Big little spells, p.14
Big Little Spells, page 14
Then I take it a step farther. I summon all of the deepest magic within me and do something I definitely shouldn’t.
I transport her—against her will like Nicholas is forever doing to me, but that’s how I know it works—and while I’m doing it, I magic in a flop-eared bunny that looks like it escaped a Beatrix Potter book in her place.
Have fun! I send her in my most cheerful inner voice.
Try consent, jerk, she replies, so grumpily it makes me laugh. I dispatch the bunny to Emerson’s bedroom before Smudge can get too interested in it, then charm it into sitting quietly on her bed.
And then I spend the rest of the evening staring at the ceiling with Emerson’s question echoing in my head.
When are we going to feel it?
14
I AM ONCE AGAIN wearing a Beltane prom dress.
And while I have had this exact nightmare many times, this is not one of them. I know this because no matter how many times I pinch myself I don’t wake up in my bungalow in Sedona. Like it or not, I’m heading for the prom. Up the hill to the outside door of the old high school gymnasium, set apart from the main building. I can see that inside it’s packed with students and, worse, decorated. And sure, there’s magic involved, so the decorations are better than a few sad streamers and insipid balloons. But it’s still the gym. Filled with teenagers.
The prom might kill me this time, I’d texted Aunt Zelda earlier.
If the prom killed people, maybe we wouldn’t have to suffer through them, she’d replied, and I could almost hear her funny little laugh. Sadly, you have to live through it. Again.
I’d soothed myself by imagining her saying that to Zander, who looks as if he’s attending his own execution tonight. No one else looks much happier.
I look over at my sister as we hover at the gym door, but instead of making a snarky comment I’m drawn to the necklace she’s wearing—the bluebell one Grandma gave her in our eighteenth year, because Emerson was born on the first day of the year and I was born on the last day of the same year, and there were even prophecies about the power we were supposed to have, psyche. The necklace seems to reach out to me. I find myself thinking about my ring, hidden away in the box beneath the floorboards back at Wilde House.
That locked little safe is where I keep my last memories of my grandmother and I don’t want to focus on them yet, but this feels different. As if the ring is looking for me tonight instead of the other way around.
I decide to lean into that notion, focusing on the ring as I whisper a spell beneath my breath. After a moment, it appears on my hand and the narcissus flower does match the whole relentlessly white Beltane ensemble, I guess. Maybe it didn’t bring me luck at my pubertatum last time, but it was a gift from Grandma. It has to have some magic.
Even if it’s just love from another time, I’ll take it.
I need it, I think as we step inside the stuffy gym, because this is a living flashback—and it’s disorienting because I somehow missed that the world went ahead and changed in the last decade. Even in St. Cyprian. There’s new technology, music, fashion, and even the decoration choices have evolved. It’s a Through the Ages theme, and there are different decades represented in dress and decoration—but it’s a current day take on the past. I know because I remember ten years back all too well.
Still, it’s the same old gym. The kids are disturbingly young and new, irrepressibly shiny in their Beltane whites and thrumming with excitement because they’re gearing up for their hopefully one and only pubertatum. Their first step into real witch life.
Assuming the Joywood aren’t gunning for them.
I feel an echo of that same old excitement inside me now, but it feels sharper than it should. Because I know how it went. I know what happened to us after our last prom.
It occurs to me then that while, yes, this is a humiliation, it’s also an exquisite sort of torture. In all the recovery groups I’ve ever attended, we always talk about how you can’t go back, you can’t have a do-over, you can’t change the past. No matter how much you want to do just that.
But what if I could is pure evil.
Because I can feel it snaking around inside me, giving me the kind of ideas that—if history really does repeat itself—will crush me long before the Joywood get around to it. Guaranteed.
I have to assume that’s part of the plan.
As is customary, all the fledging witches have to crowd together in front of the stage set up against one wall and wait for Carol, in full ruling coven regalia, to intone the opening incantation as the sun goes down and Beltane begins in earnest. You can already smell the smoke from the traditional bonfires on the breeze outside. Tonight is supposed to be a pageant of hope and celebration, but as I listen to the old familiar words from Carol’s mouth, all I feel is a creeping sense of dread.
Then again, that could be about the music that starts the minute Carol stops speaking.
In case I forgot I was at a school dance.
Teenagers are everywhere. Laughing, joking, posturing for each other. There’s a cascade of those fractured visions inside of me from all the people, all the feelings that make the air in here immediately feel much too close and clammy. My friends and I are all standing in a horrified line, staring out at the crowd. At these children who are much, much younger than we ever were.
Ellowyn tenses beside me and I glance at her.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” she says, and it’s not a joke. She looks as clammy as the air around us.
I give her arm a squeeze. “I’ll go grab you a drink.”
She gives me a wan smile, but Zander holds out a bottle of water he clearly magicked into existence. “Here,” he says gruffly.
Ellowyn doesn’t look at him, but she does take the bottle. “Thanks.” She takes a swig and then blows out a breath. “It’s okay, Rebekah. I feel better already. The water helps.”
She still doesn’t look at Zander as she says that, but I take that as her releasing me from having to go find her something to drink. Which is too bad, because I actually wanted a task. I look around the gym a little wildly. I can’t just stand here in all these feelings. I have to...move or something. Anything. “I’m going to walk around.”
“I’ll come with you,” Georgie says.
I raise a brow at Ellowyn, who makes a face. “I feel like if I move, I’m going to puke, possibly in protest, but I don’t want to give the Joywood the satisfaction.”
Jacob gives me a little nod as I hesitate. He’ll take care of Ellowyn. And Emerson and Zander are standing on either side of her like sentries.
“Go,” Ellowyn says, and waves at the crowd with her water bottle. “I’m sure I’ll be fine.”
I feel like I’m a bad friend for pretending I believe her, but it’s not puking that I’m afraid of here. I’m much more worried about an accidental spot of arson, courtesy of yours truly. So I move through the crowd of pulsing visions and chatter, Georgie at my side. My head pounds, but I don’t feel sick. It’s not that I think I might puke. I’m just...overwhelmed. Maybe a little claustrophobic.
I figure I’ll step outside and enjoy some fresh air, unpolluted by teenage pheromones, when I notice Gil Redd, the Joywood’s Praeceptor, standing at the door I was hoping to use as my escape. Standing there and very clearly telling anyone who ventures near to turn around and go back into the sweaty dance.
“We’re stuck,” Georgie tells me flatly. “The Joywood are clearly prepared to keep us here by any and all means necessary. But I do know a hiding place.” She takes my arm and we weave through kids and more static, younger teachers I don’t recognize, and older ones I do. Eyes seem to follow us as we go, but that could be the paranoia talking.
We get to a little corner where there’s an old-fashioned silver bowl filled with red punch that can only be made entirely—and jubilantly—of chemicals. There are also little plates of cake. The sign beside the table reads Enjoy the 1950s!
Georgie pulls me behind the table into a little alcove where we’re hidden from the crowd, currently out there enjoying a disco inferno, goddess help us all.
“Add a tiny little hiding spell and this is a good place to read,” she tells me.
I study her for a second, then grin. “And maybe hide from Emerson when she wants you to parade around handing out flyers.”
She shrugs, but smiles. I investigate the punch bowl, wondering if anyone’s thought to spike it. “You wouldn’t happen to have a bottle of gin hidden in your dress, would you?”
“Uh, no.”
“Bummer.” Magicking one up myself feels a bit too much to ask in my current state. Besides, I would hate to do something the Joywood would expect me to do.
We stand next to each other, not hidden by a spell but half hidden by the alcove, surveying all the sad gym pageantry. I can tell that Georgie has something on her mind. I assume that in a perfect world, she’d like to talk to Emerson about it. They’ve always been tight. But Emerson and Jacob are on Ellowyn duty—which, when I look over, looks to be more about being cute with each other.
I should find that annoying or maybe gross, but I don’t.
“You can actually talk to me, you know,” I say without looking at Georgie. Only then do I glance beside me. “I don’t bite. Anymore.”
Georgie looks at me, and I assume she’s going to pass on my offer and wait for Emerson. Instead, she looks surprised—maybe that I could tell she’s bothered by something. She chews her lip, then leans closer to me, conspiratorially. “You know what’s weird? The opening spell was different.”
“It’s the same dumb one I remember,” I say, magicking myself a cup of the punch and downing it. I’m hideously disappointed that it’s just punch. What’s the matter with these kids? Then again, I flush with an immediate chemical sugar high that makes me feel like I might actually be seventeen again, so maybe gin would be superfluous.
Georgie is shaking her head. “It’s the one I remember from our first prom. But when I was doing some research in that book Frost gave you, it showed a different incantation for the Beltane celebrations that turned into proms. Not anything off the wall different, just fewer lines and different wording. And then when I cross-referenced, I could find no evidence that there’d been a change. No petition, no law, no nothing. Whoever changed it did it off-the-record.”
“Does there have to be a record?” I ask, only half listening as I stare morosely at the teenage horror around me. The sugar high buzz can’t change the fact that high school is still high school. The same peaking-too-soon guys. The same obviously mean girls. The same pretending-they-don’t-care groups clustered here and there, sending longing glances into the most unlikely places—
I treat myself to more red dye forty.
“There’s supposed to be a very strict record. There are rules that have been in place for centuries.” Georgie is about to say more to me, but someone clears their throat. We both turn and look at a tall, slender man in a pinstriped vest and a bow tie that doesn’t quite match. He’s standing in our exit, blocking us into the little alcove.
We both stare at him, but he doesn’t look remotely familiar to me. Georgie seems as lost as I am.
“Hello,” the man offers. He holds out a hand. To Georgie. “I’m Sage Osburn. I’m a teacher. You’re not students.”
“No, we’re agents of the demonic horde,” I reply, but with a daisy smile, because that’s creepy. “Behold us in all our dark glory, etcetera.”
“Oh. Ah. Well.” His cheeks begin to turn a little pink, but he’s mostly looking at Georgie, who, it has to be said, looks good in her flowy white dress with red ringlets everywhere. Clearly Sage thinks so. “I...was wondering if you wanted to dance? Chaperones can, of course. It’s permitted. Even encouraged.”
He says that last part as if she might have been all for it, if not for the inappropriateness of it all. And like knowing the rules might tip her over and into his arms.
Then again, it’s not like I know what Georgie gets up to around here. She’s a Historian, and everyone knows Historians tend toward the duller side of witchcraft. They know everything but never do anything, I once heard my father bellow at a neighborhood block party.
There’s a beat. Then another. I’m not sure if it’s uncertainty or something else from Georgie, but it doesn’t look like she’s repulsed. So I give her a little nudge, and it seems to knock her out of it. She smiles, wide and beautiful, at the nervous teacher’s bow tie.
“Sure,” she says. “I mean, I’d love to dance. To...”
She tilts her head to one side, and Sage Osburn laughs. Nervously. “We’ve made it to the eighties, I believe,” he says, even more nervously. “This is something of a classic.”
“‘Lady in Red,’” I announce as the song wails all around us, bouncing off the walls as horny teenagers pretend they’re not straight up rubbing themselves against each other out there beneath the spinning disco ball. “Cheek to cheek, Georgie. Get in there.”
Georgie throws me a look I can’t read. Sage looks like he might fall over, possibly from embarrassment or possibly because he’s too reedy to handle a breeze. Before I can say anything else, Georgie takes his hand and they head out to the dance floor.
I tell myself that the guy is just her type. He has that tweedy, academic look, right? Perfect for a Historian. And yet as I think that, something in me pulses, too fractured to read. I think, no.
But I don’t have time to dig into what I’m picking up because the air changes. Foreboding prickles down my neck, then serpentines down the length of my spine, where I tattooed the phases of the moon to guide and keep me even when I couldn’t draw the moon down the way I used to. I use my peripheral vision to get a sense of who’s watching me, expecting Felicia to be hovering nearby, shooting magical daggers at me, but it’s definitely not Felicia.
I turn, knowing I should be stealthier. Knowing I should at least pretend, but something magnetic draws my eyes, draws me.
The way it always has.
He stands on the edges of the crowd. The forbidding distaste in his expression is palpable. Many of the prom attendees look at him, whisper about him, even long for him the way I used to, but none have the courage to actually approach the notorious Nicholas Frost.
But I do.
He’s here. In this same sad gym while “Lady in Red” bleeds into “Time After Time.” I haven’t seen him in two weeks and that shouldn’t matter. I shouldn’t even notice. But my heart is beating like I’ve been waiting for him to return to me. Pining, even.
I tell myself it’s the fruit punch.
I start toward him, though I keep my walk slow. It might even be a saunter. I’m affecting a very sophisticated look of boredom.
At least I’m trying.
I finally reach him and I stand next to him like I belong there. Weirdly, it almost feels like I do. Nicholas says nothing. No greeting, no acknowledgment. But when I stare at him, he stares right back.
“I’m not supposed to meet you until midnight,” I say.
He inclines his head. “Correct.”
“You didn’t need to come...chase me down.”
“I assure you that I did not.”
“Then why are you here? When you could be literally anywhere else?”
Nicholas only gazes at me, and something inside me...flips over.
And I know. He’s here for me. The same way he was ten years ago. I understand in a flash of insight—maybe it’s magic, maybe it’s intuition—that if I asked, I would find that he hasn’t attended these proms otherwise. Ever.
But I don’t ask.
Instead, I just...take him in. He’s wearing a stylish, well-appointed suit, not some relic from the 1800s. It’s also not white. I can’t really imagine Nicholas succumbing to something as regular as following a dress code, even when appearing in places where he must know his presence will cause a commotion. And not only in me.
His gaze slides down my embarrassing getup, a heat and a sizzle that centers itself where it very much should not.
“You look remarkably pure this evening, Rebekah,” he drawls.
I eye his dark suit. I do not think about purity in this man’s presence. “I thought the color of the day was white.”
“Only for the uninitiated.”
That can’t be true, because this is my second initiation, but something about the way he says that word has my mind going places where it shouldn’t...just like all that pulsing heat inside of me.
“I have something for you,” he says, sounding as if he can barely manage to get past the tedium of his own words. “You’ll want to bring it with you later.”
“I was thinking about skipping our date.” I smirk, as much because I used the word date with an immortal who I’m quite certain thinks tinder is still literally kindling as anything else. I lean in. “There are far more exciting Beltane rituals to attend at midnight. But you know that, don’t you? You’ve been Beltaning for centuries.”
He ignores my attempt to poke at him and instead holds out a small crystal. It’s orange, in the shape of a perfect ball, and distracts me from imagining him haunting the bonfires back in the day, naked and wild beneath long-lost stars. The crystal hovers above his palm and I find myself...drawn to it.
Enough to hold out my hand.
“What’s this?” I ask as it drops into my palm.
Nicholas’s gaze holds mine for far too long as something new and strange beats inside of me. “It’s yours.”
This isn’t an explanation, but it somehow makes sense. It feels like mine. But I’ve never seen it before in my life. It’s just a little sphere of a crystal. But it feels weighty and special. And yes, mine.
“Where did you get it? Is that where you’ve been?” Wow, Rebekah, sound more like one of these sad children you’re surrounded by, why don’t you?
