Legacy (11 page)

“I don’t know that, and neither do you. What’s more, I don’t care. I’ll never stop . . . being your friend,” I said. He had no idea. “No matter what.”

“Thanks,” he said. “But when the time comes, that won’t matter. You’ll be in the magic circle, and I won’t.” He turned away.

“Peter . . .” Just then Hattie walked in with Eric.

He was all excited to see me, kicking and waving a placemat. “Eric has a new drawing for you,” Hattie said.

“Kaaay,” he said, pressing the paper against my face.

“Thanks, Eric. Well, let’s see what we’ve got,” I said. It was the usual. That is to say, a magnificent rendering of birds in flight. This time they were flying in a spiral pattern. It was
uncanny, how he could depict every angle of the birds while still conveying a feeling of motion and speed. “Wonderful,” I said, tousling his hair. He shrieked in delight.

“Hold him for a minute,” Hattie said as she readied his high chair. It was hard to understand. Sometimes she’d act like I was Eric’s big sister, allowing me to hold him and feed him. But at other times, she’d order me away from Eric as if I were the Whitfield Slasher.

Hattie handed him to me, and I was engulfed in wild hugs and snuggles.

“The Winter Solstice is right around the corner,” Hattie said.

I waited for her to say more. She didn’t. “Yay,” I said, hoping to sound enthusiastic.

“It won’t be busy here. This is a low energy time of year. Since we won’t be cooking much, I thought maybe you could use the time to help Peter learn some binding spells.” When I didn’t answer right away, she added, “I’ll pay you the same as if you were working in the kitchen.”

“It’s not that,” I said. “But I don’t think I can. I don’t know any binding spells. I don’t even . . .”

At that moment a huge meat cleaver shot out of a drawer and flew right at Peter’s head. I gasped. By the time he turned around, it was headed straight for his right eye.

And then it stopped. Just froze in midflight for a nanosecond before I knocked it away.

“You see, you do know how to do a binding spell,” Hattie said.

“Told you,” Peter muttered. “You don’t even have to practice.”

“Excuse me?” I shouted. “Was it my imagination, or did you two not notice that Peter almost became a cubist sculpture?”

Hattie chuckled in that low, maddeningly calm way she had. “Shoot, girl, I knew you weren’t about to let pretty Pete get sliced in two.”

“But I didn’t . . .” I began, but the steam kind of got knocked out of me, because I knew I did. I’d seen the knife coming, and—I don’t know, I’d just made it stop.

“Katy will be a great witch one day,” Hattie said to Peter. “Learn what you can, and don’t be macho about it.”

Peter laughed. “I’ll try to keep it under control,” he said.

As if
control
weren’t already his middle name.

It was all very awkward, being Peter’s teacher. I was doing this stuff for the first time myself. The problem was, I didn’t have to learn how to do these spells. They just seemed to happen. So I had to dissect every move, every thought, and hope that my analysis was correct.

In the beginning I tried variations of Hattie’s knife trick, pushing things like books and cabbages toward him, but Peter was so inept at magic that everything ended up smacking him on the head. I felt terrible about that. So I tried another tack, using inanimate objects as targets.

“Just wrap a cord around this tomato,” I instructed. One time I actually saw the bindings, so I knew he had some potential. They were little tendrils of thoughts or intentions or something that oozed out of Peter’s eyes and fingers and forehead and wrapped weakly around the big beefsteak tomato we were using.

“Make it tighter,” I said.

“I don’t know how.”

“Concentrate!” Sometimes it was so frustrating. There wasn’t really anything to it
except
concentrating. It wasn’t even about thinking. “Just focus,” I said, and then, without meaning to,
I
focused. That was always the problem. I couldn’t teach by showing him how to do something, because then I’d end up doing it for him, like with the tomato. As soon as I started to focus, my own binding threads snapped taut around Peter’s, and the tomato disintegrated, squirting pulp all over both of us.

“Sorry,” I said, wiping tomato out of my eyes. “Hey, maybe that was you.”

“Yeah. Right.” He tipped his head. Juice poured out of his ear. We both laughed.

“You’re getting better, though,” I said. “I saw the strings.”

“Did you?”

I looked at him. “Didn’t you?”

“No.”

So I knew where to begin. Since we both had passes to leave the school grounds, I took him to the Meadow at night. The place was so full of magic to begin with that anything magical done there was magnified.

First I set up a gallon jar of mayonnaise about twenty feet away. It was white, so we could both see it in the moonlight. “Now watch me,” I said. “I’m going to focus on that mayo jar. Look for strings coming off me.”

“Strings?”

“Sort of. You should be able to see them here. Just watch me.”

I concentrated on the jar. Almost immediately I could feel
the binding begin. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the threads emanating like wisps of smoke from all over me. It began as a kind of nimbus around me, a sort of full-body halo, and then it went wherever I directed it. I raised my arms so that the energy concentrated in my fingers and poured out of them.

“This is what it’s about,” I said, marveling at what was happening. “The body. It has to all come out in one place instead of floating away.”

“I see it, Katy,” Peter said.

“Good. Now you try it. Keep it in your body. Remember that you’re a physical being, not a mind. The magic starts in your
cells
.”

“Huh?”

“Just do it.” I sneaked a peek at Peter. I could see his energy building around him. “That’s it,” I whispered. In the moonlight it glowed in iridescent colors, as luminous as a comet.

Peter’s face was transfigured by the awareness of his own magic. “I’m doing it,” he whispered.

“Yes.”

Slowly he raised his hands, and the light snaked out of his fingers in ten strong beams. Then he moved toward me. His light merged with mine, creating what looked like a tunnel of starlight, bright enough to be seen by ships at sea.

“I can’t believe it,” he said.

“Shh,” I said. “Don’t think. Just be here. With me.”

The light intensified, brightening until it was something more than visual. It almost seemed to hum with magic, a low buzz that filled me like warm honey. It was moving out of me,
yet coming into me at the same time, and through it all, Peter was with me. Not just beside me, but
there
, in the hum with me, in the honey.

I felt my breath coming faster. The whole Meadow was alight now, the white mayo jar shining like a July moon. My skin was tingling. I felt a thousand times bigger than my body. And Peter was no longer separate from me, but another part of my being, around me. Inside me.

And then his lips were touching mine, soft as roses.

For real. It took me a moment to realize that this wasn’t part of the magic, that Peter Shaw really was kissing me, and I was kissing him back.

The glowing jar in the distance exploded, and a fountain of sparkling glass fragments showered the night sky. Our fingers touched, extinguishing the light that had come from them. There was nothing now but the night and the Meadow and Peter and me. I held on to him for my life. My life.

“I’m . . . I’m sorry,” he said, pulling away from me. “I have to go.”

Go?
“Why?” I was so confused. “It’s all right.”

“No,” he said.

“We can’t do this. Not ever again.”

“But . . . the magic . . . You did it. You’re not cowen.”

“You can’t understand,” he said. “I should never have let this happen.”

“Don’t . . .” It was so hard to ask. “Don’t you want me?” My hands touched his face. He held one, kissing my palm.

Then he left. Just like that, into the dark.

I looked down at my hands. They glowed faintly, as if remembering the touch of him. I could still feel the heat from his mouth on mine. But he was gone.

My cell phone rang at five in the morning. It was my dad.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“Of course. I’m calling from the speakerphone in Madison’s London office.”

Ah. That must have been why he’d forgotten the six-hour time difference between us, I thought grouchily. “Well, all right, Dad. What’s up?”

“Honey, I have great news.”

There was a long pause. “Are you talking to me?” I asked finally.

“Of course!” He laughed out loud. “You’re not going to believe this, Katherine.”

Don’t say you’re getting married,
I thought fervently.

“You’re going to join us!”

Another pause. “Wh—what?”

“Madison has agreed to buy you a ticket. Don’t worry about missing classes. A week here with me would be worth
a semester of school. That is, if medievalism is even taught at Ainsworth.”

“Uh . . .”

“I’ll have to be at Cambridge for a few days, but Madison would love to take you shopping, or doing whatever women do.”

“Um, I don’t know, Dad. I’m in the middle of a lot of things here, and—”

“Oh, come on! Where’s your sense of spontaneity? You haven’t seen us in months.”

“Yes. That’s why I sent you an email. I have to talk with you.”

“About what?”

“About changing your name. I need to know, Dad. People here—”

“You’re spoiling everything, Katherine,” he growled. “Hold on.” Sweet-sounding talk in the background. “Fine, fine,” I heard him say before exhaling noisily into the mouthpiece. “Madison would like for you to pick up some things from her office in New York before you come.”

“What things?”

“What things,” he repeated.

Mim came on the line. “A bottle of nail polish, love. Crucial Fuscial. And a couple of other things. Some pills I forgot to bring. My secretary will get everything from my apartment. Just take a bus into the city and pick them up at the front desk. I’ll give you the address.”

“You want me to fly to London to bring you a bottle of nail polish?”

“No,” she said with exaggerated patience, “I want you to fly to London—
at my expense—
to have a wonderful time. The
nail polish doesn’t matter at all, really. It just would have been a nice thing for you to do.”

“I see. Well, if it really doesn’t matter, I think I’ll pass.”

“Why, you . . .” I could hear her fingernails scraping against the mouthpiece as she passed the phone to my father.

“What’s the problem?” he asked wearily.

He was bored. This wouldn’t take much longer. “Much as I’d love to see you both, Dad, I think I’d better stay at school and study. I’m having some problems with geometry.”

“Is your GPA compromised?” he asked, clearly alarmed. “This semester is going to count in your college applications, you know.”

“I know. I think I’ll be all right, as long as I take things seriously.” He loved that phrase: “take things seriously.”

“All right. Got to go, Katherine. Do you need anything?”

“No, Dad.”

“See you later, then.” Mim was already screeching. It had no doubt been the forgotten pills that had prompted the phone call. Well, now she’d just have to do without them, and Dad might get a chance to see what she was really like.

And I’d get to spend Christmas alone.

I didn’t care. That would still be better than being Mim’s drug mule.

I checked the clock on my nightstand: 5:09 a.m. Dad and Mim had gotten me so flustered that there was no way I’d be able to fall back asleep anytime soon.
Great
. More time to think about how Peter Shaw kissed me and then ditched me in the Meadow.

It had been the most intimate experience I’d ever had, and I thought he was sharing every moment with me. I felt my eyes
filling. I could still feel his soft lips touching me like clouds. Like moonlight.

It hurt, knowing that Peter wouldn’t remember the moment the same way I did, but in a horrible sort of way, I was still glad it had happened. I’d taught Peter something that even Hattie hadn’t been able to, and I was proud of that. There was something I needed to do.

At around nine in the morning, I knocked on Gram and Agnes’s door.

“I’ve been teaching binding spells to Peter Shaw,” I declared by way of greeting.

“We know, dear,” Gram said. “Hattie told us. Won’t you come in?”

The invitation surprised me. “You’re not mad?”

Agnes ushered me in. “Oh, many would say we are quite mad,” she said with a quiet chuckle. “But no, we’re not angry with you, if that was your question.”

“We’re proud of you,” Gram said. “Using magic to help others is the whole point of living in a magical community.”

“But you said I shouldn’t be with Peter.”

“That’s not true,” Agnes objected. “We said that Peter would know better than to be with
you
.”

I was blushing furiously. “Because of Hattie? Or you? Something one of you told him?”

“No, dear,” Gram said.

End of sentence. No matter how I sliced it, Peter just wasn’t that into me, and even my great-grandmother knew it. “All right,” I said with a sigh. That didn’t change anything. I’d said what I came to say. “I’ll be going now. Have a nice holiday.”

Then I noticed the fireplace. Hanging beneath the mantel were three stockings, elaborately embroidered and decorated with appliquéd holly leaves and ivy. The one in the middle had my name on it,
KATY
, in big red letters. “You made me a stocking?”

Gram smiled. “For your first Christmas.” Her voice cracked. “Except for the name. I changed that yesterday.”

“Every year since you left Whitfield, we’ve hung it up, hoping you’d come back,” Agnes said.

I threw my arms around them. Even Peter’s rejection didn’t hurt so much anymore.

“Won’t you stay with us for a while?” Gram asked.

“As long as you’ll have me,” I said.

Hattie was right. The solstice—Yule to the witches—was a quiet time. Gram and Agnes and I went into the woods and cut down a little tree, which we decorated with real beeswax candles. We put candles in all the windows, too, and made garlands of ivy and holly to wind around the stair railings and doorways. In the evenings, we’d sit around the fire while my great-grandmother told stories or Agnes played the piano. She was very good, although she played with an almost embarrassing passion. Sometimes Gram twanged along on her dulcimer, which generally didn’t improve the music, but added a homespun touch. During the days, we’d all cook together or go walking through town. Sometimes I’d hang out with Jonathan and he’d teach me about carpentry. Or I’d walk alone through the woods. Anything to avoid running into Peter. Or thinking about him, although I didn’t manage that very well.