by Skylar Finn
Witching Hour
Skylar Finn
Contents
1. The Head and the Heart
2. House of Clocks
3. The Magic of Cristo
4. Psychic Friends Network
5. Something Wicked
6. The Is, The Never Was, and The Could Be
7. Premonition
8. Autumn in Phoenix
9. Avant Garde
10. The Witching Hour
11. Homecoming
12. A Mysterious Guest
13. The End of Time
14. The Cat Came Back
15. Commitment Phobia
16. A Witch of Time
17. The Myth of Mother Time
18. Secrets
19. Baggage
20. A Powerful Witch
21. The Secret Life of Tamsin
22. A Voice in the Dark
23. Probably Not Detroit
24. Crimes and Misdemeanors
25. Intervention
26. Into the Fireplace
27. The Purest Heart
28. Decisions
29. A Witch of Time
30. The Way Back
31. Home is Where Your Socks Are
32. The Historian
About the Author
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1
The Head and the Heart
It was late spring in the city, which meant two things: one, the last of the slushy gray snow had finally melted from the curb, and two, my allergies were in a terrible state. You’d think that having recently discovered that I had inherited magical powers would have provided me with a way of alleviating them, but I didn’t really know any spells yet, let alone spells for dealing with pollen.
I rolled over and looked at the clock: it was nine am, which came as a shock. I was used to getting up at seven am sharp every day—even on weekends, to go to the gym—and now that I no longer worked for Coco Z’s PR firm, I could sleep in. I just never thought I actually would.
I hadn’t even heard Peter leave. I looked out the window just in time to see him heading up the block. I watched the back of his black jacket and gray hood until he disappeared around the corner. It felt sappy to admit, but I was already counting down the hours when I would see him after he got out of work.
It made me feel insecure. I’d never been one to spend all day looking forward to seeing someone. Number one, I was far too busy, and number two, I guess I never really cared about anyone enough to look forward to seeing them that much. It was a new feeling, and it made me absolutely crazy. And not in a good way, either.
For one thing, it made me very restless. Peter was currently excelling in his career as an investigative journalist for the city’s paper while I was waffling around in the midst of an existential crisis. Witchcraft is not a full-time paid position, so that was not a career option. In the meantime, I tried to figure out things to occupy my time so that I didn’t go insane during the day, but it was proving trying at best.
On this particular day, for example, I decided to stave off boredom by re-organizing Peter’s pantry alphabetically. I would have gone home and done my own, but I already did it earlier that week.
I opened the cabinet over the sink and paused. Was this a crazy, controlling girlfriend gesture? Like if I moved in all my kitchen appliances and ordered throw pillows for the couch? Would he feel stifled and no longer miss or idealize or fantasize about me, become bored, and meet someone else on Tinder? Yes, definitely yes.
Actually, what my behavior really reminded me of was Julia Roberts’ evil husband in Sleeping With the Enemy, which was even worse. Like if I snuck in while he was out and perfectly aligned all his bath towels and had Symphonie Fantastique playing on a boom box in the front hallway when he came back. No, this was too crazy. I needed to leave, immediately.
But first, I badly needed coffee. This was always a conundrum at Peter’s. Normally, we just went downstairs to the coffee shop on the first floor of his building, because we were both lazy and desperate for caffeine in the morning. I knew he had a French press around somewhere, along with a grinder and bag of whole bean coffee, but where?
Peter’s place was spartan to the point of being empty. He was always boasting about how utilitarian he was, and how we lived in a country of excess and needed to be conscientious about simplifying our lives. Which is great, but not when it’s—well, admittedly, nine-thirty in the morning, but still. Not when you’ve just woken up and are in desperate need of a cup of coffee.
I opened Peter’s refrigerator. There was no point in even beginning the epic scavenger hunt for the grinder, beans, and press if he didn’t have some sort of alternative milk. Peter was of course the kind of person who drank his coffee with full-fat cream and thought the idea of “alternative milk” was both laughable and ridiculous. He took his dairy privilege entirely for granted. But he did usually keep a coconut milk creamer in his refrigerator, just for me.
It was one of the many small, thoughtful things he did that made me feel both lucky and scared that something would happen and I would lose it all. I was certain this was an additional product of my bored mind, inventing trouble for myself. It didn’t stop me from doing it.
The refrigerator was practically empty, much like the rest of the apartment. What did he eat? We spent most evenings and weekends together, and we did eat out and order in quite a bit, but what if he wanted toast in the morning? There wasn’t even any butter. There probably wasn’t any bread for that matter, either.
I could see the vague outline of something in the vegetable drawer, which may or may not have been something edible. Maybe he kept a potential breakfast food in it, like grapefruit or something. I opened it, cautiously optimistic even as I anticipated a trip downstairs in my near future.
The contents of the drawer were so much worse than a non-breakfast food (like lettuce, or something disappointing and inedible, like old cabbage). As I regarded the contents of Peter’s vegetable crisper, I fell back against the island with a scream.
The only thing in his refrigerator was a human heart.
2
House of Clocks
My mind struggled to process what my eyes had just seen. A heart? Was this a new food trend I didn’t know about? Did he recently prepare a turkey and save the heart? But it was definitely a human heart, not an animal’s.
How well did I really know Peter, anyway? I knew he dealt with grisly things as a result of his work all the time; maybe it had gotten to him. Maybe he was a serial killer. I quickly pushed the thought aside. This was Peter: Peter, who cried at Pixar movies and showed up at my apartment at midnight on February 13th with a bouquet. He brought me flowers, not human hearts. He collected bottle caps, not skulls.
So what was it doing there? Had someone else put a heart in the fridge? What if Peter was being framed? I approached the refrigerator cautiously for a second glance. The only thing in the open vegetable drawer was an artichoke.
Slowly, I closed the drawer and eased the door shut, sagging against the handle. Even without Peter there, I could hear him chiding me for leaving the door open and wasting electricity. Human hearts are no excuse for excessive electrical use, Sam. But I could have sworn that’s what I saw. Was I cracking up?
There was a second possibility, one even worse: I’d seen strange things before and thought I was going crazy, only to discover that my vision was a premonition, and one that had come true. Come to think of it, I’d rather my human-heart-glimpse had been merely the byproduct of my own boredom and restlessness.
If the heart had been a vision of the future, then whose heart was it?
Before I jumped to any conclusions, I knew that first and foremost, coffee was essential to any future plan of action. I didn’t keep any of my clothes at Peter’s, due to my fear of appearing to take over his life. I knew this was more the hangover of my previous relationship, with a man who would run screaming into the night at the sight of a toothbrush not his own, but the scar ran deep and I wouldn’t put so much as a sock into one of Peter’s empty drawers.
So I borrowed a t-shirt that smelled like him: cologne and tobacco. (Which was weird, because he didn’t smoke). I also borrowed his pants. I had to cuff them a few times at the bottom, but they were considerably more comfortable than my own. (What a surprise.)
Outfitted in Peter’s logical clothing for navigating the day, I slipped on my moccasins and denim shearling jacket. I took the elevator to the first floor and went next door to the coffee shop, which was filled with the sound of grinding espresso beans and the hum of remote workers starting their day.
“Hi, Sam. What can I get for you?” The regular barista, whose name was Amelia, smiled at me. My return smile was weak and sickly at best. Number one, I just had a vision of a human heart in my boyfriend’s refrigerator, and number two, Amelia was both ten years younger than I was and beautiful.
The fact that she saw Peter every morning was troubling, even though they never talked about anything more than coffee. This was, again, another hangover from my previous boyfriend, who would have been secretly dating Amelia on the side by the end of the week. It was one I needed to get over, but it never made ordering my coffee any easier.
“Just a large coffee, black.” I always ordered the same thing every day, unless I was feeling especially pensive.
“You sure?” She raised an eyebrow. Sometimes I felt like she knew me even better than Peter.
“Well, no,” I admitted.
She smiled. “One coconut milk caramel cold brew coming up,” she said and turned to the fridge. I sighed with gratitude. Having a barista who can sense your moods is equally important as having a mechanic who won’t rip you off.
I ordered two pieces of avocado toast to go and paid for my coffee. I decided I would head to South Street to visit my best friend, Cameron. He had a boutique and was working on a new clothing line. It was his dream to show in New York Fashion Week, and I was sure he’d get there one day. He was the most talented person I knew artistically, besides my cousin Tamsin.
I was meeting her for lunch later. I was both excited and a little apprehensive to hear what she’d been up to. She’d just moved to the city for her summer session at school, and I was certain she’d been partying. Tamsin was a bit of a wild card. But she had inherited the same old family magic I did, and I hoped she’d have some insight on what I’d seen at Peter’s.
It was only a short walk to Cameron’s store from Peter’s apartment, and it was one that I needed to clear my head and calm down. I felt a little shaky after what I’d seen, though it could have just been caffeine withdrawal. It was cool that morning, for May, but after a few blocks of walking I took off my jacket and tied the sleeves around my waist.
The bell over the door rang as I entered the shop. It was the first time I’d been that it wasn’t packed to the gills. Cameron had a devout Instagram following who shopped at his boutique exclusively, flooding the store every time he got a new order in.
“Just a minute!” I heard his sing-song voice from the back. I preoccupied myself, idly turning a spinning rack while I sipped my coffee. Cameron emerged from the back, his white blond hair spiked like Billy Idol’s.
“Hello, darling!” he trilled. He came over to kiss my cheek. I was always startled by how slight he was; he barely came up to my shoulder. “Is that for me?”
“Avocado toast with cracked pepper and Himalayan pink sea salt,” I recited.
“How delightful. I hope you got yourself one.” He peered into the bag before resealing it. “We’ll have to eat on the road, however. I’m opening late today. Estate sale in Villanova.”
I was immediately excited. I relished these little road trips with Cameron. They got me out of my head and away from my problems. “Good,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.”
Cameron raised an eyebrow at me. “Trouble in paradise, sweets?”
“No, everything is fine,” I said innocently. “Aside from the random meltdowns I have at the sight of the beautiful barista downstairs and my continued meaningless and unfulfilled existence.”
Cameron snorted. “First of all, your life is hardly meaningless. You’re here with me! How can it be? Secondly, regarding your jealousy of some child waif coffee wench, that’s just normal jealousy. And do you know why you’re jealous?”
“Because I dated the biggest Lothario who ever lived?”
“Because you’re in love, obviously.” Cameron rolled his eyes. He pulled a fur cape from beneath the register. “What’s it like outside?”
“Probably too warm for fur.” I eyed the cape. “I thought you were cruelty-free?”
“Well, I don’t sell it, obviously. I’d be murdered in the street. My followers would line up to stone me to death. Vintage fur isn’t going anywhere and that animal is already long dead. It feels no pain, which is more than I can say for myself. So if I want to wear a forty-year-old mink carcass to cheer myself up, what’s the harm? This old woman in Villanova is not going to throw shade on my fur, I can assure you. She’s probably got a fur room like John Lennon stashed away in that mansion of hers.” He swapped the fur out for a lurid neon eighties windbreaker, resigned to the weather outside.
“John Lennon had a fur room?” I asked, following him out of the store.
He locked the front door with a smirk. “Oh yes, Mr. Give-Peace-a-Chance just loved fur. What do you think the girl in the Beatles shirt on Throwback Thursday would say to that? Hypocrites.” He slid his lime green wayfarer sunglasses over his eyes. “Ready to fly, my queen?”
Traffic was terrible on the Schuylkill and it took us eons to get to Villanova. “We should have just taken the R5,” Cameron admitted as he messed with his air conditioning. “But I don’t know how much stuff I’m going to find. I can’t imagine trying to lug it all back on the train. Lord only knows how much an Uber would cost from this far into the suburbs.” He pronounced the word suburbs in the same tone he would death cave.
“Will it fit in your Prius, though?” I asked dubiously. I debated whether or not to bring up the irony of being a man who drives a Prius and wears fur. I decided against it. Cameron could be quite catty when he felt like it.
“Anything that doesn’t, I’ll just have shipped to the store.” He shrugged. “So what’s on your mind, sis?” He cast me a knowing look. “I can just feel you holding back, trying not to be one of those women who incessantly talks about nothing but her new boyfriend.”
“I really hate that,” I admitted. “I find it pathetic.”
“Yes, but you have so many new and thrilling feelings coursing through you! And when I say ‘thrilling,’ I mean ‘terrible,’ of course. Don’t you just need to spill?”
“Well, I mean, yeah.” I sighed. “Every time I see Peter leave, I imagine something it makes no sense to think about: like what if I never saw him again? I’d be so sad. I feel like I’d be inconsolable. But why? I went my whole life without knowing he even existed, so why does the thought of being without him seem unbearable?”
“Because you didn’t know what you were missing. Obviously.” Cameron flipped on his blinker to get off at the next exit. “There is nothing whatsoever out of the ordinary about the thoughts you’re having. It would be weirder if you weren’t having them.”
I thought about the artichoke that resembled a disembodied heart, which was definitely out of the ordinary, and decided not to bring it up.
“I’m just not sure how much of this is a Les Rodney thing and how much of it is a new relationship thing,” I explained. I normally refrained from speaking Les
’s name, which felt like invoking an ancient gypsy curse. Les was allegedly a changed man now, but that didn’t make me any more inclined to reminisce.
“It’s probably a combination of both,” said Cameron. “And that’s perfectly fine. Stop trying to control everything. That’s your problem right there. You need to relax and go with the flow.”
He was right, of course. I’d never been able to do either of those things with any ease and now that I didn’t have a choice, it wasn’t exactly coming naturally to me. We turned onto a shady, tree-lined street. As we ascended a long and winding driveway, I tried to relax. After the high volume of caffeine I’d consumed, it was difficult.
I stared out the window at the immaculately landscaped emerald green lawn. “Cameron, is that a hedge maze?” I asked, astonished.
“Isn’t it dreamy?” He reached the top of the stone driveway and parked in front of a turret protruding from the side of the massive house. “There’s also a life-sized chessboard in the backyard. Come on, I want to get inside before all the fur is gone.”
The heavy wooden door stood open. The entryway was stunning, with a vast, cavernous foyer. Our footsteps echoed on the marble floor. I looked around and saw no one besides us.
“Are the people who live here around?” I asked. I felt weird prowling around somebody’s house and pawing through all their worldly possessions, even though that was the whole point.
