Witchtown

by Cory Putman Oakes

  I bit my lip even harder. Why was I forcing them to lay it all out for me? I wasn’t an idiot. But regardless of all the facts, and the theories, I needed more. I couldn’t alter a lifetime’s worth of thinking on so little.

  “Tell her the other thing,” Kellen suggested. He was still crouched in front of me, kind of protectively, but also like he was blocking me from getting off the couch and running out the door. I felt trapped. I reached down to find solace in more pizza, only to find that the plate in my lap was empty.

  Kellen stood up, took the empty plate, and walked it back to the kitchen. Talya eased down from the arm of the couch until she was sitting right next to me, effectively trapping me again.

  “I saw something else when I read your mom,” she confessed. “I told you that I saw everything about the stealing, the vault, the other towns, all of that. But I didn’t tell you the rest because it didn’t make sense to me. Not until now.”

  She trailed off. Her face was suddenly stiff. I could almost hear her teeth grinding together.

  She hates this, I realized. She hates telling people what she sees about them.

  I reached over and took her hand. Her fingernails were covered in badly chipped black polish, and she was wearing so many rings that when I squeezed her fingers together, they sort of clanked. Her violet eyes reminded me of the flowers on an anise plant, which was interesting because she smelled a little bit like black licorice. I had never noticed that before.

  “I only saw a glimpse of it,” she said. “The vision came right at the end, before I started getting dizzy. But I saw two things very clearly. One was Pendle Bishop. The other thing was this.”

  She pointed to my moonstone, and my hands rose up protectively, covering it from view.

  “What is that?” she asked. Rather casually, as though she was changing the subject. Even though I knew she wasn’t.

  “It keeps people from sensing that I’m a Void,” I said, the words sounding a bit hollow.

  Talya shook her head.

  “I don’t think that’s what it does,” she said gently. “I think that’s what your mother told you it does.”

  Still gripping the stone, I thought back to our second day at Witchtown, when I had seen Pendle Bishop for the first time. She had looked at my moonstone. The old Natural, who could barely see, who could barely focus her old, clouded eyes. She had definitely noticed my moonstone.

  “Well,” I swallowed. “I don’t know what it means. It’s not like we can ask Pendle Bishop to fill in the blanks for us.”

  Kellen returned from the kitchenette.

  “Maybe not,” he said. “But we can do the next best thing.”

  The grass outside of Pendle Bishop’s house looked like it had grown more than should have been possible in the days since I had last walked by. It was as though it knew that no one was going to bother to cut it now, so it might as well just go nuts.

  “I don’t have a clue what we’re looking for,” I admitted, as the three of us walked up to the old Victorian. “Do we even know if her stuff is still inside?”

  “The mayor told me she’s keeping everything the way it is until Pendle’s sister can come and look through it all,” Kellen said, leading us around the back. “She lives up in the Northeast, somewhere. The mayor has been trying to get ahold of her.”

  I stepped up to examine the lock on the back door.

  “This is a very basic single deadbolt lock,” I said to Kellen and Talya, feeling a touch of excitement. Finally, a way to put my ill-gotten skills to good use! “No sweat. It’ll take me five, maybe ten minutes to pick once I get my—​what?”

  They were both staring at me. Kellen was holding up a key.

  “I used to water her indoor plants, too,” he explained, sliding the key into the door. “She’d forget, and they would start to smell.”

  “Oh.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  Inside, the house was fairly neat. Neater than I had expected. I had pictured a slightly crazy scene, full of empty cat food cans and stacks of old newspapers. But the kitchen was clean, and filled with the scent of a large basil plant near the window, which was just starting to wilt. The living room was dark but clutter free except for a pile of large-print books and a pair of very thick glasses on the coffee table. There wasn’t a cat in sight.

  Talya went over to examine the books.

  “Looks like the old broad had a thing for bodice rippers,” she said, causing Kellen to look vaguely scandalized.

  “We need to find personal stuff,” I said, looking reluctantly at a door I was pretty sure led to a bedroom. It seemed wrong to pry into the old woman’s things.

  Talya walked purposefully into the bedroom. I followed, still feeling uneasy, especially when we were confronted with the intimacy of an unmade bed and a threadbare bathrobe that had been laid across the comforter. As though Pendle Bishop could return at any moment and find us there.

  I shivered and tried to concentrate.

  There was a desk in the corner covered by more books, all with covers depicting bare-chested men and windswept women. There was also a small calendar, a lot of loose papers, and a lap desk with a half-finished letter on old-fashioned stationery.

  Before I could stop myself, I reached for the letter.

  Pendle Bishop’s handwriting had been shaky. I could picture her sitting at her desk, wearing her thick glasses and laboring intensely over her words. The first page began: Dear Trudy.

  “Is her sister named Trudy?” I asked Kellen, who was hovering in the bedroom doorway, looking at least twice as uncomfortable as I felt.

  He shrugged, and I went back to the letter.

  I flipped through the pages, stopping cold when I got to the last one. The nearer to the end of the letter, the shakier the handwriting got. But it was still legible:

  I never would have done it. Not if I had known what she was going to use it for. But she was so insistent, and I needed the money so badly, I didn’t ask the questions I should have. Had I known it was for a child . . . a Natural child. She would have been too young to know what she was. Or what it would do to her. Does she suspect, I wonder, where her mother’s strength comes from? I cannot bring myself to even talk to her. But I must, Trudy, I know I must. I must make this right . . .

  At the bottom of the page, there was a sketch. It was even shakier than the handwriting, but there was enough detail that there was no mistaking what it was.

  My moonstone.

  I ran right out the front door and sank to my knees in the too-tall grass.

  The chain around my neck was just long enough so that I could see the moonstone when I looked down. I held the stone up in my hand and stared at it. It was something that had always brought me comfort before.

  But now, the milky blue and white stone stared back up at me like an evil eye. I dropped it hastily.

  “Macie?”

  It was Kellen’s voice. I didn’t look up, but I saw his gray tennis shoes and Talya’s black, high-heeled boots come up on either side of me.

  “Is it true?” I asked. I wasn’t asking anyone in particular.

  “If your mom were really a Natural, the angelica would have worked on her. And I wouldn’t have been able to read her,” Talya said matter-of-factly.

  “I never questioned her,” I muttered, blinking at the pointy toes on Talya’s boots. “All these years. She told me I was a Void and she was a Natural. And I believed her. Just like that.”

  I looked up at Kellen.

  “You knew I wasn’t a Void. And you’d only just met me. Why didn’t I know?”

  I looked back down at the moonstone, and suddenly I couldn’t bear the thought of wearing it for another second.

  I reached behind my neck and fumbled for the clasp. But before I could undo it, I felt two pairs of hands on top of mine, stopping me.

  “Macie, wait,” Talya said. “Let’s think about this.”

  “No!” I shouted, shaking off the hands and jumping to my feet. “You don�
��t understand! I found that angelica days ago. And I never thought of using it against her. Not even for a second. Until you brought it up. This thing”—I glared down at the moonstone—“it clouds my brain. It keeps me from thinking straight!”

  I reached for the clasp again, and this time it was only Kellen who stopped me.

  “You’re probably right,” he said, gently pulling my fingers away from the clasp. “When Pendle Bishop put a spell on it, to allow your mother to pass off your power as her own, she probably added an element of concealment to it. Something to make you trust your mother, so you wouldn’t suspect. But if you take it off—”

  “I’ll be able to think clearly,” I finished for him. “And I’ll have my power back.”

  “I doubt it’s that simple,” he said, sounding apologetic. Still holding both of my hands, he looked over at Talya for help.

  “You must have taken it off before, right?” Talya asked. “To go swimming? To shower?”

  “Yes,” I admitted.

  “And does anything ever change?” she persisted.

  “No,” I said, looking at the ground.

  “Your mother wears one too,” Kellen said, and it sounded like he was thinking out loud. “I’ll bet you both have to take them off, plus who knows what else you have to do to break a spell that old? How long have you worn that thing?”

  I thought back. I had been five years old when we entered our first Haven, and I remembered wearing the necklace then. But not before then. I hadn’t had the necklace in Seattle.

  “Eleven years,” I muttered. “Give or take.”

  I shuddered, and blanched when I felt the metal chain shift around my neck with the movement.

  “She can probably tell when you take it off,” Talya added. “If she suspects that you figured it out—”

  “She’ll alter my memory,” I finished for her. “I’ll forget all about this.”

  “Exactly,” Kellen said, sounding sorry. “You have to keep playing along. Just for a little while longer. Until we figure out how to stop her.”

  “When will that be?” I asked pleadingly. Every minute of wearing the necklace now felt like a minute too long.

  “Soon,” Kellen assured me.

  Talya rolled her eyes. “I wish I had your confidence. Last time I checked, we were out of ideas.”

  “On the contrary,” Kellen said, “I think things are looking up.”

  Talya and I shot him simultaneous you’re crazy looks, but he just smiled.

  “We’ve got a Natural on our side now, don’t we?”

  He watched me carefully as I considered this. Finally, I nodded slowly.

  “I guess we do,” I said.

  A Natural who doesn’t even have the power she was born with.

  I had never heard of anything so pathetic in my entire life.

  When I returned to the Depot, without Talya and Kellen, I found a glum-faced Percy waiting for me at the door.

  He was holding an enormous Solstice wreath decorated with yellow and red flowers.

  I groaned under my breath. I was still reeling from the events at Pendle’s house. That, plus the pizza I had eaten earlier (which had hit my enthusiastic but unprepared-for-processed-food stomach like a brick), was not exactly putting me in the mood to deal with Percy. I needed to lie down.

  I nodded to the wreath.

  “You shouldn’t have,” I told him.

  “I didn’t,” he assured me, without smiling. “This is Brooke’s thing. Mind if I put it up now?”

  “You want to put that thing on my shop?”

  “It’s for the Solstice celebration,” he explained. “Every building in the inner circle has to have one.”

  He turned and pointed. Over half of the shops facing the square were already adorned with identical wreaths. They matched the yellow and red streamers that had replaced the black banners on the streetlights.

  I looked dubiously at the ugly thing in Percy’s hands. It was so loud and the flowers on it were so obviously fake that it seemed like a weird thing for the mayor of the greenest city in the world to insist we all decorate with.

  But, as the newest business owner in town, I wasn’t about to make a fuss.

  “Sure, Percy. What do I need to do?”

  “Nothing. I can hang it up for you,” he said. “I just need to get up on your roof.”

  “Sure,” I said again, unlocking the door and holding it open for him. “Um, Percy? Is everything okay? You seem kind of . . .”

  “I’m fine,” he said, flashing me a very forced smile and nearly knocking me over as he hauled the wreath inside.

  I shut the door behind us with a sigh.

  Whatever my mother had done to upset him, I hoped she would make it right soon. Or at least erase it from his memory. Sad Percy was sort of infectiously morose.

  And I already had enough to worry about.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Despite Kellen’s assurances that we would come up with a way to stop Aubra “soon,” and despite the fact that Talya had been doing so much research in the Archives that she was all but sleeping there, three days went by without any of us coming up with anything useful at all.

  I had been spending a lot of time in the Archives myself. After I cleaned up Bradley’s mess at the Depot, I found that I had nothing to do except shut myself up in the dingy room with Talya and help.

  So it actually felt good to come out into the fresh air on the afternoon before Solstice. Kellen and I had both signed up to help decorate for tomorrow’s celebration. Talya remained behind, saying she’d rather die than spend the day getting ordered around by Autumn.

  As it happened, it was the mayor, not Autumn, who was directing the setup for the ritual. Kellen and I joined the rest of the volunteers in a clump around the altar, as Brooke and Teresa (the mayor’s new assistant) sorted through papers and assigned everyone a job.

  I heard a familiar, affected laugh and followed the sound across the square. My mother was in fine form this evening. She was wearing a short dress that made her legs go on for days, very high heels, and an intentionally wild and curly hairstyle. She was clutching a masculine arm and tossing her head back to laugh. Her moonstone necklace was prominently displayed amid a ridiculous amount of cleavage.

  I drew in a disapproving breath. Half the town was here. The mayor herself was within spitting distance. What was my mother thinking?

  But when the crowd shifted, I saw that the arm she was clutching was not Percy’s. It belonged to someone taller, with a familiar shade of brown hair that curled slightly over the top of his collar.

  Kellen’s dad.

  My stomach dropped to somewhere around my knees. And before I could get it together enough to somehow head him off, Kellen followed my line of sight.

  “Well,” he said dryly. “That’s unfortunate.”

  “My thought exactly,” I said. No wonder Percy had been in a bad mood.

  “Quiet down, everyone!” the mayor commanded, her voice tinged with excitement as she stepped up to the altar. “Thank you all for joining the preparation committee for our Solstice ritual! We have a lot to do and very little time to do it, so let’s get organized . . .”

  Teresa appeared at her side and started handing out sheets of paper.

  I looked worriedly over at Kellen.

  “Are you okay?” I whispered. I didn’t know what to tell him. Yes, my mother hooks up with inappropriate people all the time. But usually she does it monogamously?

  Kellen didn’t look to be in the mood for jokes. Even true ones. His eyes were locked on his father, who had his arm wrapped around my mother’s waist and was nuzzling her hair.

  Teresa moved through the crowd handing out work assignments, and the mayor kept right on giving us the details of the ceremony.

  “And the highlight, of course, will be the lighting of the bonfire by our very own Natural, Aubra O’Sullivan!”

  There was a polite round of applause. My mother acknowledged the clapping with an embarrass
ed wave as she continued to cling to Kellen’s dad.

  Her eyes met mine. They were filled with an intensity that I recognized. I had seen it dozens of times before, in dozens of other towns. It was as if an invisible, silent alarm had gone off somewhere. It was time. All of a sudden I knew what she was going to do.

  “The bonfire,” I whispered to Kellen.

  I looked over at the mountain of brush and logs that some of the volunteers were piling in the eastern part of the square. Did Witchtown have insurance coverage for a Solstice bonfire gone out of control? I was sure they did. Reginald Harris would have seen to that.

  And what would happen after the smoke cleared? The mayor might be able to convince the townspeople to hang on and wait for the insurance money so that they could rebuild. But the investors would be history. There would be no more money to maintain security on the wall. The town would be vulnerable, a sitting duck for anyone looking to take out their anger on those who were different from them.

  The townspeople would turn to Aubra to protect them. And she would, dutifully, right up until the second the insurance money arrived. Then we would be history. After that, whatever was left of the town would crumble. Reginald Harris’s dream of witches looking after their own would be reduced to a pile of rubble. And those who were here to witness its fall would never be able to recall exactly what had happened.

  All of them—​Kellen, Talya, Gayle, even little Aimee—​would forget that they had ever known a girl named Macie O’Sullivan. She would make them forget.

  I narrowed my eyes at my mother. Her gaze turned from cheerful to annoyed, and she dropped Kellen’s dad’s arm in order to make her way toward me.

  “Incoming,” I muttered to Kellen.

  “Once you’ve gotten your assignment, please get to work!” the mayor intoned, with mock sternness. “Have fun! And let’s have a great Solstice, everyone!”

  There was more applause, which ended quickly as people broke up to attend to their appointed tasks. My mother had reached us by then and stood so that she was blocking us from the rest of the people in the square.