Cover Spell (21 page)

My anti-magic phase lasted six months. I was more surprised than my parents were that I could go so long without so much as a quick night flight, a sky spell, or spelling my way out of a bad hair day. I didn’t practice with Ian, I left the kitchen anytime Daddy was cooking, and I refused to listen to Mama babble on in her herb garden. My parents didn’t pester or push me. They let me work through my personal struggle with magic. I blocked every ounce of it from my early teen existence. Then the Foresight happened.

Like a cold wave hitting me when my back was turned to the ocean, the dream washed over me in the middle of the night. I awoke shaking, breathing hard, and doused in trickles of perspiration all over my body.

The house was quiet. My room was dark. I fought the urge to call out to my parents. It didn’t feel like a dream; it was too real. The cloudy aura that usually enveloped my dreams wasn’t there. I could touch and talk, and they talked back. It had to be a dream, because I wasn’t using magic, I told myself.

The next morning I tried my best to act unaffected by the nightmare. I brushed my teeth, took a shower, and sat in my usual corner spot at the kitchen table. It was Saturday, and Daddy was making French toast.

“Ivy, you don’t seem like your usual sunshiny self. Everything ok?” Daddy flipped the toast over in the skillet. For my benefit, he used a spatula instead of a spell.

I wanted to tell someone, but I felt silly. I was too old to be upset by a dream, and it was only a dream. “No, Daddy, just sleepy. I’m fine.” I poured orange juice for everyone and waited for my toast.

After breakfast, I decided to take my bike out for a ride around the neighborhood. Fresh air and a change of scenery would fade out the memory of the dream. Usually by now I wouldn’t even be able to tell someone what I had dreamed the night before, much less remember every detail.

A thirty-minute bike ride, reading two chapters of
The Awakening
, and watching
The Matrix
with Ian did nothing to ease the nagging misery swirling around me from the Foresight.

I was in my room, listening to music and flipping through the pages of
Seventeen
magazine, when I heard a light tapping on my door.

“Come in,” I called.

I picked up the remote for my stereo and muted it. I was surprised to see both of my parents huddled in the doorway.

My mother crossed the room and sat next to me on the bed. Her eyes were puffy and her makeup had been wiped away. “Honey, I’m afraid we have some sad news to tell you.” My father was standing next to her with his arm on her shoulder. Before the words were uttered, I knew exactly what she was going to say.

“I just got a call from Nora Brooks.” Nora was our neighborhood know-it-all. “Tommy Nichols was in a terrible accident this afternoon. He’s in the hospital, and they just don’t know if he’s going to make it.”

I felt heavy tears sliding down my face, and the dam holding back the sickening pit that lingered in my stomach all day broke in a million pieces. I raced to the bathroom, threw open the toilet lid, and heaved into it. My parents rushed in after me, and my mother grabbed a handful of my hair at the nape of my neck.

“Ivy? Ivy, what’s wrong?” She patted my back.

I sat on the cool tile floor and looked up at my parents. “I knew. I knew all day. I-I had a Foresight last night.”

My parents exchanged concerned looks. One of them probably wanted to say, “There was nothing you could do about it” or “How could you have known,” but that wouldn’t be true. Because, I did know. I knew all day that Tommy Nichols, the boy I sat behind in Algebra, the boy I hoped would take me to homecoming, the boy I swapped notes with at lunch was lying in a hospital bed, fighting for his life, because of me.

“You knew he was going to take his parents’ car and crash into a tree?” My mother was trying to steady her voice.

“I saw the whole thing. His dad was playing golf with his friends from work today and left his car in the garage. Tommy’s mom was at the mall shopping. Tommy grabbed the keys off their key ring next to the door and took the car for a spin.” I couldn’t even look at them. “I tried to stop him in the dream. I did. But he wouldn’t listen. I watched him back out of the driveway, and creep down the street and around the corner. Next thing I knew, I was standing next to the tree, and Tommy was lying next to it. Then, I woke up.” I cried into my hands. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t want it to be a Foresight. I wanted it to be a dream so I didn’t tell you. I thought if I ignored it, maybe it wouldn’t happen, maybe it really was a dream.”

“Ivy, come here.” My mother wrapped her arms around me. “Shhh. You couldn’t know it was a Foresight. You’ve never had one before. This isn’t your fault.”

“But I should have been studying, paying attention, and I would have known.” I cried into her shoulder.

My father shifted behind us. He was taking up what little space was left in the bathroom. “Let’s go to the hospital. Maybe there’s something we can do.”

I choked back more tears. “Really, Daddy? Can we do something?” I unwrapped myself from my mother’s arms and stood.

“I reckon there’s something we can try. Violet?”

“Oh course, dear. Let’s go.”

It was one of the few times when I wished we had flown instead of driven to the hospital like normal people. My father was particularly cautious on the route to St. Mary’s. News of a terrible auto accident tends to breed newfound respect for the road.

Tommy was in intensive care, and we found his parents huddled around his bedside. Tubes, wires, and beeping machines bordered the sandy-haired boy. I trembled at the sight of his almost lifeless body. My father had a firm grip on my shoulders and ushered me in. The overwhelming sense of guilt wrenched my senses when I saw the look of utter anguish on his parents’ faces. I had to hug myself to keep the vomiting sensations at bay.

Mr. and Mrs. Nichols hugged my parents, and each gave me an extra squeeze. They told us Tommy’s condition was fragile. He wasn’t wearing a seat belt when he hit the tree, and the impact with the windshield and the ground had caused internal injuries. They were throwing out medical terms and surgery schedules, but I didn’t hear most it. I watched Tommy.

Somehow, my parents shuttled his parents out of the room and toward the coffee in the waiting area. The door closed behind me, and I shut the blinds on the long, rectangular window. I might only have a minute or two before they came back in to sit next to their son.

My mother had told me how to carry out the plan. I listened carefully and followed her instructions. I looked over at the sleeping boy who played JV football, surfed all summer, and told me the funniest stories I’d ever heard after school. I was the one who could have saved him from this pain; maybe I still could. I hurriedly pulled the saline IV bag off the rolling stand and created a little hole at the top. I retrieved the vile my mother had given me out of my purse and poured in the clear liquid.

“Remedy.” I pointed at the little hole I had made, and the plastic rippled until there wasn’t a single trace of the hole. I gave the bag a little jiggle to mix in the contents, and rehung it on the silver hook, making sure not to disturb the line running to his arm. I walked over to the window and opened the blinds again before taking my post next to Tommy.

“I’m sorry, Tommy. So sorry,” I whispered.

I carefully squeezed his fingers. I realized this was the first time I had held his hand. I didn’t really count the time in the pool last summer when we teamed up for a chicken fight against Lisa and Paul. It wasn’t the way I imagined it happening. I brushed a tear from my cheek as the parent brigade entered the room.

“Ivy, you ready?” My mother’s eyebrows arched. “The Nichols want to sit with Tommy.”

I nodded to her so she would know I had added the elixir to his IV bag.

“Yes, Mama. I’m ready.”

We said our good-byes, well wishes, and promises for prayers.

Two weeks later, Tommy Nichols was released from St. Mary’s Hospital, and though he would never be able to throw a football again, he was alive. The insurmountable internal injuries healed. His case was hailed as a medical phenomenon. Tommy might be the only boy in our high school who wasn’t excited about getting his driver’s license when he turned sixteen, but at least he was alive; nothing else seemed to matter.

That period wasn’t the only time I fought being a witch, but it was the last time I fought any magical warnings or signs. Seeing Tommy and his family suffer like that changed me forever. He would have had a completely different life if only I had stopped him from driving his father’s car that day. The only reason he lived was because of my mother’s magic.

Magic could do so much good; I could do good with it. I promised myself if I ever had another Foresight, I wouldn’t ignore it. I would do whatever I had to do to prevent pain and suffering from snaking their way into other people’s lives. Whether I liked it or not, a tremendous responsibility accompanied my witchy status. I wasn’t always sure what it was, but I knew there was a reason for my magic.

New Orleans, Present Day

T
HIS WAS
one of those times.

Somehow, I was a part of something bigger, something important. Finn and I looked at each other in the blindingly white room of Madame Chantilly’s studio. Neither one of us seemed able to register the enormity of what the fortune-teller was saying. I was the key to squashing the evil holding Emmy hostage. I had the power to eliminate his energy. Meyers’s soliloquy seemed like the ranting of a lonely man who had lost touch. He couldn’t possibly know that I was special or some sort of magical “one.” I had dismissed all of his statements, until now.

I had accepted that it was a lucky break when I flattened Helen’s Proxy strength. It was a fluke. It was a random chance that my plan in Vegas worked. Now Madame Chantilly was telling me it wasn’t any of those things. There was a reason. She gave me a name. I’m a Laurel.

It took years of practice to perfect the
Fade
,
Open,
and
Radiance Spells
. How could I not even know there was something more? Was she actually saying I was given a gift more valuable than the
Time Spell
abilities? I always thought they were my biggest witchy achievements. Maybe if I hadn’t spent my life trying to escape the magic that was a part of me, I would have known more about Laurels or at least have heard of one.

The light jingle of the front doorbell shook us out of our shocked state. Madame Chantilly rose from her seat. “Wait here. I have customers. I’ll see them out and be right back.” She closed the door behind her, and left Finn and me to face the new revelation together.

“Ivy, holy shit. Did you hear what she said? They’ve been waiting for you.” Finn was fiddling with the jasper again, but his eyes were glued to mine. “Meyers said the same thing. What is a Laurel? I’ve never heard of it. What are you?”

His questions made me feel slightly less guilty about dodging my magical heritage. Finn didn’t know what a Laurel was either. Then, he didn’t grow up with a family of witches trying to teach and mentor his magic as I did.

“I don’t know. I’ve never heard of one or it. I can’t wrap my head around it. I don’t want to worry about me, just Emmy. We need Madame Chantilly to tell us how to defeat the consul so we can return Emmy to her family and friends.”

“Seriously? Babe, I’m usually the one who ignores the heavy stuff, not you. You can’t pretend you didn’t hear what she said.”