by Meg Cabot
But she wasn’t finished yet. The coup de grace was still to come.
“I really think,” Tory lowered her voice to say, as if it were “just us girls” talking—though of course by now, the whole room was listening…even the waiters, who’d started coming around with the fish course—“that you might want to take a lesson from our great-great-great-great-grandmother Branwen, Jinx. Because, you know, she was burned at the stake for witchcraft. We wouldn’t want that happening to you, now, would we?”
I couldn’t believe she was repeating back to me what I’d told her about Branwen. I couldn’t believe she’d even be willing to bring in the horrible way Branwen had died, just to make me look bad in front of Zach.
But I shouldn’t have been surprised. I mean, if she was willing to lie about the doll, she’d stoop to anything.
“Fine,” I said, in a voice that shook. “That’s just fine, Tory. You won. Because you know what? I…I don’t even care anymore.”
And I got up and turned away.
And, in front of all those people, with all those stares boring into my back, I stalked from that ballroom, hoping against hope I’d have the strength to get out of there before I started crying.
I thought I heard a guy’s voice call my name, but whether it was Dylan or Zach, I couldn’t tell.
All I knew was that, whoever it was, I couldn’t face him. Not then. Not without bursting into tears.
I made it out of the revolving doors and onto Park Avenue. There, to my relief, the doorman asked, “Need a cab, miss?”
I nodded, and he flagged down a cab for me. I crawled into the backseat, grateful I’d thought to bring enough cash with me to get myself home, if I needed to…a lesson my preacher mother had drilled into me since childhood.
“Where to, miss?” the cabbie asked me.
I wanted to say the airport. I wanted to say Penn Station, or Grand Central, or any place that would get me on a plane or a train out of New York and back to Iowa.
Only I didn’t have THAT much money on me.
So I just said, “Three twenty-six East Sixty-ninth Street, please.”
And the cabbie nodded, and turned the meter on, and took me home.
I didn’t cry until I got to my room. Fortunately, I didn’t run into anyone in the hallway or on the stairs. Alice was already in bed, and Teddy was away at a sleepover, and Petra and Willem, babysitting while Aunt Evelyn and Uncle Ted were at one of the many parties they are constantly invited to, were in the den watching a movie. No one heard me come in.
And no one heard me weeping into my bathwater after I’d shed my finery and crawled into the big marble tub. I wept until my eyes were red and swollen, until I couldn’t squeeze out another drop. I kept the water running the whole time, so if Petra did come up to check on Alice, she wouldn’t hear me crying.
How could it have happened? I’d been humiliated in front of the entire school—made to look like a bigger freak than they already thought I was. I didn’t care so much about what Robert or even Chanelle thought about me. But Zach! How could she have done it in front of Zach? I mean, I know she’d liked him. I know she was upset that my spell on Dylan had worked and hers on Zach hadn’t.
But did she HAVE to do that in front of Zach?
And then, even as a fresh new wave of tears seemed to appear, they suddenly dried up.
Because a new thought had occurred to me, one I’d never considered before.
Was THAT what this was all about? Was it less about a boy, and more about the fact that MY spell had worked and hers hadn’t? Was Tory really jealous because she knew I was the witch Branwen had promised would come along? Was she jealous because she thought it should be HER?
Because I’m not afraid to use her gift the way you are. That’s what Tory had said to me.
It seemed so stupid. I mean, what did it even matter? My powers, such as they were, had only brought me misfortune and heartache. Sure, I’d saved Zach from that bike messenger. But that hadn’t been magic. I had merely been in the wrong place at the right time.
And the power going out the night I was born…that had just been a thunderstorm.
And Willem winning that trip to see Petra…that had just been a fluke. It had nothing to do with the binding spell I’d cast against Tory, or the protection spell I’d put on Petra.
And Dylan…poor Dylan. He had just felt like falling in love, and I had come along, with this enormous crush on him…of course he’d fallen in love with me.
None of this was proof I had the makings of a witch.
Except, I guess, to Tory, who’d probably bragged to her coven about her witch ancestry, and her destiny as the one true witch of our generation.
And then I’d had to come along and ruin it all for her.
It all made perfect sense. Really, it was no wonder she was so mad.
But if being the witch in the family meant so much to her, she could have it. I’d lift the binding spell, and—
What was I even TALKING about? THERE WAS NO SUCH THING AS MAGIC.
Because if there were, what had happened tonight would never, ever have happened. My necklace—that stupid pentacle necklace the lady from Enchantments had given me—would have protected me.
But it hadn’t. It hadn’t because the whole thing was a crock. There was no such thing as magic. Any more than there was such a thing as luck. At least such a thing as good luck. Because that was something that had never once come my way.
And I was so furious over the whole thing—so sick of it all—that I yanked off the pentacle and threw it across the bathroom. I tried not to look where it landed, either, so I couldn’t go back later to pick it up. Let Marta find it and think it was trash.
I wished I could throw away my life as easily.
It must have been an hour later—I was already in bed, in my most hideous pajamas, the pink flannel ones with the butterflies on them—when there was a tap at my door.
“Jean?” It was Petra.
“Come in,” I said. Petra was one of the few people I thought I could stand at that moment.
“I thought I heard you run a bath,” she said, gazing at me concernedly from the doorway. “You came home early, didn’t you?”
“Yeah,” I said. “It wasn’t that much fun, it turned out.”
“Did you and Zach have a fight?” Petra asked kindly.
“You could say that,” I said.
“I thought so. Because he is here.”
I sat bolt upright in bed. “HERE? NOW?”
“Yes, he is downstairs. He would like to see you.”
Ha. I bet he would. So he could tell me…what? That he thought we shouldn’t see each other anymore? That he’d decided to go back to his policy of laissez-faire—and that one of the things he was adopting that attitude toward from now on was me?
Well, I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. No way was I going down there. Not without any makeup on, with my hair looking all wild and frizzy from the steam the way it did. Not in my butterfly pajamas. That was no way to look during a breakup. Not that we were breaking up, because we’d never been going out. Anyway, he could break up with me or whatever—tomorrow, when I had some lip gloss on.
“Could you tell him I already went to sleep?” I asked her.
Petra knit her brow. “Of course I can, if you want me to. But are you sure that’s what you want, Jean? He seems very worried about you. He said…he said something happened tonight. Something with Tory?”
“Yeah,” I said. I’m sure he seemed worried. Probably because he was afraid of what kind of spell I was going to put on him, after he dumped me. That was all. “Yeah, I’m sure.”
“Well,” Petra said. “All right. Do you want to talk about it?”
Did I want to talk about it? I didn’t even want to THINK about it, ever, ever again.
“You know what?” I said. “I really just want to go to sleep, if that’s okay.”
“That’s fine,” Petra said, with a nice smile. “Just remember, I’
m here if you need me. You don’t even need to be shy about Willem. If you need anything, just knock on the door downstairs. All right?”
“All right,” I said, managing a smile. “Thanks. And good night.”
“Good night, Jean,” Petra said, and closed the door behind her.
Petra was so sweet. I was really going to miss her when I went home.
Which would be, I’d already decided, just as soon as I could arrange a ticket. Because I couldn’t stay in New York a second longer. I certainly couldn’t go back to school on Monday. I would face Zach tomorrow, because I owed him that much, anyway.
But I was going back to Hancock, where I belonged. After Tory, handling Dylan would be a snap.
Besides, maybe after finding out about the doll, he’d cool off a bit. Guys don’t like knowing they’ve been lied to and manipulated. Zach was proof enough of that. Maybe Dylan would follow Zach’s lead. At least ONE good thing would come out of all of this, then.
I’d told Petra to tell Zach I was asleep, and I’d turned out the light after she’d left, as if to make it so.
But sleep was a long time coming. I lay awake, going over the scene at Table Seven in my head, over and over.
But no matter how many times I tried, I couldn’t think of a single thing I could have said to make Zach believe me. Tory really had done a superb job of manipulating the situation to her liking. I hoped, after this, that she got what she wanted. Zach. No more Petra. Branwen’s magic powers. Whatever it was. Certainly, few people had ever worked as hard for it as she had.
At least, not in as screwed-up a way.
I don’t know what time I fell asleep. But I do know what time it was when I woke up. Two in the morning.
I know because I opened my eyes and saw the red digital numerals on the clock by my bed.
The reason I’d woken up? Well, that was the funny thing.
It wasn’t because I’d suddenly become filled with a sensation that—for once—everything was going to be all right. It wasn’t because, despairing as I’d been when I’d fallen asleep, I’d woken with a sense of calmness, a sense that there was nothing—nothing in the world—that I needed to be afraid of, although both these things were true.
No, I woke because there was someone standing beside my bed, and whispering my name.
“Jean,” the voice said. “Jean.”
It was a girl, wearing a long white dress.
But it wasn’t Tory, still dressed in her spring formal finery.
Because this girl was smiling at me—and not in a mean way, but as if she truly liked me. Plus, she had long red hair.
And even though I’d never met her before, I knew her name. I knew it as well as I knew my own.
“Branwen?” I said, sitting up.
CHAPTER TWENTY
But the minute I sat up, she was gone. The smiling red-haired girl in the long white dress had disappeared.
If she’d ever been there at all.
Because surely she had just been a dream. In a state between waking and sleeping, I’d only thought I’d seen my ancestress standing by my bed, saying my name. That had to have been it. Because I didn’t believe in ghosts, any more than I believed in magic.
At least, not as of tonight, anyway.
It was as I was telling myself this that I felt something around my neck. Something that hadn’t been there when I’d gone to sleep. Reaching up, I realized it was the pentacle necklace Lisa had given me.
The one I distinctly remembered taking off my wrist and throwing across the room earlier in the evening, not even looking to see where it had fallen.
And yet now it was around my neck.
A feeling of—what? Not fear. Because I wasn’t frightened. And not dread, either. My stomach didn’t hurt at all. But something, anyway, gripped me. I still felt the strange calm I’d experienced on waking, but now it was coupled with…happiness.
I was happy.
What was going on? Why wasn’t I afraid? Necklaces don’t just fasten themselves. Someone had found this necklace and put it back around my neck. But who? Who could have come into my room and done something like that, so quietly and gently that I hadn’t woken up? Petra?
Or the ghost of my great-great-great-great-grandmother looking out for me when I most needed her? Showing me that—just as I had always suspected—I really was the daughter she’d meant—the one who was destined for greatness as a witch. Not Tory.
Only me. It had always only been me.
I’d just needed to believe. In her.
In myself.
Suddenly, I knew sleep was gone. My skin was tingling as if I’d been electrified. I jumped out of bed and went to the window. A dim blue light was coming in through the gauzy curtain liners—I’d forgotten to draw the drapes themselves. I assumed the light was from the neighboring apartment buildings behind Tory’s house.
But when I pushed the curtain liner aside, I saw that the light came from a full moon, hanging heavy and white in the night sky, so bright that there was a slight rainbow around it.
A waning moon, I knew from my reading of the witch book I’d bought, was a time for doing banishment spells. A waxing moon was when, traditionally, witches did spells for prosperity and growth.
But on the night of a full moon…well, pretty much anything goes. Anything is possible under a full moon. That’s why so many people end up in the emergency room on the nights when the moon is full.
At least, that’s what they said on ER.
How odd that tonight, of all nights, there should be a full moon.
Or was that why Branwen had finally been able to appear before me? Because of the moon…and my need?
Then I heard something from down in the garden. It sounded, actually, like Mouche. But what would Mouche be doing outside at night? Alice always remembered to call for her and bring her inside after dark. The cat slept with her every night. Who could possibly have let Mouche out?
Then I noticed something strange. There was a light on in the gazebo.
No. Surely not. I had to be imagining things…the way I’d imagined seeing Branwen. If I had imagined seeing Branwen.
But no. There it was again. Not just a light, but many lights, almost as if…
…as if someone were lighting candles down there.
Someone who looked a lot like my cousin Tory.
And suddenly, I knew why Branwen had chosen that night, of all nights, to appear to me. I even knew why she’d found my necklace and fastened it back around my neck.
Because it was time. It was time to confront my cousin Tory.
Not turning on a light—I didn’t want Tory to see it, know I was up, and have advance warning that I was coming to see her—I slipped out of my pajamas and into jeans and a sweater. I carried a pair of loafers in my hand as I left my room and made my way down the stairs, so my footsteps wouldn’t wake anyone. When I got to the door leading to the garden, I stepped into my shoes and started down the stairs to the garden.
There was plenty of light—bluish, but still a lot of it—to see by.
But I didn’t need the light of the moon to see the yellow glow coming from behind the frosted glass panes of the gazebo. Or the three slender shadows cast by it.
It was Tory. Tory and her coven.
And suddenly I remembered the mushrooms. The mushrooms Tory had asked Chanelle to help her scrape off a tombstone by the light of a waxing moon. The moon was at its fullest now. It would begin waning tomorrow. Whatever she was intending to use them for, it had to be happening tonight.
And whatever she was intending to use them for, it had to be something bad, if I knew Tory. It couldn’t be anything to do with me. She had decimated me at the dance. She had to know that. No, whoever this spell was destined for—Petra, Zach, who knew?—it wasn’t me. Tory knew she was well rid of me.
For the first time since waking that night, I felt something other than an eerie calm.
Anger. I felt angry.
Not at what Tory had done to me—I�
�d deserved that, for what I’d done to Dylan. No, I was angry that, having witnessed the direct results of my own attempt to manipulate the will of others tonight, Tory still couldn’t see that doing so was wrong.
Well, enough was enough. It was over. She had to be stopped. I was going to stop her.
Which is when I flung open the glass door to the gazebo to tell her…
…until what I saw inside caused my voice to dry up in my throat.
There they were, all three of them, Tory still in her virginal white dress from the dance. Gretchen and Lindsey, on the other hand, were all done up in their usual heavy black eyeliner and were wearing all black. They were sitting around what looked like a small altar on the glass-topped table in the middle of the gazebo, complete with dozens of lit candles (black ones, of course) and an empty chalicelike thing in the middle of the table/altar.
And they didn’t look at all surprised to see me. Well, Tory didn’t, anyway.
“There,” she said, with a certain amount of satisfaction in her voice. “I told you she’d come, ladies. Didn’t I?”
Lindsey’s only response—not surprisingly—was to giggle. But Gretchen, throwing me a scathing look, said, “I don’t get it, Tor. How’d you know?”
“Because she’s weak,” Tory said. That’s when I saw what she was holding in her hands, beneath the glass-topped table. It was Mouche, struggling to get free and making quite a ruckus about it.
The same ruckus I’d heard from my room.
Which was why Tory abruptly let the cat go. Because Mouche had done what Tory had needed her to.
She’d lured me down to the gazebo. Exactly where Tory had wanted me.
“If she’s weak,” Gretchen said darkly, “then what do we want her for?”
“I told you. It’s not her we want,” Tory said. “It’s her blood.”
Which is when it finally dawned on me what was going on—why they were sitting around the empty chalice.
And what I was there for.
Like the blood from my face, I felt all of the Branwen-instilled resolve drain away. I whirled around to leave—but I wasn’t quick enough. I got the door open—just enough for Mouche to run out—but Gretchen, who turned out to be as strong as she was tall, grabbed me and pulled me back, shoving me roughly into the wrought-iron chair across the table from Tory’s.