A Wicked Magic

by Sasha Laurens

  “There must be something we can do,” Alexa asked. “Do you think she’s in pain? Can she hear me—if I talk to her?”

  “I’m sure she can, love.” Alexa immediately saw Swann would have answered the same whether it was true or not. “You’re right that the best thing to do is keep taking care of her. I’ll look into whether there are any spells that might help with her discomfort.”

  Sure, spells were apparently a real thing, same as curses. Why not?

  “I’ll put in an urgent request for a healer, and we’ll bring someone out to take over Lorelei’s position at Black Grass.” Swann’s mouth puckered with concern. “Although with the Solstice so soon, the Wardens will be stretched thin.”

  “Why would The Wardens care about the Solstice? It’s a magazine . . . Oh.” Alexa realized she was wrong even as the words were still leaving her mouth. The Wardens, whatever it was, was not a magazine.

  There was a tight, appraising look on Swann’s face. “She didn’t tell you?” Swann asked, but it wasn’t really a question. It was obvious to them both now that Lorelei had never said a thing about all of this.

  “No,” Alexa admitted.

  Swann’s face wrinkled into an expression Alexa had seen on adults her whole life when they realized that Alexa’s mother had failed in some clear way and they were considering if it was their place to try to intervene. This was how adults looked when they wanted to help you but were worried about the consequences.

  “Please tell me.”

  Swann set down her tea and took a deep breath. “Lorelei wasn’t a journalist any more than she was actually a seeker of Black Grass. She was a witch of the Wardens.”

  “A what? You don’t mean witch, like, literally. Like with powers and spells and all that?”

  “I do.” Swann shifted uncomfortably. It didn’t seem that this was information Swann had a lot of practice delivering. “Witches exist, and Lorelei was among our number. And yes, powers, spells, communing with animals and the natural world: we engage in a wide range of activities. I know that may be a bit difficult to accept, but perhaps you’re beginning to see that the world is far more complex than most people know it to be.”

  Alexa swallowed hard. She was indeed beginning to see that the world could be full of semi-dead corpses and curses and telepathic cat-communication and who knew how many other things that Alexa had no choice but to call magic. But could Lorelei have really lived in that world, instead of the realm of frozen pizza and action movies and road trips in the Subaru that she’d shared with Alexa? Did Alexa know Lorelei at all?

  Alexa shoved aside the sting of the revelation. “What exactly do the Wardens do?”

  The corners of Swann’s mouth quirked. “We keep watch. And intervene when we need to. Mainly we do investigations, monitoring, occasional auditing, that sort of thing. Whatever’s necessary to keep people safe.”

  “Safe from what?”

  “From things it would be dangerous to believe in. Things that prey upon the hungry.”

  Swann’s tone made Alexa queasy. “I don’t understand.”

  Swann’s light eyebrows knit together. “Humans are amazing in many ways, and one of those ways is our endless desire for what we don’t have. We’re greedy by nature. We’re always hungry for more, better, different. Then we end up with wars and Disneyland and social media influencers, and a lot of other social ills. More importantly, we end up with preachers and mystics and self-taught gurus and self-help whoevers who promise that if you follow them, all your wishes will come true. No more hunger. Unfortunately, in the right circumstances, it can be quite dangerous to have these know-nothings channeling all the energy of that wanting and wishing.” Swann leveled her dark gaze at Alexa. “When you gather the threads of desire and pull, sometimes the other end of that thread is anchored to something.”

  Alexa didn’t understand—which part of this was a metaphor? “The Wardens . . . watch for when that’s happening. That’s why Lorelei was at Black Grass. Checking what kind of threads they were pulling at.”

  “Precisely.” Swann paused. “I need to ask you an important question.”

  Alexa adjusted her glasses. “Anything, if it could help her.”

  “Has Lorelei . . . moved at all since this happened?”

  “She drove home from Black Grass that night.”

  Swann rested her pointy elbows against her pointy knees. “And since then? Anything?”

  The idea of Lorelei moving seemed absurd. “She’s just been in bed.”

  “That’s going to be a problem, if this is fatal,” Swann said, almost to herself.

  “Her not moving is a problem, if she—” Alexa swallowed. “If she dies?”

  “Of course, I’ve forgotten myself. The witches of the Wardens inherit their powers from a witch from the previous generation. This way, we can pass on spell-craft, experience, intuition. It’s very important to us that a witch not die without passing her power forward.”

  Alexa’s eyes went wide. “You want her power?”

  “It sounds callous, I know, but it’s part of being a Warden,” Swann said gently. “Lorelei became one in the same way. She would want that power preserved. It’s an easy process. All she needs to do is give a gift from her deathbed. A comb, a ring, even a glass of water has worked in certain circumstances. It’s a very old tradition. Village girls would get turned accidentally all the time when they attended old women whose time had come. It always caused a bit of chaos when they started thinking of spells without any teaching.”

  “I’ll keep you posted if she starts moving.”

  Swann stood to go. The night had faded into dark blue. She took Alexa by the shoulders. “Lorelei was an excellent witch. She’d been with us since she was nearly your age. We won’t take this in stride. We will deal with Black Grass. But the safest thing is for you to keep clear of them. Understood?”

  “Understood.”

  Swann pursed her lips. Alexa tried to stand a little straighter, set her jaw a little firmer, but she probably looked like a tragic case. “May I leave you with a hug?”

  Alexa nodded, just once.

  Swann wrapped her long, twig-thin arms around Alexa, patted her back gently. Swann’s shoulder was hard and not quite warm under Alexa’s cheek. It was such a trivial form of affection, but Alexa was desperate for it.

  It took everything in her not to cry.

  * * *

  —

  After Swann left, Alexa tried to go back to her usual post at Lorelei’s bedside, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Instead, she curled into a ball under a blanket on the living room couch as another pale dawn began to break.

  So Lorelei was a witch. Sure, why not be a witch? After everything else. Alexa wondered if maybe she’d wandered through some magic portal in a closet and found herself in this different universe. That was always happening in books. Why couldn’t it happen to her?

  But somehow she was sure it hadn’t. She was still in the world she always had been: one where she needed to finish high school all on her own, where her house had been robbed and her cat could talk, where witches and curses and magic were real. Swann had rubbed out the line between fantasy and reality—or no, the line had been drawn wrong in the first place, mistakenly excluding what was real after all. Even if Alexa didn’t want to believe in magic, it was right in front of her, making her nauseous and exhausted and miserable, and not believing wasn’t going to make any of that go away. There was no fantasy doorway she could stumble through to make it all go back to normal.

  It was easier to accept that Lorelei was a witch than that she had lied to her, and not just a little. You didn’t build a double or triple life on a single lie. The thought of Lorelei spending all day up at Black Grass lying about who she was and what brought her there, only to come home to Alexa and do the same, made Alexa’s whole body tight with tears, furious and raw.
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  Lorelei had already given Alexa more than she’d ever felt entitled to; she wasn’t obligated to tell her everything about her life too. But Alexa couldn’t help but doubt whether she’d really known Lorelei at all. She wanted to be sure that she had, that she loved Lorelei and Lorelei loved her, but what if that was all made up too.

  Alexa didn’t want to cry. What a stupid waste of time tears were when you were only feeling sorry for yourself, when they made absolutely no difference, but now they were choking her all the same.

  Domino sprung up onto the couch and crawled up Alexa’s body, until his front paws were on her chest and his face was inches from hers. In as much as a cat could, he did not appear to be smiling.

  She would have told you eventually.

  “You don’t know that,” Alexa mumbled. “She didn’t trust me. She probably didn’t even like me.”

  Domino glowered at her. If you keep talking like that, I will scratch you in unpleasant places. After what she’s given you, it’s an insult to say she doesn’t trust you.

  “I know I’m ungrateful.” Alexa wiped her nose on her sleeve. “I’d still be miserable in Arizona if it wasn’t for her.”

  Let me rephrase: After what she’s trusted you with, it’s an insult to say she doesn’t trust you. I even had to use trust twice to express that.

  “Trusted me with what?” Domino crouched down into a sphinxlike position, as if to regard her foolishness from a greater distance. “Yes, I already know I’m incredibly dumb and unobservant, so you can skip that part.”

  Suddenly Alexa heard Swann’s voice playing in her head: She would want that power preserved. It’s an easy process. All she needs to do is give a gift from her deathbed.

  Alexa’s hand flew to the evil eye necklace she wore, the one that Lorelei had ripped from her own neck and pressed to her hand that night. She tried to think of something to say, but the best she could do was shake her head at the cat.

  Ah, realization: a beautiful thing.

  Alexa’s blood was rushing in her ears. She was supposed to be happy, right? She’d read enough fantasy novels to have imagined herself as a misbegotten orphan living under the stairs whose life was transformed by magic a million times. But now she didn’t want her life transformed by magic. She wanted it to go back to the life she’d worked hard to for—a life she’d been happy with, though she hadn’t even known it.

  “But I can’t be a—she’s not dead!”

  She was dying then. You saw it yourself.

  Alexa pressed the charm between her fingers. “But that would mean . . . What did Swann say about spells done by accident? New witches don’t even know they’re doing them. What if I—”

  She couldn’t bring herself to say it, remembering the thick crackle of the air in Lorelei’s room, the gurgling rasp of her breath and wild roll of her eyes. The charm had burned her when Lorelei pressed it into her hand, and then what? She’d begged for something to stop Lorelei from dying, and that strange wind had blown through the house.

  Wasn’t that magic?

  And if that was magic, then what was happening to Lorelei now—her body seeping and oozing, her legs bloated and black, and Lorelei still not dead, but maybe in some way conscious and living through it—was Alexa’s fault.

  Something was exploding inside her. Heat, pressure raced through in the veins on the back of her hands, in her temples, down to her toes.

  Alexa had to get it together, she had to calm down and breathe, but her mind was full of her mother’s voice in her head, telling her that whatever she touched turned to shit, but in this case it was an actual human body that she’d destroyed, the body of someone she loved.

  Domino leapt off her and bolted to the front door. You need air. Outside—now!

  “I’m fine.”

  Just go.

  Her hands curled into fists, Alexa stumbled out into the grayish dawn. The night-chilled air felt better around her, but still she could barely breathe around the sad ruin of her thoughts. She was to blame for all of it—of course, of course she had wanted too much, she had been too happy, she had asked too much of Lorelei and now Lorelei was dead, she was basically dead, and it was all Alexa’s fault. She couldn’t escape it—she could never escape it—her mother was right about the kind of person she was.

  A tremendous force was building inside her. Alexa fell to her knees in the gravel and gasped out a wretched sob.

  A bright flash of white blew through her vision, a jagged line of lightning. It felt like it had come from her, from somewhere inside her, like the energy of her guilt and misery just broke free and knocked her back. Her head smacked against the driveway. As she pushed herself to her knees, she saw what the lightning had connected with: the manzanita bush that had been eking out a meager existence in their front yard was smoking, its once-red bark scorched with black and its leaves charred.

  Her palms were smoking.

  Don’t worry, Domino said from the porch. Newborn witches are notorious for that kind of thing.

  THIRTEEN

  Liss

  It was already Tuesday evening and Dan still hadn’t texted her, although Liss felt like she’d sent Dan no fewer than half a million messages in the last twenty-four hours. First, she’d kept it casual and bitched about being grounded. When she got no answer, she moved on to reminding Dan that if she, Liss, was grounded, Dan might need to start doing more of the heavy lifting with Project Rescue Johnny. Liss suggested bringing the Black Book over to her house, so they could ask it about Kasyan.

  She’d chosen the words of those texts as carefully as if they were spells.

  It was like texting a boy when you didn’t know if he liked you back, where every little word and emoji pieced together exactly right might crack the code of his affection.

  Or maybe, Liss realized, it was like texting a boy who’d already decided he wasn’t interested. A boy who’d left you. Who’d moved on.

  I never want to see you again.

  Now, Liss sat on her bed, staring at her phone. She knew what she had to do. She couldn’t afford to lose any more time to Dan’s little breakdown.

  I’m sorry. I know I messed up, okay? Liss texted.

  (The three dots appeared, announced that Dan was typing a reply.)

  Sorry about what?

  About what I said in the car.

  (The dots appeared and disappeared as Dan deleted instead of sending whatever she’d written.)

  Liss sighed and texted again.

  And about Johnny. About all of it.

  She threw that last part in as a bit of insurance against whatever else Dan might still think her guilty of.

  I really miss you. You’re the most important person in the world to me.

  Thanks, Dan finally wrote back.

  Liss frowned.

  Forgive me? For real this time?

  (. . .)

  Liss waited. Dan seemed to be composing some long message, probably she would want to explain all over again why she was mad, and Liss prepared to grind her teeth and accept whatever blame Dan wanted to throw at her. Liss didn’t care. Forgiveness was something you worked for, and Dan believed it had to happen before any work could get done. If Dan needed to think the past was behind them, then Liss would take responsibility for Johnny and magic and every paper cut Dan had ever gotten from the pages of the Black Book, if that’s what it took.

  Her phone finally lit up.

  No.

  No?

  Thanks for apologizing but I don’t forgive you.

  Liss’s stomach turned to ice.

  You can’t just not forgive me that isn’t fair.

  Dan didn’t reply. Liss imagined for a long, horrible moment that Alexa was in Dan’s room curled up in the chair by the window, or beside her drinking coconut mochas at Aroma Café, or in the passenger seat of her car. Dan was reading Lis
s’s texts aloud, or showing them to Alexa, and it was obvious how desperate she was, how she was basically groveling for Dan’s help. They would both give pitying little frowns, Liss is so pathetic and she doesn’t even know it.

  Liss’s fingers flitted against her thumb.

  It was stupid obvious. Why would Dan want Liss when she had Alexa? She’d moved on to a new best friend and left Liss to clean up their mess alone. And if that wasn’t bad enough, Liss needed the Black Book.

  She’d put off going to Swann’s to ask after another copy for so long because she’d been sure that she could win Dan back when the time was right. She didn’t want a new Black Book, she wanted the old one. Theirs. With its flocked pages speckled with mold, with the crumbling leather of its cover, with its spindly cursive lettering that had taken them weeks to read with ease.

  There was only one Black Book. Dan had it, and Liss needed it back. She set her jaw and typed another message.

  Your new friend is lying to you. She knows something about Kasyan.

  Fairy tales.

  I never found any fairy tales about Kasyan did you? I saw her at Swann’s on Monday and she wasn’t there to get a reading.

  That doesn’t mean she knows about Kasyan.

  She’s lying about something.

  You deserve friends who tell you the truth, Liss added.

  The three dots appeared and disappeared, but no reply came.

  Dan

  Dan lay on her bed and stared up at the collage of posters and magazine pages taped up on the ceiling that sloped over her bed. Rickey leveled his sultry gaze at her, his eyes like hot coals. He was holding the stem of a rose between his teeth.

  The picture was ridiculous and hot and Rickey was the prettiest creature who had ever lived.

  The album playing through her headphones repeated. It was IronWeaks’s last album—the last music Rickey made before he killed himself—and it made the world feel strange and distant. Each song danced through darkness, toying with the question of what living was for, and Rickey’s voice answering, maybe nothing at all. His songs could make you feel that in your bones.