by Tara West
She turned to him with a pout before shooting her eye daggers back at me. “I see you’ve already turned Ethan against me.”
Was she for real? Was this really happening? “I’m not trying to turn anyone.”
“Good,” she said, folding her arms across her chest. “If you would excuse me, I have a play to rehearse.” She glared at Ethan. “Ethan, if you’re finished with your little snack, act one, scene three, from the top.” She spun on her high heel and sauntered back toward the stage. “Watch and learn, Sophie,” she called over her shoulder.
Well, damn. So much for my peace offering. So much for my playing nice. Too bad for Vanessa. She was about to learn she was playing mind games with the wrong witch.
I rubbed my hands together while eyeing Vanessa as she climbed the stage stairs. Her stinky cheese farts were about to get a whole lot stinkier.
***
I thought about texting Krysta when I got home, but after my last text, I knew I had crossed the line. After a good butt chewing from AJ’s mom a last year, we promised not to mention witches or anything about magic in our texts, phone calls, or even FB messages. Besides, neither of them had bothered texting me, since the last time we talked. I guess they were too busy. It totally sucked because I couldn’t talk, really talk, to my friends. My only consolation was that I had a cat who understood me. Unfortunately, my cat also liked to hide from me.
“Alessia!” I called to her as I peered behind my closet door and scanned the floor. Nothing but a bunch of scattered shoes and a heap of clothes that had fallen off the hangers. I stepped toward the bed and knelt down. Nothing but a few cobwebs and dirty dishes. I really needed to clean up my mess before my mom found it. Then, there would be no end to her nagging. “Please come out,” I called as I stood and spun in a slow circle. “I won’t be angry, I swear. I’m just stressed and I need someone to talk to.”
I jumped back and gasped when she landed on my comforter. Where had she come from? Then I noticed my bedroom window was open. She must have climbed inside.
I’m not in the mood for talking. Her voice echoed in my brain.
I was still amazed my cat was able to project her thoughts telepathically into my brain.
She purred as she stretched out her legs, raking her claws across my satin comforter.
I cringed. If my mom saw Alessia destroying my bed, she’d freak.
That dog of yours chased me up a tree today and I’m in need of pampering.
“I’m sorry about Buster.” I dropped onto the bed and scratched her behind the ears. “Is this better?”
Much. She purred before nuzzling against my hand. They say petting cats helps relieve stress.
I arched a brow. “Really?”
No, she answered with mirth in her voice. I just made that up, but it sounds logical.
I couldn’t help but laugh out loud at that.
She rolled over and swatted my hand with a fuzzy paw. Laughing is good, little witch, but don’t forget to scratch.
I groaned aloud before scratching her tummy. Yes, Alessia was cute and soft and cuddly, but she sure was demanding. I had to admit she was right. As her delicate fur tickled the pads of my fingers, I couldn’t deny it did feel good to pet her. But pets or no pets, I had a serious problem and I needed help.
“Look,” I said through a sigh, “I know you aren’t in the mood for talking, but are you going to teach me how to control this? Because if not, I’ll keep torturing this snotty girl.”
Torturing? Who? Alessia asked, a note of concern in her voice.
My cheeks flushed. What would Alessia think of me if she knew everything I’d done to Vanssa? “Vanessa from drama club. I make her say stupid things.”
Like what? Alessia said, sounding more curious than angered as she arched while I continued to scratch.
My hand hovered over her tummy as I swallowed the lump of nervousness which had wedged itself in my throat. “I pledge allegiance to my butt and my farts smell like cheese.”
Alessia’s laughter was so loud, it nearly split my eardrums.
What did this Vanessa do to deserve that?
Heat infused my cheeks again, only this time it wasn’t from embarrassment, but from anger. What gave Vanessa the right to treat me like dirt? “She’s rude to me for no reason.”
And you made her look like a fool. Do you think she had it coming?
“Yes.” I balled my fists at my sides as I thought about everything I’d learned at church about doing unto others. But I couldn’t help myself. I still thought Vanessa had it coming. Did that make me a bad person? An evil witch?
I see. And did your magic have any negative consequences for anyone else?
I hung my head. “The drama teacher might cancel the play.”
Is this a bad thing?
I fell back against the bed and hugged a satin heart-shaped pillow to my chest. “I want to be in the play. Not to mention all the other drama students are upset,” I said through a groan. Then an idea struck me and I shot up, looking into my kitty’s pale gaze. “Wait a minute. What if I just made Ms. Jahns change her mind?”
Alessia stretched again and then sauntered over to me. More mind manipulation? Don’t you think there will be more negative consequences?
I squeezed my pillow harder. “Then what do I do?” I cried.
Alessia let out a low purr as she nuzzled my side. I’ll tell you what you don’t do. You don’t let Vanessa upset you and you don’t use magic to retaliate.
“But she’s so rude!” I threw down the pillow and crossed my arms. “In-my-face rude. She says I’ve got no talent.”
Do you believe her? Alessia asked as she climbed into my lap.
“No. Maybe.” My shoulders fell as the realization struck me. Maybe I wasn’t cut out for drama. But Ethan said I was good, a natural. He wouldn’t have lied to me, would he? “I don’t know. I only tried this acting thing once. I haven’t been able to rehearse. Now Ms. Jahns cancelled practice for the rest of the week.”
Then find someone to practice with you and prove Vanessa wrong. That is the best retaliation. Alessia nuzzled her nose against my hand. Oh, and I don’t recall telling you to quit scratching.
***
AJ
“How are you feeling?” Krysta’s face popped around the edge of my open door.
I shrugged. I was sprawled on my stomach atop the covers, staring blankly at one of Krysta’s magazine. I’d been on the same page for an hour.
Krysta came into the room. “I’m serious, AJ. Do we need to go to the hospital?”
“No!” I said with a laugh. “I promise, I am fine. I just can’t stop thinking about the dream woman.”
“Go to sleep.”
I stared up at my best friend. “Like…now?”
Krysta nodded. “Sure. It’s not like it’s sunny.” As if to punctuate her statement, a low rumble of thunder shook the house.
“I’m not tired.”
She pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes, and then snapped her fingers. “Be right back.”
When she disappeared, I looked at Cemi at the end of the bed. Cemi rolled over on her back as if to say, Who knows?
Krysta came back with a glass of water and two small white pills.
“What is that?” I asked warily, pushing myself to my knees.
She rolled her eyes. “Omigod, AJ, it’s just melatonin. I’m not a drug dealer. Take ‘em. They’ll help you sleep.”
I accepted the pills without comment and tossed them back with a swig of water.
“Get under the covers,” she said, taking the glass from me and setting it on my bedside table.
“Yes, mother,” I joked, crawling to the head of the bed and slipping beneath the covers. Cemi followed suit, her fluffy body slithering under the blue sheets.
“You need to look at this like magic,” Krysta told me as she pulled the covers up to my shoulders. The motion was motherly. She must have been worried about me.
“What?”
She gave me
a harried sigh, her hands planted on her hips. “You need answers. So go to sleep thinking of this woman. Do some internal meditation or spellwork.”
“I suck at spells. And meditation,” I hastened to add before she latched on to that and forced me to do it instead.
“You don’t suck. You’re just unsure.” She bounced out of the room again, and came back a minute later with a lit stick of incense and a purple pillar candle I recognized from Aunt B’s dining room. She set the candle on the nightstand and popped the incense in an empty candle holder. Then she drew my curtains so the room was dark.
“Sleep,” she told me. “And go to bed thinking about the dream witch.”
The door clicked shut, and the room plunged into darkness.
Envisioning the witch whose face I knew so well after all these weeks, I closed my eyes.
My mother was never given a proper burial.
I knew where she lay because I was nine—an age of innocence on the verge of womanhood—and they made me watch as they shoveled soil over her lifeless body. No coffin for rest, no offering of milk or honey to take with her. Just dark, half-frozen earth slowly covering her pale face.
I tried to deceive them, the witch hunters who had murdered my mother. I tossed a miniscule dandelion into the hole with a prayer and was cuffed in the head for my effort. The blow sent me to the ground.
Eleven years without a mother was a lifetime. Standing before her grave so many years later, I had lived longer than the time I’d been granted with her.
I lay the bouquet of white roses upon the unmarked plot. My mother rested between two shade trees, her grave hidden in the shadow of those around her. When I passed from this plane of existence, there would be no one left to remember her. Time and expansion would bury her deeper.
I’d cried so often for her that it was easy to visit now. I knelt on the soft grass and closed my eyes to pray.
“Maura?”
The voice jolted me; it was almost midnight. But the voice was also familiar. I smiled and stood.
“Benjamin!”
He carried a lantern, the pale glow from within barely illuminating his face. He had the sweetest round cheeks and the most vivid green eyes under a mop of blond hair. I’d known him all my life.
We embraced, and his breath tickled my ear as he said, “I had a feeling I’d find you here, Maura.”
“The anniversary of my mother’s death. Of course.”
“Miss Stamp was a great woman, my mother says all the time.” He pulled away, his thumb brushing gently over my cheek. “Have you given any thought to our conversation?”
Heat flooded my cheeks and I nodded. “Yes, I have.”
Benjamin stepped closer, taking my hands in his. “And? Have you decided?”
“I have,” I couldn’t stop the spread of a smile over my face, “and I will.”
Then he kissed me.
***
Krysta
“Maura Stamp.”
I looked up from Temperance’s Book of Shadows. AJ stood in my open doorway, Cemi winding about her heels. Her face was creased from the pillow and her eyes still sleepy from the melatonin.
“Huh?” I asked.
“Her name is—was—Maura Stamp.” AJ crossed the room and sat at the end of the bed. “The dream was different.”
“How different?”
“She wasn’t running for her life.” AJ laughed. “I think…. I think she was accepting a marriage proposal.”
I smiled. “Well, that’s good, right? She wasn’t always unhappy and unsafe.”
“Yeah. I think this was before the nightmares. Her face was transformed. She didn’t have the same worry lines between her eyebrows.”
“Was he cute?” I giggled.
AJ rolled her eyes, but nodded anyway. “Think Brad Pitt in Interview With A Vampire.”
The comparison struck a chord with me. “No kidding?”
“Yeah, he was dreamy.” AJ collapsed to the bed.
“The ghost I told you about kinda looks like that.”
AJ’s blue eyes turned to me. “Yeah?”
“Did you catch a name?”
“Benjamin.”
A rush of adrenaline went straight to my brain and I felt woozy. “What?” I asked, even though I’d heard right the first time.
AJ sat up, staring at me. “Benjamin.”
“Crap. Crap. AJ, this is so eerie. That’s the ghost’s name!” I flipped backwards in Temperance’s book until I found the incantation I was looking for. “We have to talk to him. If he’s the right Benjamin, he can help us.”
“Now?” AJ gaped at me while clutching her elbow.
I eyed her. “Is it hurting you?”
She glanced down and did a double take. “I didn’t even realize I was holding it. It hurts a little, but only because I’ve been using it too much.”
“Go take some aspirin and then get back in here. We have to talk to Benjamin.” I laid the book on my bed, open to the page I needed, and closed my eyes. “We’ll be waiting for you.”
“We’ll?” AJ shuddered. “God, Krysta, I don’t know how you do this.”
I opened one eye. “You’ve been dreaming of a dead woman.”
“Touché.” AJ grimaced, and left the room.
I scanned the text one more time, and then closed my eyes again. I had no idea what the words meant and even less idea what language they were. But hopefully the idea would come across with my intent.
“Cia pour li naom kerr, Benjamin.”
A cool wind rushed around me, fluttering my hair, and raw power filled me so quickly I gasped. As the wind died down, Benjamin appeared.
He stared at me, wide-eyed. “Krysta. What did you do?”
“Um.” I closed the book and held it up. “I called you. I think.”
“I tingled.” He shook his head, staring down at his hands. “I have not felt sensations in a very long time.”
I didn’t know what to say. That would be a mystery for another day. “Benjamin, I need your help.”
“Of course.”
Just then, AJ came back in the room, absently rubbing her elbow. She stilled in the doorway, her face turning white. “Oh geez. He’s here, isn’t he?”
I nodded. “Benjamin, this is my friend AJ. She’s been having dreams of a woman we think may have lived during your life.”
Benjamin glanced at AJ, though she didn’t appear to notice. “I will try to help.”
“AJ, he can hear you,” I said gently. “Tell him what you know.”
“Her name was Maura Stamp.”
Benjamin gasped, his hands clenching into fists at his side.
“Long pale hair, short, pretty,” AJ continued, oblivious to his reaction.
“I know her. Knew her,” Benjamin corrected.
“How?”
His emerald eyes were full of pain when they finally caught mine. “Maura was to be my wife.”
“He is the man from your dream,” I said to AJ, chills racing across my skin. “The world isn’t that small.”
“Seems like there are a lot of pieces coming together,” AJ agreed.
I looked at Benjamin. “You never married?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“Why?”
His sigh was world-weary, but I almost expected his answer. “Because I died for her.”
***
AJ
When Krysta finished telling me Benjamin’s story, it was like everything just clicked into place.
Benjamin had loved Maura for years before he finally got up the nerve to ask her to marry him. She freaked and spent a couple days thinking about it, but like I had dreamed, she finally said yes.
Not two days after they became engaged, a prominent local judge fingered Maura for witchcraft. What Benjamin didn’t know right away was that the same judge, a guy named Gordon Cobbet, was in love with Maura.
“So it was a jealousy thing,” I said, shaking my head. “Right?”
Krysta stared at the air at the e
nd of her bed for a minute and then nodded. “Benjamin agrees.”
Maura went on the run, hiding from Gordon, but they came after Benjamin in an attempt to draw her out. Benjamin wouldn’t tell them anything.
“He protected her ‘til his last breath,” Krysta said, smiling sadly at her ghost friend. “They hung him for witchcraft. For aiding Maura.”
“Was he a witch?”
Silence while the ghost replied.
“No.” Krysta shook her head. “He just loved one.”
“This is all great to know, but it doesn’t tell me why I’m dreaming of Maura. Specifically of Maura and Gordon Cobbet.”
Krysta nodded. “It doesn’t make sense. Your power isn’t for visions of the past. It’s for the future.” She paused, her face turning to Benjamin.
I couldn’t help the shudder. There was a ghost in the room talking to her.
Krysta looked stricken. She turned to me, her mouth opening and closing twice before she spoke, “AJ. Gordon Cobbet didn’t cross over.”
“What?” I asked, my heart beating faster.
“His ghost is still here. In Salem.”
I glanced in Benjamin’s direction. “Where?”
“A cave?” Krysta said after a moment, perplexed. “Why on earth is he haunting a cave?” She listened again. “He’s looking for Maura.”
“Is Maura here too?” I asked, my mind already piecing bits together. Was I dreaming of Maura’s death because she needed help defeating Gordon Cobbet from beyond the grave?
Krysta shook her head. “He says no. He’s looked for her.”
“A cave,” I mused, leaning against the wall. Outside, the shadows were growing longer. I must have been asleep for a few hours. I raked my memory for every instance I’d dreamed of Maura Stamp, and with a flash of insight, I remembered one. “I dreamed of Maura running into a cave.”
Krysta opened her mouth, but looked at Benjamin instead. “He says she used to do ritual in a cave outside of town.”
“In my dream, she was hiding a book in a cave. Of course, I didn’t know who he was, but it was Cobbet she was hiding it from. She kept thinking how dangerous her book would be in his hands.”
Benjamin must have spoken because Krysta went silent for a few minutes. Finally, she looked at me. “Benjamin thinks it must have been her Book of Shadows.”
