Jinx (16 page)

“Jean?” It was Petra.

“Come in,” I said. Petra was one of the few people I thought I could stand at that moment.

“I thought I heard you run a bath,” she said, gazing at me concernedly from the doorway. “You came home early, didn't you?”

“Yeah,” I said. “It wasn't that much fun, it turned out.”

“Did you and Zach have a fight?” Petra asked kindly.

“You could say that,” I said.

“I thought so. Because he is here.”

I sat bolt upright in bed. “HERE? NOW?”

“Yes, he is downstairs. He would like to see you.”

Ha. I bet he would. So he could tell me…what? That he thought we shouldn't see each other anymore? That he'd decided to go back to his policy of laissez-faire—and that one of the things he was adopting that attitude toward from now on was me?

Well, I wasn't going to give him the satisfaction. No way was I going down there. Not without any makeup on, with my hair looking all wild and frizzy from the steam the way it did. Not in my butterfly pajamas. That was no way to look during a breakup. Not that we were breaking up, because we'd never been going out. Anyway, he could break up with me or whatever—tomorrow, when I had some lip gloss on.

“Could you tell him I already went to sleep?” I asked her.

Petra knit her brow. “Of course I can, if you want me to. But are you sure that's what you want, Jean? He seems very worried about you. He said…he said something happened tonight. Something with Tory?”

“Yeah,” I said. I'm sure he seemed worried. Probably because he was afraid of what kind of spell I was going to put on him, after he dumped me. That was all. “Yeah, I'm sure.”

“Well,” Petra said. “All right. Do you want to talk about it?”

Did I want to talk about it? I didn't even want to THINK about it, ever, ever again.

“You know what?” I said. “I really just want to go to sleep, if that's okay.”

“That's fine,” Petra said, with a nice smile. “Just remember, I'm here if you need me. You don't even need to be shy about Willem. If you need anything, just knock on the door downstairs. All right?”

“All right,” I said, managing a smile. “Thanks. And good night.”

“Good night, Jean,” Petra said, and closed the door behind her.

Petra was so sweet. I was really going to miss her when I went home.

Which would be, I'd already decided, just as soon as I could arrange a ticket. Because I couldn't stay in New York a second longer. I certainly couldn't go back to school on Monday. I would face Zach tomorrow, because I owed him that much, anyway.

But I was going back to Hancock, where I belonged. After Tory, handling Dylan would be a snap.

Besides, maybe after finding out about the doll, he'd cool off a bit. Guys don't like knowing they've been lied to and manipulated. Zach was proof enough of that. Maybe Dylan would follow Zach's lead. At least ONE good thing would come out of all of this, then.

I'd told Petra to tell Zach I was asleep, and I'd turned out the light after she'd left, as if to make it so.

But sleep was a long time coming. I lay awake, going over the scene at Table Seven in my head, over and over.

But no matter how many times I tried, I couldn't think of a single thing I could have said to make Zach believe me. Tory really had done a
superb
job of manipulating the situation to her liking. I hoped, after this, that she got what she wanted. Zach. No more Petra. Branwen's magic powers. Whatever it was. Certainly, few people had ever worked as hard for it as she had.

At least, not in as screwed-up a way.

 

I don't know what time I fell asleep. But I do know what time it was when I woke up. Two in the morning.

I know because I opened my eyes and saw the red digital numerals on the clock by my bed.

The reason I'd woken up? Well, that was the funny thing.

It wasn't because I'd suddenly become filled with a sensation that—for once—everything was going to be all right. It wasn't because, despairing as I'd been when I'd fallen asleep, I'd woken with a sense of calmness, a sense that there was nothing—nothing in the world—that I needed to be afraid of, although both these things were true.

No, I woke because there was someone standing beside my bed, and whispering my name.

“Jean,”
the voice said.
“Jean.”

It was a girl, wearing a long white dress.

But it wasn't Tory, still dressed in her spring formal finery.

Because this girl was smiling at me—and not in a mean way, but as if she truly liked me. Plus, she had long red hair.

And even though I'd never met her before, I knew her name. I knew it as well as I knew my own.

“Branwen?” I said, sitting up.

But the minute I sat up, she was gone. The smiling red-haired girl in the long white dress had disappeared.

If she'd ever been there at all.

Because surely she had just been a dream. In a state between waking and sleeping, I'd only thought I'd seen my ancestress standing by my bed, saying my name. That had to have been it. Because I didn't believe in ghosts, any more than I believed in magic.

At least, not as of tonight, anyway.

It was as I was telling myself this that I felt something around my neck. Something that hadn't been there when I'd gone to sleep. Reaching up, I realized it was the pentacle necklace Lisa had given me.

The one I distinctly remembered taking off my wrist and throwing across the room earlier in the evening, not even looking to see where it had fallen.

And yet now it was around my neck.

A feeling of—what? Not fear. Because I wasn't frightened. And not dread, either. My stomach didn't hurt at all. But something, anyway, gripped me. I still felt the strange calm I'd experienced on waking, but now it was coupled with…happiness.

I was
happy.

What was going on? Why wasn't I afraid? Necklaces don't just fasten themselves. Someone had found this necklace and put it back around my neck. But who? Who could have come into my room and done something like that, so quietly and gently that I hadn't woken up? Petra?

Or the ghost of my great-great-great-great-grandmother looking out for me when I most needed her? Showing me that—just as I had always suspected—I really was the daughter she'd meant—the one who was destined for greatness as a witch. Not Tory.

Only me. It had always only been me.

I'd just needed to believe. In her.

In myself.

Suddenly, I knew sleep was gone. My skin was tingling as if I'd been electrified. I jumped out of bed and went to the window. A dim blue light was coming in through the gauzy curtain liners—I'd forgotten to draw the drapes themselves. I assumed the light was from the neighboring apartment buildings behind Tory's house.

But when I pushed the curtain liner aside, I saw that
the light came from a full moon, hanging heavy and white in the night sky, so bright that there was a slight rainbow around it.

A waning moon, I knew from my reading of the witch book I'd bought, was a time for doing banishment spells. A waxing moon was when, traditionally, witches did spells for prosperity and growth.

But on the night of a full moon…well, pretty much anything goes. Anything is possible under a full moon. That's why so many people end up in the emergency room on the nights when the moon is full.

At least, that's what they said on
ER.

How odd that tonight, of all nights, there should be a full moon.

Or was that why Branwen had finally been able to appear before me? Because of the moon…and my need?

Then I heard something from down in the garden. It sounded, actually, like Mouche. But what would Mouche be doing outside at night? Alice always remembered to call for her and bring her inside after dark. The cat slept with her every night. Who could possibly have let Mouche out?

Then I noticed something strange. There was a light on in the gazebo.

No. Surely not. I had to be imagining things…the way I'd imagined seeing Branwen. If I
had
imagined seeing Branwen.

But no. There it was again. Not just a light, but many lights, almost as if…

…as if someone were lighting candles down there.

Someone who looked a lot like my cousin Tory.

And suddenly, I knew why Branwen had chosen that night, of all nights, to appear to me. I even knew why she'd found my necklace and fastened it back around my neck.

Because it was time. It was time to confront my cousin Tory.

Not turning on a light—I didn't want Tory to see it, know I was up, and have advance warning that I was coming to see her—I slipped out of my pajamas and into jeans and a sweater. I carried a pair of loafers in my hand as I left my room and made my way down the stairs, so my footsteps wouldn't wake anyone. When I got to the door leading to the garden, I stepped into my shoes and started down the stairs to the garden.

There was plenty of light—bluish, but still a lot of it—to see by.

But I didn't need the light of the moon to see the yellow glow coming from behind the frosted glass panes of the gazebo. Or the three slender shadows cast by it.

It was Tory. Tory and her coven.

And suddenly I remembered the mushrooms. The mushrooms Tory had asked Chanelle to help her scrape off a tombstone by the light of a waxing moon. The moon was at its fullest now. It would begin waning tomorrow. Whatever she was intending to use them for, it had to be happening tonight.

And whatever she was intending to use them for, it had to be something bad, if I knew Tory. It couldn't be
anything to do with me. She had decimated me at the dance. She had to know that. No, whoever this spell was destined for—Petra, Zach, who knew?—it wasn't me. Tory knew she was well rid of me.

For the first time since waking that night, I felt something other than an eerie calm.

Anger. I felt angry.

Not at what Tory had done to me—I'd deserved that, for what I'd done to Dylan. No, I was angry that, having witnessed the direct results of my own attempt to manipulate the will of others tonight, Tory still couldn't see that doing so was wrong.

Well, enough was enough. It was over. She had to be stopped.
I
was going to stop her.

Which is when I flung open the glass door to the gazebo to tell her…

…until what I saw inside caused my voice to dry up in my throat.

There they were, all three of them, Tory still in her virginal white dress from the dance. Gretchen and Lindsey, on the other hand, were all done up in their usual heavy black eyeliner and were wearing all black. They were sitting around what looked like a small altar on the glass-topped table in the middle of the gazebo, complete with dozens of lit candles (black ones, of course) and an empty chalicelike thing in the middle of the table/altar.

And they didn't look at all surprised to see me. Well, Tory didn't, anyway.

“There,” she said, with a certain amount of satisfaction in her voice. “I told you she'd come, ladies. Didn't I?”

Lindsey's only response—not surprisingly—was to giggle. But Gretchen, throwing me a scathing look, said, “I don't get it, Tor. How'd you know?”

“Because she's weak,” Tory said. That's when I saw what she was holding in her hands, beneath the glass-topped table. It was Mouche, struggling to get free and making quite a ruckus about it.

The same ruckus I'd heard from my room.

Which was why Tory abruptly let the cat go. Because Mouche had done what Tory had needed her to.

She'd lured me down to the gazebo. Exactly where Tory had wanted me.

“If she's weak,” Gretchen said darkly, “then what do we want her for?”

“I told you. It's not her we want,” Tory said. “It's her blood.”

Which is when it finally dawned on me what was going on—why they were sitting around the empty chalice.

And what I was there for.

Like the blood from my face, I felt all of the Branwen-instilled resolve drain away. I whirled around to leave—but I wasn't quick enough. I got the door open—just enough for Mouche to run out—but Gretchen, who turned out to be as strong as she was tall, grabbed me and pulled me back, shoving me roughly into the wrought-iron chair across the table from Tory's.

“Bind her hands,” Tory commanded.

And Lindsey and Gretchen dutifully produced a black satin cord—probably the sash to one of their father's bathrobes—and began to wind it—not very loosely, I don't mind saying—around my wrists. In fact, they tied me up quite tightly.

“You guys,” I said. I told myself not to panic. It was probably only some kind of stupid hazing ritual. Probably, they were going to make me join their dumb coven and pledge some stupid oath. Just a little bloodletting, to make us “soul sisters,” or whatever. Still. “I think you cut off the circulation to my fingers.”

“Shut up,” Tory said.

“Okay,” I said. “But if my fingers turn black and start falling off—”

“I said, SHUT UP.”

That was when Tory got up from her chair and hit me. Hard. Open-palmed, across the face.

I guess you could say it was more of a slap than a hit. Still, it hurt. For a minute, I saw stars.

That's when I realized this probably wasn't about hazing after all.

“Is everything ready?” Tory asked her two accomplices, who nodded. Gretchen had a look of excitement on her face. Only Lindsey seemed a bit taken aback by the slap. At least, from what I could observe, through eyes that had automatically filled up with tears at the blow. Tory was much stronger, physically, than I'd ever given her credit for. That slap had HURT.

“All right,” Tory said. She returned to her seat.

“Tonight, under this new moon, a time for new beginnings, I am going to right a wrong,” she began. “A hundred and fifty years ago, one of the most powerful witches of all time, Branwen, who was born with the gift of magic, predicted that a descendant of hers would inherit her great powers. By every law that is natural and right, that descendant should have been me. But for some completely screwed-up reason, it looks as if it's my cousin Jinx.”

“It's not,” I said. Because, though I had seen Branwen in my own room that very night, I suspected that, based on her own experiences, she'd probably agree that denying possession of any witchlike abilities was the way to go. “It's not me.”

Tory glared at me. “Don't,” she said, “interrupt the ceremony.”

“But it's not me, Tory,” I said desperately. “Come on, this is stupid. How could I have magic powers? You know I'm the unluckiest person on the face of the planet—”

“How do you explain Dylan, then, and his devotion to you?” Tory snapped.

“That was just a fluke.”

“Shawn?”

“That was
you
,” I said. “
You're
the one who got him expelled.”

“Sure,” Tory said. “But everyone blames you. What about Zach?”

I blinked at her.

“Well, Jinx? What. About. Zach.”

And, just like that, it was back. The anger I'd felt earlier. The anger that Lisa had told me I would need when the time came.

“I told you a million times,” I said. “Zach doesn't like me that way. We're just friends…and we're probably not even
that
anymore, thanks to YOU and that stupid doll of YOURS, so—”

Tory stood up, one hand raised as if to hit me again. I glared at her, daring her—just daring her—to try it. If she came one step closer, I'd kick her in the face.

But Lindsey, of all people, stopped her by whining, “Can we just get this over with? I'm starving. And you know what happens when my blood sugar gets too low.”

Tory glared at her.

“Fine,” she said.

That's when Tory picked up the knife. A
huge
knife—a decorative one, like the kind you buy at those stores that sell ornamental knives, like those used in the
Lord of the Rings
movies.

One look at that knife, and I was done. That was it. I sprang up from the chair—only to have Gretchen shove me back and hold me down with both hands pressed, hard, to my shoulders, while I squirmed. Seeing I wasn't going to escape that way, I opened my mouth to scream—

But Tory, anticipating the move, shoved both her long,
silk gloves into my mouth, effectively gagging me.

“Stop struggling, Jinx,” Tory was saying, in what was actually quite a soothing voice, for her. “This is what you want, remember? You've always wanted just to be normal, right? Well, as soon as we get enough of your blood for me to drink, I'll assume your powers, and you won't have to worry anymore. I've made a banishing potion from some very rare mushrooms. You can drink it down, and you won't have to worry about bad luck anymore. All the powers you inherited from Branwen will be gone. Instead, I'll have them.”

Okay. This was bad. This was really bad. I'd had some bad luck before this, it was true…but this was definitely the worst. I had to get out of this.

But how? I was completely helpless. Gretchen was strong. That cord was tied so tightly. I couldn't cry out. What could I do?

What does
anyone
do when all hope is gone, and all else fails?

What was it that Lisa from Enchantments had said? Tory can't hurt me if I…if I…if I what?
Why couldn't I remember?

Embrace the magic.

But how could I? How could I embrace something that had caused me nothing but grief for so long? I mean, look what had happened with Dylan. Look what had happened to the people in the hospital the night I was born. Look what had happened tonight at the dance. I couldn't
embrace something that had messed up so many lives, something that I'd assumed was
bad
.

“Wait a minute,” Lindsey said. “You're going to
drink
her blood?”

“What did you expect?” Tory demanded. “It's a blood ritual. Duh.”

“I know,” Lindsey said, growing, if such a thing were possible, even paler. “But I didn't know you were going to
drink
it. Do I have to, too?”

“Do you want me to be a real witch,” Tory roared, “or don't you?”

“Well,” Lindsey said. “Yeah. I guess. I don't know. But are you really going to make her drink that stuff with the mushrooms in it? What if she gets sick? They could be poisonous, for all you know.”

“It won't matter,” Tory said. “No one will believe her. They'll think she poisoned herself, on account of what happened at the dance. And by then I'll have her powers—which she never appreciated, much less learned how to use properly. And Mom and Dad'll be putty in my hands.” To me, Tory said, in a voice that was soothing again, “And Zach will love me, not her. Just wait and see.”