Witch Rising

by Paige McKenzie

  It occurred to Greta, too, that they needed to warn whoever else was on that list. She started to text Mira about it, then stopped. She had no idea if Mira still had privacy—what if she was back inside the building with her phone in plain sight of the others? And besides, she needed to focus on getting her room in order and locking up her magical belongings.

  She realized that Torrence was asking her a question.

  “What did you say?”

  “What did Mira want?”

  “Oh! She had bad news. Really bad.”

  Greta bent down and scooped Gofflesby in her arms as she explained the situation to Torrence. Gofflesby nestled against her, purring, and she once again fought off the impulse to cry. Nothing could happen to her or her familiar. Or her witches and their familiars. Or any witches and their familiars, either.

  “Let me help you,” Torrence said when Greta had finished, at the same time kicking his tarot card spread under the couch. Greta noticed that one card remained visible—the Wheel of Fortune, upside down. Didn’t that configuration mean bad luck?

  “Thank you. At the moment, I need to go upstairs and—”

  Greta was interrupted by fists banging on the front door. It was a malevolent presence. Greta sensed it immediately. She could feel the waves of dark energy, the cruel intent. She froze, terrified.

  No. I have to act, now.

  “Can you grab Lovebug and the babies? We need to hide,” she told Torrence.

  Then, voices. Greta heard her mother’s among them.

  Mama. She thrust Gofflesby at Torrence, wriggling and meowing and complaining, and rushed to the front door. When she opened it, she found two police officer with Ysabel, who was balancing bags of groceries in her arms. Ysabel and the officers—their badges said Correa and Babel—all turned toward Greta at the same time.

  “Are you Greta Navarro?” Officer Correa asked brusquely.

  Fear coursed through Greta’s veins, and she was unable to speak. It’s happening. Mira’s warning came too late. They have the list.

  “We need to bring you in for questioning, Greta. You’ve been accused of violating Title 6 of the US Comprehensive Code, Section 129,” Officer Babel added.

  “No!” Ysabel set her groceries down on the porch and stepped between Greta and the officers; she was short, so the two men towered over her. “There’s been a big mistake. I’m the one you’re looking for, not my daughter.”

  “Mama!”

  “Hush, now. I’ll go with these officers. Teo is doing family swim at the Y with Papa; just take care of them until I return.”

  “But—”

  Ysabel gave her a warning look. “I’ll be fine, mijita. Officers, let’s go.”

  Greta watched as the officers led Ysabel to their car, which was parked across the street. Now the tears were flowing down her cheeks. Was this the beginning of the end?

  It couldn’t be.

  She glanced over her shoulder; she was alone. Torrence had obeyed her instructions and was hiding somewhere with Gofflesby and the other cats. Good.

  Mama had lied to save her. And now, she had to save Mama. She pulled out her phone and texted the only witch who had the skills to deal with a crisis as dire as this.

  Div.

  17

  PRISONER’S DILEMMA

  Even one’s enemies have souls, or they at least pretend to.

  (FROM THE GOOD BOOK OF MAGIC AND MENTALISM BY CALLIXTA CROWE)

  Inside the Kato family’s beach shack, Iris leaned against a tower of oars and crates. She tried a few therapy breaths, although without breathing too much, because the place smelled like dead fish and moldy things. Also salt and rotting wood. Plus there were lots of spiders and other creepy-crawly critters, too, like silverfish, which weren’t fish at all, so why were they called that, and centipedes… needless to say, animals with a hundred of any appendage were, by definition, super-scary and not welcome.

  The whole situation was less than ideal for Iris’s SPD and anxiety and other issues. Maybe if she held her nose and therapy-breathed through her mouth, for starters.

  She tried this now. Nope, negatory, doesn’t work.

  Her SPD and anxiety were also not helped by the sight of ShadowKnight’s very unconscious, very tied-up body on the damp plank floor. Earlier at WitchWorldCon, Div had made the decision to smuggle their prisoner into the trunk of her fancy white car, using a series of concealment and invisibility spells, and drive back to Sorrow Point to interrogate him. Binx had suggested that they take him straight to her family’s beach shack, which was apparently never used and located in an out-of-the-way spot.

  Too out-of-the-way, in Iris’s humble opinion. If they screamed, would anyone hear them?

  Although, Iris wasn’t sure which worried her more—the possibility that he might wake up any minute and zap them all with his Maximus Hobbes magical murder powers, or that Binx and maybe Div might do the same to him. Kill or be killed.

  “C-can we go soon? I don’t like it here,” Iris blurted out.

  Binx shot her a just deal with it look. Div ignored Iris entirely; she was frowning at her phone and tapping at the screen.

  “Besides, how are we going to interrogate him when he’s, you know, not conscious?” Iris went on. “Also, not to be a buzzkill, and maybe this is just a minor side issue… but aren’t we committing a crime by bringing him here? Like kidnapping? Are we criminals now? Of course, we were already criminals according to 6-129, except as we all know, we—”

  “Is there no signal out here?” Div interrupted.

  “Nah. I’ve been trying to create a magical app for that, but it’s still in the beta stage,” Binx replied.

  Iris raised her hand. “I’m having phone issues, too. I texted Greta before, to tell her where we were, but I didn’t hear back.”

  She’s probably having a make-out sesh with that love-potion-wielding loser.

  “I also need to get hold of Mira and Aysha and tell them what’s happening here,” Div murmured. “And they were supposed to report to me about what’s going on at Mira’s father’s campaign headquarters. Perhaps I should run up to your house quickly. You did reach Ridley, right, Binx?”

  “Yup. While we were driving. She was super-relieved to hear we were all safe. She should be on her way here.”

  On the floor, ShadowKnight stirred and moaned. His eyelids fluttered.

  “He’s waking up!” Iris whispered frantically.

  Div put her phone away. “Wands ready, both of you!”

  Iris and Binx obeyed. The three witches proceeded to form a circle around their prisoner and pointed their wands at him.

  He opened his eyes and blinked at the girls’ defensive stances. “Th-that’s not necessary,” he said in a weak, croaky voice.

  “I would say it’s very necessary, given that you had Penelope killed… and you tried to have Greta killed, too. Not to mention all the witches you murdered during your witch-hunting days,” Div countered.

  “What are you? A shapeshifter?” Binx demanded.

  ShadowKnight didn’t answer.

  Maybe I can summon a vision and figure it out? Iris squeezed her eyes shut and therapy-breathed. Unfortunately, it was hard to achieve clarity when the dead-fish smells and the noiseless skittering of spiders and silverfish swirled and collided with each other in her brain. She wished she had an off switch so she could filter out the sensory static.

  No vision came to her, but she did manage to conjure up some ideas.

  “Yeah, so… it makes sense that he’s Maximus Hobbes, given what we know. But it also doesn’t make sense, because how can a guy from the nineteenth century be a teenager now? And which version of him needed Penelope’s heart-fire? ShadowKnight or Mr. Hobbes? What even is heart-fire, anyway? Hmm.” Iris tapped her chin with her index finger, hoping it would make her look wise and detective-ish.

  “Good questions, and I have more questions of my own.” Div turned back to their prisoner and aimed her wand right between his eyes. “You’ll ans
wer them all, Hobbes, ShadowKnight, whatever your name is. But if you make the slightest move, magical or nonmagical, I’m prepared to use cruentus caecus against you. As you may know, there is no counterspell or cure for cruentus caecus.”

  ShadowKnight paled. “Cruentus caecus? Where on earth did you learn that?”

  Iris tried to remember what cruentus caecus was. Something having to do with eye gouging and lots of blood and maybe permanent blindness, too. Ouch.

  “Explain to us, please. How do you happen to be both a witch and a witch-hunter? That’s illogical,” Div went on, her wand still laser-focused on its target. “Also, are you in league with the Antima? With the New Order? With the Jessup family? Did they help you and Mrs. Feathers kill Penelope? Who was Mrs. Feathers, and did you kill her after you were done with her? How exactly does heart-fire work to prolong life?”

  “I have zero, nothing, to do with the Antima or New Order or this Jessup family. To answer your other questions, though, I need to go back to the beginning.”

  “Fine. Begin.”

  “Can you untie me? I promise I won’t—”

  “No. Your promises are garbage!” Binx cried out, waving her wand in his face.

  Iris was worried about her friend, who looked like Draska before she sliced the fake prince Lagorian in half with her magically charged Draggidian steel ax for betraying the Wildcat Folk. If things didn’t turn around fast, Binx really would murder ShadowKnight for betraying her, and for everything else, too. And as far as Iris knew, there was no spell to unmurder someone.

  “Pokedragon, I’m sorry.” ShadowKnight hoisted himself up on his elbows, leaned against a broken kayak, and cleared his throat. “I’ll explain everything.”

  “Fine. Talk,” Binx snapped.

  “When I was a teenager—a human, or so I thought—I saw my parents killed by witches. From then on, I dedicated my life to avenging their deaths. When the government initiated the Great Witch Purge of 1877, I volunteered to help round up witches.”

  “I’ve read that the government did this because they blamed—actually, scapegoated—witches for a terrible virus. A plague,” Div remarked.

  ShadowKnight nodded. “It’s true. I…” His voice broke. “I lost loved ones in the Gray Plague. So did many others. I knew there was an actual virus at work, and that witches had nothing to do with it. I was a medical student back then, specializing in sepsis and surgery. Still, I was more than happy to join the government’s cause and make witches suffer for what they’d done to my parents. I became a witch-hunter, one of the best.”

  “And you were having so much fun that you decided to keep yourself alive and continue with your evil witch-hunting into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries?” Binx spat out.

  “No, not at all!” ShadowKnight insisted. “You see, during the Purge, I encountered Callixta Crowe. I knew who she was, and that there was a tremendous bounty on her head. I was about to capture her and turn her in to the authorities when she told me an astonishing story. She said…” He paused and shook his head. “She said I was a witch, and that both my parents had been witches, too. And that it was humans, not witches, who’d murdered them.”

  Iris, Binx, and Div exchanged shocked glances.

  “She explained that I was part of an ancient prophecy that had been memorialized in a magical scroll. According to the prophecy, I, Maximus Hobbes, was destined to stop the extinction of all witches in the year 2017.”

  “2017, as in now?” Iris asked, confused.

  “Yes. She showed me the scroll, and when I touched it, I knew she was telling the truth.”

  “Soooo… you time-traveled to the present to save all our butts or whatever?” Binx asked skeptically.

  “Yes and no. Callixta sent me through a magical portal to fulfill the prophecy, but it glitched. Like, seriously glitched. I went back and forth through time—I became a baby, and then an old man, and then a baby again, and then an old man again… before the portal finally spit me into the present as my eighteen-year-old self. By then, I was practically dead from the space-time dis-continuum and disruption. My internal organs had begun to disintegrate and atrophy.”

  Binx swiveled to Div. “I think he’s lying. I think we should just throw him into the ocean and be done with him.”

  “Yeah, I deserved that,” ShadowKnight acknowledged.

  “Deserve, present tense. I’m not joking, you jerk,” Binx told him coldly.

  ShadowKnight stared at her.

  “Perhaps Binx has a point. Can you back up your account? Do you have proof?” Div asked ShadowKnight.

  “Not exactly. But I’m happy to subject myself to whatever scrying rituals you want to put me through.”

  “What about the heart-fire thing?” Iris spoke up. “Also, why does my stomach hurt suddenly? Is it the doomsday vibe in this room? Or is it the Rage-Mage Nachos with a side of Goblin Guac I ate back at WitchWorldCon?” She clutched her sides. “Sorry. TMI, right?”

  “Let me explain about heart-fire,” ShadowKnight went on. “When I landed in the present, Mrs. Feathers was already here, waiting for me. Callixta had sent her through the portal, too, from 1877, to help me with my mission and to fast-track my magical training. But as I mentioned before, I was very sick. In fact, as a person with medical training, I could tell that I would likely be dead within the year. Months, maybe. Callixta had foreseen this and warned me that the only possible cure would be to harvest the heart-fire of her descendants. Scions, she called them. Heart-fire is… well, to obtain it, you have to cut out a scion’s heart, perform a spell to extract its essential energies, and make a potion out of those energies and other ingredients.”

  “Now I really have a stomachache. Correction, I want to throw up,” Iris moaned.

  “That’s your excuse for having Penelope killed? A so-called prophecy?” Div snapped at ShadowKnight. “Was Mrs. Feathers a scion, too? Is that why you killed her?”

  “I didn’t kill Mrs. Feathers! And as for Penelope… I…” ShadowKnight hesitated. “So she’s not dead. Not exactly.”

  “What?”

  Everyone turned. Ridley stood in the doorway.

  “Hey!” Binx rushed up to her best friend and hugged her.

  Ridley was visibly shaking. “Binx, what does he mean Penelope’s not… is he saying she’s still alive?”

  “He’s been telling us quite the tale, Ridley. We still need to sort out what’s true and what’s not,” Div spoke up.

  Iris was about to jump into the discussion when her overly sensitive ears picked up a barely audible sound. A word. Evanescetio.

  She turned back around to face ShadowKnight.

  A heap of loose ropes lay next to the broken kayak where he used to be.

  “Guys? He’s gone!” Iris cried out.

  PART 3

  IDENTITY THEFT

  Transformation can be achieved using muto, but that spell has limits. Vertero is the more advanced form and difficult to achieve. Also, there are side effects. I should know, right?

  (FROM THE GRIMOIRE OF PENELOPE RUE HART)

  18

  THE GAMING ROOM

  Science and magic often collaborate in interesting ways.

  (FROM THE GOOD BOOK OF MAGIC AND MENTALISM BY CALLIXTA CROWE)

  “Die!” ShadowKnight yelled as he tapped repeatedly on his computer mouse, directing his Staff of Eternal Night at a roving band of Ongolean Orks. “Die, die, die!”

  The staff glowed blue and then red as a bolt of lightning shot out of it, zapping the head Ork. “Fzdtp!” it screamed before falling to the ground with a great thud. No vowels, which told ShadowKnight that these were outlaws from the pre–Ragamong Revolution days.

  “Yeah, fzdtp to you, too, you parasitic slimeball! That’ll teach you to steal my Golden Rocks of Retrograde Teleportation!”

  ShadowKnight finished off the rest of the rogue Orks, this time switching to the more efficient method of casting Poison Splash at the lot of them. He watched as the creatures dissolved into a collective
pool of oozing purple liquid, shouting various vowel-less Ongolean obscenities as they perished.

  “Ugh. Finally!”

  He slumped back in his chair, took a long sip of Mountain Dew, and debated what his next move should be. Shop for new magical weapons at Beeble’s Bazaar? Chase down the rumor about buried treasure in the Skirnysh Zone? Pay his former-enemy-turned-mentor Arestipolla of Yorn a visit? He wondered if Binx’s avatar, Ms. Magius, was online. He hadn’t been able to locate her so far, but it was possible to hide one’s presence in the game with a simple hack. He wondered, too, where Binx herself was IRL, and what she was thinking about—or rather, what she was thinking about him after today’s events.

  Their WitchWorldCon meetup had not gone as planned. Not even close. It was supposed to have been his great, grand opportunity to tell her the whole truth—well, most of it, anyway—and win her over to his side forever. He hadn’t expected Div to show up; Binx had assured him she’d be at the con alone, and he’d believed her.

  He was lucky he’d managed to get away from Binx and the others at the beach… really lucky. He’d used the temporary distraction of Ridley’s sudden appearance and the big reveal about Penelope to cast an advanced form of evadere, and fortunately for him, it had taken effect before the four witches could perform a counterspell. If he hadn’t escaped, who knows what they would have done to him? Binx had threatened to kill him—throw him into the ocean—and she may have gone through with it, too. He recalled the look of shock and horror in her eyes at WitchWorldCon when she realized he wasn’t the person he’d claimed to be.

  I’m sorry, Pokedragon. I really am.

  He truly liked her. She reminded him so much of his beloved Beatrice. Smart, spunky, a wicked sense of humor, and beautiful in her own defiant way. The coincidence of the names—Beatrice and Beatrix—hadn’t been lost on him, either. Of course, Binx had no idea that he’d been aware of her full name—Beatrix Akari Kato—since the beginning, even when he’d supposedly known her only as Pokedragon2946.