The Babysitters Coven

by Kate M. Williams

  The second page said “Kryo,” and underneath that “Popsicle sticks, peppermint candy, Vicks VapoRub, feverfew.”

  I flipped back and forth between the two, sure that there was something I was missing. Something obvious.

  The items seemed random at first, but the more I thought about them, the less accurate that seemed. All the items under “Fytó” were kind of about nature. The jellybeans weren’t, of course, but they were green. And for “Kryo,” I didn’t know what feverfew was, but the rest of the stuff evoked a chill, like an open window in the winter.

  What was more, I realized that they were all like the things Mom had gotten caught shoplifting—small, seemingly insignificant, yet clearly chosen with a purpose. There was a lot I couldn’t remember, but that was burned into my brain. She hadn’t just grabbed anything. Everything she’d pocketed had been very deliberate, the kind of stuff she still stockpiled in drawers in her room at the hospital. The pages in the notebook were like shopping lists, but like what you would need if you were going to make something specific. Like a recipe, almost. A recipe for magic—a spell.

  With each ring, I grew more impatient for Cassandra to answer. When she finally did, I didn’t even bother to say hello. “In your mom’s notebook, were there any pages other than those lists?”

  “There was one,” she said, “In the front. It just said ‘kinesis.’ ”

  That was when it really clicked. “Cass,” I said, “they’re spells. Put the word ‘kinesis’ after the word at the top of the list, and you get a new power. Like my telekinesis and your pyrokinesis, but for other stuff.”

  Cassandra was silent, and when she finally spoke, all she did was whisper an obscene word. “You’d better come over,” she said, “and fast.” Then she hung up on me.

  * * *

  —

  Waiting for the bus felt like it lasted decades. I had an Uber account linked to one of Dad’s credit cards, but he’d been very adamant that it was for emergencies only, and I imagined trying to explain a Sunday afternoon ride to him. “You see, Dad, I wanted to see if I could cast a spell…” Uh, no.

  The bus finally came, and when I got to Cassandra’s house, I tried to tell myself that I wasn’t disappointed when I saw that Dion’s transportation heap wasn’t in the driveway. The front door of the house was open, and through the screen, I could see that the living room looked like it had been ransacked. It would have been enough to send someone running away and screaming about a burglary, but I knew better.

  I knocked, first softly, then more loudly, and when no one answered, I let myself in and called for Cassandra. In the living room, I got a better look at the damage. The couch was charred and sitting in a puddle that had several feathers floating in it. In the corner, a light flickered on and off, and I noticed with a start that it wasn’t even plugged in.

  There were also weird, small things strewn everywhere: a plastic aquarium castle, chocolate gold coins, Mardi Gras beads, paper party hats, a kazoo, condoms, lefty scissors. It was like the guts of the world’s most eclectic piñata had exploded across the living room.

  “Hey.”

  I spun around to see Cassandra standing in the doorway, her face streaked with dirt and her hair looking like she’d just crawled out of a grave. Then some squawking thing buzzed the top of my head and made me jump three feet in the air.

  “What the hell was that?” I asked, swatting at my scalp.

  “Ugh, a stupid bird,” Cassandra said, chasing it into the living room. “Shoo! Go! Shoo!” She picked up a magazine and swung it wildly through the air at the open door, but the bird had other ideas, and flew in the opposite direction down the hall, straight into a bedroom that, from the pair of work boots that I could see right inside the door, I assumed was Dion’s. “My Poulikinesis was strong enough to get it in here, but then it wore off,” she said, “and now I can’t get the bird back out. I tried to lure it out with cornflakes, but I think that’s a really smart bird.”

  It had looked like a plain old pigeon to me, but that explained all the yellow crumbs crunching under my feet.

  “Poulikinesis?” I asked.

  “Power to manipulate birds: one packet airplane peanuts, lungwort, cotton balls, and a feather.”

  “What’s lungwort?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t have it, so I used basil, and I think maybe that’s why it didn’t work?” With an angry squawk, the bird came tearing down the hallway, and Cassandra and I both flattened ourselves against the wall to get out of the way.

  She walked into the dining room, stepping over an overgrown plant that had been turned on its side, potting soil and long green tendrils spilling out everywhere, and ate a green jelly bean off a pile on the table.

  “Plant manipulation?” I asked, and as she nodded, I realized that the lush green giant nearly blocking the doorway was the same philodendron that had been nothing but a few dry stalks when I’d lifted it into the air just a few nights before.

  I picked the book up off the table and read aloud from the open page. “Kréaskinesis—”

  “The power to manipulate meat,” Cassandra interrupted, before I read the list of steak sauce, Saran Wrap, mesquite chips, and soybeans. She waved a hand behind her, and through the kitchen door, I could see a large red hunk of raw meat sitting on the counter. “I tried to make myself a hamburger,” she said, “but it didn’t really work.” It looked nothing like a hamburger, but it was dripping blood down onto the cabinets below.

  “Let me guess,” I said. “You didn’t have mesquite chips, so you substituted…”

  “Charcoal,” she said. I nodded, shivering at how the kitchen looked like a murder scene ripe for a blood-splatter expert. It was not sanitary.

  “You did all this in an hour?” I asked, but she ignored me and took the book back, flipping through several pages. When she found the page she wanted, she looked up at the mess in the kitchen. “Katharikinesis,” she said. “Dish soap, a sponge, paper towels, and disinfectant spray. Dang it, that’s cleaning power, but it also sounds just like actual cleaning.” She carefully stepped over the blood pooling on the kitchen floor, and pulled the requisite items out from under the sink, then walked back and held them out to me. I shook my head. She’d made this mess, and she could clean it up.

  “Oh, come on, Esme,” she said. “I don’t want you to actually scrub. I want you to try the spell.” She arranged the four items in a line in front of my feet, then took my arm and pulled it out in front of me, flexing my hand up at the wrist like I did when I told Pig to stay. “Now say it. Kath-ari-kinesis.”

  I repeated it, just like she’d said, and watched as the blood drips vanished from the floor, up the cabinet doors, and along the countertop, as if an invisible paper towel had just wiped them away. The charcoal briquettes zoomed back into the bag, and the dripping chunk of dead cow evaporated into thin air.

  Cassandra yelped and clapped her hands. “Yay. So that’s one that you can do!”

  She was thrilled, and I was shaking. “What the hell did I just do?”

  She held up the book. “Katharikinesis,” she repeated. “The power to manipulate cleanliness. I can’t believe you got one on the first try! I tried about fifteen different ones before I finally found a spell I could do.”

  “And what was that?”

  She got a weird look on her face. “Malliakinesis.” She said it so softly that I had to ask her to repeat it. “Malliakinesis,” she said again, her palms running reflexively over her hair. “The power to manipulate hair. I tried to give myself beachy waves. All I got was frizz, but that was at least a start.”

  * * *

  —

  It didn’t take long for me to see how the house had gotten so wrecked. Cassandra and I ripped through the book, trying everything we could with what we had, and making a list of what we’d need to find and buy to try the rest. For some o
f the powers, we got absolutely nothing. Others, we got a tiny flicker, and for a few, they actually worked like we assumed they were supposed to. We finally got the bird to fly back out the front door, but I think that had more to do with being in the right place at the right time than it did with magic.

  It was stupid that it had taken us so long to figure it out. It wasn’t some made-up language, just rough Greek translations, which wasn’t surprising at all since it had come from Cassandra’s mother. I wondered briefly if maybe Dion would have guessed it sooner, then quickly put that thought out of my mind.

  I tried ypnokinesis—chamomile, a radio tuned between stations, an ankle sock, and lavender oil—which didn’t succeed in actually making Cassandra fall asleep, but it did make her start yawning. Weirdly, we both seemed to be particularly adept at tyrikinesis, the power to manipulate cheese. I turned a block of Muenster into Colby Jack, and then Cassandra grated it with a wiggle of her fingers. “Hmm,” she said as the last nub was shredded. “A hit at Taco Tuesdays, no doubt, but not exactly the stuff that Marvel makes movies about.”

  I knew exactly what she meant. The initial excitement at seeing that I could do all of this weird stuff was wearing off, and now I just felt confused. Fortunately, it seemed like the ingredients and objects were needed the first time we used a spell, but once the power was activated, we could use it at will just by saying the word. I stood looking at the pile of cheese in front of me, pinched off a little bit, and put it into my mouth.

  It tasted like fiesta blend, all right. I chewed and swallowed, then looked back at Cassandra. “What are we?” I asked. Her mouth was too full to answer.

  * * *

  —

  When I got home, Dad was sitting on one end of the couch, and Pig was sitting on the other. She came trundling to meet me when I opened the door, her tail wagging like a whip.

  “That dog doesn’t understand who pays the bills around here,” Dad called out. “So she loves you more.”

  I knelt down so that I was eye level with her, and scrunched up her face. “That’s supposed to be a secret, Piggy,” I said in a mock whisper.

  “I made dinner,” Dad said. “It’s in the kitchen.”

  I went to go investigate, and Pig followed, close at my heels.

  By “made” he meant “ordered,” and by “dinner” he meant “pizza.” Which was fine with me. I pulled a plate from the cabinet and helped myself to a couple of pieces.

  “I’m going to eat in my room and catch up on homework,” I yelled from the kitchen, because that seemed like a good excuse and I needed some time to decompress before I launched into a round of Dad small talk.

  “You don’t want to watch football with me?” he called back.

  “I do,” I said, pausing in the doorway. “But you know my rules about watching football, and last time I checked, hell had not yet frozen over.”

  Pig followed me into my room. I realized how ravenous I was as soon as I took a bite of the cold pizza. Spellcasting really worked up an appetite. I took another bite, and looked around my room as I chewed. I could use my newfound powers to pick all the stuff up off the floor and sweep the dust bunnies from the corners, but that would alert Dad instantly to the fact that something was up. He’d probably haul me right back into therapy, saying, “My daughter hasn’t been acting like herself lately. I’m afraid an alternate, cleaner personality has taken over.” So the mess would remain the same. Besides, I’d never been more exhausted in my entire life. Magic was even harder than babysitting, though maybe not as messy.

  I finished my pizza and set the dirty plate on top of a stack of magazines on my desk. I gathered my remaining strength and willed it to be halftime, because I figured tonight was as good a time as any to ask Dad about Mom. Surely she was the missing link between me and Cassandra and whatever it was we were. Cheese witches? Kinetic wonders? Babysitting banshees?

  I steeled myself to push through any impending awkwardness, because Mom was a topic that made Dad so uncomfortable, he would start scratching at his hands and neck. Dad and I were both good at living with unanswered questions, and we just worked around them like they were houseguests who were never leaving because they had no place else to go.

  Back in the living room, the TV screen was filled with large men in even larger suits, talking about tonight’s game as if the fate of the world depended on it. I plopped myself down onto the couch and tucked my feet under me.

  “Shoes,” Dad said, so I straightened my legs and kicked my slip-ons onto the floor, then pretzeled them again. I wanted to be comfortable so that Dad felt comfortable.

  “Hey, so can I ask you something?” I was trying to sound casual, and this seemed as good a way as any to start the conversation.

  “Sure, kiddo,” he answered, only half looking away from the television.

  “It’s about Mom,” I said, and I could feel him stiffen. I could see his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed. He took a few seconds to answer.

  “Of course.” His voice sounded tighter than it had just a moment before.

  I decided it was best to go with the truth, albeit a very shallow version of the truth. “Who were her friends, and what was she into?” I asked. I pulled at a string on my leggings, and then tried to smooth it back out. “There’s a new girl at school, and it turns out that her mom was friends with Mom. She even has pictures of them together. And I don’t know, it just got me thinking. I don’t really know much about what Mom was like before she was…” I paused. “Like she is now.”

  Dad took a sip of his Coors Light. I could tell the can was almost empty by the way he had to tip it almost all the way upside down to get some to pour into his mouth.

  “What’s the new girl’s name?” he asked.

  “Cassandra Heaven.” I was careful to keep my voice neutral and not sound too excited.

  “That’s quite the name, but it doesn’t ring a bell. Your mom had a lot of friends,” he said finally. “Her phone rang all the time. She even had her own line when we still had a landline.” He paused and gave a little laugh. “She said it would save me the trouble of answering her calls when she wasn’t here. She was like that, you know, always thinking of little things to make someone else’s life easier.”

  I nodded. This did sound very nice. And also very suspicious.

  “What were her friends like?” I asked.

  “I didn’t know a lot of them all that well. She had this women’s group that she would meet with all the time, and they would do stuff. Some would come from out of town for meetings.”

  Ah, yes. I was definitely getting somewhere.

  “What would they do?” I pressed.

  His brow wrinkled up. “Like, organizing and stuff. Nonprofits. Your mom was big into feminism, so I let her have her space. Tried not to pry too much. Wanted to make sure she was her own person, you know?” He trailed off, and stared at his empty beer can like it held all the secrets of the universe.

  “Were any of her friends babysitters?”

  He scrunched up his nose. “That’s a weird question.”

  “Well, were they?”

  “I think so? I’m not sure, but she was always running out to take care of someone’s kid.”

  That was good enough for me. “Thanks, Dad,” I said. “I’m going to bed.” I got up, but he called me back as I was about to head up the stairs.

  I walked back to the couch, and Dad shut his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Kiddo, I’m sorry we don’t talk about your mom much,” he said. “Everything that happened with her was very stressful. You were just a little kid, and I was scared. I guess I blocked a lot of it out. I’m ashamed to admit there’s a lot I don’t remember.” He paused, and swallowed. “Your mom was an amazing woman, and I’m sorry you didn’t get to know her as she used to be. So whatever you want to know, ask. I’ll try to tell you.”

  I
nodded. “Thanks, Dad. I will.” I gave his shoulder a squeeze, then got out of there before he could see that I was about to cry.

  * * *

  —

  Back in my room, I pressed my palms to my eyes and took a deep breath. This was not a day for crying. Anyway, I’d spent most of my life crying about Mom, and I was pretty freaking over it by now. Crying was worthless. It accomplished nothing.

  There was a grunt outside my door, and I opened it to let Pig in. She settled down by my bed, and as we looked into each other’s eyes, she made a noise like the air slowly escaping from a balloon. I raised an eyebrow at her. It was truly mind-blowing to me that a living creature could be so unaware of its own farts. I went over and cracked the window.

  No matter how tired I was, I knew I was still too wired to sleep, so I lay down on the bed and shuffled through the spells again. One of the few that we hadn’t attempted at Cassandra’s was for milókinesis, the power to induce speech. Pig made another squeaking noise, and I looked at her as I tried to breathe in and out through my mouth.

  I mean, why not? I had to try new things, and the ingredients for this spell were stuff I knew we had—a lemon, a cough drop, cherry ChapStick, and a blue obsidian crystal, which was left over from my rock collecting phase in middle school. I gathered them all up, then got down on the floor and sat across from Pig. Which was her invitation to come over and lick me, but I held out a hand and told her to stay as I placed the items in an arc on the floor between us. Keeping my hand extended, I looked back at her, let my mind go as blank as it did in calculus, then recited the name of the spell.