Dan wasn’t like that. She’d only been trying to stop Liss from doing something stupid on her own, and maybe a small part of her could admit that she was looking for closure on what had passed between them. But reopening the door on that friendship hadn’t been tender. It had hurt. The very unheroic truth was that Dan had only imagined as far as trying to help Johnny; she’d never honestly considered the possibility that it might actually work.
Seeing him on the beach—or whatever part of him appeared to her—changed that.
You’re the one.
If she wasn’t the hero, there was one other available role: villain.
She didn’t want to remember how disappointed she had been to see Johnny’s car pull up at the crossroads that night, how Liss gave him a kiss and invited him to watch. It felt worse than if Liss had slapped her, worse than any of the rude things Liss had said in the past, worse than feeling Liss’s eyes gloss over the cuts on her arms without seeing them. Dan still didn’t understand why Liss had given a share of their most secret, precious thing—magic—to Johnny, who wouldn’t get it and if he did, he wouldn’t care, and anyway it wasn’t his. It wasn’t Liss’s or even Dan’s to share. It was theirs.
Or it had been.
Did Johnny know how hard she’d wished that he’d just go away and leave her and Liss alone so that things could go back to the way they used to be?
Dan flinched—her cuticle was bleeding and she hadn’t even realized she’d started picking it.
A wish like that didn’t mean anything, Dan quickly reminded herself, even if she’d been thinking it that night at the crossroads. You couldn’t just make a wish in your own head without any spellwork to intensify it, and she hadn’t even considered the specifics. That measly, ill-considered, and unspoken wish on its own was as dangerous as the dribble from a cracked squirt gun. It was no way responsible for the disaster that followed, no matter how hard she’d wished it (which had been painfully hard, as if her ribs had seized upon the desire to have Johnny just be gone so tightly that her breath had gotten shallow).
Dan took a deep breath. Maybe he meant it as a question. Was she the one who could get herself together and help fix this awful mess? For the first time, she felt like the answer to that question could be yes. Even if it hurt to face what she’d done, she could choose that pain over living with the guilt.
Together, she and Liss would find Johnny. They would bring him home. Everything would go back to the way it was before.
Luck had not been on their side so far, Dan knew. But that was why they had magic.
Dan grabbed her phone and typed out the text: I’m coming over after school and I’m bringing the Book.
FIFTEEN
Liss
“You’re grounded for real?” Dan asked as Liss hustled her into the bathroom that adjoined her bedroom. In addition to grounding her, Liss’s mom had been bad with boundaries lately, and Liss didn’t want her walking in on them without any warning.
“She’ll get over it,” Liss said. Right now, she didn’t care about her mother or the fact that her college applications were no closer to finished than they’d been last week. Dan was here, at Liss’s house for the first time in months. Liss locked the bathroom door then turned back to Dan. Or rather, to the beat-up shoebox Dan was holding.
Liss’s heartbeat picked up, as if her very blood was calling to it.
The Black Book.
It was here, at last, and suddenly Liss was overwhelmed with the feeling that they were reunited lovers who hadn’t yet kissed.
No, she didn’t feel like that because that would be perverse. She’d been thinking about Johnny, her true lost love. Liss forced herself to take a deep breath. She was exhausted, that was all, and her brain was playing tricks on her.
Dan put the shoebox on the counter. “So let me tell you about Johnny.”
“Right.” Liss pulled herself together. “You really saw him?”
Liss perched on the edge of the bathtub while Dan explained what happened. She counted up to four and back. Liss expected to be jealous of Dan—she had been, when Dan had first texted her. Johnny had just appeared to Dan in a glittery nighttime beach-vision, without her having to invest months in actually doing anything to bring about that situation. But now Liss was trying so hard to ignore the gnawing hunger growing in the pit of her stomach that she’d forgotten entirely to be jealous.
“So did he say anything that could help us?” Liss asked.
Dan scrunched her face up. “No, not really.”
“Not really or no?” Liss’s eyes roved back to the shoebox.
“I couldn’t really hear what he said. He seemed surprised to see me, but would he be waiting for someone at Heart’s Desire?”
Liss’s attention snapped back to Dan. “This was at Heart’s Desire Beach?”
“I said that already. Do you know something about the auspices there?”
“No,” Liss lied. “All I know is that it’s a good place for drowning. Are we ready for the Book?”
* * *
—
They sat on the bathroom floor, Liss’s back against the tub, Dan’s against the vanity, and the shoebox between them, DAN + LISS TOP SECRET written on the top.
Liss tossed the lid aside. Inside, each item was wrapped in newspaper—candles, bundles of dried plants and grasses, eggshells and crystals, the animal bones they’d spent months slowly collecting. Liss reached to the bottom, careful not to disturb anything breakable, until she found what she was looking for.
A shiver of electricity pulsed through her, tingling in her chest and fingertips. She eased the blocky mass free of the other items, then set it on the floor and folded back the newspaper.
There it was: an old and unassuming book, with the same warp in its black cover, the same loose pages and crack in the spine. Its presence fizzed the air with an electric charge. Liss let her eyes close and inhaled deeply. She had missed that scent: a musty sweetness that stayed on your hands, so that hours later you’d catch the scent of it later and remember, all over again, that sense of power you had when you held it.
Liss’s smile was a small and famished thing.
Dan had a dreamy expression on her face too. “It’s a magician’s diary,” Liss told her. She wondered if, now that they knew what it was, they would feel the history of it or find traces of its author.
“Why didn’t we realize that? It’s stupid obvious.” Dan snorted a little laugh.
And then because Dan had snorted, Liss was laughing, and then Dan was laughing with her, and for one crystal-clear minute, everything was exactly the way it was before, when magic was a game, or even before they knew about magic at all—when it was just Liss and Dan laughing until their stomachs hurt on the bathroom floor.
Dan must have felt it too because she leaned back against the cabinet. “If this works, it’ll be like we turned back time. Like the whole last year didn’t happen at all.”
“That’s what you want?”
“Isn’t that what you want? Then everything will be just like it was, before all this.”
It brought a bitter taste in Liss’s mouth. Dan had to know that it was impossible, even with magic, to erase the past. “That’s what this is all about,” Liss said instead. “Ready?”
Dan nodded and placed her hands on the Book’s cover. “We need a spell to find Johnny.”
“A spell to find Johnny,” Liss said, doing the same.
A spell to find him, Liss repeated in her head. She tried to make her heart beat to the rhythm of his name: Johnny, Johnny, Johnny.
Liss looked at Dan; her eyes were half closed, her gaze on the Book. Liss could still see that sick look Dan had given her at the crossroads that night when Johnny had gotten out of the car after her. Liss had told herself a thousand times that she’d only let Johnny come because she wanted to share the part of herself that did ma
gic with him. But that wasn’t the whole truth. She’d also wanted to prove that he loved her enough that he’d be down for something as wild as magic. It was like daring him to break up with her, by forcing him to see that magic, like Liss, was more than he could handle. She’d barely given thought to how Dan would feel about it.
Dan’s mouth was moving subtly, and her forehead creased in concentration. Liss reminded herself to refocus.
It felt familiar to have Dan here, but it would never be the same as before. Before Dan punished Liss with whole months of silence, and before the crossroads. Before the day Liss had convinced Dan to let her hang around at Achieve! Before the Black Book and before they’d transformed themselves into something beyond the girls they were, when they were simply best friends.
How far back did Dan want to go to find the before all this? So many mistakes had led the three of them to that crossroads. Those mistakes were a fundamental part of them now. Dan was wrong: you couldn’t undo the past.
You just had to push on.
Dan opened her eyes. She seemed to think they’d spent long enough on the asking, and Liss was willing to trust her. Liss nodded and together they opened the cover. First Dan, then Liss turning one or several or a whole chunk of pages, whatever felt right. Liss forgot whatever she’d been thinking and let herself savor the feeling of the paper, the way it sent prickles from her fingertips to her scalp, then down to the base of her spine. It never ceased to amaze her that a book could feel like a whisper in the ear, a touch at the back of your neck, a sigh. Something you wanted to give yourself over to.
Liss turned the page and stopped.
They had found the spell.
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 18, SENIOR YEAR
Alexa
The following evening, Domino’s green eyes tracked Alexa from the arm of the couch as she paced in the living room. Her phone was pressed to her ear.
“What do you mean you hit a roadblock? What kind of roadblock can stop people with literal magical powers?” Alexa was failing to keep the anger and desperation from her voice, but she’d already had to do some combination of begging and threat-making (“Maybe I should take Lorelei back to Arizona!”) to get Swann to tell her what the Wardens were doing about Lorelei, Keith, and Black Grass.
“A hiccup in the plan, that’s all,” Swann admitted begrudgingly. “Another Warden has arrived in North Coast for the Black Grass case, but it seems they’re closed to new seekers.”
Alexa stopped. “They’re what?”
“They’re not accepting new seekers right now. Apparently they’re at capacity after overwhelming interest in their methods. We’re on a waitlist.”
“You’re telling me your magic can’t beat a waitlist?”
“We are assessing our options, I assure you, love.” Alexa had by now figured out that when Swann called her love, she either meant it as a form of genuine comfort or as a suggestion that she move on from the present topic. “How is Lorelei?”
Alexa did not want to move on.
“Well, I think she’s pretty shitty, Swann, because she’s dying and you and the Wardens are going to let Keith get away with it.”
Probably she should not have hung up on Swann.
Alexa threw her phone onto the couch and turned to Domino. “I’m going over there.”
To Swann’s?
Alexa shook her head. “To Black Grass.”
He pushed himself into a seated position, his black paws kneading the padding of the couch. Are you sure that’s wise?
“Absolutely,” Alexa said without missing a beat. Her cheeks were flushed, and her heart had picked up. She was never impulsive like this. She planned and was careful and tried generally to avoid disaster, rather than ride headlong into it. But she’d been that way because she’d always thought there was hope for her to have a life like everyone else.
Alexa didn’t have that hope anymore. She had no one and nothing left to stop her.
What I meant was that is definitely not wise. Domino glowered at her. It’s incredibly dangerous.
“It wasn’t too dangerous for Lorelei.”
Domino flicked his tail by way of response, which Alexa assumed meant And look how that turned out for her.
“Nothing will happen to me,” Alexa told him. “And if it does, so what? It’s not like anyone cares.”
What about Dan?
Alexa wanted to think Dan would miss her, but they hadn’t talked since their fight the other night. Dan wasn’t worried about her, even after an accident that could have killed them both (if Dan had been anywhere nearby). Graciela had called Lorelei a half-dozen times since then, wanting to check if Alexa was okay and suggesting that the girls take a defensive driving course together. Dan’s mom, who Alexa barely knew, cared more about her than Dan did.
“That’s not the kind of comment I keep you fed for,” she finally said, and sank onto the couch.
Alexa still couldn’t think about the accident without being filled with nausea, not as much over how close she’d come to serious injury as how stupidly close she’d come to drawing the attention of the authorities exactly where she didn’t want it. She realized this position was counterintuitive: avoiding the cops only mattered if she was alive, rather than squashed in a road accident. Still, she didn’t want to lose control of her situation any more than she already had. That’s what she’d risked to hang out with Dan that night, and it had been completely not worth it.
“Anyway, it’s silly to worry that something will happen to me when something already has.” She looked at Domino. “Keith needs to be stopped before he curses someone else.”
The Wardens will—
“Will they actually, though? Because as far as I can tell they’re not doing anything at all, while he’s out there being the king of his commune! Don’t you think Lorelei deserves revenge?”
Domino flipped his ears back.
“So you agree. Everyone knows cats love revenge.”
And what will you do if this goes wrong?
Alexa chewed her lip for a moment. “The same thing I’ll do if it goes right. Leave. I can’t stay in North Coast. Someone will realize something’s fishy eventually. I’m not going back to Arizona. And I’m not staying in one of those group homes. College can wait.”
Domino skulked forward and rubbed his jowls against Alexa’s shoulder.
“Don’t get all sentimental,” she told him.
Ignoring her, he headbutted her again. Where will you go?
“I haven’t decided yet. Leaving town is phase two of the plan.” Alexa smoothed out the crumpled pamphlet with Keith Lewandowski’s face on it. “Phase one is revenge, which I am starting tonight with reconnaissance.”
It was as good a beginning as any. Alexa didn’t know what was going on at Black Grass or how Keith had cursed Lorelei. She had no idea what she could do to make him hurt the way he’d hurt them. It had to be more than screaming and crying at him but probably less than murder, both of which she imagined but only one of which she had the capacity for. But she was a witch, she was furious, and she had nothing to lose. That seemed like enough to rely on for now.
Alexa grabbed her sneakers, under Domino’s judgmental stare. He switched his tail back and forth as she dug up a flashlight and dropped it into her backpack. I have a bad feeling about this.
“You’re my familiar, not my mother.”
She fished Lorelei’s keys out of the bowl of change and receipts next to the door. Domino jumped down from the couch and curled his lithe ink-colored body between her legs and stationed himself in front of the door. “Honestly, I can’t be taking a black cat everywhere now that I’m a witch.”
Domino switched his tail exactly once.
“Fine, you can come,” Alexa relented. “But only because you’re sneaky and you have good night vision.”
Domino followed her out the door.
>
Dan
“Heading to Alexa’s?” Graciela looked up from her New Yorker as Dan trudged down the stairs.
“Liss’s actually.”
“Oh, Liss’s again?” Graciela gave a hint of a smile. “Sleeping over?”
“Probably.”
“Don’t drive back here if it’s too late, but text if you decide to stay. And don’t forget about school tomorrow.”
“Okay,” Dan said, edging toward the door. The house felt too close around her. She couldn’t wait to get out onto Highway 1, heading out of Dogtown and toward Marlena, then on to the place Liss had picked for the spell.
“Before you go, I wanted to ask you,” Graciela said, leaving her magazine and leaning against the kitchen counter. “How’s Alexa been doing?”
“What do you mean?”
“After your rough night, how’s she been doing? I’ve been trying to get a hold of Lorelei, but I can’t reach her and I’m sure she must be as nervous as we are about the situation with Zephyr.”
“Really? Alexa’s fine. She’s—” How was Alexa? Dan had to know how Alexa was, she always did. She’d been so focused on the Black Book and Johnny and Liss in the two days since the car accident, she’d barely talked to Alexa at all. Maybe Alexa still wasn’t over their fight before the crash. Then again, maybe Dan wasn’t either. “I’m sure she told Lorelei about the accident, if that’s what you’re worried about. They tell each other everything.”
“If you see Lorelei, could you ask her to call me? I’d like to get you girls into one of those defensive driving courses.”
“I don’t think I’m going to see Lorelei at Liss’s house.”
Graciela clicked her tongue at Dan. It was a sound that always made Dan feel a little guilty.
“I’ll ask her the next time I see her,” Dan corrected herself.
“Thanks, honey.” Graciela gave her a kiss on her forehead. “Love you.”
A Wicked Magic Page 19