indeed, I thought, remembering Harriet’s words.
“That is so cool!” shouted Hortensia, excitedly running down the stairs. Lizzie and I clambered down after her as Sylvie took an exaggerated bow that was also a curtsy.
“How did you just know how to do that?” I asked her in admiration.
“Instinct,” she replied, “like Jessica said. Also, I can’t die by falling or hanging, remember? I figured even if I didn’t know what I was doing, I’d still be fine. Like with the cliff.”
“Well, you still could’ve hit your head on the chandelier,” said Lizzie.
Sylvie, Hortensia, and I roared with laughter, and Lizzie smiled in spite of herself.
“Do yours!” Sylvie said to Hortensia.
Hortensia looked around at the room and then ran straight into the furniture, through two armchairs and the coffee table, then right through the fireplace and out of the house as if it were all an illusion without any substance. A few seconds later, she came back through the fireplace as calmly and effortlessly as Sylvie had hovered to the ground. “It’s a nice day outside,” she said.
“Awesome,” said Sylvie.
“Lizzie, let’s see yours!” said Hortensia. “Or, not see it, I guess…”
“Um,” said Lizzie, furrowing her brow as if to concentrate. “I’m not sure how to—”
“BAH!” Sylvie shouted just as Jasper had.
Lizzie shrieked and vanished. She reappeared two seconds later, clutching her chest, and sighed. “Why does mine have to be a fear response?”
