Witching Hour

by Skylar Finn

  “I’m good.” The room fell silent, and I glanced over my shoulder to see that she had fallen asleep. Or was just lying very still with her eyes closed.

  The door opened and Tamsin bounded in, kicking the towel halfway across the room in her exuberance. She glanced over, seemed surprised to see her roommate, then saw me.

  “Sam! What are you doing here?” She dropped her messenger bag on the floor and went over to her bureau. She rummaged through the menagerie of make-up scattered across the top and began busily removing her mascara and eyeliner with a Pond’s wipe. “Ugh, my contacts are killing me.”

  “You wear glasses?” I said, surprised. “I thought those were fake.”

  “What, did you think I could just magic myself into twenty-twenty vision?” She glanced over at her roommate, reassured herself she was either unconscious or indifferent, then turned back to the mirror. “They’re real, I can assure you.”

  “I have to tell you something.” I bit my lip, remembering what I’d seen in Lindy’s apartment. “Something happened today. Something extremely strange.” I glanced over at Tamsin’s roommate, still slumbering away. Tamsin followed my gaze.

  “Let’s go to the café around the corner,” she said. “I have something to tell you, too.”

  8

  Autumn in Phoenix

  At the café, which was dim and filled with the scent of burning incense, I ordered a black coffee. Tamsin got a large mocha frappe with whipped cream. I was still ruminating over the things I’d seen earlier and in no particular hurry to divulge them. It was starting to weigh on me more heavily now with the passage of time: not just what I’d seen, but the way I’d reacted to it.

  It was partly the strong surge of emotion that accompanied the cards, causing me to realize just how invested I’d become in Peter in such a short time, and partly the odd surge of greed and want that I’d felt while looking at them. Something about it felt bad, like I hadn’t been myself. I wondered if the cards were black magic or something dark.

  It was for those reasons I wasn’t remiss when Tamsin launched into her news almost immediately. I could tell she was dying to tell someone and probably had been since she heard it. She could barely sit still when we sat down. Unable to hold it in anymore, she launched into her story before our drinks even hit the table.

  “So today after class,” she began. “Cristo asked me to stay.”

  I could see where this was going. “Were you in trouble?” I asked innocently.

  “Of course not. Cristo loves me.” She blushed to the roots of her hair. “I mean, as a student, not like that.”

  “Uh-huh. What did he want?”

  “He wants to take me on exclusively, as his protégée. He feels like I have a lot of potential and he believes that under his guidance, as my mentor, he can induce greatness in me.” Induce greatness in me was clearly another Cristo-ism.

  I studied her over the rim of my mug. “Are you sleeping with your teacher?”

  “No!” she exclaimed. She seemed flustered. “Of course not.”

  “Do you wish you were?” I said, arching an eyebrow.

  “No! No way. I’m not a total idiot, Sam,” she said impatiently. “How can you even ask me that?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know, he’s pretty hot. I wouldn’t blame you, if you wanted to.”

  She sighed, letting her guard down. “I know. I think I might be in love with him.”

  “Ha! I knew it.” I set the mug down. “That’s exactly what he wants.”

  “You tricked me.” She glared at me. “I thought you said you wouldn’t blame me.”

  “I don’t,” I said. “He’s older and wiser than you, constantly imparting you with new and exciting information. You have him on a pedestal, you admire him. It’s very natural. It happens all the time. That doesn’t make it any less terrible an idea.”

  Tamsin had by now pulled her hair over her face to get away from me. “You sound like my mother,” came her muffled voice from behind her curtain of hair. I remembered what Aunt Minerva said, about Tamsin not listening to her but listening to me. I would have to try to approach her as an equal.

  “Listen Tam, I get it, I really do. My freshman year Statistics professor, Professor Marchbanks? He was unbelievably, unbearably good-looking. And knew it. He was from London so he had an accent, which made it even worse. All the girls were obsessed with him, including me.”

  Tamsin emerged from her hair curtain. “And?” she demanded. “What happened?”

  “He was basically an early predecessor of Les Rodney,” I said with a sigh. “First of all, he was married. Never wore a ring to class, never mentioned his wife. There were rumors she existed, but everyone thought she was dead. And that he was like, this lonely heartbroken widower or whatever. Wishful thinking, I guess.”

  “Did you believe it?” Tamsin was leaning over so far she was about to fall out of her chair.

  “Of course I believed it,” I admitted. “I believed exactly what I wanted to believe. I didn’t look into his mind to learn the truth, because I didn’t know I could. I thought that his wife was dead and that out of every girl in freshman Statistics, he was in love with me.”

  Tamsin gasped. “Did you date him?!”

  “Secretly,” I said with a sigh. “For an entire semester. I couldn’t figure out why we could never eat out in public or go to the movies. He said it was because it would appear ‘unseemly,’ in his words: dating a student. He said he didn’t want to damage my reputation, that the other students might talk. That there were people who would question my performance and say that I was getting preferential treatment. He acted like he was protecting me. Then I ran into his wife at Bloomingdales.”

  “No!”

  “Yes. I didn’t know that’s who she was, and she had no idea who I was. I only figured out she was his wife because her friend asked her if Quentin had gotten tenure yet while I was standing in line behind her at the cosmetics counter. Then the girl ringing her up handed her card back and called her Mrs. Marchbanks.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I think I was in shock.” I frowned, remembering. Instead of dropping my things on the counter and fleeing the scene, I was immediately obsessed with not drawing any additional attention to myself. “I paid for my mascara and then I left.”

  “What did you say to that squid Professor Marchbanks?”

  “I didn’t say anything. I immediately applied for a semester abroad. Whoever said you couldn’t run from your problems obviously never tried hard enough.”

  “I appreciate where you’re coming from, Sam, but Cristo definitely isn’t married,” said Tamsin. “Not that it matters. I mean, I definitely wouldn’t date him while I’m his student, but I could really learn from him, you know? He’s not a bad guy. And he’s very good at what he does. He’s just a little…eccentric.”

  I sipped my coffee. “I know he seems like a genius now, having never seen his life or how he lives, but…” I tried to distill the difference it might have made if I could have had even the briefest glimpse of Quentin’s dirty socks thrown across the floor or a gross plate in the sink. Something that humanized him, instead of just the perfect public image he constantly projected of being authoritative and completely in control. “I mean, if he’s this artistic genius, then how come he’s not showing in galleries? Why is he stuck teaching?”

  “He does show in galleries.” Tamsin was triumphant as she pulled out a flyer. “He invited me to his show tonight. And you’re totally coming with me.” She slid the flyer across the table.

  The flyer consisted of a single black-and-white shot of headless bodies in three-piece suits, lined up on a black leather couch and holding martinis. His show was called, inexplicably, Autumn in Phoenix (by Cristo). His name was in a font twice the size as the name of his show. I recoiled.

  “What is this?” I asked, appalled.

  “It’s his latest work,” Tamsin said breathlessly. “It’s avant-garde.”

  “According to
whom?”

  “Everyone,” she said. “Bea’s going, so I have to get there before her and I have to look better than she does. I have to.” Her expression was feverish and I’d never seen her so worked up over something. It was clear that whatever chance I had of getting her off the Cristo train had already long left the station.

  “Okay, okay.” I was worried she’d have a fit or something. “We’ll go to Cameron’s and he’ll help you get ready while I get dinner with Peter and then we’ll go to this show with you. All right?”

  Tamsin sagged back in her seat, visibly relieved. “Thank you. I was worried you’d give me a hard time. What’s your news, anyway?”

  “It’s not news, exactly.” I frowned, remembering what I’d seen. It all came rushing back again. “Something weird happened to me today, and I don’t fully understand it.”

  “You said that earlier,” said Tamsin. “What was it? Did you have a vision?”

  “Sort of,” I said. “I mean, it was kind of because of someone else. I mean, it was something someone else did.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said, furrowing her brow. “Someone else gave you a vision?”

  “I think so,” I said. “Is that possible? I went to see Lindy, the one I told you about, from the tea shop—I know what you think of her, but you’ve never met her, and there really was something about her. I was worried about Peter, and that heart story he’s researching; there are people missing and he thinks there might be a connection. I was worried about you, too. Anyway, she had these cards—”

  “I knew it!” Tamsin interrupted me, then sat back, abashed. “Sorry. Did she do a tarot reading and exploit your pre-existing fears by asking you a series of questions which you then gave her the answers to, allowing her to pretend to look into your mind?”

  “No, actually. It wasn’t like that at all. The cards were blank and she said that only I could see them. I saw things, real things—I saw my past, present, and future. I saw Peter leaving me for Amelia, and I saw something happen to him. I saw myself alone.”

  Tamsin looked thoroughly spooked. “Where did this happen? At that tea place you told me about?”

  “No, it was at her apartment—I think. There were boxes everywhere and it was kind of empty, but she said she had just moved in.”

  “You went to a second location with this person?” Tamsin squealed. “Some random woman you just met who claimed she could see the future?”

  When she put it that way, I felt like kind of an idiot. “Yes, but—I don’t know, it just seemed like she might be telling the truth. And she was! I actually saw things on those cards, Tamsin—things it shouldn’t have been possible to see.”

  “All the more reason not to go with her anywhere, ever,” said Tamsin solemnly. “If she was a witch, you would have been able to tell. Yes, even you. It’s like running into a distant cousin at Old Country Buffet and then you realize you have the same last name and oh you know little Jimmy, too? It sounds weird, but that’s the only way I can think of to put it. And if she’s not a witch—and I’ve never heard of any witch doing any such thing, which means it’s probably evil—then what is she?”

  The words sent a chill down my spine. But I remembered how benevolent, how kind Lindy had been: she was so compassionate and sympathetic to my plight. “How do you know, though?” I demanded. “You can’t possibly know everything there is to know about witchcraft and whether or not she’s a good or bad person. You still haven’t met her.”

  “And I don’t want to. And I don’t want you to anymore, either.” Tamsin watched me sympathetically, as if she knew how badly I wanted Lindy to be right, and good, and able to help me. It was not dissimilar to how passionately she argued for me to see Cristo as entirely aboveboard. “Sam, I know it feels patronizing for me to tell you how it is and isn’t. I know you don’t always believe me, and I don’t expect you to. But this has been my whole life for the last eighteen years. And it’s something that’s been kept from you up until six months ago. Some of this stuff is dangerous. You know that as well as I do. I just don’t want you to get hurt.”

  Tamsin wasn’t telling me anything I hadn’t thought myself, about wanting to keep her safe. I was both moved and a little remorseful. This was Tamsin, who I trusted more than anybody, maybe even Peter. Tamsin would never leave me for the barista downstairs and break my heart. I shook myself of this thought. Peter hadn’t done that. He wouldn’t. Would he?

  “But what about the things I saw?” I asked. “Why would she show me that? What could she possibly have to gain?”

  “I don’t think she showed you anything, Sam.” Tamsin looked troubled. “How did she reveal these cards to you?”

  “She didn’t. She said I had to turn them over myself and that she couldn’t see what was on them.”

  Comprehension dawned on Tamsin’s face. “She couldn’t see them? She made you do it yourself?”

  “Yeah, that’s what I said.” I didn’t mean to get impatient, but I could see this going to that place where Tamsin found something very obvious that still mystified me. I didn’t like being slow on the uptake where anything was concerned, having grown accustomed at being ahead my whole life.

  “Sam, don’t you see? She used your own magic against you. The visions on the cards were your own. She might have done something to make them a conduit for your clairvoyance, probably just by suggesting you look for what you saw in order to see it—your memories, your fondest wishes, hopes, fears, regrets--but it was never her magic.”

  “But—” I flashed back to the way Lindy had watched me, so intently. It’s different for everyone. “How did she know I would see anything?”

  “She must have known you were a witch.” Tamsin shook her head. “This is scary, Sam. Someone who’s not a witch, but knows you are? Who is she, and what does she want from you? Because it’s probably nothing good.”

  “How could she know?” I was becoming alarmed. I thought Lindy could help me, but maybe Lindy was the reason I needed help in the first place. “Bridget introduced us. She said she told her all about me, but Bridget doesn’t know I’m a witch.”

  “I bet you a million dollars this Lindy person never cared about Bridget and didn’t just happen to run into her,” said Tamsin, mulling her words as she spoke. “Did they ever explain how they met?”

  I thought back, casting about in my memory for the moment when Bridget—or Lindy—mentioned how they’d met, and found I couldn’t find one. “No,” I said slowly. “They didn’t.”

  “She probably used Bridget to get to you,” said Tamsin, getting more and more worked up. “She could have been watching you for months!” She shook her head, her wild hair, flying over her shoulder. “We have to find out who she is and what she’s doing here. She could know about you, Sam. She could be after your powers.”

  I was getting a little scared now. I remembered how willingly and eagerly I’d wandered into Lindy’s lair, no questions asked. I’d been so preoccupied by my thoughts of Peter, I hadn’t even seen what was right in front of my face. Was that even her apartment? It looked more like a storage space over the deli. I had a weird sick feeling, like I’d only just missed tumbling off the platform in front of an oncoming train. I’d gone into a remote place and allowed her to manipulate me. I remembered how I felt, looking at those cards. How terrible it was.

  “What should we do?” I was completely paranoid now. “Go after her?”

  Tamsin shook her head. “I think you should avoid her for now,” she said. “We’re going home this weekend, remember? We can ask them what to do.” She sighed, resigned to the idea of going home in the wake of her newly-found independence. “Who knows what they’ll say. I’ll be lucky if they let me come back to school.”

  “That won’t happen,” I said firmly. “I promise. I’ll make sure of it.”

  Tamsin smiled at me. “Thanks, cuz.” She reached across the table and impulsively squeezed my hand. “Now,” she said, sitting up in her chair. “In the meantime: what am I go
ing to wear?”

  On the way to Cameron’s store, I got a text from Peter.

  Working late, can we reschedule? I felt my stomach drop with disappointment.

  Of course, text me later, I wrote back.

  Sorry, babe. Thanks for understanding. Peter, who hated emojis, added a little heart, and I couldn’t help but smile.

  “Peter’s working late,” I said, trying to keep the dejection out of my voice.

  “Good,” declared Tamsin. She glanced over at me and noticed my glum expression. “Oh, sorry, Sam. I just meant ‘good’ like ‘I’m glad it’s a girl’s night,’ not like ‘I hate Peter,’ you know?”

  I forced a smile. “Yeah, I know. I guess I’ve just been on edge since this afternoon.”

  “Of course you have! If some maniac weirdo lured me into a storage space above a deli and manipulated me into thinking my boyfriend was gonna bang the neighborhood barista, I’d be having a hard time with it, too. But you know none of that stuff was real, right? She just got you to project your own fears and memories onto those cards. Your longing. You know? She used your magic against you.” Tamsin shook her head. “I hate this person, and I’ve never even met her.”

  “It’s okay, Tam. I was naïve. I never should have gone there.” I tried to shove it to the back of my mind, along with a rapidly-accumulating store of other topics I was currently avoiding. Whoever said running away doesn’t work obviously never ran far enough. “Let’s just try to have a good time tonight, okay? I was starting to turn into one of those sappy boyfriend girls, anyway.”

  Tamsin laughed, knowing exactly what I meant. “The one who posts that pic on Insta where they’re wearing matching hats at Coachella!”

  “And then talks about how ‘me and babe are doing a raw food diet and we feel better than ever!’”

  “And then buys the same shoes as him and wears them in public!”

  By the time we got to Cameron’s, we were laughing so hard our sides ached. The shop was dark but there was a strange glow within, a soft golden light.