That Witch! (16 page)

Brynn stopped worrying with her bottom lip long enough to smile, even though Cassidy probably couldn’t see it. The sincerity in Cassidy’s words and the softness of her voice was enough to make anyone “chill.” It made Brynn relax in her arms.

“I can totally chill,” she said a little airily. “Totally.”

“Totally, huh?” A soft snicker left Cassidy before she unwrapped her arms from Brynn, then squeezed between her and the dresser. “You’re totally starting to sound like me.”

Heat exploded in Brynn’s cheeks. She knew right then just how bad she was crushing on Cassidy Rivers. Before, it had been a faint feeling, like wishing for chocolate, but not really craving it. Oh no, now, she knew just how badly she
craved
Cassidy.

Brynn licked her suddenly dry lips, lowered her eyes, and stammered through a bunch of “uhs” and “ums” before finally saying, “I don’t know how to respond to that.”

“Don’t worry ’bout it. The blush on your cheeks is speaking for you. Finished?”

“Yeah, I, um… I think I am.”

“Well then, let’s go. Nana’s cookies are waiting for us,” Cassidy said in her usual take-charge tone.

She took a step back, giving Brynn enough space to zip up her bag and sling it over one shoulder. Brynn barely had enough time to look around for something she might be missing. Cassidy’s fingers wrapped around her wrist, and she tugged her out of the room, down the stairs, and outside into the warm, California sunshine.

Clearly, Cassidy was pretty excited about her grandmother’s cookies. Brynn had never seen her walk so briskly for anything. She usually just paced along, taking an interest in her surroundings. This time, she could have broken a land speed record for how quickly she made it back to her house.

At the front porch, Cassidy turned to Brynn, beaming brightly. “I’m so excited for you to sleep over! I can’t wait!”

Whoa. Maybe it wasn’t the cookies that had Cassidy in such a hurry after all.

“M
OM
?
Nana? We’re back,” Cassidy called out, still holding onto Brynn’s wrist as she led her through the contemporary home.

Her grandmother called out from the kitchen in a soft, singsong tone. “Those petunias were a bit—well, they were damn difficult. I just now started on the dough, so you girls can go get ready for your sleepover or do whatever it is that girls do nowadays to hang out.” She put emphasis on the “hang out” part of her statement, almost as if the older woman was silently implicating something else.

God, her family rocked.

“Okay, we’ll be in my room,” Cassidy replied before continuing to tug Brynn along like a rag doll, all the way up the stairs, past the second floor landing, and straight into her bedroom. Only when the door shut behind them did she seem to finally take a breath and relax.

“Um… well, jeez. Now what?” she asked with a little giggle.

Brynn crossed the room and set her bag down on the floor next to Cassidy’s dresser. Her little Pinky looked so at home there now, almost as at home as she appeared in her own room. “We could…. I don’t know. Watching a movie seems so lame.” Brynn shook her head. “So does working on our project.”

“No, none of that stuff.”

Cassidy had been thinking about her mother’s words from a few nights before. The way her anger sparked her magic earlier at the mall with Laura really made those words sink in. It was apparently time to start coming to terms with the gift she’d inherited. There was really no way to do that without telling Brynn about it, since she truly wanted Brynn involved in every aspect of her life. Besides that, she didn’t want to hide anything from her.

“I have a better idea, but you have to trust me, and you have to promise not to freak out. Can you do that?” she asked, as she walked to where Brynn stood, staring cautiously at her from behind the part in her light pink bangs.

“You’re asking
me
to trust
you
.” Brynn frowned, thumbing at her own chest.

“Yes. I am. With something very, very important.”

“Cassidy, we kissed. You’ve seen me mostly naked. I think it’s safe to say I trust you.”

Well, she had a point there. Still, Cassidy needed to hear Brynn say those words. Three little, not so big of a deal words, but for some reason, it meant so much to her. Maybe it was because for the longest time, she didn’t think Brynn would ever really come to trust her at all, let alone even a little bit. Now, standing in front of her, she felt like the last of her secrets were about to be spilled. The very last thing she kept hidden away from the whole world, save for her family, was about to become something else she could share with Brynn. There really were no words to explain how that made Cassidy feel.

“Okay… I don’t really know how to tell you this, so I’m just gonna show you. But remember you said you wouldn’t freak out, ’kay?”

One step. Two steps. Three steps back. When she was far away enough from Brynn that she couldn’t hurt or startle her, Cassidy nodded toward the book on her nightstand. Brynn’s piercing gaze shifted to the Dickens tome. She stood frozen in place with something in between confusion and intrigue gracing her features.

Swiping her suddenly sweaty palms across the front of her T-shirt, Cassidy took one last, steadying breath before raising a hand, palm up, toward the book. The paperback began to gently shake. It started off as a barely visible tremble, really. Within seconds, however, it raised into the air, hovering just above the whitewashed wood of the table it had sat on. Slowly, Cassidy made a “come hither” motion with her hand, urging the book to float across the room until it rested in the open palm of her hand.

When she looked back over at Brynn, her eyes were wide as golf balls and her mouth was agape. Uh-oh.

“Please don’t freak out. I can’t help it. I was born this way. So was my mom and my grandmother and a whole line of women before us, dating back to before the eighteen hundreds.”

Cassidy’s mouth suddenly went dry. She continued to stammer excuses at the still-silent Brynn, in hopes she could stop her from doing what she looked like she was going to do—bolt from the room.

“It’s not evil or anything. I’m not bad, I swear. I… I just… it’s magic, but it’s not bad. I can’t cause harm to people or anything like that. I can only use it for good, because whatever I do comes three times back to me. Please, please don’t leave me,” Cassidy implored one last time, not really caring about how desperate she sounded at the moment.

“That. That. That.” Jesus, she’d fried Brynn’s brain. So. Not. Good. “Was that—” Brynn swallowed so hard Cassidy saw the waving of her throat. “—
real
magic?”

“Um, yeah. About as real as it gets. No potions or spells or chanting over voodoo dolls with pins inside. Just… magical power.”

“You’re a… a… a real witch? Like,
really
real?”

“Well, you won’t see any pointy hats in my closet, if that’s what you’re expecting,” Cassidy said, setting the book down on the bed beside her so she could reach out and gently take Brynn’s hands in hers. “But yeah. We’re real witches. Are you scared?”

“Not scared,” Brynn said, tightening her fingers around Cassidy’s hands. “I’m, um… surprised. I’ve read about witches, but I didn’t think they were real… like,
really
real. I mean, I know they’re real, but not like that.” She exhaled sharply, as if she’d been hanging onto that breath for a while. “I’ve heard of Wiccans and even read a bunch about it, but somehow, I think this is different. Isn’t it?”

“Yes and no. I mean, kinda. Wiccans are Pagans, and we’re Pagan, but we’re not Wiccan. It’s kind of like saying Christianity and Catholicism. Like, all Catholics are Christians but not all Christians are Catholics.” Cassidy blinked, hoping that made sense to Brynn, who thankfully was still standing in the room and hadn’t run for the tree lines of Majestic Hills.

“Brynn, please. Please, you can’t tell anyone about this, ’kay? For
so
many reasons, but mainly for my family’s safety. Please….” Cassidy’s voice had a vulnerable urgency to it. She could hear it in her tone, but she needed Brynn to know exactly how much was at stake if she spoke a word of what she’d seen to anyone.

“I wouldn’t do that to you,” Brynn whispered. “I wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to you.”

Much like before with her trust, Cassidy had needed to hear Brynn say she would keep her secret. That she wouldn’t tell anyone. Once she had, the breath Cassidy had been holding in came blowing out past her glossy lips.

“Thank you,” she said. For some reason, however, she kept talking. “It’s just that I’ve never told anyone about that before, and I’m kinda scared, ya know? I mean, the entire world is full of people like me, but we’re hidden. We keep that part of ourselves to family and only really, really close people like husbands, kids, etcetera—”

Her words were abruptly cut off by a mouth pressing against hers. Her eyes widened. Never once did she expect Brynn to be the one to initiate a kiss, but as she lived and breathed, her Pinky had her in a lip-lock of unbreakable proportions.

T
HE
anxiety and freak-out vibe coming off Cassidy was enough to knock Brynn off her feet, and the only thing Brynn could think of to make her “chill”—like Cassidy kept asking her to do—was plant her lips over Cassidy’s. It was a bold move, one Brynn didn’t really see herself ever being able to take, but there they were, kissing… again.

There was something very different about the kiss this time. It felt easier, more natural. It felt like the right thing to do. Maybe because Brynn had finally admitted to herself that she craved Cassidy in a way she’d never craved anyone else before. Maybe Brynn was starting to come to terms with how she felt and what she liked. She wasn’t sure, but she did know that her lips belonged to Cassidy. Explicitly.

She lifted away from Cassidy’s lips and gave her a hooded smile. “I, um… sorry,” she said breathlessly.

When Cassidy’s lids opened again, her smile reflected in the crinkles at the edges of her eyes, making her gaze sparkle. “Sorry? Don’t be sorry. I like the way you shut me up.”

“I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just, you were worrying and freaking out and—”

Cassidy pressed her palm to Brynn’s mouth and gave her that beautiful pink smile Brynn had become a complete sucker for. Brynn had the urge to kiss those delicious lips again, but Nana calling “The cookies are hot—come and get ’em” from the bottom of the stairs stopped her.

B
ETWEEN
the four women, the dozen and a half cookies were gone without so much as a crumb left behind. When the festivities were over and Nana said she was done for the night, Cassidy’s mother decided to dismiss herself too. She said she wanted to get a little reading done before bed. As far as Brynn was concerned, the fewer people nosing around the house the better. Maybe she could convince Cassidy to show her more magic. Then maybe they could kiss again, or even better, they could snuggle in the bed.

The idea of being that close to Cassidy made Brynn feel all warm inside. And ironically, none of those feelings really scared Brynn anymore, well, not as much as they had before.

Well, the feelings didn’t scare her, but the possible repercussions of being true to herself sure did. Every time she thought about her parents catching her or someone at school finding out she had a thing for Cassidy Rivers, her stomach knotted to the point of being painful.

They returned to Cassidy’s room, and Brynn flopped down across Cassidy’s bed. Her body felt twenty pounds heavier than it had been before she’d eaten all those cookies. She laid her hand across her bloated belly and said, “Those were delicious and all, but
oh my God
, I’m miserable.”

“I’m used to cookies for dinner. It happens at least once whenever Nana comes to town for a visit. My mom’s liberal that way,” Cassidy said casually as she sank down beside Brynn, sprawling out across her queen-size bed.

“Lucky. We’re a ‘better eat all your veggies’ household. I didn’t even know the glory of chocolate until I was in junior high school.”