The Babysitters Coven

by Kate M. Williams

  I took a few steps closer, until I was standing right under it and could feel the Negative energy it generated moving around me in gross little whispers. I focused all my energy on Cassandra and let everything else drain away. Then I sent my mind in.

  The trek was slow and uncomfortable, like moving through slushy water, and I inched along, growing more uncomfortable the deeper I got. It didn’t feel cold; it didn’t feel hot; it just felt…Negative. Icky. Like going down an hours-long social media scroll hole, or reading too much news. I felt jealous, bitter, angry, ashamed, bored—the kind of emotions that breed hate and apathy and violence.

  I pushed deeper, sending mental signals out after Cassandra like I was reaching for her. When I hit something that felt like color after swimming through so much gray, I knew I’d found them. I started to retreat, pulling the energy with me, until my mind was back in my body. There was still no Cassandra, but then a blank spot became visible in the middle of the Portal, and it slowly grew bigger. When we’d opened the Portal before, everything had sailed through, but she was crawling, and I could hear her grunts as she pulled herself forward. When one of her hands finally emerged, I sprinted to her and grabbed it, with my own hands and with my kinesis, and I started to pull as hard as I could with both. Cassandra’s hand clawed up my arm. It was like she was drowning in concrete, and rather than me pulling her out, she was pulling me in.

  Then I felt arms grip me from behind and start dragging us away from the Portal. I glanced over my shoulder to see that a train had formed: Janis had a hold of me, Mom had a hold of Janis, and Pig had the waistband of Mom’s pants clamped in her jaws. I threw my weight against Janis, and all four of us pulled with everything we had, until Cassandra, with MacKenzie clasped under her arm, was dislodged with a sucking sound and then a sudden pop that sent us all tumbling backward onto the ground.

  I was on my feet first, having realized that while I had looked up how to open the Portal, I hadn’t learned anything about closing it. In a panic, I held out my hand, the same way I’d done with all my other spells, and screamed the spell backward. To my relief, my piddly Portal sputtered, then disappeared. I raced back to Cassandra and MacKenzie, who were still lying on the ground. Cassandra’s face was pale, and I panicked, thinking that maybe I would have learned adult CPR if I’d ever actually taken gym. I was only prepped for a kid choking on a Cheerio.

  She moaned slightly, and her eyes fluttered open. She blinked a few times, as if she wasn’t entirely sure where she was. Then, to my relief, she opened her mouth and started laughing.

  The sound woke MacKenzie, who erupted in peals of her own laughter. We pulled them to their feet and gathered them up in a five-person group hug, with Pig butting her head in between our knees. Cassandra didn’t stop laughing until we let her go. Then she took a step back to catch her breath.

  “How are you?” I asked, worried that maybe her laughter was a sign that her mind hadn’t come back with her.

  “Okay,” she said. “It just feels so good to feel good again.” She looked around, then asked, “Where’s Dion?”

  “In Janis’s trunk.” This news threw Cassandra into another fit of laughter.

  “And what about my supreme a-hole of a father?”

  I gasped. “How’d you know about him?”

  Her eyebrows knitted in concentration. “He’s pretty famous down there,” she said. “And not in a good way.”

  “You talked to people down there?”

  “Not people,” she said. “But yeah. And they knew who I was….” Cassandra had a faraway look on her face, and it was actually one of the scariest things I’d seen all night. She looked…worried. She reached out and grabbed my sleeve.

  “Do you have a pen?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “Or a pencil.” She looked around. “And paper. Ugh. I need to write this stuff down before I forget it. Where is my dad, anyway?”

  “He got away,” I said. “He’s out there somewhere.”

  “So we get the kid home safe, and then find his sorry ass,” she said, “and find out what this is all about.” I promised that we would find her a pen, and I was so happy to have her back that I threw my arms around her to hug her again. What I saw over her shoulder made me scream like a prom queen in a slasher flick.

  Erebus. His stupid face, less than a foot from mine, with that horrible smile smeared across it.

  “Apologies for interrupting your moment, darlings, but it sounded like you were talking about me.”

  Without even thinking about it, I grabbed a handful of his hair, yanked his head every which way, and then spun around Cassandra and twisted his arm behind his back. Knowing he could disappear at any moment, I gave him everything I had. Cassandra was right beside me, brandishing the stolen dagger, which she had somehow managed to hold on to.

  As the blade was just inches from connecting with him, he vanished again, and the momentum of swinging through nothing but air sent Cassandra stumbling forward.

  Erebus reappeared behind us, and now he bent over with laughter. I went to grab him again. This time I was going for the fleshy parts of his face, his nose and his lips, where it would hurt the most. He sensed what I was about to do and held his hand up in my direction. Suddenly it felt like I had slammed into a plate-glass window, a head-to-toe sting that was, I realized, the feeling of my kinesis being thrown right back at me. It made my ears ring, which made the sound of his laughing again turn into an evil echo. Behind me, I could hear voices screaming my name. I tried to block them out and focus on Erebus, but I was wired to listen for children in distress, and MacKenzie’s voice cut through the commotion. “Esme, look up! Look up!” she screamed.

  So I did.

  * * *

  —

  What I saw almost knocked me out. The Portal was back, and bigger than ever. It swirled above us like the sun, big enough for a monster truck to careen right through the middle, and it was darker and deeper than before. I saw Cassandra look up too, and it had a stunning effect on both of us as we stood there and stared. There was no doubt it was beautiful. There was no doubt it was terrifying.

  It made Erebus scream, and that was when I realized we were no longer alone.

  Without me even noticing, four other people had joined us, all adults, no one I had ever seen before. There was a middle-aged woman with dreads who wore a wax print dress that wouldn’t have looked out of place on Solange, and another, in a tweed suit, who could have played the evil stepmother in a telenovela. The third wore all black, including a black headscarf, and the fourth made me do a double take. I’d seen her before, many, many times. It was Laurie Strode herself, now with a classic I-love-aging short haircut, but overall looking just as badass as ever.

  They were positioned around us, and when they simultaneously raised their right hands to the center, palm out, I knew who they were.

  The Synod.

  And they were pissed.

  I felt a crackle of magic go by me, and it hit Erebus from all directions at once, flashing around him like lightning. He rose into the air, and for a second I thought he was getting away. Then I realized that he wasn’t in control at all. They were.

  His body zoomed through the air, straight into the middle of the Portal. The flushing sound roared through my ears, and then, poof. Just like that, the Portal was gone. I turned to the nearest member of the Synod, the woman with dreads, and was starting to run toward her, ten million questions on the tip of my tongue, when her image burst like a balloon in front of me. I spun in a circle as the same thing happened to the next two. Laurie was the last one, and as I caught her eye, she gave me a quick wink. “Nice cardigan,” she said, and then she vanished too. As suddenly as they had come, they were gone.

  * * *

  —

  I could tell she was gone, too, before I’d even gotten to her. The smart, funny, engaged Mom I�
�d just been getting to know had evaporated, right along with Erebus. In her place was the old one, the one I was too familiar with. I could tell by her face, the way the skin around her mouth was slack, the way her eyes looked like they were focused on something off in the distance.

  I asked if she was okay.

  For a few seconds she didn’t respond. Then she muttered something about foosball.

  As the adrenaline drained out of me, I felt myself start to shake. Cassandra came over. I tried to stop the shaking, but that just made my leg jump like it was having a seizure.

  “What happened?” she whispered.

  “As long as he’s in there,” I said, pointing to the spot above us where the Portal had appeared, “she’s like this.” My voice trailed off in despair. “There’s nothing we can do,” I said finally. “At least, not right now.”

  Cassandra put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “We’ll figure it out,” she said. “But right now, we gotta get that kid back to her house and take care of her before you get fired from babysitting.”

  I looked over. Janis and Pig were both standing protectively next to MacKenzie. MacKenzie had one hand on the dog and was rubbing her ear. I went up to her. If it was another kid, I would have hugged them or held their hand, but MacKenzie had boundaries, so I just stood next to her.

  “Hey,” I said, “are you okay?”

  “Esme, this is all very strange,” she said. “Where was I? Where am I now?”

  I couldn’t believe she wasn’t crying or freaking out. What she’d been through would have been enough to make Wonder Woman cry, but I guess MacKenzie McAllister was one tough elementary school B.

  “You’re in a mall now, and before…well…Let’s get you home.” I’d look up Coach’s mind-melting spell as soon as we got to the car, and if I needed any ingredients we didn’t have, I’d make Janis stop for them on the way.

  I raised my hand to the remains of the ritual and mumbled a cleaning spell. The chalk lines scrubbed themselves off the floor, and the ingredients put themselves back into the pillowcase before the chairs and tables scattered themselves around in the haphazard way we’d found them. I hefted the spell book onto my hip, and then we headed for the door, me holding Mom’s hand and leading her along like she was a child.

  The mall parking lot was still home to a few revelers, and everything was already tinted with regret and shame. Instinctively I went to shield MacKenzie’s eyes, but then I remembered that a guy dirty dancing with a blow-up duck was far from the worst thing she had seen tonight.

  At Janis’s car, I helped Mom into the front seat, then helped MacKenzie and Pig into the back. Cassandra and I walked around the car, and I gave Dion a reassuring pound on the lid of the trunk. “Don’t worry,” I said into it. “We got her back. No thanks to you, of course.”

  “I’m so sorry, Cass,” he said, his voice muffled. “I’m so sorry. Can you let me out of here now?” Both of us pretended not to hear him.

  “What should we do with him?” I asked Cassandra as we squeezed into the back seat of the Honda. It was her decision, and I couldn’t imagine what she was going through. I mean, I felt betrayed by Dion in my own way, but that was barely beans. He was her brother, and no matter how much he claimed to have been a pawn in this whole Halloween disaster, he had still made the decision to make himself a pawn.

  And that sucked.

  Cassandra looked away and wiped some steam off the window. “I’m going to sleep on it,” she said. “Or to be precise, I’m going to lock him up in a closet, make sure there’s no freakin’ way he can get out, and then sleep on it.”

  * * *

  —

  We were racing against the clock to get MacKenzie home before her parents, stopping to let Cassandra and Dion out at a corner along the way. I wondered if Cassandra needed my help with him, but as soon as we popped the trunk to let Dion out, she landed a punch right in the middle of his nose, and I figured she could handle herself.

  Mom was a different story. We left her two blocks from the home, and then Janis made a call to report what looked like a resident standing on the corner. Thankfully, whoever answered the phone believed Janis and didn’t ask how she knew the difference between a resident and someone who’d just eaten too much candy.

  Pulling away and leaving her like that was the hardest thing I’d done all night.

  Janis drove like a bat out of hell—which meant she drove like she normally did—to get to MacKenzie’s, while I sat in the back seat, using my powers to find the right spell in the book. Janis, bless her, kept up a steady stream of chatter, trying to convince MacKenzie that we’d just gone to a haunted house. It was futile, as MacKenzie was too smart to be swayed, but for the moment, she still appeared to be somewhat stunned, and that was buying me some time. Janis swung into a gas station, where I bought a pine tree air freshener and a bottle of Benadryl, crossing my fingers that the McAllisters had herbal tea and eye cream back at the house. As soon as I got her home, I was going to erase her memories of the night and replace them with ones spent downloading apps and going to bed early.

  I was having a hard time concentrating, though, thinking of how I’d gotten flashes of what my life would have been like with Mom in it, and how those flashes already were starting to seem like a dream. I also dreaded returning home to Dad, who now thought his best friend was…Ugh. It was too much.

  Janis took the back way to MacKenzie’s house and parked in the alley. I had just let MacKenzie and myself in through the back kitchen door when lights from her parents’ Uber swung into the driveway. “Get in bed, now,” I whispered to MacKenzie, and went straight to the kitchen. I rifled through the cabinet, grabbed a Sleepytime tea bag, and made a detour into the master bathroom as MacKenzie shuffled down the hall. In her room, MacKenzie was already under the covers, her blanket pulled up to her chin, and her eyes were looking disconcertingly clear.

  “Esme, what happened tonight?” she asked. “Who was that who kidnapped me? Where did I go? It was awful….Where’s my phone?”

  She deserved an honest answer to that question, at least. “It got broken,” I said. “And it was my fault. I’ll buy you a new one.” A new phone like the one she’d had was probably going to cost me more than the driver’s ed Corolla. Any ceremony that I’d had planned for the spell went right out the window, and I just dumped the items onto her bed and held up my hand.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Cerebrumkinesis,” I said. She blinked a few times and kept staring at me.

  “What’d we do tonight?” I asked quickly.

  “Your friend came over,” she said. “And I set up my phone. Where is my phone?”

  “It got broken,” I said again, “and it was my fault. I’ll buy you a new one.” Then I raced out to meet her parents in the kitchen.

  I could hear her mom’s laugh as the keys jangled in the door, and seconds later, Mr. and Mrs. McAllister appeared in their now slightly rumpled Leia and Han Solo costumes. One of Mrs. McAllister’s buns had come undone, and she was trying to pin it back up, with little success. They both seemed slightly drunk, which was good for me, because tipsy parents asked fewer questions.

  “Whoa,” Mr. McAllister said. “Is that what they’re giving you guys for textbooks now? Looks like the schools are going back in time.”

  With horror, I realized he was talking about the spell book, which I had stupidly left sitting out in the open on the counter, for everyone to see.

  “Oh, haha,” I laughed, sliding it into my lap. “This is a prop for a play. It helps me practice my lines.” Before I’d even finished my lie, he had turned and was rummaging through the fridge, my weird occultish drama club artifact already long forgotten.

  I took the opportunity to tell Mrs. McAllister about the phone. “I dropped it, and it broke,” I said. “I’m so sorry. I’ll pay for it. I know it was brand-new.�
��

  “I won’t hear of that, Esme,” she said. “Phones break all the time. Where is it? If it’s just the screen, I’m sure we can get it fixed.”

  Crap. I hadn’t thought of that. The phone was at the mall, cracked screen and battery slowly dying somewhere in the food court. “I’m taking it with me,” I said. “I’m going to take it to that place. That phone place.” I said a silent prayer that she didn’t ask to see it, but she was distracted by her husband squirting whipped cream directly into his mouth.

  Through the kitchen window, I could see Janis’s headlights in the alley. “My ride is actually outside waiting for me,” I said.

  “Thanks for everything, Esme,” Mrs. M. said, thrusting some bills at me with one hand while she used the other to try to wrest a bottle of chocolate sauce from her husband, causing him to miss his mouth and fill his ear canal with Hershey’s. “You’re such a good babysitter.”

  I swallowed. Tonight, that was definitely up for debate.

  * * *

  —

  Janis dropped Pig and me off, and my phone rang as I was letting us into the house. I could hear the relief in Dad’s voice as soon as I answered. “We found her,” he said. “She was only a couple of blocks from the home. Someone called because they saw her sitting on a corner, but she’s here now and she’s fine.”

  The reality of that was sinking in. We had gone back to the way things had been for as long as I could remember. But just because I was used to it didn’t mean it didn’t suck. How could I accept that that was the way things were, when I’d seen how much better they could be?

  “Okay, Dad. That’s great,” I said into the phone, ending my night with a lie. “I’m so happy.”

  I fell back onto my bed and tried half-heartedly to take off my shoes. Maybe tomorrow I’d cry, but tonight I was too tired.