B*witch

by Paige McKenzie

  “Let’s add her to the list of people to check out, then,” Binx suggested. “We can’t be too careful. We’ve never dealt with any Antima around here. They could be super clever and super organized.”

  Ridley shuddered.

  “Okay, well… I have history again tomorrow, second period. Friday, too. I’ll watch her like a hawk.”

  “I can try to find some info on her online. O’Shea, like O-S-H-E-A?”

  “Exactly.”

  Ridley read over Greta’s text again. “So… are Greta and Div theorizing that their shadow messages were enchanted by a witch at school? Who? It’s only us and the Triad. And maybe that Iris girl. If there are any other witches, they’ve been keeping it a secret. And they’re going to be even more secretive now because of the Antima.” She paused and added, “Is the idea that this witch, whoever it is, is trying to warn us? Or give us a clue? I mean, why cast that bizarre spell that made those numbers show up? Sorry to ramble. I’m just thinking out loud.”

  “Who knows? I guess that’s part of our homework assignment, to figure it out.” Binx wrinkled her nose. “I’m not super down with the idea of working with the Triad on this. They’re so annoying. But if it means we can catch whoever’s threatening Greta and make the Antima go away, then I guess it’s worth it.”

  They fell silent as they turned onto a gravel driveway at the entrance of the Sorrow Point Cemetery, off Cliffside Drive. This was their usual shortcut; the other end of the cemetery led to a hillside overlooking the back of the mall parking lot.

  It was weird, but Ridley found the cemetery calming. She liked the winding paths that crisscrossed the grounds, dense with sycamores and pine trees. She liked the silvery-green clumps of old-man’s beard that dripped from the overhead branches. Sometimes she harvested the mossy lichen and made a healing potion out of it; whenever her little sister Harmony had one of her maybe-it’s-real, maybe-it’s-not-real colds, Ridley gave her the potion in a spill-proof kids’ cup full of chocolate milk.

  Strolling through the cemetery also made her feel closer to Daniel, even though his actual gravesite was back in Cleveland. Ridley had picked a tree in this cemetery that she called “Daniel’s tree.” It was a maple like the one in their old backyard, with two thick, gnarled branches like arms going in for a hug, except a different variety—an Oregon maple. Which was perfect, because the Oregon Ducks had been Daniel’s favorite college football team. Sometimes she visited it the same way she would have visited his gravestone, if it were here.

  You jerk, she thought angrily. Tears stung her eyes, and she brushed them away quickly.

  “Hey, are you okay?” Binx said, looking concerned.

  Ridley was touched; Binx didn’t usually do concern. “Not really. But I’ll get over it.”

  Binx hooked her arm through Ridley’s. “Don’t stress. We have our pleukiokus spells to protect us, right? And we won’t let the Antima hurt Greta. Or any of us. We’ll Moonblast their sorry butts!”

  Ridley made herself smile. Binx didn’t know that her tears were about her big brother, not about the Antima. Ridley had never told Binx about Daniel, or about all the other stuff having to do with her old life back in Cleveland. She hadn’t told her about being a trans girl, either. Someday she would, though. Hopefully soon.

  She was just glad Binx was her best friend. It had been this way since last September, when she’d first met her two coven-mates. Of course, Greta was awesome—nurturing and protective and kind, like a big sister. But Ridley and Binx had just connected. They laughed at the same stupid stuff. They liked to binge the same TV shows. They had long conversations (at the mall, at the beach, during sleepovers) about magic, especially in terms of discovering their own unique paths as witches—Binx as a cyber-witch and Ridley as a… whatever she was meant to be. (She wasn’t sure yet, she was still figuring that out.)

  And speaking of figuring things out…

  “Hey, Binx? Do you know a girl named Penelope at our school? She moved here, like, over the summer,” Ridley said casually.

  “Penelope. Hmm. What’s her last name?”

  “Hart. She told me she has a YouTube channel. It’s called Just Faces or something.”

  Binx lit up. She always got excited about anything and everything online-related. She began scrolling and tapping and typing on her phone.

  “They really need to put a cell tower in this place,” she murmured under her breath. After a moment, she held up her phone for Ridley to see. “Her?”

  A YouTube video began to play. Penelope’s smiling face filled the screen. She wore a pink V-neck blouse, and a small heart-shaped tattoo (or birthmark?) peeked out from under the neckline.

  Ridley felt that wobbly-on-the-inside feeling again.

  “Hey, guys! It’s Penelope! Soooo… many of you have been asking me about how to rock a dark lipstick without looking like the undead. Today’s tutorial is all about dark matte lipsticks, and tomorrow’s tutorial will be part two, dark glossy lipsticks.”

  Binx hit pause.

  “Yeah, that’s her,” said Ridley.

  “She has over sixty-five thousand subscribers. Impressive. So, what about her?”

  “Nothing. I met her today, that’s all. She’s nice. She’s dating this guy, Colter—”

  “Colter Jessup?”

  “He was the guy talking to Iris Gooding this morning.”

  “Yup, Colter Jessup. Mira used to go out with him. It was, like, ages ago.”

  Ridley blinked, surprised. “Mira and Colter? Really?”

  “I’m pretty sure. Wait, let me check her social.”

  Binx resumed her scrolling and tapping and typing. Ridley tried to imagine Colter and Mira dating. Mira seemed kind of shallow, like she was into surface more than substance. If that was the kind of girl Colter liked, then what did that say about Penelope? Or maybe there was more to both Mira and Colter than met the eye? Ridley didn’t know the guy. Maybe he was just as great on the inside as on the outside.

  Ridley and Binx were getting close to the hillside that sloped down to the mall. In her peripheral vision, Ridley saw Daniel’s tree to the right, by a cluster of laurel bushes. There it was, not the tallest tree in the cemetery, but not the smallest, either. A teenager. Its large, verdant leaves fluttered in the breeze. A crow hovered on a low branch, preening its shiny black feathers. For a moment, Ridley wondered if Daniel might send her a sign… but how? By making the crow speak to her? By rearranging the leaves into symbols?

  Dumb, she chided herself.

  Still, she wished she could talk to him. About what happened. About Momma and Daddy. About everything.

  “Got it!” Binx announced. “Sorry it took forever.” She held up a photo of Mira and Colter in front of Dahlia’s Ice Cream, which was downtown. Mira’s arm was outstretched in selfie mode as she and Colter exchanged a kiss. Mira’s hair was different… shorter.

  “Huh,” Ridley said.

  “I would totally date him, too,” Binx murmured. “He’s a snack.”

  Ridley shrugged. “I guess so. If you like that type.” Which Penelope obviously did.

  “What’s not to—” Binx stopped in her tracks. “Pleukiokus,” she murmured under her breath.

  Ridley stopped, too. “Binx?”

  “Say it—now!”

  “P-pleukiokus,” Ridley blurted out. “You’re scaring me. What’s going on?”

  Binx put her hands on Ridley’s shoulders and spun her around. She jutted her chin at a row of gravestones just beyond a grassy berm.

  In a garish red hue, someone had spray-painted the word DEAD on one and WITCH on another. Ridley stifled a cry as Binx snapped a quick photo of the atrocity with a shaking hand. She grabbed Ridley’s arm and tugged.

  “Let’s get the hex out of here.”

  The two girls ran, putting the horrible message behind them, but every time Ridley closed her eyes it was as if the words had been burned across her retinas.

  DEAD WITCH.

  12

  RESCUE
ME

  Psychometry and prophecy are powerful sisters in the practice of Magic and Mentalism.

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

  Iris speed-walked down Sycamore Street, wondering how she’d managed to get so lost on her way home. She’d had to stay after school to meet with her bio and algebra teachers, and figure out if there might be overlap with what she’d studied at her old school. Now she was late, and her mother was counting on her to watch Nyala and Ephrem while she helped Grandma Roseline at the restaurant.

  Iris was thankful for the GPS app on her phone, which was named Ravenscroll. (Phones were kind of like scrolls carried by ravens, right? As in, methods of communication? Or maybe she was just a big, giant dork.) She’d hardly ever needed the app to navigate her old neighborhood in Harlem, which had numbered east-west streets that went in nice, neat chronological order and north-south streets with manageable names like Riverside, Broadway, Amsterdam, Convent, and St. Nicholas.

  But Sorrow Point was a different story. Nothing was chronological or manageable. Lots of streets had almost identical names, like Loma Linda Avenue, Loma Linda Drive, and Loma Linda Boulevard. Others dead-ended unexpectedly. Others looped in on themselves so that Iris kept returning to the same spot like a rat trapped in a maze.

  Her street, too, had many variations on its name: Sycamore Street, Sycamore Lane, Sycamore Crescent, and also North Sycamore Road, South Sycamore Road, and South Sycamore Road Extension. Iris had been fine up until she’d accidentally turned onto Sycamore Crescent, which had dead-ended in a cul-de-sac (which was not a thing in New York City). So she’d had to retrace her steps, get back on Alameda (Road, not Street or Drive), and keep going. Along the way she’d found herself on a street called Junipero Serra, stopped in front of a peach-colored bungalow with a cute little VW bug (the place made her feel inexplicably safe), and consulted Ravenscroll.

  Finally, she was on Sycamore Street. She could see her grandmother’s house down the hill, just past the little bodega with the mean lady who’d yelled at Nyala for touching a candy bar without buying it. Iris had been this close to casting a hex on the nasty storeowner, Mrs. Poe.

  Ravenscroll made a tiny ping! sound, and a message lit up the screen. A reminder about an upcoming appointment with her new therapist. Oh, joy. Iris didn’t know why she couldn’t just keep seeing her old therapist, Francesca, by Skype or FaceTime or whatever. (Maybe a virtual reality videochat spell? Was there such a thing? Obviously not in Callixta’s time, but maybe some modern-day witch had invented one?) Iris had been with Francesca since she was seven. Nine whole years. She seriously didn’t want to start with some stranger who didn’t know anything about her or her life. Iris’s mom was also in the process of finding her a new occupational therapist and maybe a new social skills therapist, too. Moving across the country seriously sucked.

  Of course, lots of other things seriously sucked, too. Like having anxiety and sensory processing disorder to begin with. Like needing magic to find her way home… to not throw up on the first day of school… and other basics.

  Like not having her dad around. That super, royally, infinity sucked the most of all.

  Iris was almost at Poe’s Market. She wanted to pop in to buy some gum—it helped with her SPD-related need to bite and chew—but she wasn’t in the mood to deal with mean Mrs. Poe right now.

  In front of the store, a skinny, scruffy black cat sat on a wooden bench licking its paws. Its fur was matted, and its right ear was just a stub.

  “Hey, kitty,” Iris called out. “Do you live here? Can I pet you?” She extended her hand and approached it slowly.

  Just then, three guys burst out of the bodega, slamming the squeaky screen door behind them. One of them was ripping open a bag of Doritos. The other two were swigging from cans covered with brown paper bags.

  The Doritos guy was from school. The nasty one who’d bumped into her and kicked her lip gloss. The one with the Antima shoulder patch.

  Iris ducked behind the bench.

  “—yeah, and she was playing all hard to get at first, but a few drinks loosened her up,” he was saying.

  The other two fist-bumped him and nodded in agreement. “Way to go, Orion,” one of them said.

  “Thanks, Brandon.”

  Orion stopped in front of the wooden bench and hurled a couple of chips at the black cat. It hissed and leaped off the bench and skittered away. The three of them laughed uproariously.

  Iris waited until they were looking the other way. Then she stood up and attempted to proceed unnoticed toward the store entrance. She’d rather face mean Mrs. Poe than these cretins.

  But Orion saw her and cut her off. He stepped in front of her. He was standing too close.

  “You again! Where’re you going in such a big hurry?”

  He seemed to grow even taller and broader—or maybe it was Iris shrinking into herself. His breath reeked of Doritos and beer, like hot garbage. Her brain buzzed and crackled in confusion. “Um… excuse me… I have to…” Dizzy and frightened, she backed away.

  But Brandon and the other guy were right there; they’d flanked her while her back was turned. Oh no. They were both wearing Antima shoulder patches. Iris’s gut clenched. They were all Antima. They must know she was a witch. There was no easy way to slip away from them.

  The third guy waved his drink through the air lazily and eased forward even closer to her. “What’s your name, babe? I’m Axel, but you may call me the Ax. Wanna party with us?” He quirked an eyebrow and smirked at his friends when Iris remained paralyzed.

  Brandon had crept even closer and was lightly running the knuckles of his free hand along her upper arm. “Yeah, what’s the matter? We’re not scaring you, are we?”

  Iris’s skin screamed. She wanted to punch and kick, but her overloaded brain wouldn’t cooperate. Everything had become too confusing. Too much was happening, more than she could process. She tried frantically to think of a spell to make it stop. What would Jadora from Witchworld do in this situation? But Jadora’s magic couldn’t help here in the real world.…

  An ammonia odor filled the air.

  “What the…”

  Orion and Brandon and Axel fanned out and stared down at their shorts.

  They had all peed themselves.

  Suddenly they were swearing and blustering and covering their crotches with their backpacks. Mumbling various excuses, they rushed away—Orion and Axel on foot, sprinting in opposite directions, and Brandon to a silver SUV parked nearby.

  Safe. She was safe. Apparently, they’d been too drunk to exercise bladder control. Iris sank down on the bench, trying to corral her spinning thoughts and ease the itchy-crawly screaming of her skin. She shuttered her eyes and did some therapy breaths—six in, six hold, six out. The black cat had returned and was circling her ankles, purring.

  When Iris opened her eyes again, her field of vision shimmered. Sun. Sky. Wildflowers.

  Breathe, she told herself.

  “Are you okay?”

  Iris’s head shot up. A girl emerged from behind a gnarled pine tree and was walking toward her.

  “I… um…”

  “Those guys are disgusting.”

  “Um… yeah.”

  The girl sat down on the bench and smoothed the skirt of her green velvet dress. She reached down and petted the black cat and murmured to it, occasionally glancing up to make sure the three guys were truly gone. They were.

  Iris finally recognized her. It was the girl from this morning, at school, in the hallway. The one with the wand… correction, fountain pen.

  “I’m Greta.”

  “Hi… hey… I’m Iris.”

  Greta continued petting the cat and speaking softly to it. Her skin smelled like lavender. Sunlight glinted on her long auburn hair and separated the individual strands into red and gold and copper.

  Iris’s buzzing, crackling brain began to still itself. The lavender was nice. Calming. She tried to piece together what had just happen
ed. Had those Antima guys really peed themselves at exactly the same moment? Slowly, things clicked into place and Iris looked over at Greta. Maybe the fountain pen hadn’t been a fountain pen, after all.

  “Did you do that?”

  Greta stopped petting the cat. “Do what?”

  “Make those guys pee?”

  “Ha ha, that’s funny. How would I even do that?”

  Iris stared at her. Greta stared back, her eyes cool and guarded.

  But there was something else in Greta’s expression. She seemed amused, pleased with herself.

  She had made the Antima guys pee. With magic.

  “You’re a witch, too!” Iris burst out before she could stop herself. “I didn’t know there even was a making-people-pee spell! Oh, and this morning at school? Your fountain pen wasn’t a fountain pen. It was a wand, wasn’t it? Am I right? Did you cast a spell on me? What kind of spell was it?”

  Silence. Greta resumed petting the cat.

  “Well?” Iris prompted her.

  “You said ‘too.’”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You said, ‘You’re a witch, too.’ Are you telling me that you’re a witch, Iris?”

  “Um…”

  Iris fiddled with her smiley-face moonstone pendant, stalling. She’d said “too” accidentally, and now she couldn’t un-say it. Dumb. Should she do a memory-erase spell?

  She’d never told a single living soul about her powers. She’d barely even known (or known of) any witches—just those girls who’d gotten into trouble at her old school, plus Veronica in Dr. Singh’s office, and they hadn’t known that she, too, was one of them. The only witches in Iris’s life were Jadora and the others in Witchworld, and they didn’t really count.

  Now here was a real witch, sitting right next to her.

  Someone just like her.

  Someone who had rescued her from the Antima.

  “Yes,” Iris whispered.

  She waited for the sky to break open and unleash dark clouds and lightning and thunder. She waited for the police to show up and arrest her. She waited for Orion and Brandon and the Ax to reappear.