Hallow Graves

by Amanda A. Allen

  My mother looked like a chunky suburban housewife. Hazel looked like a sleek grandma. The type who would take you shopping for fantastic shoes rather than baking cookies. Back home, Ingrid, Saffron, and Emily—some of the younger witches of the coven were each gorgeous in their way. But they sure didn’t look like they’d be strapping on striped tights and a pointed hat.

  I supposed I looked like a typical college student. Somewhat athletic, ponytailed, slightly tilted dark eyes, and thick dark hair. I looked nothing like my mother or father.

  But that didn’t matter to the witches testing me. They asked me to light candles with my mind, and then to read ten spells off the cuff out of an unfamiliar spellbook. While I did, they judged my ability to make those spells work. Their judgment was silent except for the scritch-scratch of their pencils against yellow legal pads.

  When I left, I asked, “When will I get my results?”

  “Two days, can’t lollygag can we? Enrollment starts soon. Have you decided on a course of study?”

  “I love potions and brewing,” I said, “And I have been very interested in Dream Magic and Illuting.”

  Their gazes met, wordlessly, before they turned to me.

  “Is that all?”

  “Well,” and that studious, witch nerd came out, the one Bran called my inner Hermione, and I might have gushed, “I love learning spellcraft. I’m interested in lots of different pieces of magic. The history of, spell construction, spell languages…flying.”

  The man, who had a terrible poker face, paused. I couldn’t read his expression, but something was up.

  “What about shifting,” the woman asked.

  But that wasn’t her question.

  I shrugged.

  “Or necromancy,” the man asked. He had introduced himself at Martin Hallow. Of the bigwig that Felix had talked about. The Hallow family was…what had it been? Something. But whatever they were…what these two wanted to know about me was whether I was interested in Necromancy. Dr. Hallow had given the game away, and the woman shot him a disgusted look. But they both turned interested eyes to me for my answer.

  “It’s true that one of the spells you tested me on was necromancy,” I said carefully. My poker face was much better than both of theirs.

  “It’s an inherited gift,” Dr. Hallow said. “You did well.”

  “I guess,” my tone was entirely of an unconcerned teenager and not the person who I was, “It’s never been a thing in my family.”

  The man coughed. And the woman’s face blanked. Well, that was a disturbing reaction. I was missing something.

  “Did you need anything else,” I asked brightly. I swung my ponytail deliberately bouncy as I dropped my messenger bag over my shoulder.

  “No, no,” Dr. Hallow said. “Have a lovely day.”

  “Is there a place I can use the internet without a laptop? I guess the library’s closed…”

  “Ah,” Dr. Hallow gave me a knowing look and asked, “Missing Facebook?”

  “Tumblr.” I gave them the self-deprecating grin they expected.

  “Sorry, love,” Dr. Hallow said.

  I did not tell him what I thought of his pet name. I did not inform him that spellwork such as mine did not happen when one was addicted to the internet. Nor did I tell him that I was researching a potentially deadly spell that had been used against me the night before. I didn’t know what was happening, but I was starting to feel as if I’d missed the first act of a play and was coming in without any of the setup.

  “Okay,” I kept the bright tone. I needed those scores to be good. No need to piss him off. Yet.

  * * *

  Chapter 4

  In the eleven sections of the pentacle, I put the arcane runes that worked best for my magic. It was yet another skill set that my mother had put in my arsenal. I had learned it long before our coven leader, Hazel, had started to work with me. And I could do it perfectly. As soon as I was done, I wove an illusion and inverted it so that it would be apparent to only those who knew of magic already. A starry sky formed overhead with the moon appearing according to the actual phase of the moon. Next came a reflection of a grove of willow trees—like at home. I could only do this so fast because it was an illusion I’d created time and again in my own room at home.

  This type of magic, I thought to myself, is called Illuting. Should I go ahead and use the right name? Or was that super dorky? I had used it with the testers. Anxiety flooded the back of my mind, but I refused to focus on it.

  I added the forms necessary for the wind and smells from the island. As soon as I was finished, it seemed that I was sitting in a duplicate of my study room at home down to the scent of a salty ocean breeze on the air.

  “You’re better than I would have thought,” Felix said. Somehow, he’d cracked the door open on my work room and had been watching me without my noticing.

  My eyes narrowed as his examined me as if he were considering something. Peeking on someone was a nasty thing to do. Peeking on someone who hadn’t gone running in two days was asking to be punched right in the man sack.

  I waited, but he didn’t explain. He made himself at home. He flopped into the one chair the work room had and watched me work.

  As he crossed his legs, he said, “You’ve done this one before.”

  He meant the illusion, and I nodded.

  “Even an expert couldn’t illute something this detailed so fast unless they’d done it over and over again.”

  There’s my answer. If Felix used the right name, I would too. I released myself from the pentacle and stepped forward. The pentacle, of course, was a symbol of boundaries in magic. The sign itself meant nothing. It was a focus device.

  “Cool,” Felix said. “What else can you do?”

  We spent the afternoon making a couple of potions and making the sky I’d created overhead change colors and form the stars as they would be over St. Angelus rather than the San Juan Islands. We were in the same hemisphere, so the stars were only slightly different, but it made me sad to see them change.

  “You can have pets, you know. This is witch college after all.”

  I didn’t know.

  “It is not, however, Hogwarts.” His tone was friendly, but his eyes were kind of serious. I decided to pay attention. He might not be so bad. He was pretty good at potions. But despite being a Junior and I lowly Freshman, I was better. My mother again. Let alone my coven leader who was almost as much of a perfectionist as me.

  “What are you saying,” I asked, leaning back against the wall.

  “Get a cat. Or a bird. Don’t show up with an owl or a bat. Or, Hecate forbid, a toad.”

  “I like bats,” I said.

  “And bats like not to be in cages.”

  He wasn’t wrong. I nodded.

  “There’s a book in the bookstore. Animal Companions for Witches. You should read it before you decide. There’s even a way of helping you find the right one.”

  “Thanks, Felix,” I said as I walked back to my room. He had plans. I wasn’t invited. Loneliness overwhelmed me as I went into my room. I needed my sister. Man, I was a wuss. Probably the other college freshman wouldn’t come to school and then cry themselves to sleep for their family. I even missed my mother.

  Girl up, I told myself. But I wasn’t going to cry, and I couldn’t go running, so I pulled my spell books towards me and decided to shine the floor and get rid of the mildew scent, and possibly bend light into my dorm room to make it feel brighter and less like it was the doorway to hell.

  *

  It took days for Felix to talk to me again. My roommate hadn’t arrived yet. But other Freshmen and a few upper class-men had shown up on campus. Felix was the only upper class-man in the dorms so far. He’d eventually take over DMing just the fourth floor—where I was housed. I guessed that all witch students were housed together. I both tried and failed to get a job. I had spent days working spells and making potions and wishing I could wander the campus, lonelier than I had known was possible.
>
  I missed my coven like a pain in the side. I missed the smell of salt on the air and the sound of my sister’s laugh. I missed every single thing about home and felt as though I had been kicked out of my home rather than having fled. I had not had any success in discovering which spell left a black flame residue.

  “Have you taken your placement tests yet?” It was Felix, and he’d asked as I passed him in the hall.

  I nodded.

  “Just kidding. I knew you had. Login and get your scores.”

  I stared for a moment and then did as he asked. He had the aura of someone who had a scheme in mind. There was very little about him that was assuring or mentor-like for a person who was supposed to be that. How exactly did he get this job?

  I used his computer since I hadn’t purchased mine yet. My scores were incomprehensible except for things like French. French had me at French102. Not a surprise. I’d taken it in high school for all four years, but our teacher was horrible. The classes I’d tested into matched the classes in the catalog. But what about these other scores for BM, DM, IM…

  The M must be for magics. But what about the codes? The numbers were 571A, 818A. It was incomprehensible to me, but his eyes widened.

  “Is that good?”

  “Yup…” Felix got the considering look again, and then he said, “You’re good at magic—probably better than most who graduate from school here.”

  Now my eyes widened. Hazel had told me I was good. I knew my Mother’s requirements for what Bran and I learned left the other coven parents shaking their heads. But, I hadn’t expected that I would score that well.

  “How are your morals?”

  I stared at him.

  “There’s a blackmarket of spells, my darling whelp,” he said. “I have connections, you have abilities. We could be an interesting team.” He caressed his beard and waggled his brows. He paused when his phone buzzed and he pulled it out to read the message, eyes raising. But he slid it back into his pocket, leaned against the doorway and examined me.

  I prevented myself from asking him if he’d showered since I’d last seen him. Instead, I asked, “Consequences?”

  “Probably not expulsion. The key is to have no idea what the purchaser is using the spells for. A little love spell is of no harm when it is used to spice things up with your girlfriend. Other uses would be unsavory. The more likely the spell to get us into trouble, however, the higher we charge. There is, of course, the most important consequence.”

  “And what is that?”

  “Money. I don’t DM because I love you Bright Young Things, I do it because there’s a paycheck and a free room with it. You didn’t get a job this week did you?”

  I shook my head.

  “Everyone is poor here who doesn’t have rich family. You hesitated when you took the work room, so your family isn’t rich either.”

  I didn’t bother to explain my life or my mother. She was something most people would NOT understand. But we weren't exactly poor. Despite the suburban life style.

  “What are we talking here? How much money?”

  “There are classic potions. Ones that go like hotcakes. We need keep-awake potions, love potions, awareness potions, clarity potions. Anything school related. I can get you the spells. 70-30 split.”

  I shook my head and then said, “50-50 after the price of ingredients.”

  “You can’t do this without me.”

  “Neither can you, or you wouldn’t be asking. I’m good. Super good. You said so yourself. If I’m better than most who graduate, then you aren’t because you’re starting your junior year. And I have some killer family spells.”

  He winced dramatically.

  “You’re doing all the sales and all the delivery. I am not going to get into trouble. I have a scholarship, and I’m not losing it.”

  “Sounds to me then that it should be 60-40.”

  “Find someone as good as I am and we’ll re-negotiate.” I opened my trunk and handed him the keep awake potion I’d made before even leaving for school. “I said I have my own family spells. They’re not like adding cinnamon to a standard chocolate chip cookie. They are different, and you aren’t going to find someone who has the same sort of effective arsenal of spells. I don’t think they can be beaten by anyone else’s.” I winced as I used my mother's term for spells, but Felix didn't notice.

  He grinned at me and tossed back the potion. Unfortunately, for him it had been a concentrated dose that should have been taken a few drops at a time in another beverage. I didn’t see the point in explaining since there were no take backs on what he’d done.

  “I got a demand to show up at some DM meeting. There’s a curfew, so don’t leave?”

  I nodded, knowing I was lying.

  “But I told you about the curfew,” he said seeming to know that I was going out. What happened to my poker face?

  I nodded.

  “Remember that. Don’t make me rue the day I met you.”

  My eyes narrowed as he cackled to himself as he left me, jogging down the stairs.

  *

  I am an epic idiot. The moon rose high overhead as I ran through the campus. It was certainly stupid to be out jogging in the middle of the night again, but I hadn’t been able to sleep well since I’d gotten myself to sleep after that first near death experience. And nothing weird had happened since then. It was probably all coincidence. Or something.

  And, I wasn’t jogging in the oak grove, again. I’d taken the path around the lake instead. Sure, it bypassed the edge of the oak grove, but just for a short bit. The path overall was long, and the adrenaline inspired by an over-awareness of my surroundings was making my run all the more effective. I longed for my bed and my room.

  If I hadn’t missed my sister Bran and my Dad with a fierceness that was painful, I wouldn’t have been running. The homesickness was, literally, an ache in my chest and legs. But if I ran fast enough, the pain faded and re-centered in my lungs. That was a familiar pain. Welcome even. If I died, though, it would be their faults. Since I missed them and had to run it off. I would tell them that as I haunted them.

  My feet pounded along the cement path that wound through the ancient oaks, the graveyard, among the giant stone and brick buildings. I should be excited. I was excited. I had dreamed of college forever. And St. Angelus College in Connecticut was my perfect school. Tiny with secret magic programs. I felt bad about leaving my Dad and sister alone with Mother. My mother…man, thinking about her made me feel like I’d escaped from prison. I loved her.

  People love their mothers. But she was a ripe, controlling, jackal of a mother. That was a fact. And I’d been her target for so long. Deliberately drawing her attention after a while. Now that I was away, I needed to be sure to do things to keep her burning with fury towards me so Dad and Bran could escape the focus of her ire. Maybe I should tell her about the black fire experience.

  The echoes of my footfalls were creepy in the dark. Like I was being followed, but of course, that was stupid. I wasn’t being chased this time because someone had tried to kill me last time. Maybe. Probably not. Get back on the horse, Rue.

  This town felt like Sage Island. Small and insular. Safe. With too many people who knew about magic and pretended not to. With covens that reigned in power. I missed my coven too. I hadn’t thought I’d be so homesick.

  The wrong, horrible homesick pain flared in my chest again, and I put on a burst of speed, pushing against the cement path like I was going to launch myself into the air. I ran until the pain hit my legs and back. I wanted to go so fast that it hurt everywhere except the part of my heart where homesickness lived.

  Besides, I wasn’t powerless, I told myself focusing on the underlying creepiness of running alone in the dark rather than the too real pain of missing my home. I was no Coven Elder with decades of learning and practice behind me. But I was good. Really good. Magic burned in my soul, my veins, my fingertips. Sometimes it seemed my hair crackled with it.

  I’d be a coven
leader someday. I was that good. I was well on my way to being super educated. And I wasn’t a cow like my mother. I was a good teacher. Hazel, my coven leader at home, had told me more than once that kindness was the best attribute of a coven elder. A sort of mothering way. You had to have the ability to be both a disciplinarian and a mentor.

  I wasn't kind. But I might learn to be. If I tried. Maybe.

  "What are you doing, Veruca," I asked myself.

  And then answered, "Running around the lake. Like an idiot."

  "Why would you be so stupid," I huffed.

  "Oh you know," I said, pain in my side as I talked and ran. "Because I thought that it would be okay. And I didn't want to think about Daddy and his pancakes tomorrow morning. Or Mother and the list of spells she'd have written down for Bran to choose from. Or Hazel and how she would probably be at her house with the coven coming in and out and the..."

  This wasn't working. Running was giving me too much time to think. And now my homesickness had grown to an ache for both my Mother and Hazel. For my coven. For the blueberry pancakes that Dad made and the traps that Bran left. For car rides we’d take around the island to avoid our mother or the stupid early ocean swims that Bran would talk me into.

  I pulled myself to a stop and looked around, gasping for breath. The green between the buildings faded into an ancient oak grove that was far across the way. The grove was huge. Acres and acres big. And bordered on one side by an old cemetery. They used to bury students and teachers there. But the graveyard had long since been retired. I could see the grove from where I was, through the buildings. I was on the path by the lake which was lit here and there with long stretches of darkness.

  It was creepy. But I needed to re-own my right to run in the dark. Or something. The opportunities for running in the night would soon be lost when the New England winter hit. I wasn’t even sure I was prepared. Had I gotten the right kind of boots? Was my jacket warm enough? Did I need long underwear? Could I formulate or find spells for those things?