10. Cori
Cori
G olden hues of the midday sun poured into the large picture window of her office, illuminating the gadgets from the tackle box. She inspected a bright red floatation buoy, about the size of a doughnut. At the bottom of each float, a long, insulated collection of wire dangled at various lengths.
Each box was triple-insulated and waterproofed. A timer and plastic-ensconced GPS device was affixed to each side the box. Cori pushed the timer to its end, at which time the door of the box sprang open and resealed again. She smiled, shaking her head in awe. Anne was brilliant. What an ingenious way to collect water samples at specific times of the day and at specific depths and locations.
She opened the closet door and found the centrifuge machine, a set of micropipettes, and a rudimentary microscope setup along with slides and stain. It would be difficult to analyze the size of the plastic particulates without an electron microscope, and she had certainly taken for granted how much equipment was available to her in the lab at Yale, but she had also never been privy to such a clever and creative way to collect data before.
She peered into the microscope at the slides she had found in a box on Jordan’s desk. The brightly colored plastic granules peppered her view, colored spots in a murky mix of otherwise organic material.
She zoomed in, hopeful to get lost in the microscopic world of the ocean, but her Eye snapped open instead.
Pressing her ear to the wall of her bedroom, she strained to hear her mother’s voice, hushed as she spoke to the other priestesses in the adjacent living room. Enzo walked in with a pile of laundry cascading over his arms. He shot her a reproachful look.
“You know you aren’t supposed to be eavesdropping,” he said, throwing the laundry on her bed.
“I just don’t understand,” she said indignantly. “I don’t know why suddenly the coven is so concerned about me and what I can and cannot do. Mama said I can’t go to camp this summer. It makes no sense.” Cordelia felt hot tears stinging her eyes.
Enzo looked up at the ceiling with a serious gaze. “You really don’t know why they’re worried?” he asked incredulously.
“I don’t.”
“Cor, you made a prediction that’s going to change magic as we know it forever.”
An exasperated sigh escaped her chest. “I know that! I don’t even care about what I predicted, Enz. It won’t affect you, and it won’t affect me.”
His brow furrowed. “There are a lot of witches out there who don’t want this prophecy to come true,” he explained with calculated seriousness. “You can understand that, right?”
“Who cares what they think?” She crossed her arms around her body, hugging her favorite blanket.
“Cor, I don’t know if I’m the one who should tell you this.” He swallowed hard, his throat bobbing. He was silent for a few moments, as though considering his words with care. “It’s fabled that if you kill the witch who makes a prophecy, then it will not come to be,” he said, the power of his words washing over the room.
Cordelia dropped her blanket and gaped at him. Her mother had always warned her that there were many witches out there abusing the dark element. How many of those witches knew about her prophecy? Knew about her? She stood up and walked to the window, the stars above her turning on their axis, plunging her forward along with them.
Enzo’s voice was serious and sad when he broke the heavy silence in the room. “This is why you’re in danger. This is why you will someday need to disappear.”
Cori’s gaze shifted back to focus on the microscopic world in front of her, the drumbeat of her magic pulsing in lockstep to the pounding of her heart.
After years of silence from her Eye, the visions were consuming her. She cursed at herself. It had always been so easy for her to trap her Eye out of the way.
Why now? Why here?
Despite her anger, she allowed her mind to linger on the sweet nostalgia of the vision. Being back in her bedroom in San Francisco for a moment—only to be thrust back to the lonely isolation of her reality—was a sickening kind of torture.
Did her mother still live in the same house? She shoved her curiosity away. The more information she knew about her family, the more it could be used against them. The more they didn’t know about her, the more protected they all were.
Witches could take that information and use dark magic to find her. If they wanted to end her life to nullify her prophecy, they would go to great measures to find her family.
Cori Evans is an engineer. A PhD. Someone like her should be blissfully ignorant about a prophecy that a twelve-year-old Celestial witch made in California fourteen years ago.
She was hidden, but now that the time was near, inevitably, they would look for her. They were hunting for Cordelia Mangianelli, not Cori Evans. Would the trail of lies and secrecy be enough?
She thought this remote, anonymous town would be the perfect place to hide, but she had been here less than twenty-four hours and she had already revealed pieces of herself to a complete stranger.
Her head was heavy, and her eyes stung as she walked toward the window and watched the boats bobbing innocently in the water. Each vessel was like an island to itself, serenely drifting on the waves in solitude.
What if she set sail on a boat with enough rations to last her until the solstice? Would it look suspicious to Anne and Jordan if she left suddenly before even starting the job?
Yes, that would certainly be out of character. It would probably prompt a police investigation. Perhaps even a news story. She could see the headlines of the evening news now: Young, Single Scientist-Woman Disappears from Middle of Nowhere. Ship Missing in the Harbor. The last thing she needed was a media frenzy, especially when the investigators of her murder discovered she had been using a fake identity for the past nine years. It was best to keep her head down and simply make it through the next 101 days.
Cori loaded up her car with the tackle box and several binders of last year’s data. She shrugged off her sweatshirt as she buckled her seat belt, enjoying the warmth of the sun as it shone on her bare shoulders.
Her hair, wavy from the humidity of the car, stuck to her as she swept it into a bun. Gulls called to each other on the bay as the light dipped low in the sky. Just as they sounded on another bay—three thousand miles away.
She pulled her dented Volkswagen Golf onto the side road that led to where Anne’s house was perched on the grassy hillside. As she turned into the rock driveway, the intensity of electric energy crawled over her skin once more.
Only this time, it was accompanied by an intense heat. Her stomach dipped as she grabbed for her keys to make a quick rush into the cottage.
Before she could duck low and pivot herself behind her car, she turned to find two witches locked arm in arm, staring curiously at her with wide eyes.
The younger woman, a teenager with flaming auburn hair and an athletic frame, was dressed stylishly in a crop top and high-waisted jeans. She wore a pair of boots that were extensively scuffed on the heels.
Beside her, a middle-aged woman with gentle waves of dark brown hair offered a tentative smile. Her arms cradled a basket of wildflowers of the most colorful array Cori had ever seen. The wind picked up, and she felt a pang of homesickness once more as the scent of lavender incense wafted to her on the breeze.
“Holy Mother, it’s true,” the young witch said, awestruck.
“Stop staring,” her companion scolded as she elbowed her in the side. “I’m Hannah Huxley. We live on the top of the hill,” she continued, her voice like warm honey.
Something about this woman reminded her so intensely of her own mother—so intensely of home. “This is my daughter, Ariel. I think you may have met my son Adrian this morning?” she asked expectantly.
For the second time in one day, Cori felt like she was a deer caught in the headlights of a tractor trailer. Heat rose to her cheeks as her mouth opened and a garble of incoherent sound came out.
Hannah waved her hand sheepishly, “Goddess, help me. It was rude of us to catch you off guard like this. Here come the nosy neighbors, out of the woodwork! Come on, Ariel, let's head home.”
“Wait!” she stammered, finding her words. Adrenaline surged through her. What’s wrong with you? Her feet remained traitorously rooted to the gravel. “I was just surprised,” she said, managing a crooked smile.
“Are you really a scientist?” Ariel asked, crossing her arms. “That’s pretty cool.”
Cori’s encounter with Adrian this morning was rushed and awkward, and she could barely remember what she said to him.
He had gone home and told his family about her. Something welled up inside her stomach that made her all at once sick and elated .
“Um, yes,” she stammered. “I’m an engineer in marine ecology.” Cori’s words tumbled out like awkward gravel.
Stop talking to them, you idiot.
She cleared her throat, pushing away her fear. Sure, every fiber of her being was telling her she should run all the way back to New Haven, but her own mother had even suggested that she should make some friends. The homesickness elicited by the visions had ripped open an old wound, tapping into the void of her loneliness.
“I’m Cori. I just moved here to take a job at the marina.” She had just met these strangers on the street—if you could call this a street—and divulged multiple important pieces of information about herself. And for the first time in almost a decade, it felt right. There was no going back now.
This family of local Elemental witches did not feel like a threat. She widened her Eye to their auras. The two women had warm, open energy.
“When my brother told us about you, I thought he was lying,” Ariel continued with a sly smile.
Cori’s stomach turned over. Adrian really had told his whole family about her. She supposed that another witch showing up in a town like this was worth mentioning, after all. Did he also mention that she almost got swept away to sea that morning? Her cheeks heated again.
“Nonsense,” Hannah fussed. “Cori, it’s a pleasure to meet you. Actually, this is wonderful timing. Would you like to come over tonight for dinner? Ariel and I were just at my hive, and we collected fresh honeycomb for my biscuits.”
The wildflowers must belong to the bees, Cori realized.
She bit her lip, grappling with herself. “I wouldn’t want to impose.”
“Impose?” Ariel squeaked. “The only other witches I’ve ever known in my life are my parents and my smelly brothers—and my grandparents, but they’re dead—so it would literally offend me if you didn’t accept my mother’s invitation.”
Cori looked to Hannah, who was massaging her jaw with her fingertips. She let out a heavy sigh. “My daughter is right, I’m afraid.”
Every ounce of her tried to come up with an excuse. An explanation for why she couldn’t have dinner with them. Not tonight or ever. But instead, she said one word.
“Sure.”