by Kallie Khan
“And he wasn’t?” offered Tobie.
“The horrible part is that, for a good hour or two, I thought he might be. I mean, if I’m relegating myself to someone Mom picked out, you know. And then…” Her eyes welled up with tears. “He said...he said...He called me a cute but silly little kitchen witch. He said he’d heard I’d passed my witching basics with average marks and that it was clear I had no talent whatsoever. He said we could—could fool around if I wanted to, but that he only agreed to the family date because our mothers are friends.”
“What an absolute jerk!” Tobie said, feeling anger roll over her like a hot blast of air. “Tell me you slapped him.”
“I slapped him.”
Tobie’s mouth fell open. “You slapped him?”
Mystia looked up, a small grin peeking out from the fall of hair obscuring her tear-streaked face. “I slapped him.”
“Mystia, you’ve always been my hero,” she said fervently.
“Well, I’m glad I’m someone’s hero. Certainly not Mom’s.” Her grin slipped away.
“Don’t tell me she blames you.”
Mystia shrugged. “I don’t think she blames me for him being a jerk. But I…” she scrubbed a hand over her cheeks, wiping at the tears. “I think she does blame me for doing so badly on my basics. My options are...are ‘limited,’” she said, tongue curling around the last word in an uncannily accurate impression of their mother’s British pronunciation.
“That’s ridiculous! The world is yours,” she said, and tapped the forward button on the remote until it showed Tony looking up into the sky as a blimp proclaiming THE WORLD IS YOURS crawled across the deepening twilight.
Mystia gave a watery little laugh. “It’s a nice sentiment, but remember the end of the movie? I believe the term is ‘cruel irony.’”
“Pfft, don’t split hairs! Besides, that was his fault. You’re not going to go on some paranoid cocaine bender and alienate all your closest friends and relatives, are you?”
She laughed again. “No, definitely not.”
“Then the world is yours,” Tobie said matter-of-factly.
“The world is ours,” Mystia amended, and raised her wine glass.
Tobie raised her glass too. “The world is ours,” she agreed.
They tapped glasses, drank deeply, and spent the rest of the night quoting along as the movie played.
Kaiden came into the store during Tobie’s next shift. He held up his hands in a tentative surrender. “No golf clubs.”
She grinned. “Then I suppose we’ll allow you in. What can we get you today?”
“Actually...I was hoping I could get you something.”
“Oh?”
“A coffee maybe? Lunch?”
“Oh.” She cast her eyes down at the seedlings she was planting, smoothing the soil down gently over the seedling tray. Her stomach did this curious thing where it flopped around in her upper abdomen like a fish, and she couldn’t tell if she liked the feeling or was about to vomit.
“We don’t have to,” he said, still causal but a little too quickly. “Just a thought—”
“Coffee sounds great,” she said, more confidently than she felt. “I like coffee.” She pointed at her travel cup. “Coffee is awesome. Lunch is awesome too. Whatever.”
She wanted to crawl into the corner.
But his expression brightened. “Yeah? Great! Maybe we could go over to Pat’s when you get off.”
“That sounds—oh. Ugh. I can’t tonight, actually.” No. Tonight, she had to go play good daughter and eat dinner with her parents and some overweening young man her mother thought of as suitable son-in-law material.
His smile slipped.
“Tomorrow?” she offered quickly, not wanting him to think she was putting him off.
“Tomorrow works just fine. What time should I pick you up?”
She felt much more in her element when she replied, puckishly, “I can pick myself up, but meet up at Pat’s around five?”
“Far be it for me to part the lady from her own mode of transport,” he said, giving her a mildly theatrical bow. “Five sounds great.” He smiled once more, slouched his hands into his pockets, and sauntered out the door.
Hettie came in from the nursery just as Kaiden was leaving.
“What was that about?” she asked. “Set that poor boy on fire again?”
“Nope. But I think we’re getting coffee tomorrow.”
Hettie gave her a look that involved a lot of eyebrow-waggling and a low whistle.
Tobie snorted and rolled her eyes. “But there’s pretty much a full twenty-four hours for everything to go totally wrong, so I don’t know yet. Besides,” she said, taking a hiss of a breath, then exhaling slowly, “there’s my mother to contend with tonight.”
Hettie made the sign of the witch’s moon, interlocking her first finger and thumb on each hand. “The Brightmoon Goddess watch over you tonight,” she said seriously, then gave her a wink.
Tobie gave another snort. “I’ll need all the help I can get.”
Tobie arrived at her parents’ house in the sleepy, green town of Spellhaven at five-thirty sharp. She had a key, but it was lost somewhere in the depths of her purse (the contents of which she’d already spilled out looking for it), so she rang the bell instead.
Her father answered, peering at her through the frosted glass windows with a pinched expression. But when he opened the door and saw it was her, his face split into a happy grin.
“Tobie!”
“Dad!”
She launched forward and hugged him around the middle. He returned the hug and patted her on the back.
“It’s so good to see you! Come in, come in,” he said, and stepped aside so she could enter.
Her childhood home was one of those big estate-style monstrosities, old and filled with dark wood and fine upholstery. Every room was always in a state of grand and gothic twilight, curtains nearly drawn. A tall grandfather clock ticked gently in the main hallway next to the stairs, the mechanism clicking with a deep, metronomic regularity.
“October.”
Her mother stood at the top of the curving staircase, reminding Tobie forcibly of an arch-villainess. Isidora was beautiful, with dark eyes and silky straight hair which she’d inherited from Tobie’s Japanese grandfather, and a flush of pale pink on her cheeks that had come from Tobie’s English grandmother.
“Hi, Mom,” she said, noticeably less enthusiastically than the way in which she’d greeted her father.
Isidora made her way down the steps, movements graceful and precise. She looked Tobie up and down. “Are you getting enough to eat?” she asked.
“Yes, I’m—”
“Are you eating the right things, though?”
“Yes, Mom—”
“Oof, look at your skin. Rougher than a rat’s tail.”
“Thanks,” she said sourly.
“Let’s get you upstairs. Alistair will be here in an hour.”
Forty-five minutes later, Tobie found herself in a dress that was just a breath too tight (“Just take shallow breaths, dear”), makeup expertly applied by her mother. Her hair was coifed in loose curls held back by pins (although she knew, despite her mother’s insistence, that it would all be limp by the end of dinner), the particular green streak she’d had since birth tucked neatly behind ordinary brown hair.
“You know I love your bit of green,” Isidora had said, “but we’ll just tuck it away for tonight.”
When her mother wasn’t looking, Tobie pulled it back out of the pin and let it coil down her shoulder.
If Alistair Bloodsong didn’t like her green streak, that was his problem.
It turned out that Alistair Bloodsong was no problem at all.
And that in and of itself utterly threw her.
Alistair Bloodsong was not only devastatingly handsome; he was also devastatingly nice. He demurred when her mother pressured him to talk about his education and career achievements. He complimented Tobie on her own aca
demic pursuits and said he wished he were as passionate about something—that medicine was a good and noble calling, but he only really did it because he thought it would make other people happy.
She didn’t quite know how to respond to him, what with her mother’s pretty face seeming to crack from the inside at each of Alistair’s departures from her expectations, and Alistair himself smiling encouragingly at her, eyes a deep, dark blue, hair a glossy black.
Her father seemed oblivious to the tension at the table, but that was to be expected. Horatio (known as “Harry”) Moon was notoriously even-tempered, genial, and perpetually lost in thought. Tobie often envied his presence of mind and body; if she had just an ounce of each, she’d probably be studying with Pepper Keeling already.
After dinner, after coffee and biscuits, and after Alistair had thanked the Moons profusely for their kind and delicious hospitality, Tobie was ushered out into the garden with him.
This had been, and still was, her favorite place as a child. It was practically palatial in its sprawl and splendor, wide and long, running nearly half a mile back, where the gate met the woods.
As she walked along with Alistair onto the porch, she remembered Kaiden saying how much he loved the idea of a gothic garden. She bookmarked the thought, thinking he might appreciate some photographs.
Alistair turned to her as they neared the steps. “Sorry about tonight,” he said.
“Why are you sorry?”
He shrugged. “I know these things are horrid.”
“They really are,” she commiserated. Then she realized what she was implying. “I mean, you’re not horrible. Just—these things. The expectations.”
He laughed. “I knew what you meant. And I hope you know I, likewise, didn’t mean to imply you were horrible. In fact, contrary to all my expectations, I think you’re really cool, October.”
“Tobie.”
“Tobie?”
“Only my mom calls me October.”
“Ooh, right. My apologies. Tobie. I like it.”
“It’s the worst,” she conceded, “but my options were limited.”
“Tell me about it. My options are Ali and Stair. Or maybe Listair, which sounds like some sort of mouthwash.”
She laughed.
He grinned. “So I just save everyone else the heartache of calling me something ridiculous and just go by Alistair. Really rubs people the wrong way, though. People tend to think I’m either snobby or uppercust British or both.”
“My mom’s both,” she offered.
He snorted with sudden laughter, then clapped a hand over his mouth. He cleared his throat and smoothed down his his shirt. “Ahem. That was incredibly rude of me,” he said. “I didn’t mean—”
She waved his apology off. “Don’t be silly. I said it first.”
“Anyway,” he said after another clearing of his throat, “I’m really surprised about tonight. These things usually go wrong, and here I am rather hoping we have another chance to see each other. In a friendly capacity, of course. Nothing serious.”
“Nothing serious,” she echoed.
“I mean, it’s nice to have someone to talk to that’s equally underwhelmed by their parents’ Old World sensibilities about courting. Is that...just me?”
“I don’t think it’s just you,” she says, choosing her words carefully. “I think this went better than I’d expected too. And seriously, you’re not horrible.”
“Neither are you.”
“Well maybe we can get together sometime and have another not-horrible time.”
He grinned. “I like the way you think, Tobie.”
Then he asked for her number (and gave her his on a piece of fine stationary which was also a fancy paper napkin), and on the way out, after pleasantries were said, he leaned over to ostensibly give her an air kiss, but instead whispered into her ear, “The green is awesome.”
He winked.
She winked back. (Except she wasn’t great at winking so it looked more like tic or twitch, but he just stifled a laugh under the guise of a cough and waved goodbye.)
“See?” said Isidora. “That wasn’t horrible.”
“No, Mom,” she said lightly, but there was an edge to her voice. “‘Horrible’ is what happened to Mystia.”
Isidora paled. Her lips tightened. But she remained silent, and turned on her heel without another word to Tobie.
Tobie’s father patted her on the shoulder. “She means well,” he said.
“Funny way of showing it,” Tobie grumbled.
Chapter 8
KAIDEN
“But is she funny?”
This was what Flora, Kaiden’s little sister, pressed him with over video call. Flora was fourteen and lived with Kaiden’s stepmother and father. She was the kind of student he probably should’ve been—perfect attendance, near-perfect grades, and an excellent clarinetist. (She’d just won her all-region competition, which qualified her for state. This news had kicked off their conversation, but it had devolved quickly into her ferreting out the rather more interesting—to Flora, at least—news that he’d met a girl and he actually really liked her.)
So apart from being an excellent clarinetist, she was also an excellent interrogator.
She watched him seriously from the screen, all elbows and cheekbones and braces. Her frizzy hair was tied back in two long French braids, which fell down her shoulders. She chewed the end of one as she waited for him to answer.
“She is funny,” he said, nodding. “Kind of dark and self-deprecating.”
“Ooh, dark is good.” She grinned widely. “So when do I get to meet her?”
He let out a short, incredulous laugh. “Meet her? I haven’t even taken her out on a date yet. One step at a time, kiddo.”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, puh-lease. The craft bazaar wasn’t enough of a date to say you’ve had a date? You bought her fairy lights,” she said, as though that explained everything.
“I bought her the fairy lights after telling her a really sad story about my mom,” he said, cheeks warming in retroactive embarrassment. They shared a father and not much else by way of material items or familial ties, but they were close, and Kaiden confided in her more than most twenty-five-year-old men probably confided in their kid sisters. Maybe even sisters close to their own age.
“It was a sweet thing to do,” Flora insisted.
“It was creepy, Flora.”
“Was not.”
“Hate to break it to you, but you’re a little biased.”
She nodded thoughtfully at this, looking up and to the right, just like he did. “I guess I am biased. But I don’t think she thought it was creepy. I think you’re thinking about it too hard. You always do that.”
Flora may’ve been eleven years his junior, but she was right about that. She was also perpetually so sure of herself in whatever she did. He’d like to think he’d imparted some of that confidence onto her, but the truth was that she was the one who made him want to take control of his life in the same way.
It’s not that he hadn’t done that—but it was deeply true that he thought about things too hard. People thought he was easygoing (and really, in many situations, he was exactly that), but when it came to things like relationships and career paths and existential crises?
Well.
He’d heard the phrase “analysis paralysis” bandied around once or twice, and it sounded like it suited him perfectly.
“Why don’t I have Mom drop me off for the day? I can meet her and see for myself.” She smiled archly.
He laughed. “Just let me go on a real date with her, okay? Then we’ll see.”
“You’re no fun.”
“I’m not trying to be fun! I’m trying to make a good impression.”
“Which you’ve apparently botched. A few times,” she pointed out.
“Thank you, Captain Obvious,” he said sardonically.
She just gave him a smug little smile. But then the smile slipped away into something a touch more unce
rtain. “Hey, can I ask you something?”
“You’ve been asking me ‘somethings’ for the last hour,” he said.
“Yeah, but...it’s no big deal.” She shrugged and the camera wobbled.
“Wait, wait! I’m sorry, Flora. I was just joking. Ask me what? You can ask me anything.”
“It’s about Dad.”
His heart gave a small, traitorous lurch. “Oh?” He kept his voice inquisitive and light, so Flora wouldn’t clam up again.
But Flora could read him like few people could, especially when it came to more complicated things. His father was complicated. At least where he was concerned.
“I—I probably shouldn’t have said anything. It’s okay.”
He scrunched his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “No, Flora, seriously.”
“It’s just that...Dad’s birthday is coming up. I know he’d really like you to be there.”
“No.” The word fell out of his mouth before he could stop himself.
“Jeez, I know I said you usually think too much about things, but wow. That was very quick.”
“No, that’s not what I—”
“I know you guys have a thing. I know he was kind of...not a great dad.”
“I never knew what kind of dad he was because he was never around,” Kaiden muttered, even as he told himself he shouldn’t be unloading his own grievances with their dad on her.
“I just...I really think it would be good for you to come.”
Kaiden sighed and scrubbed a hand over his forehead, raking his fingers through his hair.
“I want you to come. How’s that?” she said finally.
“I think that’s unfair.”
“Yeah, well. Life’s a witch,” she said.
He did a double-take.
“You thought I said something else, didn’t you?” She gave him a wide grin, braces glittering.
“You’re too young to be swearing.”
She shrugged. “And you’re too old to do anything. Old man!”
