by Cassandra
“All right, Ethel. We’ll send word of the next gathering when it’s time.” Betty escorted her and Jessica out. They exchanged goodbyes with the other women and before long, Jessica settled into the car and clipped her seatbelt in place.
“Where to now?”
Ethel adjusted her rearview mirror and put her seatbelt on. “For you, home. I have some things to tend to on my own. I’m sure you can find some way to entertain yourself until I get back. I shouldn’t be gone for long.”
Jessica thought about what she could do with the house all to herself. She turned her head to face the window. “Yes, that’s fine. I have some school work I can catch up on.”
They rode the rest of the way in silence and the girl wondered if they were both thinking about Max. She sure was.
Her grandmother dropped her off in front of her house. She rolled down the window and called, “I’ll be back shortly. Feed the cats for me, will you?”
“Okay.”
She let herself in and had to step over several cats the moment she got through the door. The air felt charged, although she knew it was likely only her imagination. Or the thought of what she planned to do.
Or the guilt of it, rather.
“All right, you guys. Settle down.” She knelt to scratch a few of the cats behind the ears before she hurried to the kitchen as fast as she could. There, she found Grace, her grandma’s familiar, sitting on the kitchen table.
Jessica raised an eyebrow. “Now, do you think that’s an appropriate seat, Grace?”
“Wherever I choose to sit is an appropriate seat,” Grace responded in Jessica’s head. “Besides, elevation helps me keep watch over the others. What took you so long to get back from church? And where’s Ethel?”
“It beats me. She said she had some errands to run. Are you hungry?”
“Positively famished.”
“Drama queen,” Jessica muttered although she tried to keep her cool. She didn’t want her grandma’s familiar to guess that she was up to something and knew she had to be extra careful around Grace. She had a feeling the cat was as intuitive as her grandmother was. For once, she needed the cat to be distracted and mind her own business.
She made a show of retrieving the cat food and was extra noisy in the process as she opened cabinets and poured kibble into various cat bowls. The animals began to appear from every corner of the house, eager for their dinner.
Grace, however, remained perched on the table. She studied her so intently that she worried the cat could read minds. To be on the safe side, she began singing a Bruno Mars song in her head, hoping that it would cover her thoughts.
The familiar’s stare remained relentless.
“What is it? I thought you said you were hungry?”
She stretched luxuriously. “I am. But my taste today is a little more…exotic.”
Jessica blinked. “What exactly is that supposed to mean? Do you expect me to go out and catch you a mouse or something? If that’s the case, I can let you out of the house and you can find your own meal. Eat whatever your heart desires.”
“You know I’m older than you, right? I don’t take attitude from children.”
“Sorry.” She sighed, slightly taken aback. “I guess I’m not used to talking to cats that talk back.” She looked through more cabinets, anxious to find something to Grace’s liking and equally anxious to find it quickly. Time was ticking away, and her grandma said she wouldn’t be gone for long.
“Ah-ha!” Jessica pulled out a can of gourmet cat food. She raised her eyebrows and waved the can in front of Grace. “Is this more like it?”
Grace licked her lips in response.
Jessica opened the can, retrieved another bowl, and poured the meat into it. “Wow. This stuff darn near looks like beef stew.”
“Tastes like it too.” Grace swished her tail, ready to dive into her meal.
After a quick look at the other cats, Jessica poured out some more kibble for good measure. She went hurriedly to the back of the house and retrieved a few cat toys from the stash her grandmother kept. That way, when they finished eating, they would have something to keep them occupied.
Something to distract them and keep them away from her.
“All right. I’m going upstairs to do some homework.” She eyed Grace. “My grandma will be back soon. Will you look after things down here for me? Thanks.”
Without waiting for a response Jessica dashed upstairs. It was not the guest bedroom—which was now her room—that she entered. Instead, she headed directly for Ethel’s room and closed the door quietly behind her.
Her heart sped up and a small part of her felt guilty for what she was about to do. But another part of her—the part of her that wanted answers—pushed the feelings of guilt aside. Grandma Ethel was a busy woman who moved at her own pace. If Jessica wanted answers about the magical world, she would have to find them herself.
The old lady’s room was neat and tidy, exactly like the rest of the house. Nothing was out of place and nothing looked out of the ordinary.
Jessica turned in a circle, unsure of where to look. Her grandmother’s robe hung from the closet door. Shoes were lined up under the window. A knit quilt covered the bed. The mirror was adorned with photos of Grandma Ethel and Jessica’s mother from when she was young. Her gaze roamed over the photos for a moment. She began to wonder if her grandma was hiding pictures of Max somewhere. Or pictures of her other husbands, for that matter.
That’s not what you’re here for, she reminded herself.
She refocused and tried to figure out where she should start her search.
Where did she need to look?
Jessica grimaced and looked at her grandma’s dressers. She didn’t exactly want to search through sock drawers in search of something useful about magic.
She turned to the closet again. That was the safest and most logical place to start.
The closet doors squeaked loudly as she opened them and she cringed. She paused and hoped none of the cats, especially Grace, had heard.
Please let them all still be eating. She pulled the door open the rest of the way. She flicked the closet light switch and stared at knit sweaters of every kind and color. Just when she started to feel overwhelmed, she lowered her gaze to the floor, where there was a wooden chest.
Shaking slightly, she dropped to her knees for a closer look. There was no lock on it.
Jackpot!
She slid the box out of the closet carefully. Her fingers tingled when she touched it as if she could sense the magic inside.
Cautiously, she raised the lid.
A book lay on top, the first thing she saw as she peered inside. A magic book, obviously. It was a thick, leather-bound tome that looked older than dirt itself. The sight of it thrilled Jessica to her core and she couldn’t believe her luck. She had thought it would take forever to figure out where her grandmother’s magical stash was, but she had found it in a matter of minutes.
This must be the Bible of magic, she thought.
In awe, she lifted the book out and placed it on her lap. Its heavy weight pressed against her legs and it had a woodsy smell to it. She ran her hand across the hardened leather cover and traced her fingers delicately along the cracks. Carefully, she opened it. The pages inside gave off the scent of old, mysterious libraries.
As thrilled as she was, Jessica quickly became overwhelmed as she scanned the pages and realized how much information the book contained.
Where would she even begin?
She flipped back to the beginning. The Table of Contents was the best place to start. She read the chapter headings and realized that even making sense of that would be a chore.
She would need more time. A lot more time.
Time—free time, at least—would be hard to come by, especially considering she had that Saturday detention to make up. The school hadn’t been very keen to hear any of her excuses. It wasn’t like she had the option to tell the truth. The principal did not want to hear that she
had been sidetracked when she’d saved a cat in a tree from a mischievous imp that she’d conjured, then ran off to fight a demon.
At least her parents knew the truth. That gave her some comfort, even if she did end up with a bad record at Bishop Fenwick High School.
Then again, maybe there was a spell for erasing school records.
Thinking about saving the cat and conjuring an imp made her remember the last imp she had encountered. The one who claimed to be her familiar. Suddenly, that seemed like a good place to start. She began to search through the table of contents and traced the dense writing with her finger. There it was. The sections dedicated to familiars and imps were both long, and there was no way she could finish either one before her grandmother got back home, let alone both.
The thought of her grandma walking in and discovering her snooping shot a fresh jolt of fear through Jessica. Thinking fast, she retrieved her phone. She figured she would be better off taking pictures of the pages so that she could read them later.
There was no way she could take the book without Grandma Ethel noticing. If she had photos of the pages saved on her phone, surely she could find time to read them. Maybe she could even squeeze some reading in during her Saturday detention.
She took pictures here and there, then flipped to the book’s index. Her eyes lit up when they found a page containing “convincing and persuasion spells.” Jessica swore. She almost ripped a page in her haste to get to those particular pages.
Let’s see if I can find a spell to get me out of Saturday detention. At least one of her problems would be solved. Praying the spell wouldn’t be too complicated, Jessica took as many pictures as she could.
Hopefully, the spell worked. If it did, she could find a way out of detention altogether. Even if that didn’t work, maybe she could make her teacher think she was there in detention while she ran off to do more important things. If she could get that to work, it would definitely be something to add to her list of “pros” of being a witch.
Jessica had taken the last of her pictures when she heard a car door slam. Her heart leapt into her throat. Grandma Ethel was home.
Hastily, she shoved her phone into her back pocket and moved quickly. She closed the book, returned it to the box, and pushed the trunk back into the closet. Satisfied that it was where she’d found it, she turned the light off, and closed the closet door. She cringed again at the way it squeaked. Then, she exited the room and made a mad dash across the hall to the guest bedroom where she was supposed to be doing homework.
She moved so quickly she hadn’t seen Grace slink through the hallway in the shadows, watching her.
Jessica stood in front of the mirror, more nervous than she had any right to be.
It was only a movie. That was all it was and that was all it would be.
Still, her grandmother’s voice whispered in her ear and continued to insinuate that Kacey had more than simply friendship on his mind.
She had waited eagerly to see what her friends would say about the situation but to her chagrin, none of them had responded to her text. Then, of course, her mind had become fairly preoccupied after meeting the knitting ladies and Max. She had completely forgotten to send any follow-up text messages asking them what they thought.
By the time she thought about it again, it was time for her to start getting ready.
She had avoided her grandma ever since she’d returned from running her errands. Jessica was afraid that what she’d done would show on her face the instant Ethel laid eyes on her. Now that some time had passed and she had the movie to worry about, she felt a little less concerned with her recent snooping. Besides, if Ethel had noticed anything odd, she certainly would have said something about it by now. Grandma Ethel wasn’t the type to hold her tongue about things.
She found her grandmother on the couch with several cats lying across her lap while she watched her evening game shows.
“Hey, Grandma, I’m off to the movies.” Jessica was dressed in a pair of jeans and a sweater. Nothing fancy, because this was not a date.
“All right. Get back safely now. And remember what I said about this Kacey boy! You keep your good eye on him, you hear me?”
“Grandma,” Jessica muttered, her face reddening. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours.” She dashed out the door and automatically hopped over the cats that always seemed to lie right in front of the entrance.
She jogged down the stairs and to her Jeep. It came with her from her parents’ house. She figured since she would stay with Grandma Ethel for a while, her rusty old Jeep needed to come along as well.
The familiar coldness greeted her when she climbed into the driver’s seat. After being driven around in sufficiently heated cars for a while, her raggedy Jeep with its faulty heating system felt reassuring.
She pulled out the extra pair of gloves and the hat that she kept in the glove compartment and put them on, then flipped on the radio. The drive was short, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t use some good music along the way. After finding a station she was satisfied with, she pulled out of her parking spot and headed down the road, belting out the song as she drove.
She knew something was wrong by the time she reached the first intersection.
Jessica Palmers couldn’t pretend to be a good singer by any stretch, but she wasn’t anywhere near as bad as what she heard. As the song went on, she realized that another voice sang along to the radio. Someone or something was in the car with her.
The hairs on the back of her neck stood up and she clenched her firsts around the steering wheel, terrified.
An array of scenes from scary movies flashed through her head. How many times had an innocent teenager been killed for not checking the backseat of his or her car? She definitely should have known better, given what she now knew about the world and the evils lurking in it.
Keep calm. Pretend you don’t know anything is wrong, she told herself.
She forced herself to keep singing while she tried frantically to think of what to do. Meanwhile, the voice continued to sing along. It was not only off-key, but the voice sounded like it came from a creature in abject misery. She doubted a dying cat would sound so bad.
Jessica held her breath and glanced into the rearview mirror.
What the—
She twisted in her seat and slammed her foot on the brakes. The voice stopped singing and instead, now screamed. The imp. It was the imp again.
The force of the car coming to such an abrupt stop hurtled the creature out of the backseat to slam into the windshield. With a small groan, it slid onto the dashboard and became partially entangled in a parking sticker.
Jessica sat frozen in shock. There was no doubt in her mind that it was the same imp she had seen the night she babysat the neighbor’s children. It was the same size, had the same ugly face, and even the same goofy hairstyle. Now, it lay motionless on the dashboard.
Her heart raced as she leaned forward and poked it. The creature remained still. She swallowed and an uneasy feeling plummeted through her stomach. Honestly, she had not meant to kill it—at least, not this time. It had merely caught her by surprise. She pulled her gloves off and poked it again. Cautiously, she prodded the imp’s clammy skin in an effort to determine whether it was still breathing. She couldn’t tell, but the imp remained too still for her liking.
After a deep breath, she picked it up. The parking sticker peeled off the window but was still stuck in the imp’s hair. The little creature felt like a toy in her hand. Its legs and arms dangled limp and lifeless as its body rested in her palm.
“Hey?” She gave it a little shake. “Are you okay? Are you dead? I wasn’t trying to kill you. Wake up. Hey! Come on, wake up!”
She shook it again, but the thing still wouldn’t move. A lump formed in her throat. It was a tiny minion of evil, but she nevertheless felt a little guilty. She tried to peel the parking sticker from the imp’s hair, but it was stuck. She gave it a good yank.
“Ouch!” The imp screamed
in pain as the sticker ripped hair from his scalp. He was a he if his voice was any proof. He sprang to his feet and scowled at her.
Jessica shrieked and dropped him on reflex. His arms flailed wildly as he fell, caught the gear shift, and swung over to the passenger seat. She covered her mouth with her hands and stared with wide eyes as he steadied himself.
His large shiny eyes glared at her, full of attitude. He folded his arms across his tiny body and held his head up with an indignant expression, his big nose turned up at her. When he had her full attention, he pointed to his new, red bald patch. “Do you see that?” he squeaked. “Look what you did, you giant oaf! That’s no way to treat your familiar!”
With a huff, he snapped his fingers and disappeared.
Chapter Seven
Jessica sat in her Jeep, clenched her hands on the steering wheel, and tried to wrap her mind around what had just happened. For the second time, the same imp had claimed to be her familiar.
What in the world does this mean?
She thought about the pages she had pictures of on her phone. Given what had happened, she felt compelled to read them right then and there. Then she remembered what she was actually supposed to be doing—meeting Kacey at the movie theater. She released a long breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.
When did my life get so complicated?
Jessica shook her head. She didn’t really have time to think about that right now. The only thing she needed to be concerned with was getting to the movie theater on time. Thoughts of the imp and whether he was truly her familiar would have to wait.
She took a deep breath to steady herself, pressed the gas pedal, and continued her drive. To her dismay, the closer she got to the theater, the more nervous she became. It wasn’t because of the imp. These nerves were all Kacey related. She moved closer to finding out whether or not this was meant to be some kind of date, and she wasn’t even sure which one she wanted it to be. Then she reminded herself that with her other friends coming, it wouldn’t be like a real date. It would merely be a group outing, that was all.