The Lingering Grace (22 page)

“Penny was upset from the minute we started moving in, but it didn’t get really bad until that first night. She opened her closet for the first time and there was a dead rat in there.”

Alice, who could hardly stand the thought of stumbling across a mouse, was repulsed. If she had found a dead rat in a dusty old house, she would have turned around and run all the way back home. But when you have just moved, there is no real home to run to.

“What did she do?” Alice asked when Eva did not immediately continue.

Eva gulped. “She broke down. Completely. I’d never seen her throw a tantrum like that. She was screaming and crying, saying she wanted to go
back
, to go
home
, begging for Dad, yelling at Mom. Mom finally broke down and let her call Dad, but that didn’t help. She just sobbed the whole time.

“After a while, Mom couldn’t take it. She shut herself up in her room. I tried to get Penny to go to bed, but she wouldn’t calm down. We walked around the backyard for a while, just to get out of the house, and then, to distract her, I got out the spellbook.”

Eva stopped and raised her gaze to meet Alice’s. “What else was I supposed to do?” she asked in a strained, pleading voice. “
What else could I have done?
”

“Nothing,” Alice assured her. “I’m sure you did the best you could.”

But Eva immediately disagreed with her, unable to accept any comfort. “No, I should have known better.”

“You
didn’t
know.”

Eva shook her head and whispered, “I should have known.”

Alice, seeing that arguing was futile, could think of nothing to do but hang her head and be silent.

“It happened fast.” Eva wiped her nose on her sleeve. “Penny was flipping around in the book. I wasn’t paying much attention. Then I heard her start muttering and I felt the change in the air … the heaviness … the electricity.”

Alice remembered the change—the subtle shift—that accompanied the moments when she worked even a small bit of magic. A slight, almost opalescent haze hung in the air; her skin tingled from the whispers of heat that ran in invisible currents all around her.

“I told her to stop and tried to grab the book, but she pulled it away. I saw the page, though. It was a summoning spell to magically bring a person to you, and it was long. She shouldn’t have tried it. I wouldn’t ever have tried it.”

“Was she trying to summon your … ?”

“Dad,” Eva said with a nod. “She just wanted Dad. She thought he would make everything … ” She stopped, cleared her throat, and continued in a heavy monotone. “Penny was angry and sad and afraid, and it was too much. She had too many emotions she couldn’t control. Magic was the last straw. It was like handing a wild German Shepherd to a dog-walker already fighting to control ten crazy dogs—she let go of all the leashes … all at once.”

Magic, Alice knew now, wasn’t a passive instrument. It was more like a chainsaw than a hammer, and it had a will of its own. It was power and it was strong; she could still clearly remember the wave of heat that nearly suffocated her when she lost control of that spell in the middle of class.

“I … I
tried
. I did everything I could think of. But I didn’t know much about magic then. I didn’t realize that once one person starts a spell alone, there’s no way for another person to intervene or share the burden. If two witches start a spell together, they have to finish it together. But if one witch starts it … she has to finish it alone.

“Penny started shaking; I grabbed her and tried to hold her still,” Eva said, her voice quavering. “But she was shaking so hard that after a minute, I couldn’t hold her. She was still holding the book, but she had her eyes closed and she was just chanting and shaking and swaying, and then her nose started to bleed … and then her ears. I think she realized what was happening because she opened her eyes and started to run toward the pool. She dropped the book. She just ran—shaking and screaming and crying—until she got to the pool. But when she bent over the water, she fell in.”

Eva gulped. She started speaking faster; it could not have been clearer that she wanted to finish this story as quickly as possible.

“I ran after her and jumped in—I tried to grab her—but the magic was too strong and she was bleeding so much and shaking so hard. I couldn’t keep her above water. I kept trying. I got under her and I tried to hold her still for as long as I could, but I couldn’t get up for air, and then … I don’t remember anything else. When I woke up in the hospital, they told me she was dead.”

The word seemed to ring in the air. It hung before Alice’s eyes and she felt nothing. The hollowness inside her was an abyss so great that she was sure nothing would ever fill it. Every happy moment would be as useless as a single drop of rain in the desert. Every laugh would only underline the tiny uselessness of laughter.

Then Eva breathed in, breathed out, and shook her head. Alice’s own emotions came flooding back in. The hollow feeling had been Eva’s, she realized. She wondered if Eva felt that all the time, then recoiled at the thought. No one could live in the face of that much despair.

“Alice, do you understand now? If I hadn’t shown her the book, Penny wouldn’t have died. I killed my sister and I have to make it right. This is my
only
chance to fix things.”

Even though Alice was sure that Penny’s death had been an accident, that Eva had only ever been trying to help, she heard the despair in Eva’s voice and she remembered the emptiness. And she
did
understand now—why Eva was so dead set on this, why she was able to cope with the tragedy. She hadn’t given up hope. She refused to acknowledge the gaping hole because she still believed there might be a bridge.

“I understand,” Alice whispered. She put her hand on Eva’s knee and said again, with all the feeling she could muster, “We’ll fix it. I promise.”

Eva weakly shook her head.

“I wasn’t going to tell anyone.”

“You can trust me,” Alice promised.

“I know that,” said Eva. The right corner of her mouth twitched and she surveyed Alice with a surprisingly cool gaze, almost like she was observing a recently acquired piece of property. “I know.”

For the next hour they went back to reading—Eva had Alice’s stolen library book and Alice had Eva’s handwritten heirloom. For Alice, reading the old cursive handwriting in the bloodstained book was so familiar and unsettling that focusing was a struggle. Every time she turned a page, she half expected to see Elizabeth’s wild handwriting or her ravings about the witch and the mirror.

The book wasn’t organized in any obvious way, so Alice picked a page far away from the bloodstains and started to read a journal entry rather than an actual spell.

Like many other natural wonders, magic appears simple at first glance. When acolytes receive their first spell, they are often disappointed, complaining that it is nothing more than a short (and unimpressive) poem. But just as the master gardener can attest that there is far more to tending plants than watering and weeding, a true witch can appreciate the artistry behind spells. And a true witch knows that the words are only half the puzzle.

Society throws words around so carelessly that their power is largely forgotten. Only on rare and solemn occasions is speech given the respect it deserves. When the priest declares a man and woman married, it is done, and the wedding of those two souls is complete. So it is that words, when spoken with authority, can in and of themselves accomplish great deeds.

The matter of authority is where things become more complex. Words may be passed down from witch to witch—given freely. But each witch must develop an authority all her own. Magic is a force of nature and as such is unpredictable. Some witches are able to command magic immediately and almost effortlessly. Others struggle to find their unique connection to that most ancient force though it is all around them—in the water and in the ground and in the very air they breathe.

To truly command—to have authority—a witch must believe. She must cast all fear from her mind. Some people are incapable of this level of focus. Others are simply too distracted by life and its dazzling amusements to try. The only thing that separates a witch from the average human person is that she has the patience to work for and attain a rare degree of self-mastery. Anyone can accomplish this—man or woman, young or old—but because the practice is ancient, it is frequently dismissed as archaic. However, we few survivors know that as long as humans exist, some will be taught and others will discover that their power runs deep and old and strong.

“So then why aren’t there any male witches?” Alice said aloud.

Eva looked up from the page she’d been studying intently for many minutes now.

“What?”

Alice pointed at the page. “She says women
and
men can do magic. So where are all the guys?”

Shaking her head, Eva said, “Of course there are
guys
. We have two in my online coven—Blackhawk and Sirius. At least, those are their screen-names. Blackhawk posted his picture once.” She waggled her eyebrows. “Hot.”

“I just thought that all witches …” Alice didn’t finish. After her experience at the hotel with not only one, but two female witches, it hadn’t even occurred to her that witchcraft might not be exclusive to girls.

Eva shrugged. “I’d get in trouble with the Wicca ‘correctness committee’ for saying so, but the stereotype is pretty accurate. Ninety percent of practicing witches are girls. Guys—especially young guys—just don’t get into the whole magic scene very often. I mean, the fact is if you want to be a cool guy you don’t try to connect with earth forces, you go bash your skull in and destroy your brain playing football.”

“Don’t let my dad hear you say that. Last time I insulted football he didn’t speak to me for the rest of the night. He might kick you out.” She said it seriously, though she was sure her dad would never banish one of her friends, and watched Eva’s face closely for a reaction. But Eva didn’t believe her for a moment; she laughed off the warning. The magical bond made communication with Eva terrifyingly easy; Alice was sure that Eva would know what she meant even if she was
trying
to be misunderstood. The thought made her shiver; she was alarmed that her mind was no longer private.

“I think this is a good one to practice on,” Eva said suddenly and certainly. She pushed the library book to Alice.

Alice read the elaborate gothic titling on the left-hand page: “To Perceive the Immediate Future.” The spell title was accompanied by three solid black triangles and two full pages of instructions.

“This is complicated. Really complicated,” Alice said, running her finger down line after line of detailed instructions. The list of “needful items” was surprisingly short—a gem, a cupful of rosewater, and a glass bowl—but the method section was full of unwieldy paragraphs on proper gazing technique and details about the incantation itself. She turned the page and skimmed through the lines of the spell. It was a page and a half long.

“Alice, before we can start building our own spells, we have to get the hang of working together. It’s going to take both of us to pull this off. Do you really think we should practice creating fire when we’re going to be doing something a hundred times harder?”

“We
could
start with fire, just to warm up … ” Alice began. Eva crossed her arms and frowned. Her frustration was so palpable Alice couldn’t bring herself to finish her argument. Instead, she surrendered with a shrug and muttered, “But you’ve been doing this longer, so you would probably know better.”

“I know it’s a hard spell,” said Eva, relaxing now and pulling the book back into her lap. “But that’s why I picked it. We have to start on something difficult. We don’t have all the time in the world to practice this, so we need to make every minute count.”

Alice nodded, but her heart raced when she looked at the lines upon lines of text.

“Can I at least read through the incantation first?” she asked. “I didn’t finish.”

Eva crawled across the bed and knelt down next to Alice, laying the book in front of them. “We’ll go over it together,” she said. “I’ll do most of the heavy lifting. It’ll be fine.”

“I hope so,” said Alice. She didn’t even attempt to fake confidence since Eva no doubt already knew exactly how nervous she was.

“And Alice,” Eva added, putting her hand on Alice’s knee. “Whatever you do, don’t be afraid.”

“Right. Because magic can smell fear.”

Eva pursed her lips and looked at Alice, frowning like a strict schoolteacher. “It’s nothing to laugh about. Fear can break you. And when you break, so does the spell—it cracks and crashes down on you. On both of us.”