Spellcaster

by Cara Lynn Shultz

  “I’m sure Ashley will be okay,” Aunt Christine said calmly, but I could hear the tension thick in her voice. “She’s young and very healthy.” So was Ethan. And then what we thought was a flu turned out to be meningitis.

  I turned my head to face Aunt Christine, and I could see the worry etched in her face. Between my turbulent ten months, and now this, my aunt looked like she’d aged five years in one. My fault again.

  “So how did you end up knocking into your cousin? I missed that story.” I had called Ashley’s parents from the ambulance, and they called Aunt Christine, who arrived a little later.

  “We were watching the bands and a fight broke out in the crowd. Some douche—I mean, jerk—” I quickly censored myself for my aunt, but still earned a raised eyebrow from her “—got mad that another band was better and started a fight. It escalated kind of quickly so, um, Brendan pushed me out of the way. I didn’t realize Ashley was so close to me, and I fell into her,” I explained, a bit hesitantly. I was a little apprehensive about what Christine’s reaction would be to the news that Brendan was around when the fight happened, even though I was sure she assumed he was. I sure wasn’t expecting her dry laughter. Hmm…Saturday is double martini night, after all.

  “That boy. Of course that boy was somehow involved,” Aunt Christine said, shaking her head as she smiled wryly.

  “It wasn’t his fault,” I insisted. “He was trying to get me out of the way. This crazy guy just charged the dance floor, swinging like a maniac, and probably would have hit me.”

  “No, it’s never his fault, dear. He’s just always there when there’s some kind of trouble,” Christine pointed out, raising a perfectly sculpted eyebrow at me. “The first time I met him was in Principal Casey’s office, after all.”

  “True, but that wasn’t his fault, either. He was there because of me.”

  “I know, dear. It’s just…if there’s trouble, that boy— Oh, there he is,” Aunt Christine said, throwing her hands in the air and shaking her head.

  “I swear on a stack of Bibles, Aunt Christine, he doesn’t mean to—”

  “You’re misunderstanding me, dear,” she interrupted, pointing to the doorway of the half-empty waiting room with a pink-lacquered fingernail. “There he is.”

  I looked up, and Brendan and Angelique were standing in the entrance of the waiting room. For once, they seemed to be in complete agreement—both wore matching expressions of torment. Brendan was thankfully unharmed—no apparent stab wounds, so my psycho witch didn’t find him tonight. But he also looked almost…guilty. Angelique probably told him about me falling on Ashley.

  Brendan led the way, first greeting my aunt before sitting next to me. Angelique sat in one of the orange chairs in the row across from us.

  “How is she?” Brendan asked, brushing my hair back over my ear.

  “No one knows what’s wrong,” I said bluntly. “Aunt Jess and Uncle Dan are in with her now. They said we could probably get one more person in, but not two. And they’re going to do more tests soon.”

  “I saw a coffee shop nearby,” Brendan said gently. “Mrs. Considine, why don’t Angelique and Emma and I go get some coffees for you guys, and you can go in and see Ashley?”

  “That’s a good idea,” Angelique agreed enthusiastically. “Cream and sugar, right, Mrs. Considine?”

  “That’s okay, kids,” my aunt said, taking off her bifocals again and rubbing her eyes.

  “Are you sure? We don’t know how long you’re going to be here and I’m sure the cafeteria coffee is a travesty,” Angelique persisted with an encouraging smile that made me wonder if she was trying to get rid of my aunt. I stole a look at Brendan and he was torturing his hair, pulling at a lock so hard I expected the hair to come alive and smack him away.

  “We had some coffee earlier,” Aunt Christine said, putting her bifocals on. “But, if you kids don’t mind staying here with Emma, I’ll go in and see Ashley.”

  “I’ll stay,” Brendan promised quickly.

  “Of course you will.” I couldn’t tell if Aunt Christine was appreciative of, or irritated by, Brendan’s presence, but she gave me a kiss on the top of my head and headed down the long hallway toward Ashley’s room.

  As soon as she was out of earshot, I whipped my head so quickly to face Brendan I almost made one of those action-movie whoosh noises.

  “Spill it. You’re so hiding something,” I accused him, and he pressed his lips together and nodded his head grimly. Knew it. World’s worst liar, right there.

  Angelique leaned forward, purple and blue locks of hair falling forward into her face as she took a deep breath.

  “We can get Ashley out of the hospital tonight,” Angelique said gravely.

  I just stared at her blankly. “What are you talking about? Like, break her out? She’s sick!” I cried, throwing my hands in the air. “Have you guys lost your minds?”

  “Not like that, Em. Not like a breakout,” Brendan said quietly.

  “Get her out meaning, we can get her better. Tonight. How can I even explain this?” Angelique asked, staring at her ring-covered hands as if they would give her the answers.

  “Let me put it this way. It’s all related,” Angelique explained. “Your attack. My feeling of dread. How tonight, I couldn’t feel certain things, as if there were holes in what I was sensing. And now, Ashley being sick. It’s all related.”

  “And it’s all my fault,” Brendan added.

  “You were just trying to push me out of the way,” I said, taking his hand and he ran his fingers over the Claddagh ring he gave me.

  “No, he has a point,” Angelique said ruefully. “The blame does, essentially, go back to Brendan.”

  I twisted my head to look at him and he nodded, shutting his eyes. And that’s when I noticed that his black lashes were a little damp.

  “Let me tell Emma what happened tonight first, and you guys can deal with the rest of it later,” Angelique interrupted.

  “So, Emma, here’s what happened… .”

  Chapter 9

  Angelique

  I rested my palms against the thickly painted pink walls of the bathroom stall, trying to stop my stomach from releasing my dinner back into the wild.

  You should never have done that spell to amplify your empathy, Angelique.

  At the time, I thought I was doing the right thing. There would be no way I’d miss anything. Even the slightest whisper of hatred sent Emma’s or Brendan’s way, and we’d know who we were looking for. I had no idea I’d end up overwhelmed, with so many emotions assaulting me that I’d actually start to feel holes in my ability. Well, it was really just one big hole. Like if my empathy was a person, that hole was the part that had fallen asleep. I couldn’t feel anything there—it was numb. Dead.

  Until it suddenly came alive, pulsating and throbbing with hatred and darkness as I had my hand on the sliding latch door of the bathroom stall, ready to leave.

  I choked back bile as I was hit with an overwhelming sense of venom, bitterness…and evil. There really wasn’t a better word for it. It was evil. And I doubled over in pain as the revolting evil stabbed me in the chest.

  And it was right outside the door.

  Then I heard Ashley’s plaintive cry, and Emma screaming for help, and it was all the motivation I needed to build the mental walls to force my anguish down and storm out of the bathroom.

  I ran into the lounge, and the sight that greeted me was the visual equivalent of being smacked in the face with a brick.

  Emma was kneeling over an unconscious Ashley as her eyes rolled back in her head on the silver-and-pink-striped couch, convulsing.

  And Megan—my old friend Megan—was standing just a few feet from them, a perverse, satisfied smile on her face.

  “What are
you doing?” I screamed at Megan, who just grinned at me, mouthing, “Hunter. Now,” before calmly striding out of the bathroom.

  Hunter. Hunter College, just a few blocks away.

  And then, I could almost hear the click in my mind as the pieces snapped into place. Megan was behind this. Megan was the one who attacked Emma. And right now, Megan was the one making Ashley sick.

  I pulled out my cell phone and called 911 as Emma checked Ashley’s pulse.

  “Hello, my name is Angelique Tedt, and I’m at Magel High School on Sixth-fifth and Lex,” I told the operator, surprised that my voice was so calm. My thoughts, on the other hand, were twisting into a fury. “My friend Ashley McCue is convulsing and we’re not sure what happened…no, she didn’t take anything.”

  “She thinks she hit her head,” Emma choked out. I could feel the overwhelming guilt that was suffocating her—and hear it, practically strangling her. She could barely make out the words as she cradled her cousin’s head.

  “She might have hit her head,” I repeated for Emma’s benefit, even though I had no doubt in my mind that Megan had put a hex on Ashley. “We’re in the first bathroom, in the entrance hall.”

  I hung up as Ashley stopped convulsing. But she was still eerily quiet, strands of her cherry curls streaked across her pale, damp forehead.

  “They’ll be here soon,” I assured Emma. Her back was to me, and she was checking Ashley’s pulse. “There are a bunch of hospitals nearby, and there’s never any serious traffic up here this time of night.”

  Emma turned her head to me and nodded, tears beginning to stream down her cheeks. I told her I’d wait in front of the school for the ambulance, which is what I did, and shortly, they were taking Ashley’s vitals—stable, but still unconscious—and loading her into the ambulance marked Lenox Hill Hospital.

  Emma was climbing in with her cousin, her phone out to dial Ashley’s parents when I grabbed her wrist.

  “I’ll go tell Brendan where you are, okay? We’ll meet you at the hospital.” If Megan’s involved, he’s definitely a part of this, if not the whole damn reason.

  “Thanks.” Emma gave me a look of pure gratitude before she ducked into the ambulance, which blasted its siren and took off for the hospital.

  I followed it, breaking out into a jog—but I wasn’t going to the hospital. I was going to the marble seating area by the subway station at Hunter College, where Megan was waiting for me. I couldn’t believe it. All this time, it was Megan. I should have seen it. My old friend. The first person, outside of my family, that I could talk to about witchcraft. Megan, who got obsessive over Brendan Salinger after a one-time hookup. I hadn’t wanted to tell Emma that it was her boyfriend who drove my only friend out of school. She had enough to deal with when it came to him. And I had to admit, it was hard to hold on to my old prejudices toward Brendan now that I knew what a full-on evil psycho Megan had become. I wasn’t exactly surprised: black magic has the power to corrupt someone’s mind—twisting it until they become ruthless. And black magic was not a good look on her, because she looked like hell.

  Besides, what happened with Megan wasn’t totally his fault. I remembered the way things went down at Kendall’s lame St. Patrick’s Day party. I was surprised we had been invited, but Kendall’s music industry exec mother was in Austin for some big weeklong conference. And Kendall just wanted everyone to see her family’s impressive Nolita triplex.

  And everyone included me and Megan, even though I was pretty sure Kendall had said maybe five words to me the entire year. And they were probably, “Get out of my way.” But Megan—she was my friend. We figured each other out right away, on our first day in freshman orientation. Megan gave me that knowing look when she saw my necklaces. She strode right over, sitting next to me, flashing me the ones she kept on a longer chain tucked under her uniform shirt with a big, excited grin.

  We immediately started hanging out, working on spells, reading old books. She was a little off—always wanting to do questionable spells, things that toed an ethical line—but completely her own person. Megan did what she wanted and didn’t care who knew. It was refreshing.

  I was at the party—I was a blonde back then, but I looked so anonymous with my natural color—and watched as Megan shamelessly threw herself at him over and over. Brendan probably wouldn’t even remember this, but at one point he came up to me, and asked me if I should keep an eye on her.

  “Hey, your friend seems a little, um, out of it,” he said, not-so-subtly tilting his head in her direction as Megan danced—although a better word might be writhed—alone, staring straight at him with a seductive come-hither look on her face as music blared out of Kendall’s crazy big sound system. “Do you need help putting her in a cab?”

  “She’s fine,” I replied tartly as Megan glared at me with green-glitter-covered eyes for daring to speak to the object of her affection. “She’s knows exactly what she’s doing.” I caught on to his subtext; Brendan was asking me if she was on something. I guess, at the time, he was trying to be a decent guy—which I can appreciate now—but at the time I was annoyed. Truth be told, she was on something: she’d begged me to do an attraction spell before the party, saying she was nervous and wanted to talk to someone she had her eye on. I didn’t quite get it—she wasn’t exactly shy when it came to the opposite sex, having put smiles on more than a few guys’ faces. But Megan desperately wanted to be appealing to this one boy, whom she claimed was out of her league. I hated the popular Vince A notion that some people were better than others. So even though it went against my better judgment to do such a spell—it’s so wrong to force someone’s perception like that—I wanted to make my friend happy. Besides, who’s to say she’s out of someone’s league? How was I supposed to know Megan wanted to piggyback off my skills for the guy half of the freshman girls had already embarrassed themselves over, in one way or another? I was so disappointed. Could she be any more prosaic?

  When I told Brendan that Megan was sober, he just shrugged and walked away, busying himself with plugging in his iPod and hijacking Kendall’s monotonous soundtrack of irritating pop confections. That didn’t bother me so much, to be honest—his music was better. But since I basically told him she was fair game, Brendan got over his concern for her well-being pretty damn quickly when Megan yanked him away and started dancing with him. Although dancing is a loose word for the stripperlike way she was grinding on him, I’ll admit. All she needed was a pair of clear heels. Looking back, it was kind of hilarious how Brendan actually shrugged before giving in after the third time she tried pulling his head down to kiss him.

  But after their three hours together—yes, three hours. I’ll give him this, the Sex on a Stick reputation is apparently very well deserved—Megan was positive she and Brendan were going to be anointed Couple of the Year. I waited for her to leave the party, and all she could do was prattle on about how he was finally going to see that they belonged together. How she’d show everyone—especially her older sister, last year’s Vince A valedictorian, whom her parents favored—that she was oh-so-special when she brought Brendan home. I tried telling her she was overreacting, but she wouldn’t hear it. And when we showed up at school on Monday, he (really, really awkwardly) said hi and that was that. I don’t know why Megan thought our spell was also a time machine; this wasn’t 1950. He wasn’t going to give her his letterman’s jacket or anything. It shouldn’t have been a surprise to her that Brendan just kind of went on his merry way.

  But apparently a choir of angels sing every time that kid takes off his pants, because Megan lost her already tenuous grip on reality once Brendan gave her what was quickly becoming his trademark brush-off.

  “I’m a witch, does he have any idea how powerful we could be together?” she argued during our last time hanging out. We were supposed to be doing a health spell for a mono-stricken Randi, the big kissing bandit that she was. Instead
Megan’s behavior devolved into a full-on temper tantrum after I refused to help her perform a love spell on Brendan. She refused to talk to me anymore, claiming I betrayed her. Claiming it was no different from the attraction spell. Claiming that I wanted him for myself. (I so didn’t.)

  Our friendship started falling apart, until it dissolved altogether, along with Megan’s sense of right and wrong. The world of dark magic she was entering began warping her mind. She started trying spells in class. Harassing the girls Brendan hooked up with after her. Leaving things in his locker. Creepy things. Dead things.

  Finally, Megan was asked by Casey if it wouldn’t be better if she spent sophomore year at another school, thanks to complaints from several students about her obsessive Brendan-centric antics. But her behavior exposed her as a witch—and me, by association—so I was left at the school alone, and ostracized. Not that I cared what those look-alike sheep thought of me anyway. But generally, the whole situation, just sucked. The one person I could relate to, the one person who “got” me…chewed up and spit out by Vince A. At least, that’s how I saw it at the time.

  I was about half a block from Hunter and could feel the waves of Megan’s depravity rolling down Lexington Avenue like horrid little tumbleweeds. When I arrived, she was sitting primly on a strip of marble in a flouncy white top, jeans and heels. If someone took a look at us, they’d think I was the evil one.

  “You kept me waiting,” Megan scolded, wagging her thin finger at me. “You shouldn’t do that.”

  “I had to make sure my friend was okay.” I kept my tone matter-of-fact, trying to gauge Megan’s emotions. My empathy was one card she couldn’t pull—she didn’t know anything about my talent.