Gabbie, Maya, and Delali crowded into the elevator of Alba’s building to take the familiar ride up to her penthouse. Alba accepted the girls wordlessly, walking to her armchair without waiting for them. They exchanged a look while they took off their shoes and spring jackets. Immediately, everything about today’s meeting felt different. The energy in the apartment had shifted. Where they usually felt like they were entering the warmth of a coffee with a favorite professor, today they felt like they were entering a business meeting where they were about to receive bad news. Alba stood next to her chair instead of sitting.
“Ladies.” Alba gestured to the couch. “Please, take a seat.”
“Is everything okay?” Delali asked as she sat.
“Feel free to eat as much as you’d like. Before anything gets cold.”
Maya eyed the table. Alba had outdone herself with today’s spread. There were two elaborate hors d’oeuvres displays, a pasta dish, salad, and even a chocolate tart. Alba never conjured them desserts. Was it just her or was Alba being weird as hell? She even looked a little disheveled—well, as disheveled as Alba could look. Maybe that was from conjuring such a big spread.
The girls took their plates and served themselves while Alba watched absentmindedly, fluttering her fingers through her hair and moving her emerald ring from one hand to the other. At some point, she must have realized she was still standing, because she hastily sat down, tossing the girls a pacifying smile.
“Girls, I have to say how proud I am of you.”
The girls looked up from their food, startled to hear her speak after the long silence.
“How proud I am of how quickly you’ve progressed. You’ll remember I didn’t even think it was possible back when you started badgering me about the Gathering.” Here she waved her hand around and let out a fluttering laugh.
“Is this about our final assignment?” Maya asked, putting her fork down. “Do you know what it is?”
“The three of you are so wonderfully strong and talented. I do feel lucky to have had you as my mentees.” It was true. Alba considered her relationship with the girls to be a tremendous stroke of luck. The kind of luck she had given up on hoping for. “I’ve never felt more certain about anything, really, than I am about your abilities.”
“Alba,” Gabbie pleaded. “What is it?”
There was a long, pronounced silence. Alba took a breath and leaned forward in her chair. She’d thought carefully through her words before this, and now she reached back into the explanation she’d prepared. Anyone would be surprised, even scared by what she was about to say. These girls especially. She had to proceed carefully. “The vision came to me three days ago. And if you’ve been reading your lessons, it should make a degree of sense to you all. You’ll have read that, historically, the government of the Sphere operated without great conflict. While the Regent’s word is generally law, the Council has always had a very material impact on her governing choices and frankly, the Sphere has never really needed laws. They long functioned as the only true limit to the Regent’s power. But that all changed when Violet ascended the throne,” she said.
Alba paused, lacing and unlacing her fingers. She wanted to give the girls time to accept a new version of the Sphere. After a moment, she stood, pacing the living room. The girls leaned back on the couch, quiet with confusion. They had never seen Alba so clearly at a loss for words. Even when she went off plan or lost energy from one of her visions, there was always a seamlessness to the way she spoke to them, the vague sense that she had anticipated every possibility and prepared herself accordingly. But this was nothing like that. It seemed, for the first time, that Alba was truly off book.
“Violet wasn’t ready for the Regency when she ascended the throne,” Alba continued. “It’s possible that she could have gotten a handle on things, but certain . . . events early in her reign seem to have made it hard for her to exercise her power in a judicious way. Ever since the Betrayer’s failed campaign to dethrone her, Violet has felt threatened by the Council and their influence. She’s become a tyrant,” Alba said gravely.
She crossed the living room and settled back into her chair, taking in the girls’ solemn faces. “She’s used her position to terrorize witches across the Sphere. She’s padded the Council with her allies, and her closest advisors act as a network of spies to draw out and dispose of all her dissidents. What’s proven most troubling for the average witch has been her campaign of sanctions. Any witch she sees as a threat, or deems too powerful, is called to the Council and stripped of her powers. It’s not my role to feed you political perspectives—everything Violet has done is perfectly legal, and you have plenty of time to learn once you’ve entered the Sphere—but my vision has made it clear that I must.”
At the word ‘sanctions,’ the girls were beset by a shared panic. Delali avoided making eye contact with Maya. Because of her, Maya was only one sanction away from a summons. One sanction away from being stripped of her powers. Maya thought of her delicate new place in the CS hierarchy—Lacey had been pleased with the wedding photoshoot, and Maya had a feeling her next assignment would be some kind of step up. She’d promised Tatiana she wouldn’t quit, but she wasn’t sticking around unless she got out of probation soon. And like a Real Housewife on her second season, she couldn’t quite fathom how she’d managed before her powers.
“What was your vision?” Delali asked.
“Since the day I had my first vision of you,” Alba began soberly, “I’ve been trying to understand you—your tremendous abilities, your truly unique situation. I wondered if you three were just oddities, but I had a feeling it was something more. My vision confirmed that suspicion. You’re not ordinary witches. You’re destined to liberate the Witch Sphere from Violet’s tyranny.” Alba willed her voice to maintain its steady authority. “You’re destined to remove Violet from the throne.”
“What?” Maya protested. But Alba’s gray eyes were steady, serious. She wasn’t kidding. Delali’s heart drummed in her chest. Gabbie felt a cold sweat starting to trickle down her scalp.
“I will not deny that this is a particularly challenging final assignment, but I believe you can do it. It does make a sort of sense—your assignment doesn’t call for you to help the typic world, but to help the Sphere.”
There was a long moment of silence while the girls wondered how to react. Gabbie reached to toy with her bracelet, then remembered she’d taken it off the morning after the Brooklyn Bridge and pulled at the hem of her plaid mini skirt instead. Maya fought the urge to whip out her phone and scroll through Twitter, which is what she usually did when she was confronted with a task she didn’t want to deal with. Only Delali tried to respond, though no words came out: she kept starting and stopping as she thought of what to say.
Finally, Delali asked, “How?”
The question stirred Alba to action. She stood and turned away from the girls, examining her long rows of shelves as she muttered to herself. “It’s here somewhere,” she said, reading the spines before her. She walked along until she reached a thin book bound in worn navy leather, wedged between two massive tomes on the shelf above her crystal ball. “Here it is. There’s an old binding spell,” Alba said as she made her way back over to the girls. She sat, and Delali caught an embossed title on the cover: Ancient Spells, Tried and True. Alba placed the book on the coffee table and flipped through its old, pale pages.
“Yes,” she said once she’d found the right page and read it over. “If done correctly, this spell will temporarily strip Violet of her powers, rendering her unfit to rule and providing some time for the Council to oust her from power and end her Regency. The words and accompanying ritual are fairly simple, but it’s difficult to cast successfully. No one is sure why, but I suspect it has to do with intent, the level of singular focus a witch needs while performing the ritual. Your mastery of intention is likely the reason you’ve been called to this.”
Delali placed a steadying hand on the couch as she leaned forward. “When?” she asked. “And what happens after she’s removed?”
Maya was too angry to speak. Why was Delali acting like they’d already accepted this insane assignment? This wasn’t the time for her to be playing spokesman.
Alba nodded. “Upon the realization that the Regent has lost her powers, there will be a vacuum, and the Council will be mandated to hold an election for Violet’s replacement. I believe there are still enough honorable members in the Council for that election to be fair and honest. And to your first question, in my vision I saw a party, which I can only suspect is the Gathering. Again, it makes sense—the event has long been a New Year of sorts for us, a time to celebrate new beginnings. The removal of Violet surely fits the bill.”
Gabbie looked at Alba, doubtful. “So we’ll be casting the spell at the Gathering? That sounds . . . chaotic. We don’t even know if we’re invited.”
“It would be,” Alba agreed. “But binding spells don’t take effect immediately. It takes a lot to bind a witch’s magic. You’ll have to cast the spell days, even weeks beforehand.”
“Steep,” Delali said, remembering the term Alba had used in an earlier lesson.
Alba nodded.
“How long would the Regent lose her powers for?” Maya asked.
Alba glanced down at the open pages of the book before looking back up at the girls. “Well, that depends on you girls. Binding is always temporary, but how long the spell lasts depends on the power and intention of the witch casting the spell. Between the three of you, I imagine you can bind them for a year—”
“A year?” Gabbie cut in. “That’s so long!” If there was one thing their lessons had made clear, it was that powers were sacred. A witch didn’t just have her powers—she was her powers.
Alba sat back and crossed her legs, her face set into a scold. “I suppose it’s a matter of perspective,” she said. “To me, a year without powers for Violet is much less than a lifetime without powers for all of you.”
Gabbie, Maya, and Delali were silent, looking at Alba, the pages of the spell book, and then, finally, each other.
Delali made eye contact with Gabbie, whose lips were pursed and eyebrows were raised. Alba was right—it did make a weird kind of sense. Delali had never really moved past Alba’s reaction on that first day they showed her their metrics, the bafflement bordering on concern. Their power had to mean something, and maybe this was it. Besides, as far as Delali knew, the final assignment wasn’t exactly optional.
Gabbie shrugged in response to Delali’s look. In the grand scheme of things, it’s not like this was any weirder than everything else that had happened in the past few months. And if they refused the assignment, then what? They’d be right back where they started in September, when their powers just butted into their lives whenever they felt like it.
When they turned to Maya, she sighed and gave them a resigned eye roll.
“Fine, I guess,” she said to no one in particular. She turned back to Alba and pushed up the sleeves of her sweater. “What are the instructions? Do we start learning it today?”
Alba slid the book across the table and stood again, this time crossing the distance to the girls. “Unfortunately, this is something I can’t teach you three,” she said, handing the book to Maya. She took a step back to address them all. “In fact, the nature of the spell means I shouldn’t even be in the same room while you all practice it. We can’t risk you unintentionally binding my powers. This is something you’ll have to do on your own. But I believe in your abilities. You girls are special, you’ve trained well, and the timing of my vision has made it clear that you are ready. Whatever direction I’ve given pales in comparison to the natural abilities that have caused the universe—the Mothers—to entrust you with this duty. You’ve come a long way from your first lesson, and I’m certain you are capable.” Alba concluded with an encouraging smile, which quickly disappeared from her face, as though it had been an accident.
Delali opened her mouth to see if she could get away with a few questions, but Alba held up a hand to stop her.
“I’m sorry,” Alba said. “I can’t help you any further. This assignment is yours to understand and complete. I’m worried I may have already said too much.” She walked toward the door and the girls stood slowly.
For a moment, they didn’t quite believe the session was over. But Alba was quiet, long enough for them to realize the lesson was really, truly finished. Maya was the first to start gathering her things and heading to the door. Delali and Gabbie followed. Her hand on the doorframe, Alba gave them one last useless piece of advice. “Where you are lost or unsure, return to your lessons. I’ll speak to you all on Sunday, and no sooner than that.” Then she shut the door behind them.