Chapter Seven
Chrys wasn’t much of an animal person. She didn’t hold any dislike toward animals, but she’d never had pets growing up, not even fish. There had been a short period of time when she’d begged for a puppy, but that phase had passed, replaced by her I want to be an astronaut phase and then her I want to perform in the community musical theater phase, before she settled on her current phase, aka the I will hate you before you can hate me phase.
The seagulls that flocked around Thornhaven were the exception to her animal indifference. Chrys eyed them as warily as she might a nest of hornets. The birds had lived on the island longer than people had, and after several centuries of this joint arrangement, they were still pissed about being forced to share. Everyone knew that when the seagulls took off from a building roof in a giant feathery crowd, you ran for cover. To do otherwise meant you risked getting caught in a literal shit storm. It had yet to happen to Chrys, but it had happened to other students her freshman year, and it was as gross as it sounded. As a result, Chrys—like most sane people—gave the birds a wide berth.
That got harder to do when a seagull was homing in on her like a hawk aiming for a kill.
Chrys caught the blur of motion from the corner of her eye and had barely enough time to leap out of the way before the bird would have crashed into her.
Anushka screamed, and Isaiah let out a lou.
“what the hell?”
But Chrys was too busy moving to yell, clutching her lunch to her body because she hadn’t had time to set it down.
Her pulse pounded from surprise, and sweat beaded on the back of her neck. Without glancing around, she could tell every head in the lunch area had swiveled her way. It was exactly the kind of attention she did her best to deflect, and although she’d done nothing unusual or wrong herself, she knew a bird dive-bombing her at lunch was going to make her the laughingstock of the school.
Anushka, Isaiah, and others had also jumped away since the seagull was standing on their table, and they all stared at it, waiting for it to leave. Which it could do any day now, please and thank you. There was only ten minutes left before the bell, and Chrys had most of her lunch to finish because she’d been catching up on assigned reading first. It was a good lunch, too. Yogurt with the last of the gourmet chocolate granola she’d splurged on. If this stupid bird was going to …
The stupid bird seemed to hear her unspoken threat.
It took off in a violent motion, but it didn’t aim for the sky. It came straight at Chrys. Again! Like it had some personal vendetta!
This time Chrys did scream, but she didn’t get further tha.
“what the fu—”
before her foot hit a tree root as she backed up. She spun around, dodging the seagull and fighting for balance, and didn’t quite manage both. Instead she went flying, and her container of yogurt did as well, hurtling from her hands like she was a champion discus thrower.
Chrys landed on one knee. Her lunch, including the last of her precious granola, landed all over one of the sophomores who had gathered around to gawk. The girl screamed, Chrys swore, and the seagull took off at last, clacking—laughing.
Wincing, Chrys stood, testing out the ankle she’d caught. She started to apologize for the yogurt, but the girl ran off, wailing to her friends. A few people clapped, and Chrys heard a smattering of laughter.
Assholes.
Still, it seemed like the worst was over as she shakily returned to her table with her mostly empty container.
“What was that about?”
she muttered, scraping out the few remaining bits of lunch.
“What was what?”
Anushka asked.
Isaiah tore into their bag of chips.
“Just the birds acting strange.”
“That seagull …”
Chrys trailed off at the unconcerned expressions on their faces.
That was what. Suspicion exploded in her gut like a bomb, and she scanned the area for confirmation. All around, people were returning to their seats. Some looked confused, but most looked bored, like the past couple of minutes hadn’t happened.
Except …
A few people were snickering. A few people remembered exactly what had happened. They were witches, every one of them, which meant that seagull attack had not been a random act of animal insanity.
Someone had made it happen with magic.
Someone, as if Chrys didn’t know exactly who that someone was.
She glared at Lily, who was giggling with Sonia, and Lily’s gaze met hers for a moment before she snapped her face away. Chrys hadn’t the faintest idea how Lily could have been responsible, but she had no doubt it was her. Guilt had flashed over Lily’s face, just the teeniest, briefest amount. Just enough to confirm it had been her before she’d dissolved into new laughter.
Chrys’s grip tightened on her spoon. This war was escalating quickly, but that was fine. If Lily wanted to laugh, Chrys would give her something to laugh about.
Unfortunately, vengeance was delayed.
Chrys was sent to afternoon detention for allegedly tossing her yogurt all over another student, because the normies couldn’t think of another reason for how that might have happened. When she finally got home, eager to attempt her first-ever hex, fate intervened again. Chrys discovered that her mom had been promoted at work and Black Cat Coffee had placed an order for her cookies. Her mom was determined that they should celebrate, and faced with the need to choose between obliterating Lily and going out to dinner, Chrys chose her mom.
The delays didn’t stop there.
Over the following week, Chrys’s anger faded as schoolwork piled up and she assisted her mom with filling cookie orders. Lily fell further and further down her to-do list. She was coming to understand why wars were fought by professional soldiers. It was hard to maintain the necessary level of animosity when your mind was occupied elsewhere. If trying to best Lily over the years hadn’t involved things that Chrys had already been motivated to accomplish—get good grades, excel at magic—then she wasn’t sure she’d have been so successful.
Lily likely would have gotten away with her crime longer still, but hubris was a bitch, and so was she. Chrys had learned the first axiom from reading Greek tragedies in English class. The second was self-evident.
After their major history term paper was announced Tuesday morning, Chrys headed to the school library during a free period. With her earbuds in, she wandered down the stacks, her finger tracing the spines of the books in the history section. Tucked away in a dim corner, the section provided a sense of seclusion, and Chrys dropped her guard ever so slightly, allowing her talent to flow and help her with her search.
When she was younger, and her magic was developing, Chrys had initially been bummed that she didn’t have a flashier magical gift. School had cured her of that, and it had made her realize how perfect hers was for her. Magic might be chaos, and a talent seemingly random, yet each talent fit its witch like a custom pair of jeans.
For Chrys, that was books. Old ones, new ones, thick ones filled with knowledge, cheap paperbacks bursting with stories—it didn’t matter. Chrys loved them, and they loved her back. Sometimes her magic pulled her in the direction of whichever books she needed; other times, it pulled the books toward her. They responded to her intentions as she moved past, whispered their secrets indecipherably in her head. Every now and then, one would twitch beneath her finger, as though shouting, Pick me! I have what you’re seeking. Chrys plucked those couple of books off the shelves.
Using the online catalog might be helpful in some ways, but her talent provided far more certainty that the book in question would truly be useful.
Lost in her own world, she turned at the end of the row and bumped right into the most loathsome person in the school. Lily startled, too, and she glared at Chrys, but Chrys was the one who dropped her books in surprise.
Furious at Lily and at herself for not being more aware of her surroundings, Chrys knelt to retrieve the poor tomes by her feet. If she hadn’t been clumsy, she’d have smirked at the unintentionally hilarious expression on Lily’s face. It was too late now, though. She was the one who looked ridiculous, and not Lily, who seemed incapable of appearing threatening. She was too wholesomely pretty for that.
Chrys yanked her earbuds out, growing ever more furious with herself—and with Lily, for reminding her that she was pretty. That her brain immediately went there was obnoxious of it.
She gathered the books with all the venom she could muster, which was probably not much with Taylor Swift providing a soundtrack from her clutched fist. Why couldn’t she have been listening to one of her more typical playlists today?
To her surprise, Lily stepped closer, and Chrys found herself fighting the urge to take a step back. They were nose to nose, almost exactly the same height since Lily was wearing heeled sandals, and Chrys could smell her. She must have on perfume or use some kind of expensive shampoo like they sold in the fancy shops downtown. It made Chrys’s skin tingle, so possibly she was allergic to whatever it was.
She narrowed her eyes and did her best to look threatening, knowing she could do a better job of it.
Lily took the smallest of steps back.
“I can’t believe you told Luke I was a witch.”
Chrys rolled her eyes and used the opportunity to adjust the books in her arms, allowing her to move farther away. The air felt thick between them, as though she could sense … something. Magic? Anger? Even with the extra space, it was getting hard to breathe between these rows of books.
“So?”
She shrugged. “You are.”
Lily closed her eyes, and when she opened them, she regarded Chrys like she was gum beneath her shoe.
“You’re not supposed to go around talking about this stuff. I know you didn’t grow up here, so you don’t understand how it works, but someone must have told you that.”
Yeah, yeah. The first rule of Craft Country Club was that you didn’t talk about Craft Country Club. Like Chrys had needed to grow up in Thornhaven to learn that showing people you were different was bad.
“Stop being dramatic,”
she said.
“All I did was fill him in on some of the island’s history.”
“It doesn’t matter. You’re not supposed to talk about any of it.”
“If all the normies talk about witches, but the witches say nothing, isn’t that going to make people suspicious?”
Her logic seemed to stump Lily, but only for a second.
“Don’t be stupid. Of course we can talk about it in a general sense. But we don’t outright say that people are …”
“Witches?”
Lily groaned, and Chrys was surprised she didn’t stamp a foot with it.
Why had she never tried antagonizing Lily before? Ignoring her might have been easier, and beating her was delightful, but this was fun.
“You should watch yourself,”
Lily said at last, tossing her hair with a haughty flourish.
“Even the seagulls don’t like your attitude.”
Outwardly, Chrys made sure to hold her face perfectly still.
But inwardly, fury reignited in her blood.
That jab was her own fault, Chrys was forced to acknowledge as Lily spun on her heel and flounced away. Since she hadn’t retaliated, she’d let Lily believe she’d won.
Tomorrow, Lily would rethink that assumption.
The first thing Chrys did when she got home from school was toss the note her mother had left, saying she had to run errands, into the recycling. Then she got to work.
Shutting her bedroom door, she took a deep breath. Lily likely had a walk-in closet larger than Chrys’s bedroom, but this was her space to do with as she pleased. Three walls were painted lavender, making the most of the scant light that came in through her solitary window. The fourth was painted black. Rather than lamps, Chrys had strung lights around the ceiling—two strands, one that was pure white for general light, and one that was all purple for ambience. Her only furniture was her bed and the bureau she’d had since she was a baby, but even still, she barely had enough floor space to set down her backpack. She couldn’t risk her mother returning while she was in the middle of a spell, though, so this cramped room had to do.
Chrys shoved aside the backpack and pulled the box with her spellcasting supplies out from under the bed. For once, she wished she’d been a bit more scrupulous about following rules and making detailed notes in her Book of Shadows. She had an idea of what she wanted to attempt, but not the recipe—such as it was—that most witches would use.
For Chrys, those tools had always felt more like suggestions than requirements. If she didn’t need them, then why bother remembering which herbs promoted health and which oils were good for divination? What worked for one witch wasn’t guaranteed to work for another. She had always felt there was no point in memorizing spells or ingredient properties when the magic came from within.
She closed the blinds on her window, which dimmed the light but left the room bright enough to see, and settled on the old beige carpet next to the bed. First, a black candle. That was obvious for any hex and would give her something through which to channel her power.
Second, some incense wouldn’t hurt to focus her. More experienced witches would blend their own, carefully selecting herbs for their specific magical properties. Chrys, however, pulled out a premade blend she’d bought at the Cauldron Supply. It wasn’t one that was intended to be used for spellcasting, but that hardly mattered. The blend was called Masquerade, and its scent was dangerous and spicy. It made Chrys think of hexes, and that was what counted.
As for the rest, she was freewheeling it. Chrys got out her fancy red ink pen and a piece of crisp parchment paper. After a moment of inhaling the sultry smoke and focusing her intent, she distilled her plan into simple words. Her hand warmed with power as she wrote, and her vision blurred. When she finished, Chrys folded the parchment and spat on it. (Gross, yes, but nothing got contempt across better.) Then she stuck a corner of the paper in the candle flame until it caught fire.
It charred immediately as the flames devoured it, but not before the fire flared a deep royal blue with Chrys’s tinge. Dropping the paper into her cast-iron miniature cauldron, Chrys watched the blue and black flames rise to the ceiling and vanish. A moment later, the fire extinguished, and so did her candle.
Chrys blew hair out of her face as she snuffed out the incense, her head swimming thanks to the smoke and magical exertion. Something had happened, but only time would tell what. She just hoped she got to enjoy it as much as Lily had enjoyed attacking her.