I’m getting desperate. I know Dana senses it, even if she won’t say it. And I certainly won’t tell her that. If I say it out loud, it will be too true—too unchangeable.
“Crystal, it’s time for dinner,” my mom calls.
I lock my computer before closing it. Mom came in the other day to pick up laundry and bumped my desk hard enough to wake the computer up. I happened to walk by at just the right moment—and nothing incriminating was up on the web browser—but it was a close call. Though we’ve never spoken about it, I’m positive my mom knows—or at least has an inkling—that her baby sister, my once-again dead aunt Crystal, dabbled in witchcraft. I’m not sure what her thoughts on the matter would be if she found out I was practicing it as well, and I’m not interested in finding out.
Not waiting to be called a second time, I leave my room. Dad is already sitting at the dining room table, and mom is bringing a drink from the kitchen. I swing by the refrigerator, pouring myself a glass of lemonade before joining them.
“Wow, Mom, dinner looks amazing,” I say. It’s kind of an unwritten family rule that someone has to compliment my mother at every meal. She’s made it abundantly clear throughout my lifetime that she hates planning and cooking meals, and left to her own devices she would subsist solely on sandwiches, so Dad and I take turns making sure she knows we appreciate the work that goes into each dinner. Tonight, she’s made what appear to be enchiladas. While she usually sticks to old standbys, every once in a while she will branch out and try a recipe one of her friends shared on social media. There’s actually even money that tonight’s meal will suck.
Mom smiles. I’m sure she knows about the unspoken pact Dad and I have, but she accepts my praise anyway. As we take turns spooning globs of tortilla, meat, and cheese onto our plates, my parents engage in a kind of silent conversation spoken with their eyes. I’ve seen them look at each other this way before, and I’m pretty sure when they do start talking it won’t be good for me.
Once our plates are full, my dad shifts in his seat just slightly—just enough to draw my attention. He has a quiet, gentle manner about him, one that always puts me at ease. But now it’s clear he is not at ease with whatever it is he’s about to say. Dad skewers a piece of chicken that’s escaped its tortilla and lifts it as though he’s about to take a bite, but it hovers halfway between the table and his mouth as he locks eyes with me. “So, honey, how’s school going?”
It’s a trick question and I know it. Our district gives students and parents online access to grades, and while I know my parents don’t check daily, they do check regularly. My grades aren’t abysmal, but they aren’t to the standard I’ve set over the years, either. I don’t want to lie, but I’m not sure exactly how to respond. I give a noncommittal shrug as I take a bite of my food to buy time.
Dad lets out of breath and looks at Mom, sighing as if I’m being difficult. He brings his forkful the remaining distance to his mouth, a cue for my mom to take over the questioning.
“We’re a little concerned about your math grade.” When it comes to questioning procedures, Mom is much more to the point.
I swallow my bite and contemplate taking a second to give me more time to formulate a response but decide against it. “I’m having a little trouble with this chapter.” It’s not a lie—not entirely, anyway. I am having trouble with this chapter, but mostly because I’m not paying any attention in class and not making an effort on the homework.
“According to the grade book, you’re missing several assignments.” Mom eyes me shrewdly. I get my wavy chestnut hair from her, along with my slight build. It’s times like this that I wonder if I’ll look like her when I’m a mom. Will I be this concerned about things that won’t matter in my child’s life in ten or twenty years? Sometimes I wish I could tell her how so many things she worries about for me really have no bearing on my life. It’s the things she doesn’t know about—my magic, or lack thereof—that will really influence the person I become.
I debate exactly what to tell her. She’s told me before I’m not a very good liar, so I don’t make it a practice. Although, to be honest, the last time I tried lying to her about something was back in early middle school, and she may have told me I was bad at it just to keep me from trying again. It might be worth it to try my luck. “I think maybe Mrs. Hill lost some of those assignments. I heard someone else in class complaining about that the other day. I figured he was making a stink because he hadn’t actually done them, but if you’re saying things are missing in the grade book for me, maybe there’s something to his story.”
I take another bite as Mom and Dad go back to their wordless conversation. I wonder if I’ll ever have that with someone—the ability to gauge what they’re thinking with little more than an eyebrow raise or a quirk of the lip.
A nagging voice in the back of my mind starts up with the familiar refrain, but I shove it back. Now is not the time to think of what would be different if I hadn’t pushed Tucker away again. Now is not the time to think about distractions.
Dad swallows his mouthful and leans toward me over the table. “Saying your teacher is losing your assignments is quite an accusation. I want you to go and check in with her tomorrow. See if maybe the assignment is in a different pile, or maybe sitting in a stack at home. Your aunt used to complain that students would accuse her of losing things that they turned in late that simply hadn’t been graded yet.” His mouth twitches and his eyes dart to my mom the way they do every time he mentions his sister-in-law. Before she was the principal of Clearwater High, she was a teacher there. I assume, anyway. That particular part of her history is mostly a mystery to me, since I didn’t live it. In my reality—the one I lived in before Krissa and I went back in time—my aunt had been dead for nearly two decades.
I give myself a little shake, not willing to give too much thought to the aunt I barely got to know. Every time I start thinking that way, I can’t help getting angry that I lost the one person I desperately wanted in my life, yet Krissa has gotten everyone she loves back. In our reality, her mother died—that’s why she moved here in the first place. But in this timeline, her mom is alive and well. Even her father, who had been out of her life for years, has returned. And when we went up against Seth, she lost nothing. I’ve lost everything.
“Honey, is there something wrong?” Dad asks, his face pinched with concern.
I can’t imagine what expressions have been playing out across my face the last few seconds. I fight to relax my features into a neutral position before forcing a small smile. “I’m fine. I’ll talk to my teacher tomorrow.”
But Dad is still looking at me like I’m fragile. His shoulders sag as he releases a breath. “I know you miss her. I know how much you loved your aunt. But the last thing she would want is for you to let your studies slip because of her. You know how important education was to her. Now, if you need to talk to someone…”
Mom stands abruptly, her thighs bumping against the table. “I need to get something,” she mutters, leaving the room.
I curse myself that the conversation has gone in this direction. It’s not like talking about my aunt is off-limits, but it always seems to strike a chord in my mom. I promise myself to start pretending to care in math, if even just to keep a conversation like this from repeating.
“I’ll do better. If the teacher really doesn’t have my assignments, I’ll make them up.”
Dad looks relieved by my words and applies himself to his dinner with much more gusto than before. I can’t blame him—despite looking like a sloppy mess, this meal definitely falls in the fifty percent that turn out really well. It’s not until he reaches for a salt shaker that I pause in my own eating. I eye him carefully as he sprinkles on a little, and then a little more and a little more.
“Dad,” I say, a hint of warning in my voice. At his last checkup, the doctor told him he needs to cut sodium from his diet. I insisted we remove the salt shaker from the table entirely after that, but he declared it wouldn’t be an i
ssue, that he wouldn’t be tempted. It must only be in his distraction that he’s reached for it now, as evidenced by the sheepish look he gives.
“Oh, come on. A little bit won’t hurt.”
“It’s not a little bit I’m worried about,” I say, not managing to hide the smile that upturns the corners of my mouth. “You, sir, have a bit of an obsession when it comes to salt.”
His eyes go wide as he gestures to himself innocently. “Moi?”
“Yeah, like you don’t know what I’m talking about,” I say, rolling my eyes.
He shakes his head as he cuts off another strip of enchilada. “You don’t need to give me such a hard time, you know. I am a grown man, after all.”
“Of course you are. And I want you to continue growing. I want you to keep growing until you’re a shriveled old man. I want you to be around forever.”
He smiles, stretching his hand across the table. “I’ll do my best, honey.”
I reach for his hand and squeeze it. “You better.”
Less than a minute later, Mom returns. The barest hint of pink around her eyes suggests her reaction to the mention of her sister. I keep having to remind myself how new this is for her. As far as she’s concerned, her sister was part of her life until a few months ago.
After dinner, I head back to my room. I unlock my computer and brace my eyes for the hideous website. Some links toward the bottom boast spells to enhance magical abilities, and I open up the notebook I keep hidden with my school supplies and start scanning the pages for similarities to the spells described on the site. Who knows? Maybe there’s something here I haven’t already tried.
I hope there is. I’m starting to think there’s nothing that will help. If that’s the case, where does it leave me? It doesn’t matter what my grade in math is or how much my parents care—without my magic, I’m not me.
Chapter Seven
Krissa
When Tucker drops me off in front of my house, it’s late—way past my curfew. Once upon a time, in a different life, I didn’t even have a curfew, and now I might as well not have one for as much attention as I pay to it.
I turned off my phone hours ago when the constant barrage of text messages started to irritate me. It’s par for the course at this point.
Although the April air is getting warmer during the day, it’s still cold enough to make me shiver at night. As I approach the wraparound porch, I wish I had thought to grab a sweatshirt earlier today.
The light is on, but I know it wasn’t done as a kindness. Its light cuts through the darkness like a beacon, its purpose to remind me of the hour.
Once upon a time, in a different life, this would have caused me guilt. But this isn’t that life.
The front door is unlocked—it always is—and I ease it open and step over the threshold. I kick off my shoes and head for the stairs, but before I can get there, someone shifts in the living room. Even without the benefit of that part of my psychic abilities, I know exactly who it is before I turn. “Hey, Dad.”
“You have any idea what time it is?” His voice is low, but not out of consideration for my mom and Jodi, who are no doubt asleep upstairs. It trembles with the barest hint of anger. I know he’s working to control it, as he has countless times in the last few months.
“I’m not actually sure,” I say, leaning against the archway between the hallway and living room. “I had to turn off my phone because it kept getting blown up with text messages.”
He sputters, his anger flaring. I’m baiting him, but I can’t help it. “You turned it off?” he asks incredulously. “What if there was an emergency?”
I cross my arms over my chest. “Was there? An emergency?”
His mouth tightens. “No, there wasn’t. But you already knew that. Just like I know you were out with Griffin and Tucker again.” He cocks his head, narrowing his eyes. “What, you’re not going to deny it?”
I shrug. “What’s the point?”
He stands, crossing to me in three long strides. “Have you been drinking again?”
I groan. Of course he would bring that up. He pulls it out every few weeks or so in an attempt to get a rise from me. It happened once—only once. Tucker and Griffin offered me some beer, and I took them up on it. I figured it might help me escape my new normal. But drinking didn’t give me the distance from the unpleasant realities I would’ve liked. Instead of making me forget, it was like the alcohol was a laser pointer that highlighted all the reasons I had to be displeased with the current state of things. “No, Dad. I’m not drunk.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
I roll my eyes, not bothering to dignify his question with a response. I decided after that one night that drinking wasn’t for me. But even if I hadn’t, I could make it so no one knew I had done it. I found a spell in the family grimoire for “the abatement of drunkenness” that I’ve used on Tucker two or three times so he’d be sober enough to drive home.
“I don’t trust those boys,” Dad says.
It’s not the first time he’s made this pronouncement either. “You trusted them enough when you needed them. What? Now that we don’t have some big bad guy to take down, they’re not good enough for you anymore?”
Dad runs a hand through his graying hair, exasperated. “But you weren’t exactly best friends with either of them back then either, were you?”
I can’t hold his gaze. “A lot can change.”
“Don’t I know it,” he mutters. He lets out a breath and his entire posture softens. “I don’t want to fight.”
“Finally, something we can agree on.”
He catches my eye, and the concern there threatens to break me. “Sweetie, I think you should talk to someone about what you’re going through. I’ve done some research on some counselors and psychologists who might be able to help you process everything.”
I take a step back, the walls that had started to gently crumble redoubling. “Talk to someone? Who do you expect me to talk to? Better yet—what you expect me to say? I can’t tell anyone the truth. Dad, I killed a man. I stabbed him in the heart. I watched the life drain from his face. Who can I tell that to? They’ll either believe me and lock me up for murder, or they won’t believe me and they’ll lock me up for being crazy.” I shake my head, backing toward the stairs. “No. I can’t tell anyone what really happened. You just have to let me deal with things on my own.” The next words that escape my mouth are sharp like a dagger. “After all, you’re good at that.”
The stairs behind me creak under someone’s weight. Mom’s voice is tired when she speaks. “Give it a rest, you two. If you’re not careful, you’ll wake Jodi.” A large yawn indicates we’ve already woken her.
A prickle of embarrassment crawls up my neck and into my cheeks, and I’m glad it’s dark enough that no one can see it. Without waiting for my dad to formulate some new accusation or complaint, I head up the stairs, giving my mom’s shoulder a brief squeeze as I brush past her. Dad has made it to the top of the flight by the time I reach the stairs that will lead me to the third floor. The two exchange a brief, murmured conversation before Mom leads the way to their bedroom.
It should make me happy that the two of them are getting their relationship back to where it was before Dad left, but I can’t dredge up the appropriate emotion. It’s not even that I’m being selfish. It’s just too hard for me to feel anything anymore.
I know Dad is only trying to help, but life would be so much easier if he’d just stop. Mom and Jodi are both giving me space and I wish he’d do the same. Then again, Mom and Jodi don’t know what I’ve done. Dad made the decision to keep it from them, to tell them that we defeated Seth in broad strokes only, and I’m glad he did. At least there are two people I care about who don’t see me as a killer. I don’t know how I’d deal if I saw in them the same repulsion I detect just beneath the surface of everyone who knows.
Chapter Eight
Sasha
When Elliot and I first came to Clearwater, we shared a be
at-up Honda Civic. Since we lived together and spent most of our time with each other, it made sense to just have the one. But once we decided to relocate here permanently and get our separate places, Elliot insisted I should keep the car. It wasn’t exactly in stellar condition when we got it, and as I pull into the parking lot of Allegro Bread Company, the roar as I accelerate indicates I’m in need of a new muffler—possibly an entire new exhaust system. I ease the vehicle into the empty spot beside a sleek dark orange Chevy SS—Elliot’s car—and curse myself, not for the first time, for taking him up on his offer. It could be me in the nice car. It may have taken me more effort to acquire it, unlike the ease with which Elliot likely used his psychic abilities to persuade someone to give it to him, but it would have been worth it. The first time I saw it, I berated him for not doing the chivalrous thing and giving me the nicer ride, but all he did was stick out his tongue. With Elliot in my life, I’ve never had to wonder what it would be like to have a brother.
Besides the spot I pulled into, there isn’t another empty one in sight. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised—after all, it is lunchtime and this is a popular place. It’s not typically the kind of restaurant I would choose to eat at, but when I insisted Anya and I meet for lunch instead of dinner, this was the location she chose.
A man in his forties with an ample stomach and a broad smile holds the door open for me and I force a polite nod. It’s taken months to extend simple courtesies like this to the ordinary. The Devoted did their best to avoid them, but on the off chance we interacted with someone without abilities, we never went out of our way to be pleasant. People without abilities are below people like me. It kills me that I have to pretend otherwise.
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