Watch Me Burn: The December People, Book Two

by Sharon Bayliss

  Xavier glanced at the photo, but then turned his attention toward Patrick, a rare flicker of life in his eyes. But David could tell he was just reacting to Patrick. He didn’t look twice at the picture of the girl.

  A long moment passed. “What?” Patrick asked.

  “What?” David echoed in the same confused, ghostly whisper.

  “I’m sorry. Did you ask me something?” Patrick asked. “I didn’t hear you.”

  “I…didn’t ask anything yet. I planned to ask if you had seen her before.”

  “I…” Patrick looked at the photo again, swallowed hard, and then looked away. “No. I haven’t seen her before.”

  Now it was David’s turn to stare for ten seconds. His mouth felt dry and he didn’t know if his tongue would work if he used it. Finally he said, “Okay…thanks,” and left the room.

  he only times Patrick had felt happy since finding out he was a wizard were with Samantha. Or the times with Samantha before his brother had raped her and she had left for New Orleans to live with some crazy aunt. Since then, he could think of only one happy day. The Fourth of July. On that day, things still sucked, of course. Unthinkable horrors filled the past, present, and future. But his family had fun that day. Fun—something winter wizards rarely experienced, and certainly not the Vandergraffs.

  On the Fourth of July, they played with fire. And not in the controlled way they had on the solstice. They just played. Even though his parents no longer forbid magic, Patrick equated it with other dangerous activities such as drinking, driving, or sex—weighed down with rules and warnings. And Mom and Dad never let them forget it. “Approved” magic reminded Patrick of commercials for prescription drugs. The narrator talked pleasantly about all the nice things the drug could do for about five seconds, then the for the next thirty seconds they read the FDA warnings about all the horrible side effects. But on the Fourth of July, Mom had said, “If the Mundane kids can play with fireworks, I don’t see why you can’t too…for once, magic is probably less dangerous.”

  They went to a small park close to their house with a playscape and a few picnic tables. They chose a place far away from the city fireworks. Dad grilled burgers and Mom set out a spread of other picnic stuff, such as potato salad and iced tea. That would have all seemed super normal, even idyllic, if it hadn’t been ten-o-clock at night, in a poorly lit park. But they wanted space to play with fire.

  They set up a repelling spell around the area so no one would disturb them. Even though no one in the family, save for maybe Xavier and Evangeline, were good at magic, they found if they all agreed on one spell and cast it together, they could get the job done without much problem. Of course, agreeing on a spell was easier said than done. In most ways, trying to do magic felt like trying to survive in a foreign land when you only knew about ten words of the language.

  But simple spells like repelling were so easy it was stupid. They just had to want it. Patrick would picture a bubble of darkness around them, not a scary darkness, but a safe darkness—one that could hide you from danger. He couldn’t say for sure whether his visualization did any good or not, since they all cast the spell. He could sense the magic radiating off the others. It seeped into him, making him feel more powerful. Their dark energy filled the air, little demons floating around them as dark bodyguards. When he cast his spell, the already-circling demons stopped being wisps of smoke, and formed one solid impenetrable mass around them.

  After he cast his spell, he turned toward the beckoning food on the table and saw Evangeline looking at him. Looking was the best way to describe it. She didn’t glare, or a stare, or a gape. Evangeline’s face didn’t betray any emotion. She just looked, and he never quite knew why. But when she looked at him, Patrick knew she planned to cast a spell on him sometime soon. For his first predictions, he’d only been able to see big stuff that would happen seconds later, but his skills had improved.

  Evangeline stopped looking at him then, but he kept close watch on her for the rest of the night, trying to avoid having his back to her…not as if that made any difference. He couldn’t imagine why she would want to cast a spell on him, but that made it more nerve-wracking. Maybe this premonition came early enough that whatever he did to piss her off hadn’t happened yet. He didn’t get the sense she meant to harm him—her magic always looked dark, because she was a dark witch. That didn’t always mean she had malicious intentions. Patrick could see the spell following her around as a black cloud ready to dive toward him at any minute.

  Patrick didn’t play with fire too much himself. Compared to everyone else, his fall magic was boring. He ate chips and salsa, while Dad filled the bubble with the smell of sizzling burgers and charcoal, and his siblings filled the bubble with light. Emmy and Evangeline engaged in a fireworks battle. Xavier kept to himself, drawing patterns of light in the air, occasionally spouting a shower of sparks at Evangeline or Emmy if they got too close. The girls ran around the perimeter of the playscape, their shoes crunching in the gravel, and flung light from their fingers at each other in a good-natured-to-the-death showdown. They excelled at creating sparks, but they also could throw gleaming balls, and release glowing currents, like slow moving-lightning. And the light didn’t dissipate right away. Leftover light scattered through the park like fireflies. He hadn’t seen Emmy play like that in a long time, and he had never seen Evangeline play. Before that night, he had almost forgotten Evangeline had barely turned thirteen. She was still a kid—or at least, she was supposed to be a kid.

  All the while, even though Evangeline ignored him, Patrick saw her spell waiting for him. A dark cloud sucking up the fireflies.

  Patrick watched the cloud hover for a week. Occasionally it would fade, or disappear briefly, most often when Evangeline had her nose in a book. That made Patrick wonder if his predictions could change. Perhaps the cloud faded if Evangeline changed her mind, or forgot about it for a while, like while she read. He wanted to see proof that the future could change, despite his prophecies.

  However, the cloud still looked strong a week later, and he had grown tired of pretending he didn’t know about it. Or…he was just having a bad day. The temperature had reached over one hundred degrees, and he had texted Samantha five days earlier and still hadn’t heard back. And Evangeline walked past him, briefly blocking the television screen with her black cloud, just long enough to prick his frayed nerves.

  “What?” he barked.

  Evangeline stopped and turned to look at him. She looked around the room as if expecting to see somebody other than Patrick. She cocked her head and narrowed her eyebrows, a tiny version of the wrath Emmy would have served if he had yelled at her for no reason.

  “Are you talking to me?” she asked.

  Patrick regretted shouting at her, but kept with it. That damn cloud had to go. No one else may have seen it, but she had started it after all.

  “Yes, I’m talking to you.”

  “I didn’t say anything to you. I just walked by.”

  “I know what you’re planning. And I want to know what I did to you to deserve it.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You are planning on casting a spell on me. And a dark one by the looks of it. I can see it.”

  She cocked her head at him again, but this time she raised her eyebrows.

  “You can see it? Really? That’s…so cool. What do you see, exactly? Do you know what I’m going to do?”

  “No. I see the spell, like a dark cloud. I can’t tell when you’re going to strike, or what it’s going to be. And I certainly don’t know why.”

  She nodded. “Hmm. I wonder if that’s because I haven’t decided yet.”

  “You haven’t decided why you want to curse me?”

  “No. I know why. I just don’t know the best way to do it.”

  “Okay…are you going to tell me why?”

  “I saw what you did. In the park, on the Fourth of July.”

  “I didn’t do anything interesting that day…or, any othe
r day for that matter.”

  “Yes, you did. You stole my spell.”

  “I what?”

  “I cast my repelling spell around the park. You were standing in front of me, also preparing to cast. But when I cast mine, you grabbed my magic out of the air, and made it your own. And you made it better. I’ve never seen a repelling spell like that. When I lived with my mom, we had repelling spells around us all the time, so I know. You act like you don’t know what you’re doing, but you stole my spell and made it better.”

  “Evangeline, I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. If I did do that, it wasn’t on purpose. And I doubt I did it at all.” Patrick thought about the magic he had seen around him that night. The wispy demons. When he cast his spell, they had disappeared, leaving a dense black shell of darkness around them. So, maybe….

  “I saw what happened,” Evangeline said. “I don’t know if anyone else noticed, but I did. Your spell was better. Much better. A repelling spell might confuse people who come around, maybe hurt their vision, but yours…I think we were invisible. No one can cast a repelling spell like that.”

  “Well, I’m sorry I stole your magic. I didn’t do it on purpose. So can you get over it? I thought you were more laid-back than this. Getting pissed about something small and holding a grudge that looks like a swirling vortex of darkness and evil seems more like an Emmy thing.”

  “That’s not what I’m doing,” she said. “I’m not mad. Well, I was mad. But that’s not why I wanted to cast a spell on you.”

  “Well, then…” Patrick couldn’t finish his question, because the dark cloud swooped in on him. His whole body burned, a cold burn, as if he had fallen in a pool of liquid nitrogen. The chill went deeper than physical pain. The darkness sucked out his light, eating away at him. The darkness that filled his mind felt so complete, so irreversible, it could only be death. But at the moment he thought he might actually die, the sensation faded. He shivered violently. Every single muscle tensed in pain, as if he had gotten frostbite from the inside out.

  When he could see again, he had to look up to see Evangeline because he had fallen to the floor.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  His throat felt frozen and clogged. He couldn’t talk, but he knew his glare answered her question.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Didn’t work, I guess.”

  She held out her hand to him, and when he didn’t take it, she grabbed his arm and pulled on him until he stood up.

  “I didn’t mean to hurt you,” she said.

  avid woke up with a headache. He felt hung over, and wondered if he had gotten drunk the night before and forgotten. But he didn’t think so. He remembered watching television on the couch with Amanda, talking about…something. He buried his face in the pillow and tried to go back to sleep. Amanda had left for work and the kids slept in.

  After a few minutes of throbbing pain, he gave up. He took three Advil and stumbled to the coffee maker. He stared at the pantry for a full minute before he remembered he was looking for coffee grounds. He wouldn’t call himself a morning person, but this was ridiculous. The process of making coffee took three times longer than it should. He rubbed his temples as he watched the coffee drip into the pot.

  He had a sudden panic he had forgotten something. Did he have a job? Should he go to work? Should he take the kids to school? There must be something he was supposed to do in the morning.

  David felt a presence behind him and jumped.

  “Did I scare you?” Xavier asked.

  “Yeah, I guess you startled me.”

  “Did you mean to do that?”

  “What?”

  “You put juice in your cereal instead of milk.”

  “Oh…no,” David said, looking at the soggy orange mess of juice and granola.

  Xavier walked past him to stare into the refrigerator.

  “Do you need a ride somewhere?” David asked.

  “Where?”

  Xavier pulled a carton of eggs out of the fridge.

  “I don’t know. School?”

  “It’s summer.”

  “Right.”

  Xavier cracked eggs into a bowl. He didn’t look up at David to question his behavior.

  “And…am I supposed to go somewhere?”

  “What?” Xavier asked.

  “A job or something I’m supposed to do?”

  Xavier looked up at him now, and squinted at him with that tiny flicker that showed he noticed something happening outside of himself. That was all the reaction he ever gave.

  “No,” he said. “Not since last month. You worked for Amanda’s brother for a while, but he fired you when he found out you were practicing magic.”

  “Oh, that’s right. Son of a bitch.” David had forgotten for a moment, and became angry at his brother-in-law all over again. And the anger distracted him further. He had glared at his reflection in a spoon for some time before he heard Xavier’s voice.

  “Dad?”

  David put the spoon down. “Is there a spell that could give you a bad headache and make you, I don’t know…stupid?”

  Xavier shrugged. “Sure.”

  David waited for more explanation, but it didn’t come. Xavier lifted the bowl of three raw eggs and drank them in one gulp.

  David recoiled. “Ugh. I thought you were about to make scrambled eggs.”

  “That’s a lot of work,” Xavier said.

  “You can’t eat raw eggs. They have salmonella.”

  “Since when?”

  “Always.”

  Xavier shrugged. “Okay.”

  David had landed on a coherent thought and now Xavier’s breakfast had distracted him again.

  “You think someone cast a spell on you?” Xavier asked.

  Right, that was it. Fortunately, the coherent thought had been related to the only subject Xavier found interesting.

  “Maybe. I woke up feeling confused. And my head is killing me. I don’t know why.”

  “Maybe some kind of misdirection spell. It will probably wear off.”

  Amanda. Nothing she did made him angrier than when she used magic to try and control him. The first time she tried it, she irreversibly removed many of his memories. She thought she did it to help him, but he would never forgive her. He felt so violated when she messed with his head.

  “You’re sure it will wear off? Some things you can’t get back.”

  “When I reminded you about stuff, you remembered. So the memory isn’t gone. So, probably some kind of misdirection, or confusion spell, like I said. Those aren’t permanent.”

  Xavier turned away towards the living room.

  “Wait,” David said. “Can I talk to you about something?”

  “It wasn’t me.”

  “What wasn’t?”

  “I didn’t cast the spell.”

  “Oh, I know. It’s not that…you know, I don’t remember what it was.”

  “Okay,” Xavier said. He started to turn away, and then stopped. “What happened yesterday, after you came back from the mechanic’s?”

  David shook his head, trying to make sense of a jumble of disjointed memories. After he searched his memory for a moment, he forgot why. Xavier stared at him, with the same no-color grayish brown eyes David had. Xavier rarely looked at him so attentively. Or at anything so attentively.

  “Okay,” Xavier said. He nodded and pursed his lips together, looking maybe…worried? David had trouble reading Xavier on a good day. “I’m going to go watch TV.”

  Too confused to do anything useful, David spent most of the day in bed trying to sleep off the spell. He occasionally wandered out to count his children. However, even this confused him. He had lived most of his life with three children, and then lived with five for awhile, and now lived with four. So he found it difficult to remember how many should be there today. How could he love his kids so much and still manage to be such a crappy parent? He couldn’t even remember how many he had.

  By the time six o’ clo
ck rolled around and Amanda came home, David’s headache had passed. He still felt confused, but had gained enough coherence to hang on to the fact that someone had cursed him. And he suspected his wife.

  In that tiny house, he had nowhere to yell at her without being on display in front of all his kids. He settled for sitting on a kitchen stool and arranging his menacing eyebrows into a glare that would say it all. I know what you did to me. How dare you? And several other choice words he would never say aloud, but felt comfortable communicating with his eyebrows.

  Amanda put her purse on the counter in front of him and sighed. Maybe winter witches didn’t do well in the oppressive heat, but she didn’t look well. Her skin seemed too pale and gray, especially for the summer. She put her head on the counter.

  His concern distracted him again. He put his hand on her head, smoothing her pale blonde hair.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  She picked her head up, and smiled at him—the transformation too quick. Forced.

  “Just tired,” she said. “You know, the usual.”

  “The usual,” he repeated.

  “How…are you?” she asked.

  Something in the tone of her voice and the way she examined him brought David back to his coherent thought.

  “What did you make me forget?” He punched each word, so he could give the emphasis of yelling while still keeping his voice down.

  “What do you mean?” she asked innocently. Liar. Liar. Liar. He had no doubt now. Maybe she could get away with this stuff before he knew he was a wizard. But now, he could see right through her.

  His narrowing eyebrows must have said as much, because she sighed. “Calm down. It was a silly little spell. You’ll be fine.”

  She turned away from him and went into the bedroom. David wanted to shoot death rays out of his eyes, and as a dark wizard, he couldn’t shoot death rays but he could cause some damage with a look.

  She could ignore him if she wanted. He might have forgotten something, but he wouldn’t forget she had been the one to take it. Just in case, he had written it down in several places. Amanda made you forget something.