Charm His Pants Off

by Cate Martin

  "You're sure?" I said.

  "Absolutely," she said.

  "But Miss Zenobia cast that spell just last year before she died, right?" Sophie said. "So right now, that box is empty. Right?"

  We all looked at it, but none of us wanted to test that theory.

  I blinked to shift my awareness to the world of threads.

  The box was there on the desktop, between Brianna and me. It was like a black hole of power, glowing darkly as it pulled light in to collapse on itself, the threads around it all warping to give it a wide berth.

  I opened my eyes. "It's an object out of time," I said. "Like Mina Fox's crystal ball. I thought that happened because it was ineptly made?"

  "I thought so too," Brianna said. "Brute power. Maybe what you're seeing is just the form of the box now, in 1928. Decades before Miss Zenobia puts it to another use."

  "There must have been a reason she chose it," Sophie said. "Some property that suited her spell."

  "And it was the focal point of the coven's spells too?" I asked.

  "Yes," Brianna said. "When the box opened at the appointed hour to release that sequestered piece of Miss Zenobia so she could speak with us for those few minutes, it also triggered the memory-erasing spell. Somehow, the coven knows what this box is and that we'll all be close to it at the same moment."

  "But how did Miss Zenobia never see their magic contaminating it?" I asked.

  "Because we just removed it all?" Sophie suggested.

  I threw up my hands. "If we removed it all, then how did we lose our memories?"

  "I dismantled that spell as well," Brianna said. "It was the last, toughest one."

  "So we never lost our memories at all? Only we did?" I said.

  "We remember that happening," Brianna said. "It doesn't mean it did."

  "Huh?" Sophie said.

  "Memories are weird," Brianna said. "Every time you access a memory, you risk altering it."

  "Maybe it's too late at night to discuss memory magic," Sophie said, rubbing at her temples. "Or too early in the morning."

  "I wasn't talking about magic," Brianna said. "That's science. It's very interesting actually-“

  Sophie put up a hand to halt the flow of what was certainly going to be far too much information. "Too late. Too early. Too tired."

  "We should get back to our own time," Brianna agreed.

  "Do we take the box with us? Or do we not because we didn't before? Or does it even matter?" I asked tiredly.

  "Leave it," Brianna said, but then took out her wand. "I'll ward it first, just to be on the safe side. It'll just take a moment."

  Sophie and I left her to it, making our way one slow step at a time down the stairs.

  "She's going to be up all night, isn't she?" Sophie said. "And I'm dead on my feet."

  "We maybe gave her too much and didn't keep enough for ourselves," I said.

  "Says you," Sophie softly scoffed. "I felt you giving me extra. Don't you ever run out?"

  "The world seems to hold a lot of power I can access with a touch," I said. "It's kind of scary."

  We heard the sound of Brianna coming out of Miss Zenobia's office, her feet running down the corridor to the stairs, and we paused outside of the parlor to see the letter and note we'd left there now gone.

  "I guess your plan worked," I said.

  What did the students of this era think of us, though? How far into the future did the school exist, anyway?

  The thought made a shiver run up my spine. The time bridge hadn't existed forever. It had begun at some date, and it would have to end at some date. It wasn't always going to exist. Somehow knowing that didn't feel like knowing that someday our sun was going to go supernova or whatever. It felt a lot more immediate than that.

  Like it was all going to come to an end soon. I was never going to live long enough to see the Earth's sun go cold and dark, but in that moment I was sure I was going to see that time bridge collapse. I could feel it in my bones.

  It was not a comfortable feeling.

  Chapter 12

  "Amanda! Amanda, wake up!"

  My eyes weren't open yet, but I had the distinct feeling that Brianna had been saying my name and shaking my shoulder for quite some time. I peered up at her through the narrowest crack between my lashes.

  "It's too early," I told her.

  "It's nearly noon," she said.

  "Noon!" In an instant, I was wide awake, sitting up and reaching for my clothes. "The bridge-"

  "It's all right," Brianna said. "I checked all of the wards and everything on my own. You and Sophie needed the rest."

  "Is Sophie up yet?" I asked.

  "I'm getting her next," Brianna said. "I found a spell I think might help us make sense of that journal."

  "A decoding spell?" I asked as I pulled on my jeans.

  "Better," Brianna said and gave me a wide grin. "Get some coffee and food in you and meet me in the library."

  I finished dressing and headed down the back stairs to find Sophie already in the kitchen, putting a mug of cold coffee into the microwave. She waited for me to pour one of my own before shutting the door and pushing the too-loud buttons.

  "Toast?" I said as I headed over to the breadbox.

  "Please," Sophie said, or mostly said before an enormous yawn interrupted her. Then a curious look passed over her eyes.

  "What is it?" I asked.

  "I'm not sure," she said. "Brianna woke me up too fast. But I think I was dreaming about my mother."

  "She wanted us to write that down," I said. "What did you dream?"

  "That's just it; it's all gone now," she said. "I think we were dancing together."

  "Magical dancing?" I asked. Sophie shook her head.

  "We were dancing to Salt N Peppa," Sophie said. "It was on the radio."

  "That sounds like a memory," I said.

  "But not a helpful one," Sophie said, quickly pulling the door of the microwave open before the beep could sound.

  "Maybe if you think about it again before you go to sleep tonight, you can finish the dream," I said.

  "I'll try that," she said.

  Brianna was waiting for us in the library, practically bouncing on her toes in impatience. There seemed to be more open books sprawled about than usual, which was saying something.

  "I hope this isn't going to require too much energy, because I just don't have it," Sophie said, slumping into a chair with her mug of coffee and slice of buttered toast.

  "Actually the spell I have in mind calls on Amanda's particular talents," Brianna said. "Are you up for it?"

  "I don't know," I admitted. "I don't know the first thing about code breaking. What would you need me to do?"

  "I found this," she said, picking out one of the open books and glancing at it before shoving it into my hands. "Does that look like something you can do?"

  It took me a moment to realize that what I was looking at was meant to be a sketched version of the world as a web of threads, as I saw it when I summoned my power. Not that I could draw it any better myself. I wouldn't even want to try. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but that world is far too information-dense to be contained on a two-dimensional page no matter how intricate the drawing.

  I continued to study it as I finished my toast then licked the last of the butter from my fingertips. Then I glanced at the text. It wasn't in English.

  "Can you read this?" I asked.

  "Some," Brianna said. "It's an older version of Italian, but not quite Latin, and the writer seems to have been a lover of contemporary slang. It would be like someone from centuries in the future trying to listen to modern teenagers at the mall conversing with each other. I can get the gist."

  "What is it?" Sophie asked, leaning across the table to look at the illustration in the book, upside-down from her point of view, but I wasn't sure that mattered.

  "Amanda said her power isn't so much time as story, right?" Brianna said, bouncing on her toes as her excitement got the better of her aga
in.

  "A sequence in time of relationships between things," I said. "If I examine things closely enough, I guess they tell me stories. You think that will work with this book?"

  "I don't just want you to examine it," she said, sitting on the edge of my chair, so she put her own finger on the page and trace a pattern in the web of lines. "This is a way of teasing out that entire story and giving it a magical form."

  "Oh," I said, watching her finger move through the drawing.

  "Someone writing in a journal, they are creating a sequence through time, right? And they add to it over time. That's totally your thing," Brianna said.

  "I guess," I said, but I wasn't sure.

  "I don't think this would work with any old journal," Brianna said. "It's only because this is probably Miss Zenobia's work, right? That or another witch, but I'm really thinking Miss Zenobia. She wrote this for a reason."

  "She put it in code for a reason," Sophie said.

  "That's to keep out the nonmagical types," Brianna said. "She wants us to read it. She put herself into it as she recorded just the things she wanted to record."

  "It sounds like you're talking about what she did with that box," Sophie said.

  "This is different," Brianna said. "That was a piece of her own self, set aside at great sacrifice. This will be limited to just what's within the journal. The version of herself contained in this book might not even be aware she's Miss Zenobia. But once you manifest her, she can answer any question we put to her, provided that the answer is somewhere in this book."

  "Neat," Sophie said. "Also, I'm never keeping a journal."

  "I've never tried anything like this," I said. "And my wand is still not my wand."

  "We're going to work together," Brianna said. "I'll direct the spell with my own wand. I just need to see through your eyes. Sophie should be in our circle but just to balance us out."

  "I can do that," Sophie said, and she did look a little better now that she had some caffeine coursing through her veins.

  "All right," I said.

  We sat down in a circle and put the book between us, open to the first page. I took several slow breaths then shifted to the world of threads to look at the book.

  It was still glowing brightly, but as I looked deeper, I saw there was something dwelling within it. It didn't look like a spirit or a ghost or anything. I had looked inside of so many people since I had discovered my power I knew what consciousness looked like. This wasn't that.

  But it was something.

  I sensed Brianna waiting, wand raised, and I willed my perceptions over to her. Her breath caught with wonder, but she quickly brought her mind back to the task and began chanting and drawing the thing out of the book with little flicks of her wand.

  And suddenly we were all sitting on the floor looking up at the ghostly form of Miss Zenobia Weekes. She looked younger, far younger than I would have expected. I had assumed that if she had lived for centuries, she had probably looked like she did at the end for decades, but perhaps that wasn't the case.

  But Brianna was frowning, and that made me nervous.

  "Do you know who you are?" Brianna asked the form.

  "Oh," the form said as if startled to be spoken to. "My name is… Z?" she said uncertainly.

  "And do you know what year it is?" Brianna asked.

  I thought for a moment, that question would confuse the journal ghost. Wouldn't she remember every year all overlapped, since she embodied them all?

  But then I remembered that we had pulled out a sequential memory. A story with a beginning and end.

  "It was 1968 the last I recall," Z said. She was floating several inches off the floor, and the book under her hem began to rustle, the pages turning until it got to the very end. The last entry ended halfway down the lefthand page, and the righthand page was blank. "Yes, I remember now. 1968.”

  "What do you remember first?" I asked.

  "Coming to St. Paul, Minnesota," she said. "Not much here at the time. Not a bit like home."

  "And where was home?" I asked.

  "I don't know," Z said, almost merry in her lack of knowledge. "I don't think I ever wrote that bit down. Just that this place is not like home."

  "That's all right," Brianna said. "We're mostly interested in the last things you know. They should be freshest in your memory."

  "I don't know about that," Z said with a frown. "I think some of the middle bits are clearer. Towards the end, the writing gets a little irregular."

  "It might be worth taking the time to decode it all later," Brianna said under her breath, and I was pretty sure she was talking to herself. Then she looked back up at Z. "What can you tell us of the last class?"

  "The last class?" Z said. "You say that with such finality. Aren't you students too?"

  "Please answer the question," Brianna said. Z frowned. There was enough Miss Zenobia in her to not like being given orders.

  But she was a summoned form, conjured up to answer questions. She tapped her phantom fingertips together as she considered. "Not as many students as in years gone by. No, not much call for charm schools, especially not little local ones like mine. But there is always a need to educate witches, and I had six here at the time."

  "Six?" Sophie said. "Not three?"

  "Six is three and three," Z said. At first, I thought she was being sarcastic, but then she continued on. "Three were very tight, very focused on working magic together. Ooh, they had such potential. But the other three? Well, they couldn't much be bothered."

  "Names, please?" Brianna said.

  "Oh dear, I'm afraid it's just first names for me," Z said. Which was a relief; I was expecting it to be initials all the way through.

  "Who were the three who did the magic?" Brianna asked, then glanced at Sophie and then at me.

  "Patricia was their leader. Such a diligent student, always so eager to learn. Linda and Debra were fine in their own ways, of course, but without Patricia I'm not sure how much they would've accomplished. It's always lovely as a teacher to have a student like that, one that motivates the others. The whole class achieves more than you could ever imagine."

  "The whole class? Did she inspire the other three as well?" Brianna asked. If she was disappointed that our mothers weren't named as the three best students, she didn't show it.

  "She did at first," Z said. "When they were all younger, and magic was more like a game. It was only when I started to show them the whole world and what was in it that the others started to pull away. Patricia was driven to know it all, to face things as they were. She managed to keep Linda and Debra close by her sides, but the others were drifting away."

  "Marie wanted to dance," Sophie said.

  "Yes, and she was so talented," Z said with a smile.

  "And Kathleen?" I asked. "She got married?"

  "Married, but still a student," Z said. "She was loyal, if not so driven as Patricia. Patricia striving for new heights might have put her off, I sometimes think. The two always butted heads, but Kathleen hated competing. She'd rather leave the game and let Patricia declare herself the winner then to fight for her position. Pity. She had talent, but she chose to waste it."

  I could feel my cheeks burning and reminded myself that Miss Zenobia, for all her power, was just one woman. This was just one woman's opinion. It didn't sum up all that was my mother, not by a longshot.

  "And Lula?" Brianna asked. "She never lost interest in magic, did she?"

  "Well, her interest in magic was never about using it for anything," Z said. "Just to study the history. Or rather, she was always planning all of the stops on an epic tour of the old countries that she never quite was ready to undertake. Or maybe she did! I don't know what happened after it all fell apart."

  "What all fell apart?" we all asked at once, sitting up straighter.

  "Well, everything," Z said, surprised at the looks on our faces. "But most specifically, the time portal itself."

  Chapter 13

  We all started asking questi
ons at once, Brianna managing two or three to Sophie and mine's one each, but it didn't matter since Z couldn't make sense of any of it.

  "Children, children," she said, making settle-down gestures with her hands. "One at a time, please."

  "Tell it all," I said. "From the beginning."

  "Not the very beginning!" Brianna quickly interjected.

  "Start with the time portal falling apart. Explain that," Sophie said.

  Z looked thoughtful for a moment, as if accessing her memory like an old computer. I could almost hear the whir and whine of a hard drive booting up. Then she gave us an apologetic smile. "I don't contain all the answers."

  "Just tell us what you do know," Brianna said. "We can take it from there."

  "I was called away," Z said. "I don't know by who, to where, or for what purpose. I just know I wasn't here. There is a gap of about a week in my entries that lines up with that point."

  "Are pages missing?" Brianna asked.

  "No, nothing sinister," Z said. "My last entry is very rushed. I think I left out a lot because there simply wasn't time."

  "Do you think you were called away deliberately?" I asked. "Like it was a distraction?"

  "No," Z said after a moment's thought. "If that had been true, I would have noted it. I'm sure of that."

  "So what happened while you were away?" Brianna asked.

  "I had left my students in charge," Z said. "Kathleen was the oldest, but she was expecting a baby."

  "Does that affect magic?" I asked.

  "Yes, but in unpredictable ways," Brianna answered me. "One spell will fizzle, another will have ten times the effect. It varies by witch and by spell and by how far along she is and by time of day."

  "Unpredictable," I said, nodding.

  "Indeed, and so I asked her to rely on Patricia if anything should come up that she couldn't deal with," Z said. "There shouldn't have been any problems."

  "The bridge across time was stable?" Brianna asked.