by Kayti McGee
“And you,” I said, turning to face her fully. She gave me a quick once over. Seeing as she knew what I was, I had forsaken all pretense to normality and dressed in my usual black jeans, black T-shirt, black boots, and black wool coat. My hair was tied back. I even sported a few cartilage piercings, which were not for vanity; the onyx loops bore tiny engravings, sigils of power and protection. One couldn’t be too careful when leaving his domain.
Rose’s gaze skittered over every detail, which privately pleased me. I, too, was taking her in: The dark circles beneath her eyes, her slightly drawn face, her wide and glassy eyes. She wasn’t sleeping well. She wasn’t taking care of herself.
And still, she looked like a princess from a fairy tale. She was a magnificent creature. I moved closer to her.
“What are you doing in this neck of the woods, Little Red?”
She stared into my face fearlessly. “You’re a witch,” she blurted.
I glanced up and down the street. No one was paying us any mind. We were too close to Toil and Trouble for my liking, though.
“I prefer warlock. Let’s walk.” I continued up the sidewalk, unsure if she would follow.
She did, after a short hesitation. She came puffing up alongside me, her thick coat rustling her cheeks glowing.
“Your name is Thorn,” she prompted.
I fought the urge to stare at her as we moved along the street.
“That doesn’t matter.”
In spite of the cold, the downtown was coming alive. Homeward-bound commuters walked, biked, and drove in every direction. A bus lurched past, gears squealing. College students roamed in beer-scented packs, flowing in and out of the bars. Cigarette smoke, incense, and other herbal odors drifted through the air, mingling with the savory odors wafting from restaurants. Such nights used to excite me. Now the noise made my ears ring and the crowds set my teeth on edge.
“Yes it does,” Rose said. She, for one, was not resisting the urge to stare. She nearly collided with the oncoming pedestrians, her eyes glued to my profile. “A witch’s name has purpose. You... you grow into the destiny it offers.”
The lines sounded slightly rehearsed, or remembered.
Maybe Rosemary and Sage weren’t the worst teachers after all.
“Would you look where you’re going?” I snapped, pulling her away from a jogger bedecked in reflective bands.
“My name is R—”
“I know what your name is.” The chaotic street grated on my senses, and Rose’s presence was affecting me too, like a magnet near a compass.
“Then why did you call me Little Red?”
“Et quietam mundi,” I mumbled under my breath, “silva, noctis, pax.” I caught Rose’s hand and pulled her into the dark pocket between two buildings. Bricks and pavement cross-faded into a nighttime forest. Boulder and the street with its people and cars disappeared. We stood together in a convincingly authentic wood.
I released Rose’s hand immediately. Even through her glove, our contact stung.
“Oh... my God.” She turned slowly.
“Couldn’t hear myself think.”
“Is this real?” She touched the bark of a tree. “Can people see us?”
I couldn’t resist showing off.
“Aestas,” I whispered, and summer heat leeched into the air. The barren branches sprouted full, green foliage. A night bird’s song echoed from deep in the wood.
“Holy shit.” Rose blinked several times and loosened her scarf.
I smiled tersely. “I called you Little Red because you bring her to mind. I told you to leave. It’s not safe for you here.”
She kept about a yard between us. However much my illusory forest enchanted her, I could see her scanning for avenues of escape. “You told me to leave town.” She raised an eyebrow, her jaw set in defiance. “This isn’t Juniper Hollow.”
“Ah. Then I wasn’t explicit enough. Leave Colorado.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Rose, it isn’t safe,” I hissed. “This isn’t a joke. It isn’t a game.”
She dragged down her coat’s zipper and I stared powerlessly. Beneath, she wore a fitted midnight blue shirt, the scooped neck baring her snowy chest. She caught me looking. I smirked, unapologetic.
“I’m not afraid of you,” she said, although her wild pulse suggested otherwise. “You realize the wolf dies in ‘Little Red Riding Hood,’ right?”
She was in want of a folklore education, it seemed. I could give her that. I could give her many things.
I shook my head. My thoughts refused to fall into line. The sensation, admittedly, was pleasant, like being young again.
“You might better acquaint yourself with that tale. The Brothers Grimm did it quite a disservice. And I didn’t say I was the wolf, now did I?”
“Then who is? What’s so dangerous for me?” She took a step toward me. “You helped me, in the forest. You hid me. Why?”
I wanted her to take off her coat. I wanted her to take off her shirt. I wanted her under me, rising to meet me. I rubbed my face.
“Leave,” I said. “You have to leave. Go while you still can.” Go while I’ll let you.
“No. My uncle is in Juniper Hollow. People are helping me here.”
“Rosemary and Sage?” I laughed. “They’re damn fools. Get rid of them. They’re fleecing you.”
“You know them?” Rose came closer and closer again, until she was almost touching my arm. The longer I stayed silent, the quicker her questions came. “Who else is going to help me? You’re not going to, are you?”
I gave her a dark, anguished look. “I can’t.”
“Why not? It should be you. You know more than they do, don’t you? I can tell you do. I can tell you want to help me. Why else would you be here? Please...” She was practically panting, her flighty thoughts driving her to panic. “Is my uncle in danger? You didn’t run into me by accident, did you?”
“No. I was waiting for you.”
“Why?”
“To kill you, Rose. I was waiting there to kill you.” I met her round eyes. If I accomplished nothing else, I hoped to impress upon Rose the gravity of her situation.
She swallowed audibly and rocked on her heels, nodded, and didn’t move away. Perhaps she’d had enough shocks to her paradigm that she was becoming immune to them. Good, I thought, because that was an important step in a witch’s education: getting used to that which should not be gotten used to. Getting past the fear, past morality and mortality. Opening your mouth underwater and taking the first deep breath.
Would Rose ever do that?
I found myself studying the shape of her lips, their pouty curve, her soft cupid’s bow.
“W-well, you obviously... decided not to,” she managed. “Right?”
“You seem keen to force my hand.” I surveyed her face, wondering at her bravery. “Why haven’t you asked me to stop staring tonight?”
She wet her lips and shrugged one shoulder. Except for the tremor in her voice, I wouldn’t have known she was nervous. “I guess... I know you a little better.”
I wanted to laugh. She knew me better? All of one day had passed, and just last night she’d told me to stop staring at her.
It wasn’t the time for laughter, though.
“Leave,” I said. “Leave tomorrow morning. If you won’t do it for your own safety, do it for your uncle’s.”
I abandoned her in the alleyway, which was suddenly very much an alley and not a forest at all. From the privacy of my illusion, I watched her search for me. She pressed on the brick walls as if, wardrobe-style, they would open to another world. She shouldered her way through a group of college students. She looked frantically up and down the street and called my name. “Leave,” I whispered.
When she gave up searching, huffed, and began to walk purposefully along the sidewalk, I followed from a safe distance.
I pursued her half a mile at least. She turned onto a quiet lane and trudged up to a small, almost perfectly square
house, with a porch and gable windows. I already knew Rose didn’t live there; I had seen her license plate last night. She was from Missouri, where she belonged, with the Ozarkian hedgewitches who wouldn’t dare meddle in Blackmane politics.
She let herself into the house and I leaned against the siding and listened.
The home belonged to a mortal named “Tessa,” apparently, and Tessa must not have been a very trusted friend, because Rose left out everything about me and witches as she recounted her day to Tessa.
“So they got you sorted out?” Tessa said.
“Completely. Yeah. I was freaking out for no reason. I guess some kind of mysticism runs in my family.”
“Huh.” Tessa clicked her tongue. “Cool. See? I told you not to worry.”
“You were so right.”
“Wine? I got more cheese.”
“Not for me,” Rose said with a laugh. “Not tonight. I’ve got some reading to do.” She excused herself and went thumping upstairs. I wanted to hear her packing. Instead, I heard her practicing a rudimentary protection spell that Rosemary and Sage must have taught her. She bungled the Latin terrifically and dropped a shaker of salt more than once.
I didn’t get a hotel that night. I stayed there, outside Tessa’s house, until Rose went to sleep—and all through the night. She was too close to Juniper Hollow to be safe. Marion’s words ran circles around my mind: She is the last ember of a fire that must be crushed out. The last ember. Crushed.
If Rose were destroyed, it would be exactly like that. Her brightness would spit and crack and die. The Blackmane Coven would march on forever and she would be less than a streak of ash on my boot heel. I couldn’t understand Marion’s insistence on that fate, except as a warning to any enemy who would rise against us. The girl was weak, after all, and untaught and uncovened. Our vendetta with her family was settled, surely. They were extinct. She had no power. An uncle and his niece do not a coven make, and even if they did, two could not hope to stand against the might of the Blackmanes.
I left my post at seven in the morning. I was cold, confused, and foul mooded, but not tired. Perhaps I should have returned home and left Rose to her own devices, since she seemed intent upon destroying herself. But I was already past that point.
Ten
Rose
I wasn’t always known for my lie-detecting skills, but those twin bitches were definitely lying to me. I don’t even know how I knew, but something in the way they spoke to me had gone from creepy-intriguing to unsettling and hollow overnight.
And I might have been a magical toddler, but even an actual two-year old could have drawn the line between their change in behavior and the appearance of Thorn.
Thorn, who was unsettling on his own account.
Firstly, I desperately wanted his spellbook, or wherever warlocks got their recipes from. That forest trick was everything I’d ever wanted. Second, there was the whole killing me thing. I’d gotten that since the beginning with him, but seeing as I was still alive, the fear was fading into complete irritation. Would it kill him to just give me a straight answer on what the problem was? If he honestly wanted me to hightail it home to Kansas City, I’d need more than his simple insistence. To carry the metaphor precariously further, you don’t show a toddler where the cookie jar is and then trust they’ll stay out of the kitchen.
So I was going to learn magic, come hell or high water. And ignore the little prickle inside that said I could be inviting both.
After I finished bumbling through that stupid protection spell for the thousandth time, I turned off my light and lay in Tessa’s guest bed, thinking. And thinking. And thinking. Sometime in the pre-dawn hours, semi-delirious from lack of sleep, I remembered what had been bugging me.
Rosemary and Sage had told me that to learn magic was to become it. Not to memorize, but to intuit. That was a secret I hadn’t paid for, so it could have been worthless. But somehow I didn’t think so. It was the sort of thing they had insinuated they’d teach me before I’d come back to find piles of salt and a Latin textbook identical to my high school’s.
I drifted off, still thinking.
When the alarm on my phone woke me at six-thirty, I popped right up, despite the fact that I’d barely had a nap to show for my night’s rest. I ran a bath, dutifully infusing it with lavender. A quick search on my phone had me adding rosemary and mugwort from Tessa’s stash. Even if they hadn’t had a practical purpose, I’d have been impressed by how many little bottles of various tinctures and oils she had just waiting for warm water inside her medicine cabinet. (“For heaven’s sake, Rose, medicine isn’t just the stuff you get prescribed at the doctor.”)
I soaked while Tessa brushed her teeth and headed off to work. Once I was certain I was alone in the house, I tried the one little trick I knew was guaranteed to work. After all, it had been since I was a child. I just hadn’t recognized it as anything more than a runaway imagination. Chanting in threes, remembering and imagining, until I saw things I didn’t know, or simply shouldn’t. I knew now it was a mild trance-state, one that would be heightened by the addition of mugwort, with rosemary for remembrance and lavender to help pry open my third eye—and if the terrible twosome were to be believed, bring a dark goddess to my side.
Be the magic.
Be the magic.
Be the magic.
My body began to vibrate, that bee feeling buzzing through me again. I had to stop myself more than once from letting my mind drift onto visions of hives, just repeating and repeating my phrase. Just being the magic. It began to concentrate in my hands, and I shaped a picture behind my closed lids. A simple picture, one I could hold there and examine.
As I continued to keep my mind’s eye looking, I pulled the last little bottle off the edge of the tub and poured the smallest bit into the water.
Closed my eyes again.
Pictured.
Imagined.
Adored.
This little image I created, cute and small, but filled with potential, pulsed inside my head and was answered by my heart. The buzzing in my hands soared to a crescendo and then was abruptly gone. I peeked out of one, than the other eye.
There, in the water, beneath my still-hovering hands, was a baby rose, red as my hair. There were itsy-bitsy roots attached, and it smelled of the oil I’d created it from. I laughed out loud, just once, and it started to melt. But as it did, I felt a prick. The baby rose had a baby thorn on its stem, one that drew a single drop of blood just before it went liquid and ran between my fingers back into the water.
I put it in my mouth, sucked off the tastes of iron and petals.
Then I laughed some more. It was becoming my go-to inappropriate response.
The intermittent giggles lasted through toweling my hair and putting it into a bun, through finding a fresh blue sweater to wear, through stealing some leggings of Tessa’s, through carefully locking the door behind me, and through the short walk over to Toil and Trouble. They lasted despite the fact that I’d used up too much time in the bath to dry my hair and my head was freezing. They lasted despite not being able to grab a quick coffee for the same reason.
Opening the door and discovering Thorn was awaiting me at the shop cut them short, but I could still feel them inside, threatening to burst out of me as the magic had earlier.
He wasn’t the only one who could keep a secret.
Eleven
Thorn
Rose came striding into Toil and Trouble at eight sharp. The sleepless crescents beneath her eyes looked darker. Her hair was wet and she shivered slightly. Nevertheless, she giggled as she crossed the threshold, her eyes twinkling with some private amusement.
Until she saw me, that is.
Sage and Rosemary jittered around the shop, making tea and tidying the already tidy displays. The twins practically vibrated with displeasure. I suppose they had expected another call before I arrived. I couldn’t have been less interested in them, though. I was here for Rose, a fact that I wanted to keep secret.<
br />
Rose was not cooperating with the secret.
She remained poised on the shop welcome mat, her mouth open and her expression thunderous. The door chimes tingled softly behind her—the only sound in an otherwise thick, uncomfortable silence. When the twins weren’t looking, I grinned at Rose and tilted my head. Nice to see you, too.
“Oh, Rose,” said one of the sisters.
“No lessons today, no, not possible I’m afraid.” The other twin, identically dressed in purple linen scarves and a sack of a dress, hovered around Rose as if ready to push her back outside.
My grin widened.
“By all means,” I said, “don’t stop on account of me.”
The twins protested while Rose scowled at me. You might have thought that I had invaded her territory and not the other way around. And maybe I had, in a sense. She wasn’t wrong to pursue her magical birthright, she was simply wrong to do it here.
“We have a special guest,” one of the twins highhandedly informed Rose.
“We couldn’t possibly divide our attention,” said the other, bringing me a cup of tea.
“Rosemary, Sage”—I held up a hand—“I insist you continue your tutoring. There is nothing I would rather do today than observe a young witch in your capable hands.” I was laying it on thick, but Rose’s mounting consternation amused me.
“Can I talk to you”—she spoke around clenched teeth—“privately?”
As far as the twins knew, Rose and I were strangers. Her direct address must have seemed to them like the utmost disrespect. The twins flew into action, guiding Rose toward a table and jabbering wildly.
“You mustn’t bother him!”
“He is an honored guest.”
“A cherished member of our community.”
“Sit, child. Drink.”
They pressed her into a chair and pushed a cup of tea across the table. Rose cast a baleful look at me. I smiled back at her, chin in palm. This was going to be fun.