Spellcaster

by Cara Lynn Shultz

  Ashley frowned then turned to me. “Emma, please? Take me home. I don’t know what’s wrong with me and I just want to be okay.”

  “You are okay,” I assured her, gripping the railing of her bed to steady myself against a fresh wave of guilt.

  “You don’t know that! What if I have some kind of disease or a brain tumor and they have to shave my head?” Ashley’s hands went up to her tangle of red curls and she protectively covered her head.

  “That won’t happen,” I promised her. And that’s when I made her a silent promise—I was going to make sure Megan never did this to anyone else. No matter what it took.

  Chapter 11

  We stayed at the hospital until a room opened up for Ashley, who alternated between begging and pleading to go home and freaking out over possible causes for her collapse. Brendan waited with us, walking Christine and me to a cab just as the navy blue sky was starting to lighten. The cab ride to Sixth-eighth Street was short—and quiet—with both of us lost in our own thoughts.

  “Late night, girls?” the doorman asked, chuckling and pointing to the clock on the wall.

  “You know how I like to party, Eddie,” my demure aunt said flippantly, leaving me to stare at her in amazement and Eddie to guffaw loudly as we stepped into the elevator. I had planned to call Brendan—now that the threat of Ashley’s safety was removed, I thought about what Angelique had said—but as soon as I got to my room, I pretty much collapsed on my bed, in my clothing, my phone in my hand.

  A few hours later, my aunt was gently shaking my shoulders, waking me up so we could go visit Ashley. I sent Brendan a quick text, promising him that I would call him when I got back from the hospital.

  When we got to Lenox Hill, Ashley was sitting up in the bed, grinning from ear to ear at her unexpected visitor.

  “Emma! Liam brought me a teddy bear, isn’t it cute?” She squealed, clutching a stuffed white bear holding a red balloon that said, Get Well Soon.

  “Very cute,” I replied, giving Liam an approving look as he sat on the radiator.

  “It was in the gift shop.” He shrugged nonchalantly, but an embarrassed blush colored his face. Aunt Jess beamed, Aunt Christine rolled her eyes and Uncle Dan glared, looking like he wasn’t sure if he wanted to interrogate Liam or throw him out the window.

  “I’ll name him Liam,” Ashley said, practically batting her lashes at him, and Uncle Dan looked like he’d decided on the window. And Liam noticed.

  “Well, I should get going,” Liam said, standing up awkwardly and giving Uncle Dan an apprehensive look.

  “You just got here.” Ashley sulked and Liam stole another glance at Uncle Dan. I was positive he was eyeing the lock on the window, contemplating how hard it would be to open.

  “I have, um, homework. Yeah. Homework. It was nice meeting everyone,” Liam said, shaking hands with Ashley’s parents and smiling weakly as my uncle gave him a withering look that could melt the paint off the walls.

  “I don’t like the looks of that boy,” Uncle Dan huffed as soon as Liam left. Although that was putting it mildly—after casting one more nervous glance toward Uncle Dan, Liam bolted out of the room as if he were trying to win a marathon.

  “He’s harmless,” I assured him, trying not to laugh at his overprotective nature. “He’s friends with Brendan.”

  “I don’t like the looks of Brendan, either,” he muttered, crossing his arms. I ignored him.

  “How are you feeling today?” I asked Ashley, who was still grinning as she stared lovingly at her teddy bear, playing with the red balloon and bopping it on its shiny black nose. She couldn’t have been cuter if she was dressed in a sailor suit.

  “I feel fine. I don’t feel dizzy or anything. And I should be able to go home soon, right Mom?” Ashley asked her mother pointedly.

  “Right. We’re just waiting on the doctor to release her,” Aunt Jess said, a relieved smile on her face. “They don’t know what caused her to collapse. Her doctor thinks perhaps her blood sugar dropped.”

  “Wow, who knew your fairy fart perfume was keeping you conscious?” I joked, but Ashley just frowned.

  “It’s scary. I can’t believe they don’t know what happened,” she said to me, her eyes glassy. “I’m so afraid I have some kind of weird mysterious illness.”

  “You don’t,” I promised her. “Just put it out of your head.” But of course, she couldn’t, and after she was discharged—and we were alone, back in her room at her family’s apartment—Ashley started sobbing.

  “I don’t want my mom to know I’m so freaked out,” she whispered, hugging her legs to her chest in her bed. She sniffled loudly, burying her face between her knees. “But what if I collapse and never wake up? Or I collapse at school?”

  I realized that every time Ashley sneezed, every time she got a headache, my cousin would convince herself that she was dying of some rare, tropical illness. You have to tell her, stupid witchcraft secrecy rules be damned. She needed to know, or else she’d drive herself crazy. I shut the poster-covered door to her room, and sat down cross-legged on the foot of her bed.

  “Ashley, I have to tell you something,” I said gravely. “You cannot, absolutely not, ever repeat any of this. Not to Catharine. Not to Vanessa. Not to Liam. Not to your parents. You got it?” I asked, and she nodded frantically, her blue eyes wide.

  “You went all the way with Brendan, didn’t you?” she whispered, a smile creeping across her face. “When? What was it like? Was it good? I bet it was good.”

  “This isn’t about me and Brendan! Well, it is a little—” I amended my statement, adding, “But this is about you.” I took a deep breath. “Ashley, an ex of Brendan’s did this to you. She meant it for me.”

  Ashley stared at me confused for a minute, and then what I was saying sunk in.

  “What, like she poisoned me?” she squeaked, her hands flying protectively to the base of her throat. “How? Who?”

  “Not poison,” I said, shaking my head. “Not like that. Ugh, you swear to keep this a secret?”

  “The biggest secret ever, I swear,” Ashley vowed, making an X over her heart.

  “Okay. Well, this ex of Brendan’s…she’s, well, she’s a witch. A bad one. A real one.”

  “A witch?” She snorted, rolling her eyes. “Come on, Emma, you’re screwing with me, aren’t you? I might have some rare illness and it’s really mean of you to mess with a sick girl like that.”

  “Nope,” I replied, shaking my head again. “I wish I was messing with you. And you don’t have a brain tumor,” I added.

  “So this ex of Brendan’s—what? Slipped me some evil potion?” She said the words sarcastically. “Like, eye of newt and dragon’s blood and all that?”

  “It’s more like she cursed you.”

  “She cursed me?” Ashley repeated, leaning back on the palms of her hands. “Yeah, right. She just flew into my room on her broomstick, right? Please, Emma, you’re insulting my intelligence.”

  “She stole your hair clip from me, and used it in a dark spell. She thought she was cursing me.” I deliberately left out the part where Megan attacked me. I didn’t want to freak out Ashley with more information than I needed to.

  “Ashley, have I ever lied to you before?” I asked her seriously. “You know I wouldn’t lie to you about something this serious.”

  She considered that, biting her lip as the news sunk in. Then her eyes widened when she realized I was telling her the truth.

  “So can this psycho still do things to me?” Ashley asked, forcing her voice to remain casual, but she twisted her hot pink sheets in her hands so tightly I thought she might rip the fabric apart. “Am I going to continue to collapse randomly like I’m a narcoleptic or something?”

  “No, not at all. Angelique broke the curse. Megan
can’t do anything to you,” I promised her.

  “Angelique…wait a minute,” Ashley said, narrowing her eyes suspiciously. “Is she really a witch like everyone says? I thought she was just really into industrial music.”

  “Yes, she is truly, really, honestly a witch.” I nodded then took a deep breath. “And so am I.”

  “Now you’re really messing with me,” Ashley snapped, throwing the Liam-bear at me. I caught it and threw it back, and it bounced off her head.

  “Very funny, Emma. I thought you were being serious about some rando ex-girlfriend of Brendan’s. Don’t screw with my head…I may have a tumor, remember?” Ashley scowled, giving me a dirty look.

  “I’m not screwing with you! I swear, Ashley, I’m not,” I said, putting my hand over my heart. “I swear on a stack of a thousand Bibles, I promise you a million times over, I am not messing with you.”

  “You’re serious.”

  “I am.”

  Ashley raised an eyebrow at me. “Are you going to tell me next that Brendan is a vampire or a demon or a werewolf or one of the X-Men?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  She seemed to consider this, staring down as she chewed on her lower lip. “Are you positive Brendan’s evil ex-girlfriend can’t hurt me anymore?”

  “Absolutely. And she wasn’t exactly his ex-girlfriend—she was, well…” I trailed off and Ashley rolled her eyes.

  “Oh, one of those.” She made a sour face, getting my meaning. “Do I know her?”

  “She was that scrawny girl from the bathroom who kept staring at us.”

  “Ew, she was busted.” Ashley frowned. “At least Brendan’s taste improved.”

  I laughed as Ashley stuck her finger in her mouth, pretending to gag.

  “Hmm…a witch. That’s kind of cool,” she said, a smile spreading across her face. “Can you do anything fun?”

  “A few things.” I shrugged. I told her about a few spells I had managed to pull off.

  “I need more practice, though,” I told her. “Angelique’s cousin lent me her grimoire—that’s a spell book,” I explained when I saw her confused face. “I’m going to study more tonight after I talk to Brendan. He feels absolutely awful, by the way.”

  “Is he going to get revenge for me?” Ashley asked, excited.

  “We are,” I vowed, and she grinned widely.

  “Awesome.” Ashley raised her fist above her head triumphantly. “Avenge me!”

  I spent most of Sunday in Ashley’s room, answering her questions as honestly as I could until her parents called us for dinner. I was a little nervous that she was going to blab about my witchy-ness to her friends, but she swore that she wouldn’t.

  “Come on, Emma, they’d think I hit my head really hard,” she insisted. I steeled myself for a lecture from Angelique, but when I called her when I got home, she understood.

  “You had to tell her,” Angelique agreed. “The poor kid thought she had a brain tumor.”

  Then she paused, and I heard her sigh heavily on the other end of the phone.

  “Megan has been blowing up my phone all day,” she said hesitantly. “I definitely don’t think this is over, because she swears that there will be payback for you not meeting her today.”

  “She can kiss my rosy reincarnated butt,” I snapped, angrily kicking one of my fuzzy rainbow-colored slippers across the floor of my bedroom. “There’s no way in hell I’m giving her my blood.”

  “I figured. I just wanted to let you know,” Angelique said. “She’s definitely a much stronger witch than the one I used to know. Even the way she proved that the blood was legit was kind of inspired.”

  “What did she do?”

  “It was similar to the spell we did with the salt crystals. And it was kind of nauseating to see how happy she was when all the crystals turned red.”

  “Well, I hope she enjoys her little moment of victory, because it’s the only one she’s going to get,” I swore, sitting on my bed and kicking off my Converses. “After I call Brendan, I’m going to read the hell out of Randi’s grimoire. Maybe there’s something in there I can use.”

  “I spoke to Randi today and updated her on the situation,” Angelique said. “She came over and we did a binding spell to strip Megan of her powers.”

  “How will we know if it worked?”

  “We won’t really know until Megan tries something and it fails,” Angelique admitted reluctantly.

  After we hung up, I took a deep breath, not sure of what I wanted to say to Brendan. I wasn’t mad at him—but I wasn’t exactly thrilled, either. Never mind that I hated the mental picture of him and that scrawny little horror-show getting it on, on top of that, I despised thinking of him as a heartless player. I took a deep breath and called him. He answered on the fourth ring, just as voice mail was about to pick up.

  “Sorry, I was in the shower,” he said, sounding a little out of breath.

  “Heh, nice,” I said, smiling in spite of the uncomfortable conversation we were about to have. I couldn’t help it, the idea of wet Brendan in nothing but a towel…now that mental picture was a welcome one. One I’d conjured more than a few times. I immediately wished we were video chatting instead.

  “Do you want me to call you back?”

  “No,” he said quickly, and I heard the sound of him pulling out his desk chair. “I want to talk to you.”

  “Okay,” I replied, and there was an awkward silence between us.

  “I’ll go first. Look, Emma, I’m really sorry,” Brendan said, his voice subdued. He sighed before continuing, “I honestly don’t know what else to say. I feel like a dick and like all I do is bring you trouble. And I’m so sorry.”

  “You shouldn’t have to apologize for things you did before you even met me. I keep telling myself that in my head, but there’s a selfish part of me that’s just really sick of being reminded of your past,” I admitted, a little embarrassed.

  “I don’t blame you. I’d hate it if it was the other way around.”

  “Your ex-hookups are omnipresent. They’re everywhere I look and it drives me up a wall.” I got off my bed to pace around my bedroom. I hoped I’d burn off some of the energy before I launched into the full-fledged—and long-overdue—rant I could feel coming on. “Those annoying girls from the bodega mentioned it, you know. Kendall and Kristin talk about it so much you’d think they got paid in Brendan bucks every time they say your name. It’s like there’s a Brendan booty brigade just marching through my living room.”

  “But they meant absolutely nothing to me! I know that doesn’t make it any better for you but there were no emotions involved. I know it’s hypocritical of me to say this,” he said, sounding embarrassed, “but you have no idea how jealous I am of Matt.”

  I stopped pacing and pulled the phone away from my ear, staring at it confused. You must have heard him wrong. “Matt—my freshman-year boyfriend Matt?”

  “Yep.”

  “He’s in New Jersey,” I reminded him.

  “I know.”

  “He’s not in your face every day.”

  “I know.”

  “You’ve never even met him or seen a picture of him.”

  “I know. Like I said, hypocrite here. But in my head, he’s been inflated to a superhuman point, you have no idea. You actually had feelings for him.” Brendan sounded like he was pouting. “I never had any deep feelings for anyone before you. Minor crushes, yeah. Girls I thought were hot, sure. But nothing that made me want a relationship with them. It drives me nuts that Matt got to have that with you.”

  I couldn’t have been more stunned if Brendan had told me he was pregnant. “I can’t believe you’re jealous.”

  “Insanely so.”

  I grinned evilly. We
ll, well, well. Brendan’s jealous. Let’s have a little fun.

  “Matt wasn’t that hot,” I said casually. “I mean, he was hot, but he wasn’t a movie star or anything.”

  “Ugh, stop,” Brendan groaned.

  “What?” I replied, feigning innocence. “I think it was just because he was an underwear model.”

  “I deserve this but you’re killing me.” He paused. “Was he really an underwear model?”

  “No,” I admitted, laughing at the thought of my ex-boyfriend working a catwalk. He’d probably fall off it. “Sorry, just having a little fun.”

  “At my expense,” Brendan said wryly. “I know you’re pissed at me and I deserve it, but…ugh.”

  “I’m not pissed at you. I’m just—I’m a little pissy,” I said, sitting down on my bed again. “I really hate this. And honestly, it’s less about thinking of you with other girls. Although, don’t get me wrong, I’d rather punch myself in the face than picture that. It would be less painful. But it’s more that I hate thinking of you as this…callous heartbreaker,” I admitted. “It’s hard to reconcile the Brendan I know with the Brendan who used girls.”

  He was quiet for a moment, and I looked at my phone, afraid the call had dropped.

  “Are you still there?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he said then exhaled a short breath—as if he were steeling himself to say something. “Emma, guys don’t like to admit this kind of stuff—and it’s embarrassing to admit it—but I was…kind of…lonely before I met you.”

  “You didn’t seem to be lacking in company,” I snorted, then instantly regretted my snarky comment. “I’m sorry. That was bitchy.”

  “That stung a little,” he admitted quietly.

  “Sorry,” I apologized guiltily. He opens up to you and you shut him down. Way to be supportive, genius. “That really wasn’t fair. Like I said, I’m still pissy.”

  “Oh, I can definitely tell,” Brendan replied quickly. “And look, I know I kind of deserve it. I know I was no saint. But, Em, I had no idea anything close to you even existed. What was my life like, really? My parents are gone all the time. I can’t stand most people at school. And I was fine with it. I had my distractions and I didn’t have to think too much about stuff,” he insisted, and I heard his desk chair move as it sounded like he was getting up.