by Maya Gold
She’s making us dinner. That’s my job.
“Abby?” she calls as I storm up the stairs. “Is that you?”
Busted. There’s no way to avoid this.
“I’ll be down in a second,” I call back. I open the door to my room, toss my purse onto the bed, and storm back downstairs in a sulk. Might as well get this over with.
When I enter the kitchen, Dad and Matt are both sitting down at the table. It’s already set, with a tablecloth I’ve never seen before. There’s a big tossed salad right in the center, along with a bottle of ranch dressing (Dad and Matt’s favorite) and balsamic vinaigrette (mine). Has Danielle been researching us?
Calm down, I tell myself. They were both in the fridge.
Danielle’s wearing my quilted oven mitts. She takes out a casserole dish and carries it to the table, setting it down on a trivet. It’s full of meat loaf topped with ketchup and bubbling cheese.
“Careful, it’s hot,” she says as Matt leans forward to look.
“Mmm, that smells great,” says Dad.
“I’m glad,” says Danielle. She takes a foil-wrapped loaf of garlic bread out of the oven, twists it into a waiting basket, and hands it to him.
And I realize with a jolt that she’s going to sit in Mom’s chair.
“May I be excused?” I say, getting up before anybody can answer and beating a hasty retreat back upstairs to my room. I slam the door shut behind me and throw myself onto the bed. I wish I could cry, but I can’t. It’s as if I’ve boiled dry.
I don’t know how long I lie there, facedown on the bedspread, but the first thing I see when I pick up my head is Rem’s watercolor of the cove where he took me to swim. My fury redoubles. As I tear it down off the wall and crumple it up in one hand, I catch sight of my face in the mirror. My eyes are a thundercloud gray, and the gold rims seem to pulsate. The yellow-gold stripe across my left eye is the brightest it’s ever been. I look possessed.
I rip open the drawer where I keep my candles, light one, and hold Rem’s painting over it, watching it curl up and burn into ashes.
I stare at the candle. Could I cast a spell to make Rem lose interest in Kara? I probably could, but would I even want to? If he’s the kind of guy who two-times his girlfriend and was just using my affections to make himself feel good, I don’t care how handsome or charming he is. At least Travis Brown is nice. And he’s crazy about me, no small thanks to my potion. If I gave him a bit more encouragement, he’d probably break up with Megan and ask me out.
An idea begins to take hold. Maybe it’s good that I didn’t return the green spell book to the library. Maybe this is my destiny. I never asked to have magical powers. I wasn’t given a choice about this, any more than I was given a choice about losing my mother, or nightmares and headaches, or being that tall, gawky, weird girl who nobody likes.
Nobody except Travis Brown. And now I’m going to make him like me even more.
I open the spell book. The spidery handwriting no longer seems so off-putting. It’s almost as if I can hear the voice of the woman who wrote this with her scratchy quill pen, whispering to me across the centuries. The book isn’t signed, but I’m certain the person who gathered these herbs and magical objects, and wrote down these strange incantations, was somebody like me. I picture her young, thin, and pale, with a rim of gold fire in her eyes. I wonder if she was my actual ancestor, Sarah or Dorcas or one of her daughters. Whoever she was, she’s my guide.
The potion I choose is called “To Inspire Deep and Abiding Love.”
That’s what I want, I realize. Not Rem’s on-and-off-switch flirtations, not Travis’s moonstruck stares and the empty compliments fueled by my starter potion. I want genuine, shared, lasting love. No more baby steps. If I’ve got this power, I want the real thing.
As I read over the spell, I’m relieved I don’t have to sneak this potion into Travis’s food. I don’t want to have to bake something else and share my kitchen with Danielle.
I just have to put a pinch of the mixture under my tongue when his eyes are on me, and the spell will be cast.
The potion has just three ingredients:
Powdered Rose Petals
Essence of Jasmine
Wild Honeycomb
It’s interesting that the more powerful love potion is so much simpler than the initial one for gaining affection. Maybe the spell imitates life: Crushes and flirtations can twist and turn in elaborate patterns, but I’ve always heard that when true love strikes, you just know.
That’s what I need now. That unbending certainty.
Even if it has to come from a spell.
I wait until everyone else in the house is asleep. Then I mix the three ingredients in a silver spoon and light my seven candles. The spell book instructs:
Concentrate on thy Beloved with a Full Heart,
Releasing a Deep and Abiding Love.
What is Given, Shall Be Returned.
I close my eyes and picture Travis leaping over hurdles. I push out any images of Rem, and let my heart fill with thoughts of Travis — our friendship on the playground. Our afternoon drive. His smile.
Let him see me with new eyes, I think. Not just skin-deep infatuation, but deep and abiding love, an emotion that spends its life buried and waiting to bloom.
I open my eyes. The flames rise up at once as I recite the final phrase of the incantation aloud:
“Goddess of Love, make it so.”
The next morning I drive to school early and park next to the spot where Travis always leaves his red convertible. When I see him drive up, with the breeze riffling his golden hair, my heart does a little somersault.
Who needs Rem, anyway?
I get out and walk toward Travis’s car. I’m wearing gold filigreed earrings I bought from Dyami and the same sky blue sundress Travis told me looked great with my coloring. So I’m feeling as close to confident as I’ll ever get. Especially since I’ve got a pinch of true love potion tucked between my thumb and forefinger.
“Oh, hi, Travis,” I say, trying to sound both off-handed and pleased to run into him. My heart’s beating faster than usual. Maybe it did fill with love last night. He gives me his usual puppy-dog smile.
In that moment, it’s simple enough to fake a sneeze, bring my hand up to my lips, and slip the hex powder under my tongue.
“Gesundheit,” says Travis. He looks at me, melting. The absolute, unambivalent love in his eyes is a thrill to behold. It makes me tingle and blush, and it seems only natural to take his hand.
And that’s how it starts. Heads turn and mouths gape as we walk down the hall holding hands. Like a couple. Travis beams ear to ear, as if he’s never been prouder.
The rumors start swirling like wildfire. Rachel crosses the hall to avoid meeting my eye, Kate flashes me a thumbs-up, and Megan and her mean-girl posse glower, as I knew they would. But I don’t care what anyone thinks. Not even when Megan stalks up to me in the cafeteria and hisses, “I am taking you down, Big Bird,” flipping my lunch tray into my lap in front of the whole room.
Kids whistle and hoot, yelling, “Catfight!” But I just look at Megan, serene.
Really? Really? I think, staring up at her. That’s the best you can do, a little barbecue sauce on my sundress? Travis is already rushing my way with a paper towel.
The queen of monkeys looks furious but I’m not scared anymore.
Just wait until you see what comes back at you, Megan, I think. You’re going to be sorry you ever bullied or insulted anyone.
I stay up way after midnight, poring over the spell book’s revenge incantations. Eventually, I grind up powders and herbs for a potion that “Causes the Skin to Break Out in Hideous Spots.” That ought to serve Megan right. I don’t want to cause her lasting damage, but making her feel bad about how she looks will be sweet. Let her be the one with self-esteem issues.
Next I get to work on a hex powder called “To Turn Ally to Enemy,” tipping it into a cafeteria saltshaker. Tomorrow that powder is going on Amber’s and Sloane’s Fre
nch fries. Let Miss Popularity lose both of her sidekicks as well as her boyfriend, and see how it feels to turn into a pimple-faced nobody.
Gloating, I bend to blow out the last candle. In the sudden darkness, the wind blows my shutters wide open and I hear the tree branches tossing and creaking. The night sky is wild with an unearthly energy.
Good, I think. Make this a power night.
But taking revenge takes revenge on me: After I’ve finished mixing the potions, I can’t fall asleep. My whole body is churned up and restless, and as I lie tossing and turning in bed, listening to the wind, I can’t shake the sensation that my room is full of bad things, toads and spiders and rats scrabbling under the floorboards. When I finally sink into something that passes for sleep, it’s riddled with nightmares.
The sky outside ripples with lightning, and the whole house seems to lurch and stretch, pushing up from the earth, getting taller and taller until it’s a massive stone tower against the black sky.
A lightning bolt splits the roof open, making the whole room shake and hurling me out through my open window. Another body is falling beside mine, but I can’t see his face. We fall down headfirst, tumbling through space into earthquakes that unzip the ground into chasms of fire.
I wake up in a cold sweat of terror. It’s morning. Did any of that really happen, like the night I dreamed about Danielle’s fire?
But no, the sky outside my window is a mild summer blue, with birds singing and dew on the grass. The only disaster is inside my head, which is throbbing with one of those awful spike headaches, the first one I’ve had in a long time. I pull on my clothes and carefully hide my potions inside my purse. I head downstairs, not acknowledging Dad, Matt, or Danielle. If that means skipping breakfast, I’ll live.
I get into my car and shift into reverse. As I look in the rearview to back down the driveway, I let out a scream.
Rem is sitting in the backseat.
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?” I SPLUTTER in shock. Did he break into my car? I turn in my seat to look toward the house, wondering if I should call out to Dad. Or call the police. I’m pretty sure no one heard my quick scream.
“I need to talk to you,” Rem says steadily.
I glare at him. I’m not pleased that he looks just as gorgeous as ever. That’s really not fair when I’m furious at him.
“Tell it to Kara,” I snap. “Or didn’t you know that I saw you two kissing?”
“Of course I knew. I made you see that.”
I didn’t expect that response. “What are you talking about?” I demand, more confused than ever.
“Not here,” he says. “Someplace private. Let’s go to the beach.”
“Rem, I’ve got school!”
“You can’t bring those revenge potions to school with you,” he says, and the urgency in his voice stuns me as much as the fact that he knows about them.
“Are you spying on me?” I ask, shaking.
“Yes,” he says bluntly. “Drive to the beach and I’ll tell you why.”
For a moment, I consider bursting out of the car, running back into the house. But upset as I am with him, I trust Rem to tell me the truth. And now I need answers.
The beach is not very far from my house, and we drive in uncomfortable silence. As soon as I park, on an empty lot wind-strewn with sand, Rem jumps out of the car. He heads into the dunes, and I realize that he’s barefoot. It’s not hard to see why — with every step my sneakers sink into deep sand. I bend down to take them off, tying their laces together with the knot Travis taught me and slinging them over my shoulder.
I follow Rem down to the tidal strip, edged with pop weed and fragments of clamshells. The sand here is hard-packed, with foamy waves rolling up to the edge. Rem keeps moving, anxiously seeking a place he deems private enough. What is he worried about, seagulls with spy-cams? There’s a jogger a mile or so down the strand with his golden retriever, but other than that, the beach is completely deserted.
Finally, Rem stops at a weathered drift log, gesturing that I should sit. He sits down beside me, so close he can whisper. As if the roar of the breaking waves wouldn’t drown out whatever he’s planning to tell me.
“You know that our souls are connected,” he murmurs, and right away my stomach jumps. I can’t move, or speak. “Don’t protest or say you don’t feel it,” he goes on. “I know you do. It’s been there since the first time we met. That’s how I know you’ve been practicing spells.”
My eyebrows go up. “Are you saying you can read my mind?”
“Not all the time. Not when you’re at school. But when you’re doing magic, our energy’s braided together. It has been for centuries.”
This is starting to freak me out big-time. What is he saying? That he knows about my magic powers — believes in them? If it’s all true, then why did he tell me at our swimming lesson that I was imagining things?
It wasn’t the right time or place, his voice says in my head. Rem goes on in a spy-movie whisper. “We don’t have much time,” he says. “You haven’t crossed all the way over yet. You can still stop.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say with an edge. Stop what? Making the kind of potions I made last night?
“You know in your heart. There’s no use pretending.”
I stand up, frightened. “I’ve got trigonometry class.” I start walking away, but Rem jumps up, grabbing my arm.
“I was supposed to bring you across. And they’re furious I haven’t done it yet.”
My head is spinning. “Done what? Who are they?”
Rem’s face grows serious. “All right, I’ll make this quick. Twenty people were killed on charges of witchcraft in Salem in 1692.”
I nod. I know this already. And Rem must know that I know it. My blood is roaring in my ears as I think of my ancestor Sarah Good. But she was proven innocent. Wasn’t she?
“Every so often,” Rem goes on, “one of their descendants is born with potential powers. Think of it as a rogue witch gene, like having red hair because someone way back in your ancestry had it.” Or being as pale as your mother when everyone else in your family is dark- and curly-haired, I think, and nod.
“But,” I begin, “if I was born with some witch gene for magical powers, wouldn’t I already —”
“Potential powers,” Rem corrects me. “Which usually start to appear at the age of sixteen.”
Like my dreams and my headaches, I think. Rem is still talking.
“Sometimes that potential runs in a different direction and turns into artistic or musical talent; people call it a gift. But if it runs toward the rarer gift, actual magic, another witch is tapped to help them … cross over. Become a full witch.”
Cross over. I open my mouth and manage to speak. “Like you were supposed to …” He nods again. “So you’re … a witch?”
Rem turns his blue-and-green eyes on me. “Duh.” There’s a trace of a smile on his lips, and it brings out his dimples. Why does he have to be so irresistible?
I jerk away from him. “Don’t make fun of me, Rem. You’ve got to admit this is hard to believe. And why didn’t you tell me before?”
“Too risky. There’s no place in Salem where someone’s not watching and listening.”
“What is it, witch Homeland Security?” I shiver, staring at him. It still seems unreal that we’re talking about this.
“It isn’t a joke. There are four kinds of witches in this world,” Rem continues, “each tied to an element. I’m a water witch, through my grandmother’s line. So are most of the witches in Salem, or anywhere else. There’s a handful of air witches, mostly half crazy.”
I think of the elements as Dyami listed them when she did my tarot reading. Water, air, earth, fire …
“And earth witches?” I ask.
Rem shudders and lowers his voice. “One. Only one. But you, Abby? You’re the rarest of all. There hasn’t been a fire witch in Salem in three hundred years. And that’s what you are.”
A fire witch
! Suddenly, things seem to fall into place. The candles bursting into flame, Danielle’s house, my dreams of fire, my fear of water …
And what Rem said to me that day of our swim lesson: “I can see the fire in your eyes.”
I look at Rem now, and I know in my heart that he’s telling the truth.
His voice picks up urgency, as if he’s afraid he won’t have time to finish. “There must be a witch of each element to complete the circle,” he’s saying, “so they can bring Salem to justice. The air witch is losing her grip on this lifetime, and the earth witch is on the move. He’s looking for us right this minute. The ocean is drowning us out, but he knows we’re nearby. I can feel him searching. Can’t you?”
Now I’m really spooked. I do feel a presence, as clammy and deep as an underground cave. I shiver, and Rem pulls me close. I bury my face in his neck. His skin smells like saltwater taffy, briny and sweet. I can feel his heart beating against mine, the strong, reassuring warmth of his body, and it feels so perfectly right that I raise my face to his. Kiss me, I think. Kiss me now.
But Rem pulls away. Again.
“Why do you do that?” I blurt out. “Because of Kara?”
He shakes his head. “Because of you.”
“I don’t understand.”
“A witch’s kiss is a dangerous thing, Abby. It transfers and magnifies powers. When one of us kisses a human, it can turn them into a witch.”
“But I’m already a witch.”
“No, you’re not. You’re just a beginner. The powers you’ve already harnessed are nothing compared to what you have inside you. If I give you the witch’s kiss, there’ll be no turning back. For either of us.”
“But you were kissing Kara. I saw you.”
Rem sighs. “Kara is a fourth-degree water witch. Her powers aren’t strong — never will be. But you’ve got the strong bloodlines, and fire is the rarest of all the magical elements, the one that’s been missing from Salem for centuries. That’s why they want you to cross over now.”
