Spellbooks and Sleepovers

by Amanda A. Allen

  He knew Maeve well, and Scarlett liked to see the concern on his face.

  “I wouldn’t have thought that Maeve would have gotten involved with something like this,” Lex said. He had already checked the pulses of several of the girls.

  “Slumber parties are a vicious game when you’re 12, Lex,” Scarlett said.

  He snorted, but he had no idea about the power and meanness of a pre-teen girl. They were vicious beasts by nature. Scarlett could remember some things she’d said and done at the same age, and she had been considered nice. That being said, remembering made her wince.

  Scarlett tried shaking Maeve awake again. When that didn’t work, she tried another girl and then gave up to see if she could figure out another way to snap the spell closed. She tried blowing out the candles, but they wouldn’t go out. She’d tried flipping the ouija board, but it seemed cemented to the ground.

  “Lex,” Scarlett said. He was sorting out the girls and laying them out into a line.

  “Scarlett,” there was something in his tone that had her looking up at him.

  “The energy of these girls…except for Maeve…I’m worried.”

  Scarlett took another look, but she couldn’t see what he was seeing. Then she pulled her nature magic into her and realized that none of the others were connected to the nature here except for Maeve. There was one other druid girl—Amy? Annie? Scarlett couldn’t remember, but she hadn’t been channeling the nature around her. Maybe her talents were in another direction? Or she just wasn’t very good? Maeve worked hard and, not to be arrogant, but the Oakens were some of the most accomplished druids in Mystic Cove. It wouldn’t be surprising that someone so young still needed help connecting.

  “I suspect that Maeve is better off because of her connection to the old trees outside.”

  “Well, for the other girls…” Again there was something in his tone, and her heart clenched in her chest.

  “Are they in danger?”

  “We need to move fast, Scarlett. Or we’re going to lose them.” He pulled out his phone, glanced at the screen, and said, “And we’re on our own.”

  Chapter 3

  “Lose them?” She knew what he meant, of course, but these were her sister’s friends. They were just kids. By the stars, no. She and Lex were going to find another way. They were going to find a way, and they were going to make this right, and then they were going to smack the back of some stupid children’s heads.

  Lex just nodded once—one time for what they faced—and then tried to blow out the candles. They sputtered, and she realized he must be using his warlock talents. It wasn’t enough against the might of these little girls working together. They were idiots. But they were powerful young things.

  “You can’t break through whatever they did?”

  He shook his head. It turned out he didn’t have one of those lazy, macho shrugs for this.

  “I can try a druid thing, but I can’t see their energy like you. I’d only be able to trace Maeve. I’m not sure that’ll show us what they did.”

  Lex crossed to the book on the floor and tried to pick up the book. He was no more successful than Scarlett had been.

  “We need to check around and see what they did. There might be some clues that will keep us from being sucked into whatever it was.”

  “You think we could get trapped too?”

  “Yeah,” Lex added, “I do. This isn’t druid magic. It doesn’t work the same way.”

  Scarlett gave Lex an unamused look.

  “I’m not trying to be a jerk, Scarlett. I just… don’t know what you know about this stuff.”

  She paused, realized that her exhaustion was making her rude and said, “I’m sorry. I don’t know about this. I only know about druidry.”

  Lex nodded and then said, “Well… the warlock in me says we need to assess what’s happening around here. One of these girls has to have engineered whatever this is. If we can figure that out, we might be able to reverse it.”

  Scarlett wanted to argue, but she decided not to. Instead, she said, “Well… it’s whoever lives here, of course. And probably her best friend.”

  “It could easily be any one of them.”

  “No,” Scarlett said, shaking her head and she couldn’t help but laugh. “They’re 12 and 13. They don’t go to the bathroom alone.”

  Lex’s brows rose, but he didn’t argue. Scarlett patted him on the shoulder as she passed him to the stairs.

  The basement was just a massive family room. It was too open for whatever shenanigans these kids had been up to. Scarlett climbed the stairs, glanced at the passed-out parents, and kept going. A part of her wanted to call them fools, but she’d discovered Luna had been nursing orphaned opossums in her bedroom weeks after Luna had started. The truth was…parents rode the child train and hoped the kid didn’t crash it.

  Lex was behind her, but he didn’t say anything as they passed the parents. She had to wonder what he thought not being a parent. Was he one of those people who thought, never my kid… Or perhaps he was just thinking, thank goodness I don’t have kids.

  She wasn’t going to ask him right then, but she did wonder. They were… sort of dating… and sort of just friends. It was all weird, and none of it mattered right then.

  “Have you heard from Gus?”

  Scarlett shook her head. She opened the first door, found a master bedroom, bypassed it for what was clearly a little boy’s room and then another which had pink, striped wallpaper. The walls were covered in posters and there was a desk with a vanity mirror and mounds of makeup.

  “This is it,” Scarlett said.

  Lex followed Scarlett inside. He glanced around and then said, “It isn’t going to be out in the open.”

  “Are you sure it isn’t all downstairs?”

  Lex shrugged and then said, “If we can figure out what they’re doing, it’ll make breaking in easier. We need to double check, just in case.”

  That made sense to Scarlett, but her sister was in trouble, and Scarlett was pretty sure she could at least break Maeve away. But… what if that put the others in greater danger? Maeve and Scarlett would be unable to forgive themselves if only Maeve survived because Scarlett’s emotions won out over logic.

  Scarlett reflected for a moment trying to think of her own hiding places, but she hadn’t had much to hide. She might have been rude here and there, but in a lot of ways, she was an ideal teen. Well, except for the whole disappearing right after high school and setting aside all of the traditions of her family thing.

  She glanced under the bed, found it was actually clean and reassessed. The makeup told Scarlett this kid wasn’t clean by nature which meant the mom had been cleaning.

  “The hiding place can’t be obvious,” Scarlett said.

  “Yes obviously,” Lex said. He wasn’t being mean, but his look said that she seemed to be saying something anyone would know.

  “Her mom cleans her room,” Scarlett said, “The fool. But anyway… look at the bed. It’s perfect. But the makeup is a mess. Under the bed doesn’t have anything, but there’s an outfit flung across the bed. This kid is stupid spoiled, but any mom this hands-on would read the kid’s journal.”

  Lex frowned and glanced towards all the things Scarlett had pointed out.

  “I wouldn’t have realized that,” Lex said, and she had to love him a little bit for so easily giving credit. His ego didn’t get in the way of interacting with others.

  He looked into the closet again while Scarlett rummaged through the makeup. Given the brands she was seeing, this girl was stupid, stupid spoiled. She’d just set aside a YSL foundation and shuffled past some Urban Decay eyeshadow palettes. Anyone who loved makeup would recognize those were luxury brands. She doubted the kid was paying for the makeup with babysitting money which meant either her allowance was way too high or one of her parents could be manipulated with batting of lashes or a solid whine.

  “I don’t care for this kid,” Scarlett said. It wasn’t the makeup so much as
the cost of the makeup compared to the setup of the house. She bet this kid’s parents struggled to provide those things… or the kid was a thief.

  Lex glanced over and kept dumping over shoes and pulling out dresser drawers to see if anything was taped underneath or behind them.

  There was nothing in the makeup drawers except things that most preteens could only dream about. She followed Lex’s example and searched behind the drawers. That didn’t work, so she peeked under and behind the vanity. There was a box of tampon, and Scarlett glanced through them looking for something hidden inside, but it was just a normal box.

  “She’s sneaky,” Scarlett said, sighing. If this had been Harper, whatever she’d been up to would have been out in the open—like a dare. But, of course, their mom, Maye, would never have dug through Harper’s things. If this had been Scarlett, there would have been nothing to find. If this had been Maeve… Scarlett rose and tried to glance around, searching for what Maeve would do. Maeve had secrets.

  Lots of them, Scarlett thought. She was a veil that no one had quite been able to get past. But, if she looked at this room through Maeve’s eyes… Scarlett realized she still didn’t have any idea of where to look or what to do. Maeve had money from when her sister had stolen from the drug dealers who’d killed Bridget. Maeve had been suspended and hadn’t told anyone what had happened. Maye knew, but only because the principal had told her. Maeve connected with the druid circle, but she somehow kept her center blurred.

  Lex glanced at Scarlett and then asked, “What are you doing?”

  “Trying to think of where Maeve would hide it.”

  “Maeve is smarter than this kid, Scarlett. I found a phone that this kid clearly stole given that it’s hidden and someone else’s picture is the screen saver…Maeve wouldn’t be stupid enough to put something that can be tracked in a sock roll.”

  “I can’t decide if that’s better or worse,” Scarlett said, as she lifted the girl’s mattress, found nothing, and remade the bed.

  “It’s better,” Lex said flatly. “You can’t outgrow stupid. Maeve’ll be fine.”

  Scarlett envisioned the lifeless form of her sister downstairs, barely breathing, non-reactive and prayed he was right. She had to admit she was sure he was. If they couldn’t save the other girls, Scarlett was still going to snap her sister out of that spell. The delay was to give them all a chance. She followed the trail of tree magic from the outside that Maeve had connected to and examined her sister magically. She was… perhaps… a little weaker. Something in the tree magic caught her attention, and Scarlett considered before letting her mind go blank and hoping the knowing would kick in. As her mind went blank, she realized it was like catching the scent of something you recognized but couldn’t quite place. Or perhaps what she was feeling was some sort of magical deja vu.

  “By the stars!” Scarlett said. She dropped to her knees and let the magic flow into her.

  “What?”

  “There’s a druid circle outside trying to give us power. They must know what this is…”

  “Can they tell you?”

  Scarlett glanced over, and her glance must have been irritated.

  “So, you’re not psychic?”

  “Druids can’t read each other’s minds. Not even when we link as a circle.”

  “You all seem so… like the chick elf in Fellowship of the Ring.”

  Scarlett laughed and then said, “That’s the knowing. The knowing is like a whisper of possibility in your mind. You have to pay attention and learn to recognize it, and it isn’t a guarantee.”

  “It sounds useless,” Lex said.

  Scarlett considered for a moment and then gave him one of his shrugs. It was impossible to explain the power of the knowing.

  “The power of the druids,” Lex countered, “Is in how you work together.”

  She shrugged again. She wasn’t sure she disagreed, but she also didn’t want to sidestep the knowing.

  She just wasn’t sure what to do with the power they were giving her. Should she try to break the spell? What would that do to those girls? She wasn’t even sure that she could break the spell with what was being offered. She wasn’t in the circle and they were sending the power through whatever barrier had been placed on this house.

  “We need to figure out what to do with that power,” Lex said. He opened the closet door again and started searching through bags that were neatly placed on the shelf. Three bags later, and he was pulling out a purple leather journal.

  “No way,” Scarlett said. She didn’t think she’d have looked there. She’d have tried the places movies showed… like behind the vent plate or in the tampon box.

  Lex glanced up, grinned, and shrugged that arrogant shrug before he flipped to the end of the journal.

  “It’s a spook spell. The idiots. Don’t they know the magic behind Halloween?”

  “I don’t know what any of that means…”

  “They were trying to send a ghost to haunt someone,” Lex said.

  Scarlett’s eyes narrowed and she couldn’t wait to wake those girls up and slap them about the head. That was so mean. She wanted to smack Maeve but knew she needed to leave parenting to their mom. At least mostly.

  “What does that mean for us?”

  “It’s a hard spell to break,” Lex said. “I don't know if we can do it. With a circle of them against us?” He shook his head and shrugged, but there was nothing lazy about that movement of his shoulders.

  “Is there a kid being haunted right now?”

  Lex’s face said that was all too likely.

  She tried to tell herself puffy cloud thoughts, but she was experiencing the fury of the east wind.

  “We don’t break the spell,” Scarlett told him. “What if we break the circle?”

  “The circle is where their strength is,” Lex said. “We’re not that strong.”

  “But they are,” Scarlett said. “We’ll peel them away one at a time.”

  She rose and headed back down the stairs, feeling that breaking them apart was the best thing to do.

  “I hope you can make them do community service or something for this,” she told him as she glanced back. “They don’t just get to shake this off. Whoever is being haunted certainly won’t shake it off. Man…as if bullying through Facebook wasn’t bad enough.”

  Chapter 4

  “What do you need to snap Maeve out of that circle?”

  Scarlett glanced up at him and then reached down, put her hand on Maeve’s shoulder, and accepted the magic the druids outside were giving her. It wasn’t as much as the circle in here, but… she didn’t need enough to break the circle in here, she needed enough to find Maeve and pull her out. As each person was peeled away, the circle wouldn’t be wrong enough to power the spell.

  “Given that they’re passed out, they’re probably in their dreamscapes. If that’s the case, I can use the druid meditation to find them. It’s sort of how I might be able to persuade them to…exit one at a time.”

  Lex nodded and said, “Do it. We can’t break the spell until it has been weakened.”

  “Hey,” Scarlett said. She projected puffy cloud thoughts into Maeve’s mind and then let the roots that were being woven between them since they’d become family come into play. They were friends and linked through their love and their history—short as it was. They were linked through being part of the same druidic circle, and their roots were cinched tighter because of that link. But what made the link between Scarlett and Maeve truly solid was the way they’d chosen and recognized each other as family. It hadn’t mattered that they weren’t blood family. It hadn’t mattered that they weren’t raised together. Their souls recognized each other and that was enough.

  “Hey,” Scarlett said again. In her mind, she was in a dark forest. It was Maeve’s forest, and the trees seemed to whisper and mourn for Maeve’s first family, her sister, and mother. Scarlett wanted to drop to her knees and feed love into the trees, but she couldn’t. Somewhere in Mystic Cove
another 12-year-old was being terrorized. Maeve didn’t get coddling when she was contributing to that.

  There was also the whole circle of mean little girls slowly dying because they hadn’t the skill to do the bullying they were attempting. Of course, they did have the skill, just not enough to keep themselves safe at the same time.

  “Hey,” Scarlett said and she focused her will until she whooshed through the grove in Maeve’s mind, trying to find her sister wherever she was hiding in her own mind.

  “Hey,” Scarlett said, calling, “It’s Scarlett, Maeve.”

  If anything, the forest seemed darker… shame… Scarlett thought. Shame at what they’d done.

  “Maeve,” Scarlett called, “I get it. Please come back.”

  There was a rush of wind but no reply.

  “Maeve,” Scarlett said, “It’s time to druid up and stop this. Until you come out, we can’t stop what’s happening to that girl.”

  The wind went still.

  “I tried to stop it,” Maeve said. “I tried to pull out of the circle when I realized it was working.”

  Scarlett couldn’t see her sister, but she knew she was near. Of course she was, though, they were inside of Maeve’s mind.

  “Take my hand,” Scarlett said.

  Maeve stepped out from behind an ancient and twisted tree, but she didn’t meet Scarlett’s eyes. It took her too long to reach out, but as soon as she did, Scarlett used the power given to her by the druid circle and their connection and yanked her sister out of the spell-circle.

  Scarlett opened her eyes and glanced down at her sister who’s lashes fluttered and then she rolled over and puked on the girl next to her. Maeve gagged for several minutes before she stopped heaving and sat up.

  While her sister was puking, the house rumbled as the spellers who’d woven the spell quaked.

  “That was horrible,” Maeve said.

  “Suck it up,” Scarlett said gently, pushing back Maeve’s hair. “Let’s get the other druid girl.”