Blood Witch (7 page)

On Monday, Mary K. and I were late for school. I had stayed up late reading Maeve’s BOS, and Mary K. had stayed up late having a heartfelt, tortured talk with Bakker—and so we both overslept. We signed ourselves in at the office and got our tardy slips: the New York Public School System’s version of the Scarlet Letter.

The halls were empty as we split up for our lockers and headed toward our respective homerooms. My mind swam with what I had been reading. Maeve had loved the herbal side of Wicca. Her BOS was filled with several long passages about magickal uses for plants—and how they’re affected by time of year, amount of recent rainfall, position of stars, and phases of the moon. I wondered if I was a descendant of the Brightendale clan, the clan that farmed the earth for healing powers.

In homeroom I slithered into my desk chair. Out of habit I glanced at Bree, but she ignored me, and I felt irritated that it still caused me grief. Forget her, I thought. I’d once read somewhere that it takes about half as long to recover from a deep relationship as the relationship lasted. So in Bree’s case, I would still be upset about her a good six years from now. Great.

I thought about Dagda and how Bree would adore him: she’d loved her cat Smokey and had been devastated when he died, two days after her fourteenth birthday. I’d helped her bury him in her backyard.

“Hey. Slept late?” my friend Tamara Pritchett called softly from the next desk. It seemed as if I barely saw her anymore, now that Wicca was taking up so much of my time.

I nodded and started organizing my books and notebooks for my morning classes.

“Well, you missed the big news,” Tamara went on. I looked up. “Ben and Janice are officially going out. Boyfriend and girlfriend.”

“Really? Oh, cool,” I said. I glanced across the room at the lovebirds in question. They were sitting next to each other, talking quietly, smiling at each other. I felt happy for them. But I also felt removed—they, too, were friends I’d hardly seen in recent weeks.

My senses prickled, and I glanced across to see Bree’s dark eyes on me. I was startled by their intense expression, and then we both blinked and it was gone. She turned away, and I was unsure if I had imagined it or not. I felt unsettled. Cal had said there was no dark side to Wicca. But aren’t two sides of a circle opposite each other? And if one side was good, what was the other? I had disliked Sky as soon as I had met her. What was Bree doing with her?

The bell rang for first period. I felt sour, as if I shouldn’t be there—and thought enviously of Dagda at home, wreaking feline havoc.

 

During American lit it started to drizzle outside: a depressing, steady stream that was trying hard to turn into sleet but not quite making it. My eyelids felt heavy. I hadn’t even had time for a Diet Coke yet. I pictured my bed at home and for just a moment considered getting Cal, skipping out, and going home to be alone with him. We could lie in my bed, reading Maeve’s BOS and talking about magick. . . .

Major temptation. By lunchtime I was really torn, even though I never skipped school. Only the knowledge that my mom sometimes popped home in the middle of the day prevented me from bringing up the idea to Cal when I saw him.

“You bought lunch?” he asked, eyeing my tray as I slid it onto our lunch table. He met my eyes. As clear as the rainfall, I heard the words
I missed you this morning
inside my head.

I smiled and nodded, sitting down across from him, next to Sharon. “I overslept, so I didn’t have time to make anything at home.”

“Hey, Morgan,” Jenna said, brushing her wheat-colored hair over her shoulder. “You know what I’ve been thinking about? Those words you said the other night. They were so amazing. I still can’t get them out of my mind.”

I shrugged. “Yeah, it’s funny. I don’t know where they came from,” I said, popping the top off my soda. “I haven’t had time to research it, either. At the time I thought it felt like a spell, calling power to me. But I don’t know. The words sounded really old.”

Sharon smiled tentatively. “It was kind of creepy, to tell you the truth,” she murmured. She opened her container of soup and took out a crusty roll. “I mean, it was beautiful, but it’s weird to have words you don’t even know coming out of your mouth.”

I looked up at Cal. “Did you recognize them?”

He shook his head. “Uh-uh. But later I thought about it, and I felt like I had heard them before. I wish I had taped our circle. I could play it for Mom and see if she knew what it was.”

“Cool, you’re speaking in tongues,” Ethan joked. “Like that girl in
The Exorcist.
”

I pursed my lips. “Great,” I said, and Robbie laughed.

Cal shot me an amused glance. “Want some?” he asked, handing me a slice of his apple.

Without thinking, I took a bite. It was astonishingly delicious. I looked at it: it was just an apple slice. But it was tart and sweet, bursting with juice.

“This is a
great
apple,” I said, amazed. “It’s perfect. It’s the
über-
apple.”

“Apples are very symbolic,” said Cal. “Especially of the Goddess. Look.” He took his pocketknife and cut his apple again—but across the middle instead of top to bottom. He held up a piece. “A pentacle,” he said pointing to the pattern made from the seeds. It was a five-pointed star within the circle of the apple’s skin.

“Whoa,” I said.

“Awesome,” said Matt. Jenna glanced at him, but he didn’t meet her eye.

“Everything means something,” said Cal lightly, taking a bite of the apple. I looked up at him sharply, reminded of what had happened yesterday in church.

Across the lunchroom I saw Bree sitting with Raven, Lin Green, Chip Newton, and Beth Nielson. I wondered if Bree was enjoying hanging out with her new crowd . . . people she had once referred to as stoners, wastoids. Her old crowd—Nell Norton, Alessandra Spotford, Justin Bartlett, and Suzanne Herbert—were sitting at a table near the windows. They probably thought Bree was crazy.

“I wonder how their coven’s circle went on Saturday,” I mumbled, half to myself. “Bree and Raven’s. Robbie, do you know? Did you talk to Bree?”

Robbie shrugged and finished his piece of pizza.

“It went really well,” said Matt absently. Then he blinked and frowned a tiny bit, as if he hadn’t expected to say anything.

Jenna looked at him. “How do you know?” she asked.

Matt’s face turned slightly pink. He shrugged, his attention on his lunch. “Uh, I talked to Raven during English,” he said finally. “She said it was cool.”

Jenna regarded Matt steadily. She started to gather up her tray. Once again I remembered seeing Matt’s car and Raven’s car on the side of the road. As I wondered what it could mean, I heard Mary K.’s laughter, a few tables away. She was sitting next to Bakker with her friend Jaycee, Jaycee’s older sister, Brenda, and a bunch of their friends. Mary K. and Bakker were looking into each other’s eyes. I shook my head. He had won her over. But he’d better watch his step.

 

“What are you doing this afternoon?” Cal asked in the parking lot after school. The rain had all but stopped, and an icy wind was blowing.

I glanced at my watch. “Besides waiting for my sister? Nothing. I have to get dinner together.”

Robbie snaked his way through a few cars, heading toward us. “Hey, what’s going on with Matt?” he called. “He’s acting all squirrelly.”

“Yeah, I thought so, too, ” I said. “Almost like he wants to break up with Jenna but doesn’t want to at the same time. If that makes any sense.”

Cal smiled. “I don’t know them as well as you guys do,” he said, putting his arm around me. “Is Matt acting that different?”

Robbie nodded. “Yeah. Not that we’re bosom buddies or anything, but he seems kind of off to me. Usually he’s really straightforward. He’s always just right there.” He gestured with his hands.

“I know,” I agreed. “Now he seems to have something else going on.” I wanted to mention the Matt-Raven car thing but thought it would be too gossipy. I wasn’t even sure if it meant anything. I suddenly wished Bree and I were still close. She would have appreciated the significance.

“Morgan!” called Jaycee. “Mary K. asked me to tell you that she was catching a ride with Bakker.” Jaycee waved and trotted off, her blond ponytail bouncing.

“Damn!” I said, disengaging myself from Cal. “I have to get home.”

“What’s the matter? Do you want me to come with you?” Cal asked.

“I would love it,” I said gratefully. It would be nice to have an ally in case Bakker needed to be kicked out of the house again.

“See you, Robbie,” I called, hurrying off to my car. Damnation, Mary K., I thought. How stupid can you be?

I drove home as quickly as I could, considering that the streets were basically one big ice slick. The temperature kept dropping, and the air was miserable with the kind of bone-drenching chill that Widow’s Vale seems to specialize in.

“I thought Mary K. broke up with Bakker after what happened,” said Cal.

“She did,” I grumbled. “But he’s been begging her to take him back, it was all a mistake, he’s so sorry, it’ll never happen again, blah blah blah.” Anger made my voice shrill.

My tires skidded a bit as I turned into our driveway. Bakker’s car was parked out front. I slammed the car door and crunched up our walk—only to find Mary K. and Bakker huddled together on the front steps, shaking and practically blue with cold.

“What are you doing?” I exclaimed, relief washing over me.

“I wanted to wait for you,” Mary K. muttered, and I silently applauded her good sense.

“Come on, then,” I said, pushing open the front door. “But you guys stay downstairs.”

“Okay,” Bakker mumbled, sounding half frozen. “As long as it’s warm.”

Cal started making hot cider for us all while I stayed outside and salted the front walk and the driveway so my parents wouldn’t have a hard time when they got home. It was nice to get back inside, and I cranked up the thermostat, then headed to the kitchen. It was my night to make dinner. I washed four potatoes, stabbed them with a fork, and put them in the oven to bake.

“Hey, Morgan, can we just run upstairs for a sec?” Mary K. asked tentatively, clutching her mug. Since I’d met Cal, I’d begun drinking a ton of cider. It was incredibly warming on cold days. “All my CDs are in my room.”

I shook my head. “Tough,” I said shortly. I blew on my cider to cool it. “You guys stay downstairs, or Mom will have my ass.”

Mary K. sighed. Then she and Bakker brought their stuff to the dining room table and self-righteously started to do their homework. Or at least they pretended to do their homework.

As soon as my sister was gone, I waved my left hand in a circle, deasil, over my cider, and whispered, “Cool the fire.” The next time I took a sip, it was just right, and I beamed. I loved being a witch!

Cal grinned and said, “Now what? Do we have to stay downstairs, too?”

I let my mind wander tantalizingly over the possibilities if I didn’t practice what I preached but finally sighed and said, “I guess so. Mom would go insane if I was upstairs with an evil boy while she wasn’t home. I mean, you’ve probably got only one thing on your mind and all.”

“Yeah.” Cal raised his eyebrows and laughed. “But it’s one good thing, let me tell you.”

Dagda padded into the kitchen and mewed.

“Hey, little guy,” I crooned. I put my cider down on the counter and scooped him up. He began to purr hard, his small body trembling.

“He gets to go upstairs,” Cal pointed out, “and he’s a boy.”

I grinned. “They don’t care if
he
sleeps with me,” I said.

Cal let out a good-natured groan as I carried Dagda into the family room and sat on the couch. Cal sat next to me, and I felt the warmth of his leg against mine. I smiled at him, but his face turned solemn. He stroked my hair and traced the line of my chin with his fingers.