Lost Magic

by Alexandria Clarke

  “Alberta!” I hissed. I rushed up behind her, took her elbow, and guided her out of the church. She squinted in the bright sunlight. “What were you doing in there? What did you put in the holy water?”

  “Just a little something-something,” she replied. “I love helping people see God.”

  “You’re making them hallucinate?”

  “Of course not!” She laughed and waved off the accusation. “I’m helping them see their truth.”

  I dragged her away from the church doors. “No wonder so many people in Yew Hollow claim enlightenment. What happened last night, huh? Why did you leave me at that wishing well all on my own?”

  Alberta brushed my hand away and straightened out the wrinkled I’d put in her shirt. “I brought you to the surface after the bonding ceremony. It’s not my fault you took forever to wake up.”

  “Where were my clothes?” I demanded.

  “I have no idea,” she said. “Eudora’s an eccentric woman. I’ve learned not to wear any of my favorite things when I visit her, lest I leave without them.”

  I contained a growl of frustration. “What about my first task?”

  “What about it?”

  “What is it?” I demanded. “I blacked out as soon as Eudora touched me. I don’t remember anything that happened afterward.”

  Alberta rushed to help an elderly woman climb the steps to the church. As she led the woman inside, she said, “Don’t forget to cross yourself with the holy water, dear!”

  “I never do!” the woman replied cheerfully.

  “Don’t you have any shame?” I asked Alberta when she returned to me. “What if that old lady can’t handle whatever potion you threw into that fountain? She could have a heart attack and croak!”

  “She won’t,” Alberta assured me. “That’s Mrs. Lannahan. I’ve been spiking her holy water since ‘72. She loves it. Besides, why do you automatically assume my potions are harmful? Did it ever occur to you that the citizens of Yew Hollow might be grateful for my additions?”

  “You’re putting the coven’s secrecy at risk,” I said. “You have to start following the rules, especially since we weren’t able to renew all of the protection spells at the equinox this year.”

  Alberta waltzed off without answering. I hurried after her, following her toward Belinda’s Bakery.

  “Hello?” I stood in front of her and walked backward, but she pointedly looked away from me. “Aren’t you forgetting something? You’re supposed to be mentoring me for this stupid ritual, and you haven’t been doing the greatest job so far.”

  Alberta rushed forward, forcing me to stumble over my own feet. “Guinevere does not rely on others to motivate and inspire her. She doesn’t ask permission to sit at the round table with the noble knights. She is her own inspiration. She makes her own seat at the table.”

  “Once again, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Eudora assigned your first task last night,” she informed me. “If you’d bothered to glance inward rather than relying on everyone else to solve your problems, you might have figured that out on your own. I’m supposed to help you complete your three tasks, not perform them for you. Grow a spine, fishie.”

  She tossed another vial of potion in front of me, and I stepped right into the puddle. The liquid glued my feet to the cement, preventing me from following Alberta any further.

  “Have a good day,” she called over her shoulder. “You know where to find me if you actually need me.”

  “No, I don’t! Alberta! Ugh—” I yanked on my sneaker, but the gluey potion below held firm. “Alberta, don’t you dare leave me here!”

  I ended up walking home barefoot. No matter what spell I tried, my shoes refused to unstick from the pavement. As I passed the Summers house, Morgan waved at me from the front porch.

  “Did you find Alberta?”

  “Yeah,” I called back, “but she wasn’t much help.”

  Morgan patted the empty seat beside her. “Come on up. We can talk about it.”

  I shook my head. “No, thanks. I haven’t been home in two days, and I think I need some time to myself.”

  “Sure,” Morgan said. “Let me know if you need anything.”

  “Will do.”

  “What happened to your shoes?”

  I waved goodbye instead of answering and made my way across the fields and into the woods behind the Summers house. A few years ago, Morgan and I had paved the path to the redecorated barn with pretty, petal-shaped blocks. It beat slogging through the mud and grass every time I walked home. A few minutes later, I slid open the barn doors and let out a sigh of relief. It was good to be home.

  The barn was set up like a miniature apartment. On the first floor, I had a small living room and kitchen. My bedroom occupied the second floor loft space. It was cozy, airy, and wild. No matter what time of day it was, I could hear some kind of critter outside. Birds chirped in the morning, cicadas sang at dusk, and everything else filled the hours in between. In winter, everything grew quiet and still, especially when it snowed. It was as if the snow acted as a blanket over the barn, muffling everything around it. Sometimes, I loved it. Other times, the eeriness of silence got to me, and I slept at the Summers house instead.

  I sawed an English muffin in half and tossed it in the toaster oven. From the fridge, I pulled a jar of jam and another of clotted cream. Clotted cream was my weak spot. They didn’t sell it in Yew Hollow, and it was annoying to make, so I often summoned it from a supermarket chain all the way in London. I preferred the more authentic taste of the UK brand to the cheap imitations in my own nation.

  I flopped on the couch, frosted the English muffin, and ate it atop a napkin on my chest. As crumbs fell to the floor, I pondered Alberta’s advice. At first, I felt defensive. I didn’t always ask for help. Since I was a kid, I’d had to do everything by myself. That included getting myself to Yew Hollow to find Morgan. Admittedly, once Morgan agreed to take me in, I relied on her more than I’d allowed myself to rely on anyone else in the past. She was the first person I ever trusted completely, and it was a relief to finally have someone to lean on.

  But did that mean I was dependent on her? For the last few years, I’d done everything in my power to support the coven. It wasn’t fair of Alberta to accuse me of not taking initiative in my own life. Simply, she was wrong about me.

  Or was she?

  I tossed aside the last bite of my English muffin, dusted the crumbs from my chest, and sat up. I rested my hands on my knees and closed my eyes, relaxing into myself. My mind pulled itself away from the real world and into the imaginary one that lived inside every witch. I focused on the green glow that surrounded my heart, pulling it out into the open until it filled the barn with its strange, swampy light.

  Like a massive three-dimensional projector, my aura cast images all around me. Since they were all shades of green, it was hard to tell what I was looking at. Then I saw Eudora’s wings pumping through the water and Alberta dive in from above. My aura was showing me the memory of what had happened last night after I blacked out.

  I watched from a third-person perspective as Eudora took my hand. Though I’d been unconscious, my body didn’t appear so. I gazed at Eudora with rapt attention as she joined hands with Alberta and linked the three of us together. She performed the bonding spell, and my wrist flared with golden light. When it faded, the strange rune had been pressed into my wrist.

  “You are joined,” Eudora declared. “From this point on, if one of you has a foot in another world, the other will too.”

  “And her first task?” Alberta asked.

  “Your first task is set based on your ability,” Eudora said, “to test whether or not you have learned the necessary skills to continue as an adult witch in our world. You, Gwenlyn Bennett, are a psychic medium. You have the power to communicate with the dead. As such, I believe you are well-suited to ferry lost souls from this world to the next.”

  Dazed, the version of myself from last night re
plied, “Yes, Eudora.”

  Eudora clapped her hands, and a wave of gold washed over the green images my aura created, erasing them from the walls. Everything returned to its normal color as I slumped against the couch cushions.

  “Crap,” I said to myself. “I’m the Grim freakin’ Reaper.”

  8

  “A Reaper, huh?”

  After a nap to ward off the exhaustion that had been slowly creeping up on me ever since I’d woken beside the wishing well, I returned to the Summers house to update Morgan on my first task. She was working on a project for the local police station in her home office. Chief Torres, who Morgan had worked with for certain homicide cases that mere mortals were unable to solve, was finally retiring. Naturally, a surprise party had to be arranged, and Morgan was the best person to do it.

  “Are there more than one?” I asked, shuffling through Morgan’s arrangements for the party. She’d written a to-do list that was a mile long.

  “Oh, yeah,” Morgan replied. “Sometimes, they’re witches like us, with a medium ability, but since we’re pretty thin on the ground, other people pick up the slack.”

  “Aren’t we already Reapers?” I asked. “Whenever someone dead hangs around Yew Hollow, we find a way to help them cross over.”

  “That’s more therapy than reaping.” Morgan wrote a note on her day planner, crossed it out, and wrote the exact same thing underneath. “Reaping involves a bit more trouble. You have to escort the dead into the otherworld.”

  Panic crept into my voice. “I have to cross over?”

  “In a manner of speaking,” Morgan said. “You’ll have access to both worlds. It’s not as scary as it sounds. Reapers go back and forth all the time without issue. Did you find your sensus?”

  “My what?”

  Morgan chuckled and set her pen aside. “Your sensus. It’s how the spirits you’re responsible for are designated to you. Now that you’re officially a Reaper, you should be able to access a new part of your powers. The sensus helps you feel the auras of your targets, regardless of whether they were mortals or creatures of power.”

  “Targets? Am I Reaper or a bounty hunter?”

  “It’s a fine line sometimes.” Morgan ripped the page out of her planner, crumpled it in a ball, and tossed it across the office. It bounced off the rim of the wastebasket. “You know what it’s like with lost souls. Half the time, they don’t want to cross over for some reason or another. Usually, we can persuade them to do it on their own, but other spirits are stubborn. They’ll stick around until a Reaper forces them into the otherworld.”

  I sat in the window seat and let the warm sunshine tickle my shoulders. In the backyard, the kids of the coven lured the baby bunnies out of their den to play with. Kids and bunnies alike bounced around in the grass with unbridled glee.

  “What’s it like?” I asked quietly. “The otherworld?”

  “It’s not as bad as you might think,” Morgan answered. “There’s a bunch of different levels, and they’re all weird as hell. For the actual dead, it can be terrifying, but for us—or for a Reaper—you just have to remember that you have a stable connection to both worlds. You can pull out of the otherworld whenever you want to and return to the mortal world.”

  I scratched dirt off the window pane. “Do you see people? You know, dead people?”

  “Uh, that’s the point of the otherworld,” Morgan said. “There are dead people everywhere.”

  “I meant people you know,” I clarified. “When you went, you saw your dad, right? And one of the original Summers sisters?”

  Morgan spun her rolling chair in slow circles, using the desk to propel herself around. “My dad greeted me on the first level. Tradition says that one of your loved ones meets you on the beach of the first level to ease you into death. I’ve done a lot of research on the otherworld in the years since I returned from it.”

  “What else did you find out?”

  She stopped spinning, got out of the chair, and wobbled over to her bookshelf. From the volumes, she pulled a large leather journal. Every page was full of Morgan’s messy, cramped handwriting, and additional notes written on gum wrappers, sticky notes, and newspaper corners had been crammed into it as well.

  “I keep everything I know about the otherworld in here,” she said. “You’re welcome to read it.”

  I reached for the journal, but as my fingers were about to graze the worn cover, a blast of orange magic burst from the pages and knocked my hand away. Bits of magic adhered to my hand and stung like tiny bees.

  “Ouch!” I shook my hand, and the little pebbles of magic fell from my skin and evaporated. “What the heck was that?”

  “That,” Morgan said, “was a little smack to both of us.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m not your mentor,” she reminded me. “You’re not supposed to ask me for help. You have Alberta for that.”

  I stared open-mouthed at the hostile journal. “So Alberta cast a spell to keep you from giving me information? That’s not fair!”

  “It wasn’t Alberta.” Morgan tentatively picked up the journal and returned it to its place on the shelf. “It was probably the kelpie that performed the bonding ritual. She’s in charge of your tasks, your mentor, and everything else. It’s against the rules for the coven leader to help you. I didn’t think giving you a journal would count as cheating, but I guess so.”

  “Well, can you tell me anything about the otherworld?” I asked, desperate for any tidbit of information.

  When Morgan opened her mouth, another flash of orange zipped around her lips and forced them shut. She wiped the magic away and rolled her eyes. “Apparently not. It would appear I am permitted to gift you with common knowledge such as this: the otherworld presents itself differently to everyone who enters it. Your experience will not mirror my experience.”

  I let out a sigh of relief. “Good. That’s good.”

  “To be fair, I was legitimately dead when I first entered the otherworld,” Morgan said. “The only reason I got out was because of you and an ancient weapon.”

  Morgan was famous for two things: coming back from the dead, and bringing with her a magical gun that had the power to send demons, ghosts, and other undesirable opponents back to the otherworld where they belonged. I’d used the gun myself, shooting Morgan’s enemy to end the battle for the coven’s survival. It had taken a toll on me for months afterward, but that time also marked the coven’s deepest admiration for me. Perhaps those who didn’t consider me family had forgotten my rash act of bravery from so long ago.

  “I don’t suppose you have that gun stashed somewhere, do you?” I asked.

  “It got lost,” Morgan said simply.

  “No, it didn’t.”

  “As far as you or any other member of this coven knows,” she said, “it got lost.”

  I smirked but let the matter go. As long as Morgan knew the gun was somewhere safe, that was all that mattered. If the time came, she could protect Yew Hollow from serious harm again.

  “So how do I access this sensus thing?” I wondered aloud.

  “Sounds like a question for your mentor.”

  Perhaps Alberta sensed that I was ready to commence my first task in a more serious manner, because when I left the Summers house to find her, she was already sitting on the front porch steps.

  “Ah, there you are,” she said when she spotted me. “I felt a disturbance in the force.”

  I sat next to her but made sure there was enough space between the two of us so that I could defend myself if she decided to throw another potion at me. “Did you just make a Star Wars reference?”

  “What is this Star Wars you speak of?”

  “Never mind.”

  “I felt your aura reach out,” said Alberta. She took a bag of baby carrots from her pocket and offered them to me. I shook my head. She shrugged and crunched into one. “Did you finally decide to play the game, Guinevere?”

  “I did what you said,” I told her. “I fig
ured it out for myself. I’m a Reaper.”

  Alberta glanced over her shoulder at the house. “And the first thing you did following this discovery was consult the enchantress?”

  Surprisingly, there was a hint of hurt in Alberta’s voice. “I’m sorry,” I said truthfully. “It’s a habit. I go to Morgan for everything. I’m not used to relying on someone else.”

  “It’s fine,” Alberta said. “What did you discover?”

  “Not much,” I answered. “She said I should find you to answer my questions.”

  Alberta bristled with pride. “Do you have questions for me?”

  “Yeah, what’s with this whole sensus thing?” I asked. “I hear I’m supposed to access it like a bounty list? I have no idea how I’m supposed to do that.”

  Alberta threw the end of her carrot into the front yard. A rabbit emerged from the grass, looked both ways, grabbed the carrot piece, and made off with it. “The sensus acts similarly to your aura. It resides within you. Reach out to it like you would reach out to your craft.”

  “But what am I looking for?”

  “It’s business, not pleasure.”

  “That’s not helpful.”

  Alberta stuck a carrot in either ear. “La, la, la. I can’t hear you. All I can hear is my mentee trying to access her sensus.”

  As Alberta closed her eyes and hummed loudly, I leaned back on my elbows and looked inward. Just as I had that morning, I searched through the things that existed inside me. Instinctively, I located my aura. It was easy after doing it for so many years. This time, I pushed past my aura and looked behind my glowing green craft. There, a tiny bubble of different magic waited for me to discover it. I pushed against it, but it didn’t pop. Instead, my entire conscience entered the space inside it.

  I soared above Yew Hollow, almost as if the town was in another plane of dimension. I could see everything all the way to the town’s borders. Each person was highlighted a different color. The witches were a rainbow of auras. Most of the mortals glowed with my green craft, but some of them glowed orange like Alberta’s. If I zoomed in and focused on one of the orange beings, I discovered I could sense that they were near the end of their life. How brightly they glowed seemed to depend on how much time they had left on this earth. Those in green were healthy, and barring unnatural forces, would occupy the planet for years to come.