A Charming Wish (14 page)

“
Great!” She jumped in
place. “I can come to your house or you can come to mine.” She
scribbled her address on a piece of paper and handed it to me. “We
can try a few things I found on the internet until we find a yoga
studio.”

“
How about your
place?”

Her place was perfect! I would be able
to snoop around to see if she had anything to do with the June’s
Gems missing from Wicked Good. The more I thought about how she
could steal from Raven and pin it on me the madder I
got.

“
Sure.” She smiled,
rounding her cheeks into rosy mounds. “Call before you
come.”

“
I will do that.” I rolled
my eyes at her, but she didn’t see it. She was too busy looking at
her watch.

“
Hey, I will be right
back.” Hurriedly she walked to the door. “I have a very important
delivery today and I want to see if it’s here yet.

“
Important delivery?” I
spat the words out contemptuously after she left the room. Looking
down at the trash can, I couldn’t help but get angrier and angrier
trying to figure why she would do such a thing. “What are you up
too, Adeline?” I pumped my fist to the side, just as a puff of
smoke filled the air around me.

“
What the…” I blinked
several times as I realized my hands were gripping the steering
wheel of the Green Machine. Quickly I let go as if I were touching
fire. “. . .hell!”

My breath caught in my throat as my
heart pounded.

Meow,
meow
. Mr. Prince Charming sat ever so
elegantly on the passenger seat with a smug little smile on his
face. If only he could talk.

“
Madame Torres.” I grabbed
her out of my bag and held her up to my face. “What was
that?”

“
What?” She
yawned.

“
I’m sorry; did I wake you
up from your little nap?” I sarcastically added, not letting her
answer. “How in the world did I go from inside of Adeline’s office
to here without walking out of there?” I pointed to the front of
the store with one hand and held her up to see with the
other.

“
I don’t know. Maybe it’s
some sort of new gift you got since you took over as village
president.” She did worry about my little mishap too much as she
brought her fingernails up to her eyes to inspect them. “Maybe you
need to ask
the elders
. They seem to be know-it-alls.”

“
I’m serious. Do you know
anything about this?” I held her up to my face. This was not a
normal gift for me. “I am an intuitionist, not a. . .well. .
.
witch.”
The
word left my mouth in a hushed whisper.

Placing my hand over my opened mouth
that I couldn’t seem to shut, my mind started drifting with all
sorts of possibilities. These were thoughts that would have never
crossed my mind. When I accepted the position, did it really come
with all sorts of powers that I had never even dreamed of? Did all
my powers have to match or even go beyond those of the citizens in
the community?

Blankly, I stared out the windshield.
I wasn’t sure what to do. Oscar’s memory had been swiped clean as
if he never knew he was a spiritualist, and he obviously had no
clue I was one, so he was not someone I could talk to.

Eloise thinks I’m on house arrest and
when she finds out I left, she will be mad.

The Elders won’t help me; they are
only worried about ‘making sure the community doesn’t get a bad
name.’

Hiss,
hiss
. Mr. Prince Charming’s back raised up
as if he knew exactly what I was thinking.

“
I hate to, but it’s my
only hope.” I rubbed down his back, thinking about Aunt Helena and
vividly picturing Hidden Hall, A Spiritualist University before I
plunged my hands down to my side.

Chapter Eighteen

That wasn’t so bad,
I thought as I looked down the street of the
University. I could probably get use to traveling around this
way.

Mr. Prince Charming darted ahead of
me. He knew his way around and would be fine.

“
Nice to see you,” the
voice came before I saw the body.

“
Hi, Gus.” I would
recognize his voice from anywhere. “It’s lovely to hear
you.”

“
And to see you.” His
mischievous smile appeared before his tall lanky body
did.

Gus was a shape-shifting Clairvoyant.
He was all over the place and reading the dead better than anyone I
had ever know. Well. . .I guess I didn’t know many, but he was good
at it.

“
You got your hair cut.” I
said.

There was a sense of more of a
grown-up Gus from the last time I had seen him.

He brushed his hands through the
shorter version of his old shaggy ash-blond hair. His brown eyes
rolled, “Your aunt told me I needed to be more presentable if I was
going to continue to be her assistant.”

“
Well, you certainly are
trying.” I noticed his usual cargo shorts and T-shirt had been
replace by khaki pants and a button-down, though his sleeves were
rolled up to his elbows.

“
Are you here to finish
your classes?” he asked as we walked toward campus.

The streets were filled with students.
Many more than I recall being there before.

“
I’m working on my level
twenty-eight and a few other things.” I didn’t want to tell him
everything. “What’s with all the students?”

“
Since you left, the
University opened up the divide between the Dark-Siders and
Good-Siders.”

“
Oh.” My eyebrows lifted
in delight as I looked down the street toward the edge of the
University where the Dark-Siders lived, and I noticed it had become
a much brighter area.

The Dark-Siders and Good-Siders could
never really get along well enough to co-habit. Luckily, I was able
to show them we could live in harmony the last time I was here. It
was hard, and both sides still have to refrain from using their
gifts on the other, but it seemed to be working out pretty
well.

“
Yea.” He nodded toward
the edge of town. “Even the wooded area has gotten a lot
sunnier.”

“
That’s great.” I laughed,
recalling the time I had snuck over to Raven Mortimer’s to spy on
her when I was a student. She is a Dark-Sider and her sister is a
Good-Sider.

That was taboo back in the day, but
this was a new day and everyone needed to get along, good or
bad.

“
You did a good thing
here.” He swept his hands in front of him like the models on the
Price Is Right game show. “Enrollment is up. Morale is up. Everyone
is happy, including your Aunt.”

“
I hope she’s in a good
mood today.” I winked.

Aunt Helena had always been a hard nut
to crack, so anytime I could find her in a good mood in my favor,
the better. She was my only hope.

“
There is something
different about you, June Heal.” Gus stopped and rubbed his chin.
He stared at me. I looked away. I didn’t want him to see into my
soul.

“
I’m not sure what you are
talking about.” I said looking up, but he was gone.

Without hesitation, I made my way down
past the library where the administration offices were. Aunt
Helena’s office was there, but she rarely was. A lot of the time,
she was substituting for a class. She believed it kept her in tune
with the students, when the students would have rather stayed in
bed if the teacher was absent.

The sun was always the brightest over
the library. It was a great place for all the spiritualists to
learn harmony. After all, the books in there told everyone
everything they needed to know about each other and their
gifts.

“
Hello.” I nodded and
smiled as I passed the students running up the library
stairs.

I never saw myself as the college type
since I didn’t have the opportunity to go to college since Darla
died, but after being here and taking classes, I did enjoy
it.

Mewl,
mewl
. Mr. Prince Charming was sitting next
to old Elory, the dog that lived in Whispering Falls.

I couldn’t help but smile. Anywhere
else, it would be strange to see a pristine white cat sitting next
to a dog that wore a long scarf that covered his head and wearing a
couple of strands of pearls around his neck. But not here. It had
become the normal way of life for me.

My mind drifted back to
Oscar. My gut told me things were going to be rocky for us. If
there even
was
an
‘us’.

“
June!” Aunt Helena was
walking out the door of the administration building. “I was
expecting you, but not so quickly.”

She wrapped her arms around me, and
guided me back toward the campus. The students suddenly stirred
clear of our path, not making eye contact with my Aunt or
me.

“
I’m assuming you are
figuring out all the new
gifts
you are getting.” There was pride in her
voice.

“
I don’t really know of
any but the whole disappearing thing.” I fluttered my hands in the
air. “The smoke I could do away with.”

“
Smoke?” She stopped in
the wheat field just shy of the sign with several long wooden arms,
each with a finger pointing in a different direction. Each wooden
arm had a different school on it.

“
Yes, the whole
teleportation thing that you do.” Looking at her, something clicked
in my mind. She had no idea what I was talking about. A more
terrifying realization swept over me. If she didn’t know what was
going on with me, who did?

Without a word, she tapped the sign
toward Potion School. Then magically, a pathway appeared across the
wheat field.

My eyes followed as the path gained
momentum and ended at a small pink cottage that had window boxes
under each window overflowing with Geraniums, Morning Glories,
Petunias, Moon Flowers and Trailing Ivy, leaving a rainbow of
colorful explosion.

Unable to enjoy all of the lovely
flowers, I hurried alongside of her. Her long cloak flapped behind
her, creating a very eerie sound.

“
Aunt Helena?” I
questioned with fear in my voice. She knew something and was not
telling me what it was.

“
It can’t be.” She hurried
into the cottage where there were a handful of students silently
waiting for class to begin. A hushed gasp came from
them.

“
Yes, yes.” Aunt Helena
tapped the cauldron on the table without looking up. The cauldron
started to bubble before she even put anything in it. The foam rose
just shy of the top so not to spill over. “This is June, my niece.”
She turned toward me. “Everyone knows who you are. Especially since
you took over as Whispering Falls Village President.”

I didn’t know whether that was good or
bad, until I saw the latest issue of UnHidden Hall, the University
newspaper, or should I say smut rag?

The headlines read:
Former Hidden Hall Prodigy On House
Arrest!

There was a picture of me doing a
smudging ceremony to accompany it.

“
I…” I grabbed the paper
and quickly read through, fully aware that all eyes were on me,
including Aunt Helena’s. Nervously, I laughed and held my wrists
out in front of me.

I need my bracelet.
If there were ever a time I could use some good
luck and protection, it would be nice if it were now. I didn’t want
to risk anyone turning me in if they knew they could get a price
for it. “I’m obviously not on house arrest. See?” I shoved my
wrists in the air. “It’s all a misunderstanding.” I smiled, making
sure I looked each of them in the eye. I wanted to see if I could
tap into my intuition to see if any of them were going to rat me
out.

All I smelled was fear.
Good.

Aunt Helena cleared her throat. “Now
that that is out of the way we can start our lesson on level
twenty-eight.” She drew her long pointy finger out in front of her.
“June, you can sit there.”

Before taking my little stool at the
front table, I noticed that everyone in the class was much
different from the classes I had taken before.

“
What? I guess you think
all witches have warts and pointy hats?” A plump girl snarled
making the freckles on the bridge of her nose come together forming
the shape of a bat.

“
Um. . .witch?” I jerked
around looking at all the students, and then to Aunt
Helena.

“
Yes, June.” She put her
hands together, bringing them down to her waist. “A level
twenty-eight is potions using witchcraft. They are very tricky
spells and only the village president’s can know them outside of
the witchery world.”

I listened intently as Aunt Helena
explained the first stages of level twenty-eight, but I believe it
was for my benefit since all the other students groaned and rolled
their eyes as she continued to talk.

To me it was fascinating to hear about
different hexes and spells that I would have never dreamed existed.
The possibilities were endless in the ways I could help customers,
and more importantly, Oscar.