Spellcaster

by Cara Lynn Shultz

  “You really want to know what I could do?” I asked, taking a step back as I interlocked my hands, stretching them out until my knuckles cracked. The corner of my mouth turned up in a smirk. This is going to be so much fun. I knew I was about to cross a line. I was about to do cartwheels over the line, waving pom-poms in the air victoriously. And I didn’t care.

  “Oh, what, are you going to hit me?” she asked, her voice wavering nervously as she looked behind me. I was blocking the exit. I ran over the words from the spell I’d read in Randi’s grimoire—the spell I’d wanted to forget but stuck in my head as if I’d had Angelique’s photographic memory.

  Kristin continued to rail against me. She was too busy hurling words like loser, trash and her perennial favorite, slut, at me, that she didn’t even notice that I’d whispered, “Give the illusion that we’re in a fire, fill her sight with a burning pyre.”

  My palms pricked with heat, and my grip on the note I’d been holding loosened. It slipped out of my palm, twisting with red and yellow flares as it fell, exploding in a ball of fire as it ricocheted off the tip of my shoe.

  Kristin shrank against the lockers, panic pinching her face as she stared at the flames spreading in a perfect circle around me.

  “You’re a witch!” Kristin screamed, her face screwed up in terror. “You’re just like Megan and that freak Angelique!”

  I stepped through the ring of fire as easily as I’d step over a puddle in the street, as the imaginary flames appeared to seize my legs and crawl up my skirt. I stood a few yards before Kristin and cocked my head, holding out my hand as blue-and-orange flames danced across my palm, tickling my skin.

  “Aw, do you really want to call us freaks?” I cooed, and pretended to blow her a kiss. The blue flames fluttered like leaves off my palm and hit the floor mere feet from her, bursting into a colorful explosion of heat and fire. The blaze spread—the blustery noise of a raging fire filling the small hallway as flickering crimson-and-orange tongues licked at the lockers lining the walls. The flames spread behind Kristin to block the emergency exit, causing the red paint to bubble and warp under the force of the imagined heat.

  “I think it’s time you apologized to me,” I purred calmly, picking an imaginary piece of lint off my shoulder. I inspected the fake lint before flicking it off my fingertip, another tiny fireball that rolled down the hallway, leaving a trail of flame in its wake.

  “Fine! I’m sorry!” Kristin cried, her eyeliner mixing with her tears and leaving glittery streaks down her face.

  “And you’ll never do it again,” I trilled in a singsong voice, rocking back and forth on my heels. This is more fun than a trip to Disney.

  “Never! I swear!” she cried, shutting her eyes and holding her hands out against the imaginary inferno, which raged around her.

  “Ooo-kay,” I said doubtfully. “I don’t think you deserve a second chance, so remember this when you want to piss me off.”

  “I’ll leave you alone, I swear,” Kristin sobbed. I considered making her get on her knees to beg me for forgiveness when I heard a gasp behind me.

  I whirled around to see Cisco standing at the base of the stairs, one hand holding my math notebook and the other white-knuckled as it gripped the banister.

  “What. Is. Going. On?” Cisco whispered, taking a deep breath in between each word as he stared at me, his face a mix of horror and disgust. Then his eyes shifted to Kristin, reminding me about the girl cowering against the lockers. I whirled around—Kristin’s hands clenched white-streaked locks of hair at her temples as she screwed her eyes shut against the horrific sight in front of her. And I was ashamed. Just four months ago, I’d been terrorized by Anthony in the same spot. And now I was doing it to her. Gleefully.

  Who are you, Emma? This isn’t you.

  I stepped away from her, choking back the metallic taste of bile. I was disgusted and heartbroken by my own shameless behavior. “Restore her sight, break the illusion. Extinguish the fire, restore her vision,” I whispered. I could have shouted it—Kristin wouldn’t have heard me over her weeping, or the roaring of the raging fake inferno. With a subtle hiss, the flames melted into the floor, pools of orange-and-red swirls slithering like liquid mercury into the cracks in the concrete.

  She opened her eyes, her gummy mascara-coated eyelashes sticking together. Kristin ran past me to the staircase, and I turned to watch her run out.

  Kristin nearly fell in her Louboutins as she shoved Cisco aside and ran up the stairs.

  “There’s an explanation for this,” I said, holding my palms out weakly. He just shook his head, dropping my notebook on the floor before turning on his heel to race up the stairs.

  “Wait! Cisco, please come back!” I called, running after him. I grabbed his hand as I tried to pull him back down the stairs. We were in the middle of the staircase between the first floor and the basement, and I knew if he got away from me now he’d never speak to me again.

  “What the— Were you going to kill— What the hell was that?” Cisco stammered, his brown eyes staring at me in shock. “Who are you?”

  “I know it looked bad, but let me explain!” I pleaded.

  “If I don’t are you going to set me on fire, too?” he asked sarcastically.

  “Stop it! I’d never do that to you!”

  “Wouldn’t you? No matter how much she deserves it, I never thought you’d try to set Kristin Thorn on fire, either.” He ran his free hand through his thick brown hair and shook his head, his eyes shut. “I can’t believe what I just saw.”

  “She wasn’t really going to burst into flames. It went too far, but it was just an illusion,” I explained, and he stopped struggling. I dropped his hand and he folded his arms, leaning against the banister.

  “So, what? You’re…a magician?” Cisco asked hesitantly. “A master illusionist?”

  “Sort of. Yes,” I answered, leaning against the banister opposite him and mimicking his pose.

  He shook his head, sighing heavily. “Just be honest with me, Emma. You owe me that much. You end up bloodied on a school trip, Brendan’s got a black eye, you and Angelique skulk around the school like a couple of ninjas, and the basement just looked like what happens when you put tin foil in the microwave.”

  “I know,” I admitted. “Listen, I have to meet Angelique. Why don’t you come with me, and we’ll explain everything, okay? I’m just kind of short on time right now, and if you want to know what’s going on, we’ll tell you.” I had to get out of school before Brendan was done with practice.

  “I knew something was up with Angelique the minute she hauled Brendan’s ass out of the pizzeria on Saturday,” he muttered as he followed me back down to the basement, casting cautious glances around the hallway that, just moments before, was engulfed in flames.

  I grabbed my stuff—and the note I’d dropped on the floor—and we headed upstairs, meeting Angelique in the quad.

  “Um, hi, Cisco,” she said apprehensively as we approached, giving me a what-is-he-doing-here look. “Emma, we have that thing we have to go to—no offense, Cisco, but we have to get going.”

  “Save it,” he barked. “I just walked in on Emma turning the basement into an inferno, practically scaring the orange off of Kristin Thorn. So why don’t you guys take a seat and tell me what’s been going on?”

  Angelique glared at me, her nostrils flaring so wide you could drive an SUV through them.

  “It was a glamour that got carried away. What? I found it in your cousin’s grimoire,” I excused myself defensively. “Kristin’s been Megan’s little helper all along. I caught her leaving this note in my locker,” I added, slipping Angelique the wadded-up loose leaf.

  “Megan? Crazy Megan?” Cisco blurted out, mouth open in shock. “Megan who left dead birds in Brendan’s locker Megan?”

  “Sh
e left dead birds in his locker? Ew.” I grimaced, disgusted.

  “It was just one bird. And it was part of a botched control spell—Megan tried to control him and obviously failed at it,” Angelique explained as Cisco frowned in disgust.

  “I thought she was just leaving creepy presents in his locker like a deranged cat or something,” he whispered, more to himself than anyone else.

  “As if you needed another reason why Brendan wants to fling himself between you two,” Angelique said to me. “He knows firsthand how demented Megan can be.”

  Reminded of Brendan—and the clock ticking down until basketball practice ended—I cut the conversation short. “We need to go somewhere else to discuss this,” I said, grabbing their wrists and ushering my friends out of the school.

  We walked east, finding a quiet spot in the redbrick courtyard outside an apartment building on Third Avenue. We settled in the rim of a square garden box, overflowing with bushes and trees that had just started to bud. Cisco sat in the middle, with Angelique and I flanking him on either side.

  “So, do you want to tell me what that was all about?” Cisco asked, raising an eyebrow at me as he pulled his knees up to his chin. “Do I need to start carrying a fire extinguisher? Are you a fire-starter or a pyro-whatever the word is?”

  “Pyrokinetic,” Angelique corrected him lazily. “And no. She’s a witch.”

  “Angelique, I always knew that you thought you were a witch—” Cisco began, and she cut him off.

  “Um, I am a witch, thank you,” she huffed.

  “Whatever.” He rolled his eyes. “What I mean is, I always just assumed you were really into Goth music and liked playing up the part to make people uncomfortable.”

  Angelique fidgeted on her stone perch, causing her tulle skirt to tuft out in awkward angles. “Well, that part’s true,” she admitted begrudgingly.

  “Well, obviously, I believe all the rest of it is, too, because I know what I just saw.” Cisco rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands, keeping his eyes covered as he spoke, his voice weary. “I saw Emma standing in the middle of a goddamned inferno, which she extinguished with just a flick of her wrist. What I want to know is why did I just see that?”

  He opened his fingers and peered at me through the V-shaped openings. I took a deep breath. There was no way to say this except bluntly. “Angelique’s right. I’m a witch,” I said plainly. “A real one.”

  “As in casting spells and riding broomsticks and—”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Broomsticks, pfft,” Angelique scoffed with a toss of her black hair.

  “Oh, but turning the basement into a fireball, that’s within the realm of possibility?” Cisco shot back, and Angelique relented.

  “It all started last week at the Cloisters,” I began, launching into the story. I didn’t tell him about Brendan and me being reincarnated soul mates, or else we would have sat there until the trees behind us blossomed. But I told him about Megan, and her plan to bleed us for a vindictive spell. About her causing Ashley to collapse. About how she was now threatening Brendan’s life. When I told him how Kristin had helped Megan, a look of pure hatred crossed his face.

  “You should have set her on fire,” he spat out, before looking at me apologetically. “Honestly, Emma, I had no idea what was going on in the basement. I know Kristin torments you just for kicks, but I mean…she’s directly responsible for the two most horrible things that have happened to you since you got here.”

  “True, but I shouldn’t have lost my control like that,” I admitted, combing my fingers through my brown hair nervously. “It makes me no better than she is.”

  “Please, Kristin deserved it. I think it was self-defense, in a way. She’s a threat. She’s an idiot, but she’s a threat.” Angelique punctuated her point with little stomps of her metallic black booties. “Megan never would have gotten as far as she has without Kristin’s help. She’s a moron and a follower, but she somehow manages to be at the center of all your problems.”

  “Still, I totally abused my power. And honestly, Cisco—” I stared down at the red bricks next to my thigh, tracing a crack in one with my finger “—I don’t know how far I would have gone if you hadn’t shown up.”

  “Don’t beat yourself up over it,” Angelique said sympathetically. “If it makes you feel any better, I’m sure your little spell will come back to bite you in the ass at some point.”

  “Great.”

  “This is all so seriously weird,” Cisco said, shaking his head. “Honestly, that’s the only word for it. Weird.”

  “You’re taking all this weird news really well, by the way,” I pointed out, and he just shrugged.

  “I have relatives who are really into Santeria, so it’s not like I’ve never heard of witchcraft being practiced,” he explained with a slight lift of his broad shoulders. “No one’s set fire to anything—that I’ve seen—but at least I know it’s not something that only happens under bridges in mystical far-off lands. Besides,” he added, looking to glare at me accusingly, “I just knew something was going on with you guys. I knew it as soon as I found you in the park at the Cloisters. Tripped over a tree branch, my ass. I heard you yelling.”

  He paused. “And I did just see you turn the basement into a furnace, so it’s not like disbelief is an option.”

  “Seeing is believing,” Angelique said wisely.

  “Seeing is cosigning on every crazy thing you’ve just told me,” Cisco corrected her. “Still, I can’t believe—hold on a second,” he said, pulling his phone out of his pocket as it vibrated. He looked at the screen, frowning.

  “It’s Brendan. He wants to know if I’ve seen you,” Cisco said.

  “Tell him no,” I said as I pulled my phone out of my bag and saw that I had several missed calls from Brendan and a few text messages.

  “Come on, Em. I don’t want to lie to him,” Cisco argued, and Angelique looked at him sharply.

  “You’re now in the secret witch club,” she said dramatically. “It comes with the territory. Lie. Besides, if you don’t, Brendan is liable to get himself killed. Megan is that unstable and she’s made it clear that he’s her target. Turning to dark magic has made her more ruthless than you could imagine—it’s really warped her mind.”

  Cisco’s eyes widened as he mouthed, “Really?” to Angelique. She nodded, and he frantically typed back that he hadn’t seen me—he showed me the message—before putting his phone away.

  “We should go,” I said. “Brendan’s going to come looking for me—I don’t want to be anywhere near school.”

  I said goodbye to Cisco—a very dumbstruck, very numb Cisco—and we walked until we got to Seventy-seventh Street, hoping to avoid seeing Brendan by grabbing the subway at a different stop. I busied myself by reading his messages, which were increasingly frantic.

  Hey, in the quad. See u soon.

  Missed call.

  In quad.

  Missed call.

  Are you ditching me?

  Two missed calls.

  Emma you promised.

  I called him back when we got to Angelique’s apartment. By then I had worked through what I wanted to say. Brendan answered on the first ring.

  “Where are you?” he asked, frantically.

  “Brendan, I’m fine,” I lied, sitting on Angelique’s living room couch. “I had some last-minute spell stuff to do with Angelique. I’m sorry, I know I should have called, but we had to see Randi before she left for…spring break.”

  “You should have texted me at least. I thought—I don’t want to say what I thought.”

  “You’re right. And I’m so sorry.” That wasn’t a lie. “I just have so much on my mind.” Also not a lie.

  “It’s okay, I know you didn’t mean it,” he said sweetly, and the st
abbing guilty ache returned to my heart. “I’m working on the legal stuff I was telling you about. Do you want to come meet me?”

  “No, you keep doing that and I’ll work on the witch stuff—as a last resort, you know. I’ll meet you at the park near Angelique’s house later on, like nine-fifteen?” My voice was smooth and even as I lied, in direct contrast to what I’m sure was pure agony on my face.

  “Why don’t I just meet you at her house?” he asked.

  “Oh, um, her mom will be home, and we don’t want to clue her in to anything going on.”

  “Okay,” Brendan agreed easily enough. Because he trusts you. You big fat liar. “The little playground thing on Tenth and Forty-eighth, right?”

  “Right,” I said.

  “I’ll see you there.” No, you won’t.

  I hung up the phone, agonizing over my lies, until Angelique reminded me again that it was necessary to keep him safe. She also reminded me that she was the one who would face his wrath, since she was going to meet him in the park at nine-fifteen—long after I was on the roof.

  “He’s not going to hold a grudge against you, I promise. I never thought Rich Boy had a heart, but when it comes to you, he’s got a big mushy one,” she said, smiling a little before her tone returned to the snarky one she reserved for Brendan. “Seriously if you x-ray him, he’s probably just got a little stuffed animal in there. For everyone else, it’s an army tank, but you get a big, smooshy, furry—”

  “Very funny,” I interrupted her, hiding a happy smile.

  “Go moon over your boyfriend later. Right now, we have to get ready,” Angelique said, getting up and going to her freezer. She held out two frozen pizzas—a four-cheese one, and a cheeseless one with prosciutto and truffle oil. I pointed to the four cheese.

  “Pizza? And I’m the one with the culinary leanings of a toddler?”

  “These are gourmet,” she stressed as she threw the pizza in the toaster oven sitting on the counter.