by Cate Martin
"Yeah," Brianna said absently, either to me or to the book.
"I tried looking in the web world. I couldn't find anything odd. Although apparently, I have to learn how to keep myself breathing while I'm in the web world. I didn't expect that to be a thing."
Brianna looked up at me sharply. "You astrally projected?"
"Did I?" I had no idea what exactly that meant.
"You astrally projected without protecting your physical form first?"
"I guess maybe?" I said.
"Either you did, or you didn't," Brianna said.
"How can I tell?" I asked.
"Ugh, Amanda!" Brianna said, circling the table to drop the book she was holding next to her journal. "I pulled every conceivable book I could find in this library about anything related to the sort of magic you said you could do. Didn't you read any of them?"
"I tried," I said, not meeting her eyes. "They were big books. Most of it didn't sound like what I did, so…"
"So you gave up," Brianna said with a sigh. "After what, four books? Five?"
I said nothing.
The correct answer was two.
"I even flagged the ones I thought you should start with, the more generalized ones. I know the very top book covered the dangers of astral projection. You did read it, didn't you?"
"I tried," I said lamely.
"Amanda, honestly!" Brianna said, throwing up her hands. She looked so frustrated as if she were about to start crying. The atmosphere in the library was suddenly getting very uncomfortable. "I try to help you out as much as I can, but it just never feels like you're doing your part."
"I'm way behind you and Sophie in learning this stuff," I said. "It's only been a couple of months."
"But you don't seem to be trying," Brianna said. "I have so much to go through here it's completely overwhelming, and then you are constantly wanting me to help you. And it's not just pointing you in the right direction. You want me to hold your hand every step of the way. To stand behind you while you read and explain every single thing."
"I'm not that bad," I said.
"Amanda, I'm not going to be able to master your power for you. I don't know a thing about it. It's a very rare sort of magic. And I can't really know what's useful to you because I don't have your perspective of actually having the power and seeing the world your way. I can't master a power I don't even possess and then teach it to you. I just can't. I can't do it."
"Okay, okay," I said, holding up my hands as if I could stave off Brianna's impending emotional collapse.
"I have so much work to do!" she all but wailed, gesturing vaguely at the mountain of books on the table.
"I'm sorry," I said. "It's okay. I'll figure it out. Somehow."
She was still talking, rambling on and on, but this time just to herself. Somehow that involved more facial expressions and gestures than she used when talking to others. It was kind of scary to watch, like she was going to have a complete mental break at any moment.
But there was nothing I could do but make things worse, so I quietly retreated from the library. I thought about making her more tea and bringing it up as a peace offering, but then her monologue kicked up to a hysterical level, and I thought it best to just leave her be.
I could sneak in through the other door and get to the little table in the back that was my workstation, where all of the books Brianna had found for me were arrayed in neat stacks, largely undisturbed since she had put them there.
But I doubted I would find them any more enlightening than I had before. It was a shame no one had done any YouTube channels on channeling one's rare time magic or understanding the world when you perceived it as a web of energy and threads that joined to tell stories. That might be really helpful.
But alas, I was stuck with musty all books written in antiquated English with far too many asides in French, Latin, and Greek.
Emotional outbursts aside, I knew Brianna's frustration wasn't so much that I was interrupting her as that she really wasn't able to help me. She really couldn't understand my magic, and I couldn't explain it well enough for her to grasp it. She really, truly wanted to help me. She just couldn't.
I don't think it was a feeling she was used to. She clearly didn't like it. I felt bad for her.
Which I guess is a little weird. I was the one who needed help, and yet I felt sympathy for her because she couldn't help me.
But then, I had other avenues to getting help. I wasn't having a book problem, after all. I was having a problem understanding what I was feeling and perceiving. And that was really more Sophie's domain anyway.
Surely Sophie wouldn't mind having her evening interrupted.
Chapter 4
After searching the rest of the house and even going back out into the wind to look in the cellar, I finally found Sophie in the attic.
Just where I had left her. I probably should have started there, logically. I guess my encounter with Brianna had left me more rattled than I had thought.
I had put on a hoodie before going out into the backyard to check the cellar, and I was still wearing it as I climbed the steps to the attic. Good thing, too. Even though Sophie was still in that space, she was no longer warming it with scent-laden New Orleans breezes. It was, in fact, quite cold.
But apparently, that was deliberate, for whatever reason. Sophie was wearing a warmup jacket over her normal clothes. Although it had no team name on the back, it reminded me of what the dancers in my high school had worn from time to time. She even had old school leg warmers pulled up over the calves of her skinny jeans, slouching low over her canvas shoes. A fuzzy headband sat low on her head to cover her ears.
If I tried to wear a band like that, it would make my hair jut up like the bride of Frankenstein. But not Sophie. Her bangs were pushed back from her forehead but in a perfect pompadour wave.
Honestly, I don't know how she ever got through life without everyone knowing she was a witch. Her hair game just wasn't natural.
She was turned mostly away from me as I approached the doorway and I stopped just short of going into the room. I admit I was a little gunshy about interrupting and breaking her focus. Clearly, I had been wrong about how engrossed in her task Brianna had been. I kept still so I wouldn't distract Sophie out of the corner of her eye.
She had her own eyes closed, though, and looked like she was murmuring something to herself. Then she straightened her back and raised her wand. She moved it slowly through the air in a long loop, creating another ribbon, this one of a lovely dusky rose color. It seemed to be having trouble streaming out of the end of the wand, however. It bunched and knotted, and Sophie's little shaking gestures with her wand weren't helping it get loose.
Then she made a sweeping gesture with her other hand, a long motion that started under the elbow of her wand hand then extended out and up, ending in a delicate pose with her elbow up but her hand behind her head.
The ribbon ruffled out of the wand tip and spread out full-length parallel to the floor. It rippled as if in a breeze, and for just a second I once more smelled jasmine with hints of coffee and pastries.
Then Sophie gave a loud groan of frustration and even stamped a foot. She brought both of her arms down with a cutting gesture, and the ribbon didn't crumble to pretty bits like before.
It caught fire and exploded.
Which I thought was really impressive, but Sophie was stomping around perhaps partly to warm her feet but clearly mainly in anger about something.
She took a deep breath and went back to the center of the room, closing her eyes to try again. Again the ribbon started to form but then just hung wrapped around the tip, unable to pull free. This time she raised both of her arms at once, and when she followed through on that motion by rising up on her toes ribbon after ribbon started flying out of the end of her wand, all dancing around the attic like a family of long-tailed birds.
But Sophie's frustration this time wasn't so much a groan as a scream, and she flung both of her arms wide, b
lasting the entire room with a hot wind that dripped with humidity and reeked of urine and vomit.
I was caught off guard and took too deep of a breath of that noxious mix and found myself coughing. Sophie spun to face me, her face flushing darkly.
Ooh, she was angry. I suddenly knew how those ribbons felt. If I could set myself on fire and explode just to make her shift her gaze away from me, I would.
"Sorry, sorry," I said, still coughing at the thick reek of the air. "I didn't mean to interrupt. You looked like you were doing well a second ago."
"I was not," Sophie said. As usual, when her emotions were high, her Creole accent was thicker. "I was cheating."
"Cheating? How can you cheat with magic?" I asked.
"I'm meant to be using the wand as a focus," Sophie said, glaring at the wand in her hand. "But instead I keep shifting back to dance magic. What I already know. I'll never get stronger if I don't stop doing the easy thing."
"You might be being a little hard on yourself," I said, then almost flinched as that gaze swept back up on me.
"Why are you here?" Sophie asked.
"I wanted…" I stammered, then fell silent. Nothing on earth was going to make me say the word 'help' now. I started again. "I wanted to consult with you on a matter."
"Consult," Sophie repeated. She was getting calmer. She never did stay angry for long, but I was still nervous.
"I felt something weird when I was in the building next door," I said. "I tried some of the meditation techniques you taught me, and I managed to get into the altered state where I can perceive the web world without being forced into it by nearly dying."
I paused, a part of me hoping she would be impressed. But she just looked at me, waiting for me to continue.
"The problem was I stayed in that state too long, and I wasn't paying enough attention to my body," I said. "Brianna called it astral projection? Do you know what that is?"
"Roughly," Sophie said with a shrug.
"Ah," I said. "Have you ever done it?"
"No," Sophie said. For some reason that seemed to make her frustrated again, like I was pointing out another limitation to her magic. Which I absolutely wasn't doing, but there didn't seem to be any way to say that without, in fact, pointing in that direction.
So I pressed on. "I'm hoping we can work on some techniques together."
Sophie sighed and pressed a hand to her forehead, knocking the headband askew.
"When you have time," I rushed to add. "I just need someone to watch my body while I try moving over to that other place. The web world. To be sure I'm safe."
"What good would that do?" Sophie asked.
I suspected a trap. There was an edge to her voice that said any answer I gave to that was going to be a wrong one. But I gave it a shot. "Once I work out the basics with your…" - not help - "assistance, I should be able to take it from there."
"Will you?" Sophie said.
"Yes," I said.
"Will you really? You're going to practice? Really practice?"
"Yes," I said again.
"Well, that would be lovely to see," Sophie said.
"I practice," I said. Even to my own ears I sounded sullen.
"When one of us stands over you, yes, I guess you practice," Sophie said.
"I practice on my own too," I said. Now I was starting to get annoyed.
"Not much," Sophie shot back.
"I do too," I said. "How would you know if you're not there?"
"Because when someone practices, they get better at things. And not just the easy things. They get better at the hard things," she said.
"I'm at a disadvantage," I said. "I started years behind you and Brianna."
"So we're all very aware," Sophie said.
"Maybe we should talk about this some other time," I said, taking half a step back.
"Yes, run along. Catch me or Brianna when we're in a better mood and coax us into doing all the heavy lifting for you again.”
I literally bit my tongue. I didn't want to get into a fight. But it really felt like Sophie was attacking me out of nowhere. She and Brianna had always been so supportive of the fact that, unlike them, I hadn't grown up knowing about the existence of magic. I didn't have the background to easily pick these things up now. But I was trying. I was struggling, but I was always trying.
"Is this some weird spell?" I murmured to myself. "You're both acting so strangely."
"We're both past the point of carrying your weight, and you find that strange?" Sophie asked.
"No, not that," I said, scrambling to regain control of the conversation. "I just felt something strange when I was at Nick's place, a sudden pain in my head out of nowhere. It went away just as suddenly as it came, but it was so intense when it happened it really felt like an attack."
"If someone were attacking you, why would they just stop?" Sophie asked. Her anger was shifting back down to annoyance and frustration, but I could deal with those.
"I don't know what it was. That's what I'm trying to figure out, what it was. I went into the web world to see if anything looked magical or malignant or whatever. But I don't really know enough about how that world works in relation to this one to be sure of anything. I mean, I saw something there, but I don't know what it was."
"And this was next door?" Sophie asked.
"In the building next door, on the second floor in the back," I said.
Sophie half-closed her eyes for a moment, and I imagined she was reaching out with her senses. Maybe she would feel it too, what I had felt when I had peaked inside the empty apartment.
But Sophie just opened her eyes again and looked straight at me as she tucked her wand away behind her.
"It's nothing," she said.
"Nothing?"
"Nothing to do with us," she clarified. "The time bridge is exactly as it should be. Nothing is moving through it; nothing is being affected by it."
"But I didn't think this was related to the time bridge," I said.
"Then we really don't need to worry about it," Sophie said.
"But it still might be magic," I insisted.
"We have a calling," Sophie said, leaving the attic to stand toe to toe with me at the top of the stairs. "We have a mission. One only we can do. That calling is not to control all magic in the known world. It's to maintain that passage through time, to stand as gatekeepers between 1927 and today. Maybe what you perceived was a magic thing. The world is full of magic things. The vast, vast majority of them are no business of ours."
Sophie brushed past me to head down the stairs, but I just couldn't let it go.
"What if something really was attacking me?" I asked.
She paused at the landing but didn't look back up at me. "If you think you're in danger going to Nick's place, the answer is very simple. Don't go to Nick's."
Then she went down the rest of the stairs and disappeared on the third floor.
I had the urge to just sit down where I was, to slump into a fugue state there at the top of the steps and just never come out of it.
But it was far too cold for that. I huddled down deeper inside my hoodie and headed down the stairs myself.
Chapter 5
I went into my bedroom and shut the door, still half entertaining the notion of settling into a fugue state either in the chair by the fireplace or maybe just in the bed - in which case we could just call it sleep - when I gave a strangled gasp and fell to my knees.
It wasn't my head this time. No sensation of having to hold my skull together. No, this time it was like a line of fire stretched across my throat, burning deeper into my neck even as my hands reached up to close around it. To hold something in.
Blood, I suppose. My hands felt wet and sticky as if coated by a hot spray.
I didn't want to look.
But I couldn't keep my eyes closed tight forever. Not that having them open was going to show me any way to help my situation. I was rapidly running out of breath, my throat unable to pass any air through to my lungs.
It felt a bit like drowning and a bit like being strangled both at once.
The floor slammed into me, and I realized I had fallen to my side.
Then I did open my eyes and found myself back in the world of webs. I couldn't draw a breath, but in this place, I didn't need to.
I turned to look down at my own body, but the threads that ran through it were all entirely normal. As far as I could tell, there was nothing wrong with me. No injury, no spell. And yet, clearly, something was happening.
I looked around, but the house around me was almost blinding in its dense network or connections. It was filled with magic, yes, but it was more than that. It was as if the house existed in every time at once, and I saw them all overlapping each other, adding their brightness to each other.
It was too much. I turned my attention back to my body and was about to attempt to settle back into it when something else commanded my attention.
I looked towards the building next door, thinking it was the object in the empty apartment that was calling me, but that wasn't it. It was something closer, inside the house. Not in my room or on my floor, but close.
Then my eyes were opening, my real eyes, and I pushed myself up off of the hardwood floor.
I was going to have a bruise, I was sure. My shoulder and ribs were protesting that fall.
I sat up straighter, listening for the sound of running footsteps. I thought I had cried out when the pain struck me. I knew there would have been a thump when I fell. But no one was coming to investigate.
Well, whatever.
I got back to my feet then headed back down the hallway, moving slowly as my sore body protested, but the aches were already fading. Just another illusion.
Now, where had that thing been that had called out to me? Below me, but just a bit. Inside the house. I went to the stairs and slipped down to the second floor, careful not to make any sound as I crept past the open doors to the library.
Another door was also open: the door to Miss Zenobia's office. I didn't know if Mr. Trevor kept it locked or not. I had assumed locked, but then I had never tried to go in there. I hadn't had any reason to. I had certainly never seen that door just standing open.