Work Like a Charm

by Cate Martin

  Well, I had been supposed to go to Mina's house, and now here I was, so that made sense. But now that I had control over my own mouth I didn't know what to say.

  I had no idea why I was here, beyond wanting to see if that crystal ball was still in the cabinet. It seemed easier to take it from Mina who had no idea what it was than from Cora. And then I could bring it to Brianna.

  "I'm glad that you came, I wanted to ask your advice," Mina said, setting the paper aside and setting a stack of brochures in front of me. "The matter of the will isn't quite settled yet, but they've given me some numbers, and oh my, they're overwhelming."

  "What are all these?" I asked, leafing through the brochures. Food banks, clothes drives, sponsoring kids in other parts of the world. "Charities?"

  "Exactly," Mina said, sipping her coffee with a smile. "I don't need a cent of that money myself. I plan to donate the house to the historical society, but I'd like to use the money for a cause that Linda Olson would have liked. But I never knew her. Do you have any idea?"

  "I really didn't know her very well," I said, taking another drink of that strange coffee. Perhaps her machine needed service or at least a good cleaning. Or perhaps she was still using coffee she got a decade ago at a huge discount from one of those wholesale stores that sold things by the ton.

  "I suppose I could just give it all to the historical society," Mina mused, looking out the window at the slowly brightening sky.

  "You know, she might actually have liked that," I said. "She was always very interested in the neighborhood."

  "Oh!" Mina cried, jumping to her feet. "I have another thought. Something that was sent to me in the mail, but I held onto it. Let me go have a look. You'll be all right here?"

  "Perfect," I said, taking another swallow of coffee.

  The minute she had shuffled out of the kitchen I leaned forward to see which way she went. I don't know if I hoped she would save me the trouble and open that cabinet herself, but in the end, she went the other way, towards her bedroom.

  "It was only a week or two ago, I'm sure I still have it," Mina called, yelling over the sound of drawers sliding open and the contents being stirred about.

  I set down my coffee and crept to the kitchen doorway, running one hand along the wall then grasping the doorframe as I leaned out. No sign of Mina.

  I rushed into the living room then stopped as a wave of dizziness rushed through my brain. Too much caffeine, not enough food. Or rather, no food at all. No supper the night before. I hadn't even had any of the sandwiches Coco had brought us.

  My blood sugar had to be in the single digits.

  But there was nothing to do but press on and finish what I had come here to do. There were a million places I could stop for food between Mina's house and the school. I'd be fine.

  I took a step then flinched at the sound of my foot hitting the floor with approximately the gravity of Frankenstein's monster. I regretted choosing clunky boots over sneakier footwear. But the carpet was thick enough to mask the sound if I walked lightly enough.

  I crossed the living room to the cabinet then dropped down to one knee. The dizziness had lessened but not quite gone away. I could still hear Mina prattling away as she upended drawer after drawer in search of I didn't know what.

  I pulled the key out of my pocket and slid it into the lock. It fit. I hadn't quite realized that I had been worried the lock would have been changed in the intervening decades.

  Holding my breath, I turned the key. It slid easily as if the lock had been recently oiled. Then I heard a click.

  The space that had been crowded with dusty objects when Margery had opened it before contained only one item now. But I recognized that faded velvet wrapped around it, as well as its palm-sized spherical shape.

  "I think this is it," Mina said, and her voice was drawing closer. I reached in to seize the ball. Another wave of dizziness rolled over me, blacking out the sides of my vision, and when it passed, I realized I wasn't holding the ball, only the scrap of velvet meant to be wrapping it. Hiding it from view.

  I gave my head a shake to clear it then peered inside the cabinet. The ball was resting there. It flared brightly as if in greeting, then went dark as fast as if someone had thrown a switch the very moment Mina stepped back into the room.

  "Oh," Mina said, startled to find me clearly snooping in her things, and possibly even trying to rob her.

  I tried to explain, or I guess really lie, about what I was doing but my tongue was suddenly too thick for me to move inside my mouth.

  "Oh dear," Mina said, setting aside whatever thing she had been on the hunt for. It looked like yet another brochure, glossy and colorful. The gloss caught the light from the kitchen and reflected it back to me, too bright. It stabbed at my eyes. My head instantly started aching, then the vertigo hit again, and I realized I had fallen to my hands and knees.

  Bitter almonds. The coffee had tasted like bitter almonds. Oh, I had been so stupid. Cyanide, the oldest poison in the book.

  I had been so stupid. And the one thing I had always counted on, that feeling that guided me through my hardest days before, had just abandoned me.

  I was all alone, and I was going to die.

  Chapter 20

  I tried to get to the front door. I really did. But somehow holding onto the back of the sofa to pull myself up became slumping into the sofa and then gravity was just too strong for me to get up again.

  "You know, I was so worried you wouldn't even drink the coffee," Mina said as she walked past me to the cabinet. I was slumped too low on the sofa to turn my head and see what she was doing. But she kept on talking. "I was sure you would be too suspicious of me. But I thought maybe you'd take a sip, just to be polite. So to be on the safe side, I really dosed it. I had to make that one sip count."

  I heard a grunt as she straightened up from a crouch and then she was back in my line of sight, holding the naked crystal ball in one hand so casually I knew she didn't truly understand its power.

  She leaned in a triumphant smile in her eyes. "But you just drank it all down, didn't you? That is a touch inconvenient. I had hoped to have sent you on your way before you keeled over. You dying in my living room isn't exactly ideal, but I'm sure we'll manage." She turned her attention to the ball in her hand. "Won't we?"

  I closed my eyes, focusing on my breathing. It kept wanting to just stop. My lungs didn't seem to be working as a team so well anymore, and everything hurt, and I was so tired.

  I felt Mina leaning in closer and opened my eyes, or tried to. I managed to get one to squint up about halfway.

  "Still with us?" she said. I tried to give her a death glare, but I doubt I projected much. And even that took too much attention away from focusing on keeping my lungs going. A black tunnel was starting to close around the edges of my vision.

  "You know what this is, don't you?" Mina asked, holding the ball between us, so close I could snatch it from her if I could still move my arms. "You must know if you came here to take it from me. Do you?"

  I watched her out of that half an eye but kept focusing on my breath. She waited expectantly for an answer for far too long before giving up with a shrug.

  "You must know. It's power," she said, holding the ball up in the air. "Great power that could have changed everything for my family if only my mother hadn't been so closed off to it. If only my grandmother hadn't been so afraid of it. But I'm open-minded, and I'm not afraid. And soon I'll have everything."

  She glanced over at me as if I had said something and a look of annoyance crossed her face.

  "No, it's not about the money," she said. "I already told you, I'm as well off as I could ever hope to be. Why does everyone always think everything is about the money? No, this is about revenge. Revenge on the family that destroyed mine. Revenge generations in the making, but finally ours."

  My eye was starting to slip closed.

  "Hey, stay awake!" Mina shouted, suddenly close to my face. Paralyzed as most of my body was, I still fli
nched away from her. Given the little grin that played across her lips, she found that reaction very gratifying.

  "The spirit in the ball helped me to get my family's revenge, but now it's my turn to help it in its quest. And do you know what it wants more than anything? It wants the Witches Three. That’s what it calls you. It's been waiting so long for you. And here you come, throwing yourself right into my lap. How delicious. One down, two to go."

  This time I deliberately closed my eyes, or let that half-open eye close. Whatever. I remembered every meditation session I had done with Sophie, how she had instructed me to focus not just on my breath but on every cell in my body. I did that now, first taking an inventory and then assessing what strength I had left.

  There was a little. Not much. But maybe enough.

  I lurched forward, and Mina stumbled back out of my way, but I only managed half a step before I was falling again. Mina grabbed the edge of her coffee table and pulled it out of the way before I could land on her precious tchotchkes.

  I suppose I should be grateful. The padded carpet was softer than the hard edges of that table. But not by much.

  "Go ahead, tire yourself out," Mina said, hovering close like a kid cheering on his turtle in a race. "Speed your way to your inevitable end. I certainly don't need you alive to lure the other two here. One by one I will take you all down."

  I ignored her. I didn't have the strength to get on my hands and knees, but I could still squirm forward on my belly like a soldier under barbed wire.

  The front door was so very far away.

  "I know a little about you, you know," Mina went on, bent over me so that her upside-down eyes were close to mine. "I know that the red-headed witch is the one with all the knowledge of things, but she's timid. I know the black witch has more raw power than even she knows how to access. Both together might present a challenge, but one by one they'll be no real trouble. Not for the spirit inside the crystal ball.

  "But you? You I didn't even need the ball's help for. You don't have even a hint of power, do you? And you came here all alone with not even a weapon on you. So you're not particularly bright either."

  I tried to ignore her, to focus on what I was doing, but having someone else list all your faults for you out loud, to confirm your darkest fears about your own shortcomings when she's only met you once, it's hard to tune that out.

  My grasping fingers couldn't clutch the carpet well enough to pull myself further ahead. I couldn't draw up a knee to advance my foot. I pressed my forehead to the floor and tried not to choke on the oily, mildewy smell of the carpet. I could scarcely breathe, and every breath was a torture.

  I felt something warm against my buttock, like a rod that was heating itself up. I couldn't figure out what Mina was doing until I finally realized it wasn't her. It was my wand.

  My wand was getting warmer? What did that mean?

  Nothing helpful, when I lacked the strength to even reach for it, to take it out of my pocket and hold it in my hand. Even if I could manage that, what then?

  Surely I was imagining the warmth.

  With one last supreme effort, I rolled my head to one side, to get free of the stink from the carpet. Mina was still bent low over me, dangling her head to look me in the face. Her expression was pure delight. Watching me die was clearly making her day.

  My tongue was thick in my mouth, bloated and inert like a dead fish washed up on a rocky shore. But I coaxed one last word out of my throat.

  "Why?"

  Mina laughed. "Why?" she repeated. "Goodness, I never even thought to ask. It was just a bargain, a promise to exchange revenges. Like strangers on a train, only one of us is strictly speaking not currently human. We've been planning this together since I was a small child. My mother would bring me with her to visit my grandmother, and I would always find a way to slip away, to hunt through the things my grandmother kept hidden and my mother pretended didn't exist. I admit, there were times when I thought the time for our little bargain would never come. Always I was waiting, waiting for the arrival of the ones the ball wanted me to help destroy. Waiting while the ones I wished to revenge myself upon grew fewer and fewer until they were only one. Oh, I was so afraid she'd just die, and I'd never get a chance to make anyone pay. But I did. Oh yes, I did."

  My eyes were closed again, but I could still see something. A glow from the crystal ball in Mina's hand. It was glowing so brightly it penetrated my eyelids, holding back the darkness that wanted to take me.

  Then I realized that the darkness was death, and the spirit inside the crystal ball wasn't going to let me die. It wanted something else for me. Something far worse than death.

  My mouth was no longer capable of opening up to scream. I couldn't even warble my vocal cords. But my mind, my mind could scream and scream and scream without having to pause for breath.

  And it did.

  Chapter 21

  The screaming suddenly stopped, and the silence was like the coldest, purest, longest drink of water after a march across the desert in full burning sun. I drank it in, and all the pain I had been working so hard to tune out was just gone.

  And I opened my eyes to find myself back in the world of silvery light. I searched for the patterns in the millions of interlocking silver strands and realized I was still in Mina's apartment, not the charm school. I could sense the outline of Mina still standing over me, dark and mundane.

  But the crystal ball in her hand was something else. It glowed like a light, fiercely bright, and yet was the blackest darkness I had ever seen. It was emitting darkness in fierce beams like the hottest sun. I stumbled back away from that darkness and tried to shield my face from it.

  "Amanda," a woman's voice called.

  I knew that voice. I had heard it before. Where had I heard it before?

  "Who's there?" I called. The shadow of Mina seemed frozen in time, unaware of me as I got to my feet and looked around.

  "Here I am," the woman said, and I turned around to find her standing behind me. For a moment, just a moment, I thought I was looking at Miss Zenobia Weekes. But this woman was different, younger. She wore her hair in an elaborate weave of braids that piled on her head only to cascade loosely around her shoulders. So very different from Miss Zenobia's severe updo, and still with a lot of black mixed in with the silvery gray. The white dress she wore was a simple sheath with a braided cord around her waist. It looked like something from the Middle Ages, where Miss Zenobia had dressed like a lady from the Civil War era when I had met her ghost.

  "Who are you?" I asked. She looked younger but dressed older. What did that mean?

  "You know," the woman said with an indulgent smile.

  "You're a Weekes," I said, and she nodded.

  "My name is Juno," she said. "But that's not really the answer to your question, is it?"

  "No," I said.

  "Then look deeper. Look at me with all your senses." She smiled at me, waiting for me to figure this out. She looked like she could happily wait forever.

  I could see and hear in this web world, but smell and taste didn't exist here, and touch was a very different sensation. Instead, I examined the web around her closely, following the path of each individual thread. As if indulging me, she lifted her arms then took a few steps forward then back again.

  "You're not part of the threads," I realized. "You have your own inner structure, not connected to anything around you."

  "That's more true than you know," she said with a sad smile. "Oh, Amanda. You understand so much more than you think you do."

  "Why are you here?" I asked, ignoring the compliment.

  "To save you," she said. "Just as I did once before."

  "From Helen," I said, and she nodded. But that didn't explain why her voice was familiar. No one had spoken to me that time, although something outside of me had filled me with power. Was it just because she sounded like Miss Zenobia?

  But no. Juno's soft voice was nothing like Miss Zenobia's harsh, not to be trifled with tone of comma
nd.

  I turned my attention to the ball generating wave after wave of darkness. "Do you know what this is?" I asked.

  "I do," she said, in a voice that told me she wouldn't explain further.

  "Can I destroy it?" I asked.

  "Do you want to?"

  "Kind of," I admitted.

  "Be careful, Amanda," she said. "In magic, you always must be very specific with your goals. You have to know exactly what outcomes you want if you're to find the best means of achieving them."

  "Why does it glow darkness like that?" I asked.

  "Very good question," Juno said indulgently. I suspected that like her sister she had been a teacher. "But let's not start there. Look at the rest of the world. What do you see?"

  "Intersecting threads of light," I said.

  "What you perceive as light and dark aren't really about color or light at all," she said.

  "No, I thought it was about magic," I said.

  "Not all magic," Juno said. "Magic is a huge, vast thing. No one can perceive all of it. Your friend Sophie sees a very specific part of magic that focuses on emotions and intent. Brianna sees the world through physics and math. But this version of the world, this is all yours. I can see it almost as you can, but not quite."

  "But how can it be mine? I have no power but what you gave me. How come this isn't your version of the world, and I'm the one almost seeing it?"

  "Another excellent question," Juno said. "Perceiving the world as others do is very difficult. I've had centuries of practice, and still, there are only a very few worldviews close enough to mine for me to perceive them."

  "But I'm young, and I don't have any power. How can I have a version of magic I can perceive?"

  "You have magic," Juno said. "Just as I did. Throughout the millennia there have been less than a handful that perceive magic the way we do. Not as light or dark, not as right or wrong, not as order or chaos. Not as a thing and its opposite all mixed up together."