Hexed (18 page)

I exhale, my heart pounding hard and fast in my chest.

“I’m sorry.” Bishop relaxes his grip. “But it’s true. That could be you, if you don’t do something.”

I can feel it coming. I try to push the memory to a corner of my mind, but it’s too strong to be brushed aside.

Mom
is
slumped
against
the
ropes
that
hold
her
taut
to
the
chair. Thick crimson blood drips from the hilt of the knife buried in her head, down onto the frayed ropes and over her blue-veined skin.

Something like a scream crossed with a whimper slips out of me. Bishop pulls me against his chest and shushes me, pressing down my curls with his big hand as I cry into his shirt. He feels warm against my cheek and smells like laundry left out to dry in the sun. I stay there against him, breathing in his scent, until I catch my breath again. When I’ve quieted, he pushes back to look at me.

“Look, I have a deal. I can’t give you your mom, but there is something I can do.”

“What? What is it?”

“It’s unhealthy, and I really think you need to start moving on, and I’d never suggest this if you’d given me any other choice—”

“Say it, Bishop.”

He sighs. “You give me a day to practice magic, and I can let you hear her voice again. And not just on voice mail.”

A spark starts low in my stomach. “How?”

“Through a complicated scientific theory proposed by Stephen Hawking, called the—”

“Bishop,” I warn.

“Magic, obviously. How else?”

I tilt my head to the side, challenging him to crack another joke.

“It doesn’t always work,” he continues. “And even if it does, she won’t speak to you directly, just on playback. Like with the voice-mail message, except with real conversations she had.”

Except it won’t be the same one line, over and over. The spark in my stomach shoots up into my chest like a firework.

“But I have to warn you: you may hear things you don’t like. People say things when no one else is around, things they don’t want others to hear. Maybe it’s best to leave the memory of your mother alone—”

“I’ll do it.”

“Are you sure? Because—”

“I said I’ll do it.”

Bishop nods once. “Okay, but remember the other half of the deal. I do this for you, you give me one day—one full day—of magic.”

I pretend to mull it over a minute before saying, “It’s a deal.”

He doesn’t have to know I was already going to agree.

F
inding a parking spot on Melrose is a nightmare on a good day. It’s about a bazillion times worse when a huge chunk of the street just past the shop is closed off for filming of the latest A-list, crash-bang blockbuster.

Hordes of paparazzi and squealing, fainting fans hoping for a glimpse of a muscled-up celebrity clog the sidewalk and the cordoned-off area surrounding a prop ambulance. I’m not sure whether I want to hate them all, or envy them for having nothing more important to do than watch some guy doing his job. And I don’t care that it’s hypocritical, and that weeks ago I’d have been right there with them, elbowing my way to the front of the crowd.

“Want to check it out?” Bishop asks as we approach the shop and the chaos of the movie shoot looms closer.

I don’t even dignify that with a response. Save to glare at him.

My footsteps grind to a halt in front of the shop. I stare up at the big cursive letters on the shop’s canvas awning.
the black cat
. I give a wry laugh, recalling the day nine years ago when Mom received a loan approval from the bank, and before doing any of the more practical things, like finding a location, ordering stock, or taking a bookkeeping course, she insisted we pick a name for the place. Something original. Something to entice tourists in off the street. When I suggested the Black Cat—about the least original name for an occult shop—she happily agreed. Agreed because it made me happy. Tears well in my eyes, which makes Bishop shift awkwardly next to me. I’d forgotten how weird he is about that.

“Does it really get better?” I ask, wiping my face. “I mean, everyone says it’ll get better with time, but does it really?”

I hold my breath, because everything depends on his answer. How can I do this, go on with life, if every memory knocks the wind out of me, every day steals my breath away.

Bishop stuffs his hands into his back pockets and stares vacantly at nothing. And then he finally speaks. “Not better. Just less”—he shrugs—“intense, I guess. I don’t know how to explain it. It still hurts to think about my mom, but now I cope with it better.” He looks at me, a twist of dark hair falling in front of his face.

“Less intense,” I repeat.

I guess less intense is okay. I’ll take any emotion over what I feel now, which is the worst kind of pain. Pain times a million. Pain on acid.

“Was she a witch?” I ask.

Bishop smiles so brightly his eyes crinkle in the corners. “One of the best.”

And now I can’t look away from his face, because I’ve latched on to the idea that one day, some time from now, I might be able to think of Mom and smile the way he’s smiling: a real smile that reaches all the way to his eyes. “How did she die?” I ask.

His smile melts away.

“Don’t answer that,” I say, burying my face in my hands. “It was rude of me to ask.”

“Cancer.” His voice is even, but there’s bitterness laced in the word.

It’s so unexpected, I look up from behind my fingers. “But—but she was a witch?”

He nods. “A witch who smoked two packs a day.”

I shake my head. “But wasn’t there some magic spell that could make her healthy again? That’s just such an ordinary way for a witch to die. I mean, not ordinary.” I pinch the bridge of my nose.

“There are some spells that work for a while, but then the magic fades and the cancer comes back stronger than before.” He gives a bitter laugh. “But I wasn’t a warlock then. There was nothing I could do anyway.”

His voice cracks, almost as if he might cry, but then he cleas his throat and claps his hand on his thighs. “Well, there goes my lifetime supply of sappy minutes. We going in or what?”

I touch his arm to let him know I can see past the veneer of his joke before fishing in my purse for the shop keys. My hands shake like a crack addict’s in withdrawal. I don’t know why I’m so nervous—the house holds as many, if not more, memories than the shop—but somehow this place is entirely Mom. It was hers, and she loved it so much.

I’m not ready to go inside, but I slip the key in the lock, because I’m desperate to hear her voice. Bishop says the magic he plans to use only works where the energy of the dead is the strongest—something about energy never being destroyed once it’s created—and I can’t think of any better place to find Mom’s energy than here.

The door pushes open with a creak that sends a chill through me.

And I don’t even have to walk in to know the magic will work. Mom’s presence here is as undeniable as traffic in Los Angeles. It’s not just her scent, which is so strong it’s like burrowing under ten of her duvets. It’s the fading smell of Murphy Oil, the only wood cleaner Mom trusted on her floors. It’s the sequined scarf slung over the chair behind the till, the inkwell and pen next to the till’s ledger, the unique way she arranged books on the shelf—laying a stack horizontally every now and then, “for variety.” It all screams Mom.

I step into the fractured block of sunlight coming through the big picture window, circled by dust motes that dance lazily around me. When I close my eyes, I can almost see Mom at the bookcase, dusting off the spines of the how-to witchcraft books, wild curls spilling down her back. She turns and sees me, and a bright smile lights up her face. Then she makes some crack about gracing her with my presence, because I’m always so busy with school and cheerleading.

A second later, a shadow falls across my face, and I’m pulled into the present again.

I open my eyes and find Bishop leaning against the window. He looks at me—“appraises” would actually be a more fitting word—and his face takes on an unreadable expression.

“What?” I ask.

“It might not work, you know.”

“Yeah, you said that. Like six hundred times.”

“I just don’t want you to be disappointed. It’s not really complicated or anything, but it only works if, well, if …”

“What?”

He sighs. “If you’re really close with the person who died. Not just anyone can summon the voice of the dead.” He holds up his hands in defense. “I’m not saying you weren’t close, I’m sure you were. I just want you to be aware that there is a chance, that for whatever reason—”

“It’ll work.” My voice is even, giving him no room to argue, but as soon as the words leave my mouth an ice pick of worry chips away at my confidence. Maybe it won’t work. Maybe I
was
too busy with school and cheerleading. Maybe I wasn’t as close with Mom as I thought. “So how do we do this?” I ask.

Bishop looks around. “Too bright in here,” he mumbles.

“I can take care of that.” I walk around him and pull down the blinds until we’re cloaked in darkness, save for the thin strip of light that creeps around the blinds’ edges. “What now?”

“Now we light candles.”

I snort.

“What’s so funny?” Bishop asks. “Candles give our magic extra power. Like an energy drink for witches.”

“Candles? really?” I remember the night of my two hundredth full moon, when Mom and Paige both suggested we light candles and I’d said that it wasn’t a séance. They’d been right all along. “Okay, well, there are candles on the shelf over—”

There’s a quiet
pop,
and then Bishop’s holding a tall taper candle. A golden flame flickers under his chin.

“Oh. Uh, great.”

Bishop smiles before striding backward and dropping into a cross-legged position. He places the candle in front of him and pats the floor, indicating for me to sit.

“Should I bust out a Ouija board too?” I sit across from him and mirror his cross-legged pose. “Okay, what now?”

“Now you relax and quit asking so many questions.” He gives me a pointed look, then reaches around the flame to take my hands in his. I swallow, looking first at his warm fingers cradling mine, then at his eyes, which are tightly closed, séance-style. Jezebel enters my mind. Beautiful, bitchy Jezebel—his girlfriend.

“Why are you helping me?” I ask.

He doesn’t open his eyes. “I thought I said no more questions.”

“Last one.”

He sighs. “You wouldn’t be able to summon without me transferring power to you.”

“Oh.” A feeling I don’t want to think about analyzing squeezes my chest, but I won’t let him off that easy. “But why are you here at all?”

He exhales. “I don’t know. Can we just focus on this? Close your eyes.”

“How do you know they’re not already closed?”

He pops one eye open, then closes it again. “Close your eyes, Indie.”

I do as I’m told. And I decide that it’s true what they say: when you lose one sense, the others become heightened. How else can I explain the way the hair on the back of my neck stands on end when Bishop brushes his thumb along my index finger? The way I’ve become acutely aware of the sweat collecting along the lines of my palms. The way the sound of the wood floor creaking as I adjust my position echoes like an old house in a storm.

I don’t have time to analyze the phenomenon further, though, because my hands suddenly grow so hot that I know it has to be the magic working. The heat borders on uncomfortable. I try to pull my hands back, but Bishop grips my wrists, not letting go. My fingertips begin to sting, an almost too painful to stand, pinprick burning, like taking the first step into a hot bathtub.

“Bishop.” I try to wriggle free, but his grip becomes like iron shackles around my wrists. Panic ignites inside me. I open my eyes, because I’m sure my hands are on fire, that the candle is burning me, but it’s not. Bishop’s chest rises and falls with slow, even breaths, and his jaw is so relaxed that his lips part slightly.

Doesn’t he feel this? Doesn’t this hurt him too?

But just when I think I can’t stand the heat any longer, it shoots up my arms like a current of electricity, collecting in my chest in a swirling, molten ball of lava, like the sun has been plucked from the sky and shoved into my body. Only now it’s not painful. In fact, it’s undeniably exhilarating.

“Wow,” I exhale, breaths coming hard and fast.

“Think of your mom.” Bishop squeezes my hands.

I need only that little reminder for her image to come charging back into my mind. And I’m thankful that, for once, it isn’t Mom from the theater, but the smiling, wild-haired Mom I thought of moments ago.

“Will I be okay leaving you two alone?”

I suck in a quick breath.

Mom.

I open my eyes and whip my head around, sure that I’ll find her in this room, but she’s nowhere to be seen. Disappointment weights my shoulders. I stare into my lap, biting down on my bottom lip to stop it from trembling. This is still great, I remind myself. I heard her voice.

I think about what she’d said.
Leaving
you
two
alone.
Who was she talking to?

Bishop sighs. “Close your eyes or it won’t work.”

I close my eyes, and as soon as I do, another surge of heat shoots up my arms, and Mom’s speaking again.

“I’m kidding, but, Indigo, could I speak with you for a moment?”

Indigo? So she was talking to me. But why can’t I remember this conversation? I rack my brain for a clue, but all I get for my efforts is a vague déjà vu feeling.

“I don’t mind your boyfriend coming over, it’s just …”
She pauses.

I don’t remember having this conversation at all—how can I not remember this conversation?—and yet it’s as though my responses are just out of reach, sitting on a virtual ledge in my mind, ready to tumble over and out of my mouth with the tiniest puff of wind.

“Just don’t let him near the book, okay?”
Another pause, long this time, and I worry Mom won’t speak again, that the magic is over, but then she says,
“I’m serious, Indigo. If that book gets into the wrong hands—”

My stomach pitches. The book did get into the wrong hands, and look what happened. Tears spill down my cheeks, and even though it’s been quiet for a long time and I feel Bishop watching me, I don’t wipe them away.

“I told you that you might regret it.”

I open my eyes and lock them with Bishop’s. “I don’t regret it.” How could he think I would regret hearing Mom’s voice, even if it has opened up so many new questions? Even if I can’t seem to shake the strange déjà vu sensation—the same sensation that’s been pricking my senses more and more lately—that the summoning caused.

Bishop shrugs. “Whatever you say. Magic time?”

I take a big breath and tuck my hair behind my ears. “I guess.”

He pushes to his feet and reaches a hand out to help me up.