B*witch

by Paige McKenzie

  And his message had found an audience. After he became president, a national hate movement called Antima—“Anti-Magic”—started to surface. And what was up with that name? Had they deliberately riffed on “Antifa,” the antifascist movement, when they were the polar opposite of that? Evil jerks!

  Iris had learned from the news and online that the Antima were made up of small local factions with one goal in common: eliminating witchcraft for good. What would that even look like? Did they want to go around hunting down everyone with the teeniest amount of magical powers, and… what? Iris was worried (okay, maybe more like terrified) that this was their goal, because lately, they’d begun to amp things up. A couple of their rallies in Washington, DC, had turned violent. Last week, Iris had seen on TV that a Texas witch was beaten up by an Antima gang called the Sons of Maximus and left for dead.

  Iris hadn’t personally encountered any Antima members in New York City (that she was aware of, anyway). She hadn’t heard about any Antima incidents there, either. As for Sorrow Point, she and her family had just moved here, and she’d only visited a few times before, so she didn’t know it well. But it seemed like such a cute town (despite its name—seriously, it could use some Zoloft). She couldn’t imagine the Antima wreaking havoc here, holding rallies and harming witches. Still, she would be very discerning and super, super careful regarding if and when she used magic.

  Like maybe now? The acidy oatmeal-OJ-hot-chocolate combo was rising in her throat again. She had to get her anxiety level down, fast. She wouldn’t do anything dramatic—just an itsy, bitsy, under-the-radar spell from Callixta Crowe’s confidential witchcraft manual (a printout of which she’d accidentally stumbled upon in her old public library, hidden under a boring book jacket with the title The History of the Finnish War 1808–1809).

  She peered around to make sure no one was looking. A sea of pastel-clad girls swept by. Argh. Why had she settled on all-black after the multiple outfit changes? She looked like a lump of coal in a basketful of Easter eggs. Black had been the go-to in New York, but obviously not here.

  The pastelly girls disappeared around the corner. The coast was clear. Iris reached into her backpack, pulled out her phone, and pretended to check it. With her free hand, she touched her smiley-face moonstone pendant.

  “Cessabit,” she whispered. “I am peaceful. I am confident.”

  The moonstone warmed. It sparked against her skin—tiny electric sparks like the fizzy emanations from a firecracker.

  Nothing.

  “Oh, come on. Cessabit! I am peaceful! I am confident!” she hissed through clenched teeth.

  Seconds later, the nausea began to diminish. The pounding in her ears stopped. Her heartbeat slowed to normal. Her whole body calmed.

  Yes!

  Buoyed by her success, she impulsively added another incantation.

  Underneath her lump-of-coal sweater, her faded black 1984 tee—WHO CONTROLS THE PAST CONTROLS THE FUTURE—morphed imperceptibly into a cute, stylish pink top.

  “With ruffles,” Iris whispered.

  The neckline blossomed into a semicircle of rose-colored ruffles. Nice! She wriggled out of her sweater and stuffed it into her backpack.

  Someone bumped into her from behind, hard. Her backpack tumbled to the floor, spilling its contents.

  Startled, Iris spun around. A guy stood there, glaring at her. He wore black jeans, black boots, and a black shirt with a shoulder patch. (So some people here did dress in all-black.) His dark hair was super-short and streaked with blue.

  “Oh! I’m sorry!” Iris blurted out, although why was she apologizing? He’d bumped into her.

  The guy didn’t reply, just continued glaring at her. His shoulder patch had a stark, almost geometric design of what looked like a birdcage suspended over a bonfire. It seemed familiar—and it was definitely creepy. Flustered, Iris dropped to her knees and grabbed at her belongings: her sweater, pens, notebooks, phone, and a tube of Pretty in Pomegranate! lip gloss. (Fortunately, she’d left her wand at home.) Her panic and nausea were seeping back. Had the guy seen her perform the calming spell?

  As she reached for the lip gloss tube, the guy stepped on it. The sole of his boot just missed her fingers as he kicked it and stalked off. It skidded across the checkerboard floor and pinged against a locker.

  Iris rose to her feet unsteadily. She realized that her hands were shaking, and that she had stopped breathing.

  She remembered where she’d seen that shoulder patch before.

  On TV. The story about the Texas witch. The Antima members the reporters had interviewed were wearing that same patch.

  “Hey, are you okay?”

  A tall, cute guy picked up her lip gloss and handed it to her.

  “Um…” Iris’s throat felt dry.

  He bent down and scooped up the rest of her stuff. “Are you new here? I don’t remember you from last year.”

  “I…”

  Iris took her backpack from him and made herself do more therapy-breathing—six in, six hold, six out. She was safe. The scary guy was gone. This guy seemed nice. And he wasn’t wearing an Antima shoulder patch—just a plain white polo shirt and khakis.

  “Yup, I’m definitely a big ol’ newb. And thanks. Um, so, I think I’m supposed to go to my homeroom now. Can you tell me where—” She pulled her schedule out of the side pocket of her backpack, scanned it quickly, and flipped it around. “Sorry, upside down! Can you tell me where Room 125 is?”

  “I can show you. By the way, I’m Colter. Colter Jessup.”

  “Bond. James Bond,” Iris joked in a British accent. Yeah, could she be more awkward? “JK, I’m Gooding. Iris Gooding.”

  “What year are you, Iris?”

  “I’m a sophomore.”

  “Me too. Hey, did you get Cram for algebra?”

  “Cram? Hmm, let me see.…”

  Iris adjusted her glasses and looked over her schedule as Colter gave her the lowdown on teachers—who was easy, who was difficult, who had perpetual bad coffee breath. As they rounded the corner and passed what appeared to be the library, Iris closed her eyes briefly, touched her moonstone pendant, and mouthed the word cessabit. Everything was fine. The Antima guy probably hadn’t seen her perform the spell; and if he had, she could always track him down and do a memory-erase.

  Still, the fact that he’d been wearing that shoulder patch upended her rosy assumptions about Sorrow Point being a witch-friendly (or at least not a witch-hostile) town. There were Antima members here.

  “Sanchez talks way too much about his cats in class,” Colter was saying.

  Something grazed the back of Iris’s neck.

  She slapped a hand against the spot. What the hex? She turned—but there was no one, nothing there. Except for a couple of students up ahead, this section of the hallway seemed to be deserted.

  Or not? Iris turned the other way and spotted three girls in the doorway of the library. A girl in a Juilliard hoodie, a girl with pink hair and a Hello Kitty backpack, and a girl in a green boho dress with soft auburn curls down to her waist.

  They were staring at her.

  “You’ll totally get A’s, though, if you do the extra-credit labs,” Colter was saying. He paused and reached into his pocket. “Sorry, someone’s texting me.”

  Iris inched closer to him as he checked his phone. She pulled out her own phone and typed a gibberish text while side-eyeing the three girls. Why were they looking at her?

  Wait… could they be Antima, too? There were female Antima members apparently, which was messed up, since Iris had heard that witch hatred might be related to men being scared of O.P. women.

  Then she noticed the auburn-haired girl holding something at her side, pressed into the velvety folds of her dress. Iris’s pulse began to go bonkers again. Not with panic this time, but with excitement.

  No. Way.

  The girl pivoted slightly to whisper something to the two others. Now Iris could see the object more clearly.

  It was just a fountai
n pen.

  “Sorry ’bout that.” Colter tucked his phone away and smiled at Iris. “I can take you to Room 125 now.”

  “Thanks!”

  They continued walking. I am peaceful, Iris thought. I am confident.

  She touched the back of her neck, wondering.

  2

  FLUFFY BUNNY

  A lone witch has powers. A coven has a multitude more.

  (FROM THE GOOD BOOK OF MAGIC AND MENTALISM BY CALLIXTA CROWE)

  “So is she one of us?” Ridley asked Greta in a low voice as they emerged from the library doorway.

  “I’m not sure. I couldn’t get any information from the… you know.” Divining spell, Greta finished silently.

  She tucked Flora into her vegan leather backpack. To the world, Flora looked like an antique fountain pen; Greta had enchanted it to appear that way. She undid the enchantment only if she happened to be using the wand alone or with her two coven-mates somewhere safe.

  “She’s probably just a Witchworld newb. You can tell from the twitchy fingers and the dark purple eye shadow. All the Level One gamers wear it,” Binx declared. “Or she might be a fluffy bunny.”

  Ridley frowned. “A fluffy what?”

  “Fluffy bunnies are kind of like faux-witches,” Greta explained.

  “So they want to be members—excuse me, faux members—of an oppressed minority? Like, that’s their goal in life?” Ridley said skeptically.

  “Well…”

  Ridley had a point. Besides, Greta could swear the girl had mouthed the word cessabit—one of Callixta’s simple calming spells—while touching the moonstone pendant around her neck. That was a super-witchy move. Ridley and Binx had witnessed it, too.

  Footsteps. The librarian, Mr. Kasich, suddenly appeared from around the corner, swinging a faded brown messenger bag.

  “Good morning, girls! I trust your summer vacations were enjoyable? Can I help you find some books?” he called out.

  “No, thanks, Mr. Kasich! Maybe later,” Greta replied with a wave.

  She hooked arms with Ridley and Binx and speed-walked them down the hall.

  The three of them ducked into the alcove with the trophy displays, and Greta cast a calumnia spell. (She’d perfected it to the point where she could just think the word, and it would manifest 99 percent of the time.) Calumnia could scramble their private conversation so that anyone listening would think they were discussing makeup or the weather or froyo flavors or something equally banal and boring. It reversed automatically if a non-witch entered the conversation. (Not for the first time, Greta felt huge gratitude for Callixta’s book; before its existence, her skills had been so limited.)

  “Okay, we’re in calumnia mode. So there hasn’t been a new witch at our school since forever—that we know of, anyway. It’s just our coven and Div’s coven,” Greta mused out loud. “If this girl is a witch, maybe we could invite her to join us? She might be looking for a community. And it would be nice for us to have a new member.”

  “Really? I think we’re fine with just the three of us.” Binx studied her nails, which had been painted to look like red, white, and black Pokéballs. “Well, maybe fine is an overstatement. But you know what I mean.”

  “I don’t know. When I moved here, it was really wonderful for me to meet you guys and have this coven. I never knew any other witches besides my aunt Viola,” Ridley admitted. “And besides, the more witches the better, right? According to Callixta, any group spell gets more powerful with each added witch.”

  Binx’s face lit up. “Ooooh, excellent point! If we could snag a fourth member, we’d have more power than the Triad. I’ll do some research on the new girl ASAP!”

  “This isn’t a power grab,” Greta told Binx. “I was just thinking that the new girl might like being part of our coven. If she’s a witch.” She sniffed and added, “Plus, our kind of craft is so much better than theirs. Their way is toxic and negative. Curses and poisons and—”

  “Ummm… I think that makes what you’re doing a power grab, then,” Binx interrupted. “Good Witches, four, Bad Witches, three. The Good Witches win!” She pumped her fist in the air.

  “Ha ha,” Greta said with an eye roll, even though Binx was kind of right. But kind of not right, because wasn’t it the job of a coven leader to welcome new members? And keep the flame of Callixta’s legacy alive? Callixta’s magic was about love and light, not darkness and control (which were Div’s and Mira’s and Aysha’s things). “I’m serious. The world doesn’t need another Div clone. So, yes, okay, could you do some research on the new girl? Find out who she is, where she’s from, if she might be one of us? We should figure all this out before Div gets wind of her existence.”

  Ridley glanced at her watch. “Guys, can we continue this conversation later? We need to get to homeroom. I’ve heard that Ms. Nasser loves to give detentions for tardies.”

  “Fun fact—the detention room has excellent Wi-Fi,” Binx said. “You can poach it from Sparklebutt’s office.” Principal Sparkleman had become Principal Sparklebutt last year after accidentally sitting in some art class glitter.

  “I prefer my Wi-Fi without the detention. Ridley’s right; let’s talk about this later,” Greta suggested.

  She adjusted her backpack on her shoulders and started toward the stairwell. Ridley followed at her heels. Binx followed, too, speaking into her phone, which had some sort of bright yellow Pokémon case today. Actually, she was speaking at her phone. Greta could just make out the words light and sesame.

  A few seconds later, half a sesame bagel materialized in Binx’s other hand. Lightly toasted, with butter.

  “Breakfast,” Binx explained, taking a bite. “Overslept,” she added with a mouthful of bagel.

  Alarmed, Greta glanced around. There were students up ahead, but none of them seemed to be paying attention to Binx. “Can you please not do that stuff in public?”

  “What’s the big deal? We’re in calumnia mode, right?” Binx finished off the bagel and licked her fingers one by one. “Mmm, butter should be its own food group. Besides, why shouldn’t I use magic to make myself breakfast? Why should I starve because of a law that was created by a bunch of sexist old dudes in the Middle Ages?”

  Not this again, Greta thought. “The 1870s wasn’t the Middle Ages. And calumnia doesn’t scramble things visually. We need to be more careful than ever about hiding our identities.”

  “Why? We’ve never gotten caught. And even if we did get caught, so what? We can just hang out in detention together. Or, if we get suspended, that’ll give us more time to stay home and practice spells,” Binx pointed out.

  Ridley bit her lip and said nothing.

  “Yeah, well… I didn’t want to freak you guys out, but just before we met up, I passed a couple of students near the cafeteria, and I think they were wearing Antima shoulder patches,” Greta explained.

  Ridley grabbed her arm. “Excuse me, what? Where did they come from? There weren’t any Antima students here last year!”

  “Who were they?” Binx asked Greta.

  “One of them was Axel Ngata. I think the other one is Orion something.”

  “Orion Kong. I know him, and I know Axel, too. They’re total posers. They’re probably just wearing the patch because they think it looks B.A.,” Binx scoffed.

  “Still. The Antima are horrible. That poor witch down in Texas… and did you hear about the latest? The police…” Ridley’s eyes shimmered with tears. “The police are letting her attackers go. They claim there’s no ‘evidence,’” she added, making air quotes.

  “Seriously?” Binx burst out. “That really is Middle Ages. What’s next, torture chambers? Someone needs to do something about this!”

  Greta was about to reply when a rustling in her dress pocket caught her attention. She reached in and extracted a folded-up piece of paper.

  She unfolded it and gasped. A cry escaped her lips.

  “What’s wrong?” Ridley asked her.

  “It’s a shadow message!”r />
  Trembling, Greta held out the piece of paper for Ridley and Binx to see. The handwritten letters were glossy and black, like crow feathers:

  YOU AND YOUR KIND NEED TO DISAPPEAR

  Ridley stepped back, swiping at her eyes with the back of her hand. She looked terrified. “W-where did you find this?”

  “In my pocket. Just now. I don’t think it was there before, but I’m not sure. Do you… I mean, could it be from the Antima?”

  “Lemme see.” Binx grabbed the shadow message and squinted at it. “Yeah, no, it’s not from the Antima. It’s from those tea-brewing trolls!”

  “You mean Div’s coven?” Greta asked.

  “Yeah, it’s totally them. I recognize Mira’s handwriting. This is so annoying.” Binx crumpled the shadow message into a ball and pitched it at a nearby trash can, missing.

  Greta rushed forward to retrieve it and placed it inside her backpack in a small recyclable bag containing a rosemary sprig. (She always carried rosemary with her, for such occasions; it had protective properties.) “We should keep it. Just in case it’s not them, and we need to try to use spells to identify the writer.”

  But Binx was already texting Mira on her Pokémon phone. “W… T… F… you… think… you… can… scare… us… with… a… stu… pid… NOTE?” she read out loud as she typed.

  Greta sighed. Binx had some sort of third-grade inter-coven feud going with Mira and Aysha; they were always pranking each other (which Greta wasn’t entirely happy about because it increased the chance of exposure—but Binx wasn’t one to be told what to do).

  Although to be honest, Greta hoped the shadow message was from Div’s girls.

  Because if not…

  The image of that witch in Texas flashed through her mind. The stretcher carrying her out to the ambulance, the blood gushing from her forehead, news cameras everywhere. An elderly neighbor saying in a disapproving tone, “I didn’t know she was one of them.”

  Greta had heard about Antima factions popping up in the South… in the Midwest… in Florida… in California and Arizona.