Spellbound (12 page)

Nice. But the call belonged to me again anyway.

“Hi, Logan. Are you having a good morning?” Serena. I didn’t even bother asking how she knew my phone number.

“I am now. How about you?”

“Me too.” Her voice sounded impossibly bright for this early. I wished I were right there next to her. “We’re just finishing up with breakfast over here. The plan is for me to begin my

‘training’ all day today.”

“Oh.” I couldn’t hide the disappointment in my voice. I wanted to hang out with her, actually couldn’t wait to be with her again. I tried to sound casual. “I hoped we could get together sometime today.”

“Well, that’s why I’m calling, actually. Would you like to come over for a late lunch? There are some people here that want to meet you. We’ll be taking a break probably around two o’clock.”

Two? Great! I could get with her, meet her people and still have time to pick up Dave and get over to Sully’s. This could be a perfect day.

“That’s perfect, Serena. I can’t wait to see you. Can I bring anything?”

“Just yourself, Logan. That’s all I need.” My heart actually skipped a beat when she said that. I wondered if she even knew the effect she had on me.

“Hey, before I forget, I got a call from Dave. He doesn’t even remember anything about last night. Kind of spooky.”

“I know. I jumped a couple minds just to data mine the memories there. Logan, its so amazing…not one student who attended that dance last night has any memory of what happened.

Well, with one notable exception.”

“Right. Natalie.”

“And it’s not official yet, but as of Monday, she will have dropped out of school.”

“What?”

“Yes. We have information that she will be dropping out.

We don’t know what the reason will be yet, just that it will be official on Monday.”

“Wait a minute. You said you mind-‐-jumped to find out about the memories?”

“Yes?”

“But you can’t do that unless you’re near the person, right?

Did you leave the house?” She had enough danger without inviting more. “Oh, I didn’t tell you! I’m getting more powerful, Logan. I’ve been practicing all the disciplines and with jumping especially now, I can do it if I have a connection with the person. I don’t have to be standing near them anymore. I have been working hard.”

“So, a connection could be…what?”

“I’m finding it could be as weak as knowing what the person looks like. My connection can be emotional or physical.”

“Serena, you’re the most amazing person I know.”

“Stop it, Logan.” I knew she didn’t like compliments, but I couldn’t help it. Sometimes she just amazed me.

“No, I mean it, Serena. You blow my mind.”

“Well, I might be about to blow your mind again.”

I laughed. “What do you mean?”

“Let me explain it when you get here this afternoon. I’ll just say this: I’m about to teach you a new trick.” She blew me a quick kiss and rang off. Man, I was crazy about this witchy chick.

****

I spent a leisurely morning hanging out with my mom and my sister. Tabitha went home right after breakfast. Even with the protective spell in place, I felt better walking her halfway across the street. I knew the spell was my Mom’s, but I just felt better about doing it. I came back and found my mom and sister talking in the living room. They had sat up late into the night last night talking about Mom being a witch and her passing her witch genes down onto Jade. I was exhausted from the looniness of the dance but I did lie in my bed and listen to them laughing and crying, then giggling and crying some more until I fell asleep. I remember thinking that my mom sounded happier than she had in a long time.

After I walked Tabitha home, I came back in and joined Mom and Jade in the living room. I shared with both of them how I felt about Serena and they hugged me and cried again. Jade especially seemed happiest for me. She told us how she had been experiencing her emerging powers for a little more than a year now and at first she thought she might be going crazy. Then she thought maybe she just had extraordinary luck. She wanted to buy lottery tickets but had a fear of angering unseen spirits using her powers for greed instead of good. While she explained all this to us, I could understand how hard it had to be for my Mom to hear it all, realizing how agonizing it sometimes was for Jade, and how she had dealt with it on her own, without the one person she is supposed to turn to in life, her mother. They kept embracing while Jade shared, and Jade made sure to tell my Mom, pretty much over and over, that she understood why Mom never told us her big secret before now.

While she talked, I marveled over how, overnight it seemed, Jade had grown up. She still had the appearance of a fifteen year old, and based on our exchange with the stupid bacon this morning, she still acted like a fifteen year old. But while she spoke with my Mom and me about her developing abilities, she seemed so animated and alive, she didn’t come across as fifteen at all. And lately, even aside from the whole witch thing, she seemed to have some secrets of her own as well. And my reaction to her being a twitch surprised me as well. I felt pride. I was proud of my sister for being a twitch. And proud of my beautiful mother for being a witch. And for telling us what so clearly had to be one of the most difficult things she had ever had to do, aside from losing the love of her life, my father.

Another thing I noticed? My mom had on her wedding band, the one that Serena told me to find behind the dresser upstairs. About to question her about it, Jade interrupted me.

“Logan, I’m so sorry. I jumped the gun on that one.”

“But how did you know? I mean…” I had a loss for words,

“Did you always know I’d find it there?”

“No, I didn’t. But Tabitha has been teaching me how to mind jump.”

“Jeez, Jade! You’ve only known her for, like, a few weeks!”

“I know! But she knew right away what I didn’t.” Jade managed to look chastised and smug at the same time. I wanted to smack her.

“Do you guys all have a secret handshake or something?” I muttered under my breath, forgetting my mom belonged to the club now, too.

“Logan,” my mom warned.

“Sorry, Mom.” I said. Then I looked at Jade. “So, how did you know?”

“That day me and Mom went shopping? You took, like, an hour-‐-long shower and when you came downstairs, you just acted guilty of something. All jumpy and shifty. I never forgot that. So when Tabitha started teaching me the mindjumping trick, you were the handiest guinea pig.” She lowered her eyes again, but I knew she did it for Mom’s benefit, not because she felt sorry. “When I knew what you found, I waited till you told her about Serena and the dance, and then I told her.”

Mom wrapped her arms around me.

“I understand why you didn’t tell me right away Logan. You must have struggled with the decision. And I respect it.” She kissed me on the cheek. “You always did try and protect your sister and me, ever since your dad passed away. It doesn’t surprise me, you know. The role you’re taking on now? It’s so you, son. It’s just so you. Serena is one lucky little twitch.” I hugged my mom back hard.

We talked and laughed for more than an hour in our living room till Jade got anxious. She wanted to work on her skills and now that mom knew about them, she had agreed to work with her on developing them. I went out back to shoot some hoops and kill time until my lunch with Serena.

****

About twenty minutes before two o’clock, I went inside the house to shower and get ready for my lunch across the street with Serena and the other witches. Under the water, I wondered why they wanted to meet me. Did it have more to do with the fact that Serena and I were becoming more serious and important to one another or were they only concerned that I wasn’t a person with powers? Were they afraid that I would be clearly outmatched and therefore unable to protect her? Or did they now know about my mother and did they have new and as yet unrevealed concerns regarding Mom? Or had Tabitha or Elizabeth maybe given them some new information about my sister and now possibly my whole family could be either under suspicion or maybe they were also afraid for my entire family’s continued safety? Thinking about all the possibilities threatened to give me a major headache.

I toweled off and dressed fast. The other thing which freaked me out: I didn’t know how powerful these witches across the street were in Serena’s life. Did they have the power to control her destiny? Because if they did, that meant they had the power to control mine as well. What if they didn’t like me? Could they rip me out of Serena’s life as easy as ripping off a Band-‐-Aid? I shuddered. That thought frightened me.

I headed downstairs and found it eerily quiet. I crept around a little anxious for a minute, not knowing what to expect and almost laughed out loud when I found my mom and sister still on the couch in the living room, all right, but sound asleep. I guess the witching lessons, or whatever my mom and sister were calling them, had taxed them both, because they were both napping peacefully, each stretched out in their socks on the sofa and loveseat, and looking like they had been that way for a while. I wrote my Mom a quick note about the lunch and also about going to Sully’s dad’s sporting goods warehouse after and that I would grab dinner on my own and find her later tonight. I wrote I had my cell phone with me and would text her later. I scrawled I loved her at the bottom. She loved stuff like that. I grabbed my house keys and walked across the street to Serena’s.

Technically Serena’s house could be called the corner house of our cul-‐-de-‐-sac. I stared at it hard trying to discern -‐- Could I notice the spell of protection? This time I did notice something different. The coven witches’ rental car remained parked in the driveway, that
was
the same, but the shrubs and bushes surrounding the driveway and lining the walkway up to the front door seemed thicker, denser even. Like it had grown overnight. As I got closer, I saw that the branches
were
thicker, and woven and tangled together. Where they grew from the ground, the trunks were wider and appeared
sturdier
and more substantial. And here within the leaves, something new lurked– where before there were no flowers growing at all, now there were new blooms, beautiful, full-‐-petal blood red roses. With thorns. Huge, nasty-‐-looking, thorns. As I reached out to admire one of the roses, I could have sworn one of the tangled and throaty-‐-looking branches swatted me and I snatched back my hand with a start. I examined it and noticed brutal thorns had dug deep into the flesh on the top of my hand and opened the skin, and a tiny rivulet of blood began to flow. “No! No, no, no, no, no!” The front door flew open and Serena ran out, yelling as she came toward me. She had a cloth with her and as she applied it to the top of my hand, I could feel it had been heated and had some kind of ointment on it. At first I thought it would sting, but it didn’t.

“Oh, Logan, I’m so sorry. They didn’t know. They were only protecting me.” She busied herself with my hand.

Did she say they? About the bushes? As if to answer my question, she bent away from me and began whispering furtively to the bushes. I couldn’t make out what was said but I got the gist of it. She had told them off. Unbelievable.

Suddenly, from the side of me, I felt a nudge. A branch had extended one of the beautiful roses toward me. I got the gist of this too. I understood I had been offered a version of an apology.

Having never offended a tree before, I wasn’t sure what to do.

Good thing Serena did. She curtsied low and took the extended rose and made an exaggerated show of smelling it, inhaling deep and exhaling long. Then she spoke.

“Thank you, Wood Protectors. Your gift of perfume is wonderful and we accept it.” Then she took my arm, and escorted me into the house.

“Um, what
was
that?” I tried to make my voice light, but having just been attacked by a tree, I was having a little trouble with that.

“Well, simply put, the exterior of the house is in a state of transformation. Some additional, ah, features, are being put in place to ensure added protection.”

“Is a moat next?”

“Not a moat, no.” She giggled when she said it and I wasn’t sure if she had made a joke or not. She leaned into me then and kissed me. I forgot everything then and kissed her back. We stood there in the hall like that until I heard a throat-‐-clearing noise and we jumped apart at the sound. Three women were standing in the front room waiting for us. They barely hid their amused faces.

The trio seemed to be around the same age, but they struck different poses from one another. Serena introduced me to each of them. She seemed closer to the one named Eden, who acted motherly toward her. The one with the long braid answered to Cordelia and a fiery-‐-eyed black-‐-haired one was named Finola. Each was warm and welcoming to me, asked if I might be hungry for lunch and when I admitted I would be, we all went to the back of the house. We went to the dining room this time, where we found Elizabeth and Tabitha setting the large farmhouse-‐-style table for lunch. We were having cold cuts and cheeses with some salads and it looked delicious. Tabitha made herself a sandwich and, as was becoming the custom, made herself scarce for the adults to congregate.

We circled the table, making small talk and filling our plates, then seated ourselves and talked and laughed through lunch. It relieved me that the meeting appeared to be going so well. Serena had never looked more beautiful, and she and Elizabeth were so animated, talking about our school and her studies and telling funny stories about some of the people they knew. Serena kept us laughing. Cordelia and Finola had stories of their own about some of the places they had traveled to. We were all having such a good time, I wondered if I had stressed about the lunch for no good reason. Eden seemed to be watching more than talking and I began to wonder why I had been summoned there. I didn’t have to wonder for long.

“Logan,” began Eden, and it so surprised me when she spoke, I almost dropped my glass. “My sisters and I are so glad you were able to join us this afternoon.”