30. Christmas （Baby Please Go Home）
Christmas (Baby Please Go Home)
Once the incantation began, the air grew thick and foul, the consistency of milk left to expire in the sun.
Delilah felt a surge of untamed magic writhe across her skin, far more powerful than anything she’d felt before.
More savage, even alien. Ancient words poured from Jerusha’s mouth like they’d been waiting centuries for this precise moment, each syllable carrying the weight of Oak Haven’s very foundation.
Luna had planted herself facing east, her eyes glowing with borrowed magic as she channeled Eps’s power through her own formidable abilities.
Scarlett faced south, her voice steady despite the trembling of her hands.
Jerusha commanded the west with a sort of timeworn resolve.
And Delilah was turned toward north, feeling strangely calm as she completed the diamond of their spell-casting.
In the center stood Eps. He was only barely visible now, a ghostly smear of color and fabric.
“Walls between shall crumble,” Jerusha thundered, her voice carrying despite her age.
“Earth shall yield its grip,” Luna responded.
“Structure shall be unmoored,” Scarlett added.
“And what was here shall be elsewhere,” Delilah completed.
The casino began to shimmer, its edges blurring like air rising from a summer pavement. Gaudy neon signs flickered, their lurid colors bleeding into the night air. The top hats stopped rotating, frozen in time.
It’s working, Delilah thought with a mixture of exhilaration and disbelief. It’s actually working!
“The next verse is...” Jerusha’s voice faltered, her eyes going wide with panic. “The next verse is...”
Delilah’s heart seized. The spell can’t be interrupted. Not now.
“Mountains bow, waters part,” Luna whispered urgently.
The old witch’s face cleared. “Mountains bow, waters part,” she continued, her voice gaining strength again.
Okay, back on track. Delilah felt sweat trickle down her back. If Jerusha can just get through this incantation, everything should be fine. Except, wait... no!
Somehow, she saw the next catastrophe coming without forming a coherent thought about it. Instead, an old nursery rhyme popped, unbidden, into Delilah’s head:
This is the church, this is the steeple... but in this casino, too many damn people.
Some of them would be swept away with the building; perhaps most of them would. But without sufficient magic, some would be left behind. Maybe on the twenty-ninth floor, or the thirty-seventh floor, or the forty-second... There would suddenly be no floor underneath them at all.
Luna understood the situation, too, but her hands were occupied with casting. “Delilah!” she shouted. “You’ll have to catch them! Remember the Walpiri!”
“The Walpiri taught me to move a rock ,” Delilah hollered back. “One rock, singular .”
Naturally her other sister had to weigh in. “You caught Nate, though! Remember? By the Christmas tree?”
“Again,” Del shouted, “singular.”
“Principle’s the same,” Luna argued. “Use the wand, maybe that’ll help!”
As she took the wand out of her coat, Delilah groaned at the thought of Mama learning she’d needed it in order to do her job as a witch.
Alas, I do, in fact, need my wand in order to do this job.
And then a worse thought: Oh shit, I also need magic.
“Luna! How do you expect me to do this? I don’t have any magic, remember? ”
“Look down!”
Snowball, Eps’s fluffy white cat with the mismatched eyes, was pawing at her ankle.
“She was forged from Eps, which means she’s made from magic too.”
“Aw, c’mon... you want me to use her for power?” Delilah said. “Poor Snowball!”
But if she didn’t try, all those unsuspecting visitors, innocent folks from Woonsocket or Nashua or Brookline, who’d all been drawn to that trendy witch casino they’d seen on TikTok... They’d all tumble about six hundred feet and splatter across a frozen New England ground.
Snowball gazed up at her, meowing impatiently. Delilah picked her up and tucked her inside her coat. “Is this gonna work?” she asked the cat. She just meowed again, which wasn’t helpful, so Del posed the same question to her far-more powerful sister.
“Damned if I know!” Luna’s voice was cracking from exertion. “But this casino has about ten seconds before it’s swallowed by the uh... by the big thing... you know. Anyway, chop chop.”
“Okay.” Delilah sighed heavily. She kissed the top of Snowball’s head and whispered, “Good kitty. You’re the best little gal ever.
” Then she lifted her wand. She squeezed her eyes tight, envisioning herself standing in the Great Sandy Desert.
She tried to remember the smell of the sand, and how the sun felt on her skin.
And after several deep, cleansing breaths, Delilah stretched out her arm and. ..
She caught them all. Forty-seven people, each one grasped by an invisible power.
It was like conducting the world’s strangest symphony.
Every gesture of her wand controlled the descent of panicked humans who’d suddenly found themselves suspended in mid-air.
With every life saved, the cat’s purr against her chest surged, acknowledging and even approving this wild, unorthodox wielding of forbidden magic.
“Holy shit,” Scarlett breathed, momentarily breaking her part of the incantation to watch her Grinchy sister saving Christmas tourists. “That’s some Big Mary-Poppins Energy right there.”
“Focus, ladies!” Jerusha’s orders sliced through the chaos. “The spell is destabilizing!”
They refocused, and the spell flowed from their lips with renewed urgency.
As the casino dissolved like sugar in hot tea, a sound like the unholy offspring of a thunderclap and a vacuum cleaner echoed across the sky.
After a final, thunderous surge of power, the structure vanished entirely, leaving behind nothing but shocked tourists and a handful of profoundly confused casino employees who happened to be outside.
Luna collapsed from the effort, landing on the frozen ground like a marionette with cut strings.
Epsilon had disappeared entirely, as had Snowball.
But the other cats had survived; they were curled up on the pavement, grooming one another as if not a single interesting thing had occurred in the past hundred years.
Delilah smiled down at them. Don’t you worry, kitties , she thought, I’ll convince Mama to let us keep you around.
Oak Haven could use a few cats... and Epsilon deserves a furry memorial.
“Holy mother of—” Scarlett stumbled backward, tripping over her own feet and landing hard on her butt. “Did we just... did that actually work?”
Delilah stared, her mind struggling to process what her eyes were seeing.
Or rather, what they weren’t seeing. No tacky architecture.
No rotating top hats. No magicians. “I think we did it,” she managed, the words feeling inadequate for the sheer magnitude of what just took place. “We just... fixed the skyline.”
Jerusha hobbled over to help Luna to her feet. “Breathe, child. The magic takes a heavy toll.”
Luna’s face was tuberculosis pale, her normally wild hair hanging limp with sweat. “That was... intense,” she wheezed. “Like trying to fit the entire Pacific Ocean through a drinking straw.”
Meanwhile, rescued tourists and stray employees milled about, their expressions ranging from stunned disbelief to outright panic. One woman in a sparkly “WITCH PLEASE” T-shirt kept taking photos of the sky, as if her phone would reveal something her eyes couldn’t see.
“Um, guys?” Scarlett gestured toward the increasingly agitated crowd. “What do we do with... them?”
Aphra stepped forward, her expression resolute.
“I’ll handle it. I spent the last week pretending to be a ‘genuine witch tour guide,’ so I can certainly manage these folks.
” She straightened her shoulders and strode toward the confused group.
“Ladies and gentlemen!” she called out, summoning the same theatrical presence she’d used during her Enchanted Yarn Experience.
“On behalf of Oak Haven, I want to thank you for participating in our annual Holiday Illusion Spectacular!”
The tourists blinked at her in confusion.
“What you just experienced was a masterful example of mass hypnosis and state-of-the-art holographic projection,” Aphra continued smoothly. “We hope you enjoyed this unique entertainment experience! Click like and subscribe for more.”
“That’s only for videos,” Delilah called out. “Not real life.”
“But I don’t understand,” a man in a plaid jacket protested. “I was up fifty bucks at blackjack!”
“All part of our famous immersive simulation,” Aphra assured him.
“Now I suggest you let me lead you back to your cars. It’s Christmas Eve, after all.
Surely you have families to visit.” Amazingly, the crowd began to follow her, their confusion giving way to a sort of bemused acceptance.
One woman was already telling her companion, “I told you those slot machines couldn’t possibly be real. They were paying out way too much!”
“Aphra is a goddamn genius,” Scarlett whispered. “Think they’ll actually believe that whole ‘Holiday Illusion’ garbage?”
“They believed a casino materialized in the woods overnight,” Delilah pointed out. “Safe bet they’ll believe anything at this point.”
The witches stood in stunned silence for a long moment, staring at an empty space where, seconds before, a garish monument to the great humbug had dominated the landscape. The afterimage was still burned into Delilah’s retinas, like a ghost hovering in the cold night.
“Did we just kill a bunch of gamblers?” Scarlett asked suddenly, that thought clearly just occurring to her. “Like, the tourists and stuff?”
“The Mojave isn’t exactly the surface of the sun,” Luna replied, still sounding winded. “They’re probably just improperly dressed and super confused.”
“So what’s next?” Delilah asked. “We need to get to the oak grove, right? Finish Saturnalia and get our powers?”
Before anyone could answer, the air began to shimmer, coalescing into a rectangle of light. Within the rectangle appeared an enraged figure they recognized all too well: Ramona, the burgundy-suited magician who had taken Kelly.
Scarlett folded her arms across her chest and grinned wickedly. “What’s next, you ask? Next, we get our people back.”