Chapter Twenty-Six
Twenty-Six
Honey and Karma arrived about fifteen minutes later, both huddled under one umbrella. Honey was carrying an overstuffed tote bag that appeared to be filled with Tupperware containers. I ushered them in from the front porch and took them into the sitting room.
As nice as the living room was for watching TV, it wasn’t the ideal location for an actual conversation. The couches were too soft, and the layout of the room made it difficult to talk to more than one other person.
I almost never used the sitting room, so it was still set up exactly the same as Eudora had left it. I had lit a fire in the massive fireplace that was connected to both the sitting room and kitchen, because the drafty old house was having temperature mood swings and even though it had been sticky hot the previous day, there was now a distinct chill in the air thanks to all the rain. The fire made the sitting room feel cozy, and I loved the smell of burning wood.
Through the two grates I could see Bob curled up in his bed on the hearth in the kitchen.
Honey handed me one Tupperware container after another, describing each dish as she went. “That’s honey jalape?o corn bread. That’s shrimp with dirty rice. This one is akara.” She shook a container that appeared to be filled with golden-brown coins. “They’re deep-friend patties made of black-eyed peas. You’ll love them. And this , this is chicken mafé. Phoebe, let me tell you . . .” She made a little chef’s kiss gesture. “You haven’t lived until you’ve had my mama’s chicken mafé. You’re not allergic to peanut butter, are you?”
While I didn’t immediately know how peanut butter was involved, I assured her I was totally fine to eat it. The container with the chicken was still warm to the touch, and when I opened the lid, my mouth immediately began watering. The chicken was coated in a reddish-gold sauce, and there appeared to be a stew-like mixture of vegetables cut up with the meat: carrots, onion, potato. The scent was heavenly, a little sweet with hints of tomato, ginger, and something perhaps a little umami, maybe fish sauce?
Whatever it was, I couldn’t resist the urge to snatch out a cube of potato and pop it into my mouth. If I’d thought the smell was good, the flavor was beyond comprehension. I’d been about to eat a tuna salad sandwich for dinner when food like this was an option? It was sweet, salty, rich, and creamy. The spices sang, and even the bed of rice the whole meal was settled on was the fluffiest I’d ever seen.
Heaven in a Tupperware container.
“This is incredible. I can’t thank you enough.” I closed the lid and set all the food on the coffee table, knowing full well that the instant I locked the door behind them I was going to turn into a pure glutton and just sit on the floor with a fork in one hand and a napkin in the other, devouring everything in sight.
Bob must have smelled the chicken, because he had snuck into the room at some point and was pointedly sniffing his way around the table.
“None for you, mister,” I scolded. But everyone in this room knew he’d get to try some when I finally sat down to eat.
“You girls are too skinny. I don’t know what this town is feeding you. I said to Honey, I said, ‘Baby, you need to eat some proper home cooking, because you’re wasting away to nothing.’ And so I made something nice for her, and for you.”
“Thank you, Karma. This all looks insanely good.”
“You’re welcome, baby. Now I’m sure what you really want isn’t comfort food, so let’s get down to business. I do my best thinking while I’m in the kitchen, so all day today I was thinking to myself, Karma, how are you going to help that poor girl? And somewhere between the dirty rice and the mafé, it came to me.” She clapped her hands together loudly, spooking Bob, who had climbed up onto the table to investigate the shrimp. He darted out of the room.
“Mama, you’re scaring the cat,” Honey scolded.
“Oh, pshh, he’s a big boy, he’ll be okay.”
Indeed, Bob poked his head back around the corner not even a minute later, the siren song of shrimp simply too powerful for him to stay away.
“How are you going to help me fix my problem?” I asked, steering us back toward the subject that had brought them here tonight. I didn’t want to be rude, but the promise of no longer making random objects around me start floating was too enticing to ignore.
“Witches usually grow out of our magical hiccups pretty quickly as teens,” Honey started.
“But because you started so late in the game, your magic is having a hard time adjusting,” Karma explained.
“Yes, I think we got that part figured out already. But aside from going back in time and telling teenage Phoebe she’s a witch, what else can we do to help me through this midlife magical puberty?”
Honey snorted, but Karma didn’t seem to think my joke was very funny.
“I’d tell you to get a little therapy or go on some good antianxiety medication if I thought we had time for that.” She clucked her tongue at me.
I might have found her suggestion offensive at a different point in my life, but I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t considered medication a few times while dealing with this. A little Xanax every now and then would probably stop me from sending fruit levitating in my kitchen.
“What we need to do is tell your magic not to worry so much,” Karma said.
Honey nodded along.
I was completely lost.
“I’m sorry, you want me to . . . have a heart-to-heart with my powers?”
“In a sense.” Karma started to pull more things out of the tote bag that had been nestled under all the food. There was a huge chunk of smoky quartz, a mason jar filled with water, several freezer bags packed with dried herbs, a whole box of salt, at least a dozen candles, and a sharp-looking bronze blade that Honey had told me once was called an athame. They were ceremonial knives used by some witches, depending on their practice. “Honey, help me with the table.”
Honey got up from her armchair, and the two women moved my hefty coffee table off to the side of the room.
“Okay, you can sit right here, sweetheart.” Karma tapped her toe on the center of Eudora’s huge Persian rug.
I did as I was told, even though I still had no idea what was happening. They wanted me to talk to my power? While I understood that magic was a strange thing to have control over, I had never thought it was a sentient thing that I could just hold a conversation with.
Surely there was more to this than what Karma was suggesting.
I just needed to trust the process.
Sitting cross-legged in the middle of the carpet, I immediately set my hands on my thighs like I was about to start meditating. I wasn’t much for mindfulness, but I’d apparently watched enough YouTube videos that I thought this was the best way to sit. I was ready for yoga but not a tête-à-tête with my witchy powers.
“You got a good vacuum?” Karma asked, picking up the box of salt from the table.
“Uh, pretty good, I guess?”
“Okay, good.” Then she set about pouring the salt directly onto the rug.
I almost made a noise of protest but bit down on my cheek before it emerged. I had to trust that Karma knew what she was doing. She’d been a witch for decades longer than I had and had raised one of the smartest women I knew. If anyone was going to have an idea of how to fix this, it would be her, so I let her continue with her efforts.
My Roomba was going to have a field day with this later.
Next to Karma, Honey was lighting the small white candles they had brought with them. She followed behind her mother, who was drawing a circle of salt around me, and Honey placed five candles at equal distances around the circle.
When the last candle was placed and the circle was closed, it was as if a window had been shut and blocked out all the sound and air from outside, except it was blocking out the sound of the room.
I felt a chill creep over my skin as the warmth from the fire disappeared.
I took a deep breath just to remind myself I could breathe.
While I’d never been inside a deprivation chamber, I had to believe this was exactly like what it felt like. My heart hammered, and sweat beaded my forehead.
On the coffee table, the individual food containers that the Westcott women had brought with them started to lift from the table, as did a collection of wooden coasters and several small framed photos on a nearby desk.
I shut my eyes tightly, trying to will it to stop, but the muffled voice of Karma broke through the invisible wall around me.
“It’s okay, Phoebe. Let it happen.”
I took a deep breath and opened my eyes, horrified to see that small objects all over the room were now halfway up to the ceiling. Whatever Karma and Honey were doing was making things worse, not helping.
“I can’t do this,” I said, barely able to catch my breath because my pulse was tripping all over itself.
“You’re doing great, I promise you. This is okay.”
I didn’t see how it was possible that making everything that wasn’t bolted to the walks in a whole room float eight feet in the air was okay, but Karma’s voice was calm and reassuring. I wanted to believe her.
She glanced around me, taking in just how much of a midair disaster I’d created. Bob, meanwhile, was no longer put off by my glitchy abilities; he was balanced on the back of an armchair, reaching out to grab the Tupperware container with the shrimp and rice. His paw clipped the edge, but he only managed to send the plastic dish wobbling away from him.
He started to wiggle his haunches, but Honey plucked him up quickly, sensing as I had that he was about to make a jump for it.
“You’ll get some later, Bob. Just be good for now,” Honey scolded in soothing tones. She set him on the floor and he stayed by her feet, staring up at his forbidden snack, the tip of his tail twitching violently.
“Phoebe, do you grant me permission to cross your barrier?” Karma was crouched in front of me, pulling my attention back to her.
“Yes?” I really wasn’t sure what any of this meant. Honey had grown up not just employing her natural hereditary witchy abilities but practicing a more traditional form of witchcraft as well. She made potions and poultices. She used candles and herbs and crystals. I didn’t know what any of this meant beyond the few things she’d educated me on over our friendship.
“Thank you,” she said, then picked the huge chunk of smoky quartz up from the ground. “Can you hold this?” She passed it to me, and the moment her hands crossed the line of salt on the floor, the suffocating sensation dimmed for a second. The warmth of the fire tickled my cheeks; the rain pattering heavily on the window became audible.
When she retracted her hands, leaving me holding the heavy crystal, everything dulled again.
How bizarre.
She took something from Honey and passed it across the barrier, again creating the strange opening between whatever space I was in and the reality of my living room, as if she were parting a curtain between rooms. Bob paced in front of me but seemed to be aware of the invisible wall between us; he didn’t try to get any closer, which made me unspeakably sad. My inability to snuggle him in that moment meant I’d never wanted to do it more.
The item Karma passed me this time was the bronze-hued knife. I almost resisted taking it, but she placed it firmly in my palm before retracting her hand and sealing me inside my terrible little fortress. I stared at the knife in one hand and the heavy crystal in the other, then looked to the older woman for even the slightest idea of what I was supposed to do.
“Put the crystal in front of you.” She tapped the rug, and I mimicked her, although it was like trying to listen to instructions that someone was yelling at me underwater. “Now take the knife and cut your palm.”
I stared at her, holding the knife totally still against my knee. Surely I had heard her wrong.
There must have been something obviously mistrusting in my expression, because she gave me a soft smile, nodded, and then mimed drawing her thumb across her palm. “It doesn’t have to be deep, but you gotta spark the magic, sweetie.”
I gestured to a candelabra floating about three feet to her left. “I think it’s pretty active already.”
“You want help or you want to be sassy? I’m plenty used to sassy—I raised this one.” She jerked a thumb in Honey’s direction.
“Excuse me, don’t go pointing any fingers at me right now, I’m just an innocent bystander.” Honey was actually an innocent participant, because she’d mixed together the herbs they’d brought into a metal bowl and set them alight and was now fanning the smoke around the room.
This was nuts .
I took the knife, whose blade now looked especially sharp, and drew it across my palm. While I barely even touched metal to skin, I still let out a surprised hiss of pain, and stared as blood bloomed across my skin. The cut wasn’t deep and actually looked and felt less painful than the scrapes already on my palm and knees from my tumble down the hillside a couple of days earlier. In fact, I doubted anyone was even going to notice this new cut in a day or two.
I held my hand up so Karma could see, and she gave me an appreciative nod. “Good girl. Now put your hand on the crystal.”
In for a penny, in for a pound, I guess.
This time I didn’t hesitate or make faces. I just pressed my palm against the smoky quartz.
The second flesh met stone, the entire world disappeared.