by Multiple
“Dad, what do I do?” Panic coursed through me.
“Sit here and let’s just ride it out. Sometimes your mother had odd things happen. They often wore off.” He led me back to the chair.
Now my arms were trying to move together. My wrists pressed against each other like sex-starved coeds, but my shirt seemed to stop its progression. Thank God it was winter. Imagine this happening in a bikini.
I sat down, staring at my tight hands. I had zero control. But now they were going over my head, dragging me up, back to standing. “Dad?”
He held on to me as though fearing I might take flight. Heck, it could happen, the way things were going.
My hands had a force of their own now and pulled me across the room to a table in the corner piled high with dusty papers. Dad awkwardly clasped my waist as we walked together. When I got close enough, my arms knocked through the papers, sending dust and loose pages flying.
“What’s it doing?” I cried. The stack continued to hit the floor until something gleamed.
Mom’s headband. Instantly my hands were released.
I shook my wrists. But when I took a step backward, my hands began to gravitate toward each other again. “What do you want me to do?” I asked them.
My palms were vibrating, and the metal headband began to shudder and shift. I tried to step away again, but my arms pulled me forward. The silver circlet lifted from the table and stuck to my fingers.
The pull released, and the headband began to fall. I clawed the air and caught it before it hit the ground.
“I never knew where that went.” Dad tried to reach for it, but when his hand got close, a spark flew out. He jerked back. “I think it’s clearly meant for you.”
“What do I do with it?”
“I’m guessing you put it on.”
I’d never worn a headband in my life, scarred in childhood by images of Hillary Clinton. I’d tried to convince my mother to give up the look, but she’d just smiled and said it kept her hair out of the chemicals.
My head tingled as I moved the metal higher. The band was an incomplete circle made of two silvery wires, wide in the center and coming together in a point on either end. It looked, actually, like it might poke me bloody.
When it touched my scalp, I sensed the metal shifting, opening wide, and popping into place like a Tupperware lid.
“Is it some sort of crown?” I asked.
“I have no idea.”
“Did Mom wear it all the time?” I imagined being doomed to such an embarrassing head accessory for life.
“No, but she did most of the time. She didn’t usually sleep in it, unless…” He trailed off.
I whirled around. “Unless what?”
“She sensed danger.”
Great. Embarrassing AND an evil-magnet. What had I gotten myself into? And had it gotten Mom? My belly began to quake. I suddenly doubted I was up for the task.
“How does it fit?” Dad asked.
“Perfect, actually.” And it did. No pressure, no pain, no sense of anything other than maybe — comfort? I felt better wearing it. Like it belonged. Like it protected me.
“Do you think wearing it makes me a witch?” I moved to the glass case to inspect my new look. Uggh. Awful.
Hallow scurried across the desk and bent his little white body between two stacks of books to hop onto the case. He peered down at me with his red eyes. “Only if you tap your heels together three times,” he said.
I think I screamed.
4: Potion Problems
Color started coming back to my vision about five minutes later. Hallow turned in circles on top of the glass case as though he were any other ferret. My dad knelt beside me. I was back in Mom’s chair.
“I thought I’d lost you there for a minute.” His voice was cracked and strained.
The chair creaked as I sat up straighter. “What happened?”
“You put on the headband, and Hallow came up to you, and then you started falling backward.” He reached for my hair. “I tried to take it off, but apparently it’s just like when your mother wore it. Only you can remove it.”
I reached up for the metal band. At first it resisted, but after a tug, the circlet came free. Hallow stopped his incessant pacing and looked at me. “You’re going to want that on.”
I laid it on the table. “Dad, did the ferret just — talk?”
He turned to look at Hallow, who began sniffing at a green jar. “He might have squeaked or something.” His eyes locked back onto mine. “Did you understand him?”
“Did Mom ever mention it?”
He stood up and leaned against the desk. “No. But she did talk to him, and to Shadow, the ferret she had before. I assumed it was a cute quirk of her personality.”
Why couldn’t Mom tell him?
Hallow jumped in my lap. “Put it back on — NOW.”
“Okay, okay,” I said. I lifted the headband back into place.
“Okay, what, love?” Dad asked.
“I was talking to —” My words turned into a mumble. My lips were stuck as tightly as my hands had been a few minutes ago.
“What was that, Sweetpea?”
My lips would not unseal. A lesson. Don’t talk about the ferret. Got it.
My mouth popped open. “Nothing, nothing. Just a strange day.”
“Indeed.”
Now I needed Dad out of the room. If I could talk to Hallow, maybe he could help. “Show me the recipe for the potion, and I’ll get started.”
“It’s a spell,” Hallow said, jumping up on the desk. “Don’t call it a bloody recipe.”
Dad glanced at the ferret, and I thought maybe he understood. “Poor little guy. Is it upsetting to be back here?” He ran his hand down Hallow’s furry back, then returned to the Book of Shadows.
“Dad, what did you hear?” I asked.
“His squeak was a different pitch than normal. I hope he’s not ill.” Dad flipped another page.
So bizarre.
Hallow settled onto a fuzzy round pad near the book. “Are you really going to sleep now?” I asked the ferret.
Hallow shrugged his tiny shoulders and closed his eyes.
“What was that, love?” Dad looked up from the book.
“Never mind.”
“Ah, here it is.” He smoothed the page down. The handwriting was unmistakably my mother’s, a thin spidery scrawl.
I read a few lines. Hair of a redheaded virgin. First-laid eggs of a newly adult toad. Good grief. “How am I supposed to find these things?”
Dad turned the page. “There are notes here. They are already in the case.” He walked over to a lighted cabinet where colored bottles were lined up on glass shelves. He opened the door and pulled out a clear plastic sleeve.
“Hold this up to the light.” He flipped on a desk lamp.
I took the sleeve, illuminated by the bright bulb. Three auburn hairs curled together inside it. At the bottom was a sticker with the initials RHV. “Redheaded virgin?”
He nodded. “There are receipts from a number of stores if we run out, although none of them are familiar.” He rummaged through a drawer. “Ah, here.” A sheaf of loose papers fluttered to the desk. “Hopefully we can track them down.”
The pages were mostly written out by hand. Pea spider, $4000, paid in cash. The virgin hairs had been $180 per strand. “This is a racket!” I said.
“I’m sure that’s why your mother needed the money.”
“How did she get caught up in this?”
“I wish I knew. I wish she had told me.” Dad leaned against the wall, looking worn and tired.
“Why don’t you go fix some tea? I’ll see what I can figure out here.” I glanced at Hallow, who was sleeping. Not for long, little minx. I needed info, and fast.
“All right. You settle in.” He smiled, an expression more sad than anything. “The band looks good on you, like your mother.”
I could barely swallow. “I’ll do my best.”
“I know you will.”
He turned to the door. “Call me if you need me.”
I waited to the count of three before I snatched the ferret from his little bed. “WHAT is going ON?”
Hallow squirmed in my hands until I let him loose on the desk again. His red eyes bored into me. “First your mother marries a Brit, then she births a bloomin’ nix. And you’re supposed to save us?” He snorted.
I dropped my head to the desk. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Enchanters have bloodlines. Your mother had to traipse off to London, fall in love with a bloke, and as a result, you are a nix.”
“Nix?”
“Null and void. Nixed. No powers.”
“But I understand you.”
Hallow stepped back onto the pad and circled until he found the spot he liked. “Nixes understand magic. You just can’t do it. You’re an outcast, the worst kind, the dangerous kind.” He stretched out and tucked his white head on his paws. “There is no way to save a nix.”
“But I have to! Dad expects me to do this!”
Hallow closed his eyes. “So he files bankruptcy. Big deal.”
I snatched the ferret up again. “You’re going to help me.”
Hallow sighed. “I guess there’s no sleep for the familiar.”
“Familiar with what?”
He smacked his paw on his forehead. “Set me down.”
I put him back on the desk, and he walked over to a sculpted pewter bowl, its edges fluted out like a flower. Despite all the dust in the room, this silver surface had a highly polished shine that reflected his tiny head as he peered over the edge.
He tapped on the side. “Hellooooo? Anybody in there? Someone needs to relieve me of this nix.”
The surface of the bowl fogged over, like a cloud had passed, then cleared again.
Hallow looked up at me. “No help for a nix. Them’s the breaks, kid.” He dropped back to all fours and scurried to his pad. “You can mix that potion all you want, go through another small fortune in supplies, but at the end, if the words aren’t there, nothing will happen.”
I flipped the Book of Shadows back to the list of ingredients. Virgin hair. Toad eggs. Two black fairy mushrooms picked under a full moon. One drop newborn tears. Four stems of glasswort, dried and crushed. Two drops sea foam from the shore of Aphrodite. One web of the pea spider, freshly spun. I glanced up at the green bug. This didn’t seem too impossible. Only one last thing. Urine of a blue-eyed rat.
Uggh.
I stood up and paced the room for a moment. What sort of world was this? How could I not have known? The lighted cabinet stood open. Glasses clinked as I sorted through its contents. The labels revealed nothing, OMS, BS-4Y0. A pale blue bottle held just a few drops of something marked NBT. Newborn tears? I checked the Book of Shadows. Mom’s notes confirmed that the tears were on the top shelf in a baby-blue vial.
Might as well mix the potion, despite what the ferret said about my being a powerless nix. I dragged Mom’s pewter bowl across the desk. I didn’t see any other obvious place to pour the ingredients.
Hallow leaped from his bed, his white fur all puffed out. “Don’t pour anything in there!” He pushed against the bowl, moving it back to its spot.
“Why not? It’s a bowl.”
“It’s a portal, you silly nix!”
The movement made the surface fog over just like before. This time I caught sight of something, a dark green swath of fabric, undulating like a skirt. No, a robe. It was a person, someone in a green robe!
I leaned over it. “Hey! I need help!”
The green filled the surface of the bowl, distorted along the waves of the fluted sides. The figure moved, shifted, and I made out a neck, then a face. A man. A young man.
A very handsome man.
I shifted away a bit, as our faces were too close. “Can you hear me?”
The boy looked at me, soulful, serious. His dark hair curled around his arresting face. Eyes very much the color of mine, an unusual turquoise blue, heavy eyebrows, full lips.
“You can’t hear me, can you?” I asked.
The boy watched me as if I were on television and there was no point in talking back. He seemed worried as he glanced around the room, pausing on the blue bottle, then back at me. “I don’t understand how you can be my match,” he finally said.
I clutched the bowl. “I have to make a potion. I don’t know what to do!”
“Helping a nix is forbidden.” He turned to look over his shoulder. “Just don’t mix the potion. It’s wrong. Your mother did it wrong. It’s a powerful spell.” He frowned, those matching eyes full of concern. “I have to go. I’ll come back if I can.” He backed away. “Your mother and my mother were friends.”
The pewter fogged over. I picked it up, shook it. “Hey! Hey!”
Hallow crossed the desk. “Told you.”
I set the bowl back. “Who was that?”
“Somebody who’s going to get his powers hijacked if he isn’t careful.”
“I don’t understand any of this. Why won’t you help me?”
He curled back onto his bed. “Mainly because I’m lazy.”
I riffled through the receipts. “Maybe someone at one of these shops could help.”
Hallow opened a single red eye. “They won’t sell anything to a nix.”
“Then I’m just going to have to figure out how not to be a nix.”
“Good luck with that.” He closed his eyes.
Rotten little rat. “Don’t you feel any loyalty to my mother? Weren’t you her pet?”
“Familiar. The term is familiar. And I am my own ferret now. If I return to service, I don’t get the perks of being a free spirit.”
“So you were going to let me blow myself up? Like mom? Were you here when it happened?”
Hallow twitched, his little mouth turning down. “That was a very bad day.”
“She loved you. She took you everywhere.”
Hallow sighed. “Look, the potion can’t blow up, because you don’t have the power to make it work. I don’t know what she did wrong. There were several versions she tried.” He pointed a paw at the Book of Shadows. “If you were going to start somewhere, go back to the previous formula, see what she changed. Make a different change.” He dropped his head back to his paws. “But I can’t turn a nix into an enchanter. No one can.” He opened one eye. “And don’t bother Googling it. All you’ll find is a bunch of paranormal fiction.”
I pushed the pewter bowl, watching the fog come forward, then recede, over and over again. If I didn’t have any power at all, I wouldn’t be able to hear the ferret talk. Even I could see that. And I’d be willing to bet Dad had never seen the bowl portal work. I would have to tell him about it. My lips puckered and sealed together again.
Ha! I knew it.
The situation couldn’t be hopeless. I could hear the ferret, and I could see the portal. I’d figured out the code on the potion bottles, and the headband had found me.
Maybe the mysterious boy would help. He’d called me his match, and that had to mean something. I could try and find out who my mother’s friends were and locate him.
I could still picture his face, those eyes. I’d never seen anyone with my color, not even my parents. And while I wasn’t normally one to believe in love at first sight, something about him had gotten to me. Even now, I felt unsettled, edgy, like I couldn’t be set right until I saw him again.
So I would find him.
5: The Search
The lip-sealing bit was a pile of rubbish.
“Here, I’ll get you a napkin.” Dad left the table to rummage through a drawer.
Tea dribbled down my chin for the third time during the conversation. I could only blame the headband. If I even considered talking about Hallow or the bowl or the green-robed boy, my lips clamped together like a bloody vise.
Probably just as well it didn’t let me yammer on. If powers could be hijacked, like Hallow said, I couldn’t afford to make whatever magic the headband posse
ssed be lost. Besides, I already had what I needed from Dad — the names of three of Mom’s friends with sons the right age.
“Here you go.” Dad passed over a kitchen towel. “Do you plan to go calling on them? They might be rather blinkered on the subject of magic.”
“I’ll be careful what I say.” I sopped the front of my shirt. Not like my lips would let me go all balls-out anyway. They only let go when I formed my thought ahead of time. “I won’t mention enchanting unless I’m sure.”
“Here. I’ll give you an excuse to go there.” He opened a high cabinet and pulled down an array of casserole dishes. “They all brought food over in the weeks after the funeral. I never could bring myself to return them.”
“I’ll do it.” The mother of the boy I was interested in was bound to have photographs of him around. And if I were really lucky, I’d find him in person.
I formed my next question in my mind ahead of time, checked my lips, then continued on when I was certain they weren’t locked again. “Dad, did Mom ever let on that marrying you wasn’t — well, wasn’t in the best interest of her power?”
He shook his head. “All she ever said was that enchanters were allowed to marry humans. Her mother did. Your grandfather was human.”
“But she knew I might end up without any power.”
“Marrying a human weakens an enchanter’s children, sometimes back to human.” He looked down at his cup. “You do know she was already pregnant when we got married, right?”
“Yes, I know. Are you saying she HAD to marry you?”
“No, no. Just that what was done couldn’t be undone.”
Suddenly I remembered the boy’s comment about a match, and his eyes. I looked at my dad’s eyes, a cool gray, not a match for my mother’s. Not that it mattered. He was human.
I wanted to ask about the term nix, but my lips froze up again. Ridiculous. Dad stared out the window at the snowfall. Time was so short. I had only five days to make the potion. They couldn’t take our house, surely, the place where Mom’s memory was still so pure, and the location of her lair. And this was the only home I’d ever known. But then, maybe a fresh start for Dad wouldn’t be so bad.
I leaned over and squeezed his arm. “We should get a tree,” I said. “It’s Christmas.”
He nodded. The snow drifted down, settling on the fence and trees like sparkles. Dad needed to move on in his own time, and I would see that he could choose, not be forced by some arsehole who’d tricked Mom into borrowing money for his overpriced love connection. How was that fair?