Spellcaster (28 page)

“She’s threatening everyone I love!” I cried, slamming my palm into the couch cushion. “I have to end this.” I didn’t tell him that he, specifically, was the target. I knew Brendan too well—he’d take the hit to keep me safe. He’d done it before. Now, it was my turn.

“Why won’t you let me help you?” he asked, leaning forward and taking my hands in his. I clenched my jaw, steeling myself to face him. I couldn’t tell him it was for his own protection, so I tried an alternate route.

“If you’re there, I’ll worry that she’s going to do something to you—what if she can still possess you? Do you want me to have to fight you
and
her?” I asked gently, and he stared down at my raw knuckles, the muscles in his slightly scruffy jaw tense as his thumb lightly ran over my cuts. And then he shook his head, a determined look on his face.

“No. I’m not letting you knowingly run off into a dangerous situation.”

“I wasn’t aware I needed your permission before I did anything,” I retorted cattily, and his stoicism relented.

“Come on, Em, you know I’m not like that,” Brendan said, looking a bit offended as he reached out his hand, resting the tips of his fingers on my knee. “I’m just saying, this is danger—”

“Look, Brendan, I’m the only one who can stop this,” I interrupted him. “Please, just listen to our idea.”

“Fine. Tell me,” he said, frustration saturating every syllable as he sat back, resting his weight on the palms of his hands. I shot him a look before telling him about my dream, and the rough plan we had in mind.

When I was done, a mix of rage and disgust twisted on his face. I’m pretty positive I saw a mushroom cloud explosion in his furious eyes.

“You look like you’re about to turn into the Hulk,” I said, hoping my weak joke would alleviate some of the tension. He looked at me, his palm up, his mouth open as he tried to find the words. And then he just sighed and shook his head.

“It absolutely kills me to say this, but I get where you’re going with this.”

Then it was my turn to look shocked. “So you’re agreeing with me?” I gasped, astonished.

“No. Not at all. I don’t
agree
with any of this and there has to be a better way,” he scoffed, his voice getting more agitated with every word. “I hate the idea of anything that puts you in danger like this. I hate the idea of you going—by yourself—to confront a knife-wielding witch, who’s only on your ass because of how
I
acted, armed with nothing more than a spell and an idea.” Brendan stopped short, reaching out to take my folded hands in his. He covered the backs of my hands with his, interlocking our fingers. Then he spoke again, this time a little more calmly, but a lot more severely, “What I hate about this—what I absolutely
hate
—is that, no matter what, you’re going to get hurt. After everything you’ve been through, this is the exact opposite of anything I’d ever want for you.”

Then he paused, and staring down at the way our fingers were intertwined before looking up at me proudly. “But it’s a
good
idea,” he said softly. “And you’re a genius for coming up with it. And I hate saying it, because of what it is. But it makes sense. If I were watching this in a movie I’d be yelling at the screen, saying, ‘It’s so simple! It’s perfect!’”

I smiled back, relieved—until Brendan frowned. “But it’s
not
a movie. It’s your life, and it still doesn’t mean your plan should happen. There has to be another way. Or at least a way to stall until we come up with a better plan that doesn’t put you in danger.”

“I don’t
want
to stall,” I said angrily. “I can’t put a Band-Aid on this, hoping things will get better. It has to end. And I have to end it.”

He stared at my aunt’s cable box, studying the glowing green numbers on it as if the time would give him answers.

Brendan leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “If you’re insisting on meeting her, then you have to let me be there with you, Emma,” he said, his voice serious. “She might not come alone. Please.”

“Brendan, I—”

“Please, Emma,” he pleaded desperately. “You can’t just go blindly into what’s probably a trap.”

I forced myself to meet his eyes, which bored into mine, with love. And I knew what I had to do.

I had to lie to Brendan.

Chapter
15

Brendan stayed a little
longer, talking to me about the spell Angelique and I had tried to write
over lunch when she called, her ringtone piercing the somber mood. I barely
had the chance to say hello before she was excitedly chattering in my
ear.

“Randi had
the best
idea ever!” she
shouted into the phone.

“It has to be good for you to
give her credit like that,” I observed, and she snorted on the other end of
the line.

“Oh, she’ll probably build
herself a statue or a palace or the Taj Mahal in the Fordham plaza in her
own honor, but this is pretty smart, I have to admit.”

“So what’s up?” I asked, as
Brendan pretended to flip through one of the magazines my aunt kept on the
coffee table. I appreciated that he was trying not to look like he was
listening, but he was sitting right there—what else is he going to listen
to?

“Can you come over tonight?”
Angelique asked excitedly. “Say you’re coming over for dinner or something.
Or say that you came here after kickboxing. But you need to come over
tonight.”

I sat up straighter. “Did you
figure out what kind of words I should use in the spell?”

“Oh, no, that’s something
you
have to
write,” Angelique reminded me. “For something this important, you need to
pick words that resonate with you. But I think we have a solution for you
not being—sorry to say—powerful enough to take someone like Megan on. We
figured out a way to get you more power.”

I jumped up off the couch. “I’ll
be right there,” I promised.

I called my aunt and asked her
if I could go to Angelique’s for dinner, and she agreed, whispering that the
school board meeting was running late. I was pretty sure I could recognize
Brendan’s mother’s shrill voice on the other end of the phone, and my aunt
sighed loudly at something she was saying. Brendan made sure I arrived at
Angelique’s safely, even though Megan was likely at her own home, prepping
for her gruesome little ritual. I pictured her sitting in a high-backed
chair, weaving diabolical plans behind a heavy wooden desk as she petted a
hairless cat like an old-time movie villain.

When I got to Angelique’s
apartment, she answered the door, excited, and grabbed my wrist and pulled
me down the hall.

“Why are you still in your
uniform?” I asked, noticing that she still wore the black, navy and green
plaid Vince A skirt. I had changed into jeans after kickboxing
class.

“I went straight to Randi’s
after work,” she said. “We’ve been brainstorming all afternoon.”

“Aw, Angelique,” I murmured,
touched—but she gave me a wary look.

“Don’t hug me,” she warned as if
I was attempting to lick her face.

“By the way,” she added,
whispering, “Randi…she…ugh. Just be prepared. And be glad your boyfriend
isn’t here.” Rolling her eyes, Angelique pushed open the door to her
bedroom, where Randi lounged in the middle of the black velvet comforter,
reading from a thick textbook. Her blond hair was in soft waves, which fell
around her shoulders. Randi was in black capri pants, heels—and was
threatening to spill right out of a vintage-looking red bustier. Her cups
runneth over, indeed.
Hell, those cups could
runneth a marathon.

She got off the bed when we
showed up, and ran over to give me a hug, practically suffocating me in
those cherry-red great balls of fire on her chest.

“Emma, don’t worry about a
thing. I have a fantastic idea,” she gushed, looking over my
shoulder.

“Where’s Brendan?” she asked,
blinking her cat’s-eye-lined lids innocently.

“He’s busy being underage
somewhere,” Angelique said dryly.

“He’s home. His parents just got
back from a business trip,” I explained. Considering that I was relying on
Randi for help, I tried to avoid noticing how her red-painted smile fell
into a frown.

“What about his siblings?” Randi
asked in a forced-casual tone. “Any older siblings, like, say, a
brother?”

“Only child,” I replied, as
Angelique snorted. Randi rolled her eyes, kicking off her fire-engine-red
heels and sitting cross-legged on the floor. She tugged at her binding
bustier impatiently before pulling a folded up piece of paper out of her
cleavage. The amount of boobage she was showing off, she probably could have
hidden my math textbook in there. And my math teacher.

“Okay, well let’s get started,”
she said matter-of-factly, dropping the saccharine act. She took a black
hair elastic off her wrist and pulled her artfully waved hair back into a
messy bun. Angelique turned off her desk lamp and set unlit, plain blue
pillar candles in a circle around us, the glow-in-the-dark stars stuck on
the purple walls giving the room a greenish cast. Only the hallway light
streaming in from her half-open door—and the faded light from the New York
skyline—illuminated the dark room.

I sat next to Randi in my
familiar spot on the throw rug—right next to the burn mark I’d caused—and
Angelique joined us on the rug. We formed a triangle—Randi was on my right,
and Angelique was on my left.

Angelique set one more blue
candle in the center of us—a thick, embellished candle, with complicated,
swirly scrollwork along the sides and three wicks.

“So, what’s going on?” I asked,
casting a look over to Randi, who was taking deep breaths with her eyes
closed.

“We’re going to give you our
powers. We’re going to do a power transfer,” Angelique blurted, her
blue-gray eyes wide with excitement.

“More like a power loan,” Randi
corrected her, opening one eye. “I got the idea from the spell Angelique did
to amplify her powers the night you guys went to the Battle of the Bands.
And you shouldn’t be so excited,” Randi addressed her cousin
condescendingly. “This is going to drain both of us.”

“Wait—I don’t want to do
anything that’s going to hurt you guys,” I objected, looking back and forth
between Angelique’s giddy face and Randi’s cautious one.

“It’s not going to be painful.
It’s just going to be fatiguing,” Randi explained, taking a dagger out of a
wooden box on the floor and wiping the blade with a soft cloth.

“See, you need to go against
Megan—doing a spell that we don’t know for sure will work, or that you can
pull off,” Angelique said. “Since Randi and I failed at the binding spell,
it’s got me worried about how strong Megan might be.”

“Thanks for the reminder.” I
smiled weakly as Randi mouthed
sorry
to me.

“Well, how about I remind you of
something else?” Angelique asked, twirling a blue streak of hair around her
finger. “You’ve successfully pulled off spells where Megan is concerned. You
sent her flying into a tree. You saved Brendan with a spell you’d known for,
what, a day?”

“But you guys still think it
isn’t enough,” I fretted, pulling my own long brown hair back into a
ponytail. Even though they weren’t lit, the candles had me nervous—last
thing I needed was to accidentally set my hair on fire. I liked my
hair.

“Not that it isn’t enough. More
like…hmm, how can I put this?” Angelique mused, taking a second lock of
purple hair and twirling it around the blue one. “Think of it like a video
game. You’re
good
at the game, but we’re just giving you extra
lives.”

“She’s not a cat, Angelique,”
Randi drawled disdainfully before turning to me with a calmer expression.
“We’re going to transfer all of our innate witch power to you. We’re giving
it an expiration date—it will fade when the lunar eclipse is over tomorrow
night. Because let’s face it, if you haven’t won before that’s over, then
you’ve got bigger problems than having enough power.”

“That’s true,” I
agreed.

“Okay, let’s get started,” Randi
said, resting her hands on her knees with her palms facing up, the piece of
paper resting in her lap.

“Concentrate and repeat,”
Angelique whispered to me, and I shut my eyes, absorbing Randi’s brief
words.

“Goddess, give your
daughters light,

So we may honor you on this
night.

May the circle protect us in this
task.

Goddess, this is what we
ask.”

I took a deep breath and
repeated Randi’s words. The darkness beyond my closed eyelids lightened, as
flickers of shadows danced across my vision. I felt a spot of heat by my
right hand, which was resting on my knee.

I opened my eyes and gasped. All
the blue candles were lit, except for the one in the center.

“Did you light those while my
eyes were shut?” I asked Angelique, awed. I didn’t even hear her get
up.

“
We
lit those,” Randi said, her voice
monotone as she held out the dagger she had been wiping against the palm of
her hand. The flickering candles reflected in the shiny silver blade,
casting an orange glow on her skin.

And then she pressed the point
of the athame into her fingertip, making a small, shallow cut in her skin.
Randi wiped the blade off and wordlessly handed it to her cousin.

“This is the only way to
transfer the power,” Angelique explained, taking the knife and wincing a
little as she made a similar cut in her right index finger.

“You have to make a cut,” Randi
instructed as she held her hand up. A small trickle of blood trailed down
her finger.

I looked down at my hands. “Just
make a cut anywhere?”

“Just do your fingertip, it’s
easier,” Angelique ordered as she wiped Randi’s blade off, handing it to me.
The handle was gorgeous, burnished silver carved with a dragon’s head—a far
cry from the creepy athame Megan preferred. I took a deep breath, steeling
myself to make the cut. It stung, but I’d had worse.

“Now what?” I asked, awkwardly
holding the athame in my right hand as I attempted to not bleed all over
it.

“Now put the athame down, and
follow what we do,” Randi said. As I placed the athame gently on the rug
next to me, Randi held her finger over the unlit blue candle in front of us.
A small drop of blood dangled from her fingertip, quivering as Randi’s hand
moved slightly. Then, it fell, landing on the edge of the blue candle. The
blood pooled, slithering to the wick like liquid mercury. It crawled up the
wick, staining the stiff, white, waxy string crimson. And then the wick
exploded in a burst of red flame.

“Whoa,” I breathed, staring at
the blood-colored flame flickering just a foot from me. I watched Angelique
do the same, squeezing her finger slightly to force the blood out of her
fingertip. A fat drop fell onto the candle, and soon another ruby-colored
flame flickered next to Randi’s.

Then it was my turn. I
tentatively held my hand over the cherry-colored flames, feeling an
unnaturally scorching heat searing my palm. Like Angelique had, I squeezed
my finger, forcing out a drop of bright red blood. It landed directly on the
wick, which absorbed it and burst into a bloody flame.

“Now, just focus, Emma, and
listen to the words we say,” Randi instructed, and she and Angelique grabbed
my hands and began chanting.

“On this night and in
this hour,

We give this witch our blessed
power.

Until tomorrow’s moon is no longer
shaded,

Then our powers will have
faded.

Let her hold our power dear and
true.

Goddess, this is what we ask of
you.”

Angelique and Randi repeated the
chant, their words blending together, overlapping until I couldn’t make out
distinct words anymore—their voices were just a low, rhythmic buzz, an
undulating wave of noise. The flickering lights of the candles cast large
shadows on Angelique’s purple bedroom walls—shadows which seemed to dance,
getting larger as they came closer, almost threateningly advancing before
they withdrew to the corners of her room. I felt like they were taunting me,
so I shut my eyes against their provocation.

I felt a sharp tingle in my
hands, followed by a searing heat that burned but didn’t cause me pain. It
was almost soothing—like putting lotion on after a sunburn. The sensation
crawled away from my hands slowly, my skin reacting with gooseflesh as the
tingling climbed up my arms. Then, it suddenly launched into my chest, an
electrical jolt that caused me to jerk forward, gasping—and Randi’s and
Angelique’s grip on my hands tightened.

My heart pounded as if I’d just
run ten miles in two minutes—but I didn’t feel exhausted. I felt powerful,
like I could run twenty miles. I
wanted
to go running. I wanted to do
cartwheels down Tenth Avenue. I wanted to challenge the Knicks to a dunking
competition. I felt invincible.

I realized that Angelique and
Randi weren’t holding my hands anymore—and they weren’t even chanting. I
opened my eyes warily, and Randi was slumped forward, her red lips forming
an O shape as she exhaled long breaths. Angelique’s streaked black hair was
blown back off her face, and she looked like someone who had just ridden a
roller coaster that she didn’t particularly enjoy.