Familiarity Breeds Witchcraft (2 page)

That’s amazing! Have you been working on it long?
Gemma asked, typing the message with her thumbs as she walked away from the group, the boisterous sounds fading into the distance behind her.

She was about to put her tablet away when her friend responded. Fox was great for that: her job and life was just as oriented around the internet as Gemma’s, so she was never more than a quick message away from chatting.

Only a couple hours. I just got home,
Fox had responded.

She wondered what Fox might have been up to that day.
Another photoshoot?
Fox was an alternative model, very popular on those crafty websites where she posted pictures of the Halloween cupcakes she made along with her latest piercings and tattoos.

Do you envy me my glamorous life? LOL.
Imagined laughter accompanied the message.

Gemma chuckled in reality as she responded.
Yeah, guess so. Your life’s so much more interesting than mine.

Magic splattered over Gemma’s feet. She leaped away, swinging around to see Enid smiling angelically at her. She had deliberately lobbed a mischievous hex at her sister.

Okay, Fox’s life wasn’t
that
much more interesting than Gemma’s.

FeistyFox95 was a solitary practitioner, which meant that she performed magic without a coven. Solitary practitioners weren’t capable of casting magic as strong as witches among a coven could, but there were other advantages—such as being able to spend a lot of uninterrupted time with computers.

“Bug off! Go fly with the bats!” Gemma shouted to her sister, cheeks burning.

“Aw, come on, sis,” Enid called back. “Help us raise the school!”

It didn’t look like they were anywhere near being able to raise the school. Worse, Nana Winterblossom had arrived—and Nana, more than anyone else, had gotten awfully pushy about Gemma’s love life lately.

Nope, no way. She was not going to allow herself to be subjected to that kind of scrutiny.

The breeze came up again, lifting her skirts enough to show her undergarments, and she patted them back down in an absent-minded way.
 

She watched the small screen she held as FeistyFox95 sent another message.
Don’t worry, I’ll send along the links when I have them. You’ll just have to go through the old material in the meantime.

I’ll find a way to survive.
Gemma stopped under one of the lanterns hanging from a pole on the street corner and took a picture of own face, making an exaggerated pout she felt sure would amuse her friend. She looked a pale shadow of herself in the evening light.
 

She tagged the picture with “#witchselfie.”

Fox sent a return shot of herself, lips pursed in a kissing gesture that accentuated her snakebite piercings, the corners of her bright eyes crinkling with amusement. The crest of her long mohawk trailed straight down the back of her head and left the shaved sides of her scalp visible.

Gemma laughed, warmed enough to no longer notice the chill, and turned toward home.

Who needed to hang out with people in reality when some of the best people were a safe distance away on the internet?

AFTER SHE ESCAPED the coven, Gemma curled up in her attic: safe haven, witch cave, home of all the blinky lights and servers a girl could ask for.

It was an airy space that looked more like a new building than a Victorian-era house, though the craftsmanship of the hand-carved door frames and hardwood floors indicated the true age of the structure. The modernity of it was 100% Gemma’s work, both physical and magical. The rest of the house looked like it should probably have been condemned for decades, just like every other building in Secret Hallow.

 
Computer cables coiled around the legs of her work tables and fell into a tangled heap beneath the lowest slope of the roofline. She thought they seemed to multiply when she wasn’t looking, but the mess fit in with the older feel of the house somehow since the place looked the way Gemma felt inside: a confusing mixture of historic and modern co-existing in one space.

She wasn’t alone in her special space that night.

“Thanks for letting me come up here,” Rowan Middlebrook said, settling onto a nest of soft pillows with an aching groan. “Getting away from all the hovering mother hens is relaxing. I like the peace and quiet.”

Gemma knew exactly how she felt.

Bronson, the Saint Bernard familiar Gemma shared with her sister, cuddled up beside Rowan and drooled on her tummy. The oversized dog adored kids and seemed to have sensed the one that hadn’t yet made an appearance in the greater world. Whenever Rowan visited, he could be found at her side, doing his very best to saturate the baby bump with all the drool he possessed in his salivary glands.

Rowan was due to give birth soon. Actually, she’d probably been due to give birth like a million years ago, from the looks of it. She was so big that she probably could no longer fit in Nana Winterblossom’s ancient truck and would have rolled down the hills of Secret Hallow if she fell over.

“I like having you here,” Gemma said, and it was true. Aside from Enid, Rowan was her best real life friend: the one person whose presence only ever filled her with joy more than anxiety.

A lot of that was probably because Rowan was the one person who knew better than to meddle in Gemma’s nonexistent love life.

The meddling had reached critical mass in Secret Hallow lately. Intentions were good, but being trapped in a hurricane of good intentions was still a hurricane.

Gemma’s attic was the eye at the center of the storm. An Ethernet cable-draped place of calm. As long as Rowan preserved that calm, she was welcome to hang out under a constant stream of Bronson’s drool.

Gemma turned back to her computer and began typing. “It is very quiet in here, isn’t it?” She hadn’t often considered just how quiet the attic could be, even with the low drone of the computers and distant sounds of the villagers going about their day-to-day business on the street below. At times Secret Hallow could sound very loud for a place so small and…well,
secret.
“Probably won’t be getting much quiet when the little one finally makes an appearance, huh?” She glanced over and nodded toward Rowan’s belly.

Rowan groaned again, rubbing the back of her hand across her sweat-damp forehead. “No kidding. Getting rest at all right now is almost impossible since the baby either kicks me awake or leans against my bladder so I need to pee for the millionth time. Oh, pumpkins, do I miss sleep…something I won’t be getting for a while.” As if in response to her complaints, the great mound of her stomach twitched. Bronson flopped his head over to ensure maximum slobber-spread over the baby’s squirming form. “The wee witchling seems to be in tune with my feelings. Whenever I get worked up, she kicks.”

“Revenge for getting all tensed up?” Gemma asked mischievously. A fiber optic cable slithered from under her desk and twined adoringly around her ankle. Gemma leaned down to stroke its connector with a knuckle.

“I like to think she’s encouraging me to relax as only she can,” Rowan said. “I’m probably naïve.”

It was ridiculous to consider what that would be like: having a human being inside of her, so dependent on her. It was one thing having her attic filled with computers pining for her whenever she was away. There was now a power cable inching its way out of the floorboards to seek contact with her, animated by her magic, and it gave Gemma a tug of warmth to know that it would be far from the last component seeking her love.

But even if the computers didn’t like it, they didn’t mind when she left. Gemma would never be able to leave a baby if she got pregnant.

Gemma considered whether she might ever change that part of her life. While she sometimes thought she should try to get out more often and become more involved in the coven, she never regretted the amount of sleep she managed.
 

As much as she liked kids, she felt much too selfish to have one of her own. She didn’t envy Rowan her impending motherhood.

After all, Gemma would get to play around with kids all day, and then return them to their parents at night. It was the best of both worlds.

“Were you at the gathering last night?” Rowan asked. “I saw Enid trying to raise the Ash Academy, but I only stuck around long enough for a piece of Nana’s pie.” Rowan’s patience for ebullient social gatherings was rapidly waning as the prodding inquiries about her pregnancy increased.

The questions were even worse than the ones directed toward Gemma. Like, “Are you still pregnant?” (No, Rowan had just swallowed a pumpkin, she would joke.) “When is that baby coming?” (She’s scheduled for seven-thirty on Thursday, was her response to that one.) Or even, “What’s taking so long?” (To which Rowan sarcastically apologized because it was clearly her fault for withholding the newest witchling from the coven.)

Amusingly snide responses aside, Rowan was clearly getting sick of it. She’d gotten a lot of practice hexing people lately. She had even cursed a mustache onto old Iris Westerly for a couple of days. As hilarious as that had been, it was like asking to be excluded from the annual pie bake off next year.

“I didn’t stick around long at the Ash Academy either.” Gemma shook her head with a sigh. An Ethernet cable that had draped itself over her shoulder gave her cheek a comforting rub. “Enid told me the spell didn’t really work again.”

“Yeah.” Both Rowan and Bronson sighed together. She scratched the spot right behind his ears that he liked. “At this point, I’m not sure we can ever bring that old building up to scratch.” Rowan met Gemma’s gaze with a concerned one of her own. “Have you considered other options for the school? My little one will need a place to learn. I’d rather not have to take her somewhere else for that to happen.”

“I don’t know if we have many other options,” Gemma said. The village was positioned between cliff and beach on steep real estate, which meant there wasn’t a lot of open space—almost none of it without some kind of magical problem.

“I’ve been looking at listings in another town.” Rowan looked guilty. “Listings for houses, that is. Does that make me a traitor?”

Gemma laughed to herself at the thought of Rowan as a traitor. She might have flaws just like everyone else, but tended to be loyal to a fault. “Depends on why you’re looking.”

“Like I said…I want to be sure this one gets a good education.” Rowan shifted again, causing Bronson to lift his head off her belly. A large spot of drool stained the oversized shirt she wore. “In another coven’s town there might be more opportunities to learn all the magic that could be hard to pick up here right now.”

Gemma nodded, more to herself than in response to Rowan.

Secret Hallow lagged behind other coven towns due to the inability to maintain a secure place for their younger members to test out their strengths. The more informal ways everyone learned really suited the spirit of the town, but Emilia Ash had built her old school for a reason: strong witchcraft could be dangerous when used by the untrained.

Rowan was a powerful witch, and any witchling she produced would need a proper education.

“No,” Gemma said aloud after mulling for a minute. “You’re not a traitor. But if you give me time, I think we can make something work here.”

“I hope you’re right. I mean, I’m not the only one bringing a child into our world.
All
the kids need to be taught. Moving my family away won’t solve the bigger problem.”

Knowing Rowan to be right, Gemma bit her lip, her emotions churning. She hadn’t been super worried about the school before because the problem hadn’t seemed too immediate. The village contained very few small children for the moment, Orianna’s daughter Fern being one of the youngest, but she knew other young couples would be starting families in the not-too-distant future.

They needed some place to teach the next generation before everyone drifted away and the coven died out.

“What if…” She paused to get her thoughts in order. “Maybe we’re looking at this situation the wrong way. The use of magic might not be the best option for us in this case.” The A/V connector against her wrist twitched, as though offended by the implication.

“What do you mean?” Rowan asked. She got up onto one elbow, wincing. “Ooh…bad idea.” She lay back again. “What I wouldn’t give to feel comfortable for just a few minutes!”

Gemma gave Rowan an understanding smile. “We can’t tap into our magic to rebuild the school. We’ve tried and failed too many times for me to believe we could ever be successful. So what if we approach this in a more straightforward way? Raise money, tear down the old buildings, then build a new structure by hand.” She had been trying to avoid that very thing for months. It was expensive, difficult, and would require finding contractors who knew about witches.

“Oh!” Rowan thought for a few minutes. “That just might work. Why didn’t we come up with the idea before?”

“You’ve got other things on your mind.”
 

The two women laughed.

The smile dropping from her lips, Gemma went on to say, “And because the amount of work the project would take is daunting?”

“Depends on your definition of work, I guess. Throwing magic at a place over and over and over again isn’t the easiest way to do things.” Rowan nodded. “I like your idea. How ‘bout you get Enid to bring it up for discussion at the esbat?”

Gemma nodded agreement.

It was only several minutes later that she realized Rowan had assumed that Gemma wouldn’t be at the esbat to bring it up herself.

She was right, of course. Gemma hadn’t been to an esbat in

 
weeks, and even though she had yet to decide if she’d go to this one, that she would change her patterns was unlikely.

What did it say about her that people now assumed she was going to remain distant from the coven in such a way? That even Rowan, loving best friend, believed Gemma was a solitary force unto herself?

Bronson sensed her thoughtful mood. He plodded over and flopped on top of her lap. Gemma shut her eyes, buried her face in his fur, and inhaled his stinky dog-smell.