A Wicked Magic

by Sasha Laurens

  Alexa yawned. She’d stayed up texting Dan about her meet-up with Liss—how Liss had just assumed Dan was going to help her, like Dan didn’t have any of her own opinions or thoughts or anything about that, and then basically freaked out when Dan stood up to her, which she totally deserved. It wasn’t unusual for them to text until one of them fell asleep, but Alexa made a special point of it when Dan was in a dark mood. Last night, even after Dan fell asleep, Alexa couldn’t. Alexa didn’t know the full story of what went on between Dan and Liss. She did know that when Liss came up, Dan got this look like she was nauseous from a gut punch and expecting another, and Alexa hated to think of her alone with her thoughts in that little attic room.

  She first guessed that Dan was depressed not long after they met. She could tell from the way Dan always said she was doing good or having a chill weekend or just fine, with this strange and perfect lightness that made you want to believe her. Growing up with Kim, Alexa learned how to tell lies like that—lies that presented a reality a lot nicer than the one everyone knew you were in, lies that rolled off your tongue without hesitation because you needed them. Four months into their friendship, Dan had still never talked outright about it. If there were rules about when and how to confront your best friend about her depression, Alexa didn’t know them. But she was beginning to think she should find out.

  Alexa was so lost in thought that she almost didn’t realize class had ended. Half the kids had left and she was still packing up, which meant she heard it when the post-class conversation shifted from controlled chaos to something quiet and covert, the kind of half-whispered voices that meant only one thing: gossip.

  Normally, she would have ignored it. Alexa almost never knew who they were gossiping about. She hadn’t made any friends at North Coast outside Dan, mainly because Alexa rarely tried to be friendly, and when she did, she didn’t quite get to friendly friendly. Just sort of like, not glaring at you, which wasn’t for everybody. But today there was the hiss of something in their voices that made Alexa turn to the group of girls at the back of the room and ask, “What’re you talking about?”

  One of the girls gave Alexa a look that did not entirely conceal her excitement. “A girl from St. Ignatius disappeared last night.”

  “What do you mean disappeared?”

  “You know, like, poof, gone? She’s missing. They found her car by the side of the road a few miles south of Gratton. They don’t know if it’s a kidnapping or whatever. Super scary.”

  Alexa didn’t wait to hear their theories about who it was. She grabbed her stuff and went to look for Dan.

  Alexa decided to play it cool. That would be the best way to make it seem like Dan’s fears were unfounded, because Alexa hadn’t leapt to the exact same conclusion.

  Although naturally she had. Alexa only knew one student at St. Ignatius, but that student was on a solo quest to locate her runaway boyfriend. Liss’s disappearance had the potential to unravel Dan completely, and Alexa didn’t know if either of them would have the capacity to put her back together.

  She could not let that happen. Dan was her first real friend—someone who would spend a weekend with her watching a Buffy marathon or go to midnight showings or laugh at her whining about how sore her boobs got before her period. Sometimes they would actually sit around talking and painting their nails, like they’d stumbled onto the set of a movie about teenagers. All of it was silly to care about, but only if you could take it for granted.

  Alexa said the name under her breath like a curse: Liss.

  Dan’s locker hung open, exposing its innards to the world: a photo collage of Dan’s favorite bands (so many boys in eyeliner), old lunch containers she forgot to bring home, piles of papers and broken binders that she’d managed to amass with astonishing speed as soon as the semester started. Dan was standing in front of this mess, clutching the locker door hard enough that the metal edge was probably digging into her hand; there were fresh scabs on her knuckles. She wore the sick, desperate look she always got when she was unhappy, but she was furtively scanning the hallway, straining for any overheard shred of information about the missing girl.

  “What’s up?” Alexa asked breezily.

  Dan released her death grip on the locker and crossed her arms. “Did you hear that a girl from St. Ignatius went missing last night? Everyone’s talking about it.”

  “They’ll find whoever it is. Don’t worry.”

  The look she got from Dan was a flash of misery so unvarnished, Alexa’s breath caught in her throat. She pulled Dan into a hug. Alexa could practically feel the tightness in Dan’s chest, pressed against hers. She would definitely need those rules, soon. “You’re okay,” she whispered. “It’ll be okay.”

  She felt more than heard Dan’s reply. “How do you know?”

  Alexa pulled back. She didn’t know what to say.

  “So it’s Liss?” A husky voice interrupted from behind Alexa. She turned to see Sierra Nagler wearing leggings so expensive the price of them could have fed a family of four for a week, and a look of unrepentant curiosity.

  “What are you talking about?” Alexa growled.

  “You know, the girl from St. Ignatius. Jocelyn’s dad’s a cop, and she texts with one of the younger guys on the force.” Alexa sneered at this, but Sierra rolled her eyes and continued. “They aren’t releasing the name yet. Anyway, Dan, we thought you’d know if it was Liss.”

  Dan’s gaze shifted between Sierra and Alexa, like a snared animal unsure if it should lie down or fight.

  Sierra carried on, “Because she goes to St. Ignatius now? And she was basically destroyed over that stuff with Johnny last year, so we thought—”

  Alexa focused very hard on breathing properly. “Sierra,” she said as calmly as she could. “You need to get the fuck away from us right now and reassess everything about your life.”

  “Jeez, Alexa, you didn’t even know her.”

  “Right now. As in immediately. Away.”

  Sierra smirked, but there was no satisfaction in it. She turned on her heel and went back to her identically dressed friends, shrugging dramatically.

  When Alexa looked back at Dan, Dan had arranged her face into something resembling keeping it together.

  “I do not like that girl at all.” Alexa frowned.

  “Really? I was worried I was about to be knocked out of the number-one best friend spot,” Dan answered, and Alexa smiled, barely, because Dan was trying to be brave.

  “I bet the Lizard’s fine,” Alexa said.

  “You’re probably right,” Dan said, but Alexa could see she didn’t believe it.

  Dan

  After lunch, Dan excused herself from Chemistry, locked herself in a bathroom stall, and balled her hands into fists. She stood there, with her eyes shut tight and the scabs across her knuckles splitting, trying to shake the images in her head: Liss finding some secluded spot off Highway 1 where the vibes were right, ignoring that it was dark and dangerous and she was alone. Liss, with her dirty-blond hair falling into her eyes and that pinched look her face had when she was concentrating, casting another spell gone wrong and that horrible woman with her shuffling gait and hunched shoulders coming out of the night. There were so many ways to end up lost in North Coast.

  Alexa said the missing girl had to be someone else, but Alexa didn’t know Liss. When Liss undertook a project, she gave herself to it entirely. She would let nothing stop her, let no one dissuade her, even if she couldn’t possibly do it on her own because it was a thing that could not be done.

  Dan knew this about her, and when Liss had come to her for help, she’d said no. Dan had been stupid to think she could convince Liss to just give up. Liss had been in a rage when she’d left Dan’s house yesterday. Who knew what she could have done next?

  Even as Dan pulled her phone from her pocket and typed out the text—are you ok?—she felt certain of the answer. Li
ss wasn’t okay. Liss was gone. And it was Dan’s fault, again, same as before—another stone to lay on her conscience, Liss alongside Johnny like she always wanted to be.

  All the way back to class, Dan stared into her phone, which wasn’t strictly speaking allowed, waiting to see the three dots that meant Liss was sending a reply.

  But fifth period ended without word from Liss, then so did sixth. Dan couldn’t put her phone down in seventh, not even waiting for Liss anymore, but for someone to let her know that Liss was gone.

  When the last bell rang, Dan hurried out to her car, the tightness in her chest unbearable. She would drive all the way to Liss’s house, she would talk to Liss’s parents and—and tell them what? That being a witch was a lot more complicated than it looked? That demons might be a safety risk they’d never considered when raising a teenage daughter?

  Then her phone buzzed.

  What’s that supposed to mean?

  Dan slumped forward to rest her forehead on the steering wheel. Her breath came in quick little gulps. She waited for the leaded, dark feeling of guilt to ease. Liss was safe—everything was fine.

  Wasn’t it?

  Then why couldn’t she shake the feeling that it should have been Liss? This was the fate Liss was racing toward—lost on the side of the road somewhere, and Dan the only one left alive who knew what really happened and the only one who could have stopped it.

  Liss’s plan was stupid, pointless, dangerous. Johnny was dead, and he wasn’t coming back. But even if she hated Liss, Dan couldn’t let her lose herself to figure that out.

  I’m in, she texted Liss.

  Liss sent back an emoji of twin girls dancing.

  Alexa

  Alexa was halfway through a new novel, her feet curled under her in a knit blanket on the couch, when Lorelei’s headlights flooded the living room of their little cottage. Alexa yawned and stretched and headed into the kitchen. It was after nine, which meant frozen pizza, which Alexa knew without looking at the box meant an oven temp of 425°F. She turned the knob and heard the gas catch as Lorelei spilled through the door and collapsed promptly onto the couch, the strap of her bag still looped around one wrist and the other arm flung across her forehead and her legs kicked up carefully so her shoes didn’t dirty the already-stained couch. Domino, the black cat Lorelei had had since college, jumped up on her stomach.

  “Ugh, Alexa, I’m literally dead,” Lorelei moaned. “And I’m also literally dying of hunger.”

  “You can’t be dead and dying at the same time.”

  Lorelei grinned and said, “There you go being all intelligent again,” in a way that made Alexa feel fluttery and warm. She loved it when Lorelei did that—teased her without being mean, in a way that made Alexa feel treasured. It was almost enough to make her forget all the times Kim had told her to quit it with that smart mouth.

  “Oven’s on. Cheese?”

  “Do we have any pepperoni? I want to eat something that’s very bad for me. All they eat up there is buckwheat groats.”

  “What even is that?”

  “It’s a grain. Tastes like cardboard, but . . . nubbly-er.”

  “Nubbly-er?”

  Lorelei opened one eye. “I’ll smuggle you some out tomorrow. Grab you a pocketful. It’s probably better with lint.”

  “You could try it with some fingernail clippings for crunch.”

  “Brilliant.” Lorelei laughed. “Brilliant.”

  * * *

  —

  They ate the pizza at the big table in the living room, which also served as both of their desks. It was stacked on one side with textbooks and on the other piled with documents related to Lorelei’s investigation into Black Grass Spiritual Advancement Center for The Wardens magazine. They both agreed that eating dinner surrounded by work wasn’t good for their mental health, but every time they cleared the table off, it was only a matter of days before Alexa had a test to study for or an essay to write, or Lorelei ended up spending all night researching this or that thing for her story, and the piles of books and notes reappeared and they found themselves wondering which papers were fine to put their plates directly on top of.

  As Alexa sliced the pizza, Lorelei fiddled with the evil eye charm on the necklace she always wore. Lore hadn’t been sleeping much. To get the inside scoop on Black Grass, she’d posed as a member—a seeker, as Black Grass called them. Lately, she’d had to report to the campus just down Highway 1 earlier and earlier, and stay later into the evening, which meant she had less time to write up her notes from the day and talk to her editor and work on the story.

  “Did you get anything good today?” Alexa asked.

  Lorelei’s eyes refocused on Alexa, as if she’d forgotten she was there. She rubbed her eyes and grabbed her slice. “Not enough. Keith’s trying to get me to move up there. All this bullshit—sorry, I mean BS—about how they really need me and I really need them, that I can’t really get enlightened if I’m off campus. I’ve told him so many times that I can’t, but he keeps pushing. He knows I have you.”

  “But he wishes you didn’t.”

  “That used to be his tune. He acted like you’re something I can ‘advance’ myself out of, with all his iterative desires and needs crap. Like you can’t be fully spiritual if you actually care about other people, which is absolute bull—BS. Now he’s been saying that you ought to move up there too, which is so never gonna happen. He even tried to get me to bring you up there to visit last week.”

  “I can do that, if it would help.”

  “You are not going up there,” Lorelei said firmly, then sighed. “Honestly, I can’t believe I managed not to punch him. I can’t look at that man’s face anymore.”

  She flipped over a pamphlet for Black Grass from the top of one of her stacks.

  Alexa knew the face well. It was always slipping out of Lorelei’s papers, emblazoned on nearly every Black Grass document. Always the same headshot: tanned, apple cheeks under an overgrown shag of scruffy brown hair; eyes, a photo-retouched polar blue. He was wearing red prayer beads and two necklaces that were basically only thin strips of leather over a white linen shirt. He wasn’t quite smiling, but his mouth was open, exposing teeth as white and regular as chewing gum Chiclets. Keith Levandowski had made a fortune in Silicon Valley, his bio said, but he had always been seeking something more—until he heard the calling from some higher power he called his Lord. He founded Black Grass Spiritual Advancement Center to teach his philosophy and practice of transcendental meditation to his “seekers.” Under Keith’s headshot, the words EMPOWERED GROWTHFUL ENERGY were written in oversized letters.

  Lorelei had been working on her exposé on Black Grass for months. She suspected the organization was involved in some kind of financial fraud, and on top of that, was probably a cult. Midsummer in LA, Lorelei had sat down with Alexa and told her that her editor wanted her to move out to North Coast to investigate Black Grass’s new center; the whole campus had been set up in a remote spot in the hills virtually overnight, and it was definitely fishy. Lorelei promised Alexa that they would do whatever Alexa thought was best: she knew it wasn’t fair to make her move again, especially when she’d only been in LA for a year and North Coast was so far from Arizona.

  But far from Arizona was where Alexa wanted to be, she’d said. She didn’t mention that she would have agreed to anything Lorelei wanted, because she was pretty sure living on the moon with Lorelei would have been better than living anywhere with Kim. Alexa still didn’t understand how she’d gotten so lucky, and she wasn’t about to blow it by making Lorelei stay in LA. So they’d packed up the Koreatown apartment and driven up to Dogtown, the whole way practicing Lorelei’s new identity as a graduate student alienated by modern life (“Why do things make us who we are, when we make things?” Lorelei would ask. “If phones are meant to connect us, why do they make us so lonely?” Alexa would answer). Five months later,
Lorelei had leveled up enough that Keith had finally given her access to Black Grass’s offices, which he called his “inner sanctum.” But Lorelei was frustrated; she needed more.

  Alexa eyed the photo of the little white bungalows on the back of the pamphlet.

  “Maybe you should move up there. You can come home on weekends.” Alexa chose her words carefully. “If that’s what the story needs.”

  “I can’t,” Lorelei said around a mouthful of pizza. “Can’t miss dinner, otherwise we aren’t a proper family-thing.”

  “You can’t ruin the whole article so I have someone to eat dinner with. I’m perfectly capable of eating frozen pizza all on my own.”

  “I told you, I’m getting a pizza stone and then we can make pizza from scratch and it’ll be delicious,” Lorelei said, the pointy end of her slice drooping toward the floor. “You know dinner’s non-negotiable. That’s our only rule, got it?”

  Alexa nodded. Although she sometimes complained about it, Alexa loved that Lorelei insisted that they eat together. Whenever she asked if she could skip and meet up with Dan instead, part of her always wondered if this was finally the time when Lorelei would stop caring. But every time, Lorelei would say nope so it sounded like she was popping a bubblegum bubble and suggest that Dan come over to their place for dinner instead.

  “Besides, I doubt they’d give me weekends away. I couldn’t leave until the article’s done, and who knows how many weeks of sleeping in those creepy bungalows that would take. I’m not going to leave you to go join some cult in the middle of college application season.” She punctuated this last point by stabbing the air with her slice. “So tell me how school was.”

  Alexa shrugged. “All anyone wanted to talk about was that missing girl.”

  Lorelei set her pizza down. “What missing girl?”

  “The girl from Marlena. They found her car a few miles north of here.”