by Kayti McGee
“Oh yes.” She wiggled her fingers. “A little squirrel told me we’d be together tonight.”
I didn’t want Rose to hear or see this. This was the ugliest, cheapest side of my world. I cursed Imogen inwardly.
“Please tell me that squirrel is on the road now.”
“He is. Are you happy?” She reached for me.
I stepped back, my boot hitting the edge of the water. Another step and I would collide with the girl Imogen couldn’t see.
“Don’t,” I warned.
She pouted prettily. “You were never squeamish before.”
“And I’m not now. I want to be alone.”
Imogen’s expression shuttered. Still, she turned and disappeared, the trace of her blinking away rapidly.
Witches, for all their need of covens, are surprisingly solitary creatures, and privacy is a right universally respected among them.
I waited until I was sure she was gone, then I hauled Rose out of the stream and began pulling her, barefoot, in the direction of her car. “We need to go.”
“My stuff!” She yanked her hand from mine.
I glowered at her as she shoved her wet feet into her boots and gathered her coat, sweater, and socks.
“Who was that?”
“Nobody,” I snapped. As if she were an unruly child, I gripped her arm and began marching her at double-time pace toward the road.
“You’re hurting me.” She wrestled her arm away. Her teeth chattered uncontrollably and her lips were an alarming shade of purple. “Where are we going?”
“I’m not going anywhere. You’re going to get back in your car, blast the heat, and leave this place forever. Drive out of town tonight. Don’t come back.”
“No,” she said. “N-no, no way. My family is here. Everything I can learn about my past is here. I’m not leaving. I need to talk to you. I need to talk to my—”
I rounded on her. Somehow, Juniper Hollow and a menacing paranormal encounter had failed to frighten Rose to her senses, and so it was left to me. I gripped her jaw and brought my face close to hers. My eyes darkened. The pocket of night around us went black as hades. For a flash of a moment, my face deteriorated to what it should have been: A wizened, mummified rind.
“There is nothing for you here but death,” I growled, “and if you stay, I’ll be the one to give it to you.”
I shoved her toward her car.
At last, Rose did what she should have done when I’d stepped into Ella’s two hours earlier: She ran and she didn’t look back.
Six
Rose
For the second time, I ran from him.
That nameless green-eyed monster who seemed to see into my soul and frankly maybe did. I couldn’t be certain. The way he had just—disintegrated my pepper spray… I hadn’t drunk nearly enough wine to invent that one.
I pulled over to a lookout point once I was out of Juniper Hollow and got out of the car. My hands were shaking as much from everything that had just happened as the cold that had gotten into my bones after I’d doused myself in the stream.
What was that?
Under normal circumstances, I’d have gone through a checklist, wondering how the illusions were made, but in this case it was impossible. No illusion turned a solid cannister to dust, no smoke and mirrors made a glacial stream steam on command. I felt like Harry getting his Hogwarts letter, if his letter had come with a few death threats attached as postscripts.
I couldn’t help it. I started laughing. Once I started, I couldn’t stop.
Magic is real. Magic is real!
I yelled it to the trees, listened to the echo of my voice bounce back. Holy fucking shit. Magic. Like actual, legiteral magic. He just spoke words and the universe bent to his will. The water was warm; I was invisible. The pepper spray was sand. My whole body had felt simultaneously feather-light and boulder-heavy. It buzzed, that was the only word for it. Like I was made out of bees.
I’d imagined a thousand different scenarios playing out on my drive into the mountains. Not a one had involved magic.
I sank down next to the passenger-side front tire and laughed and shivered until the tears came. How was I going to tell Joe about this without sounding like an actual crazy person? It was something he accused me of often enough as it was. I could just imagine that phone call. It would be followed by him calling my parents, who would have a long talk with me about growing out of my imagination before they set up a psychiatry appointment.
I was definitely not telling Joe, then. Or Mother and Dad.
Another car pulled in next to me, and the older couple inside seemed nervous to get out with the crazy girl laugh-crying on the ground, so I got back in my car and turned up the heat full-blast until my cheeks and eyes felt dry.
How could I keep this in? Or was I crazy, after all?
How could a person tell the difference? Crazy people are always the last to know that they are. I replayed the encounter in the woods over and over in my head. Had that really happened?
Had he hypnotized me somehow, given me suggestions? If so, he was good. Because I could swear everything I had seen, from the spray to his death-mask, had been somehow realer than this steering wheel in my hands.
I started back down, the drive out taking years longer than the drive in, as they tend to do. Once I was safely back on the outskirts of Denver, I decided I was, indeed, crazy. That hadn’t happened. It couldn’t have. Not while the world down here carried on as usual, meeting friends and walking dogs and paying bills. The juxtaposition of city life and Juniper Hollow drove my doubts home.
I must have gotten some bad wine or something, and hallucinated. Can ergot grow on grapevines? There was probably a recall on the batch I had, but I never noticed because I prefer books to newspapers and am usually always behind on world events. Deciding that was comforting. It warmed me a lot more than my crappy car heater could. Because how could I go back home, go back to my boring, unfulfilling, newly single life, if all of that had actually happened?
I sat in a gas station parking lot in Lakewood and considered my options.
Number one, and probably most important, I would need more wine. Secondly, I had enough money to stay in town for a while until I figured out exactly what was going on with Rune, but Juniper Hollow money and Denver money were vastly different sums. Third, I officially couldn’t tell a soul that I had gone temporarily crazy.
There was only one thing to do. Call my freshman-year dorm roomie, a certified nutjob herself, and invite myself to crash on her couch in Boulder. I pulled up her contact in my phone, thanking all the gods I had signal now.
“Tessa? Surprise! I’m in town...ish… what’s the pinot situation looking like at yours?” Lucky for me, I’d gotten pretty solid luck in the dorm draws, and Tessa didn’t know how to say no to anyone, much less the girl who wrote her comp homework for her all year.
“OMG! Get over here, and I’ll have a bottle waiting,” she said. “I’ll text you my address. Where are you staying?”
“Haha!” I answered. “See you soon!”
The occasional shiver still ran through me as I made the forty-minute drive up north along 93. I hadn’t wanted to deal with the traffic my GPS told me was congesting the entire city and half of the main highway. But I hadn’t realized the alternative would be so desolate. It was almost cute to look back and remember being worried about bears just last night. This evening, I was worried that I’d suddenly start hallucinating again without the normality of cars covered in craft-brew stickers and mountain bikes whizzing alongside me.
Thankfully, just as I’d convinced myself that actually, I wasn’t crazy, and that a bolt of green lightning would probably zap me into the same oblivion as my pepper spray at any second, the soft orange lights of Boulder came into view.
Tessa was in a little bungalow just off campus, something that made me wildly jealous as I frantically calculated how much money it must have cost to make rent in that neighborhood. I adored everything about my major, from
the reading to the writing to the gazing-into-middle-distance while thinking about character arcs. But one thing was certain, English Lit was not the fountain of opportunity that Accounting appeared to be.
Then again, I thought, as Tessa answered the door and wrapped her arms around me, at least I never have to do math again. Her whole life must be one long homework session.
“Come in, come in! Why are you...damp?” She pulled me by the hand out of the wind and into her cozy little house. It was a relief to see she decorated in Target-chic, all colorfully framed typography and trendy throws. Not a mysterious symbol or taxidermied mouse in sight.
“It’s a long story. Run me a bath?” I batted my eyes, and used the full power of my dimples on her. Few can resist the dimples. Including Tessa, who blinked a few times and then headed off to get the hot water going. I grabbed the bottle of wine and glasses she’d already thoughtfully laid out on her counter and followed.
“It’s like old times again, huh?” I asked, pouring her a healthy glass and myself one even healthier.
“If by old times, you mean this bottle leads to three more and I wake up two days later wondering how I managed to get a tattoo on my ass? Then I suppose.” She didn’t seem overly concerned, though, as she poured some kind of scented bubbles into the water filling the tub.
“God, that only happened one time, Tessa. You’ve really got to let it go.” I started pulling my soggy boots and socks off. The scents of lavender and peppermint were nearly as enticing as the steam in the air. There was a real concern that I’d never get warm again.
“Explaining to a potential boyfriend why my left butt cheek says ‘your name here’ has happened more than one time, Rose. It’s embarrassing.” I rolled my eyes as I tugged off my sweater and camisole.
“So get it covered with something less embarrassing. With any luck and a few more bottles of this,” I inclined my head at the glasses sitting on the sink, “it’ll just happen sometime during the next day or so and you won’t even remember.” And maybe I could forget everything that happened over my last few days while we were at it. It was already fading as I imagined turning this into a normal vacation, full of Tessa and hikes and more red wine than would fill this bathtub.
“No can do. I have work.”
I removed the rest of the clothing damply clinging to my skin and hopped in the bath as Tessa politely averted her gaze. Of course she had work. I was the only crazy person who’d dumped my boyfriend and skipped out on my job to chase down a mysterious relation in a creepy nowhere-town with no plans for what to do once I found him.
Or for what to do when I found out that mental illness was clearly in my genetic code.
I closed my eyes and sank under the water.
When I surfaced, my dimples were back. One did not simply announce one’s intentions to couchsurf and the distinct possibility one was cracking up all in one evening.
“You know me, I like to live dangerously.”
“Actually, you really don’t. I always thought the tattoo thing was more of an unhappy accident than a deliberate plan.” Considering that I managed to escape ink-free while Tessa ended up with a bad joke on her ass, the accident seemed quite happy to me.
“Well, I’m dangerous now.”
“Not after this bath, you won’t be. I added like a pound of Epsom to it. That’ll just slurp all the danger vibes right off you. Here, want a crystal?” Now this was the Tess I remembered from college. Hippie shit. Juniper Hollow shit. I accepted the crystal.
Tessa wandered off to see about rustling up some food for us and I felt myself relax for the first time in days. This was okay. I was okay. I’d had a shock, certainly. Perhaps some light poisoning. Even if I was showing early signs of schizophrenia, everything was treatable these days. A few days here, taking complete and total advantage of the Tessa Spa, and I’d head back to Kansas City and collect my things from Joe and find a new apartment and a new job and join a dating app and figure out if Mother was going to die.
Normal stuff.
I closed my eyes and let my thoughts drift.
I wondered idly if Green Eyes used a dating app. I bet he didn’t. Not that I cared. He was a sociopath, obviously, regardless of what I thought I saw in his face. Of what I really could have sworn happened in the creek. I decided, as I floated, that my mind had probably invented the whole baptism/invisible thing to protect me from the fact that I was definitely almost murdered in the woods by a maniac who preys on tourists.
So I wasn’t crazy, probably. Probably I was extremely healthy. Right? Healthy enough to remember my libido when I pictured the tattoos crawling out from the shirt Green Eyes wore. Or maybe that was the final proof I was crazy after all.
Green eyes.
Tattooed skin.
Electric shocks.
Green eyes.
Tattooed skin.
Electric shocks.
Green eyes.
Spellworked skin.
Wards and warning.
I sank beneath the surface again, letting the nonsensical images wash over me with the fragranced water. Roadkill and bridges. Footsteps and missteps. His eyes, glowing green against the dark sky.
My hands started to feel cold again, and I sat up to turn the hot tap back on. But it wasn’t the water. It was the crystal. There, like a beacon, glowing green as his eyes and cold as the mountain stream had been. I must have made a noise, because Tessa came charging back in.
“Oh,” she said.
“Oh?” I wanted to look at her, but I couldn’t take my gaze off the crystal. “Oh, as in you see this too? Oh, as in I’m not crazy?”
“Oh. Yeah.” I tore my eyes away from the green rock that was slowly cooling my tub.
“Why aren’t you freaking out?” Because she wasn’t. She seemed completely calm as she added a few dashes of a different oil to the water.
“Rose, stuff happens. I probably overdid it with the peppermint. I’m adding a little rosemary.”
“Stuff happens? Stuff like this doesn’t just happen! Pepper spray doesn’t just dissolve. Mountain streams don’t just heat themselves. I don’t become invisible. And crystals do not glow green for no reason! Certainly not because of too much peppermint! Is everyone crazy?” I was shouting by the end. I couldn’t decide what I preferred to believe.
Which would help me sleep tonight? Knowing I was only a few steps away from the loony bin, or knowing that everything I’d ever learned about the world was a lie?
Finally, she stopped and looked at me.
“Well, invisibility seems like a bit of a stretch. Anyways, you’ll probably want to go see the ladies over at Toil and Trouble tomorrow. They’re better at this sort of thing than me. Crystals don’t tend to do that for no reason. Listen, do you need some more wine?”
I did. I did need more wine. Or perhaps a lobotomy.
Once my eleventh birthday had passed without an actual Hogwarts invitation, I’d given up on the fantastical idea that there was more to the world than what anyone else got. The real magic was found in books. I did my thesis on children’s literature, and how it prepares young people for the dreary day-to-day by using allegorical adventure. I myself had been prepared by the same books. Parents, capitalism, unfairness, etcetera. But the whole time, I was wrong. Magic was real.
Another giggle fit threatened. Instead of giving in, I drained my glass and grabbed a towel. The crystal’s light was fading, and so were my fears.
What was left behind, the dregs of my emotions, could be dealt with once I was wearing pants. One must retain some shreds of one’s dignity, even in the face of a paradigm shift like this.
Tessa and I talked late into the night, going through another couple bottles and every piece of cheese in the house. I’d heard her talk about her Nana’s Sight a million times in college, and even benefited from a few of her very accurate tarot readings, but I hadn’t actually believed. Because how could witchcraft possibly exist in the same world as the IRS? How could Tessa, an accountant, also be a psy
chic?
“For heaven’s sake, Rose, math is the building blocks of the universe, not the antithesis of it. Tell me again what it felt like when you were getting zapped as he touched you.”
I was pretty sure she was never going to believe the invisibility spell, but frankly, I could have imagined that part myself. Maybe that terrifying woman had just been as entranced with those green eyes as me and didn’t notice me crouched down in the stream. It had been quite dark, after all. And maybe I could accept the smaller spells, the ones Tessa seemed to. Maybe I could believe that in little pockets of the world, pockets like Juniper Hollow, that more was possible. Maybe I could sleep soundly, knowing that I was gone from there.
And maybe, just maybe, when I dreamed of him that night, watching me in the bath through the crystal, that was just the wine talking.
Seven
Thorn
Rose fled Juniper Hollow as if hell were at her heels, and it was. I pursued her to the town limit. From the shadows, I watched her pull off the road and sob and shiver. “Magic is real!” she rasped at the night. The words rebounded dissonantly.
I wanted to silence her. I shuddered with restraint.
“Magic is real!” she repeated, her voice hoarse with confusion and wild with amazement.
That mantra, shouted aloud, would have been a death sentence in the woods of Juniper Hollow. Even here, so close, it was dangerous.
But she is already in great danger, I reminded myself. And she was already under a death sentence—a sentence I had not carried out.
A sentence I should have carried out.
What was I doing, letting her go? Not only had I warned her of the imminent danger in the valley; I had also shown her my power. I had cast right in front of her. I had protected her from my family, whom I was sworn to protect. But it was Rose, for reasons unclear to me, who presented the real threat.