Family Magic (11 page)

The first thing I did was hug my mother.
Despite my instinct to storm from the room and act like I usually
did, rail against her, tell her she would never understand, I
embraced her and used my power to squeeze her too.

“I love you, Mom,” I said.

“I love you too,” she whispered, voice thick.
When I leaned back, she wiped at one cheek. I knew I finally made
Mom cry for a good reason.

“I need a shower,” I said, picking up the
remains of my purse. I wanted to scrape the rest of that hideous
day from me as completely as possible.

“I guess so,” she said. “And Syd,” she
wrinkled her nose as I left the kitchen, “you can throw out that
bag, okay?”

I scrubbed so hard in the shower my whole
body turned red and my hair squeaked, but when I toweled off and
dressed, I felt a hundred times better. I looked in the foggy
mirror at myself. My reflection stared back, as determined as I
was.

That was it. Mom was right. I was done being
the new kid, the torture victim. If Alison thought she could use
her little tactics against me, she had another think coming.

I was so wrapped up in what was going on, I
almost forgot about soccer practice.

I loved the outdoors, way more than a normal
kid, I guess because witches were so attached to the earth. It was
one of the only things about being a witch I didn’t mind. Given the
choice between watching movies in my room and messing around in the
back yard, I’d choose outside, hands down. One of the reasons I
loved soccer so much.

By the time I changed into my jersey and made
it back downstairs, Mom wasn’t there. A quick glance at the
driveway told me she was gone. Her pristine blue and white ’66
Mustang coupe was missing from the front of the house. She probably
had it at the car wash. Mom wasn’t what you’d call a materialistic
person by any means, but she loved that car more than she loved
us.

I almost made it out the door when it swung
open. Erica and Jared let themselves in. Yet another thing that
bugged me about the coven. No one knocked. They waltzed into each
other’s houses like it was home and put their feet up. One more
thing for the list. I vowed to keep my door locked when I was older
and on my own.

Erica tried a smile, but it was weak and I
knew she was still mad at me for Mom’s sake. Being my mom’s best
friend meant she heard all the gory details about us, including,
I’m sure, stuff I don’t want to know about Dad. I shuddered
thinking about it. But, it also meant she would take Mom’s side as
usual and give me a hard time.

Her boyfriend Jared, on the other hand, would
play good cop and try to be the diplomat. I hated being tag teamed
and wondered if it was a setup.

Erica tossed back her blonde bob, her soft
blue eyes pinning me so I couldn’t escape. She always dressed neat
and tidy, makeup flawless, matching outfit adorable on her slim
figure. She tried another smile and this one stuck.

“Syd, I’m glad I ran into you.”

Now I knew it was a setup. “You’re in my
house.”

She frowned, the line between her brows
deeper than I remembered the last time we had ‘the talk.’

“Syd, seriously, we need to discuss this
thing about your mom.”

I rolled my eyes.

“I don’t suppose it would help to tell you to
mind your own business, would it?”

I’ve never seen Erica turn that particular
shade before. I clamped my lips together, knowing laughing in her
face would make it worse.

Jared coughed, near laughter himself. He
winked at me from behind her, sharing the joke. I tried not to grin
back, but lost. There was something about the tall, dark and
handsome Jared Runnel that made you want to trust him with your
deepest, darkest secrets, the kind of person who would be great to
share a practical joke with. Didn’t hurt he was yummy, either.
Strong jaw, warm brown eyes, great muscles. Still there was a
secret behind those eyes, as if he privately laughed at all of us.
I wondered sometimes if I was in on the joke or part of it.

“Erica,” Jared said, “I think Syd is
right.”

Erica turned on him, fists on hips, doing her
best angry society girl. Pathetic.

And they said I was a normal conformist.

“Jared.” She gave him the dirty eyeball.
“Stay out of this.” She turned back to me, all business down to her
fake French manicure.

I pulled myself up on the kitchen counter.
“Fine. Go ahead. But I already know everything you’re going to
say.”

“Then why do I have to keep saying it?”
Erica’s stern expression softened. She leaned on the counter,
dropping the act. I liked Erica much better this way. “Syd, why do
you have to be so hard on your mother?”

“I’m working on it,” I said.

She looked startled. “Sorry?”

“I know this isn’t doing it for either of us,
okay? I need everyone to back off and let me handle it for once.
Can you do that?”

She couldn’t speak for several seconds.

Jared’s whole being shone with laughter.
“Wow. Erica speechless.”

I shot him a don’t-mess-this-up glare, biting
my lip to keep from smiling.

He winked back.

“Okay.” She looked at me like I sprouted
something unusual and she wasn’t sure if it suited me or not. I
hopped off of the counter, keeping my eyes firmly away from Jared’s
teasing.

“Thanks for the concern. I have to go to
soccer.”

I left the kitchen and a silent Erica,
leveling a mock punch at Jared’s shoulder on my way out. I almost
missed the speculation in his eyes behind his dazzling white flash
of teeth, and wondered what it meant.

I glanced at my oversized sport watch as I
let the door slam shut behind me. I had about a half an hour to
cover the five minutes it took to get to the field before practice.
I was always early and I didn’t want to break my perfect record as
the first one there.

I was lacing up my cleats when the first of
my teammates started to arrive.

I didn’t really have any friends on the team,
not because I wasn’t nice to the girls, but because I ‘felt’
different. To normals, the witch in me came across as some sort of
weird aura marking me from ordinary as much as a banner across my
forehead. So as much as I was a great soccer player and an asset to
the team, it meant even though I was welcome on the field, I wasn’t
invited into their lives outside of the game.

Story of my life.

Coach Matters pulled up in his beat-up truck,
followed closely by the rest of the team. No more feeling sorry for
myself. At least, not about my lack of friends. I had tougher
things to worry about. Like handling the ball, running until I
couldn’t feel my legs and loving every second of it so much I never
wanted it to end.

I adored my coach, as much as I could adore a
man who worked us so hard I wanted to throw up on a regular basis.
Andrew Matters was the perfect trainer, compact himself with a bit
of a limp from years and years playing the game he now taught. I
loved how tough he could be on us and ignored the complaints of the
other players. The harder I worked my body, the more normal I felt.
Somehow, soccer shut down my worries about magic and set me
free.

Plus, I was addicted to the rush, the smell
of fresh cut grass, the impact of hurtling bodies that only turned
to pain hours later. I lived so much in the moment on the field.
I’m not sure what it was about soccer in particular, especially
considering I sucked at all other sports I tried. Maybe it was just
the one normal thing I was good at. And I was
really
good at
it. So much so the coach pushed me way harder than the rest of the
girls and they knew it. No wonder I wasn’t popular.

But, on the field, I didn’t care about
popular, probably the only place I didn’t. On the field all that
mattered was the ball, the grass and getting it in the net.

I packed up reluctantly at the end of
practice, dragging my butt, wishing I had anywhere to go but home.
I longed for friends to hang out with, to be normal and not the
girl who lived the life of a cloistered nun. None of the other
girls offered, as usual, going their own ways in their little packs
of twos and threes. I tried to insert myself when I first arrived
but took the hint pretty quickly. Their clubhouse was closed to new
members. So, I made the return trip a lot slower going than
coming.

I was almost home when I noticed with horror
the hunched, skinny old woman across the street. My stomach
clenched into immediate anxiety. I almost dropped my backpack in my
haste to get to her before something awful happened. Even from
thirty feet away, I recognized her hair, white and wild. In
daylight, Gram’s paper-thin skin almost glowed with the veins
underneath. She stumbled to a halt in front of a mailbox, dressed
only in a thin, flowered nightgown brushing her bare toes. She
proceeded to have a heated conversation with it, gesturing wildly.
I rolled my eyes as I reached her, waving at a passing car whose
driver watched with concern.

I gently touched her arm. She glanced up,
pale blue eyes almost white they were so washed of color. Her lips
pulled back into a grimace. She clutched at me, thin hands
surprisingly strong.

“He won’t apologize,” Gram gestured at the
innocent mailbox.

“I’m sure he didn’t mean anything by it,
Gram,” I said softly to her, wishing I at least had a normal
grandmother, not the disabled witch clinging to me, offended by a
box on a stick.

“He said some horrible things, Miriam,” she
whispered. “Horrible.”

“It’s Syd, Gram,” I sighed and tried to pull
her away. “Let’s go home, okay? Mom will be worried about you.”

“Lewd things,” she hissed, eyes flashing,
“vulgar and suggestive.”

“Really?” I tried to distract her. “Maybe Mom
will want to hear it.”

“Maybe I do, too!” She cackled, hopping up
and down on one foot to the other, face splitting into a huge grin.
“Say it again, sweetheart!”

Gram reached out to grab the mailbox as I
spotted the twitch of the living room curtain across the lawn. I
waved, trying to appear harmless, tugging in earnest. I yanked at
her even harder when I spotted a huge black dog. Yikes. This family
had obvious protection issues to need a monster like that in the
family. I felt a sudden shock of recognition. It was the same dog I
saw the day before outside my house. Only this time, I paid
attention to what he looked like.

Shaggy, thick and massive,
more pony than canine, he stood by the corner of the house,
staring. The way he watched me made me shiver. I wasn’t sure if
Gram’s antics would trigger an attack or not but I wasn’t about to
hang around and find out. Man, that dog was
huge
.

“Let’s go, Gram, the mailbox doesn’t want to
play today.”

She pulled free of me, shrieking. “Let me go!
Leave me alone!”

I pulled a little harder, not wanting to give
her the chance to take off on her own. Who knew what the dog would
do if he saw her run away?

A wicked gleam appeared in my grandmother’s
eyes.

“Witch!” She cackled happily. “She’s a witch!
Help, she’s evil, evil!”

“That’s it,” I grated through clenched teeth,
keeping one eye on the dog and the other on her, “no more nice Syd.
Here, Gram,” I fished out a large milk chocolate bar from the front
of my backpack. I had been saving it for a rainy day of pajamas and
bad TV, but this was way more important. Thank goodness I had it
with me in the first place. Besides chocolate, the only other
distraction that worked was tequila and I was too young to carry it
around. Guess the Boy Scouts have the ‘be prepared’ thing all
figured out after all.

Her gaze lit up like a child as she tore into
the wrapper. I managed to turn her around and start her walking the
block back to our house. I glanced over at the dog, but he was
gone. Dodged that bullet. We slowly made our way without much
incident while Gram sucked and smacked at the melting chocolate.
One glance at her and I knew it would take a whole lot of scrubbing
to get her clean. But, at least she was quiet.

She stopped at the end of our driveway and I
flinched. I took her by the arm again, hoping to head off another
outburst, wondering why the chocolate hadn’t done the trick when
she turned to me, face blank and serious.

“Darkness comes,” she said softly, wetly
around the chocolate in her mouth.

“Yeah, Gram, sometime today.”

She turned to me and pressed her index finger
into my chest. I looked at the smear of chocolate. There was no way
I was getting the stain out of my pale blue jersey.

“Nice, Gram,” I said.

“No light has it seen,” she continued as if I
hadn’t spoken, “none will it see, for it chooses the dark.”

I stopped tugging.

“Gram? What are you talking about?”

“From within, but without,” she whispered to
me. “Its goal is power, its joy, pain. Darkness comes, Sydlynn, and
you must stop it.”

I shook my head, not sure what to say. This
was the most lucid I ever saw my grandmother, if you could call it
lucid. She even managed to get my name right for the first time
ever. Here she was after decades of living in her own little
existence, attempting to communicate, and I had no idea what she
was trying to say.

“Gram,” I said. “Who is it, can you tell
me?”

“Beware,” she said.

Our conversation ended with the banging of
the kitchen door. Mom ran out into the yard toward us, her face a
combination of anger and fear.

“Mother!” She reached for Gram, spotting the
chocolate. “Syd!”

“Mom!” I fired back.

“Did you have to give her that?” Mom tried to
take the last of the bar from Gram but the old lady was quick. She
managed to stuff it into her mouth with a squeal of joy. I half
reached toward her but the woman I just spoke to had gone, leaving
the damaged mind in control. Part of me wondered if it was the
ravings of a crazy woman after all, but I needed to be sure.