B*witch Read online

  It was her copy of the shadow message.

  It, too, had numbers on it.

  1415.

  10

  THE DREAMLESS ONE

  The Natural world is full of Magic.

  Harvest it with care and love.

  (FROM THE GOOD BOOK OF MAGIC AND MENTALISM BY CALLIXTA CROWE)

  “We need a plan,” Div told Greta as she slid behind the wheel of her white Audi.

  Greta didn’t respond as she carefully buckled her seat belt. After Div and Mira and Aysha had shown up unexpectedly at Binx’s house, the six witches had gone around and around trying to figure out who’d written the shadow messages and also who’d enchanted them (to catch on fire, then not catch on fire, then mysteriously sprout the numbers 1415). Was one force at work, or several forces? Were they witches or witch-haters or some of both?

  The two covens had gotten nowhere, and so Div had offered to drive Greta home in order to speak privately, coven leader to coven leader. Greta had balked at first. She didn’t feel comfortable being alone with Div. First of all, she didn’t trust her. Even now, she wasn’t 100 percent certain that Div and her girls weren’t behind the shadow message business. (Ninety-nine percent, maybe, but not a hundred.)

  And there was their personal history, too. Back in eighth grade (before they even knew Binx and Ridley and Mira and Aysha), Greta and Div had formed their own little coven, and the two girls had been so close. Then one day, Div had tested Greta’s “strength” (she’d called it that, but really, it was more like “unquestioning, unconditional loyalty”) by making Greta watch as she fed a small, helpless little creature to her familiar, Prada. Div had known how much Greta loved animals and she’d wanted to see what Greta would do. What Greta had done was leave their little coven—leave their friendship—and she’d never come back. The breakup had been a long time coming as far as Greta was concerned. The two of them had been developing divergent magical paths—Greta’s positive and nurturing, Div’s negative and toxic, and that incident had been the last straw.

  Greta now knew that underneath Div’s cool, confident exterior was a cruel soul. Greta couldn’t stand cruelty. It was anathema to her. Like Callixta, Greta believed that love and light should be the abiding principles in magic.

  “… clearly the work of the Antima,” Div was saying. She turned on the engine, backed smoothly out of Binx’s driveway, and headed left onto Cliffside Drive. “We have to stop them before they follow through on their threat.”

  Greta folded her hands in her lap. “Stop them how? Maybe the best thing to do is to lie low. Maybe even take a break from using magic. We need to keep our witches, and ourselves, safe.”

  “You don’t seem to be grasping the situation,” Div said coldly. “The Antima appear to be onto us—or at least onto you and me. They’re capable of anything. Their shadow messages said that we should ‘disappear.’ Plus, as far as I know, aside from you and Aysha, the rest of us have kept our witch identities a secret from our families. If our families find out… if the school finds out… well, I’m not sure that all the memory-erase spells at our disposal can contain the fallout. Also, and this is a terrifying thought, but what if the Antima convinces the police and the government to start arresting child witches, teen witches?”

  “Oh!”

  “Not to mention the fact that we need to think offense as well as defense. The Antima are evil, and they need to go.”

  Greta winced at the angry edge in Div’s voice. She touched the raw amethyst pendant at her throat, to center herself. Love and light.

  “Okay, well… say that the Antima did write those shadow messages,” she said after a moment. “But they don’t use magic. They’re anti-magic. So who enchanted the messages, and why? And what does 1415 mean?”

  “Aysha googled 1415 on our way here. A lot of random things came up. Like, the year 1415 was the beginning of the Hundred Years’ War in France; some king invaded someone else’s kingdom. Nothing relevant.” Div swept her white-blond hair over her shoulders. “We should perform some scrying spells to see if ‘1415’ is part of someone’s personal information. Maybe it belongs to the author of the shadow messages?”

  “Good idea.” Greta shifted in her seat. “So, I’ve been wondering… Who at the school might know that we’re witches?”

  “Speaking for myself and my girls, no one. We’re very careful.”

  “So are we.”

  “Right, uh-huh.”

  Div’s tone was skeptical, arrogant. As usual. But Greta wasn’t going to bite.

  “And who do we know at our school who are Antima, or who might be Antima?”

  “There’s Brandon Fiske, of course,” Div pointed out.

  “And this morning before homeroom, I saw these two guys wearing the shoulder patches. One of them was Axel Ngata. The other one was named Orion; Binx said his last name is Kong. She thought they were just posers, but…”

  “Kong. He’s in my algebra class. Okay, so that’s three possible Antima members that we know of. Let’s go back to the 1415 spell. Do you know of any witches at the school besides us?”

  Greta hesitated. She thought about the girl from this morning. Iris Gooding. Could she have enchanted the shadow messages?

  Greta wanted to meet her, learn more about her, and, if she was a witch, invite her to join their coven. Unless, of course, she was connected to the shadow messages and the numbers. But likely, Div would want to ask Iris to join her coven, as well. If she knew about Iris’s existence. Which, hopefully, she didn’t.

  “Not really, no,” Greta lied. “Do you?”

  “No.”

  Greta wondered if Div was lying, too. She closed her eyes and tried to read Div’s emotional state. This was a magical skill she’d been cultivating for a while, and sometimes, it provided her with useful information.

  But not today. Not with Div. As usual, she was inscrutable, a wall of deep shadows.

  Greta opened her eyes and blinked against the sunlight. “So what do we do now? What’s our plan?” she said out loud.

  “Why don’t we split it up?” Div suggested. “Why don’t my girls and I look into Orion Wong and Brandon Fiske and Axel Ngata, see if we can trace the shadow messages to any of them? You and your girls can try to figure out if there are any new witches at our school who may have enchanted the shadow messages… or witches who aren’t new who’ve managed to keep their identities a secret.” She added, “And we should all keep an eye out for additional Antima members. There may be more of them beyond the three.”

  “Okay. Sure.” Greta pointed. “My street is the next left. Junipero Serra Drive.”

  “Yes, I remember.”

  Greta remembered, too. Back in eighth grade, they used to spend a lot of time at each other’s houses: making teas out of herbs in Greta’s garden, writing spells in code in their diaries, concocting potions out of random ingredients and storing them in empty lotion bottles… basically freelancing it, since Callixta’s book had not made its way into the world yet. They’d also done a lot of non-magic stuff together. Like watching old black-and-white movies, drawing portraits of each other, and playing board games (neither girl liked losing).

  Was it during Casablanca that Div had kissed her? Or Sunset Boulevard? Somehow, Greta had suppressed the details of that day.

  “You can just drop me off here. I’ll walk,” she said abruptly.

  “No problem, Gretabelle.”

  It was Div’s old nickname for her.

  Flushing, Greta grabbed her backpack and exited the Audi without saying goodbye.

  Greta opened the gate that led to the backyard of her house and headed over to her garden. She needed to text Binx and Ridley to fill them in on her conversation with Div, explain about the assignments. But first, she wanted a moment to chill, to get her equilibrium back after the long, unsettling day.

  Her garden always calmed her. She set aside her bag and knelt down on the grass. The lawn was damp from a mayfly-brief shower that had passed through about an h
our ago; the air smelled like rain and moss and lovely, unidentifiable green things. The wetness seeped through the knees of her thin wool tights, but she didn’t mind. She never minded getting messy when she was in nature… even if “nature” in this case was her family’s small backyard, boxed in by Mrs. Mianowski’s house to the right and the new neighbors’ house to the left.

  The garden was called Bloomsbury. Greta had named it that because she wanted to inspire her charges to bloom, plus she’d learned about something called the Bloomsbury Group in a dusty old art book at her father, Tomas’s, used-book store, the Curious Cat. Bloomsbury was a neighborhood in London filled with elegant gardens. In the early 1900s, the writer Virginia Woolf, her sister Vanessa Bell, and other Bloomsbury artists and intellectuals had met regularly to have interesting discussions, create, and support each other’s work. Kind of like a coven.

  Bloomsbury—her Bloomsbury—was not elegant, exactly. It was wild and overgrown, a mad jungle of herbs, flowers, foliage (and even weeds, because as far as she was concerned, they were plants, too). She had tried this year to be more orderly than in previous years, dividing everyone by height, color, growing season, sun and soil preferences, and of course, magical properties. But the plants seemed to have minds of their own, no surprise, and had extended themselves into one another’s territories. Some, like the black-eyed Susans and foxgloves, had reseeded like crazy. Some, like the partridgeberry and creeping fig, had tentacled their way over and across and made friendly—or not so friendly?—curlicues around their neighbors.

  Still, they all managed to grow and thrive. Perhaps it was Greta’s magical green thumb. Or perhaps it was the Goddess’s way, spinning beauty out of chaos.

  The marigolds caught Greta’s eye. They badly needed to be deadheaded. She leaned forward, plucked the dried-up blossoms, and slipped them into her pocket. She could brew them for a tea, or maybe steep them in milk to make a lotion—Teo was constantly falling or bumping into things, and marigold lotion was good for bruises and sprains.

  Marigolds had other magical properties. For example, according to Callixta’s book, sleeping with a marigold under one’s pillow could bring on prophetic dreams. The thing was, Greta never had dreams, prophetic or otherwise—or if she did, she never remembered them. She’d tried the marigold-under-the-pillow trick several times, just to see if they could cause her to have a dream, any dream, but nothing had happened. She’d tried other remedies from the book, too, like wild asparagus root and peppermint. Still nothing. Obviously, she was destined to be one of those dreamless people. Which was kind of depressing—it was like there was an entire part of her that she would never know, like roots growing too deep under the loamy earth.

  A whisper-light sensation tickled her brain.… Something was mentally nudging Greta for her attention. She glanced up; her familiar, Gofflesby, sat in the kitchen window in sphinx position, his large emerald eyes fixed on her. His mouth was slightly open, and his chest rose and fell in an irregular rhythm. He let out a long, wrenching cough.

  Greta’s heart clenched like a fist. “I know, little one. I meant to tell you before, I’ve been working on some new potions for you. I’m going to take you back to Dr. Slotnick, too. The last time we saw her, she told me about these new medicines that are good for kitties with chronic respiratory infections.”

  Gofflesby continued staring and panting and coughing. The thing was, he was just barely out of kittenhood. Two or three years old, max. Greta had found him this summer hanging out in Bloomsbury and eating the valerian and silver vine, and after making sure he didn’t have another owner, she’d adopted him as her familiar. Cats this young shouldn’t be sick all the time. It wasn’t normal, and it most definitely wasn’t fair.

  Greta was a witch; surely she could cure him? What good was magic otherwise? What good was she? Sometimes, she seriously questioned whether she had any business being a witch. Much less a coven leader. Half the time, she felt as though she was making it up, improvising, pretending.

  And now, on top of Gofflesby’s illness, she had to deal with the Antima.…

  Oh, right. Greta pulled out her phone and fired off a quick text to Binx and Ridley, detailing her conversation with Div.

  “Hello, my love!”

  Greta’s mother, Ysabel, emerged from the back porch lugging two canvas bags, a pile of library books, and a basket of cookies. She walked over to Greta and planted a kiss on the top of her head. The air filled with her jasmine-and-lemongrass perfume.

  “Hey, Mama.”

  Gofflesby had vanished from his window perch. In her mind, Greta imagined him padding up to her room to take a nap in his favorite spot: on top of her mandala-print comforter in a pool of sunlight, snuggled below the large dream catcher that he sometimes pawed at.

  “I need to deliver more bath soaps and soy candles to Organic Bliss,” Ysabel was saying. “Sparrow said the last batch is almost sold out, can you believe it? After that, I need to return these books to the library and drop these gluten-free goodies off at Angelina and Jack’s—they just had their baby, did I tell you? Babies, plural, twin girls, Zadie and Zoe—and pick up Teo from coding club. I hope he didn’t get into a fight with that Sasha girl again. How was your first day of school?”

  Her words tumbled out in a rush of breathless, happy energy. She was always like that, even when things around her were not so happy.

  Greta rose to her feet and pocketed the rest of the dead marigold blossoms. “School was fine. Can we make another appointment with Dr. Slotnick? Soon? Gofflesby’s still coughing.” She hated asking this; she knew money was tight. The vet bills for Gofflesby had been piling up along with the other bills; she’d noticed the unopened envelopes on the kitchen counter.

  “Poor kitty. I thought he seemed less coughy lately, but you would know better. My friend Lamar told me about a homeopathic remedy he uses for his pug’s asthma. I can find out the name of it for you.”

  Pug asthma? “Um, okay. Thanks, Mama.”

  “Of course, honey. Your dad is doing inventory at the store, so he’ll be a little late. Do you mind making dinner? The avocados are probably ripe by now, so I’m thinking guacamole. There’s leftover lentil soup from my Climate Coalition meeting. It’s that recipe you like from Veganomicon, except we were all out of tarragon so I had to use marjoram instead. Oh, and maybe a nice salad, we still have a few of those heirloom tomatoes from the farmer’s market.”

  Before Greta could reply, Ysabel leaned in and hugged her, the canvas bags and library books and cookie basket crushed between them. “Love you! Don’t forget about the—Sorry, I lost my train of thought. Maybe it’ll…”

  Her words trailed off as she turned and hurried toward the driveway, leaving a jasmine-and-lemongrass cloud behind her. A moment later, the family’s ancient Volvo station wagon sputtered to life and disappeared down Junipero Serra Drive.

  Greta blinked.

  Someone was standing in front of her house. It wasn’t Mrs. Mianowski or one of the other neighbors; it was a stranger.

  Alarmed, Greta took a step back until she was half-hidden behind Teo’s Cozy Cocoon tree swing. She remembered Div’s comment about the police; could it be an undercover detective looking for witches? Or could it be an Antima member? Orion or Brandon or Axel or someone else? She searched her mind for a spell she could use to defend herself if necessary. Maybe repellare? The person was hanging out next to the family’s other car, a VW bug that was parked in its usual spot at the curb. His or her back was to Greta, but then he… she?… pivoted slightly to look around.

  It was a she. A familiar she. Straight black hair, glasses, really pretty, a Zooey Deschanel–Audrey Hepburn vibe… wait, was that Iris Gooding?

  Yes, it definitely was.

  What was she doing here?

  Greta retreated farther behind the tree swing. She watched curiously as Iris pulled a phone out of her pants pocket and swiped at the screen, shaking her head and muttering to herself. Was Iris looking for her?

  Also,
how did Iris know where she lived… or even who she was?

  Now Iris was touching something at her throat—the moonstone pendant she’d been wearing this morning? Then she began walking down Junipero Serra, her stride suddenly quick and confident. So she wasn’t here to see Greta. After a block, Iris turned onto Sycamore.

  Greta decided to follow her. Casting a quick pleukiokus spell on herself (the second of the day, for extra protection), she headed out into the street.

  11

  DEAD WITCHES

  Your enemies will not always appear in human form.

  (FROM THE GOOD BOOK OF MAGIC AND MENTALISM BY CALLIXTA CROWE)

  After the coven meeting, Ridley and Binx decided to take a walk to the mall, which was near Binx’s house. It was one of their favorite unwinding activities.

  As they strolled down Cliffside Drive (there were no sidewalks, just the quiet road bordered by deep woods), Ridley found herself looking over her shoulder constantly. The events of the day had left her feeling totally rattled. And confused. Were they dealing with other witches or witch haters… or both?

  The sudden buzzing of her phone startled her. Binx’s phone trilled at the same time.

  “It’s a message from our fearless leader,” Binx announced.

  Greta had texted:

  Div and I talked (I know, I know), and we have assignments for all of us. Our coven is going to try to find the witch/witches who may have cast a spell on the shadow messages. Their coven is going to investigate Orion, Brandon, and Axel to see if they wrote them. And in general, we should all be on the lookout for other possible Antima members at our school. But don’t confront them (obviously). We need to stay safe.

  “Women and girls can be Antima, right?” Ridley asked, glancing up from her phone.

  “It’s backward, but yeah. Why?”

  Ridley told Binx about the new history sub, Ms. O’Shea. “I don’t know if she’s Antima or what. But I felt like she was watching me—observing me.”