Witchtown

by Cory Putman Oakes

No one knows why some people just can’t channel. In theory, becoming a Learned witch is not that complicated: as opposed to Natural witches (who work with their own, internal power), Learned witches use power channeled from external sources, like the moon or the wind. The only way to become a Natural is to be born one. But with enough study and practice, anyone can learn to channel and become a Learned. In theory, anyway. Voids are the exception to the rule. They are rare, but even so, Havens go to great lengths to keep them out.

  Every Haven keeps an iron cattle brand. They mark you before they banish you so no other Haven can ever be tricked into taking you. And so the outside world will know you for what you are. Or what you tried to be, anyway. There’s no evidence that Voids are contagious, but this is one area where witches are unwilling to take chances. Not even Witchtown allowed Voids, and they were as progressive as Havens got.

  I had nightmares for years after I saw that woman. About how easy it would be to get found out. And how the red-hot metal would feel as it seared into my face. I still thought about it sometimes.

  I wondered if Talya ever did. I wondered if she ever felt empty, the way I did. Like a hollow, worthless vessel, which no power could be coaxed to enter.

  Except that one time . . .

  No, that time did not count.

  It had been a rain spell and it had been in Seattle. Seattle. Where it was pretty weird for it not to be raining.

  Besides, even if I had channeled that day, it took more than one accidental rainstorm to make someone a witch. “Witch” was not a title I could ever hope to claim.

  When the square was clean, both spiritually and physically, Autumn released everyone. I watched Talya grab Aimee by the hand and begin to march her quickly out of the square, right past me.

  She paused and turned around to face me. “Thank you,” she said stiffly, and I got the distinct feeling these were not words she said often.

  “Sure,” I said, although I wasn’t really certain what I had done.

  She went to take a step and then paused again.

  “What herbs did you say you needed?”

  “Elder and valerian,” I repeated.

  “Do you mind wild herbs?”

  “I prefer them,” I said truthfully.

  I thought I saw a ghost of a smile appear on her lips. Then she pulled on Aimee’s hand and led her away without further comment.

  I stared after her. There was a lot to ponder there, but I couldn’t afford to think about it right now.

  I had a robbery to plan.

  Chapter Six

  There were at least eight color-coded bins in the alley behind the mayor’s office. Part of Witchtown’s ridiculously complicated recycling program. The mayor had tried explaining it to us last night, but I had tuned out most of it. I doubted we’d be here long enough to tarnish Witchtown’s zero carbon footprint anyway.

  To the left of the bins, there were two doors. The streetlights overhead provided just enough of a glow for me to see that one was labeled ARCHIVES. The other was unmarked, but looked like it led into the office itself.

  I stood in front of the blank door, with a small black bag in my gloved hand. Fighting against my better judgment.

  Just get it over with.

  I took out a flashlight and wedged it into my armpit to get a better look at the lock.

  Pick or bump?

  Picks are quiet and elegant, and leave no trace. Bumping is faster, but there’s always a chance of damaging the lock. And it would be better if the mayor thought this was an inside job.

  But as I looked around, at the scant cover provided by the alley, I decided that speed was more important. It was close to two in the morning, and the streets of Witchtown had been silent on the walk here, but I didn’t know this town well enough to risk loitering around the alley for long.

  Which is the whole problem with pulling a job too early.

  I opened the bag and pulled out a ring of keys and a small rubber mallet. Screwdrivers or tension wrenches were more traditional, but I had always found mallets easier to grip. Plus, they make a lot less noise.

  I noted the lock type, found the correct bump key, and slid it home. Three sharp, muffled taps with the mallet to make the pins jump and bam, I was in. And the lock was still in one piece.

  Thanking Laverna for small favors, I opened the door. I paused briefly on the threshold, but there was no alarm. I hadn’t really expected one. Witches, I had discovered, were secretive and paranoid and good at hiding things like spell books. But they were shockingly low-tech when it came to protecting things of actual value.

  Some witches used protective spells, but I didn’t think that would be an issue here either. Just in case, I had Laverna tucked into my bag. Her presence was usually enough to render those kinds of spells ineffective.

  I walked to the center of the office.

  Normally, when I was with my mother, this was when my part of the job would be over. She was much better than I was at finding money. It seemed to call out to her, like it wanted to be found. It had never been that way for me.

  Use your strengths, she had told me.

  Right, I thought back. Standing in the middle of the crammed office, which smelled strongly of stale coffee, I couldn’t picture a situation where a working knowledge of herbs would be less helpful. Trust my mother to rub my nose in my own uselessness. That was probably her real reason for sending me out on my own.

  Think, Macie, I ordered myself. Everything you need is right in front of you.

  There had to be money here somewhere. Petty cash, a community fund, something. At this point I would have settled for the office clerk’s lunch money. Anything monetary I could take home, to convince my mother my head was in the game.

  My attention was drawn to the lone plant in the room, which was sitting in a pot on top of a squat wooden file cabinet. It was a much-neglected silverweed plant, sometimes called “five-finger grass” because its leaves look like a hand. It was an herb said to assist in “anything five fingers can do,” particularly lucky in money matters.

  My eyes traveled down the cabinet. The bottom drawer had a lock on it, which made me smile.

  I always found it amusing when people put big beefy padlocks onto cheap, put-it-together-yourself furniture.

  I set the silverweed on the mayor’s desk, safely up and out of the way. Then I turned the file cabinet around and picked out the eight nails that were holding the faux-wood backing in place. After that, I just had to unscrew four cam locks before I could take the back off the locked drawer.

  There were a bunch of files inside, mostly labeled with things like “Insurance” and “Important—​Save.” I was tempted to read through the one labeled “Private—​Brooke,” but then I found a manila envelope marked “Beautification Donations—​for Deposit.”

  Inside was a stack of cash. Jackpot.

  I stuffed the bills into my bag without bothering to count them. Then I replaced the empty folder and set about reassembling the file cabinet. When everything, including the silverweed, was back in its proper place, I slipped out the back door.

  Just in time to see Talya come out of the door marked ARCHIVES.

  In her black bandanna and entirely black outfit, she looked like even more of a thief than I did. But her face, with its slightly tuned-out expression of thoughtful boredom, said to me that she was not in the act of doing something wrong.

  I highly doubted I had a similar look.

  I stood, frozen, and watched her take in every detail. My black gloved hand on the doorknob of the office. The small black bag over my shoulder. The lateness of the hour.

  I needed to think of something to say. Something to spin it: to make her think that I had caught her and not the other way around. But before I could think of anything Talya turned away, locked the door of the Archives, and slipped the key into her back pocket.

  She nodded in my direction.

  “’Night,” she said, then turned, walked down the alley, and disappeared behind
a brown bin marked COMPOST.

  There had been $814 in the locked drawer. First thing the next morning, I left it all on the kitchen table, where my mother would find it.

  Now that I had completed her stupid, unnecessary thief test, it was time to start planning the real heist. And that meant continuing to get my bearings in this strange new Haven. So I grabbed the mayor’s map and headed out, with a steady stream of thoughts for company and a highly unsatisfying meal of leftover salad in my stomach.

  I probably should have been more worried that I had gotten caught. Not that Talya had actually seen me do anything wrong. Even if the mayor noticed the money was missing and started asking around for suspects, Talya couldn’t call me out for being there without placing herself at the scene of the crime as well.

  If it came down to it, who’s to say that the mayor wouldn’t take the word of the innocent new arrival who just happened to be out for a late-night stroll over the word of a rumored Void?

  I didn’t love the thought of using that particular piece of gossip against Talya. But if it came down to her or me, I knew what side I would take. Still, I doubted I would have to go there.

  I had a weird feeling that Talya wasn’t going to tell anybody.

  Putting the odd Goth out of my head for the moment, I paused to check the map. I had meant to walk north, toward something marked “the Tor,” but I had been so lost in thought that I had somehow wandered west. I was standing on the shore of Witchtown Lake.

  There were voices nearby. I darted behind a tree just as a small girl with white-blond hair ran by.

  She was clutching a stick and looking over her shoulder. Before long, a mop-haired boy ran up behind her and made a grab for the stick.

  “Kellen!” the girl called shrilly. “Kellen!”

  I gulped, hopefully not audibly, as Kellen emerged from the nearby woods and walked right past my hiding place. Through the scraggly leaves of the stunted tree I was using for cover, I could see that in spite of the warm weather, he was wearing the same jacket he had worn at my initiation. He was also wearing a pair of jeans that, I had to admit, fit him nicely.

  Stop it, I scolded myself. You were going to be more careful with him, remember?

  “He’s trying to steal my wand!” the girl cried as the boy lunged toward her again, missed the wand, and grabbed a chunk of her hair instead.

  Kellen walked up to the squabbling kiddos, seized the disputed stick, and tossed it into the lake. Both kids gasped in protest.

  “You don’t want a wand you fought over,” he explained. “The energy will never be right. You have to find one that feels right to you. Only to you. Got it?”

  “Okay,” the little girl mumbled, and ran back into the woods.

  The boy said nothing. He stared wistfully at the spot where the wand had disappeared into the lake, until Kellen tickled him and hauled him toward the trees by his armpits.

  “Come on, I saw a lot of good ones in here.”

  The little boy giggled and gazed up at Kellen, hero worship shining brightly in his eyes.

  I smiled in spite of myself.

  “Hi, Macie!” An alarmingly loud voice piped up behind me, startling me so completely that I shot to my feet. I spun around and found myself staring down at Talya’s cousin Aimee.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked, so loudly again that I cringed.

  I looked warily over my shoulder. Kellen had stopped at the edge of the trees. He turned around and spotted me easily.

  If he was surprised to find me here, he didn’t show it.

  “Looking to join the class?” he asked.

  “Huh?” I asked.

  “Kellen is our teacher!” Aimee announced. “He’s the best!”

  “I help out with the little ones a couple times a week during the summer,” Kellen said.

  Of course you do.

  Assisting with rituals, hanging with the kids. What, was he running for Town Golden Boy? “A nice guy,” he had called himself. Sure. Nobody was that nice for no reason.

  He walked toward me until he was directly on the other side of my tree. “Right now we’re trying to find wands.”

  “I found mine!” Aimee told him, holding up an arm-length branch.

  “Great!” Kellen cheered, without looking away from me.

  I narrowed my eyes at him; he smiled innocently in return.

  “Care to join us?” he asked. It sounded like a dare.

  “Sure,” I said.

  Once the kids had all found wands, Kellen led us to a grassy area beside the lake and explained that today’s lesson was on channeling wind. For a heart-stopping moment, I worried that he was going to ask me to demonstrate. But instead he lit a candle, lined the kids up, and each one took a turn trying to summon up enough of a breeze to put out the flame.

  Relieved that I was not required to participate, I stretched out on the grass a good distance away, with my head on Kellen’s backpack. When I could tell that his attention was focused entirely on the kids, I put one hand behind my head and slipped the other inside the pack.

  There wasn’t much in there. A plastic bottle (probably water), a book, and—​yahtzee!—​a wallet. I extracted the small leather rectangle and rolled over partway so I could examine its contents in private.

  The front pocket held a driver’s license for one Kellen Stewart, age seventeen. Which was odd, considering that he lived in a place that didn’t allow cars. There were also two twenty-dollar bills, a CPR certification card, and a frequent buyer card for someplace called the Crescent Roll that had five hole punches through it.

  That was it. No pictures, no receipts, no notes.

  I wasn’t a master pickpocket, but I had lifted my share of wallets and I had never seen one so free of clutter. Pendle Bishop’s, for example, had been stuffed so full of junk that I had had to dump the whole thing out before I found a lone five-dollar bill in the midst of the garbage.

  Just another thing confirming my hunch that there was more to Kellen than met the eye.

  I slipped the wallet, with the two twenties still inside, back into the bag and rolled over, shielding my eyes against the warm sun and watching as he patiently took each kid through the exercise. He applauded them when they succeeded and reassured them when they came up short. One time he summoned a gust of wind himself, so strong it almost knocked the kids off their feet. They giggled hysterically at this and demanded more. A thought came to me out of nowhere: Rafe would love this.

  It was an odd thought to have about the guy whose cold glare had kept me up for most of the night. Anger had been a part of who Rafe was, and angry Rafe had been the first version of him that I had become acquainted with. But there had been a lot more to Rafe than his anger. There were far better versions of him.

  The sun, combined with my restless night and my long walk that morning, was making me drowsy. I felt my eyes start to close and I didn’t fight it. It was nice here. Warm. And something about the ceaseless kid chatter and Kellen’s calm explanations in the background made me feel safe.

  I settled my head into a more comfortable position against the backpack and drifted off. Rafe would have felt at home here too. The real Rafe. The one I had met the day after I had found the mandrakes in the woods . . .

  The knock on the door sent me stumbling toward it. I opened it without thinking and when I saw who it was, my stomach clenched in on itself, like it was reliving the night before. I mentally calculated how long it would take to slam the door in his face and run out the back.

  Until his voice made me pause.

  “It’s Macie, right?”

  It was a nice voice. Much better than the growly, menacing voice he had used before. It was hard to square the dark, murderous presence of last night with the thoroughly unthreatening guy on my doorstep. He was dressed casually in jeans and a very worn leather jacket. He had a somewhat embarrassed expression on his face. And he was holding a dirty plastic bag.

  “That’s me,” I said, keeping one hand on the door.
Ready to slam it if necessary.

  “I wanted to apologize for last night. And to make sure that you’re okay. You are, aren’t you? Okay?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  Now that he wasn’t glaring at me, I could see that my earlier assessment of him maybe being attractive had not done him justice. His black hair was shiny, just longer than his chin, and it was curly in some places. It would have been pretty on a girl; on a guy, it was something else entirely. His skin was smooth and brown and his eyes were as dark as I remembered, but softer in the light of day. He was adorable, frankly. And I think that annoyed me even more than his nearly having killed me the night before.

  “You found my stash,” he continued, and a glint of humor crept into his eyes. “I had it warded. But I had no idea it would be so strong. I’m sorry.”

  “It was probably the mandrakes,” I told him.

  “Mandrakes?” He frowned. “Is that what these things are?”

  He held up the plastic bag; it was full of the roots I had dug up last night.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Mandrake roots amplify magic. And there was a crap ton of them around that tree.”

  “I didn’t know that. If you need more of these, I know where there’s a whole field of them.”

  “A whole field?” I repeated, unable to stop myself from adding up in my head how much an entire field of mandrake roots would be worth.

  “I’ll show you, if you like.”

  “Okay . . .”

  “I’m Rafael, by the way. Rafe.”

  He held out his free hand and I hesitated. There were so many reasons not to touch him.

  But then he leaned in a bit closer to me, and suddenly all of the reasons became a shade hazier.

  “I’m not warded,” he assured me. “I promise.”

  I took his hand. It was a decision. I knew that it was the start of something. And now, even after all that had happened, I couldn’t bring myself to regret it.

  “Hey! Sleeping Beauty!”

  My eyes flew open. Kellen was standing over me. The sun was behind him, making his brown hair seem to glow.