It was impossible.
What was going on?
I reached the porch after what felt like an eternity. That’s when I noticed the front door. I gasped, raising my hands to my lips because now it was obvious what the problem was. The door was open. No, it was slightly ajar, as though it had unintentionally been forgotten or ignored. It hadn’t been left open on purpose. Of course not. Grams was absolutely meticulous in her planning and in her daily activities. She never left anything open. Not when someone could just wander up to the house. Not when anyone could just come on in.
It’s not that Grams was paranoid.
Well, actually it was.
Ever since my Mom and Dad died, Grams had been different.
Cautious.
Worried.
I’d never really questioned her too much, but now I wonder if I should have. She’d always been worried about something, but I never really knew what it was. I pressed her sometimes, here and there, but never too much. She was just such a private person and I always brushed things off as her needing personal space. Now a sinking feeling settles in the pit of my stomach as I realize there was so much more to our lives than I could have possibly known. I didn’t push harder, didn’t find out what her secrets were, and now something terrible had happened.
What had we been hiding from?
What had we been running from?
To be honest, I had been so wrapped up in getting my job, not being a total loser, and trying to make friends – which I had failed miserably at – that I’d brushed off many of the warning signs that something was seriously, unabashedly wrong.
For starters, Grams and I didn’t use our real names. Not really. She had a silly “pretend” magic name that she asked me to call her when we were in public. I wasn’t even supposed to let people know she was my grandmother. I always just said I lived with a roommate. Grams was eerily private and liked to stay to herself, but she’d always been a bit of a loner.
Had something else been going on?
What was happening now?
I fought the urge to call for her by either her real or fake names. Instead, I hurried up the porch as silently as possible and I reached for the door. I heard a hiss before my hand even touched the wood. Then Boo was in my arms: soft and warm.
“Mr. Boo,” I whispered, looking at him. “What’s wrong, baby?” I pet him softly, rubbing his head. He didn’t purr. His entire body was tense, and I realized that something really was the matter.
Holding him tightly in my arms, I pushed the door open and walked inside.
Then I dropped Boo.
He squealed and ran back outside, but I couldn’t look away.
It’s human nature to be drawn to things that are awful. It’s the reason you never look away when you’re driving, and you see a car wreck. It’s the reason you can’t quite turn your head when two people get in a fight in public. Now, it was the reason I kept staring at my living room even though I was devastated at what I saw.
The entire house was destroyed.
Chaos filled the place and I wondered exactly what had happened here and who had done it. Potions were spilled and glass was shattered. Pages were ripped out of books and strewn everywhere. There were candles and herbs tossed on the table and dropped on the floor.
And my grandmother wasn’t there.
I opened my mouth, but I didn’t scream. Couldn’t. Maybe I should have, but I didn’t. Instead, I took a deep breath, and then I called out, “Grandmother?”
I never called her Grandmother.
I always used my special name for her. I always, always called her Mémère. It was what my mom had always said, and even though Mom had been gone for years, I couldn’t break the habit of calling my grandmother the lovely French name for grandma.
The house was silent.
There was nothing.
It was destroyed.
Whoever had done this had been searching for something, or maybe someone. They had torn apart the life we had so carefully crafted together. They had destroyed everything. Worst of all, they had taken my grandmother, and I had no way of finding out where they went. I had no way of knowing exactly where they had taken her or, more importantly, why they had taken her.
I wanted to fall onto the floor and cry, but I couldn’t.
I wouldn’t.
Instead, I swallowed hard and looked around.
I had spent so much time in this place. This was the place where I had recovered after Mom and Dad died. This was where I learned I’d never be a proper witch. This was where I met Boo. This was where I discovered myself.
Now the cabin was utterly destroyed.
One thing was for sure: I couldn’t stay here.
A plan.
I needed to make a plan.
First, I looked for the magic book. It was important to Mémère. It was the most important thing she owned. When she wasn’t working on a spell or using it to find important information, she kept it hidden and locked away. I was pretty sure I was the only person who knew where she kept it, too. I scoured the living room until I found a tiny wooden chest. It was small: only about four inches long, and it fit in the palm of my hand. I grabbed it and set it on the table. Then I stared at it.
I knew I wouldn’t be able to open the chest. I’d tried hundreds, if not thousands, of times. It had never worked. Nothing had ever happened. I picked the chest back up and shook it softly. It made a soft sound and I breathed a sigh of relief. The book was in there. They hadn’t found it. It was safe.
Just another sign that Grams was paranoid, I suppose, but she always shrunk the book and kept it locked in this chest. There was no key to unlock the treasure chest: only a spell. The words were carefully etched on my heart, but I knew that there was no way I’d be able to open it to get the book. Not on my own, anyway.
I had to find help, but perhaps more importantly, I had to get out of here. I couldn’t stay. Whoever had come for my grandmother was an evil person.
Or persons.
Or magic users.
I shivered in disgust and fear. They would come back when they realized she couldn’t help them without the book. They would come find the book, and then they would try to hurt her. I might have been isolated, but I’d read books and watched movies. I knew exactly what happened when someone wouldn’t cooperate, and Gram? She’d be a hostile hostage if I ever saw one.
These people wouldn’t let it lie. No matter who they were, no matter what they were after, they would need her to cooperate. So they would come for me. As tough as Grams was, I knew she wouldn’t let them hurt me. She would do whatever they wanted if it meant protecting me.
I couldn’t let it get to that point.
I ran up the stairs to my room and gasped when I saw the space. Like the first floor, it was completely trashed. My bed was unmade and covered with toys and books and clothes I hadn’t seen in years. The dresser was knocked over and my closet was totally torn apart.
And it smelled.
Everything reeked.
This time, I wasn’t smelling danger.
I was smelling anger.
“So now I’m scenting emotions in empty spaces, huh?” I shook my head. The day couldn’t get any weirder.
I grabbed the little leather bag that hung on my closet door. Dumping out its contents onto the bed, I replaced them with a few important items. I was all about leaving in a hurry, but I also was going to be smart about this.
First, I wrapped the little treasure chest in a baby blanket my mother had made for me. I tucked that into the bag. I followed it with a picture of my parents and my grandmother. Then I placed in Boo’s favorite toy: a little stuffed wolf. I’d be damned if I was going to leave here without my cat. Boo was all I had left now.
I scurried over to my grandmother’s bedroom. Like the rest of the house, it was totally trashed. I tried to ignore the different emotions that I was definitely smelling in the room. Instead, I reached for the back of my grandmother’s dresser. Somehow, whoever ca
me for her hadn’t discovered her secret envelope of cash and ID cards. It wasn’t going to be enough to get me very far, but it would buy me a bus ticket out of here. Then I could try to figure out who had taken my Grams. Without opening the envelope, I shoved it into my bag and headed downstairs.
Boo was sitting by the door, as though he knew what was going to happen.
I took a deep breath.
“Come on, Mr. Boo,” I scooped him into my arms. Boo had always been there for me and now I was going to be there for him. I didn’t know what was going to happen next, but I was going to protect him. I was going to keep him safe. I was going to make sure that no matter where we went or what we encountered, we were going to be fine.
We could do this.
I glanced at the clock. 3:30. If I hurried, I could get to the bus station before the last buses left for the afternoon. I could go somewhere. Anywhere. I could collect my thoughts and make a plan and I could find answers. I could figure out who did this. I could stop them.
How?
Well, that was a question for the bus.
I took a deep breath and pushed open the door. I stepped onto the front porch and turned around to pull the door closed. Even though I wouldn’t be coming back to this place, I couldn’t stand to leave the door ajar. It would bother Gram and somehow, doing this made me feel like I was honoring her in some weird way.
When I turned back around, I screamed.
“Oh, shut up,” the witch standing on the porch said.
The voice…it was familiar.
My eyes shot to her face: sweet, round, innocent. I knew this person. I’d seen her before. Oh, it had been years, and we were both older now, but it was definitely her. Her eyes flashed with anger and fear and a lot of different emotions I couldn’t identify, but I could smell them. It was definitely her.
“Aunt Erin?” I asked, my eyes going wide. And then I instantly started crying and threw myself into her arms. Oh, Aunt Erin was here. She was going to fix things. She could make them all better. Aunt Erin was my dad’s kid sister. We’d spent so much time together before my parents died, but after they passed away and Grams took me to live in the cabin, I never got to talk to Erin.
I missed her often and wanted to reach out to her, but Grams always forbid it.
“If anyone finds us,” she used to say, but then her voice would just trail off. I never knew what would happen if the wrong person found us. I only knew that it would be bad, and that it scared my grandmother, and so I stayed quiet. I stayed away from the only aunt I’d ever known. Now, part of me wished I had ignored my grandmother and contacted Erin, anyway.
“Oh, Aunt Erin,” I whispered. She hesitated, ever the awkward one, but then my aunt slowly wrapped her arms around me and held me tightly. Boo squeaked and jumped down, sprinting away. “Sorry, Kitty,” I said. I hadn’t intended to squish him between us, but sometimes bad stuff happens when you don’t mean for it to.
“Maxine,” my aunt whispered, and I didn’t even correct her when it came to my name because I was just too damn happy that she was there. She’d come for me. I didn’t know how she’d managed to find me after all of this time, or on a day like today, but she’d found me.
I looked up at my aunt, but before I could say anything, she cocked her head and her eyes narrowed.
“What did you do?”
Chapter 3
“W-W-What?” I asked, shocked and appalled. Did my aunt think I had anything to do with this? “I just got here,” I told her. “And Grandma is missing. We have to do something!”
Erin shook her head sadly.
“Honey, I don’t want to be the one to tell you this, but Grandma isn’t coming back, okay? She’s not missing. She’s dead.” Erin spoke with assuredness and bluntness, but she was wrong.
She was totally, completely wrong.
My grandmother couldn’t be dead. We were supposed to have dinner together tonight. We were supposed to cook. We were going to talk and spend time together and maybe even play a board game. Today was supposed to be normal. It wasn’t supposed to be horrible.
Dread filled my stomach as I looked at my aunt. Suddenly, she seemed ominous. She was definitely a witch. There was no mistaking it. Her short blonde hair was almost white and her eyes shone like diamonds. When she smiled, it could melt a man’s heart. It could melt a woman’s. It could melt anyone’s.
That was her power, her strength.
My aunt was the type of person who could convince anyone to believe her, to trust her, but right now, I didn’t.
“She’s not dead,” I said. I wanted to ask my aunt a million questions about today. Why had she shown up here, at my house? Why was she looking for me? Why did she think Grandma was dead? Why had she stayed away for so long?
“I’m sorry, but she is.” Erin’s voice was firm.
No.
No.
No.
Just no.
There was no way that it was true. I shook my head, but my aunt nodded sadly. I heard the words she was saying, but they didn’t make any sense to me. Dead? But the house was ransacked. Someone took her. It was obvious. There was no way someone could have done anything more than just a gentle kidnapping. Not to her. Not to my grandmother. Not to the one person who was always there for me.
I dropped to the porch and shook my head. It was impossible. There hadn’t been any blood. Besides, I would have felt it. Would I have smelled it? I don’t know. I certainly would have known, though. I had known something was wrong when I first reached the cabin. I had sensed it, smelled it. I had understood that I wasn’t walking home, I was walking into danger.
“This can’t be happening,” I said.
“I’m sorry,” Erin said. “I know this doesn’t make a lot of sense. I’ll explain once we’re gone, but for right now, you need to know that time is of the essence.”
It sounded like something out of a dumb book.
Not that books were dumb.
But this sort of thing didn’t happen in real life and it certainly didn’t happen to a girl like me.
I was ordinary: through and through.
That’s why people in town didn’t like me and it’s why I struggled to make friends. I was utterly and ridiculously ordinary. I wasn’t the kind of person who got swept up in magical activities or terrific experiences. I certainly didn’t get involved in murders or kidnappings. Those things didn’t happen to people like me.
Even as I protested, though, there was an itch at the back of my heart that urged me to question why I was so sure.
Why was I so certain that she was okay?
The reality was that there was a lot I didn’t know about my own Grandmother. Mémère was a wonderful person, but she held her secrets close to her heart. She spent hours upon hours working on spells and magic. She was always writing things in her magic book and she was constantly reading and researching. Our tiny home was a haven for people who loved to read. We had plenty of stories in the cabin.
But Mémère never told me why my parents had died.
She never told me what she was working on.
And she never explained why so much of our lives had been a secret.
I looked up at my aunt. She was watching me carefully. Her eyes flashed another color. Green. It happened so quickly that I figured I had probably just imagined it. Eyes couldn’t change color, no matter how much magic you did.
“Maxine,” my aunt said. “We need to go. Do you have a familiar we need to bring? I didn’t see an owl.”
No, she wouldn’t, would she?
Because I hadn’t wanted an owl.
Mr. Boo had been the familiar that Mémère chose for me. He had been perfect. He’d been friendly and kind and special to me.
“I have a cat,” I whispered. He’d run off when I went to hug Erin. She probably didn’t realize that he was more than an ordinary pet to me. He was my familiar. He was my strength.
“Good. Get him.” Erin looked around. “Something doesn’t feel right.”
None of this felt right.
My entire world was ending. My hands shook and my breath felt strained. It was hard to breathe: almost impossible. I hadn’t felt this scared since Elizabeth Margot didn’t invite me to her sweet sixteen. Everyone else in town got to go except for me. I was weird, and strange, and unwanted, and I had struggled to breathe when I realized that I really was just as weird as everyone said I was.
Suddenly, everything seemed to swirl around me and I felt like I was going to faint. Boo seemed to sense this and came barreling towards me. He leapt up and landed on my chest. I wrapped my arms around him and pulled him close. I found comfort in Boo I couldn’t explain. He was more than a cat to me.
He really was a friend.
“Mr. Boo,” I whispered. Somehow, he always managed to calm me down. I wasn’t quite sure how he always did it, but Boo was incredible. Boo was the best cat anyone could ever wish for. Gram certainly knew what she was doing when she chose him as my familiar. He was with me all of the time when we were both at home. Sometimes Boo had a bit of his own life and would wander away. He always came back though.
When we were both at the cabin, he didn’t follow me to work, but sometimes, I would sneak him out in my backpack. We’d go to town together: an unstoppable duo. I shouldn’t have taken him away from the house, perhaps, but I didn’t think there was any harm.
That had been a long time ago.
“Max, we need to go,” Erin looked around, her eyes roaming. “They might come back and it’s not safe for you here anymore.” She seemed wildly uncomfortable in front of the cabin. We weren’t out in the open. Not by any means. Security was very important to Gram, so she chose a place that was clearly isolated and surrounded by trees and brush and acres and acres of forest.
Whatever my aunt was afraid of wasn’t going to be a problem.
Not out here.
No one knew where this place was. No one could trace it. The cabin was an impenetrable castle for us, or at least, it had been, once upon a time. It had been a safe space where we could relax together and Gram could practice her magic and spells.
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