52 Sophie
Sophie
Sophie’s fingers feel thick and useless as she opens the journal.
Barbara sits next to her and leans in so she can see.
The rain, which sounds like it is only getting worse, makes the kitchen feel closed in.
A little lamp casts a dim light from the corner near a plate of cookies.
Barbara wears a pendant with a jewel-studded butterfly.
It catches flecks of light and spills them onto the journal.
Gael is busy with something on a laptop in the other room, headphones over his ears, but Elena is not here.
The last thing Sophie wants is to reopen healed wounds, but she also knows that this is critical. Barbara drums her fingers on the table.
The inside cover of the journal is where Sophie decides to turn first, since this will do the most damage. She wants to rip the Band-Aid off.
Barbara’s fingers stop drumming. She inhales a small abrupt breath that gets stuck somewhere in her throat. Without saying anything, she traces a finger over Quinn’s name. She circles the balloon of the large Q, then the rest of the letters, until she reaches the end of them.
“Where did you find it?” she asks. She wipes at her face.
“In my closet,” Sophie says quietly. “At my dad’s.”
Barbara’s eyelashes are wet and clumped together. She keeps her hand on the page, as if preventing Sophie from taking the journal away from her now that she has it. “You’ve read through it?”
Sophie nods. “It’s…” She doesn’t know exactly how to explain it. “It gets a little dark.”
Barbara presses her lips together and nods.
She pulls her reading glasses down off her head and starts to flip the pages with a tremulous hand.
Quinn’s handwriting assaults Sophie’s eyes again.
Eventually, she turns to the page Sophie hates to look at.
Its words are etched into the paper with a ferocity she didn’t realize Quinn possessed.
Bloodspell. Bloodspell. Bloodspell… The single word is written out ten, twenty times in a row, with nothing else on the page.
It’s the underlining that does it for Sophie.
The words are static, and yet it feels as if they’re going to crawl up and under her skin.
She brings her arms to cross in front of her chest. “Do you know what it means?”
Barbara shoves her reading glasses back up into her hair, while Sophie shifts in her seat.
She longs for a glass of cold water but doesn’t get up.
Then Barbara leans back. She puts her fingers to her temples and massages slowly, rhythmically, as her eyes close.
There’s a long silence that allows them to listen to the oncoming storm.
Sophie feels the rumble of distant thunder in her bones.
“Bloodspell is folklore,” says Barbara at last. “Years ago, well before my time, the book was different. It was full of spells written by generations of powerful witches.” She inhales long and deep and looks toward the window where raindrops streak down the glass.
“Remember I told you about Tammy Kallinski, who was initiated with me? How she came to me with a request? Well, of the four of us, Tammy was the one with the true heart of a witch. She was fierce about the magic, always going on about our power. She wanted to expose all the spells in the book that we knew had been hidden long ago. She gave me a whole list of reasons, and honestly, she was pretty compelling. Part of me agreed with her. Why shouldn’t we have access to all that magic? Why shouldn’t we be trusted with it?”
Barbara closes her eyes again for a long moment, and Sophie isn’t sure if she’s done or not.
Then, she fixes a renewed expression on her face and keeps going.
“In the end, I said no. I was the keeper of the book, and I didn’t see how anything good could come from unlocking spells other witches deemed too dangerous.
And thank god I did because I watched the greed grow inside Tammy like a tumor.
She was not going to let it go. But eventually, she realized I wasn’t going to give in.
She was just power hungry. It was becoming obvious to all of us.
She turned on me, tried to pit Carly and Winona against me—Joey’s and Elena’s moms. I guess she succeeded at that in a small way.
Soon Winona turned her back on magic altogether.
Carly folded into herself. She was never quite the same again.
And Tammy left. Moved away. Took her kid to follow her ex and his money.
Maybe being wealthy made her feel powerful. I don’t know.”
Sophie stands up slowly, processing. She tips two cups out of the cabinet and runs the tap, drinks deeply from one, and fills it again. The other, she places in front of Barbara, who gives her a distracted nod but doesn’t touch the water.
“Anyway,” says Barbara, “one of the hidden spells was called bloodspell. It was a way to steal the magic from a witch and transfer it to someone else.”
Before Sophie can process this, there’s a sudden sound from the hall, and Gael rushes in carrying his laptop. “Have you heard from my mom?” His hair is rumpled, and he looks wide-eyed around the kitchen, as if Elena might be hiding somewhere.
“No honey, but I’ll text her,” says Barbara. “Dinner in about an hour.”
“I just messaged her,” he says quickly. “But she hasn’t responded. I need to talk to her.”
“Could be that she’s on her way.”
“Can you let me know if you hear from her? It’s kind of important.”
“Of course,” says Barbara, standing to give him her full attention. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah, just want to show her something.” He glances at the laptop screen. “It’s fine, I’ll wait till she’s back.” He carries his computer out of the room, and Sophie hears his socked feet take the steps two at a time.
“Where is she?” Sophie asks quietly.
“She didn’t want me to say—I think she wanted to surprise Gael—but apparently she got a last-minute part in the film. She’s up at the glass house doing a bit of rehearsing.”
“That’s exciting. But why up at the glass house? Kind of random.”
“That’s where the director and Cal Pierce are staying, I think.”
Sophie thinks about asking more about this rehearsal, but the rain picks up with a sudden intensity that reminds her what they were talking about. “You said that bloodspell was a way to steal magic and transfer it to someone else. What exactly does that mean?”
Barbara puffs out her cheeks and exhales. “Well, those of us who are initiated are the only ones who can do magic. That’s the way it’s always been. However, bloodspell, if I am correct, is essentially a loophole. It allows someone who is uninitiated to do magic.”
“Huh,” says Sophie. “But how does that work?”
“I’m not entirely sure. I think there are two steps. The second step is the actual spell, the transfer. But it’s the first step that I think gives them the ability to use the book, to see through illusion spells, to start feeling the magic…”
“Okay,” says Sophie, afraid to ask her next question. “So, then what about the first step? What is that?”
Barbara looks at her for a long moment before she speaks. “The first step is a blood sacrifice.”