Witchtown

by Cory Putman Oakes

  She was already wrapped in Talya’s arms when Kellen and I burst into the space on top of the shop. And even though she was coughing like crazy, she didn’t seem hurt. I breathed a giant sigh of relief.

  Then I remembered that we were still trapped inside a burning building.

  “Help me get her downstairs!” Talya yelled, starting to cough as well.

  We were all coughing now, and my eyes were watering so much it was hard to see. Holding a hand over my nose and mouth—​for whatever good that would do—​I peered down the stairs. All I could see were flames. The fire must have reached the roof, because debris was raining down on the shop floor.

  Kellen was looking over my shoulder.

  “If we run—” he started, but cut himself off as a smoldering beam fell at the base of the stairs, sending a cloud of heat and smoke up at us.

  We both jumped backwards, exchanging identical looks of panic. No way were we getting out through that inferno. And there was no exit to the outside from up here.

  But we had more immediate problems. Smoke rises. Aimee and Talya were just a few feet away from me, but I could barely see them. And it was getting harder not to choke with every breath I took.

  Don’t panic, Macie, I scolded myself. Whatever you do, don’t panic.

  I looked frantically around the small living area.

  “The bathroom!”

  The closet-size bathroom was barely big enough to fit all of us. But the door had been shut, so it provided a blissfully smoke-free pocket of air. We piled inside and I climbed up on the toilet to open the postcard-size window near the ceiling. It was far too small for any of us—​even Aimee—​to fit through, but it let in a welcome trickle of fresh air.

  “People would have seen that explosion, right?” I asked. I peered out the window and saw nothing but thatch. Dry, flammable, easily ignitable thatch. I climbed down from the toilet. “Someone will come and help us?”

  Talya and Kellen looked at each other.

  “Witchtown doesn’t have a fire department,” Talya said quietly.

  I just stared at her.

  A rhythmic bong bong sound started coming through the open window.

  “What’s that?” asked Aimee, from Talya’s lap. They were sitting on the floor.

  “It’s the bells,” Kellen answered, as he shoved paper towels into the crack beneath the door to keep the smoke out. “The bells on the Tor. They ring when the town is in danger.”

  Percy had hung the wreath on the front of the building. At the mayor’s insistence, he had said. But it wasn’t the mayor who had put that idea into his head. It had to have been my mother. How else would she have known that it would explode with just a spark?

  And there was an identical wreath on every building in the square. If the fire spread . . .

  I wondered briefly what the ring of fire around the town square would look like. If the fire got out of control enough for that to happen, nobody in this room would be alive to see it.

  “Are we going to die?” Aimee asked, her eyes bright with tears.

  “No,” Talya assured her, not sounding sure at all as she pulled her cousin’s curly head closer.

  “No,” Kellen echoed. “No, Aimee, we’re not going to die. Macie is going to save us.”

  “Me?” I exclaimed, feeling a rising sense of terror at the thought that I was somehow responsible for getting us out of this. “What about you? You’re always prepared for everything. You always have the exact thing everybody needs right when they need it. You must have brought something with you that can help us!”

  “I did. I brought you.”

  He finished cramming the last of the towels under the door and turned to me. His expression was tense but controlled. “This fire is too big for any Learned to put out. We need a Natural.”

  I stared at him.

  “I can’t! I tried when Pendle Bishop set the circle on fire. I wanted to put it out but I couldn’t! Nothing happened!”

  Kellen said nothing in reply and for a second, I saw a trace of the same panic I was feeling cross his face.

  But then it was gone, and he was holding both of my hands.

  “You used your power before. In Seattle, remember? The rain?”

  “The flood,” I corrected him.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Talya said impatiently, still holding Aimee close. “You tapped into your power then, and you can do it again. Think about that day. What did you do to make it rain?”

  I thought hard. Aimee began to cry again. The sound tugged at my heart and I tried desperately to block it out. I closed my eyes. It was hard to remember. I had stood in front of the window. I had been so angry. I had felt it in every part of my body, just like earlier today, when the magic had filled me and I had been afraid I was about to burst. I did not feel that way now.

  “I felt different then,” I said.

  “How?” Kellen asked. “What was different?”

  He was being patient with me. The effort that it was taking for him to do so was plain on his face. But he was doing it. Even though we were probably all about to be burned alive. If I had been in his place, I would have grabbed me and shaken me until my brain scrambled. But that wasn’t Kellen’s style.

  “What was different?” he pressed me again.

  “I was angry.”

  “Angry at who?” he prompted, trying to encourage the memory.

  “My mother,” I recalled. “She wouldn’t tell me about my father.”

  Never say that word to me, Macie, she had said. You don’t have a father. I never want to hear you say that word again.

  “You were emotional,” Talya inferred, drawing me back into the here and now. Which, unfortunately, was becoming hotter and more smoke filled by the second, in spite of the towels under the door. “Okay, so emotion is the key to unlocking your power. That’s common.”

  I coughed. My eyes were starting to water like crazy.

  Aimee coughed too. We all shifted position so Talya could set her on top of the toilet and angle her face up toward the open window.

  Kellen squeezed my hands.

  “Let’s talk this out,” Kellen said, in the same, patient teacher voice as before. “You do realize that we’re probably going to die here? Do you have any emotions about that?”

  I could barely see him now, through all the smoke. Aimee started to whimper again, and another wave of panic shot through me.

  This is it. This is how we’re going to die.

  “Macie! Work with me!” Kellen sputtered, as a hint of tension burst through his mask of calm.

  “I’m trying!”

  I closed my eyes. I tried reaching for the coiled spring, for the well of power that had returned to me. It was still there. I could see it in my mind’s eye. I could feel it, in the same weird sort of way that you know your stomach is there even if you can’t pinpoint how you know. But I could also feel the wall. The damned wall was keeping whatever power I had in solitary confinement.

  Kellen squeezed my hands again and Talya left Aimee standing on the toilet to come stand beside us.

  “Don’t you see, Macie? It’s your mother. She’s still in your head,” she said. “If she can’t have your power for herself, she wants to make you fear it. She wants to make you so afraid that you won’t even touch it. Don’t let her do it. None of it was your fault.”

  “The flood—” I started.

  “Was not your fault,” Kellen said firmly. “You were young, untrained. And your father leaving wasn’t your fault either. None of it was your fault—” he paused, and took a deep breath. “Any more than what happened to my mother was my fault.”

  “I thought you said that was your fault,” I said.

  “I lied,” he said, and even with all of the smoke, I could see the ghost of a grin on his face. “What happened back then, whatever we did, that was then. It’s what we do now that matters. Right now, Macie.”

  He grabbed me around the shoulders and pulled me into him. I could barely see and my
head had grown foggy, but I could feel his arms around me, and Talya’s too, even as I felt myself drifting away, leaving my body behind and floating up through the burning roof above our heads.

  I could see the town, as if I was looking down on it from above. There was a crowd of people gathered in front of the Depot. I could see everyone. Gayle, her face tight with fear; Maire and Brooke, both industriously trying to get everybody organized; Autumn and Royce; even Odin was there. They were forming a hasty circle in front of the building. When they had all linked hands, they started chanting.

  Chanting for rain. On the eve of Summer Solstice.

  Witches are nothing if not optimists.

  I felt a surge of love for them at that moment. For all of them. For the whole town. Every wacky square inch of it. My love moved me to tears.

  “You can do it,” Kellen’s voice whispered in my ear. His voice sounded dizzy, as if he was about to pass out.

  “I know you can do it, Macie,” Talya added, sounding equally woozy.

  My mother had never believed in me. But Kellen and Talya did. The town did. And maybe that was the difference. I had things and people to protect now.

  My coil of power was still there, still untouchable behind its wall. And I thought of something that Kellen had said once, when he had been talking about my mother.

  She’s a Natural. Magic is like breathing to her.

  I stopped trying to force down the wall. I thought about all the people below in the square. I thought of the town. This dream of a town. This silly, romantic, magic-infused vision of a town. I breathed.

  And the wall shattered.

  I felt the spring begin to uncoil, letting loose whatever it was that Pendle Bishop had thrown at me earlier. I let it out, pouring it all down into the square, into Maire, who stood at the very center of the circle, arms raised. As though she was waiting for me.

  Her eyes flew open as the first thunderclap sounded.

  Suddenly, I was back on the floor of the bathroom. Kellen’s forehead was pressed against mine and Talya’s arm was slung around my waist.

  There was a second thunderclap.

  “Rain!” Aimee yelled, pointing out the tiny window and jumping up and down on the toilet. “Rain!”

  I looked up. The smoke had begun to dissipate. Water was pouring through the window, spilling onto Aimee’s shoes and down to the floor, where it pooled around my jeans.

  Talya jumped up to hug Aimee. Kellen didn’t move; he was staring down at me with an expression I had never seen before. It was the most beautiful combination of relief and triumph I could have imagined. It was even better than his most Kellen-like smile.

  “I breathed,” I gasped up at him, just before I collapsed into his arms.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Two days passed before the Depot was declared structurally sound enough for me to enter.

  There was a giant hole in the front of the building, where the wreath had hung. A large part of the roof had been burned off, and most of the upstairs living area had been flooded by the sudden deluge of rain I had called up. The main room downstairs was dry but littered with charred debris. I busied myself there, hoping I could tidy up my thoughts as easily as I could sweep up the remnants of the fire and our ritual.

  My mother had vanished during the fire. Her things were gone from the apartment. Except for her silver Natural ring, which I found sitting on the kitchen table.

  I hadn’t been able to bring myself to touch it. I wasn’t sure if I was ever going to be the sort of Natural who wore the ring.

  I had spent the last few nights at the apartment by myself. On the couch. I also wasn’t sure if I was ever going to be able to go into that bedroom again. Not when I knew it would still smell like cinnamon, like her. Odin had mentioned something about my moving in with him, Talya, and Aimee. I thought maybe I should take him up on that. At least until the upstairs space in the Depot could be repaired. I made a mental note to bring the subject up with Talya when we met up for pizza later.

  While I was sweeping up at the Depot, I found the remains of our necklaces. Thanks to the fire, they were now two twin puddles of silver, dotted with blue-gray shards of shattered moonstone. They were probably a permanent feature; I couldn’t begin to think of how I would remove them from the concrete floor. Maybe I could pass them off as mosaics.

  Maybe I would invest in a rug.

  I had swept all of the rowan branches into a pile, and I was looking around for a garbage bag, when I found the box of herbs the previous tenant had left behind.

  It was empty.

  There was a garbage can beside it, filled to the brim with bags of the cheap basil that somebody—​I still wasn’t sure who—​had tried to pass off as other herbs. The remaining herbs, the legitimate stuff that had merely been mislabeled, had all been carefully sorted and laid out in neat rows on the floor. Ready for proper labeling and display.

  I knew for a fact that I had been the first person allowed back into the Depot after the fire. The first living person, that is.

  “Thank you, Bradley,” I said softly.

  I found a garbage bag and was stuffing the last of the rowan into it when Kellen walked in.

  “Where have you been?” I asked. I hadn’t seen him since I had woken up with my head in his lap, after the townspeople had managed to clear enough of the debris off the Depot stairway to get us out. And then, I had only woken up for long enough to realize I was safe, and to see Royce helping Talya and Aimee out of the Depot, before I passed out again.

  “I went to see my dad,” he said matter-of-factly. “The rain washed most of the Zealot village away. The church is still there, but most of the congregation decided to call it quits and go protest somewhere else. My dad is leaving today. My uncle is going with him.”

  “And you?” I asked, not looking up from the rowan.

  “I’m not sure,” he started, and I had to remind myself to take a breath. “I bumped into Gayle and Maire on the way here. They said something about maybe taking me in.”

  I looked up at him, and he shrugged.

  “It’s been a long time since I’ve had a mom. Maybe it’ll be nice to have two.”

  “But you’re staying here?” I asked. I needed to hear him say the words.

  “Yes,” he said, and he smiled that irritatingly cocky grin of his. “I’m staying here. This is my home. It may not have started out that way, but . . .”

  He spread his hands as if to say, What are you going to do?

  “I understand the feeling,” I said.

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “So you’ll be staying here as well?”

  I pulled a piece of paper out of my back pocket.

  “The mayor said she’s going to transfer the Depot lease to me. I’m headed over to see her after this. Since I’m a minor, I’ll have to get a cosigner to make it legally binding. I was hoping one of your new moms could help me with that.”

  “But you’re staying?” he pressed me.

  Maybe he needed to hear the words too.

  I grinned at him.

  “Yes.”

  “Good,” he said. His attention shifted to the floor and he pointed to the urn, which was sitting at the base of the counter, badly burned but intact. “After all, I did rob a perfectly respectable woman’s grave for you.”

  I brushed the remains of the rowan off my hands and picked up the urn.

  “That’s right, you did. That wasn’t very Christian of you.”

  Kellen slipped an arm around my waist and pulled me into him, urn and all. He leaned down to kiss me. Just before our lips met, he rolled his eyes.

  “Religion,” he scoffed. “Does it really matter what kind of label you put on it? They’re all the same, you know.”

  I pressed my lips to his. I wasn’t going to argue with him, even though I knew in my heart of hearts that I would never believe that.

  Not a witch like me.

  “I found something.”

  Brooke pushed a small
, rectangular piece of paper across her desk and into my outstretched hand.

  “What is it?” I asked, without looking.

  “An account, in your mother’s name. She opened it at the Witchtown Bank just after you got here.”

  I looked down at the paper. It looked like a deposit slip. But it was the amount that caught my eye.

  Twelve thousand dollars. All the money we had in the world. The sum total of our lives of thievery. We had never been very good about saving.

  The mayor sat back in her chair.

  “I wasn’t sure what to do with it. I know you don’t want to file a missing person report on her. I respect your wishes on that. Why involve the authorities when we don’t have to? So I thought I’d transfer the money into a new account. One that’s in your name.”

  I looked at Brooke strangely. I had just assumed my mother had taken the money with her when she left. I hadn’t known about the account. Why was she telling me about it now?

  When I just continued to stare at her, she tucked a chunk of her acid blond hair behind her ear and cleared her throat.

  “The investors have agreed to back Witchtown,” she informed me, as though that fact was totally unrelated to what we had been discussing. “I’d hate for anything to derail our agreement at this stage.”

  I thought of the forged books that my mother had prepared; the ones Brooke had shown to the investors. And the vault, which she had never managed to open.

  Twelve thousand dollars. The price of my silence?

  I’d take it. But not for myself.

  I took a deep breath.

  “Eight hundred and fourteen dollars of that belongs to you,” I informed Brooke, just a touch uneasily. “For . . . um, the beautification project.”

  The mayor gave me a look that was too tired to be accusatory. Percy’s arrest had taken a lot out of her. As had his confession that all this time, he had been the one who had been sabotaging Witchtown. To say nothing of his very public affair with my mother. Percy was now sitting in the one lonely cell of the Witchtown Police Department.