by Alys Arden
I tapped out a response.
Isaac 14:37 Chill.
Dee 14:37 What do u think the odds of her finding a witch are?
Isaac 14:38 She definitely wants it bad.
Dee 14:38 I’d just feel better if I was the one making contact with our next sister.
Isaac 14:38 Brother.
Isaac 14:38 And stop worrying. She’s got this.
Ren finished his story to enthusiastic applause and questions about paranormal activity. I topped off their coffees as he answered their questions, and then he shooed them out the door, muttering something about ghost children as they headed to the hotel across the street.
I poured myself a cup of nonchicory and sat back on the stool. Just as I picked up my pen, the door opened again and a pretty girl walked in. A customer coming in was already strange enough, but a gorgeous girl felt almost mythical. When someone did come through the doors, it was almost always a cop, a construction worker, or Ren.
I think she’s wearing the same uniform as Adele’s.
She approached the counter, her gaze and smile in sync—actually, everything about her was in sync, from her hand placed at her hip to the rhythm of her walk. Her crisp clothes and glossy hair made her look prim and proper, but the way she casually leaned on the counter before saying a word, completely confident that I would be into her, made me think she was after something. A thick, silver, chain-link bracelet with a flat heart that looked like a dog tag rested on her left wrist. Dee wore an identical one.
“Hi,” she said.
“I hope you like plain ole drip coffee, because it’s pretty much all we have. That or espresso straight up.”
“I was hoping for something a little sweeter . . . She has long dark hair, innocent blue eyes, and a scar down her right cheek.”
The mention of Adele’s scar made me immediately uncomfortable—as if she knew I was the one who caused it.
“Adele’s not here today. I can tell her you came by?”
I could have told her that Adele was just around the corner at the tearoom, but I figured that if Adele wanted people to know where she was, she would have told them herself.
“Oh well. I could have sworn she told me she was working today.” She slowly pulled off her cardigan, arching her back unnecessarily. “Silly me.”
“You could try texting her,” I said.
“I’ll do just that.” She swung the sweater over her shoulder, and walked away.
It took me a moment to register what I’d just seen. “Hey!”
She paused just before the doorway and looked back.
I ran around the counter. “You have . . .”
“I have?”
I hesitated, and she walked out the door.
A mark on your arm . . .
“Wait!” I yelled, grabbing my peacoat from behind the counter—the keys were in the pocket.
She had a mark on her arm. And she’d wanted me to see it.
By the time I got the door locked, she was turning the corner.
“Where are you off to?” I yelled.
She looked back. “That depends. Where are you off to?”
Oh Jesus. Everything about this girl screams trouble.
I caught up with her, telling myself I’d just be a few minutes and that no one else would be coming into the café anyway. “I’m Isaac.”
“Isaac Thompson. Son of the infamous Norwood Thompson. The one who’s going to fix the city, right?”
I barely nodded.
“I’m Annabelle.” She held out her hand. Her skin was like silk, but she shook with authority. “Annabelle Lee Drake.” Her fingers slowly slid against mine when she pulled away, beckoning me to follow her—and also telling me to tread with caution if I didn’t want to be in the doghouse again.
“So, how do you know Adele?” I asked.
We passed an oyster house, a hat shop, and a grocer’s, all closed. She still didn’t answer.
I probed. “Just from school?”
“Adele’s the best, isn’t she?” Buried deep under all of her sweetness, there was something patronizing about her tone. “I’m sorry about NOSA, but I’m so glad Adele got transferred uptown, or we’d have never met and become such good friends—”
“No offense, Annabelle, but I know about all of my girlfriend’s good friends. Who are you?”
“I think the question you’re trying to ask is, Are you a witch?”
My feet planted.
She glanced back, smiling, her head cocked slightly to the right, as if it was the most normal thing to say to a guy she’d just met. She continued to walk, and her stride stretched a tiny bit longer, and so did her smile when I caught up. I’d never spoken to anyone besides Adele and Désirée about witch stuff, and I had the feeling that talking about magic to the only girl on the planet who could make a school uniform look good was a bad idea.
“Yeah,” I said, “maybe that’s what I meant.”
“Then maybe I should be asking who you are.”
“I’m someone whose name you knew before we met! And whose café you came into.”
Her arms crossed.
“Fine.” I shoved my jacket sleeve up my arm and unbuttoned my shirt cuff, revealing the mark.
One of her eyebrows lifted. “We are kindred spirits . . .”
It was a pretty docile reaction compared to what I was feeling. She can see it. Someone can see it. I’m not going crazy.
“Have Adele and Désirée gotten their Maleficiums yet?” she asked, walking from the slate sidewalk to the middle of the street and continuing down the road. It’s not like there was any traffic to hold up.
I ignored her question and followed, starting to wonder if she was leading us somewhere in particular or if we were just wandering.
“I heard,” she said, “that if your Maleficium doesn’t surface by the birthday after your Elemental, you lose your magic forever—even your memories of it. You just slip back into the mundane as if it never happened.”
“What? My what? How do you know all of this?”
“How do you not know? You’re a witch with a Maleficium, so you’ve clearly come into your Spektral magic. It can’t be your Astral if you’re really as green as you’re making yourself out to be.”
“Spektral magic?”
“Oh, you really are like a little puppy.” She paused, turned to me, and touched my face. “Can I keep you?”
I pushed her hand away and kept walking. I already hate this girl.
She fell into step next to me. “Spektral magic is your secondary power,” she explained as we walked past antique shops and art galleries and jewelry shops—all closed until further notice. “The one that comes after you’ve mastered your Elemental.”
“I—I don’t have a secondary power.” I tried to feel like I wasn’t following her around like a lost child.
“Sure you do—otherwise you wouldn’t be able to see your mark. And you sure as hell wouldn’t be able to see mine.”
My phone buzzed. I pulled it from my pocket without taking my eyes off her, like she might vanish before I was able to shake her down.
My eyes flicked to the message:
Adele 14:48 ISAAC! Did u seriously not notice anything weird about Callis?
She huffed as if in disbelief that something could possibly be more important than our conversation. I quickly banged out an answer, debating whether I should mention the perhaps-a-little-too-coincidental Annabelle encounter.
Isaac 14:49 What’s NOT weird about the guy? I actually thought he was a vamp at first.
Adele 14:49 Wow. Okay. No. By the way, found out about ur arm <3
When I looked back up, Annabelle was already walking off. I dropped my phone back in my coat pocket and ran to catch up.
“Hey, Annabelle, did you by any chance talk to Adele about the Maleficiums?”
“No. I wanted to, but she ran off before I had the chance.”
Hmm. “So back to this Spektral power?”
“It’s not like the
universe would give a witch all their magic at once. You have to earn it, prove you’re worthy before moving on to the next stage. Your Maleficium, your mark, is like Mother Nature’s way of initiating you. If you never earn your mark, it all fades away and you just become an extraspecial mundane person. A tycoon, a street-corner psychic, a cancer curer, a prolific artist—you know, someone extraordinary but not magical.”
“Is your whole family magical? Like Dee’s?”
“Hardly. I’ve pretty much been on my own.”
“Then how do you know all this?”
“Oh. I—I guess I’ve just picked things up here or there. At first it was freaky. For a while I just thought I was really . . . persuasive. I was already used to getting my way, but then after my sixteenth birthday, if I wanted something, all I had to do was . . . ask. It didn’t matter if it was a teacher. My parents. Thurston. I borrowed a car from a cop once, just because.”
“That’s kinda rad.”
“I know! It was extra hard for me to tell I was coming into my magic, because there are no physical signs of Elemental magic for Aether witches.”
“You’re an Aether witch?”
She held out her arm so I could see her mark, a black circle with line work that matched mine. “Aether.”
I pushed my sleeve back up and held my wrist out to her. The marks were in the exact same spots on our forearms. “Air.”
“I’ve never met an Air witch.”
I pulled a breeze around her head until her long red hair stood straight up, causing her to “Eep!”
I twirled my finger into a spiral, and the breeze gently twisted her hair into a crown on top of her head, something I’d practiced on Adele a bunch of times. I figured Annabelle would take it down straight away, but instead she just slowly spun around with her arms out, letting the remaining magical breeze brush over her face.
“That’s so cool. You can actually control the wind . . .”
When we hit the edge of the Quarter at Canal Street, we turned back around and kept walking the way we came.
“So, are you in a coven?” she asked. “Or anything like that?”
Avert.
“Wait, if you have your mark,” I said, “then you must have your Spektral power.”
The store behind her, which sold stripper clothes, suddenly came into view through her chest. I blinked, and she literally disappeared before my eyes.
“That is effing—you can evaporate?”
A hand swept slowly across my jaw. “Invisibility,” she said, her voice soft.
“That is so crazy.”
“It’s not that crazy,” she said as she reappeared. “For a witch.” She smiled again, but this time like a normal girl, no smirk or hidden agenda.
“Yeah, I guess it’s no crazier than being able to change into a bird.”
“No way.”
Without much thought, I grabbed her hand and pulled her into an alleyway next to a shop that sold antique swords and coins.
Even though there wasn’t a soul around, I looked both ways down the narrow passage and then up to all the windows overlooking the alley.
When it seemed clear, I walked backward into a darker, danker area. She crossed her arms, giving me a questioning look.
Then I sprinted back toward her and leaped into the air, wings spread, and swooped up over her head.
“That is so cool!” she yelled as I soared up into the sky.
I zoomed down the length of the alley, out to the street, and circled back. And then dove again, landing on the ground in front of her.
“You can fly!” she yelped as I retook human form.
“Yeah, I guess it’s part of my Elemental magic.”
She was jittering with excitement when we walked back out to the street, heading toward the café. “Have you ever met another witch of your kind?”
“Another Air witch? No. Just Adele, and Dee.” I didn’t feel like I was breaking code, because she’d mentioned them first. She already knew they were witches.
Is it possible that I just found a descendant? My fingers raged with prickly sensations as I tried not to freak out. I turned the corner, and she followed, and suddenly we weren’t just wandering. She knew it, and I knew it, even if I didn’t want to admit it to myself. I was leading us.
Observe.
Witch? Check. Aether? Check. Cosette Monvoisin was a beauty, and this girl definitely fits that bill . . . Might not be an actual correlation, but, check. I walked faster. She kept up.
I had an idea.
Adapt.
We turned another corner. There was a very easy way to test Annabelle’s ancestry. Take her to the mother of all invisibility spells. It wasn’t like I’d let her in the house or tell her our secrets; I just wanted to see what would happen if I slipped through to the other side of the spell.
My confidence grew as we walked two more blocks, but when the brothel was within view, fear knocked against my chest. Bad. This is a bad idea, Isaac. What if your plan works? Then what?
I ignored my own questions, too overwhelmed by the prospect of finding the next descendent. I could already envision myself telling Adele and how happy she’d be. She and Dee were so hell-bent on putting the rest of the coven together. They want this.
We closed in on the gate.
Abort. Abort. Abort. Walk past it, Isaac.
But my gut told me she was one of us.
Then, for once in my life, I did the smart thing: I disengaged and readapted the plan. I kept walking.
Internally, I breathed a sigh of relief, knowing I’d just averted disaster. And most likely a huge fight with Adele.
Annabelle stopped.
Shit.
She looked up at me. “Do you feel that?”
“Feel what?” I stuffed my hands into my coat pockets.
“I know you can feel it too.”
She took two steps to the left, then two steps backward, as if playing some magical game of Hot and Cold. “What is that feeling?” she asked me again. “That magic.”
“I—I don’t know.”
“You’re lying. You brought me here because you wanted me to feel it, just like I wanted you to see my mark.”
In a split-second decision, I walked up to the gate and grabbed the handle. “Wait right here,” I said.
“Oooooookay.”
I passed through the gate, closed it behind me, and while pacing back and forth behind it, blurted out, “I think spirits have been contacting me. Guiding me. Something? I heard them say my name.” I peered through the vine-wrapped bars at her, heart pounding.
“See.” She smiled. “The universe is giving you your next gift.”
“You—you heard all that?”
She raised an eyebrow.
I gripped the two bars framing my face. “Does that mean you can see me too?”
“I’m the one with the Spektral invisibility, not you.” She gripped the bars just above my hands and slowly stroked the iron, twisting her hands up and down. Fascination washed over her face, making my pulse accelerate.
She dragged her gaze from her left hand to her right and then met mine. “What is this place?” She was smiling, but her eyes shone with fear, her voice practically a whisper.
It was just how I felt around my own family’s magic at the convent. I wanted to tell her she didn’t have to be scared. She deserves to know about her own magic.
Dominate.
“It’s a spell,” I said quickly, before I lost my nerve. “An invisibility spell, with a few enhancements on our part. I’m guessing you feel it so strongly because . . . it belongs to you.”
“I didn’t cast this spell.”
“No, it was originally cast by another Aether witch.”
“What happened to her?”
“She died.”
Her eyes pulsed.
“Sorry! In like the 1700s. And I think you inherited the spell.”
The fear in her eyes turned to rapture. “Witches inherit spells?”
And
then I was the one smiling. “I guess I’m not as green as you think.”
“Well?” she said. “Are you going to let me in?”
CHAPTER 24
Fourth Time’s a Charm
Customers came in and out of the tearoom, some locals, some having traveled from outlying cities to ask questions about their fate. Chatham hung in the background, stocking shelves and rearranging merchandise, but really I think he was listening in, watching as Callis taught me how to fill out the forms for astrological birth charts.
“The information provided has to be precise,” Callis said. “An incorrect hour can throw an entire chart off.”
Chatham’s partner, Edgar, came out from the hallway, kimono trailing. “Darling!” he said with Ren-level enthusiasm. “How have I only now been able to greet you on your first day?”
He pulled me into his arms, and I got a big whiff of his rose-scented chest.
“Because you’re more popular than Madonna around here, Mr. Ed,” I said, squeezing him back.
“Adele, how many times do I have to tell you, Mr. Ed was a horse, of course. My nose isn’t that big.”
Callis chuckled in the background.
It was so nice being around people instead of being by myself at the café, I bobbed back and forth between not wanting them to go away and wanting to get Callis alone so I could interrogate him, especially about these marks. Excitement bubbled as I thought about telling Isaac.
The phone rang, and Callis answered. After a quick greeting, he processed a credit card transaction and looked at Chatham. “A Ms. Nora Murphy on the line for a tarot reading.”
“Thank you, sir,” Chatham said, and slipped into his booth for the phone reading.
“Would you like some tea?” I asked Edgar.
“Only if you’ll drink it with me.”
I made a pot of vanilla chai rooibos, and he sashayed to the front with the sugar and faux cream. We sipped tea at the table by the window while he explained the differences between palm readings, tea-leaf readings, and dream consultations.
I tried to listen attentively and not obsess over the other witch in the room, but I kept sneaking glances at Callis, who was polishing brass chalices, the faint chemical smell mixing with the floral incense burning on the fireplace mantel. Is he a descendant?
