Spell Check

by Julie Wright

  I sat up slowly, rolling my comforter off. Jammies covered my body instead of a dress made of squashed, dried up leaves. Farmor must have helped me change again.

  I slid into jeans and a T-shirt and found my way downstairs to the kitchen. “Where’s Sob-Rob?” I asked.

  “School,” Mom said.

  School made sense, if I’d slept as long as they’d said. Mom scowled at the reappearance of Robison’s nickname but didn’t say anything. She must have still been worried about me. My tongue felt fat, and my stomach was practically eating itself.

  “Four days? Really?” I asked.

  “Four days. Really,” Farmor said. “I had to spell you to get water in you, which made you sleep even longer, but there was no other way.” No matter how much she may have told Mom I was fine, the creases in her face looked deeper than before. She’d been worried too.

  “I’m still tired,” I said, but ate everything Mom put in front of me, and she put a lot of food in front of me. Farmor updated me on the goings on with Fula, the troll who tried to take my powers. The Kvinnor council decided to separate her from the others. She was banished from her homeland to live in a colony of Kvinnor where they could figure out her magic, since she refused to tell them where she got it. Farmor said she was a fiery spit of a troll and completely unsafe to allow to run loose. I told her of the echo I saw. She frowned and murmured something about being afraid of that, and how it meant others had to be involved. How long had they prepared for me to come so they could try to force me to hand back my powers?

  When Mom left the room for a moment, Farmor mentioned that the Troll Queen was interested in meeting with me and testing my strength further. When I shook my head no way, she promised it wouldn’t be anything like the trials and that I would be perfectly safe. She said it in a way that let me know I really didn’t have a choice.

  Mom kept me up for most of the day to prove I didn’t have a concussion or anything, which was weird, but she was mom, and moms were weird. I played chess with my dad—who grumbled about me not letting him touch Jake’s chess set, played the piano for my mom, even though looking at the instrument made me feel slightly ill, and let Sob-Rob win at his dinosaurs game. Farmor stayed in the background, watching me while allowing me the time my family needed to prove I was really okay.

  When they finally allowed me to sleep, my dreams were swathed in trolls and caves and magic.

  My eyes snapped open when the first witching hour tolled. Farmor was already up and sitting at the window seat in my room—the place where Fula had sat. “So are you ready?” she asked.

  “Ready for what?” It wasn’t that I didn’t trust her, but after the trials, I wasn’t into the idea of surprises.

  “To learn how to use your magic.”

  I sighed in relief. “Totally ready.”

  We spent the whole of the witching hours talking about spells and uses for spells, and how to fix spells that didn’t work right. She spent a lot of time teaching me to spell people to forget. She wouldn’t let me move on until I made her forget what it was she was trying to teach me.

  “Is this for Jake?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “I will leave that to you. He promised silence, and I bound him to his promise. You care for him, and I am not allowed to interfere in matters of love.”

  At 1:58, she sent me to my bed.

  “I’m not tired.”

  She smiled knowingly. “You will be.”

  The last thing I remembered was my clock flipping to 1:59.

  Chapter Twenty Three

  Note to self:

  Don’t mess with women of power.

  I awoke to my alarm and went to school. One, because I’d already missed several days and didn’t want to flunk out. Two, because I thought Jake would be there, and we needed to talk. He wasn’t anywhere to be found before first period which meant I’d have to wait until lunchtime. Whereas Jake was nowhere to be found, it felt like Lisa was everywhere. She glared at me during all of first period, and several snide remarks that were under Mr. Ware’s radar made their way to my ears.

  During lunchtime, Jake still wasn’t around.

  Lisa stood in front of my table where Kristin and I sat and tapped her foot. “You can’t have him,” she declared and spun on her heel and was gone.

  I couldn’t take it anymore and stood to follow her. Kristin’s eyes widened, but she didn’t try to stop me. Lisa had gone outside, in spite of the bracing cold. “Lisa!” I called. “Lisa! Stop!” My breath puffed out.

  She stopped and glared at me. “What do you want, Ally Kat?” Her voice was filled with scorn.

  “I want to be done with whatever this is between us. I’m not asking you to be my friend, but what is the point in being my enemy? You’ve spent my whole life torturing me,” I said. “You never once tried to be nice to me. Would it hurt you to be nice for even a minute?”

  “I am nice!” she said, repeating her earlier declaration in the jungle.

  It totally floored me that she really believed that about herself. “You mean like it was nice when you invited the whole sixth grade class to your birthday party, but didn’t invite me? Or maybe you mean when you took my books off the counter in the bathroom and dumped them in the trash so you could record me getting them out while screaming ‘scrounge’ at the top of your lungs? Or maybe you were being nice when you defaced all my posters when I was running for freshman class secretary? Or maybe when you hanged me in a tree and left me there in the cold? Maybe that’s what you mean. I could have frozen to death out there. That was really, super nice, Lisa.”

  “It’s not like you got hurt. You wouldn’t have frozen.” She scoffed, though her voice carried a hint of uncertainty. “Kristin was going to come right back. You were there, what? Twenty minutes? A half hour tops. Can’t you take a joke?”

  “It isn’t a joke to humiliate someone in front of the whole school. It isn’t a joke to ruin someone’s birthday. I am tired of being your joke, Lisa.” There. I’d said it. My lungs filled with a deep cleansing breath. I stood up to Lisa Snoddy without using magic. It felt like someone had just taken a huge weight off my shoulders.

  The bell rang, startling us. But Lisa and I remained where we were. “So what do you want me to say?” she finally asked.

  “Nothing, I guess. I just want you to stop using me as your punching bag.”

  She nodded.

  After a moment, I realized we were both going to be late, and it was going to be my fault, so I started walking away.

  “I didn’t know it was your birthday,” she said softly.

  I stopped. “Would it have changed anything if you had known?”

  “I wouldn’t have done it if I’d known. I mean, it shouldn’t have happened at all. I didn’t mean to ruin your birthday.”

  “It doesn’t matter anymore. It’s okay.”

  “Okay.” She stood for a horribly uncomfortable moment longer before she nodded, lifted her chin the way she had in the mirror, and went back inside for class.

  “What just happened?” I asked the sky. But the sky apparently didn’t know either.

  Jake never showed up at school.

  Kristin called after school. “So what was that?”

  I kicked my shoes off by my bed and flopped over the side of it. “What do you mean?”

  “Are you and Lisa okay, now?”

  I rolled to my back and stared at my ceiling. “It’s not like we’re going to have sleepovers and paint each other’s nails, but I think she’s going to leave me alone.”

  “Well, I think it’s about time you stood up for yourself. You were awesome today. I’ve never been more proud of you.”

  And then we went on to more important topics, like school, and TV, and Jake and Nathan.

  It was as I sat on my bed debating whether or not I should just call Jake or go over to his house, that he called me. His voice remained cautiously neutral. He asked to come by later in the evening. He said he needed to get his chessboard and wanted to ta
lk. I agreed. He was quick to end the call—leaving me holding the phone with my mouth open to say more. Farmor asked, “Is this the boy again?”

  “Yep.”

  “You like him?”

  I couldn’t help but smile. “Yep.”

  “He knows too much.”

  She was at the window, looking out, and absently petting Cinders, who sat on the window sill.

  “Is it bad if he knows?” I finally asked.

  “We don’t advertise who we are for obvious reasons. And anyone told must be bound to silence. He’s already got a partial binding. You can tell as you see fit, but beware a loose tongue. It may be better to just do a forgetful charm and be done with it. But the choice is yours.”

  She was trying that whole reverse psychology thing on me—the kind my parents pulled all the time. Tell me I can do something, but make it clear they would rather I didn’t. They did this in the hopes they’d get me to do what they wanted.

  I usually did.

  But what should I do with Jake?

  The doorbell rang as I was stuffing my feet into my black low-heeled boots. I nearly tripped to get the door before anyone else could. I wanted to see Jake alone without interruption, not with a family ensemble again.

  Robison beat me to the door. From the stairs I heard Jake being ushered into the house; Robison challenged him to chess. He said something like maybe another time or whatever, and I hurried to intersect them.

  He was already boxing up his chess set when I made my appearance, even though I’d left the pieces exactly the way they were when we were interrupted before. Disappointment welled up in me. I guess we’d never know who would win that game.

  His eyes met mine and he shuddered, his memory-dampening spell lifting from him upon seeing me. He took several deep breaths and blinked rapidly. He looked like he might throw up. “Hey, Ally.”

  “Hey, Jake.”

  He bit the inside of his cheek. “Wow right?”

  I nodded, unsure what wow meant. Lots of things could be considered wow.

  He glanced around, noticing Robison trying to pretend to be invisible so he could eavesdrop on the conversation. “Want to go for a drive?” he asked.

  “Absolutely.”

  Robison actually tsked his disappointment.

  Jake was uncomfortable walking to the car, uncomfortable in the car, and uncomfortable when we parked at the ocean. I was finally getting my ocean-side moment with him, and he was acting anything but romantic.

  It figured.

  We stared out over the black water for several moments. I decided this was his idea, so I’d wait it out until he got up the nerve to say whatever it was that was making him chew on his cheek.

  “So, tell me about the elf and the reindeer again.” It took him a considerable amount of energy to say this because his breathing became crazy, like he was running laps or something.

  “What would you like to know about that?” I asked, still feeling like this was his party. If he wanted to know something specific, he was going to have to ask more specific questions.

  “Are you a witch?”

  I smiled. “That’s not a nice thing to call a girl.” I thought about the forgetful spell, the one that would bury these memories deep into his brain so they would feel like a dream he’d had once, if he thought of them at all. But then I looked down at the ring my dad had given me for my birthday. There will be lots of guys to parade through your life . . . my father had said. Lots of guys. And eventually, hopefully, I’d end up with one of them. I might as well start out the parade with outright honesty. If a guy couldn’t like me for who I really was, then what would be the point? I stopped forming the electrical currents for the forgetful spell.

  If he freaked out, I could perform the spell later. So far . . . considering all he’d been through, he was taking things pretty well.

  “I am human. I’m a Troll Kvinna, and I can do magic,” I finally said. Troll Kvinna sounded so much nicer than witch.

  He held his breath. Held his breath and bit his cheek, which would have been cute under different circumstances. At that moment it just drove me crazy.

  “Really?”

  “And truly,” I said.

  He let the breath out. “So I’m not crazy?” He seemed relieved.

  “Is it okay with you that I am who I am?”

  He frowned. “Did you really get the cheer team sick?”

  Why did he have to ask THAT question? “Yes, but it was an accident. I didn’t know I had magic when that happened. It was my birthday, they’d been really mean to me, and I made a stupid flippant wish. Haven’t you ever made a wish like that? A wish that something bad would happen to someone, but you didn’t really mean it because you’d feel like trash if anything bad really did happen?”

  He stared over the steering wheel to the water as if considering the question. “Yeah. Yeah, I’ve done that.”

  “Well suppose you do that one day and find out that the thing you just said, but didn’t really mean, actually happened?”

  “I’d feel awful.”

  “Me too. So I fixed it as soon as I knew how.”

  He nodded, and I focused my energy on the electricity for the forgetful spell.

  “It’s okay with me, that you are who you are,” he said.

  I dropped the energy again and blinked at him in surprise.

  “Really?”

  He laughed. “Seriously! How cool is that that you can do stuff like that! You totally rode in on your white stallion and saved me from that creepy chick with the nose ring. Just wow!”

  Wow? Not exactly the articulation one would expect from a Harvard-accepted student, but under the circumstances, it seemed fairly appropriate.

  “Let’s not talk about horses ever again, okay?” I said. “And, really, you’re cool with this?”

  Instead of answering, he asked me a question. “You know when I decided I liked you?”

  I shook my head, not trusting myself to respond.

  “It was the minute you went back to throw away all those cans the cheerleaders left. Anyone else on the planet would have left them after going through what you went through, but not you. You picked up the mess, and made the best out of the night in spite of everything. That’s who you really are, Ally. Witches and trolls . . . and everything else is just . . . air.”

  And water, fire, earth, and soul. The smile spreading over my face probably looked as silly as it felt. It took me a few seconds to think rationally. “Now that I’ve told you about this . . . you can’t tell anyone else.”

  “Who’d believe me?”

  “I mean it, not anyone.”

  He shrugged, but when his eyes fell on me, they were filled with such a sense of curiosity and wonder, I couldn’t help it. My heart puddled into my toes.

  “I’ll have to delve you.”

  His grin widened. “And what does that mean?”

  I grunted and punched him in the arm. “Don’t act like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like a guy.”

  “I am a guy.”

  I rolled my eyes. Farmor had taught me how to do a delving after school. It was sort of like what they had done to me when I was little in Sweden, and like what she’d done to Robison. You can delve a person to find out if they genuinely intend to keep a promise or secret or whatever. If you find them sincere, you can hold them to that promise, so that they won’t be able to accidentally slip up and let the cat out of the magical bag.

  I delved him before he knew I was doing anything. His intent was sincere. His face moving closer to mine made it really hard to concentrate on the spell when my mind chanted, please kiss me, please kiss me, please kiss me.

  As the delving settled over him, his lips settled softly on mine.

  Electricity sparked every nerve, and the air current around us seemed to wrap us up like a present. Now that was magic.

  He smiled at me when we broke apart. I moved closer to him to settle into his arms. With my movement, the keyc
hain my mom gave me fell out of my purse. It rolled to the side on the seat between us. “Don’t mess with women of power.” It read. I smiled to myself.

  How completely appropriate.

  Links To Other Works

  If you enjoyed this book then you may also enjoy other works by Julie Wright.

  Loved Like That

  Does meeting someone when they’re a soul make you soul mates?

  After being set up on one of the worst blind dates ever, James Hartman decides dating is hopeless and he should just stick to doing what he knows best—being a bachelor cop.

  That decision lasts all of ten minutes as he comes across the scene of a car accident and finally meets the girl of his dreams. Granted, she’s dead when he meets her, and she doesn’t remember him at all once he resuscitates her. Does he try to help her remember that out of body experience or does he walk away from his one chance to be loved like that?

  The Fortune Cafe (A Tangerine Street Romance Book 1)

  (a novel in three parts)

  Welcome to Tangerine Street

  Tangerine Street is a must-see tourist stop with a colorful mix of one-of-a-kind boutiques, unique restaurants, eclectic museums, quaint bookstores, and exclusive bed-and-breakfasts. The Fortune Café, situated in the middle of this charming collection of shops and cafés on Tangerine Street, is a Chinese restaurant unlike any other because, well, to be honest, the fortunes found in the cookies all come true…

  MIS-FORTUNE: Emma, a waitress at The Fortune Café will do anything to avoid opening a fortune cookie. Each fortune is rumored to somehow magically come true. Being a girl grounded in reality, she doesn’t have time for that kind of nonsense. But when trying to prevent a food fight at the café, Emma accidentally cracks open a fortune cookie: “Look around, love is trying to catch you.” If there is one thing that Harrison, her former best friend in high school is good at, it’s catching her unaware.