5. Cori
Cori
A nne opened the door to the guest cottage with a flourish. “Ta-da!”
Cori strolled through the doors as Anne clicked on the entryway light. She had never seen a house so cozy. The door opened to a tidy little room with whitewashed walls. There was a kitchen carved into the corner, defined by a butcher-block table.
Against the wall was a farmhouse sink, flanked with a solitary cherrywood cabinet that was charmingly worn and weathered. An ancient-looking icebox refrigerator was tucked in between the cabinet and the half wall that seemed to lead to a bedroom.
There was an old rotary phone on the wall, resting atop an antique bracket. The wall was adorned by mismatched shelves in the kitchen and a window of wavy glass that looked out to a small garden and the ocean beyond it.
A quaint sitting area housed two couches that, despite their aged appearance, looked warm and comfortable. The jute rug on the floor was tattered and torn.
Through the front bay window, she could see the ocean beyond the rocky drive that had led up to the cliffside cottage.
“I hope you don’t mind the rug,” Anne said. “This is our cat’s favorite place to bathe in the sun…and sharpen her claws. We never find her in the main house. It might have something to do wi th the nice, warm sun patches that come through the skylights,” Anne laughed.
Cori smiled widely as she looked up at the skylights. It was getting dark now, and she could practically feel the moon orbiting around her, pulling her gaze toward the sky with its gravity.
Just then, something softly rubbed against her leg.
“There you are, Turtle, speak of the devil,” Anne laughed.
“Funny, she looks more like a cat to me.” Cori bent down to scratch a fuzzy ear. “But I can see why you named her Turtle.” The calico cat had beautiful markings of white, cream, and brown that distinctly looked like a tortoise shell.
The connection between witches and cats was one of those old fables that happened to be true. She closed her eyes and remembered fondly how many strays they used to attract to their town house in San Francisco. The neighbors had issued a few complaints through the years.
“Are we going to be roommates, pretty girl?” Turtle craned her neck as Cori scratched under her ear. She purred deeply as she leaned in.
“I hope this will be comfortable enough,” Anne went on. “Farley really doesn’t have a booming rental market, after all. Geoff and I would be more than happy to have you stay here as long as you like.”
Cori opened her mouth with a question on her lips when Anne interrupted, raising her hand. “And don’t even ask me what the rent is. You can make it up to me by working hard. God knows I’m not going to pay you what you really deserve. Oh, and you can spend part of the day entertaining Jordan for me. I love him to death, but he truly never shuts up.”
Cori laughed at this, unsure just how entertained Jordan would be by her fumbling attempts at small talk. Her shoulder tipped up. “We can argue about this again another time.”
“You can consider us even, then. Besides, if you don’t live here, then nobody would. Except Turtle. And what would it say about me if I had a guesthouse just for my cat?”
After assuring the hot water heater was working, Anne bid her a good-night. Cori huffed a deep breath, taking in her new home.
The cottage was small, dark, and starkly cold. After walking the perimeter and muttering a few of her mother’s finest protective spells, she piled some of the wood from the basket into a dirty cast-iron stove, setting it alight with magic.
The bed, she found, was covered with crisp white sheets and a sky blue flannel coverlet. She walked around her bed, whispering her mother’s spells into the air.
A spell to protect her from bad dreams and one to prevent her from oversleeping. It was not until the familiar electric crackle of her mother’s magic settled into the atmosphere of the room that she really felt at home.
It took her less than ten minutes to unpack her few worldly possessions. Then she set out on the most important task at hand. While all witches could do basic spells, Charms witches could weave their own, and her mother had invented quite a few ingenious spells through the years.
Her note-sending spell was Cori’s favorite.
Dear Mama,
How was the summer solstice? I didn’t have time to celebrate much myself because I was preparing to move. After what seemed like a hundred years of school, I finally got a full-time job. I wish I could tell you all about it. Of course, I won’t be able to tell you where I am, but I will say that the views are beautiful. And Papa’s vision continues to be stronger and stronger each day. Love you and miss you terribly.
102 days.
Love, Starlight
She touched the paper to her heart, folded it three times to fit into her palm, and said the incantation. The paper melted into her hand, and she knew at that moment, three thousand miles away, the note would materialize in her mother’s palm right now.
She stared into the fire, eagerly expecting her reply. Cori could think of no better feeling in the world than that little piece of paper, crisp in her hand, smelling no doubt of lavender and sandalwood. A special charm her mother made, just for them. A bridge between them in time and space.
As soon as she received her response, she eagerly unfolded the violet paper. Her mother usually tucked a newspaper clipping into the notes. Peanuts was her favorite, but this time the clipping appeared to be a from a pamphlet.
Dearest Starlight,
Congratulations on your new job! I’m beyond proud of you and hope you’re doing something you love. I asked your brother to send you a letter, so expect one soon. He’s been under a lot of pressure lately. I found this pamphlet in his apartment. Stay vigilant, of course, but I hope you’re making friends. I miss you every minute of every day.
Mama
Cori let out a ragged sigh. How could her mother expect her to stay vigilant and also make friends? It had been hard for her to make friends even before she had a target on her back. Her mother couldn’t be so delusional to think that her misfit daughter had developed social skills, even after all these years.
She unfurled the clipping from the pamphlet that had been tucked into the note.
The Los Angeles Reform Coven will hold an open meeting on September 24 for any members or interested nonmembers to discuss mitigation efforts to deal with the impending implications of the Gray Prophecy.
Her prophecy—the one that would come to be in 102 days. Nausea bubbled up into her throat as she read and reread the words on the page. What exactly did they mean by mitigation efforts ?
She considered sending a letter to Enzo right away but cast the thought out of her mind. Mama had said he was under a lot of pressure. She was certain he was working out a way to stop this meeting from happening.
She pulled out her laptop and connected to the Wi-Fi with the password Anne had scrawled on a sticky note for her.
She typed “Los Angeles Reform Coven” into the search bar, and the results smacked her in the face with the first image that she saw.
Calvin Hanson, her brother’s handsome best friend, was all grown up, but his face still had the same boy-next-door guise that she remembered from when she was a teenager.
She clicked on the image of Calvin, bedecked in an expensive-looking suit, and it redirected her to the page.
At the Los Angeles Reform Coven, the LARC, we teach witches how to tap in to the potential of their magic using natural and ancient methods. The LARC believes that Charms energy is strongest when light and dark elements are used in harmony to build on the spells that you weave. Take one of our award-winning workshops to hone and unlock your true potential .
She gaped at the screen with horror. Using dark magic was strictly forbidden by the Covenant, but this coven challenged that and openly defied it to prey on feeble witches that wanted to bolster their power.
She clicked through the website, shaking her head in disbelief as she read the description of the courses and workshops that the coven offered. She scrolled through the “about me” section where Calvin gushed about their methods—a manifesto to allow all witches to come to their full potential.
The more research she did, the more her Eye started to blink and hum a warning in her mind. It was early in the morning, with the first golden beams of day, that she finally fell asleep, her laptop open on the pillow next to her.