by Laura Marie
It was still early days, though. It had only been two weeks. Time would tell, but at least the future looked bright.
After school, Chloe and I said our goodbyes before she headed home and I made my way to Pebble Beach. I hadn’t been there in a while to practice my magic, and I felt way overdue.
I was about to walk down the path that led to the beach when Calder appeared.
“Hi,” he said, smiling. “Where are you going?”
I gestured to the beach. “It’s been a while since I’ve practiced my magic.”
“Can I join you?” he asked.
I nodded. Calder and I hadn’t been spending a lot of time together lately. He hadn’t approved of my magic. Or at least, he hadn’t minded it, but he hadn’t wanted to contradict the coven.
But we were friends again.
We walked onto the beach together, and I sat down in the warm sand. The weather had been perfect again since we had taken on Dmitri. When everything was okay, so was the weather. I still had to figure out how to stop my magic from translating into a storm when I was upset.
“So, show me this new magic you’re so set on practicing against Mirta’s will,” Calder said.
“Are you sure you want a part of this?” I asked Calder. “The coven won’t agree.”
He pulled up his shoulders. “We’re not with the coven now, are we?”
I grinned. He was right.
“Okay.”
I focused on my magic. It was so much easier now to reach down and grab it. It was as if I had shaken it loose on Colemeda Bluff.
As we watched, clouds started to form and darken, with lightning playing in the sky.
“You’re always so angry,” Calder said.
“I’m not,” I argued.
Calder shook his head. “Your magic is strong, E, but you forget the beauty. Remember what I told you.”
I nodded. Calder had been the one to show me that my fire magic could be beautiful, too. That it wasn’t only about destruction.
But he couldn’t show me with this. He didn’t have the same kind of power as I did now.
“Here,” Calder said.
He offered me a hand and helped me up. When I stood, he moved behind me. He wrapped his arms around my body and put his hands on mine, so they were cupped in his palms. I was aware of how close he was, the heat radiating from his cheek against mine.
“Do it again,” he said.
I brought the clouds back, the thunder, the lightning. Calder focused his magic and piggybacked on mine, turning the storm I created into a thing of beauty. Instead of storm clouds, we built stacked clouds that were white and fluffy. They had a pink sheen to them, and a moment later snow started falling from the sky, fluttering down in patterns.
“How do you do it?” I asked. “How do you always find beauty in everything?”
Calder let go of me, and I wished he would come back.
“It’s my gift, I guess,” he said. “We all have one.”
“Yeah? What’s mine?”
“Fearlessness, Emily Frank. You aren’t scared of anything.”
I laughed. He was right. I feared nothing. Maybe it made me do stupid things, but I always came out on the other end.
After spending the afternoon together, Calder finally had to go, and I walked back home. It was great being able to go out again. My mom had decided after two weeks to lift my jail sentence.
When I arrived home, a few cars were parked in the driveway. I frowned and skipped up the steps to the front door. My mom was still at work as far as I knew, which could only mean one thing.
Victor.
Sure as shit, he sat in our living room conducting a meeting with some of the other humans from around the neighborhood. I recognized them because my mom spent time with them sometimes.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“A neighborhood watch meeting,” Victor said as if it was normal and waved me away.
Maybe that would have been fine if we’d actually had a neighborhood watch.
I left the room, but just outside the door I stopped and listened. I wanted to know what they were saying.
“We can’t let something like this happen again,” Victor said. “The species are so caught up in their personal fights, the humans end up being collateral damage, and that’s not going to work for us anymore.”
The group cheered as if Victor was rallying them up for a protest or something.
“What will we call ourselves?” one of them asked.
“The Supernatural Neighborhood Watch,” another said, “SNW.”
“That sounds dumb,” another one said.
“It doesn’t matter what we’re called,” Victor interrupted them.
“What matters is that we don’t allow the preternatural community to get away with murder, literally. We can’t let them think they’re better than we are just because they have magic.”
What the hell? I couldn’t believe Victor was doing this. In my own house. When I was a witch. Didn’t he care that I was a part of the preternatural community? God, he could have hosted the meeting at his own place, at least.
I waited in my room until my mom came home. By the time she arrived, the meeting had dispersed, and only Victor had stayed behind.
I called my mom into the room.
“Can I talk to you about this neighborhood watch thing?” I asked.
“Sure,” my mom said. “Do you want to get involved?”
“What? No. Did you forget I’m a witch, Mom?”
My mom sighed. “Of course not.”
“How can you be okay with this?”
“I happen to agree with him,” my mom said, and I gaped at her. “I think he’s right.”
“You can’t be serious. “I couldn’t believe where she was going with this. “It’s not weird to you that your boyfriend will be hunting your daughter?”
My mom laughed. “Don’t be melodramatic, Emily. It’s not like they’re out hunting vampires and werewolves, burning witches at the stake. The humans are just upset about how many lives were lost lately, and they want to stop that from happening again.”
“What about the police? They’re all involved now, right?”
My mom shook her head. “Who knows where they stand? We all know the cloaking spells the witches cast make the humans apathetic. It’s not fair that we are the ones that always draw the short straw because we don’t have magic.”
This was ridiculous. My mom was supposed to be on my side, not side against me. Since when was this household split down the middle because we weren’t the same species?
“Victor means well, Em. I know you don’t like him, but give him a shot. He has everyone’s best interest at heart.”
“Yeah, as long as they’re human.”
My mom sighed. “I’m not going to fight with you. Not everything is a personal affront, sweetheart.”
She turned around and left my room, ending the conversation.
I was furious. I didn’t care what my mom said, being with Victor when he was so obviously against me and my kind was an insult. My mom and I were not in a good space, and this only made it that much worse.
My mom walked to the kitchen to start cooking. We would eat soon, playing happy family, even though we were far from being one.
I walked out of the house. I couldn’t run to Pebble Beach again, but I needed the fresh air.
It was just one thing after the next, wasn’t it?
Anger built inside of me and I expected my fire to appear. It did, my palms bursting into flames, and I let it consume my body for a moment, turning into a ball of fire.
The earth trembled beneath my feet, a roar coming from underground, and I froze.
What was that? Every time this had happened before, I had been with Reece. Somehow, I had thought it was he. But I was alone now.
And it was happening again.
I tried to control what was happening. I felt the power coursing through the earth beneath my feet, but I couldn’t catch it.
I couldn’t do anything with it.
Whatever was happening, I wasn’t in control of it yet.
So, what else was new?
* * *
THE END
Also by Laura Marie
THE TEEN WITCH CHRONICLES
THE TEEN WITCH: REBIRTH
* * *
THE TEEN WITCH: INFERNO
* * *
THE TEEN WITCH: TEMPEST
Young Adult & Urban Fantasy Author
LAURA MARIE
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