by Ariel Hunter
I was just tired. Tired from the visions, from my inadequacy at this task, and from the painful awkwardness between me and Callan.
I wanted to bridge the gap between us, but I really didn’t know how. Sometimes, he could be downright irresistible, but at other times, his possessiveness turned me away.
I couldn’t believe that he loved me when I felt like he was only now getting to know me. And roping me into an arranged marriage for his own reasons, however guided by a sense of love they might have been, seemed a bit underhanded. Hell, claiming to my friends that he was my boyfriend just straight-up like that had been a bit shady too. On the other hand, knowing he did all this, and it wasn’t actually for the potential of power that I’d inherit from my family, that had to mean something. He claimed he loved me. And he had he had made these arrangements when he really didn’t know if I would be a witch of any worth at the time—and it seemed like I wasn’t really yet proving to be a witch of any worth, anyway.
But I couldn’t deny the electricity, the enigmatic desire . . .
Right on cue, he stopped in front of my desk.
“How’s it going?”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Have you not been watching at all?”
“I’ve been trying to help my other students.”
“Clearly.”
“Are you facing the same problem over and over?”
“So you have been watching.” I sighed. “I can never get it to go from here,” I picked up the rock, “to here.” I smacked it down on the other side of the desk.
“You’re trying to force it. You need to give it permission.”
I stared at him. “What are you talking about? It’s a fucking rock.”
“It is earth. It is part of that element. It has magic pouring through it. You need to find the balance within it, invite it to move from one place to another. Find the harmony, take its hand, and guide it. Not force it to be where you want it to be.”
I stared at him, dumbstruck. “Like you with me.”
His mouth dropped open, and he fumbled at his robe. He looked around, but no one was watching us. He lowered his voice and his eyes grew hard. “No. Not like with us.”
“It is the same, Callan. When we teleport, I make myself blank. I give myself to you, let you direct us. So, you lead and let us go where you want. But, in all other decisions, I fight you. I am a different element you are trying to force where you want it to be, instead of taking my hand and guiding it within a harmony that can match.”
Callan’s jaw was clenched tightly. His hands were fists on my desks. He held my gaze for a long moment, eyes locked. That awkwardness that rumbled between the desire to embrace and the desire to shove away stirred inside me.
Gold magic flared between his knuckles as they rapped against the desk and he backed away, crossing his arms. “Forget about the rock, Marnie. Try teleporting yourself. Do as I instruct. Find the harmony.”
“But I might end up somewhere I’m not intending.”
“You have to learn sometime. Enough excuses. Find the balance. Move yourself from one spot to another. You are a powerful witch. Use it. Be calm, be still inside, but feel the flow and move yourself.”
He was instructing me to be calm, but all I felt was anger boiling hotter and hotter. His continued refusal to actually face any real discussions and then just order me around was another example of the possessiveness, the righteousness that he thought would somehow guarantee a way to win my heart.
I smashed the rock into the desk and then pushed back from it. I took a deep, heated breath, my chest swelling with the flow of my pink magic. The other students and Mystics were looking at us now, but I didn’t care.
Teleportations were one of the few magical skills that magicians didn’t need to speak a spell for, which should have ensured me an easier access. That just didn’t seem to be the case. I reached out beyond myself, into the threads of the magic around me, willing myself to pull through the magic, disappearing into the well of infinity, and reappearing beside the pile of books on the floor.
Nothing.
Fuck.
I glared at Callan and he gestured with his palms, moving them up and down, telling me to calm, but that just enraged the storm further inside me, like waves cresting up and down.
I tried again and again . . . pink magic billowed into a filmy haze around me. The entire class had stopped to watch me.
I tried to aim for a different part of the classroom.
Nothing.
Fuck.
I selected a different part of Dimlight and tried again.
Nothing, though the magic stirred stronger this time.
Why do they all have to stare?
“Okay, one final time, Marnie. Find the harmony. You can do this,” Callan said, but he glanced at his wristwatch as he said it.
He was giving up on me. He was annoyed with how long it was taking. That I couldn’t do it. How long had I been trying this for, anyway?
The intense despair that he might be giving up on me and that all the pupils and Mystics were standing around, antsy to leave in their perfected teleportations, with their rather mundane lives to get back to. Meanwhile I had an arranged marriage to navigate, a Collector to escape, a familiar to care for, and visions of death to fight . . .
I lashed out and surged forth with every effort to teleport to the other side of the room.
A swirling chill wrapped around me, significantly more painful than any teleport I had ever before experienced, as pink sparks blurred before my vision, a nebula array of stars, and I was ripped from Dimlight’s classroom. I sank into chill water. I thrashed to get to the surface, panic flooding my brain, instinctively holding my breath as waves beat against my body.
Screaming rang out as I burst through the surface of the ocean, flailing to gather myself as I tread water, swiping my drenched hair from my eyes.
It was dark, the moon just past new, and the waves were tall. The moonlight on the crests of the waves as they raked over us revealed dozens of bobbing heads. They were shrieking, choking, gasping.
They were my classmates and their Mystics.
We were in the middle of the ocean.
And they were drowning.
Chapter 15
It was my vision, just as I saw it, and I was going to kill my entire class.
The panicked thought rushed through my body. I sank under the waves and forgot to swim. The waves dragged me down. I squinted into the salt water, the ripples of the ocean current revealing the vague outlines of struggling, writhing figures in the water of dozens of people, fighting to survive. They pulled at each other, attempting to hoist each other above the riotous waves, floundering in the water, dragged down by the current.
It’s my fault. It’s all my fault.
I have to fix it.
I fought to get back to the surface, kicking with everything I had. My head broke the water, and I gasped for air.
It’s my ocean. This is my place, my home. My sanctuary.
This is my element.
I can save them.
As the salt water lapped at my face, a peace swelled in my soul. I blinked up at the shell of a moon and let the serenity I always felt when I surfed fill my chest. A request; a handshake. An agreement with the water.
I can save them.
I raised my hands above my head, and then I started sinking down as pink magic wrapped around me. Split parabolas arced above me, slicing down into the water. I pushed my hands out with a huge inward breath and gush of air. Magic burst out of me and the waves separated. The displaced water rose up around us.
I pushed again, and the water heightened as we fell. I had gotten steadily closer to the Mystics and students, who had stopped their gasping for air, and were now gasping in awe as they stared at the pink cords of power pulsing from me. The water rose to form walls on either side of us as we sunk, slowly but surely to the sandy bottom of the ocean.
I stood and gasped at the immense feat I’d accomplished. Pi
nk tendrils wove through the air, over the sand, and in the waves—holding them hundreds of feet high. If I lost my concentration now, or if I willed it, those waves could crush and kills us all—as well everyone else living in Eastbrooke if I forced a tsunami.
Mystic Tamsin walked close to one of the walls and she peered into the barrier. A large fish flashed by, barely illuminated by the sliver of moon that graced the scene. She mouthed in awe and then touched the water gently with her fingertips. The spray from the barrier hit her face, but the wall held.
The Mystics and students stared at me as one.
Callan pointed his hand along the path I was weaving for our escape, his eyes locked with mine as I continued to push pink into the waves, carving a winding gap before us like Moses with the Red Sea. He was one of the greatest warlocks of his time, and the most unstable, because he held the white magic that even made this possible.
“Hurry. We need to get to shore,” Callan said. His hazel eyes were dark pools in the night, and I couldn’t read them. I just hoped they weren’t filled with shame.
As I walked behind the group, pink ribbons rippled through the green and blue striations of the ocean walls, fins flipping a wink at us as curious fish passed by. At the distant height above us, waves rollicked, crashing into pink walls, spray raining down on us occasionally, wetting our foreheads. But my power shielded us from any danger as we paced through the moonlight frosted floor of the fine ocean sand.
My chest started to heave as panic bubbled up. I wondered if I could stop when we reached the end. Would I be able to control it? To settle the waves? Or would I drown us all?
I had teleported us to about a half a mile out, but as the wave walls on either side grew shallower and as we trudged through the silt and then the shell-strewn sand closer to shore—my panic hadn’t calmed in the slightest. The only thing I could do when we finally walked out onto the beach was drop my hands, and will the magic to recede. Will it to slowly lower those tsunamis simply waiting to happen.
Will the ocean to calm, even if I wasn’t.
They collapsed inward, two waves smashing into each other, interrupting the natural tide. But as they started to fall and rush towards land, the last of my magic ignited like a flash across the surface, soothing the waves.
By the time it reached us, it was only enough water to wet our toes in the sand, had we not been wearing shoes.
I put my hands on my knees and dropped my head down, sucking in air. Callan put his hand on my shoulder, then helped me stand.
I gave him a tight smile. I had saved us. Granted, I had first almost drowned us all too.
I looked around at the students and Mystics, but they just stared at me. They didn’t seem to want to accuse me of almost killing them, but nor did they thank me for saving them.
Maybe if I spoke first? “So . . . I’m sorry—”
It was then that I noticed the Paragon Witch and Warlock striding right toward me, my mom a step behind them with three other Council members.
What. The. Fuck.
“Do you still have a tracker on her, Lila?” Callan roared before I even had a chance to be pissed at my mom. I stared daggers at her, but she held up her hands and shook her head.
Josie flicked her fingers. “That’s nonsense. Lila took off the first tracker, as we commanded. We just put another one on her.” She pointed at Julia, who dropped her eyes, though Mystic Tamsin stepped up beside her, chin held high. “The girl you nearly pulled from limb to limb.” Frustration and anger and more than a little guilt ran through me. “You’ve gone too far this time, Ms. McTavish. You could have killed your entire class.”
“She also saved us. Did you even see what she did? She parted the ocean—” one of my classmates started, but the Paragon Witch and Warlock were having none of it.
“That doesn’t change that she teleported you all to the middle of it.” Hiram Talltalker, who I had always thought was more on my side than Josie, had his hands firmly clasped in front of him. He was rigid with anger. “More than that, those monstrous walls of water you made could have been seen by humans. We have already scanned the area. You are lucky that there was no one in range, but there may have been boats nearby, or campers, or people passing on the road. You do not employ critical thinking and are a danger to yourself and others.”
The Mystics pulled their students back from the fury of the Council and I wished I could go with them. Sparks were emanating from the Paragons’ fingertips as they spoke, as if they too, had emotional charges ripple through them that they couldn’t fully control.
Yet it was endangering others when I did.
Never mind that I never wanted this power to begin with.
Never mind that I did everything they asked, even when I didn’t want to.
Never mind that they held me to a standard that they couldn’t even meet.
I was exhausted. My head was spinning with the power that had just rushed through me and part of me was elated that I had managed to move aside ocean waves, but the other part of me was absolutely despondent because they were right in a way. I had failed again. And my vision, which had indeed shown me endangering dozens of lives, had not done me any good. I had not been able to act on it with any preparation in order to keep me from hurting others. What good did the visions serve? In fact, what good did any of my magic serve? I’d been able to fix things, sure, but they were things I’d caused to begin with.
“The time has come for change. This stunt proves that your magic is not under control at all. On the contrary, it is merely reactionary. It might be true that you could become a very powerful witch if control was part of your process. The class of magic you hold is certainly unprecedented, but that does not mean it should exist,” Hiram said.
“The Council has decided. You will either take a new Mystic, one who is less biased to your every whim and who will work with you to actually enforce discipline and control, or you will have your powers caged. The decision is yours.” Josie’s tone was flat, with a touch of triumph.
I looked at Callan as he immediately stepped in between me and the Council. Of course he wouldn’t want to be torn from my side as my Mystic, and if I had my powers caged, wouldn’t that be the same thing?
But I was tired. I was so fucking tired of trying to be what everyone else wanted me to be. I didn’t have these responsibilities before I took my powers. I was just Marnie McTavish, a surfer girl, bartender, best friend extraordinaire.
And honestly, at this point I just wanted to get back to that.
Magic sucked.
“You have no right to ask for either of those things. Caging her powers; have you lost your minds? She is one of the most powerful witches that has ever—”
“I’ll do it.” I placed my hand on Callan’s arm and moved around him. He looked at me with wide eyes and furrowed brows. “I’ll cage my powers.” He moved to protest, anger flaring on his face. “Being a pink witch isn’t all I would have hoped for. I just think . . . it’s too wild. Too unruly. I’ve done my best, but my best clearly isn’t good enough. I’m tired and I want to go about my life without you guys putting trackers on me and everyone around me.” I looked imploringly into Callan’s eyes, but I only saw fury. I couldn’t expect him to understand. “Besides, maybe the Collector will lose interest in me, without my magic. This is better for everyone.”
“No, Marnie. You can’t do this,” Callan hissed as he grabbed my arm.
“It’s decided.” Hiram completely ignored Callan.
“It will happen at Beltane,” Josie said. “If you go missing beforehand, then Mr. Edwards will be subject to the same price. His powers will be caged as well.”
“Like hell,” Callan growled. “You aren’t even capable, though I’d love to see you try,” he challenged.
I put my hand on his arm, looking to meet his eyes, and I shook my head. Not like I was changing my mind anyway. I looked to them again and nodded. “Agreed. I will not run.”
The Council murmured amongst themselves
as they looked over the Mystics and students, as if they were wondering if there should be affidavits of confidence signed, since normally, this would have been a closed-door kind of process. My mom tried to catch my eye, but I ignored her. She might love me and have my best interest at heart, but she played a part in this too.
The Council teleported out. Apparently, they didn’t care who knew that I was facing extreme orders of discipline and caged powers. The Mystics and students followed their teleports, heading back to Dimlight to fetch their belongings.
I was left standing on the beach with Callan. He glared at me as he offered me his hand. I knew that the conversation wasn’t over. It had all happened so quickly, but I had made the right decision.
My powers would be caged.
I was done with them.
I hadn’t wanted to be a fucking pink witch in the first place.
Chapter 16
After going to school first and picking up my backpack, we reappeared at Callan’s house. As soon as we finished teleporting, he spun me away, flinging my hand out so forcefully that I reeled away from him and had to catch myself against the wall. I spun around to face him.
“What is your problem? This is my decision,” I snapped.
“That may be, but it’s a selfish and cowardly one,” he fired back, fists clenched, body tense, eyes like hazel flames.
“How do you figure? I’m choosing to bind my powers in order to keep others safe. I’m caging my wild magic to make sure I don’t cause anyone else harm, again. It’s not like this was the first time or even the second. I’ve been working on this for months. My entire life has changed to revolve around this stupid fucking magic. You can’t blame me for giving them what they’ve been after the entire time. We can’t all be perfect.”