3. Cori
Cori
C ori sat down heavily at her new desk, her possessions scattered around her in her feeble attempt at unpacking. A vibration of nervous energy shook her hands as she carefully unpacked a box of slides. She knew that her magic would eventually break through again, no matter how hard she tried to lock it away.
Why now?
She had successfully pushed away her Eye since she left for Yale at seventeen, the year all witches come of age. When she sent in her college acceptance letter, she didn’t tell her family about it.
She couldn’t.
This part of her life would be safer for everyone if they didn’t know where she was going. After years of plotting, they had no better alternative. It was safer for her, and it was safer for the coven.
She closed her eyes, bracing herself, as her magic twitched to life. A vision was coming. It had been so long since she had received one, but she immediately recognized the visceral dread as her Eye broke its way to the forefront of her mind .
The row home in San Francisco always smelled a bit like sandalwood incense. Astrid lit candles and sprinkled lavender under a whimsically painted sign, the plait of her blond hair cascading down her back.
Happy 9 th Birthday, Cordelia.
“Can you light the rest of those candles?” her mother called back to her. Giggles echoed from the other side of the room where two other girls from the coven were at work setting up the ritual circle.
“Do you think Cori knows how to light candles?” Josephine whispered to her friend.
“I know how to do it,” Cori muttered indignantly. She hastily whispered the incantation, but the wicks merely sparked pathetically.
“Girls, don’t tease Cordelia,” her mother said sternly.
The girls exchanged a serious look. Astrid Mangianelli was the coven leader, and getting scolded by her was not something to take lightly.
“Sorry, Priestess,” they said in unison.
“Cordelia’s a Celestial witch. It’s not easy for her to live in a coven of Charms witches.” Cori’s cheeks heated at her mother’s rebuke. “Every witch—Celestial, Charms, Gray or Elemental—can do basic charms. She just needs to use the incantation.” Her mother smiled encouragingly at her. “We’ve been practicing.”
Astrid’s cool, blue eyes flashed as she nodded at her misfit daughter. Cori puffed out a deep breath and wrinkled her forehead as she methodically whispered the incantation, lighting the candle ablaze with her magic.
“I knew you could do it, Starlight.” Astrid squeezed her daughter’s shoulders before crossing the room to finish hanging the sign.
“Why are you a Celestial witch?” asked Josephine, the priestess now comfortably out of earshot.
Cori’s shoulder tipped up. “Because my father was a Celestial witch.”
“Why don’t you go live with him, then?” Josephine asked scathingly. “Then he can be the one to teach you magic. ”
Red heat flared in her cheeks. “Because my father’s dead.”
Josephine’s face paled as Alexandra nudged her in the ribs.
“Well, I think it’s pretty cool that you’re Celestial,” Alexandra said quickly. “Where do you keep your Eye?”
Cori’s eyebrows rose into her hair. “I don’t keep it anywhere. It’s in my head. Sometimes it takes over my sense of sight, and I get a vision—like I’m watching a movie—from the past, present or future.”
“My mother says you can see ghosts,” Josephine said ominously, raising her hands as though she were a zombie.
Cori wasn’t sure if she wanted to punch Josephine in the jaw or run up to her room and bury her face in her pillow. She opened her mouth to respond when a serious voice interrupted them.
“Cori can see spirits, as a matter of fact. And if you girls don’t stop teasing her, I’ll make sure she sends some mean, bloody ones to your house to wake you up in the middle of the night.”
Enzo to the rescue. As usual.
Her brother sauntered into the room, escorted by his best friend, Calvin. The girls blushed a deep crimson. She bit back the urge to give her brother the biggest hug of her life but instead arranged her face into a cool, satisfied smirk.
“I could do it, you know,” Cori said, finding her courage. She squinted at Josephine. Sure, she could see spirits, but she couldn’t make them do her bidding. Josephine didn’t need to know that part.
Calvin laughed heartily as he mussed Cori’s hair. “Don’t mess around with this girl. She can see spirits, but she can also see auras. That means she can sense what you’re thinking about—almost like she can read your mind.”
“No, she can’t,” Josephine retorted.
“Oh yes, I can,” Cori shot back. “And right now, I can sense that you think Calvin’s hot.” Josephine’s face paled. “And that you’re holding in a fart.”
The boys let out a thunderous laugh as Josephine stormed from the room, either to find her mother or let out the gas she was accused of holding in. Cori could see auras. All Celestials could .
She couldn’t detect people’s stomach discomfort, but her first accusation was all truth. Enzo and Calvin were popular and good-looking. Any time the other girls saw them, the haze of energy around them turned a smoky red.
“Come on, Cor,” Enzo said, hooking his arm around hers. “I have a birthday gift for you.”
Cori followed him into the kitchen, where he presented her with a neatly gift-wrapped parcel.
She smiled up at her brother as she tore through the paper, revealing a double paned picture frame. On one side, a man stood on the steps of a trolley, holding a little boy’s hand. The man had neatly combed brown hair and dark eyes that sparkled with flecks of gold.
Her eyes.
She bit her lip hard enough to dull the ache rising in her chest. On the other side of the frame, her name was written in calligraphy.
“I found this picture of Papa and got it framed. Did you know he named you? Right before he died, he told me he was going to name you Cordelia because of a vision he had about you.” He pointed to the description etched in fine writing under her name.
“Cordelia,” she read aloud. “Latin; meaning: heart, star of the sea.”
She sucked in a breath, returning to the present. It made sense that this place would bring her back to a time when she missed her father most. It was funny that you could miss someone that you had never even met.
Mourn something you never even knew.
But as she took in the view of the ocean from her office window, she felt her father there with her in a way. His prediction had come true. She had dedicated her life to the ocean, and now she was taking on her first big endeavor toward trying to save it.
The charm bracelet on her arm jangled as she twirled it through her fingers.
It had been so long since she had received a vision. Locking her Eye away in the bustle of Yale’s campus had been easy. Occasionally, she had run into another witch, the tingle of magic bristling on her skin in an inopportune moment. She would usually flee the scene, but in rare instances, she ended up small-talking with another witch, pretending she was a Charms witch with little to no magical ability.
She had gotten an invitation to the coven on campus, but she shoved it in a drawer. The only person she allowed herself to get close to at Yale was Anne, and Anne only knew one side of her—the boring scientist, not the cursed witch. Committing all her energy into her research turned out to be a highly effective way to tamp down her magic.
Over the years, she continued to have shadows of her visions in her sleep, the only time she couldn’t consciously control her Eye. Dreams were different for Cori, like a vivid extension of reality. Every night, she replayed scenes from her childhood, saw glimpses of her mother and brother in the present, and received messages of the future. Some of her regular dreams were still a mystery to her.
A blue flame, rapidly engulfing a piece of folded paper. The sound of a little girl giggling in a faraway voice, perfumed by the smell of cotton candy. Two electric blue eyes haloed in a constellation of freckles that perfectly mirrored the constellation of Cetus.
She jumped when she heard a soft knock on the door. Anne popped her head in, her eyebrows raised. “Were you burning incense in here?”
Cori felt her cheeks flush. “No…” she stammered. “It must be coming from one of my bags.”
Anne shrugged. “Well, we should probably get going. I know you have a lot of settling in to do. I was thinking…you should stay with Geoff and me. For as long as you want.”
“Don’t worry about me.” Cori waved her hand in the air. “I made a reservation at the Collins Inn for the next few days until I can find an apartment.”
Anne shook her head with a sigh. “The Collins Inn is just a spare bedroom in Greg Collins’s basement. I’ll call him and tell him you made a mistake.”
Cori rubbed her forehead. “I don’t want to impose,” she said.
“Stop it,” Anne returned, scooping up Cori’s duffel bag and leading the way to the door before she could argue any more about the topic.