A Witch and a Secret

by Evangeline Blackwell

“They’ll be fine.” Ciara sighs.

  “So what’s up with your grandmother and Supernatural?” Jessie asks.

  “Supernatural?” Ciara asks, bewildered. “Oh, you mean the TV show? She loves it. She has a thing for Dean Winchester. Even has his poster in her bedroom. Actually, it’s inside her closet. I saw it a couple of times when she opened it.”

  I start coughing to hide my laughter.

  Jessie doesn’t even try to hide hers. “What did I tell you?” she says to me.

  “So Adelise likes Dean, huh?” I say. “Who knew. I figured she was more of a Lucifer kind of girl.”

  Now Ciara starts coughing. “Please don’t tell her I told you,” she begs. “But there’s more.”

  “Oh, please tell me there’s more.” Jessie giggles.

  “She loves this series of books about a forbidden love between a witch and a demon hunter and how they overcome all these obstacles to be together.”

  “No,” Jessie and I say together.

  “Yes,” Ciara wiggles her eyebrows. “But you obviously can’t tell anyone, because if you do, she’ll kill you. You, too,” she turns to Azzie.

  “Oh, I’m not telling anyone.” He shakes his head vigorously.

  “Don’t worry your, grandmother’s secret is safe with us,” I assure her. It’s not like anyone would believe me even if I did tell.

  Chapter 23

  “How did you get ahold of a witchlight?” I ask Ciara. We are in my room, setting things up for the spell. A blanket on the floor, candles to form a circle. We’re lucky candles aren’t edible, or we’d be out of those, too.

  “In my family, every time a witch is born, her mother creates a witchlight for her. My mother created this one for me.”

  “Oh,” I say. Ciara seemed so upset the last time she mentioned her mother. “It must be really hard to part with it.”

  “To be honest, it’s somewhat of a relief,” she says. “This is something I’ve been carrying with me for as long as I can remember, something that constantly reminds me of her. And since she died, every time I touch it or see it in a mirror—I don’t know. I just think it’s time for me to let go of it and move on with my life.”

  “But isn’t it bound to you?” Jessie asks. She fetched a large bowl from the kitchen and is now placing it in the middle of the blanket.

  “It’s a little different for witches than it is for demons,” Ciara says as she puts the witchlight inside the bowl. “You only need one witch to bind it and most witches can do it themselves. Also, it’s only useful if you’re going to a demon dimension, because it allows you to use your powers there. It wasn’t originally designed to help demons use their powers here, but a few smart and probably very cunning witches figured out a way to do it. So now demons who enter our dimension can use their magic here if they can find a few witches who are willing to create an amulet for them.”

  “How did you get your first witchlight?” I ask Azzie. He’s been very quiet since we came back to my house. Well, not exactly quiet. He’s just had his mouth occupied with chocolate chip cookies we bought for him on our way here.

  “I had a witch make one for me, obviously,” he says.

  “Why can’t she help you make another witchlight? Why do we have to do this?” Jessie asks.

  “Because she’s been dead for over eight hundred years now.”

  “I guess that does complicate things a bit,” I say.

  “All right, everything’s ready for the spell,” Ciara says. “I think we can start.”

  Azzie is so excited he doesn’t even finish his cookies.

  “Have you ever performed this spell before?” I ask Ciara.

  “Oh no, I’ve heard so many stories about witches being hunted down by demon hunters after they created witchlights for demons. It’s kind of a big no-no in the witch community and the fastest thing that can get you killed.” She notices our terrified expressions and adds, “But I’m sure those are just things they tell young witches to scare them, right? Anyway, this spell seems straightforward enough.” She looks at the binding spell. “Okay, let’s start. Let’s form a circle,” she says and extends her hands. “Azzie, you should get in the center of the circle.”

  He doesn’t need to be asked twice and is near the witchlight in a heartbeat. We take Ciara’s hands and form a circle. Ciara starts saying a spell in that strange tongue again.

  When she is finished saying the incantation, we are surrounded by a cloudy sparkling mist. It looks more beautiful than anything I’ve ever seen in my life. The mist sparkles like it’s made of diamond dust.

  Ciara lets go of our hands and draws out a pocket knife. Azzie gives her his hand without her even having to ask. She pricks his finger and squeezes a few drops of blood—which turns out to be as red as mine or anyone else’s—onto the witchlight. When the blood touches the amulet, it turns into sparkles of golden light that weave into the curves of the witchlight. When the light fades, there’s no trace of blood anywhere, but the witchlight looks a little different, as if it’s glowing from the inside.

  “It already has my blood,” Ciara says, “but it needs the blood from two more witches.” She holds the knife ready for another sacrifice.

  I sigh and hold out my left hand. I close my eyes as Ciara pricks another one of my fingers and squeezes a few drops of blood onto the witchlight. My blood reacts in the exact same way Azzie’s did. Once it’s over, there’s no trace of my blood anywhere.

  Ciara then does the same thing to Jessie’s finger. After Jessie’s blood turns into light and weaves itself into the witchlight, the amulet starts glowing even brighter.

  Ciara takes our hands in hers. “Now it’s time for the main spell,” she says. “Brace yourselves, this is going to be very powerful. Repeat the spell after me. We’ll have to say it three times, and no matter what happens, you can’t stop and you can’t break the circle. Otherwise this witchlight will be ruined as well.”

  “Way not to put too much pressure,” I mumble and squeeze Ciara’s and Jessie’s hands. They do the same thing.

  Azzie sits inside the circle, eyeing the witchlight which is glowing gently inside the bowl.

  Ciara starts saying the spell in that strange language and we repeat after her. She has to say one or two words at a time, because we don’t understand anything. When we finish saying the last word, a circle of light forms around the witchlight. It seems to have emerged right from the amulet itself. It glows for just a second and then explodes into a powerful burst of light that almost sends us flying across the room. If we weren’t clutching each other’s hands so tightly, we would have ended up pinned to the walls. Another second passes, and the wave of light returns, with a little less force this time, more like a tugging and pulling sensation rather than an explosion. It shapes itself into a ball of light around the witchlight.

  When the light settles and stops shimmering, Ciara starts saying the spell again and we repeat after her. This time the wave is so powerful that even though we manage to hold on to each other’s hands and keep the circle intact, my brain feels like it melted to jelly. The only things I can hear now are the buzzing in my ears and the sound of my heart beating like it’s trying to pop out of my chest. I don’t even feel the wave when it returns, my senses are so dulled. I can barely feel Jessie’s and Ciara’s hands in mine, but I know I’m still holding on to them.

  When the light settles again and the buzzing in my ears subsides a little, Ciara starts saying the spell for the third time.

  The third wave knocks me out for at least a few seconds. When I finally open my eyes, I find myself lying on the floor and staring into darkness. At first, I’m not sure if I have opened my eyes after all, but then I notice that there is sunlight gleaming off the darkness in some spots and in the middle of it is what looks like my ceiling light, only now it’s totally black instead of beige, but the shape is still the same.

  I sit up and look around. Jessie, Ciara, and Azzie are all rubbing some part of their bodies and blinking like t
hey are in some kind of a daze. My senses are returning back pretty quickly, though, and I can now smell the strong acrid stench of burned material. Everything in my room is completely charred, like it was burned to the last molecule. The only colorful things are our clothes, the blanket, and the white bowl with the witchlight.

  “This is incredible!” Jessie looks pretty awestruck as she examines the room.

  “Incredible? Try grounded for the rest of my life. How in the world am I ever going to explain this to my parents?”

  “Good thing your mom decided to remodel your room, huh? Seems pretty timely, doesn’t it?” Jessie grins.

  It’s all a joke to her. She’s not the one who will have to sleep in Chloe’s room. No, I think I’d rather sleep in the attic with the spiders.

  “I don’t think any amount of remodeling is going to help this room,” I say, still dazed, and shocked, and contemplating whether I should ask Azzie to take me with him. Running off with a demon sounds as good as any other plan. Only that’s something Jessie would do, not me.

  “Gosh, I had no idea this would happen,” Ciara says. She looks genuinely upset.

  “Are my horns supposed to vibrate like that?” Azzie asks, rubbing his forehead. His horns do seem to vibrate a little.

  “I honesty haven’t got the slightest idea,” Ciara says. “Do they hurt?”

  “Not really, they just feel weird.” Azzie grabs his horns with his hands, but instead of stopping the vibration, now his hands are vibrating too.

  “I really need to use the bathroom,” Jessie says and tries to stand up, but as soon as she moves, something snaps inside the floor, right underneath her, and a large crack spreads from her feet to where I sit.

  I jump up and the crack grows even wider, followed by more snapping and breaking sounds.

  “Uh-oh,” Jessie says, but it’s already too late. The floor crumbles under our feet and we fall right through it.

  The moment before I disappear in a pile of rubble, I catch a glimpse of Azzie reaching for his witchlight.

  I CLOSE MY EYES AND brace myself for the fall, but when I reach the ground, the impact of the fall isn’t as bad as I expected. When I open my eyes, I realize why. We haven’t fallen through the floor. We are lying in the middle of our backyard. I sit up and look at the house, only to see it crumble in front of my eyes. After a few moments, all that’s left of it is a huge pile of ashes. I don’t know whether to get up and dust myself off, or—well, I don’t think I have any other options at the moment.

  “Worked like a charm,” Azzie kisses the witchlight and tucks it under his—er, my—pajama top. Then he looks at the pajama top, mumbles, “This needs to be fixed,” flicks his fingers and in a split second is dressed in black jeans with a hole for his tale, dark red shirt, and a black leather jacket. The look is complete with enormous black boots. “That’s much better.” He examines himself in a mirror that magically appears in his hand, and then disappears just as quickly when he is done looking at his reflection.

  “Did you teleport us from the house?” Jessie asks.

  “Something like that.” Azzie grins. “Well, it was nice knowing you all.” He gives us a bow with a twirl of his hand.

  “Hey, wait, are you leaving already?” I exclaim. “What about the house? Can’t you fix it?”

  “Sorry. That’s too much even for my magic.” He looks pretty happy and doesn’t sound sorry at all.

  “You just conjured yourself a new outfit, not to mention teleporting us over here from a crumbling house. How can you not be able to fix this? Maybe just a little bit?” I plead.

  “I really wish I could do something about it, but the best I can offer you is to put a glamour on it. That way, when someone looks at it, they will see your house. But it won’t last long, and when someone enters inside, the house will start blinking. So it’s probably not what you’re looking for,” Azzie says.

  “He’s right,” Ciara says. “Not even a powerful witch could do something like that. I mean, restore an entire house from scratch.”

  “What about three witches?” Jessie asks.

  “Maybe three witches like my grandmother. Although it still wouldn’t look exactly the same. I’m pretty sure that the binding spell was not supposed to do this to Emmy’s house. So even if we knew a spell that could fix it—which I don’t, by the way—we’d probably do even more damage.” How much more damage could we possibly do?

  I sit on the ground, pull my knees up to my chest, and hug them. “This sucks. But at least Azzie’s witchlight works, so I guess we didn’t screw things up entirely.”

  “I think your neighbors are watching.” Ciara nods her head towards our neighbors’ house, where a nice elderly couple lives.

  “Great, how much do you think they saw? Crap! They must have seen Azzie! How are we going to explain him, in addition to the house?” I jump back to my feet, but have absolutely no idea what to do next.

  “Don’t worry, all they can see is a few tabby cats having a meeting in your backyard,” Azzie says. He is polishing his witchlight with the hem of his shirt.

  “Huh?” Jessie and I say together and stare at him.

  “Oh, I was wondering what that was. I just thought it was an aftereffect from the spell,” Ciara says and cocks her head to the side, squints her eyes, and stares at me—no, it looks as if she is staring right through me. “Huh, you’re a ginger tabby.” She grins at me.

  I try to replicate what she’s doing. I cock my head to the side, squint my eyes, and try to look at the bush behind Jessie. When my eyes focus on the bush, but I still have Jessie in my line of vision, she blinks—her entire body blinks—and then she turns into a cute gray tabby cat. The cat is staring back at me. I perform the same maneuver with Ciara—who is also a gray cat, but a lighter shade. Azzie turns out to be a huge, fat ginger tabby with the biggest, bushiest tail I’ve ever seen. I can’t help but laugh when I see that. He still looks cute, though.

  “Ha-ha, very funny, laugh at a poor defenseless demon,” Azzie grumbles, but he doesn’t seem offended at my laughing at him and seems to be enjoying himself.

  Fire sirens sound in the distance.

  “Your neighbors must have called the fire department,” Jessie says. “I think we should go hide in the woods and tell them that we were taking a walk and have no idea what happened to the house.”

  “You’re right,” I agree. That sounds like a much better plan than trying to explain to anyone what really happened here.

  “Well, then, ladies I will be off,” Azzie takes off a hat, which just a second ago wasn’t even there, gives us a small bow, and disappears into thin air before I can ask him if we will ever see him again.

  “I should go, too,” Ciara says. “I don’t think I can be of any more help here, but if you do need something, well, you know where to find me.”

  “Thanks for your help,” I say and really mean it. Losing the house I grew up in aside, this was the biggest and most incredible adventure I’ve ever experienced. Ciara gives us a little smile and then she’s gone.

  “We should head into the woods now,” Jessie says. “I don’t know how long this cat glamour will hold and we don’t want firemen crossing themselves and spewing curses when they see two tabby cats turn into teenage girls.”

  “Let’s go,” I say and grin from ear to ear as we walk away from the house, or what’s left from it.

  “You’re awfully cheerful, considering that your house is a pile of ashes,” Jessie says.

  “Oh, I just thought that this was the most incredible adventure I’ve ever experienced, better than anything I’ve ever read about in a book. And then I remembered that all of my books are safe and sound in a storage facility. I can’t believe that just yesterday I was so upset about it. It’s the best thing that my parents ever did for me.”

  Jessie starts laughing and I join in as we disappear behind the trees.

  Epilogue

  It has only been one day since my house burned to the ground in a magical explos
ion, but already the entire town knows about it. Even Mystic Hollow Daily dedicated its front page to the mysterious fire that no one saw. The only thing that the firemen recovered from our house was my blanket—the bowl must have shattered into tiny pieces when the floor crumbled. The firemen couldn’t determine what caused the fire and were extremely surprised to find an intact blanket in the middle of a burned-down house. They just scratched their heads as they tried to make sense of what happened.

  In the meantime, we are staying with the Sullivans, which Jessie and I are particularly happy about. Our parents occupy the only guest room in the house, so Chloe was supposed to stay in the room with Jessie and me, which we weren’t that particularly happy about, least of all Chloe. I suggested that she should sleep in the attic if she was so displeased with the arrangement, but she didn’t seem to appreciate the idea, at least that’s the impression I got when she flipped me off. Finally, Logan gave up his room to Chloe—lest we all kill each other—and took the couch in the living room for himself.

  We all skipped school today to help us settle in. We also told Logan everything about what happened yesterday. Well, he forced us to tell him everything that happened, including all about our criminal career, meeting Adelise and Dorian, and, of course, the spell itself. Logan seemed more amused than mad with us for ignoring every single commandment he and Parker gave us. Parker was the only one who didn’t get a chance to hear the full story, although by now surely every person in our little town knew what happened.

  Even having our house burn down wasn’t enough to mar Chloe’s enthusiasm for Brian’s party. When I told her that I didn’t have a date, she didn’t seem upset at all. If anything, she seemed happy that she could set me up on a blind date with a guy of her choosing. I begged Jessie to come to the party with me for moral support, but since the only way for her to do it was by going there with her brother, I couldn’t push her too hard when she refused.

  All these thoughts rush through my head as Jessie helps me get ready for the party. I sit in front of her dressing table mirror while she is styling my hair.