She had hurt Dan.
She had hurt Dan without even knowing it. Liss remembered missing Dan all summer and fall, and her efforts to win her into Project Rescue Johnny. She’d pressed against Dan’s resistance, but she hadn’t understood what she was fighting against. Liss didn’t know what she had done to Dan, how exactly she’d inflicted the wounds. For a second that felt unfair, but that didn’t matter. So much of what had happened wasn’t fair, and it had happened anyway.
Liss wanted to hate Dan, but she couldn’t.
Liss took a deep breath. Thank god Brodie wasn’t on the beach. He wasn’t who she really needed right now.
She went back to her car.
Dan
Up in Dan’s room, IronWeaks was blasting. Dan set the razor blade on her nightstand and waited for that numbness to flood her. She shouldn’t have cut on her forearm, where it would be almost impossible to hide, but that didn’t feel like it mattered anymore. She was a nightmare of a person, and everyone might as well see it.
In any case, there was no one left who would care. Liss was so angry on the drive back that she’d literally been shaking, and Alexa probably wouldn’t speak to her again, knowing what she’d done to Johnny.
Are you the one? Johnny had asked her on the beach. Now everyone knew: she was the one who did this to him.
Blood ran down her wrist and filled the crevices of her palm with red.
Dan had been stupid to think that helping rescue Johnny could put things right. Nothing had that power. But somehow she’d felt better for trying, even though their chances of success had always been slim. It felt better than carving pointless lines into her skin and better than hating Liss. Especially with all three of them working together, it had felt almost like hope.
It hadn’t been hope at all, but its opposite.
Blood was pooling in her hand, but the numbness still hadn’t come. Maybe one more would do it. Already, she’d never cut this much before, Dan realized, and the thought turned her stomach. It was sick that she did this to herself. She should stop. She wanted to stop. But one more might make the difference between feeling this and feeling nothing. She could make herself do it.
When would it feel like enough?
She had the razor blade in her hand when the door to her room flew open.
“What are you doing here?” Dan gasped. She hadn’t heard the creak of the stairs over the music, and now there was no time to hide any of it: the blood, the wounds it seeped from, not even the razor blade.
Liss could see it all.
“Graciela let me in. I wanted to talk—oh my god, you’re bleeding!” Panic ripped through Liss’s voice. “What happened? There’s so much blood.”
“It’s nothing!” Dan grabbed a T-shirt from her bed and wrapped it around her arm. Liss’s face shifted from wide-eyed shock to horror. Dan wished she had somewhere to hide the razor blade where Liss wouldn’t see it, but she was still pinching it between two fingers and Liss was staring right at it.
“It’s not nothing,” Liss said, breathless.
“Can you close the door?” Dan whispered. “My parents are downstairs.”
When Liss’s back was turned, Dan wiped up as much of the blood on her arm as she could and scuttled the razor blade away under a book. Her heart was racing as she turned off her music.
Dan expected Liss to sit in her regular chair, but instead she came and sat beside her on the bed. Her voice was ragged. “Are you doing . . . what I think you’re doing?”
Tension tightened in Dan’s stomach, then up through her throat. “It’s nothing serious.” By which Dan meant she wasn’t trying to die, which didn’t feel like something she could say out loud. “I’m fine. Honestly.”
“Oh, fuck that. You are not.” Liss pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes and made a strangled kind of sound. Dan realized Liss was crying—actually crying, not pretending to or forcing it. “Neither one of us is fine. We can’t keep going like this. What’s wrong? Just tell me what’s wrong.”
Watching Liss cry, whatever rationalization Dan had come up for herself vanished. Dan had resented Liss for so long for not trying harder to find out why she was unhappy. She’d imagined dozens of conversations where Liss pushed past “I’m fine.” But she had never wondered what would happen if Liss pushed and she still couldn’t open up.
“Is it because of Johnny? Because of—of me? Dan, talk to me. Please.”
“No, that’s not it. It’s not because of you or Johnny,” Dan managed. “I started before I even knew him.”
“I had no idea. I should have stopped you.” Liss held her face in her hands for a moment, her eyes pressed shut. Dan had thought that too: if someone caught her, she’d stop. But now Liss was sitting right next to her and Dan had to admit that wasn’t true. She realized with a jolt of fear that part of her wished she was doing it even now. There was a voice in her head, rocked with panic, that just wanted for Liss to leave and let her deal with her stupid, hateful pain the way she’d taught herself to. It was the same part of her that always worried about getting caught, because on top of the embarrassment, it would mean she’d have to give up cutting, which sometimes felt like it was the only thing holding her together.
She wanted to be a person who didn’t do this. who could deal with her darkness. Instead she’d just become a person who couldn’t stop hurting herself.
“It’s not that simple,” Dan said.
Liss looked up at her. A tear fell from her chin. “Then tell me how it is.”
“I don’t know if I can explain it.”
“Dan.”
“But I’ll try.” Dan swallowed hard. “Sometimes, I just feel so bad. Like being alive is suffocating me. Like I’m suffocating me. I’d rather feel anything else than keep feeling like that.”
“When you’re so desperate to feel okay again that you’d do almost anything.”
Dan nodded.
“I think I know what that feels like,” Liss said. “But doesn’t it hurt?”
Dan looked down at her arm, wrapped in the T-shirt. It had started to throb. What came after was the worst part: after a few moments of bloody relief, you were left with a cut that ached for days, scabs for a month, scars you would have to hide or lie about forever. It did hurt, and Dan was so tired of pain. “That’s the whole point. Sometimes everything hurts and it feels like there’s no difference. Sometimes it feels like I deserve it.”
“You don’t deserve it!” Liss snapped. “Look at me Dan: You do not deserve to feel like that. You deserve to be happy. And don’t tell me you don’t, because you’re a bad or messed-up person or whatever, because I know you better than anyone else on Earth, and you’re not an impartial judge.”
Dan crumpled. “How can you say that? After what I did?”
Liss let out a deep breath. “I’m saying that knowing what you did.”
“Really?”
“You didn’t mean for any of this to happen. It would be crazy to hold an accident against you for the rest of your life. Crazy in a way that I am not,” Liss clarified.
“Thank you,” Dan managed.
“Is it true, what you said earlier? That I hurt you?”
Dan didn’t know what to say. It was true that Liss had hurt her and afterward she’d wished Johnny gone, but saying it that way made it seem like it was Liss’s fault, when it obviously was Dan’s.
“You meant before what happened to Johnny, I did something to hurt you. I didn’t mean to.” Liss ran her hand through her hair and swallowed hard. “Sometimes, I worry . . . it’s too easy for me to treat people badly and not even realize it. Like in the moment, nothing’s as important as the way I feel, and it doesn’t matter who I hurt to make myself feel better. That sounds terrible. It is terrible. It does matter that I hurt you. I’m so sorry, Dan. You’re my best friend, and that probably means you got it twice as bad as any
one else. If you don’t want to be friends, I understand. You put up with me for so long.”
“The whole problem is that I like putting up with you,” Dan said.
“You’re the only one, then.” A fresh wave of tears streaked Liss’s face, even as she tried to smile at this.
“What is it?” Dan’s brow furrowed. “Something else is wrong.”
Liss took a steadying breath. After a moment she raised her eyes to meet Dan’s, and there was a dark grief flashing in the blue. “Do you remember the love spell we asked the Black Book for? The one you didn’t want to try, because you didn’t know what it would do?”
Dan nodded.
“I cast it, for Johnny. The stupidest part is, I already knew he liked me. We were about to go on our first date and I just . . . I needed him to be mine, I needed to be sure. So I forced him to love me. I did it deliberately—it wasn’t an accident like your wish—which makes it a thousand times worse. If I could do it over again—”
“We can’t,” Dan cut her off. “I thought the point of rescuing Johnny was to undo what we did. But that isn’t right. That means avoiding what we’ve done, and why. But now I think the best we can do is try to make amends and get some justice for Johnny.”
“If we do, do you think Johnny will forgive me?”
“I want that too,” Dan said carefully, “but I don’t think it’s fair to expect it of him. If we can forgive each other, maybe we can try to forgive ourselves too.”
It wasn’t enough. Maybe it never would be.
But it was a start.
TWENTY-FOUR
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 21, SENIOR YEAR
Dan
“It’s open!” Dan called out when Alexa knocked the next morning. “We’re in the kitchen!”
“Who’s we?” Alexa yelled back as she closed the front door. “I thought your mom was doing Solstice Parade stuff . . . Oh!”
“Good morning to you too,” Liss said without looking up from the coffee maker she was trying to decipher.
Dan knew she should explain to Alexa how Liss had ended up in Dan’s kitchen, with her hair unbrushed and yesterday’s makeup under her eyes, and wearing a clearly borrowed shirt. That meant telling Alexa the full story about Johnny, and confessing to her about cutting, which seemed almost more difficult.
Difficult, but not impossible.
Alexa deserved the truth about who Dan was, even if there were parts of that truth that embarrassed or scared Dan herself. And more importantly, Dan deserved that honesty too. She had been lying to herself for so long, letting her secrets fester, but it was easier to move forward when you brought things into the light. That’s what she’d had realized last night, as she and Liss stayed up talking for hours. There were too many things that had gone unspoken between them over the years of their friendship. Dan had been sure she knew everything about Liss, but it turned out that Dan hadn’t been the only one with secrets.
Alexa propped herself up on a stool at the counter. “Is this a peace treaty or a cease-fire?”
Dan turned the heat down on the eggs. “I have a lot to tell you, but I’ll explain later, I promise. Everything’s good now,” Dan assured her. “Except the coffee might never be ready.”
Liss poked at the coffee maker’s buttons. “Do I look like a freaking wizard with a wand who can just make coffee magically appear?” Liss whined.
Dan and Alexa grinned at Liss.
“What? This is complicated!” she cried.
Then all three of them burst out laughing. It was a laughter weighted with exhaustion and fear, but also the particular kind of joy that could come from living through awful things and choosing to laugh anyway, and it filled Dan with the warm, fluttering feeling of hope.
* * *
—
They drank Liss’s too-strong coffee and ate eggs that were at least definitely scrambled, with hot sauce and chunks of avocado.
“What’s the deal with this parade?” Alexa asked. “I spotted a lot of creative face paint walking over here. And at least one guy on stilts.”
“Dogtown’s event of the year,” Liss said around a mouthful. “It’s what it sounds like. A parade for the Solstice.”
“You say that like it’s a thing that happens in every town.”
“It’s a North Coast thing,” Dan explained. “Anyone can join. The idea is to thank the spirits or whatever for the last year and then cleanse yourself for the next.”
“The cleansing part involves running into the ocean naked at Dogtown Beach.” Liss leaned toward Alexa and cocked an eyebrow. “Dan’s parents always take the plunge.”
Dan rolled her eyes at them. “My mom’s on the organizing committee. I promised her I’d work at a table for her pottery during the parade.”
“You do know that’s prime Kasyan-fighting time,” Liss said.
“I can’t get out of it,” Dan said. “Until we figure out more about when and where and how Kasyan-fighting is going to happen, I will be spending prime Kasyan-fighting time selling pottery.”
“We could ask the Black Book again,” Liss suggested.
“Even though it’s been trying to kill you?” Alexa scraped up the last bit of her eggs. “You’ve asked it a ton of different ways how to find Johnny. Somehow it has a blind spot at the one thing you really need it to do.”
“What other ideas do we have?” Liss argued. “It’s our last resort.”
“A last resort?” The words caught on something in Dan’s brain. She set down her fork. “That’s kind of how the Book feels, isn’t it? Like you’re desperate, and you’d sacrifice anything for one last chance to get that thing you want.”
“That’s not the Book, that’s just how magic feels,” Liss said.
“No, it’s not,” Alexa said. “I’ve never felt magic like that.”
Liss rubbed her forehead with the heel of her hand. “You make it sound like the Book’s as bad as Kasyan.”
A queasy pulse of dread washed over Dan.
“What?” Liss faltered. “It’s not, is it?”
Dan turned to Alexa. “The Warden who fought Kasyan—do you know his name?”
“It was in the record book Lorelei had. Something Russian. He lived in the Russian settlement down at Fort Ross. Ivan Ivanovich—Volin?”
“Volunin?” Dan said.
“How’d you know that?”
Dan was already running up to her room. When she came back down she flung the Book onto the kitchen island. She flipped open the front cover. On the first page, a familiar script spelled out Black Book.
And beneath it, the letters IIV.
“They’re Roman numerals,” Liss said.
“That’s not how Roman numerals work,” Dan said. “They’re initials. IIV: Ivan Ivanovich Volunin. The spell that started all of this was called Volunin’s Frame. Somehow, this is his book. Either the original or a copy.”
“He died with his Book in Kasyan’s prison,” Alexa said. “That means . . .”
All three of them stared at the Book. A few short moments ago it had seemed at least familiar, if not harmless; now it felt altogether less innocent.
A divot formed between Liss’s brows, and then the muscles around her mouth tightened. “You’re saying Kasyan’s been using the Book to mess with us this whole time,” Liss said slowly.
“That’s what I’m proposing,” Dan answered.
A dark look crossed Liss’s face. She pushed back from the island, paced across the kitchen and living room and back before she managed to say, “We’re idiots. We’re absolute fucking idiots for falling for it.”
“Falling for what?”
“For what? For the Book, obviously!” Liss ran a hand through her hair. “It’s a handwritten magical diary, and we convinced ourselves we just found it by chance in the Free Box.”
“It’s magic,” Dan hurried to sa
y. “Anyone would have fallen for it.”
“But they didn’t. We did. The Book’s been Kasyan’s since the very beginning. Don’t you see what that means?”
“The first spell,” Dan said slowly. “‘For the Making of Naive Witches.’”
Liss nodded. “When we turned ourselves into witches, we turned ourselves into his tools too. All the magic we’ve ever done is his. We set all of this in motion, just like he wanted us to.” She turned to Alexa. “I thought you were exaggerating about the Book trying to kill us, but Kasyan must want us out of the way for whatever he’s planning next.”
For a moment, none of them spoke. That black-hole feeling was opening in Dan’s chest, the concentrated mass of all the things that had gone wrong to bring them to this place: the whirlwind that first night in Liss’s bedroom, the love spell Liss worked on Johnny, the fateful night at the crossroads, and the months of hiding that followed it. In a panicked flash, she felt herself being drawn back into that dark, guilt-ridden place. She couldn’t go back there.
So this time, she was going to resist.
Dan took a steadying breath. “I didn’t become a witch just so some demon could use me and toss me aside. If Kasyan is the reason we have this power, then it will be his fault when we use it against him, right?”
Liss’s forehead was drawn tight as she glared at the Black Book, her shoulders tense. For an instant Dan worried she was going to give up. But then she straightened her back and met Dan’s gaze with clear eyes. “The Book is too dangerous for us or anyone else to use again. We should burn it.”
“We can’t just burn it,” Alexa interjected. “If it’s really Kasyan’s tool, it’s not really material like that. If we did manage to burn it, it would release a huge amount of energy. If that energy didn’t have somewhere to go . . .”
“It would be like setting off a bomb,” Dan said.
“Exactly.” Alexa pushed her glasses up her nose. “And I hate to say this, but if Kasyan has the spell that locked him up, he probably knows the spell to free himself. There’s a way to sort of . . . negate spells. Like they contain their opposite. I can’t really explain it, it’s just . . .”
A Wicked Magic Page 29