by E J Elwin
“My mom,” I whispered. “They took my mom. The surprise guest is my mom.”
Black spots popped up across my vision and the hands holding my drink started to shake, the ice clinking loudly in the glass. Lizzie and Sylvie leapt suddenly from their places on the red couch and came to my side. They each clutched one of my hands and I felt the familiar jolt of electricity. This time, instead of a force field popping up or the lights flickering, I felt a wave of calm wash over me. It was a sensation similar to putting healing lotion on a painful and itchy insect bite. The black spots vanished, the room cleared up before me, and I was able to breathe regularly. I could see in both Lizzie and Sylvie’s eyes that they knew what had just happened.
“Thank you,” I said.
They gripped my hands and then wordlessly returned to their places on the couch next to Hortensia. Harriet had risen halfway from her chair the way Jessica had done when Jasper fell.
“Arthur, are you okay?” Her face was tight with worry. I nodded and knocked back the contents of my glass. Jessica promptly leaned forward and poured some more whiskey into it.
“We have to find her,” I said. “We have to get her back and then kill Deidre for real this time—”
“Let’s think this through,” said Harriet. “We don’t know for sure that they have her—”
“They know where she lives,” I said. “Who else could it be? Who else would be so important? They already killed Connor…” I swallowed hard and took another sip of whiskey.
“Call her!” said Hortensia. “Call her and see if she’s home!”
I looked up at her. Why hadn’t I thought of it? I glanced around and saw Jessica already picking up an old-fashioned rotary phone like the one upstairs in the library. “It’s untraceable,” she said.
I picked up the receiver and quickly dialed my former home number which had been the same for as long as I could remember. I listened to the steady ringback tone, tapping my foot impatiently, while the others watched me anxiously. After about twelve rings, I heard the familiar high-pitched tone that indicated no one was around to take the call, followed by the automated operator’s voice. We’re sorry. Your call cannot be completed as dialed…
I hung up and then instantly picked it up and dialed a second time. Twelve rings later, the same high-pitched tone and the same operator’s voice.
“No answer,” I said, handing the phone back to Jessica. “They have her, I just know it. My mom is always home on Sunday nights…”
“What about your dad?” asked Lizzie. “How do you know they didn’t take him?”
I laughed humorlessly. “They definitely didn’t. They’d know it’s only my mom I care about.”
The Brotherhood had learned enough about me to know that. They’d been able to find out where I lived by tailing Sheriff Murphy. They’d figured out what I’d done to Father Gabriel. They had learned about my relationship with Connor— ‘two faggot kids’, that man Carlson had described us. It wouldn’t have been difficult for them to gain the slightest bit of insight into my relationship with my parents.
It suddenly occurred to me that my dad could be dead. Maybe he had tried to protect my mom from the Brotherhood and they killed him for getting in their way… If that was what happened, it would be the most decent thing he had ever done.
“So what do we do?” asked Sylvie.
“We have to go to Wineville and see if she’s there,” I said, rising from my seat.
“Whoa!” said Jessica, indicating for me to stop. “Wait just a second. If they took her, they wouldn’t be keeping her in Wineville. They’re due to be here in Seaside Tuesday night, aren’t they?”
“Yeah, and wouldn’t someone have answered the phone?” asked Hortensia. “Maybe asking for a ransom or something?”
It did make sense. It was more likely that she was somewhere here in Seaside.
“Then we cast a tracking spell, right?” I asked. “But for that, we need some of her blood or hair, and we can find that at the house in Wineville!” I rose from my seat but Jessica stopped me once more.
“Arthur, wait! If the Brotherhood had taken her any other time in the past, I would have said let’s go find that sample of hair or blood, but now that they have Deidre, there’s no doubt that wherever they’d be keeping your mom is magically cloaked. In the same way that we couldn’t be tracked in this house, Deidre could easily do the same to wherever they’re holed up.”
“Then what do we do?” I asked. “We have to at least try!” I heard an echo of my own voice in the Halfway Place as I begged Connor to keep an open mind to a new resurrection spell. “Maybe there’s some new Sacred Four gift that can break through the cloaking! We have the force field, the new extended time outside our bodies— couldn’t this be a new gift too?”
Jessica hesitated. “It could. You’re right, we can try. But we’ll have to be careful. They must have people watching the house. They’ll be expecting you to show up. They could have the place booby-trapped. The house might be rigged to explode as soon as we set foot in it—”
Explode. I suddenly realized what I needed to do.
“I’ll teleport,” I said. They all looked at me in surprise, and I spoke quickly before Jessica could respond. “If the house does blow up, I’ll be fine. I’ll get there much faster than if we drove. And if they are watching the house, I’ll be able to make it directly into my old room without them seeing me!”
“Arthur, it’s dangerous,” said Harriet. “You don’t know how that power works…”
“I have to learn to use it at some point, don’t I? And it’s my mom… I’ll make it work.”
She saw the determination in my eyes and understood. An image of her own mother in the picture frames that had hung on her living room wall floated across my mind.
“There’s a spell,” she said finally, “to create a contained explosion.”
**
A short time later, we all stood in the Concoction Cave around Harriet’s rusty cauldron as she strode around the room picking out glass jars from the wooden shelves lining the walls.
“Let’s see… Twaddle Root… Essence of Hemlock… Now where’s the Eye of Newt?”
Jessica reached for the jar filled with small marble-like objects floating in dark liquid.
“Ah, thank you,” said Harriet, taking the jar.
She looked fully in her element, and as I watched her expertly measure out the spell ingredients, I wondered just how many thousands of spells and potions the rusty cauldron had seen in its life.
“This spell,” said Harriet, “creates an explosion as forceful as the one that happened in Portland, but contained entirely inside the cauldron. It’s very dangerous and there usually isn’t any good reason to cast it. Witches have lost eyebrows, among other things. I’ll ask all of you to step back, but Arthur— and this is the first time I’ve ever asked anyone to do this— you’ll be stepping into the cauldron.”
I tucked my bright red Cloaking Crystal, which I’d just gotten back from Jessica, into my t-shirt and then stepped forward. Jessica and the girls all stepped back as Harriet took my hand and helped me into the cauldron. It was a bizarre feeling. I felt like a lobster about to be cooked.
“Remember,” said Harriet. “Instinct and intention. Trust in your gift, trust that it belongs to you and that you have power over it. Focus as hard as you can on exactly where you want to go. See it clearly in your mind. Let the desire to go there fill you up like the air you breathe.”
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, focusing on her instructions. The spell ingredients in the cauldron crinkled beneath my feet.
“Take this newt eye,” she said, placing it into my palm, “and drop it into the cauldron as soon as I finish saying the spell. Are you ready?”
“Yes,” I said. “I just hope my clothes stay on.”
“It’s a risk we’ll have to take,” said Harriet, as the girls giggled behind her. “Now, focus.”
I gripped the tiny gooey newt eye in my hand
. It smelled terrible but I focused instead on my old bedroom, on the David Bowie and Joan Jett posters on the walls…
Harriet stepped back and began to chant:
“Within the cauldron, iron vessel of potions
Now brews combustion, the largest of explosions
A bit of root and an eye of newt
A burst of fire, with force absolute.”
I focused all my energy on my old bedroom, willed every last particle of my being to take me there, then dropped the newt eye into the cauldron.
The Concoction Cave vanished around me in a dazzling flash of yellow orange light as I was enveloped in fire. It was everywhere, the only thing I could see. I became light as a feather. I knew I still had a body, but it was weightless. I was a smoky breeze, a cloud of ash wafting effortlessly through space. I held on tightly to the image of my old bedroom in my mind, wishing and wishing for it to appear before me, and repelling any doubt that it would…
After a few seconds, my feet found solid ground and my body had weight again. I opened my eyes and saw darkness. I blinked around at my surroundings, my eyes slowly adjusting after the brightness of the explosion. I thought for a moment that I had landed in the Irish meadow of the Illusion Room, and then I saw glowing red numbers nearby. 11:44.
It was my old digital alarm clock. I had done it! I had made it into my old room! I squinted around in the darkness and found my bed, saw the posters barely visible on the walls, found my closet door exactly as I had left it when I fled from Sheriff Murphy… The only other light in the room besides the red one from the clock crept in through the curtains, and I knew it was from a distant streetlight.
I patted my hands over my body and found, to my great satisfaction, that I had managed to keep my clothes on. I almost whooped in triumph but then quickly remembered the seriousness of the situation. There could be members of the Brotherhood right outside the house, or even in the house…
I crept silently to the window and looked out at the yard and the road beyond. There was no dark van or sign of suspicious activity. I padded softly to the door and pressed my ear against it. The house was dead silent, and from the looks of the crack under the door, all the lights were off. I opened the door as gently as I could, trying to keep it from creaking. The hallway was nearly pitch black except for the small blinking red light of the smoke detector on the ceiling.
I tip-toed into the hall, feeling like a burglar in my own house. There was a dark hole where I knew my parents’ bedroom was. The door was wide open and I walked soundlessly toward it, knowing before I reached it that the room would be empty.
My parents’ bed was neatly made. There was no sign of a struggle, no sign that anything horrible had happened. I slipped quietly inside and felt around on my mom’s dresser for her hairbrush that I knew she kept there. I would find it in an instant if I turned on the light but I knew the members of the Brotherhood surveilling the house would notice. I didn’t even dare risk lighting my hands on fire. My fingers fumbled over makeup and pieces of jewelry and I started to get nervous, thinking that maybe Deidre had removed all possible hair and blood samples. Then my heart leapt as my fingers landed on a smooth plastic handle.
I held the object up to my face and squinted at it in the negligible light available. I ran my hands over it and felt the unmistakable texture of stray hairs tangled in soft plastic bristles.
“Yes!” I whispered in victory. I gripped the hairbrush tightly as if something in the dark might try to snatch it from me, then crept back out of the room.
My heart thumped nervously as I stepped silently through the hallway toward the stairs. Harriet and I had agreed that I shouldn’t cause an explosion in my parents’ house for my return trip, but rather light the fireplace downstairs and then step into it. I was nervous because I wasn’t sure if that fire would be enough or if I would actually need to blow myself up in the end.
I climbed carefully down the stairs that I could barely see, gripping my mom’s hairbrush with one hand and the banister with the other. It would be unfortunate if I fell and broke my neck. Again, I imagined the irony of dying so soon after having chosen to live, and being reunited with Connor in the beyond. Well, my love, it’s the funniest thing…
I held in a laugh and was almost at the bottom of the stairs when a high-pitched screeching shattered the silence into a million pieces. I jumped about a foot in the air and nearly lost my balance on the steps as I looked wildly around in the dark, expecting tall dark figures or a swan to pop out at me. Then it hit me— the burglar alarm. My dad must have set it when he last left the house. It was motion activated, and I had just set it off by arriving on the ground floor.
My mind raced in panic as I tried to remember the code to deactivate it but knew I never would. My eyes darted around in the dark in search of the fireplace. I wondered frantically if I should just turn on the light. I would then light the fireplace and be gone in seconds if my gift worked the way I needed it to. I groped around for the light switch and couldn’t find it, feeling only cold wall. I was about to bumble blindly into the living room when I remembered my fire.
I clutched my mom’s hairbrush in my left hand and then ignited my right. My yellow orange flames were like a fiery sun in the darkness. I jumped the last two steps and then—
BANG! The front door was thrown open and two dark figures stood on the threshold. Their eyes glinted in the light of my flames, then they raised their guns.
I reflexively threw my right arm out in front of me and willed my fire to attack them. A great jet of yellow orange flames shot from my hand, and the two men dived out of the way to avoid it. I turned on my heel and bolted up the stairs, taking them two at a time.
The fireplace is downstairs, you idiot! shouted a voice in my head.
I didn’t know why I was running up the stairs to my bedroom, only that it was instinct. There were crashes and commotion downstairs as I reached the upstairs hallway, and I sensed that there were more than two men in the house. I heard their heavy footsteps pounding up the staircase as I flew into my bedroom, slammed the door shut behind me and locked it.
They would break it down like Sheriff Murphy had. I had only seconds—
In a moment of sharp clarity, of battlefield survival, I threw out my right arm and shot a torrent of yellow orange flames at the door. I kept it going, a continuous stream of dazzling fire, spreading it up and down the length of the door like I was painting with a flamethrower brush. I heard the surprised yells of the men on the other side as a great wall of fire erupted between us. The shrill shriek of the smoke detector was added to the din. I then turned to my bed and threw out my arm once more.
The blankets and mattress ignited in a roaring inferno just as gunshots exploded beyond the wall of fire. I gripped my mom’s hairbrush tightly in my hands, hoping it would survive the flames like my clothes had, then ran forward and dove onto the burning bed.
I was surrounded by bright yellow orange light as I focused my mind entirely on the Concoction Cave, on the faces of Harriet and Jessica and my sister witches as they waited for me… I became weightless once again, a flutter of ash drifting through the air. I held onto the image of the Concoction Cave as tightly as I continued to hold onto the hairbrush even in my weightless state.
After a few seconds— maybe it was four— I felt solid ground beneath my feet again and the reassuring weight of my body. I opened my eyes and felt warm, glowing relief as I looked around at the Concoction Cave and at Harriet, Jessica, Sylvie, Lizzie, and Hortensia. They sat around one of the circular wooden tables and quickly looked up as I appeared. There was a moment of pure astonished glee as they looked me up and down, at the hairbrush in my hands, then they burst into applause.
“Well done!” shouted Harriet. “Arthur, I’m so proud of you!” She dashed forward and kissed me on the cheek, then pulled me into a hug.
“And I kept my clothes on and everything,” I said, over her shoulder.
When she pulled back from me, the girls all l
eapt forward for a group hug.
“That is such a cool power!” said Hortensia.
“You’ll never have to sit in traffic again!” said Sylvie.
“That was fabulous, Arthur!” said Jessica. “I can take that brush and get the tracking spell set up!” I glanced at the table where they’d been sitting and saw the crystal ball on its purple velvet cushion. There was also a single white candle and Jessica’s sapphire knife. I handed her the hard-won hairbrush and watched as she gripped the base of the white candle and ignited it.
“Everything went smoothly with the fireplace, I take it?” asked Harriet.
“Not really,” I said. “I kind of, um… set the house on fire.”
They all exclaimed in surprise and Jessica looked up from the crystal ball, the tracking spell momentarily forgotten.
“You what?” asked Harriet, startled, but with a smile curving at the sides of her lips.
I quickly recounted what happened in the house; the shock of the burglar arm, the appearance of the Brotherhood members, and the raging fire I’d started in my bedroom.
“Well, I’m glad you’re okay!” said Harriet. “You didn’t have any pets, did you?”
I shook my head, grateful that I never actually got that puppy I’d asked my parents for.
“So I’ll need a bit of blood from the four of you,” said Jessica, returning to the spell.
The girls and I gathered around her and watched as she tugged a few strands of my mom’s hair from the hairbrush and then held them over the candle. The flame briefly flashed a yellow gold as it consumed the hairs. Jessica picked up the sapphire knife.
“Who’s first?” she asked. I volunteered myself by thrusting out my hand. Jessica lightly poked my middle finger with the shining knife. The blood caused the candle flame to shoot up a few inches and turn bright red, before settling back down. Hortensia wordlessly offered her hand next.
“Are you going to tell your mom about all this?” Sylvie asked me.
“I guess I’ll have to,” I said. “Deidre’s probably already shown her plenty…” I shuddered at the thought of my mom being held in a dark hideout somewhere and screaming in terror as she watched the psychotic swan morph into a woman…