“Thanks Peaches, you’re awesome,” I replied. My stomach was rumbling, Greek food sounded great.
“I know,” she winked before practically flying out the door.
“You don’t mind me watching you eat, do you?” Francine asked, and I smiled.
“Of course not. I can’t imagine being able to see and smell food and not being able to taste it.”
“You’re telling me. I can’t wait until we get to destroy the Others, and I can pass on into the next life. Whatever it holds, I hope it involves food.”
“Speaking of the Others,” I said, “what is the plan? I know Grandma Cee says to trust her, but I feel like we’re just treading water here.” The Others had been coming after me since I moved back to Sapphire Village; it was lucky that I had. If I was still living in Miami, unaware of my own magical powers and away from other witches, I would have been a sitting duck.
Aunt Francine shrugged. “I don’t know what she has planned. I haven’t seen her since we all decided that Peaches was living with you. But I’m sure she has something up her sleeve, that old lady always does. Besides, now, the Others have taken the lives and souls of two of her daughters. And not to brag, but I was totally her favorite. Don’t tell Sage I said that.”
I bit my lip to hide a smile. “I won’t. So you think now Grandma Cee will act?”
“For sure,” Aunt Francine nodded. “All jokes aside, they’re coming after her grandchildren. If anything can get Grandma Cee riled up, it’s someone coming after her family.”
“I hope you’re right,” I said.
I made my way back to the computer and started a list of new orders; I was running out of a lot of books.
“Oh, is Vasile going to be here soon?” Aunt Francine asked, and I smiled. Vasile was the vampire–at least, I was ninety-nine percent sure he was a vampire–who owned the wholesaler that supplied the store.
“I was thinking of placing an order this afternoon,” I replied.
“Good, I’ll hang around tomorrow morning, then. I haven’t seen Vasile since my death, and I want to speak with him.”
“Hopefully you don’t have any complaints about the store’s contents,” I told her with a smile, but Aunt Francine waved me away.
“Of course not, I like what you’ve done with it.”
All of a sudden, Peaches rushed back into the store, her face ashen.
“They’re… they’re here. I saw them,” she managed to stammer out before collapsing onto the floor in a dead faint.
I rushed over to my cousin. She was still breathing, thank goodness. I managed to drag her limp body to one of the couches and placed her on it, then raced upstairs to grab her a glass of water. By the time I came back down, she was starting to come to.
“Are you all right?” I asked. “What happened?”
Peaches fixed me with an intense gaze. “I saw them. I saw the Others. They came for me, too.”
Aunt Francine’s ghost rushed over. “Tell us what you saw,” she said in a firm, but kind voice.
Peaches took a few deep breaths and closed her eyes before answering. “I was walking to the Greek place. You know how it’s in that food truck that’s parked in the main parking lot? Well, I decided to cut behind Pickles’ Pizza and take the shortcut through the woods to get there. As soon as I got into the woods, it was like a fog was coming through. Everything seemed a little bit out of focus somehow, and I felt really cold.”
She took another deep breath, then continued. “I knew straight away what it was, from Alice’s descriptions. So I tried to turn around and run back, but it was like I was running in sand. It seemed like the more I fought against it, the slower I went.”
“So how did you get away?” I asked. She looked at me sheepishly.
“To be honest it was almost more of an accident than anything. I knew that I had no choice but to use my magic, so I tried a spell that would make them visible, since that was what Alice had done and it worked really well.”
“What happened instead?” I asked. Peaches was really nice and all, but her magic had a tendency to be a little bit, well, random. The spells that came from her were very, very rarely the spell she was actually aiming for.
“It was like the sun brightened a thousand times over. I had to close my eyes, I couldn’t see anything at all. It was so hot, I thought I was going to burn to death right then and there. But then I heard a wail. It was horrible, worse than any sound I’d ever heard before.” She shivered.
“I closed my eyes. I thought I was going to die. And when I opened them again, they were gone. I broke the spell, and everything went back to normal. I don’t know what I did, or what happened, but I’m not dead. I ran back here as fast as I could.”
She took the glass of water I offered with trembling hands and took a sip, which seemed to relax her. “It looks like they’re not only coming after Alice anymore.”
“This is serious,” Aunt Francine said. “One of you text Cat. We’re going to have an emergency family meeting today. Now.”
I nodded mutely and grabbed my phone, sending Cat a quick text. I got a reply a minute later that she would be there immediately.
This was definitely not good.
I put the “closed” sign on the front door, along with a note apologizing that a family emergency had come up. I figured it wasn’t a lie; if anything counted as an emergency, my cousin being attacked by a group of unknown soul hunters certainly did.
Cat arrived less than five minutes later, worry etched all over her face. She ran straight over to where Peaches was lying on the couch.
“Are you ok?” she asked, and Peaches nodded. I quickly retold Peaches’ story–she was still pretty pale, and I didn’t want to make her repeat it yet again–and by the time I was finished, Cat’s fists were clenched.
“We need to do something. We can’t let this continue.”
“I agree,” I nodded.
“Let’s just go over to Brixton Road and see what Grandma Cee says,” Peaches suggested. “She’ll know what to do.”
Chapter 8
Five minutes later we had made our way through the portal that led to Brixton Road. I was getting used to the weirdness of opening a portal in the corner of the bookstore and making my way through to the strange world known as Brixton Road.
The sky, shining with stars at all hours of the day, was a gorgeous pale pink color today; it almost looked like one of those phenomenal sunsets. But today, I barely noticed it. The three of us–Aunt Francine said she would meet us there–simply charged across the strange bouncy road and over to the large house which housed Sage–Cat and Peaches’ mom–and Grandma Cee.
As we passed the large tree made of cotton candy at the front of the house I shivered; that tree had saved my life when I had plummeted into it during my one and only attempt at learning to fly on a broom. As soon as we got to the front door Cat just pushed it open rather than knocking.
“Mom, Grandma Cee,” Cat called out. “The three of us are here.”
From the outside, the house already looked pretty big. From the inside, however, it was practically palatial. Cat’s voice even echoed across the entrance hall. A couple of minutes later Sage Calliope came out. She always dressed like she belonged in an episode of Little House on the Prairie, today in a green gingham dress and a white apron, holding a mug of tea in her hand. Grandma Cee, who strutted in a few minutes later, was quite the interesting character as well. The octogenarian was tiny–I’d be surprised if she was even five feet tall–with a slight hunch, stringy grey hair and a scar on her face. She looked exactly like the stereotypical witch, but at the same time it was obvious that in her youth she had been a beautiful woman.
While Sage’s face was etched with surprise–Peaches spent about half her time at Brixton Road, half her time in the human world, but Cat and I rarely came down to Brixton Road unless we had a scheduled visit–Grandma Cee’s was impassive and simply accepting.
“Girls, what a lovely surprise! What are you doing h
ere?” Sage asked, and Grandma Cee made a strange sound in the back of her throat.
“Isn’t it obvious? Peaches has been attacked by the Others.”
The mug fell to the floor and shattered, spilling tea everywhere, as Sage let out a gasp. She muttered something to herself, pointed at the mug and a second later the shards magically came together once more and floated back up into Sages’ hand, liquid and all. Magic could be pretty handy sometimes.
“Is that true, Peaches?” her mother asked, and Peaches nodded.
“Yes.”
“Come on, we need to talk about this,” Grandma Cee said, motioning for us all to follow. She led us into the right wing of the house, a place I hadn’t been before. We ended up in a room painted all sorts of pastel colors in a bit of a galaxy-type pattern, with all the colors swirling together on the walls, ceiling and floors. The furniture–a number of large couches and comfortable-looking chairs–was completely white, and while the effect of the colors was pretty cool, as I sat down I couldn’t help but feel a little bit like the room was spinning; I felt like we were floating in space rather than sitting down in a simple room.
At least, I hoped we weren’t floating in space. If there was one thing living in the magical world had taught me, it’s that there are never really any guarantees.
I sat down in a chair while Cat and Peaches shared a couch. Grandma Cee sat on the arm of a different chair, while Sage slumped into one chair so hard that for a second I worried she’d fainted.
“Tell me everything that happened,” Grandma Cee ordered, and Peaches did as she asked. I listened intently; I needed to know everything we could know about the Others.
When Peaches was finished her story, Grandma Cee nodded slowly. “All right,” she said. “Thank you for telling us this. It’s obvious that they’re not simply going after Alice anymore, and it might simply have been chance that she’s encountered them twice in a row. It looks as though they are going after anyone in the family.”
“Are you sure you need to go back up there?” Sage asked, and Peaches had worry etched all over her face.
“I was thinking of staying down here, but I have to stay with Alice, remember?” Peaches said. It was written all over her face that she was terrified, and my heart went out to her.
“Please,” I said, shaking my head. “Don’t stay with me on my account. If you feel safer here, stay here.”
“Are you sure?” Sage asked me, as Aunt Francine’s ghost finally floated into the room and took a spot in the corner, and I nodded.
“Of course. I don’t want Peaches to be terrified every moment of every day on my account.”
Grandma Cee looked me up and down appraisingly, then nodded as if she liked my answer.
“Good. It’s settled then. Peaches will take up her room here and stay here for the foreseeable future. But we still have to decide what to do with Cat and Alice. After all, I assume they’re not staying here.”
Cat and I book vehemently shook our heads. I definitely had no desire to spend more time in Brixton Road than I had to. I was already just getting used to the idea that magic existed and that I could use it; Brixton Road, with the weird, well, everything, was just a little bit too much for me to handle full-time anymore.
“Are you sure?” Sage asked us both. “Things are getting very dangerous out there.”
“Absolutely,” Cat replied, her mouth firm. “I run a business, I have friends. I’m not changing my life around completely because a group of idiots wants to steal my soul.”
I had to smile at Cat’s answer; it was exactly what I would have expected from her.
“Same with me,” I answered, not wanting to insult the witches here by telling them the real reason.
“This is your fault,” Sage hissed at Grandma Cee, who turned to her.
“How on earth is this my fault?”
“You insisted on making them strong, on raising them to be like you. Now they’re in danger.”
“They were going to be in danger regardless,” Grandma Cee said. “This way, they might have a chance of surviving when the Others come, like both Peaches and Alice have done.”
“Mine was an accident,” Peaches said. “I still don’t even know what happened.”
“No, that’s true, but you still survived. It seems as though deep down, your body did what it had to in order to get you out of there,” Grandma Cee said.
“What are we going to do about the Others?” Cat asked. “After all, Alice and I are going back there. They’re not going to just disappear.”
“No, they are not,” Grandma Cee said. “I have already charmed your homes and stores so that they cannot get you there.”
“Plus, they don’t seem to come after us when there’s a lot of people,” I added. “The three times that we’ve come across them so far, they’ve waited for us to be alone.”
“That’s a good point,” Francine said. “When they came for me, I was in the hospital, but I was the only person on the ward. It was in the middle of the night, so there was no administrative staff at the desk, and the nurses were elsewhere in the hospital.”
“All right,” Grandma Cee nodded. “So we need to make sure you’re not alone, ever, if you’re not in your shop or home. No going out late at night. No taking shortcuts through deserted alleys.”
Cat rolled her eyes. “That’s ridiculous. You can’t expect us to sit and hide forever.”
“Of course I don’t,” Grandma Cee replied. “But for the near future, yes. Until I figure out exactly how we’re going to stop the Others permanently, I want you to stay safe.”
“And how long is that going to take? I don’t want to have to change my life completely and not have any fun at all just because someone else is trying to get me.”
“It will take as long as it takes,” Grandma Cee snapped. “Do you not think that I am putting all of my energies toward stopping them?”
“I do, but I also don’t think I should have to change my actions and live my life differently just because the Others have decided they want to hurt me.”
“Well, you’re going to have to,” Grandma Cee said. “At least for a while.”
The argument went on for a bit longer, but ended with Sage pleading to her daughter to do this for at least a little while. When we finished, Cat and I made our way back to Brixton Road. Aunt Francine hung behind to talk to her mother and sister some more, and Peaches already had everything she needed at Brixton Road; I told her to let me know if she needed me to bring her anything from the apartment.
When we got back into the bookstore, Cat exploded with rage.
“I can’t believe they think we should just not live our lives anymore out of fear for the Others,” she said.
“I don’t know,” I replied slowly. “I mean, I can see where they’re coming from. But I agree with you, it sucks.”
“Plus, I don’t even know if Grandma Cee is even doing anything to stop them,” Cat said. I had to admit, I tended to agree with Cat. Everyone always told me what a great witch Grandma Cee was, and yet apart from a few spells in the backyard, I was yet to see any of it.
“So, what are you thinking?” I asked. Cat sounded like she had a plan.
“I’m thinking we do something ourselves. After all, we now know two things that stopped them. You trying to make them visible, and Peaches’ weird heat and light bubble. It seems they really didn’t like that at all.”
I grimaced slightly. “Are you sure that’s a good idea, though? I mean, you haven’t seen them yet. You don’t know how truly terrifying it really is to be confronted with… that,” I added, shivering slightly.
Cat shrugged. “Well at this rate, it’s only a matter of time, isn’t it? And besides, if we work together to bring them out, all of a sudden we’re the ones with the advantage. We know what they act like. We know that whatever Peaches did, either the heat or the light or the combination of the two of them they didn’t like. And if we can work together, and surprise them, well, maybe we can scare t
hem off. Even if it’s just for a little while, giving Grandma Cee time to come up with a plan.”
I had to admit, Cat’s argument was persuasive. I knew I agreed with her: I didn’t want to sit around and wait for the Others to just come and get us. Maybe going on the offensive wasn’t such a bad idea after all.
“Ok, I’m in,” I said. “We have the element of surprise on our side. Hopefully that’ll be enough.”
Chapter 9
With the energy that comes from a new idea that still needed to be planned, Cat and I decided to make our way back to the cupcake shop and figure out the logistics of how exactly we were going to draw the Others to us and how we were going to try and defeat them–or at least scare them into leaving us alone for a little while.
Despite it being early afternoon, we went together. After all, witches were more powerful in numbers, apparently.
While most of the tables at Cat’s Cupcakes were taken up by customers, there were still a handful of empty ones, so Cat and I sat down at a double table next to a rather large table able to seat six, where a group of three students were poring over open textbooks. Cat and I sat down next to them while Maddie brought up a couple of coffees, but before we started talking about our plan, I looked over at the students.
There were two girls–one of them was the redhead I’d seen outside Professor Little’s office, one who was definitely of Japanese ethnicity, and a guy with messy brown hair and a frown on his face.
“Hey, excuse me, do you guys go to the college here?” I asked shyly, and the three of them looked at me. The redhead nodded.
“Yeah, we do. I recognize you, you went to see Professor Little during her office hours the other day, right?”
“That was us, definitely,” I nodded. “We just transferred here, and so we’re trying to catch up with everything. I’m wondering if you can help us with something.”
“Sure?” the guy answered.
“We keep hearing about this thing called Black Magic, and we don’t understand anything about it. What is it?” I asked, and the three students all shared a glance between them. I suddenly felt uncomfortable; like I was intruding on this huge secret.
The Very Killer Caterpillar Page 5
