by Isobel Bird
This wasn’t the first time she’d heard voices talking to her. It had happened before. But that time she had been receiving messages from the goddess Hecate, and the goddess had shown herself to Annie. This was different. Annie hadn’t been frightened by hearing Hecate’s voice, at least not overly frightened. But this time she was scared. There was something about the voices that chilled her. They sounded sad, and lonely, and lost. When she heard them it made her feel that way, too, and she didn’t like it.
The bus came, and she got on it with a sense of relief. Running her pass through the meter, finding a seat, settling in for the ride home—these things all felt normal and right. They reminded her that she was in the real world, surrounded by real people, and not sitting on a rock by the ocean hearing things that probably weren’t there.
But they were there. She couldn’t deny that, no matter how hard she tried. She looked out the window and tried to think of anything but the one thought that wouldn’t stop running through her mind: Something was trying to get to her.
CHAPTER 5
“Kate, I’m open,” Jessica called.
Kate tossed the ball over the head of her opponent and Jessica caught it. Jessica jumped, the ball lifting from her fingers, and Kate watched as it swished through the net.
“Yes!” she yelled as Jessica ran over and they slapped hands.
It was the first game of the intramural league season. There were six teams, and Kate and Jessica had been assigned to the same one, to which its players had given the ridiculous name of Court Monkeys. Tara, much to her annoyance, had ended up on a team whose members chose as their moniker the even more inglorious Dribblers. But since the whole point of the intramural league was to have fun, the crazy names simply added to the carnival-like atmosphere that surrounded the games.
For Kate, though, the games were more than just fun. They were her only real time away from school and her parents. Although the thought that Annie and Cooper were attending the weekly Tuesday night Wicca study group without her made her sad, she was happy to be on the court, playing a game she loved. She also knew that although Coach Coleman said that nobody should take the games too seriously, she watched the players carefully and used their performance in part to select her lineup for the varsity team, which would start practice later in the fall.
Tonight the Court Monkeys were playing the Ballgrrls. So far Kate’s team was ahead 19–17, and she was feeling good about her performance. Unlike the rest of her life, which seemed to be totally out of control, her game was on. She’d scored twelve points so far and had only missed two shots. Not bad for your first night out, she congratulated herself.
She was running up the court, looking for an opening so she could sneak through and get under the net, when she looked up and saw her father sitting in the bleachers, watching her. He would have been hard to miss; he was the only one watching the game. Nobody came to intramural matches, especially not parents. Seeing her father there, Kate knew that he could only be there for one reason—to check up on her.
Mr. Morgan saw Kate looking at him and waved. She didn’t wave back. Instead, she turned and threw herself back into the game. There wasn’t a lot of time left, and she didn’t want to waste a second being angry at her father. But she was angry. She couldn’t believe he would come over to the school to make sure she was really playing, like she said she was. She’d told her parents that she was getting a ride home with one of the other girls. Clearly, they hadn’t believed her.
“What’s your dad doing here?” Jessica asked her a minute later as they stood waiting for one of the Ballgrrls to shoot a free throw.
Kate wasn’t sure how to respond. Jessica and Tara didn’t know the extent of the trouble she was in with her parents, and even Annie and Cooper didn’t know that she was going to therapy sessions. She didn’t want her friends to know any more than they had to.
“He probably stopped in on his way home from the store,” she said. Her friends all knew her father worked long hours at the sporting goods store he owned, so she hoped Jessica would believe her.
She seemed to, since all she did was nod and then get back to focusing on the game. Kate did the same, and in the next fifteen minutes she made six more points. Then the ref blew her whistle and it was all over. The Court Monkeys had won, 27–22, and they congratulated one another with high-fives and whoops of victory.
Kate walked in the direction of the locker room. As she approached the bleachers her father walked over. “Hi, honey,” he said.
“Hi,” said Kate evenly.
“Good game,” her father told her.
Kate shrugged. “It was okay,” she said.
At that moment Coach Coleman happened to be walking by. She patted Kate on the back and said, “Play like that, Morgan, and you’ll be starting for me in a couple of months.”
“Looks like it was more than okay to me,” Mr. Morgan said as the coach went to talk to some of the other players.
“I’m going to go shower,” replied Kate. She knew her father was trying to make nice with her, but she wasn’t in the mood to give him anything.
“I’ll wait outside,” he said.
Kate walked away without saying a word. She didn’t want her father to wait for her. She wanted to be able to get a ride home with one of her friends, like the rest of the girls. Instead, she was going to be treated to her own personal escort just so her father could make sure she didn’t try to make an unscheduled detour to Crones’ Circle.
She took a long time under the shower, knowing her father would be anxious to get home. Then she dressed slowly. When she finally packed up her gear and walked out to the parking lot she saw her father pacing around the car. She knew he was irritated, but she didn’t care. He was making her life miserable; he was due for a little bit of misery himself.
She started to open the passenger’s-side door just as her father said, “Uh-uh. You drive,” and tossed her the car keys.
She looked at him with a surprised expression.
“You need the practice,” he said, opening the driver’s-side door and motioning for her to get in.
Kate walked around to the other side of the car and got behind the wheel, while her father got in the passenger’s side and shut the door. He immediately snapped the seat belt in place, then turned to her and smiled. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s roll.”
Kate inserted the key and started the engine. What was her father up to? He never let her drive. It was her mother who allowed her the occasional turn behind the wheel. Her father always said it made him too nervous to be in a car with a student driver. Even her older brother, Kyle, hadn’t been allowed to drive when their father was a passenger.
Well, she wasn’t going to question it. She wanted the practice. Even if her father was just trying to get on her good side, Kate wasn’t about to turn down the chance to drive. She put the car in reverse and backed out slowly, making sure to check her mirrors just the way Mr. Caffrey had showed them in class.
When she reached the front of the school, Kate switched on the left blinker and prepared to turn. But her father said, “Turn right.”
“Right?” Kate asked, not sure she’d heard him correctly.
Mr. Morgan nodded. Kate flipped the blinker from left to right and turned the wheel in the opposite direction. She eased out onto the road and began to drive.
She had no idea why her father had told her to turn right. Their house was in the other direction. He was probably afraid I’d have an accident if I made a left-hand turn, she thought. But going right meant she could take the long way home, which also meant even more driving.
Her father didn’t say anything as they drove along. Kate figured that he was probably too tense, waiting for her to make some mistake. She was extremely careful to be on her best behavior, watching the speed limit and driving with the utmost care. She wanted to prove to her father that she was responsible, that she could handle herself and make good decisions.
“Turn here,” her father said,
again surprising her. The right-hand turn he was indicating would take them even farther from home.
Again she did as he said, not asking why. The road they were on was narrow, with lots of curves in it, and she had to concentrate as she navigated the twists and turns in the dark with only her headlights to guide her.
Then she saw, somewhere ahead of her, flashing lights. They flickered in the dark like giant fireflies doing a crazy dance. Seeing them, Kate slowed down and looked at her father. “What’s going on?” she asked.
“Keep going,” her father said. “Just drive slowly.”
Kate drove on. When she rounded the next turn she saw a group of police cars. They lined both sides of the road, the lights on their roofs circling. Kate also saw an ambulance and a fire truck parked on the road.
“What is this?” she asked, confused. “It looks like an accident.”
“It is an accident,” said her father as a police officer waved Kate along.
She pulled forward, driving between two spurting flares that had been laid out to warn drivers away from the accident. As Kate passed the ambulance she looked to her right and saw that a car had run into a tree. The front of the car was crumpled, as if the vehicle had been made not of metal but of paper, and some giant hand had simply squeezed it into a ball. The windshield was shattered and thousands of bits of glass sparkled in the glare of her headlights. Both front doors had been wrenched off the car, and Kate could see dark stains on the road. She didn’t want to know what had made them.
“That happened about two hours ago,” Mr. Morgan said as Kate finally passed the accident scene. “Alec Noble from the volunteer firemen told me about it. Two kids from out of town. They were going too fast around the turns and hit that tree. They’ll both survive, thank God, but they’re both really beat up, and one lost a leg.”
Kate felt her stomach rising. Why was her father telling her this? Why had he made her drive past such a grisly scene?
“I don’t drive too fast,” she said. “And I always wear my seat belt.”
“Good,” said her father. “But that wasn’t really the point of this.”
Then what was? Kate thought to herself, but she waited for her father to continue on his own.
“Driving is fun,” he said. “When it’s done responsibly. But when it gets out of control, this is what can happen.”
“I get it, Dad,” Kate said. “I’m not going to be a speed freak when I get my license.”
“It’s not just driving, Kate,” Mr. Morgan continued. “There are a lot of things that can seem like fun that can wind up hurting you if you’re not careful.”
Suddenly Kate got it. Her father hadn’t brought her out to see the auto accident because he had concerns about her driving. He’d brought her out there because he was trying to equate the crash with her interest in witchcraft. She couldn’t believe it.
Her grip on the wheel tightened as she attempted to remain calm. She was so angry that she could feel herself shaking. Just what did her father think he was doing? There were so many things she wanted to say to him, and none of them were nice. But she knew she couldn’t lose her cool. That would just make him think he was right.
“You’re a smart girl, Kate,” her father said. “Your mother and I have always trusted your judgment.”
Until now, Kate thought.
“We know that the recent problems you’ve been having aren’t really your fault,” he continued. “You were just curious about what your friends were into. That’s normal. But you have to see that sometimes getting too curious can be dangerous. We just want you to use that good judgment of yours and make the right choice this time.”
Kate didn’t say a word the entire drive home. She just let her father talk. He kept repeating how much faith he and her mother had in her and how they knew that she would make the right decisions in her life if she just focused on what was right for her.
It wasn’t until she’d pulled into their driveway, turned the engine off, and gotten out of the car that she turned to her father and said icily, “If you really knew anything about me—anything at all—you’d realize that my wanting to be involved in Wicca is what’s right for me. But you don’t want to see that. You don’t want to even try to understand why this is important to me. So I really don’t think there’s anything for us to talk about.”
Her father stared at her, a stunned expression on his face, as she turned and walked into the house. As she passed through the kitchen her mother said, “Hi, honey, where’s your—”
Kate slammed the keys on the counter and walked past her mother without a word. She stormed up the stairs to her bedroom, kicked the door shut, and threw her gym bag on the floor. Then she stood there, trembling all over and trying to slow the beating of her heart. She couldn’t take it anymore. She just couldn’t take it. Her parents were treating her like she’d been rescued from some kind of cult and needed to be deprogrammed. They watched her every move, waiting for her to do something suspicious. She was starting to wonder if they’d bugged her room or if they went through her stuff when she wasn’t home.
She walked to her closet and looked in the far corner for the shoebox in which she kept the few ritual objects she had in the house. She kept most of them at Annie’s, but she liked to have a few things around for her own use, like candles and some incense. She wished she could have an altar, like Annie and Cooper had, but that wasn’t possible with her parents as upset as they were about the idea of her practicing witchcraft.
She lifted the sleeping bag under which she had hidden the box. The box was gone. Someone had come in while she was at school and taken it, and there was absolutely no question about who that someone was. Or someones, she thought angrily as she shut the closet door.
She had to do something. But what? She couldn’t run away, which is what she was sort of tempted to do. That would just be stupid, and it wouldn’t solve the problem. Neither would arguing. Her parents weren’t going to listen to anything she had to say as long as they thought she was just being stubborn or belligerent. She needed to find a different way to deal with them.
Meditate. The word flashed into her mind.
I can’t meditate now, Kate argued with herself. I’m too mad.
Meditate. The word came to her again. And again she brushed it aside. But it refused to go away, and the more she thought about it the more it made sense. Sophia was always telling them that the point of meditation was to focus intention. That’s what she needed to do—focus. She needed to channel her energy and use it to find a solution to her problem.
But I don’t have anything I need, she thought helplessly. Her candles, her matches—everything that had been in the box was gone.
You don’t need those things, her inner voice told her. And again she remembered Sophia telling them that the tools of witchcraft were just that—tools. They helped you do the job you needed to do. But the real power behind all magical workings was the force of your own intentions, the power you had within yourself. If that was working properly you didn’t need the tools.
Kate sat down in the middle of her room and closed her eyes. She breathed deeply. It felt strange just sitting there with no candle to focus on. She felt as if there should be more to it, and her mind kept filling with excuses about why she was wasting her time.
One by one she brushed them aside. She imagined herself in her favorite place, a hilltop from which she could look out over meadows and forests. She pictured herself sitting in a ring of flowers—her magic circle. Already she could feel her breathing coming more easily, and some of the anger she felt toward her parents slipped away.
After a minute she began the familiar exercise of drawing energy from the earth and letting it fill her. When she could really feel it moving throughout her body she imagined the anger inside her as a black ball. She let the energy swirl around the ball, breaking it up into millions of tiny pieces so that it was completely destroyed. Then she let the energy run out through her hands, going back into the earth
and taking the anger with it, leaving her feeling clean and refreshed.
The meditation was the first thing she had tried after finding the book that had introduced her to Wicca. She’d been doing variations on it ever since, and never failed to be amazed at how good it made her feel. It made her feel even better now because it had helped her get rid of some of the negative feelings she’d been gripped by since her father’s lecture ambush. Doing it successfully proved to her that she really didn’t need to be in a Wicca study group to practice the principles of the Craft. She didn’t need to do rituals with Annie and Cooper to keep up her abilities. Those rituals would be nice—fantastic, in fact—but she saw now that although her parents could take away the class and her time with her friends and even her ritual tools, they couldn’t take away everything she’d learned.
She hadn’t solved her problem. She realized that. But she’d proved something to herself, and it was something that made her feel good. The rest could wait for a while. If there was one thing Kate had learned during her months of study, it was that the hardest magic—the strongest magic—took time.
She opened her eyes. As she did she saw the door to her bedroom close. Someone had been watching her. But who had it been, and how much had that person seen?
CHAPTER 6
“Happy birthday, dear Annie. Happy birthday to you.”
Annie sat at the table in the cafeteria, surrounded by her friends. In front of her was a huge chocolate cake covered with candles. She listened as Cooper, Sasha, Kate, Jessica, Tara, and T.J. finished singing. Then she leaned over and blew out the candles.
“What did you wish?” Tara asked her.
“For a date with Ricky Martin,” answered Annie untruthfully. She wasn’t about to tell them what she’d really wished for.
Cooper took a knife and began to cut the cake, putting the slices on the brightly colored paper plates she’d brought with her. She’d already made everybody put on pointed birthday hats. She was enjoying the silliness of the occasion, and she was glad that Annie seemed to be having a good time.