Bewitched, page 2
August 29
Had the interview. A witch named Constance Sternfallow said you will be accepted if you can meet the following two requirements:
1. Go on a bomb-ass magic quest
2. Get a familiar
I try not to hurl as I stare down at what feel like two insurmountable demands. Magic quests are incredibly subjective; I’ll be at the whim of whoever reads my paper on the experience. And finding a familiar, a witch’s magical animal counterpart, is much harder than it seems on the surface.
I take a deep breath.
It’ll be fine. It’s always fine. I’m smart, and creative, and crafty as hell. I’ll manifest the shit out of this.
Shoving the notebook back into my bag, I glance at another dark Gothic building to my left. This is the coven’s residence hall for attending witches, and it’s where my best friend currently lives.
I cut across the grass to it.
As I approach, I pass two massive lamassu—sphinxlike stone statues with a woman’s head and a lion’s body—that stand on either side of the porch, the hybrid creatures protecting the threshold of the house.
Ahead of me, the door opens, and a group of witches pours out, chatting among themselves. I rush over before the door can close behind them, and after catching it, I slip in.
Today, the residence hall smells like mint and fresh bread, and I can see wisps of red-orange magic drifting from the spellcasting kitchen to my left, where one of the coven sisters must be baking something literally magical.
All supernaturals have some identifying marker to their magic—a color, a smell, a texture. It varies depending on the type of being you are. Witches and mages in particular are known for having colored magic—supposedly no two hues are exactly alike. And only witches and mages—and a few other select supernaturals—can see these magical differences.
I nearly go snooping around the house, drawn in by the sight of magic and the cozy feel of the place. It’s been a long time since I lived among other witches, and I miss the way their power calls to my own.
Instead of exploring, I cross the foyer to the staircase ahead of me and climb it. Sybil lives in one of the many rooms on the second floor. When I get to it, I call out, “Sybil—it’s me!” then promptly enter.
At first, all I see is the greenery. Her room is a mess of plants, shelf after shelf filled to bursting with whatever species she’s currently fascinated with. The vined plants snake around the room, twining around framed photos and light fixtures. It’s probably some sort of fire hazard, but then, from the faint pale purple shimmer of magic above me, Sybil might’ve already warded the room against that.
She sits at her desk, her barn owl, Merlin, perched on her shoulder. When she hears me, she swivels around in her chair, causing her familiar to flutter his feathers before resettling.
“Selene!” she says. “Shit, is your interview already over? How did it go?”
I drop my bag and shake my head. “I don’t know.”
Sybil’s face falls a little. “Is that ‘I don’t know because I don’t remember’ or ‘I don’t know because I don’t know how to feel about it’?”
“The latter one,” I say.
I glance out her window, where I can clearly see part of Morgana Hall.
A coven is a strange thing—it’s a bit like a university for witches but also offers affiliated jobs and continuation classes for witches who’ve graduated. There’s also housing for those who prefer to keep their own company, and there’s even a graveyard for witches who want to stay with the coven even into death.
The truth of the matter is that joining a place like Henbane means joining a sisterhood, one that supports you and walks alongside you throughout your life. Who wouldn’t want that? Friendship, belonging, education, and a life that revolves around magic. I’ve yearned for it for as long as I can remember.
“You’ll get in,” Sybil says, drawing my attention back to her.
I give her a sad smile. “They told me my application was missing two requirements: a magic quest—”
Her brows furrow. “But you already had one of those,” she objects.
I lift a shoulder. “I don’t think they liked my Yosemite camping trip experience.”
Sybil makes an annoyed noise. “What more do they want? Mine was one of those group magic quests that the Witches’ Club offered back at Peel Academy,” she says, reminding me of our high school years at the supernatural boarding school. “That was the saddest excuse of a magical quest.”
After a moment, Sybil says, “So they want a different magic quest. Okay, that’s easy enough to arrange. What else?”
“They want me to find my familiar.”
“What?” Now she’s starting to look outraged. “But that’s not even a requirement. I know five witches personally who don’t have familiars. These things take time.”
Sybil’s own familiar tilts his head at me, like he too doesn’t understand.
I press my lips together, not saying what to me seems obvious.
The coven is making me climb these hills because, at the end of it all, they don’t trust that I have what it takes.
Sybil grabs my hand and squeezes it. “Fuck them. You’ve got this, Selene, I know you do. You are a witch—you can literally make magic happen. So go home. Have a pity party. And then it’s time to plot.”
I do go back to my apartment in San Francisco, which is really nothing more than a basement converted into a studio flat, but it’s my little slice of heaven.
I close the door, leaning back against it while I debate giving in to that pity party Sybil talked about.
At my back, something crinkles. I turn around to see a sticky note pressed to the door.
Return Kyla’s call and apologize profusely. (She’s still mad at you for forgetting her birthday.) Also, buy groceries.
Damn. I pull out my big-ass planner from my satchel, making a few vials of something or other clink at the bottom of the bag.
The planner is engorged with extra sheets of paper, and a flurry of sticky notes stick out from its sides. I flip to a blank page and take the sticky note from my door and place it inside.
I’ll deal with you later.
For now, I have admission requirements to complete.
I walk past my bookshelf, which is filled with more of these notebooks and makeshift planners. I go through them like potato chips. These journals of mine are my memory, each one meticulously labeled.
There’s another mounted shelf across the room packed with homemade, handwritten grimoires, each one organized by subject.
My tables and counters are lined with stacks of blank sticky notes, my wall is covered with a zoomed-out map of the Bay Area, and all my most important places are pinned and labeled on it—my apartment, my work, Henbane Coven, and so on.
I was serious when I said I’d be an asset to Henbane.
Witchcraft is my purpose. I want to study it. I want to excel at it. I want to go out into the world and do big things with it. And I will, with or without the coven’s help, I reassure myself. But that doesn’t change the fact that I badly want to get in.
I cross to my desk and drop my bag next to it, then head to my kitchen.
I need tea before I settle in to work.
Unfortunately, when I get to my cupboard, a sticky note stuck to it says:
Buy more tea bags—you prefer the fancy herbal kind.
Well, damn.
I open the cupboard anyway, and sure enough, there’s no tea. There is, however, a bottle of wine.
There’s a sticky note on this too, only this one is not in my handwriting.
The booze-fairy was here!
<3 Sybil
Hell’s spells, I love that sneaky friend of mine. I grab the wine, thanking the triple goddess that it’s a twist-off cap. I unscrew it then and there and pad back over to my laptop, drinking straight from the bottle.
Probably not the best habit to drink alone, but whatever, I’ll call this my celebratory drink for standing up for myself and getting a foot in the door.
I set the bottle down and pull out my notebook before reading over the two requirements I scribbled down back at Henbane.
It’s the second one that’s going to give me hives.
Get a familiar.
I drink half the bottle of wine while I ponder how the fuck I’m going to do this. It’s not as though I haven’t already tried. The thing is, a familiar isn’t just any animal. It’s a particular creature whose spirit resonates with your own and literally binds itself to you. Supposedly, familiars are the ones who find their witches, but that hasn’t happened to me yet, and I’m increasingly skeptical that it will happen anytime soon.
Okay, screw number two for now. I take another swig of the bottle, feeling the first stirrings of a buzz. I’ll focus on the other requirement, the magic quest.
Every witch has to participate in one of these quests. The idea is you go out into nature, connect with your magic on a deep, spiritual level, and then you write about your experience. In theory, it’s supposed to be life changing, but now that it’s a requirement for coven membership, it’s been cheapened and commodified.
But whatever, the coven wants me to give them an exciting quest?
Fine.
I open an airline site, musing over where exactly I should go. I’m sure the admissions board believes an exciting quest begins with an unusual destination.
Siberia? The Kalahari Desert? The Gobi Desert? I could go to the North Pole, ride a narwhal, and call it a day.
Only, when I scroll through international fares, everything is so damned expensive. My god. I’d need to sell a kidney to afford the airfare alone.
Oh, wait. They have deals on flights under this little tab.
I click it.
Oklahoma City—that’s…hmmm. Could I make that work?
Nah, probably not.
I filter the results to just international flights and begin looking again.
Reykjavík—don’t they have natural hot springs? Sounds nice.
Venice—I don’t know. It seems magical, but not in any sort of wild, natural way.
London. Paris. Athens.
I rub my head. All these are faraway destinations, but none of them fit the bill.
I take another swig of wine. Perhaps tonight is not the night.
I’ll sleep on it and hopefully come up with something tomorrow.
“Great Goddess’s left tit.”
I stare at the receipt for the nonrefundable plane tickets and the nonrefundable cruise I booked to the Galapagos Islands.
I mean, high-five drunk Selene for finding a destination I would legitimately love to visit.
But also, what in the actual fuck, drunk Selene?
A cruise? How did we even afford this?
One look at my credit card alerts me that we did not, in fact, afford this. Drunk Selene simply decided that future Selene would have to figure it out.
I spend a good ten minutes trying not to hyperventilate.
Maybe I can work overtime until kingdom come so I can pay this off. Or I could try to find more magical odd jobs. Those helped pay the bills this past year when money from my restaurant work didn’t quite cover it.
I take in the trip itinerary again.
This is what I get for drunkenly buying myself a magical quest.
It’ll be all right—I’ll fly to Ecuador, board the boat, enjoy the hell out of the cruise, try desperately to bond with some creature—any creature—willing to be my familiar, and then return to the States, where I’ll present my magic quest and my newly acquired familiar to the coven. Wham, bam, thank you, ma’am.
I write all this information down in my journal and blow out a breath.
South America, here I come.
CHAPTER 3
I gaze out the airplane’s window, taking in the thick mass of clouds stretching off in the distance. Now that I’m actually in the sky and on my way, my excitement is sinking in.
I’m going to the Galapagos Islands. Forget travel expenses or magical quests—these largely uninhabited isles have been on my bucket list for a while.
When the view of clouds, and more clouds, and oh, look, more clouds, gets boring, I let my mind drift back to when I first became a witch.
Over three years ago, shortly after I began attending Peel Academy, a boarding school for supernaturals, I—and every other new student—went through an induction ceremony: the Awakening. For supernaturals this is an age-old tradition, one that manifests our latent powers.
We’re given a draught of bittersweet, and the potion brings to life our paranormal aspects. That’s when I first felt my magic stir within me, and it was when I learned of the steep cost it demands.
I return my attention to the book in my lap—Multifunctional Magic: Ingredients and Rhymes to Apply to Everyday Spellcasting. Because my mind is not always reliable, I have what I fondly like to call adaptive magic. Fancy for I’m just going to feel things out and wing it. I don’t mean to brag, but it has about a 62 percent success rate.
And honestly, that’s better than nothing.
But I’m hoping the more I study and learn, the more I can actually ease off my innate abilities and draw on things like lunar phases, crystals, spell ingredients, and incantations. I have to believe that the more knowledge I commit to my mind, the harder it will be for my power to completely erase it.
Empress…
I pause, a scowl pulling at the edges of my lips.
Did I just hear something?
A whisper of magic brushes against my skin, drawing out goose bumps.
Come…to…me…
I set my pen down.
Okay, what the fuck was that?
I glance around to see if anybody noticed. Most of the other passengers are sleeping or watching something on their personal TVs. I do, however, catch sight of a plume of indigo magic snaking down the aisle.
Is someone spellcasting—?
EMPRESS!
The plane lurches, and the deep-blue magic now lunges for me, the cloudy wisps of it twining up my legs and around my waist. I bite back a yelp when I see the dark strands of it moving higher and higher by the second, obscuring the bottom half of my body.
I spare the people around me a quick glance, but though a few passengers are looking around, no one else seems to see the magic causing the disturbance or the fact it’s only clinging to me.
I make an absurd attempt to push it away, but the magic is as ephemeral as smoke, and my hands move right through it. The man seated next to me gives me an arch look. Nonmagical humans can’t see power the way witches can. I’m sure I look ridiculous swatting at nothing.
Before I can explain myself, the magic holding me in its grip tugs downward, hard, and the plane dips again. I swear it feels as though it’s trying to rip me right out of the sky.
The aircraft lurches to the right, and my book tumbles off my lap. I can’t see where it landed; the blue-hued magic hides it from sight.
Above me, the Fasten Your Seat Belt sign dings on. The overhead intercom crackles to life. “Hello, passengers…” the flight attendant begins.
Come to me!
I grab my head as the booming masculine voice drowns the intercom announcement. I can’t tell if it’s coming from within me or not, but it seems to be everywhere, and I have the oddest urge to give in to its demands. All the while, that distinct blue-hued magic is making its way up my torso.
The overhead lights flicker, and my stomach drops as the plane loses altitude. A few people cry out.
“This is just turbulence,” the flight attendant continues, translating the reassurance into Spanish and Portuguese while the sky outside seems to darken. “Please remain in your seats. Someone will be by shortly to take another beverage order.”
I peer out the window again, but I can’t see the clouds anymore. Instead, thick plumes of indigo magic press against the outside of the plane.
Empress, heed my call!
Maybe it’s panic, or maybe it’s this strange hold the magic has on me, but before I’m even fully aware of what I’m doing, I’ve unbuckled my seat belt and risen to my feet. Muttering distracted apologies, I angle my way past the surrounding passengers and into the aisle, and the churning smoky power moves with me.
More deep-blue magic is pouring in through air vents and seeping in from the walls themselves, rapidly filling the cabin.
“Hey!” a nearby flight attendant calls, catching sight of me. “Get back in your—”
My queen!
I gasp, putting a hand to my head as the plane jerks downward. I fall against a nearby seat even as I feel more of that magic wrapping its tendrils around me.
I pause, my heart galloping, and I have a moment of absolute clarity.
This is a magical attack.
My eyes sweep over the plane and all its passengers, even as that one flight attendant starts yelling at me to sit back down. I can’t tell if the attacker is inside the plane or somewhere on the ground, but I don’t think I have time to find the culprit and deal with them.
The aircraft hasn’t righted itself; it’s still plummeting, and my stomach has a sick, weightless feeling to it.
The offending magic is everywhere, and it’s growing stronger by the second. It looks like an indigo cloud, the great plumes of it darkening the cabin. No one else seems to notice this, which means I’m probably one of the only supernaturals on board, and I may be the only one who can do anything to stop it.
Ignoring the flight attendant still calling out to me, I focus on my own power, letting it rise to the surface. It presses against the underside of my skin, and I swallow, my heart pattering away nervously. I love my magic, I relish the freedom and strength it gives me, but there’s always a prick of terror, knowing that each time I use it, memories will vanish—and I don’t get to choose which ones.
I have no magical ingredients to mitigate the cost of this magic—nothing but the incantation itself. For whatever reason, spells like the neatness of a rhyme.
