The Power of Witches

by Shay Bencosme

  I felt my cheeks inflame, and I went into the bathroom to scrub my face clean of makeup and apply the skin medication to my sensitive face. “I had a really good time. He’s such a good guy, really.”

  Lily appeared outside of the bathroom, staring in to watch me do my nighttime skin routine, products courtesy of my dermatologist and Medicaid. “Need I remind you what I told you before?” Lily asked.

  “For Christ’s sake, Lil. It was a date, not a marriage proposal.” I slammed the medicine cabinet shut and took off my boots, kicking them away from me and just leaving them on the floor of the bathroom. I began to unbutton my shirt, pulling it away from my shoulders and letting the smooth material fall to the ground. Then I took off my jeans, leaving them in a pile with the rest of my stuff. I walked past Lily and opened my closet door, grabbing the closest t-shirt and pajama shorts that I could put on to get into bed.

  “I’m just saying,” Lily continued. “With the threat of the Order and all the drama around your existence anyway, you don’t need to bring a mortal boyfriend into it.”

  “Mind your business, Lily.” I walked over and climbed into bed, and Lily stayed put in her spot in front of the bathroom.

  Apparently frustrated, Lily shut off the bathroom light and walked into the main area of our room. “It is my business. If the Order finds out that Cyrus and I kept you a secret…”

  “But that’s not the conversation we’re having right now,” I cut her off. “I had my first date. And my first kiss. And I feel really good for once, and you’re ruining my vibe.”

  “Your vibe?” Lily laughed. “You’re not gonna have a vibe in witch prison or whatever they do with rule-breakers.”

  “Witch prison? Really?” I shot Lily a look. The blonde girl threw her hands up in frustration and climbed back into bed.

  “I’m just saying maybe you shouldn’t be so stupid.”

  I clenched my fists. In that moment, I hated my roommate and one of my only friends. Why couldn’t it just have been a normal conversation where my roomie and I stayed up until all hours of the night with a bowl of popcorn and a crappy Netflix movie, gossiping about boys? Why did everything need to be an existential crisis?

  “Don’t call me stupid,” I spoke through clenched teeth.

  “Well stop acting stupid then.”

  I released my fists and shot Lily a look that could kill. The candles on Lily’s side of the room all lit up in massive flames that no candle should’ve been able to produce.

  “Noa, stop!” Lily threw out her hands, lowering the flames but not quite extinguishing them. “You need to learn control.”

  “I need you to just give me a moment of normalcy.” The flames shot up again, this time higher as I complained.

  Lily jumped out of bed. I held my hands out in the direction of the four or five candles lit up. They were extinguished just as quickly as they came.

  I turned over in bed, away from Lily and whatever nagging she still had left.

  “You’re walking on thin ice, Noa,” Lily continued. “Elsa, the other witches here… they’ve all noticed what’s been happening since you’ve been here. The kitchen, the lights, your fight at school. They’re not stupid, you know. They asked me if you were a witch.”

  “Yeah? What’d you tell them?”

  “I said I didn’t know. I took the fall for all your magic. Cyrus took the fall. We got in trouble for you, and we have extra witch studies now because we can’t control our magic in Elsa’s eyes. But what’s going to happen when you do something that we can’t take the blame for?”

  “I don’t see what any of this has to do with me dating a mortal,” I sneered the word out like it was trash I even had to use it in the first place. I picked my head up and looked back over at Lily. What was the difference between Tomás and I? Why was he beneath me? Because I could manipulate the elements with my mind?

  “I don’t want to get in trouble for helping you. And the rate you’re going, the Order is going to find you.”

  “Then don’t help me anymore,” I said. “I know enough now. And if they haven’t found me in the last sixteen years, I doubt they ever will.”

  “You don’t know anything, Noa.” Lily snorted. “And if you think you do because you’re some hotshot human sacrifice, you have a lot more coming for you when the Order shows up.”

  “Stop talking to me.”

  “Whatever.”

  The room was silent except for the sound of the ceiling fan. I clenched my fists and took a deep breath, exhaling slowly. Lily is wrong. I knew plenty, and I had a whole library to learn from. And if Lily didn’t want to teach me anymore, I could go to Cyrus. Or Alana. Or even admit to Elsa I was a witch. Just because I was magical didn’t mean that I had to be the Rosdahl baby, right?

  Or I could go back to normal. I had learned enough to control the outbursts. I could just pretend the magic I held within me didn’t exist. And I could go back to being mortal. Go with my original life plan of getting out of foster care as quickly as possible and living out the rest of my days.

  I felt tears brim into my eyes. I wiped them away with the back of my hand and shut my eyes tight to stop any from escaping.

  CHAPTER 14

  A few weeks later and late into the afternoon, Cyrus and Lily entered the bedroom together, laughing loudly at some joke they had that I hadn't heard. I looked up from one of Lily's magic books, smiled softly. "What's on today's agenda?”

  Lily had entered some sort of crisis after my budding relationship with Tomás began. I wanted me to know everything, study at all hours. Honestly, it was exhausting. I had school. When we got home, Lily and Cyrus departed with the other witch kids to have their own study time, while I helped the younger mortals (and not yet activated witches like Josie and Harry) with homework or chores. Then they’d spend two or three hours teaching me whatever they’d learned that day and other basics. Supper. Then more studying late into the night. I was getting burnt out and exhausted, but Lily persisted.

  "Keep practicing the life spell." Lily set her book bag down. "We don't know what it's like to have an affinity of Spirit. We can't help you control it, but we can help alleviate the consequences."

  "Death," I chimed in. Lily nodded, picking up her Grimoire and flipping open to the life spell. Cyrus took his usual place on Lily's bed, and Lily sat on the floor next to her dresser. I had already been sat on the floor with my back resting against my bed.

  Lily pulled out a dead flower that I had killed with my affinity. I sat it on the ground between the two girls and gestured to me. "Go on."

  "I'm not good at this one," I grumbled.

  "Okay, but we make you good at it." Lily reached over to hand me the Grimoire. "All witches have some affinity to a natural element, and with it comes benefits and consequences. You have access to all of the magic the world has to offer, but you also have all the consequences.”

  "So why is it such a big deal if I can’t do this?”

  "Because I'm scared of what the Order might do to you if they find out you can’t control your own consequences.”

  "Lily," Cyrus warned. "That's enough."

  "No, it's not." I scooted closer to Lily, my interest peaking. My hands became clammy and my heart rate quickened. "Why are you scared?"

  Lily shook her head, burying her face in her hands. When she lifted her head again, her face was red. "They already want to kill you because you have all this power, and you don't know how to use it. Five elements? I’m pretty sure there has never been a witch in this world with more than two. They’ll kill you.”

  "Lily that's not true, and you stop scaring her." Cyrus reached down and grabbed Lily's Grimoire, snatching it up to his level up on the bed. "We'll work on something else today, now that you've gone all real-life on us. Remember our purpose here is to teach and control."

  "We should just hand her over to Mama," Lily murmured.

  Another thing Lily held over my head. The threat of telling Elsa and letting the consequences happen.
r />   It was Cyrus and I who agreed on continuing to keep me under wraps, continuing to pretend to be mortal. If Elsa knew I was a witch, specifically the Rosdahl baby, she'd alert the Order. I wouldn't even have a chance.

  "We're not doing that," I insisted.

  "Maybe we should focus on things you're good at already." Cyrus had a fire affinity. He was incredibly talented with offensive magic. Lily was a water type, and since they were polar opposites, it was only natural that they butt heads. Lily was all healing and life and medicine.

  "Or we could focus on things that'll protect her when the Order undoubtedly locks her in a house and sets her on fire," Lily spat, taking her Grimoire back.

  Ouch.

  Cyrus didn't respond to Lily, nor did he object when she brought up a protection spell. A magical shield of sorts. "This is to protect you from offensive magic. Or any kind of magic. You can either shield yourself or a group around you, or even shield people who aren't close by, but further away. That takes more work. We'll try just you."

  I studied the keys to intention for this spell. I pictured in my mind a plexiglass box that I had locked myself inside. I pictured being protected by the element of Earth itself.

  Warmth filled my body and then ejected itself, pushing forward to surround me all over. I opened my eyes and saw a flimsy shield separating me from Lily and Cyrus. Cyrus snapped his fingers and let a ball of fire form in his hands. He held the ball in front of his face and blew it like a dandelion flower, sparks flying towards me at a rate of gunfire.

  I lifted my arms to cover my face but realized it wasn't necessary. That flimsy magical shield I had no hope in was working, actually working! I stuck my hands out slowly, forming a circle with my fingers. I stole Cyrus's flames from his grasp and brought them to me instead. I held the warmth between my fingers, then clasped my hands together quickly, extinguishing the fire. I broke the shield.

  Lily squealed and began to clap. "That was amazing!"

  I broke out into a huge smile. My whole life, I'd hardly been good at anything. Maybe photography. But magic… magic was something I was incredible at. Something to help quell my anxieties and sadness. Something I could use to protect my newfound life, and friends.

  Cyrus smirked at me also. "That was pretty cool. And advanced."

  "I'm the bloodborn," I bragged with a cocky smile and tilt of my head. "I'm pretty advanced."

  "Stop being a showoff," Cyrus grumbled, but he still had that smirk on his face. His cute smirk.

  Oh heck.

  CHAPTER 15

  That evening, I lay in bed staring up at the ceiling, praying to God that my anxieties would go away and my life would go back to normal. Or whatever normal a foster kid ever experienced.

  I always felt like this after training, felt as if this power bestowed onto me was too much. A few months ago, Noa Rembrandt was just a foster kid going through the motions until I turned eighteen. Now Noa Rembrandt was a missing witch baby whose family was dead (because of me), and my friends’ families were dead (also because of me), and I had no hope to convince an Order of old witches who wanted my death that I was actually a good person.

  I gulped. I wanted to be normal. I wanted my mom to be a drug addict who got knocked up and left her baby in a dumpster. I felt tears form in my eyes and I used my long-sleeve shirt to dry the salty liquid from my lashes.

  “Are you awake?” came Lily’s voice from across the room.

  I gulped, willing my throat to clear so my voice came out normally, deep and strong like I had no care in the world. “Yeah.”

  “I’m sorry this is how your life turned out. And I’m sorry I give you so much shit for it as if you had a choice.”

  Lily Caine was a mind reader. She easily picked up on my pain and anxiety more often than not, and I never really knew how to feel about that. I didn’t even know if Lily meant the apology—from our time together, I knew that deep down Lily did blame me for it all. Her parents’ death. The war.

  “I wish I could’ve just been a normal kid.”

  “I think we all wish that at first,” Lily laughed. “When I was younger I told my mom I’d never use magic again because it made me a weirdo.”

  “Harry and Josie seem excited.”

  “I think Josie’s gonna be a natural at it.” The two girls laughed obnoxiously, bonding at the shared secret between them. The twins’ birthday was coming up soon and that meant not too long after they would begin to use magic.

  It was weird, the process behind “awakening” a witch’s power. It always happened after eight, never before. But it could be months before it happened. Lily’s much older brother Liam, who had also perished in the fire, didn’t get his magic until he was a month older than nine.

  I sighed. There was quietness in the air for a few moments, and then Lily’s meek voice spoke up again. “How does it feel?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “Being so powerful.”

  “I don’t know,” I breathed the words out. “I don’t have anything to compare it to.”

  “Momma always told me whoever the Rosdahl baby grew up to be, she’d change the world. Change the world as we knew it.”

  “Your mom was in the war, right?” I spoke carefully, not wanting my words to hurt Lily’s feelings. The truth was painful sometimes.

  “My momma, papa, and my brother. I was the only one not involved, and that’s just cus I was too young at the time. If I had been older than you, I would’ve joined the ranks at sixteen just like Liam did.” Lily fell easily into the narrative of her childhood, her deep Southern accent adding a lighter touch to the terrible story she was about to tell.

  “When they first brought Wanda before the Order, before the sacrifice, she was so excited. She’d been groomed basically since childhood that she was going to be the next leader to the coven. We’d simply been waiting. My momma was pregnant with me at the time, and Wanda made a joke to her one day how cute it’d be for them to have a child at the same time and be able to raise them together and be best friends.”

  I burst into laughter. “I guess our friendship was fate.”

  Lily giggled too. “Seems like it. My momma and Wanda’s family were close, and Momma didn’t think anything of the comment until after the sacrifice.” Lily paused, and I heard her breath catch. “It was my momma who told the Order she thought Wanda was pregnant.”

  I clenched my hands into a fist and then released. Zelda Caine couldn’t possibly have known what the consequences of Wanda’s pregnancy were going to be. Couldn’t possibly have known it was going to end the life of Wanda, and nearly every member of the Caine family also. The anger I felt against Lily’s mother dissipated. I couldn't be angry at someone for following the rules.

  "The Order tried to imprison Wanda, but my momma warned her and she escaped. For eight months, Wanda was missing. By the time my momma was having me, Wanda was found and there was this huge trial, but it was super private. No one knows what happened. But there was a witch hunt, for lack of a better word, for the Rosdahl baby."

  I nodded my head slowly. From where Lily's story ended and I knew mine began, simple dots could be put together. Wanda had given birth and hopefully planned to raise me in secret. One day, she'd been found and her best bet was to hide me—in a dumpster of all places, sure. But baby Noa was safe.

  "I think they found you a couple days after, right?"

  "Yeah."

  "And you told me before that you shouldn't've lived, and it was so cold."

  "Yeah, that's right."

  "She must've put a protective spell on you. She wanted you to live, Noa. Don't forget that."

  I felt tears brim into my eyes. My whole life, I'd assumed some crack heads just screwed around and got knocked up—left me in a dumpster to hide the evidence. I never thought my mom would've wanted me, or would've kept me in other circumstances. But here was the proof—the real story I'd been missing. Wanda Rosdahl was my mother, and she risked her life to save me from a group of old witches who wa
nted both of us dead. Risked imprisonment, torture... for me. I was wanted.

  I reached up and wiped the tears from my eyes. It was a good feeling, knowing that in another life I would've had a family. Here, I might have to fight to get mine back but I was going to.

  Unlike Lily. Unlike Cyrus. I cleared my throat. "Tell me about the fire."

  I could hear the pain in Lily's voice, her words cracking as she told the next story: "I was so mad at her that day. We lived in Charleston at the time, and she promised to take me to the City Market for the day because it'd been so long since we'd done anything together as a family, the war was so bad."

  Lily's voice cracked again. I didn't say anything, didn't want to ruin the vibe of the story. I could tell it was painful enough, to not only live the day your parents died but to recount it time and time again after. You never got used to it. "Papa couldn't go, had to settle some truce the Order proposed. So I was mad at him, and I was mad at Momma for letting him go. But we went, and we spent a few hours there before Momma got the call that she and Marcus had to be there for the truce. Every rebel had to be there, otherwise, the Order wouldn't accept it."

  I held my breath. I knew the end result of the story, but it didn't yet make sense. Lily laughed, breaking me out of my thoughts, totally and completely confused. "They put every rebel in some high ranking witch's house, and then they locked them in with a spell and burned it to the ground."

  I felt pain in my chest. The people I was running from were complete lunatics.

  "And the worst part was that when Momma dropped me off at home, I told her I hated her, for ruining the day for some stupid war. And she told me she loved me anyway. Like she knew this was the last thing she was going to say to me."

  Lily broke out into a sob. I climbed out of bed and crawled under Lily's duvet with her. I wrapped my arms around Lily's small body, engulfing her sadness into my own body. It was the only thing I could really do at this moment.