Spellcaster

Jenn and Cisco waited for me before we all piled onto the bus—we were almost the last people on, but there was no risk of anyone taking our uncomfortable, noxious-smelling seats in the back. I tapped my foot impatiently. It felt like people were deliberately moving slowly. I tried to focus on the fact that in just thirty minutes, I would be home. But I should have known this day from hell would get one last lick in.

As I approached Kristin’s seat, Amanda—Kristin’s unfortunate-looking sycophant who occupied the seat behind Kristin—stood in the aisle, deliberately taking her sweet time sticking her jacket on the overhead shelf. Which left me standing right next to Kristin, the Creamsicle-colored harpy. I felt like that chained-up goat from Jurassic Park, just waiting for the T-Rex to come and bite my head off.

Kristin flipped her ultrawhite streaked blond hair. I groaned internally. Whenever Kristin flipped her hair, it was a sign that something incredibly bitchy was about to go down. She would be the world’s worst poker player—the hair flip was a big tell.

“Aw, why the sad face? Is Emma having a bad day, too?” She sneered in that same sickening baby voice. For a brief second I wondered if she was my attacker—but her left eye was (unfortunately) free of any bruising. I considered remedying that, but decided to just ignore her.

She looked me up and down critically, dissecting me for something to pick at. Then Kristin saw the bloody smears on the front of my shirttails, which were peeking out from the sweatshirt, and my red-stained sock, and grinned, baring a Pepto-Bismol–pink-painted mouth full of straight white teeth. If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear she had fangs. Or a baby bunny in her mouth.

“Nice shirt, Emma,” she scoffed, cackling. “So, like, what? Did you just get your period or something? Can’t your rich aunt buy you tampons?”

I bit the inside of my cheek to stop myself from saying anything back to her. It was never worth it: the more I fought back, the more venomous Kristin got.

“Knock if off, Kristin,” Cisco said from behind me, annoyance permeating every syllable.

“Oh, shut up, Cisco,” Kristin snapped in reply. “Who asked you?”

“Can you please hurry up, Amanda?” I said calmly, lifting my chin. I didn’t want my friends getting caught in my drama—and this high school drama was definitely less significant to me than my real-life drama. “You’re holding everyone up.”

“Don’t worry about what she does, Emma,” Kristin snapped, flipping her streaked hair. “She’s the one who belongs here. You don’t. And Brendan will see that soon enough.”

She flicked a thick, shimmery-painted nail toward the bloody splotches and her pink lips curled up in disgust.

“At least we know you’re not knocked up. For now.” She sneered. “You’re just the type to try to trap someone like Brendan. He probably got an STD from your low-class ass. Or your little slut of a cousin.”

And with that, the thin thread that held my composure together snapped. I crouched down so my face was eye-level with Kristin’s.

“Since I’m so low class, what makes you think I won’t jump you after school today?” I challenged, staring at her with unblinking eyes. I was so angry, at that moment I was glad I didn’t know how to turn her into a toad, or I’d have done it. She put me in a dangerous situation with Anthony, countless awkward situations at school…but she was not going to slander the people I loved.

“You really don’t want to mess with me,” she said coldly, but she leaned back in her seat a little. “You’ll get what’s coming to you.”

“Shove your idle threats up your ass, Kristin. You don’t scare me,” I hissed, not bothering to craft a clever reply. Simple worked. I didn’t wait for her reply. I whirled around and strode to my seat in the back of the bus, flopping in the window seat this time. I stared out the window, not even noticing that Cisco and Jenn had taken their seats next to me until he nudged me.

“I don’t know what you said to Kristin, but she looks scared. And angry. And oddly constipated,” Cisco whispered approvingly.

“That’s just her face,” I retorted, adding ruefully, “I’ll pay for it later.”

“Still, it was worth it. I never thought someone so orange could actually turn red. It was like staring into the sun,” he said seriously, and I chuckled.

Jenn was immersed in some game on her cell phone, so Cisco brought his voice even lower and leaned into me.

“Are you okay? I mean, really okay? I’m pretty sure I heard you scream loudly back there. And you usually don’t let Kristin get to you.” His brown eyes searched my face, and I squirmed a little.

“Yeah, I’m fine. I was just in shock when I fell,” I lied.

“Are you and Brendan okay? I mean…the cops show up this morning, you look like you were just attacked or something. It just…I don’t know, Em.” Cisco fidgeted with the tail of his black tie, curling it around his finger and unraveling it. “You can talk to me, you know. I can keep a secret if something’s going on with you.”

“I know,” I said. “Honestly, I do.” And I did—he was the first person at school I’d told my real story to. Pretty much everyone else still thought I had moved here from Philly, a lie constructed to put more distance between me and my painful past. But that was when my reality seemed…real. I didn’t know how I could explain the very supernatural turn my life had taken.

My reality was highly unreal.

“Okay. Just know if you guys are involved in something, I’m not going to judge.” Cisco innocently held his palms up, and I couldn’t help but laugh at his insinuation.

“There’s nothing drug-related going on, I promise. No gangs. No sinister, clandestine meetings in the park. I swear.”

“Or anything else? You guys had a traumatic time of it just a few months ago…” His voice trailed off, looking down at my right hand. “And your knuckles look swollen, too.”

“Tree branch,” I lied again automatically, pulling them into the sweatshirt sleeve. “And I promise you, me and Brendan are fine.” That much, at least, was true. “In fact,” I added, pulling out my cell phone, “I heard from Brendan. He’s okay. Just pissed off. So it was just some big prank, I’m sure. Maybe Jenn’s right, maybe it was a rival school.”

“Maybe.” Cisco shrugged, dragging his fingers through his chestnut curls as he still eyed me suspiciously. “Well, if you guys feel like stepping out in public and showing how very undrugged out he is, you should come by Battle of the Bands and help me cheer for Gabe.”

I just gave him an apologetic smile as I shook my head. As much as I wanted to support Gabe, Brendan and I avoided school functions like the plague. Hell, the fact that you just got mugged, attacked, demonically assaulted, whatever that was, on a school trip proves that you and school functions go together like peanut butter and razor blades.

Jenn finished her game, and she and Cisco talked about making plans to meet up before the Battle of the Bands. My head was beginning to throb, so I leaned it against the chilly window, the cool pane of glass soothing my skin. I stared at the cityscape, relieved to see that we had made it across Manhattan and were just twenty or so blocks away from Vince A. The posh store windows on Lexington flashed by, their designer wares just a blur. A chunk of my resolve to maintain my composure broke away with each block we passed. It had been less than twenty-four hours since I’d last seen Brendan, and my world had completely transformed in that time.

Brendan had texted that he would wait for me outside the school. And as if there were an invisible chain pulling me to him, I knew exactly where to look for him the moment the bus pulled up.

His hands were in his pockets as he leaned against the school, his right foot propped up against the building behind him. He wore a navy hoodie over his uniform, keeping the hood up, his head casually resting against the stone structure. He looked calm and unbothered to any of the passing students who looked at him—and they most definitely did look at him, the scandal du jour—but his eyes were alive, actively scanning the darkened windows of the bus, looking for me. I held my palm up against the glass, and when our eyes found each other, his lips curled into a small smile—which faded almost immediately.

Brendan stood up straighter, and I could see his body get rigid. He squinted his eyes, giving me a questioning look.

“You okay?” he mouthed, taking out his earbuds and stuffing them in the pocket of his hoodie. I just shook my head.

My classmates had started filing out of the bus. I was antsy to get off, but we were stuck in the back, waiting for everyone to take their precious time exiting. Really, it’s the weekend. Don’t you all have somewhere to be? I glanced out the window and saw Kristin approach Brendan, holding out a Cloisters pamphlet and her notebook as if she were offering him her notes from the class trip. Of course, she held everything right underneath her overly padded chest—her boobs were practically sitting on her notebook. Really? Who did she think she was kidding? She must truly want me to jump her after school. She said something, but Brendan’s lips curled in disgust as if she were offering him a cool, refreshing drink of water from the subway tracks. He waved his hand as if he were swatting away an insect and walked away, continuing to scan the bus windows for me. Kristin pulled on his sleeve—and for a brief second, I considered doing the Emoveo spell on her from my perch in the back of the bus. I could feel the same heat taking over my body, crawling up my skin. In that moment, I had no doubt that I could definitely knock her down the block—or hell, through a building. I took a deep breath, regaining control of my emotions as Brendan jerked his arm back, giving Kristin the finger. Pure shock was etched on her tangerine face—surprising, since it wasn’t a secret that he hated her. She stomped away, pulling out her cell phone, no doubt to complain to one of her sycophants.

I looked up, and the bus had cleared out. I gave Cisco and Jenn hugs goodbye, and walked off the bus as quickly as I could, barely stopping myself from just running straight into Brendan’s arms.

“What’s going on?” he asked, taking my hand in his as we began walking slowly to the train station.

“Not here. People are looking,” I said quietly, casting a glance around at the students milling about.

“Don’t care. Are you okay?” he asked, kissing the top of my head softly. Finally I shook it back and forth, frowning.

“I knew it. As soon as I saw you, I just knew something was wrong,” he whispered, dropping my hand to rest his arm across my shoulder, tucking me into his side. “Let’s just get out of here.”

Chapter 4

“So is that everything?”

I searched for some kind of anger in Brendan’s eyes, but I didn’t see it. Just concern—and a little frustration at being kept in the dark—but there wasn’t anything hard in those glittering green eyes as he rested on his left side, his head propped up with his hand.

I nodded and he shut his eyes, taking a deep breath before leaning over me, steadying his balance with his palm resting over my left shoulder and taking care not to hit my raw knee. We were barely dressed, and we were sprawled out on his large bed in his family’s empty, palatial town house—but the situation was anything but romantic. For starters, I held a bag of frozen vegetables against my knuckles. Cisco was right, they were red. And puffy. And nothing sets the scene like a melting bag of broccoli. Seriously, it’s the sexiest vegetable.

Brendan just had on an undershirt and his black school pants, and my clothing was in the washing machine on the floor underneath his—yes, he had an entire floor for a bedroom. So Brendan, an only child whose parents traveled a lot, had the place to himself. He was like a teenage Bruce Wayne, but without a driver’s license for the Batmobile. In fact, none of my New York friends had their licenses.

I was in a pair of Brendan’s boxer shorts and one of his T-shirts, which hung on me like an oversize shirtdress, but when I showed him the knife, any possibility of romance went out the window. All my rage and thoughts of vengeance joined it as soon as I’d stepped foot in his room. I started sobbing, stuttering out everything—the spell that foretold disaster for me and possibly Brendan, Angelique’s mystical sense of doom, which clearly predicted the attack at the Cloisters, the magic mojo I summoned to disarm my attacker—even Kristin and Kendall’s catty commentary. I probably should have left that last part out, but every lurid detail of the past twenty-four hours came tumbling out as I blubbered like a big stupid baby in his arms. I even continued to blubber while he gently tended to my shredded knee, cleaning it and getting the splinters out while I sat on the rim of the bathtub in his messy bathroom, blowing my nose into a continuous roll of toilet paper like the sexy beast I am.

“I understand why you think you had to wait to tell me about the spell you and Angelique did, but I need you to promise me that you won’t keep things from me anymore, even if you think you’re just looking out for me,” Brendan implored, wiping away an escaping tear with his thumb. I thought I had gotten them all out, but much like me, a few of my tears liked to run late.

“Okay.” I sniffled, blinking back the rest.

“Don’t just ‘Okay’ me, please,” he said a little more firmly, his voice getting more agitated as he continued to speak. “We talked about this only yesterday, remember?”

He pulled at his black hair, frustrated. “Promise me you won’t keep this kind of stuff from me, not even for a little while. Especially when it’s something magical! I mean, hell Emma, only four months ago, we beat a millennium-old curse that could have tortured our very souls for all eternity. I’m not asking you to tell me every time you use the damn bathroom, but when you do a spell that indicates that there’s a major evil out there for you, that’s even stronger than us—because that’s what those crystals meant, right? A billion evil little crystals and one tiny red one for us?—then I need to know!”

He took a deep breath and shook his head bitterly.

I whispered another apology.

“Stop apologizing,” Brendan moaned, rolling onto his back next to me with such force he almost hit the wall. He rubbed his face with his hands so hard I thought he was going to take his nose off. Then Brendan propped himself back up on his elbow.

“Emma, I know there’s magic at play here, but can you do me a favor and remember that you’re also in New York City?” he asked, and this time I did see anger glinting in those green eyes.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you thought this spell meant something had come gunning for me, right? Well, so what if it had?” Brendan threw his hand in the air, exasperated. “That doesn’t mean some random crackhead wouldn’t still try attacking you if you were alone somewhere!”

“I thought I’d be fine in the daytime!” I defended myself. “I was in a park on a school trip, and I just had to get away from everyone for a minute.”

“Still, Emma. And I have another question. Did it ever even cross your mind to, oh, I don’t know, call 911?” I flinched at his harsh tone.

“Um, maybe you missed the part where I kicked his ass?” I retorted angrily.

“So? Emma, I don’t care how you disarm someone—with a few self-defense moves I taught you, or with magic, or with Mace, or they somehow get burned to a crisp by fireballs you summoned from the sky—if someone attacks you, you call the police,” he said through his teeth.

“Brendan, I didn’t even have a description,” I protested, and he cut me off.

“I don’t care. You should have—”

“Okay, Brendan, I call the police. And say what, exactly?” I fired back, throwing the bag of frozen broccoli on the nightstand angrily. “‘Hey, someone—a guy, I’m assuming—in a blackout mask clearly bought on the clearance shelf at Ricky’s the day after Halloween, pushed me into a tree. So I used these self-defense moves my semi-notorious boyfriend taught me, I punched him in the face, then he asked to cut me, so I used a repulsion spell to kick him, through the air, about twenty feet away. And I think he stole Ashley’s hair clip.’

“One more thing,” I continued, annoyed. “Don’t forget that I would have had to turn over that evil-looking knife before Angelique could get a good look at it.”

I pushed myself up on my elbows and pointed at the knife, which sat across the room on top of Brendan’s desk, and shuddered as if it could somehow fly across the room and stab me. For all I knew, that’s what it was designed to do.

“That knife is just more of a reason why you should have called the cops. Someone comes at you with a knife, you call the people with guns,” Brendan demanded, his eyes narrowing.

“Did you get a look at that thing? It’s clearly a ritual knife—they’re called athames,” I explained, still irritated. “And that one looks like it was designed with a very clear purpose.”

“The police deal with the occult all the time, Emma. Assault is assault, no matter what sorcery this guy might worship at home.”

“And how would I explain how I got away? I couldn’t exactly tell them about the spell I used to disarm this psycho! They’d think I was insane,” I argued, slamming my fist down and wincing when my sore knuckles struck the pillow-topped mattress. I dropped my elbows and let my head fall back against his pillow. “Think about it. I’d be the one locked up in a padded room. They’d think I was making it up for attention or something. I mean, who gets attacked twice in four months? We have to figure this out on our own. Besides, could you imagine if people knew spells worked? That’s why Angelique is always telling me that real witchcraft isn’t something we want to go around advertising.”

“Then maybe she shouldn’t dress like she fell out of a Tim Burton movie,” Brendan said sarcastically. He looked away, exhaling sharply before biting his lip. I wondered what words he was swallowing. But when he faced me again, his expression was calmer.

“Since you seem so sure that she holds the answer to everything, me, you and Angelique need to have a little meeting. The sooner, the better.”

I mentally cringed at the thought. I did not want to deal with Angelique and Brendan in the same room for longer than a few minutes. I doubted I could focus on anything other than trying to keep them from snapping at each other—and clearly, keeping my magical focus was crucial.

“I was already planning on calling her,” I said. “I texted her from the bus that I had a pretty big tale to tell her. She’s at work until six, though.” Angelique worked at Vince A as part of her scholarship deal, but she worked in the front office, home to cuddle bear Casey and her assistant, Mrs. Gary, a steely woman who always seemed to be wearing gray. I thought I saw her in pink once and almost had a heart attack.

“I have to know if Angelique sensed anything. I told you about her empath abilities, right?”

He nodded, looking unimpressed. “And you also told me that she had no idea what the spell she did only yesterday meant—and today you get attacked.”

“Stop nitpicking.” I sighed, shutting my eyes. “Angelique really does know her stuff—she’ll know what’s going on. Or at least know how to find out what’s behind it,” I insisted, opening one eye. “You don’t have to be there, I’ll tell you what she says. Everything, I swear it.”

“You’re joking, right? Just try to stop me from going with you to talk to Angelique about this.”

“So I keep one little thing from you, and now you don’t trust me?” I asked, my voice rising in pitch. I couldn’t help it, I was a little insulted.

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