by Tara West
“Aunt B left.”
“What?” I asked, confused. “Why?”
“Do you remember when she got that call and had to leave the other day?”
I nodded.
“She has a friend in Boston who’s really sick. They called early this morning and said her friend might not make it.”
“Poor Aunt B.”
“I know how she feels,” Krysta murmured, eyeing me pointedly.
I touched my scar but didn’t say anything.
“So she said not to expect her back tonight. Unless…” She trailed off.
“Yeah. I get it.”
“What do you want to do? Aunt B left us some money.”
I slapped my hands together. “Let’s go get breakfast!”
After throwing some clean clothes on, we made sure Sif and Cemi had food and then locked up behind us as we left the house.
It was colder today. A frigid wind blew past us, making me glad Krysta had warned me to grab a beanie for my unprotected head. The sky was cloudy and gray.
“Is it gonna rain?”
Krysta nodded. “Yeah, I think so. We should be quick about breakfast and get back before it pours.”
We picked up the pace, and I said, “Hey, I thought Cemi talked to me this morning.”
“What? No way! But Aunt B said they wouldn’t until we were ready.”
“She only said ‘good morning’, but I swear she said it.”
Krysta pointed across the street, and I followed her finger. The Witch Café. I laughed, and we made a beeline toward it.
“What do you think it means? That she talked to you?”
I shrugged, my hands shoved into the front pocket of my hooded sweatshirt. “I don’t know. I’m ready for something, I guess.”
***
By the time we finished eating bagels slathered in cream cheese and piled with bacon and egg, it had started to sprinkle.
“I think it would be quicker to go this way home,” Krysta said, heading down a dim alley next to the restaurant.
“Are you sure?” I asked dubiously.
“Positive. Aunt B’s house is only three streets over, and I know this alley goes through.”
I wasn’t going to argue with her. Her sense of direction was miles better than mine.
The street was kinda creepy though. We were behind a row of houses like Aunt B’s, and to our right was an empty park. Tall, gnarled trees grew along the edge of the grass, finger-like branches reaching over the alley.
“Let’s go a little faster,” Krysta said hesitantly, her eyes on an especially strange looking tree. There was a branch broken at the top; it hung down almost like a person.
A hanged person.
As I had the thought, my head swam. I slowed, putting fingers to my temples. “Krysta…”
“AJ?” Krysta, who had rushed ahead in a bid to leave the alley, hurried back to my side. She clutched my arm. “What’s wrong?”
I swayed on my feet, the wooziness growing stronger. A shiver ran up my spine. “Someone just walked over my grave.”
“Do you need to sit down?”
“No, I’m ok—” But I didn’t finish the sentence, because my world went black.
The barn sat in the middle of nowhere, rising like a specter amongst wheat stalks taller than the men who held me. Behind it, a starless night sky seemed to foretell the dark things that would happen here tonight.
I stumbled along behind them as they tugged on my ropes. They were too strong for me to fight with my hands tied and bound beneath burlap sacks.
A final violent tug sent me sprawling through the gaping maw of the open barn door. I landed with an “Oof!” my legs splayed behind me as I came down hard on my hands. Something gave in my right hand, and I cried out.
“A shame you couldn’t accept a future with me.” His voice filled the inkiness of the barn from corner to corner, reverberating through me like the voice of God.
“I would never accept a future with a monster,” I replied, irritated to hear a quaver to my voice.
I couldn’t see him, but he could apparently see me. Something hard connected with my head and I rolled twice across the hay-strewn floor, coming to rest on my back. My head spun, and my stomach rolled. He’d kicked me.
Four strong hands grabbed me and yanked me to my feet. I was thrown against the wall so hard stars burst in my vision. I sucked in a breath, trying to stay on my feet even as I sank against the boards.
There was the striking sound of a match, and the tiny flame whooshed as it was touched to a torch. As the head of the torch burst to life, my tormentor’s handsome face was revealed.
“Are you prepared to meet your maker?” he asked me, voice dangerous.
“Are you?” I spat at his feet.
“You are in no position to taunt me.”
Only then did I notice the pile of wood. I stood behind a funeral pyre: sticks, timber, paper, all spread in a circle around me.
My heart pounded. So many months of running, only to lead me here.
“Where is the book?” he asked, torchlight flickering across his face.
“You will never find it. The seasons will change, the years will pass, and yet you will never find it.”
“Then neither shall you have it.” He lowered the torch.
“May God have mercy on your soul, Gordon Cobbet,” I snapped, fighting against my bindings.
“He won’t have mercy on yours,” Gordon replied, and touched the torch to the pile of tinder.
It was instantaneous. The fire raced along the pile, easily as tall as I was within a single moment. On the other side of the wall of flame, he watched for a few seconds longer, and then he was gone.
As the smoke consumed me, the flames licking at my toes, I held my breath and prayed.
There were tears in my eyes, but the heat dried them before they could fall. I knew nothing would save me this time.
***
Krysta
AJ woke up crying.
Big, gulpy, sobby tears that wrenched my heart. I held her head in my lap and petted her soft growth of hair and shushed her.
“Are you okay?” I asked, my heart pounding. I was so happy I’d caught her before she hit the ground. I didn’t even want to think about what another head injury could have done to her so soon after the accident.
My best friend cried harder, burying her face in my jacket.
“Do I need to call an ambulance?” I asked, going for calm and collected, but a small note of hysteria belied me.
“No!” AJ wailed. “She died! I couldn’t save her!”
The rain began to pour then. I didn’t realize just how cold the morning was until my jacket was soaked through.
“AJ, we need to go. Can you walk?”
She nodded, sniffling. Her face was red, her nose runny, and her eyes so bloodshot they looked demonic. I took hold of her hands and pulled her to her feet.
The walk home was slow, but we made it. Cemi and Sif met us at the front door as if they’d been waiting for us, and followed us to the kitchen where I helped AJ into a chair.
“I think this calls for hot chocolate,” I said to fill the silence. I banged open the cabinets, searching for the cocoa powder.
“She doesn’t get away,” AJ said as I was filling two mugs with milk.
“If this really did happen in the past, there was nothing you could do for her anyway,” I said gently, popping the mugs in the microwave and turning it on two minutes.
I sat down across from her, Sif jumping in my lap the moment my butt hit the seat.
Cemi was already curled up in AJ’s arms on the table, and AJ was resting her head on Cemi’s soft fur. Rain hit the kitchen window, the steady pit-pat the only sound in the room beyond the cats’ purrs. I couldn’t even see the back yard through the downpour.
“I just hoped….” AJ’s voice was muffled against Cemi.
“I know.”
The microwave dinged, and I set about mixing our cocoa. I threw a handful of
marshmallows in before putting a mug in front of my best friend and sitting back down.
I didn’t say anything for a while. AJ’s eyes were open, but she wasn’t really there. I gave her the space she needed to think things through. When she was ready to talk, she would.
When she finally did, I could barely hear her. “If the witch died, do you think she’s trying to ask for help from beyond the grave?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why would she show me all these scenes?”
I didn’t know if the question was directed to me or rhetorical, but I answered anyway. “Maybe she isn’t.”
“What do you mean?” AJ lifted her head, but kept her arms wrapped around her cat as she stared at me. Her face was still blotchy. She looked…tired.
“Maybe she has no control over what you’re seeing. Maybe she’s just trying to reach you.”
***
I helped AJ out of her wet clothes and into clean sweats, and then pulled the covers over her in bed.
“I don’t want to dream,” she told me, her voice small.
I couldn’t help but think with the mottled face, the angry maroon scar on her shaved head, and the frightened look in her big blue eyes, she looked like a trauma victim.
Even as she argued against it, her eyelids appeared heavy. Maybe if I left her alone, she’d get some rest.
In my room, Sif sat on my bed, her tail flicking. There was something about her stance—the straight back and calm face—that made me stop and do a double take.
“Sif?”
My cat answered by standing and taking a single step to the side before she sat down again. The move revealed a slim book where she had been sitting.
I made quick work of changing clothes, and then sat down beside her, picking up the book. There was nothing on the outside to indicate what it held—no title, no author. Just a plain, soft black leather book.
“Did you bring this to me?” I asked Sif.
She flicked her tail once.
I crawled to sit against the headboard, tucking my toes beneath the covers as I opened the book.
“The Art of Spirit Work,” I read, my skin going cold. I lowered the book to eye Sif. She sat at my feet, staring at me with knowing eyes. “Sif?”
Again, she didn’t speak, but she licked her paw and rubbed it across an ear. Some weird part of me felt like she was urging me to continue.
So I did.
An hour later, I was still reading, and I was stunned. What I held was a journal from a woman named Temperance. She’d started it when she was a seventeen-year-old girl in the late 1600s, and it chronicled five years of study.
Like me, she’d spoken to spirits.
The book was full of ways to communicate with spirits, even ways to manipulate them. She wrote strange, very loopy cursive, and she spelled things weird, but I got the gist.
Halfway through the book, I put it face down on the bed and eyed Sif.
“Did you give me this journal?”
I thought she would do something cat-like, like stretch or meow. Instead, a tinkling, fae-like voice spoke in my head. Book of Shadows.
I jerked. “What?”
Book of Shadows. Not journal.
Stunned that my cat was talking to me, I burst out, “What does it matter?”
It matters very much, Krysta. A witch’s journal isn’t simply a journal, it is a Book of Shadows. It is her spells, her thoughts, her learnings. It is so much more than a “journal.”
“Like you’re so much more than a cat?” I said wryly.
Just so.
“Thank you,” I told her sincerely, touching the soft leather cover. “This is going to help me so much.”
Sif sat silently for a moment, her gaze steady on my face. When she spoke, it gave me goose bumps.
Read thoroughly, Krysta. For this book will help you even more than you know.
Chapter Sixteen
Sophie
I dragged my weary butt toward the drama room fifteen minutes late after running all the way from the athletic field. My yearbook teacher had assigned me as the cross country photographer. Boring with a capital B. All they did was run. But I guess I should have considered myself lucky. There were only five runners on the team and I’d shot all of their photos within a matter of minutes. Now I could focus on play rehearsal for the rest of the week—that is, if we were still having rehearsal.
I couldn’t help but worry if Vanessa had decided to call it quits after yesterday’s disaster. Though I wouldn’t blame her for quitting, I secretly hoped she’d stay. For some reason, this play was important to me, not just because it exposed ignorance and cruelty, but because acting was fun, especially with Ethan in the cast.
Yeah, I’d already figured out I had a thing for the kid with the messy hair and entrancing eyes. No use denying it. Crud. But there was not much I could do about my crush at the moment, even though I no longer believed he was a mind reader, too. Whatever he’d meant when he’d said to stay out of his head, it had nothing to do with me. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been so nice to me lately. No, there was something else preventing me from acting on my crush. And that something else was me.
It was no use falling for Ethan. I’d only wind up with a broken heart. The first time he thought Big Bertha was hideous or my breath was bad, it would be all over. Even though I’d been pretty good at staying out of his head, let’s face it, my willpower wasn’t very strong. Eventually, I’d catch him checking out another girl and I’d be all inside his head. Speaking of being inside heads, I still felt bad about what I’d done to Vanessa. Sure, she was a complete snot. Sure, she deserved it. But the fact remained I had abused my power to the extreme. I was hoping a chocolaty peace offering would make it up to her.
After I walked into the back of the dark drama room, I set down my backpack and pulled out my container of homemade brownies (well, as homemade as Betty Crocker could get). I put the plastic box to my nose and inhaled.
Mmmmmm.
These little babies had been tempting me all day long, and though I so wanted to gorge on these during my solitary lunch instead of eat my processed meat product, I resisted. Maybe my willpower was strengthening.
Luckily, my late appearance didn’t seem to cause any raised eyebrows. As I watched the cast members file down off the stage, it looked like they were just wrapping up a scene.
No sooner had I popped the top on the brownies than Ethan and two other guys were beside me.
I held the container out to them. “Want one?”
“Brownies?” Ethan licked his lips as he reached for a treat. “What’s the special occasion?”
I smiled up at him as I noticed his hair was messier than usual. What was up with the hair? It looked like his head had been caught in a wind tunnel.
And why was I starting to think his messy hair was totally cute?
“There’s no occasion.” I shrugged. “I just thought everyone would enjoy brownies.”
“Oh, you rock!” The big redheaded kid named Finn reached in the container with both hands, pulling out two of the biggest brownies before shoveling one into his wide mouth. “Thanks, Sophie,” he said between mouthfuls.
“Save me one,” a small, reedy girl with pale hair said as she surprisingly knocked Finn out of the way.
Luckily, I’d made a double batch, and I had another container in my backpack. More and more students began to crowd me. Unfortunately, Vanessa wasn’t one of them. After all, these brownies were really meant for her, the closest I could come to apologizing for bewitching her without actually facing persecution myself.
After scanning the room, I noticed Vanessa hanging toward the back of the crowd, her mouth set in that familiar scowl. I set down the empty container and was answered with several cheers when I opened another box.
“Would you like one, Vanessa?” I said, while plastering what I’d hoped was a genuine smile on my face.
The other students fanned out around me in what I could only describe as the part
ing of the Red Sea, making a virtual gap in their numbers so Vanessa could pass through.
Wow. To think she had so much control over these kids and she didn’t even have telepathic powers.
Vanessa sauntered toward me, nose held high. “Ugh, no,” she said while waiving a dismissive hand at my brownies. “Do you know how many calories are in those things?”
“Maybe just half of one then?” I hated the note of humility that had crept into my voice. If she was going to be rude, why did I feel the need to kiss her ass?
She glared at me from beneath what appeared to be heavy, fake lashes. “Or maybe just no.”
“Okay.” I rolled my eyes while putting the lid back on the brownies. “I was just trying to be nice.”
Vanessa cocked one hand on her hip and glared at me. “Oh, I know exactly what you’re trying to do,” she said with an accusatory tone.
My jaw dropped, and for a long moment, all I could do was stare at her, dumbfounded. “Excuse me?”
“Here we go again,” Ethan groaned.
The other students backed up several more paces, looks of fear in their shifting gazes, as if they were expecting molten fire to shoot out of Vanessa’s mouth.
Vanessa threw her hands in the air and all but stomped her feet like a toddler. “After my little breakdown yesterday, this is your chance to steal my limelight.”
“No.” I shook my head. What the heck was wrong with this girl that she would think that? “That’s not it at all.”
“Good.” Vanessa’s head bobbled around like a diva on crack. “Because it’s not going to happen.” She held up a hand and counted off each manicured finger. “I did yoga, had a massage, and went to my therapist last night.”
As if I was supposed to be impressed? “That’s nice,” I answered dryly.
“Plus I dropped two of my other electives. My therapist said I was just overworked, and I’ll be back to myself in no time.” She narrowed her eyes and pointed a finger at me. “You have never even been on a stage before.”
I gave her my best glare. “I know that.”
She twirled one of her short ponytails with her fingers. “So there is no way you can pretend to be the star of the show.”
“All I did was make brownies.”
“Vanessa,” Ethan said, laughing, “pull the stick out of your ass.”
