by Multiple
In fact, he’d better watch out. Because if THIS nix ever got her powers, I’d be making that passion potion, and something with a little more kick on the side.
*
The first house on my dad’s list was only a few blocks away, so I snatched up the casserole dish marked “Mavis” and trudged along the snow-blanketed sidewalk.
I didn’t figure Mavis could be the one, since she was too close, and I was pretty sure I could remember her kids — two hellspawn worthy of a permanent lip-sealing spell.
Sure enough, one of them opened the door, a girl a couple years behind me in school. She cocked a hip, smacking a piece of hot-pink gum that matched her punked-out ponytails. A nose ring winked from the flashing light of the bling-deluged entryway that pulsed with holiday overload.
“Your mom here?” I held out the dish. “I came to return this.”
She stared at me a minute, and I could almost hear the “For real?” in her head. Good for her that she didn’t say it out loud.
“Mom ain’t here.”
Bollocks. I needed to get inside, check out that brother of hers to see if he was my mystery boy. “Could I use your bathroom?”
Her penciled eyebrows drew together. “Hey, you’re that girl whose mother blew up, right?”
Okay, never mind. If the boy was as wretched as his sister, it didn’t matter anyway. I turned to go.
She snatched at my arm. “Hey, sorry. I mean, she was all right. She came here all the time.”
I pulled myself together before spinning back around. “I heard they were friends.”
She stepped back a few paces. “Come in for a sec. I think Mom had something for her. Well, I guess, for you.”
The front room was an explosion of Santas. I mean, an army of red velvet. Short, tall, small, fat, laughing, serious. They covered the Christmas tree, dangling at every angle. They lined the walls and filled the mantel and surfaces of all the tables, clustered around every chair leg.
“Wow, this is really something.”
The girl kicked at one, laughing when it HO HO HO’d to the ground, its mechanical mouth opening and closing. “It’s a freak show. You’re Jet, right?”
“Yeah. Sorry, I don’t remember your name.”
“Mom calls me Harrah, but I go by Rah.”
“Okay, Rah.”
We stood awkwardly in the room another moment, the Santa doll winding to its jolly conclusion.
“Oh, yeah, that thing.” Rah tapped her forehead. “What was it? I could text her.”
“She’s working today?”
Rah tugged a phone out of her jeans pocket. I realized her sweatshirt, cut at the shoulders so it exposed her upper arm, read “F*ck the Establishment.” Classy.
“She’s a nurse. Always shift work.”
I looked around for family pictures to see if I could speed this visit along. A portrait over the fireplace was partially obscured by Santas. As Rah fumbled with her phone, I walked over to it.
Mavis was like I remembered, stout, friendly, sporting too much floral. The dad looked sort of tired, thin, worn down. The picture was a little old, as Rah was still dressing like her mom in a flowery dress and a big rose in her hair.
The boy was all wrong. Blond hair, lidded eyes. I didn’t need to see the color to know he wasn’t my mystery man. Now I just needed out of there.
“She has some crystals, apparently.” Rah shoved her phone back in her jeans. “Mom is into some weird healing shit.”
Now that was interesting. “Did your mom and mine use the crystals together?” Hallow had mentioned a coven. I knew next to nothing about what that meant, but I assumed it involved witches — enchanters — whatever, that got together. Mavis could be one.
“All the fucking time. She got totally torked if we tried to go in there while they were arranging colored rocks around.”
I couldn’t imagine Mavis getting “torked.” “Tell your mom to call me, and I’ll come for them later. I’d like to talk to her, maybe learn about what they did together.”
Rah smacked her gum as her hip went to the side again. “I never pegged you for a freak, being a college girl and all.”
She was calling ME a freak. “Thank you for your help.” I headed for the door.
Rah didn’t follow. I gave her a little wave and stepped out into the cold. I felt more optimistic that I might learn about my mother’s world after all.
Now I had to find the next mother on the list. Genevieve. That sounded like a proper name for a witch.
6: Snooping
Dad and I got a Christmas tree that afternoon, and while he set it up, I took off in my Beetle with the casserole dish for Genevieve. I felt so good about this visit after learning about Mavis and her crystals that I snapped a shot of the passion-potion spell, including the gibberish at the end I was supposed to say. Or, I guess, enchant.
I smacked the steering wheel. This was too great. I could do this.
Genevieve lived on the other side of town, and with the snow still coming down, I felt an urgency to get to her before any of the streets got too difficult to navigate. We’d been snowed in more than one Christmas when the plows couldn’t keep up.
I hadn’t called ahead for any of them even though I had their numbers. Surprise seemed to be wiser, to see what I could glean before they recognized me.
I debated the headband. While I knew it might attract magic I couldn’t handle or understand, the reaction of people seeing it on me might tell me what they knew. Rah had obviously been clueless. Plus, I never knew when it was protecting me or steering me in the right direction. Hopefully I had a handle on its lip-sealing side effect.
Genevieve’s house was set back from the road. A large iron fence separated it from the street, but the heavy gates were open, so I drove in.
The front of the house could have appeared in a magazine. Sparkling lights, tasteful ribbons, and real boughs of garland, not plastic bits on wire.
Quite a lot of cars lined the circle drive. When I opened my door, piano music filtered from the house, a Christmas tune. They must be having a party.
I hesitated. I could come back another time, but that meant the loss of another day. I had hoped to learn something I could use that night in the lair, after Dad had gone to sleep and I could safely mix things. If everything with Genevieve went perfectly, maybe I’d even know how to say the words to the enchantment. The end of the spell was indecipherable, and who knew if a simple mispronunciation was all that stood between a working potion and — Mom.
But I couldn’t ask her until I knew where I stood. The boy and Hallow had both said helping a nix was forbidden, so I had to be cautious.
I clutched the Pyrex dish to my chest like a shield as I went up the steps. Another car pulled up behind mine, and I hesitated. Maybe I could walk in with another family and get a good look around before I was spotted. I dug my keys from my pocket and purposefully dropped them off the side of the porch.
“Dang,” I said, smiling at the couple getting out of their seats. A man, a woman, and two teen girls. Perfect. I hurried down the steps and collected my keys as they made their way up the walk.
They rang the bell, and the door swung open. “Jerry! Cecilia!” a woman cried.
I fell in behind the bored teen girls in their holiday dresses. Rats, I was wearing jeans to a fancy party. Nothing to do about that.
As the family filtered through the door, I caught sight of the woman who had greeted them. Yes, I recognized her. She’d been at the funeral, elegant but somehow unapproachable and stern. I didn’t know if I could ask her about the potion after all.
As I had hoped, Genevieve stepped back and led the adults into the room, letting the kids follow. I closed the door and quickly passed by the cluster in the front room to head down the hall.
Another large group had gathered in the open kitchen, pouring wine and laughing. I set the dish on a counter, nodding at everyone, and backed out again. I just needed to find some photos.
The kitchen co
nnected to a family room with a large television set in the center of a wall of bookshelves. Interspersed on the rows were many framed images. I walked as casually as possible over to the portraits.
The light was pretty dim, but I could make out a family of five. Unfortunately, the kids were all babies and toddlers and Genevieve was a young mother. The hair color was right, though. This could really be it.
The family grew older in the portraits as I walked along the shelves. A light glimmered faintly in a hallway off the other side of the room, and I could spot much larger photographs on the walls there.
I smiled at a few other passersby and beelined for the hall. There, a bright light shone on the images. Another of the young family, but then, there, one of all three kids as teenagers. I moved toward the image, two boys and a girl, when someone grabbed my shoulders, dragged me backward into a room, and slammed the door.
7: Caleb
“Are you insane?” The voice was disembodied, as the room was too dark to see anything.
I pulled away from the arms that held me. “What the hell are you doing?” I asked.
A light snapped on.
Oh, man. It was him. Instead of the green robe, he wore a pair of slim khaki pants and a cranberry sweater that fit him like a dream. His black hair curled along his forehead just as it had in the pewter bowl.
“Your eyes.” It was all I could think to say.
He sat on his bed, and finally I began to realize where we were. A bedroom. His room. My heart beat a little faster.
He shook his head. “I know. I don’t know why we’re a match. You’re a nix, and I’m an enchanter. Even talking to you is forbidden. And meeting you during the match phase…”
I backed away to lean against a desk. I needed some distance. My face was flushing, and I didn’t think my ribs were going to contain this racing heart much longer. I needed to be calm.
My scalp tingled under the headband, and a strange warmth began to flow down. My shoulders dropped a few inches, less tense, and my breathing slowed. Magic. Had to love it.
The boy ran his fingers through the curls. “This is a disaster. I already started the rituals with Mariah.”
I held on to the desk. “Look, I’m not interested in your matches or your rituals. I’m just trying to figure out how to make this potion.”
He looked right into my face, and when our eyes locked, all the work the band had done to calm me was for nothing. I couldn’t breathe, not a bit, and I gripped the edge of the desk so hard my fingers hurt. I wanted nothing more than to walk up to him, to embrace him, to be as close as I possibly could.
“You feel that, don’t you?” he said. “I feel it too. It’s the way it’s supposed to work.” He whirled around. “All those other matches I’ve met, and you have to be the real deal.”
I pushed off the desk. So he had other options. Fine. “I really have a lot more urgent matters than worrying about my next shag.”
His hands went back to his hair as he stared out a window at the lights twinkling on snow. “You’re right. That doesn’t matter. I can’t do anything with a nix anyway.” He turned back around. “Okay, so what are you doing here?”
“I have to make this potion.”
He exhaled in a rush. “What is it with this one spell? Your mom called on everyone she knew to help her with it. What did she get into?”
“It’s some sort of love potion. Seems like that would be standard issue.”
“But it’s not. There are three things an enchanter doesn’t mess with — life, death, and love.”
He acted like I was stupid. Well, on this issue, I was. His room practically crackled with starch. Clean, organized, matching accessories. No posters, no junk, no personal stuff spread across the dresser. “You don’t live here, do you?”
“I’m home from school.”
Safer topic. “Where do you go?”
“Yale.”
Of course. “Major?”
“The usual. Chemistry.”
My knees wobbled at that. I rolled the desk chair out and sat down. “Why chemistry?”
“It’s the best way to hide who we are, to blend in. Some do medicine. A few go into other sciences, just to mix things up, but the rules are pretty strict.”
“So there are rules.”
“Of course. But you’re a nix. You won’t be trained. You won’t need to be.”
“But I can understand Mom’s ferret. And the band works for me.” I pointed at the silver circlet.
He walked over to peer at it. “It was your mother’s.” His nearness made my blood pressure shoot up again. I’d had boyfriends, plenty of them, and sure, we’d had our moments. But this was some other feeling, an attraction to the exponential degree.
“What’s your name?” Thankfully, my lips allowed that question.
The boy stepped away, staring at his hands like he couldn’t control them. I knew exactly how he felt. The need to touch him, to connect with him in some small way, was fierce.
“Caleb.”
Knowing his name eased my discomfort by a degree, as if I were moving in the right direction. “I’m Jet.”
He nodded. “I know. I’ve always known you.”
“But you didn’t know we were a match?”
Caleb sat back down on his bed. “Do you remember when your eyes changed color?”
“They’ve always been like this.”
He frowned. “No, an enchanter’s color arrives with all the other changes at age thirteen.”
“Nope. Always been turquoise.”
“You just don’t remember.”
I jumped up at this. “Look. I know the color of my freaking eyes. I was even in some baby contest and won because of my eyes. The picture was up on the wall of that stupid little portrait studio in the mall for years.”
Now he leaped from the bed. “That was you?”
“Yes. My lifelong humiliation.”
“You had chubby thighs.” Those matching eyes glanced down at my jeans.
God. That picture had been the bane of my adolescence. I’d probably run a thousand miles in high school to make sure no one could call me Thunder Thighs and mean it. I was naked in the image, sitting on my bare bottom, my fat thigh hiding the crucial bits. But my eyes were what won the prize, I knew.
“I’ve changed since then,” I said.
“I can see that.”
The electricity was practically lethal. I could have powered a small village at this rate. “So why are you all gobsmacked over our eyes?”
Caleb busted out with a laugh. “Do you always talk like a Brit? You don’t have the least bit of an accent.”
“Sorry.” My face flamed. “Happens when I’m around Dad a lot. Mom met him across the Pond on holiday.” I’d tried to break myself of the habit when I left, but talking to no one but my father made it all flood back.
“So your father is from England.” He paced the room.
“Yes.”
“Do their eyes match?”
“No.”
“And you always had your color?”
“What does this have to do with anything?” I felt exasperated. I needed help with the spell. The rest of the whole world-building could wait.
“I don’t know why you are a nix. You seem like you’re like any other enchanter before the change.” He spun around. “You say your ferret talks?”
“Yes. Since I put this on.” I pointed to the circlet.
He pushed up the sleeve to his sweater, revealing a bracelet made of heavy silver links. “This is my token. It allows me to sense magic.”
I reached for it, drawn with a force second only to when my sticky hands had searched for the headband. When my fingertips touched the surface of the metal, a visible spark flew out.
I jerked back. “That was something.”
Caleb watched me with those eyes like mine. “I can’t be with you, but I don’t get it. Why would you find me? Why would we have a match bond?”
A rap on the door made us both
jump.
“Caleb? You’re missing the party.”
I dove behind the bed. Good grief, I was living in a made-for-TV movie.
The door opened with a click, and Caleb said, “I’ll be right out.”
“Come with me now. I need you to meet another daughter.”
“Mom, I told you I was going to accept Mariah.”
“It doesn’t hurt to see them all.”
Another match? How many of them were there?
“Can you give me just a minute?”
“All right. But don’t try to avoid this one. Most matches are set by the time they finish undergrad, and you still have the six rituals.”
The door closed. I waited a few seconds, then peeked over the bedspread. “Sorry if I’m inconveniencing your rituals.”
He paced the room, hands back in the black curls. “This is way screwed up. Seven matches, and you’re the one.” He paused. “I don’t know what else to do.”
I clambered up from the floor. “What are you talking about? What do you have to do?”
He strode over and clasped his hands behind my head.
And kissed me.
8: Fire in the Hole
My mind felt erased. Caleb’s lips were soft and warm, and the kiss was unlike any kiss I’d ever known. Not sloppy, not wet, nothing irritating or alarming. Like home. Like Sunday morning breakfast. Like birthday presents. Like love.
I yanked myself back, tugging the way you might separate a lid from a stubborn jar. Fear rose up in me. I hadn’t felt anything like that with the guys I had kissed, not to mention, well, the rest of the things we’d done. Pleasant, sure. Sexy, sometimes. But this blew me away.
I backed up. I didn’t have time for a holiday fling either. I needed to make a potion.
The iPhone buzzed in my jeans. Yes, a reminder from the real world. Show him the spell. Record a pronunciation. Get the hell out of there.
A solid plan.
I reached for the phone, but Caleb was shaking his head.
“What?” I asked.