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Cora stands by the door, dumbstruck. Actually, I think we all are.
Silas has not caught us in our finest moment, to say the least. I watch as Cora tries to brush flour out of her hair while ogling the tall, handsome man.
It takes me a moment before I find my voice. “Silas!” I say. “Thanks for coming. We were just—er—practicing a bit of magic.”
“I see,” says Silas, as he looks around the little kitchen. In the flickering candle light, it must look like a kind of odd war zone, dusted with the debris of some sort of explosion.
“It didn’t go well,” Annie says sheepishly.
“To say the least,” adds Marley with a sigh.
I lift my chin. “We’re working on it,” I say.
Cora snaps on the light.
Suddenly, the room is much brighter, and our mess seems somewhat less catastrophic. It’s amazing what lighting can do.
I begin dusting off my shoulders. A showering of white flour sprinkles off of me, onto the floor.
“How did you find us back here?” I ask.
“The boy at the counter told me you had all headed in here, looking serious,” Silas says. “I waited out in the cafe for a while, but then I started to get nervous. Penny, you said that you’re working on the Banishing Spell, right?” Silas is picking his way through the kitchen now.
Cora, left behind at the door, watches him move. I can tell by the look in her eyes that she finds Silas attractive.
I catch her eye and give her a wink. She straightens up and tears her eyes away from Silas. Even with the thin coat of white flour that’s dusted over her face like foundation, I can see the blush that creeps into her cheeks.
“Right,” I say to Silas, who’s now at my side. “The Banishing Spell.”
“It’s a dangerous one,” Silas says. “It can go very wrong. I started to wonder if something had happened to you all back here. I worried that perhaps you’d translocated yourselves, or had some other kind of unfortunate mishap. I’m glad to see you all in one piece.”
Marley laughs. “One very messy piece,” she says, shaking her head. A cloud of dust billows out around her.
“It could be worse,” Silas says. “I’ve heard of witches who—”
“Silas!” I say, cutting him off. I don’t think my already disheartened coven—or myself—need to hear any horror stories about the Banishing Spell. We’re already lacking in confidence as it is. “Do you think you could hand me that rag?” I point to a dishrag on the countertop, next to where he’s standing.
He reaches for it. “Sure...” he says, eying me.
I grab it from him. “Maybe now’s not the best time for idle chit chat,” I say. “We need to start making a strategy for tonight. Why don’t you tell these ladies what you told me last night—about how you think Zeke will attack those in leadership positions? We can strategize while we clean.”
“Oh... right.” Silas looks around at my coven. His eyes land on Cora and stay there.
Yep. There are definitely some sparks flying.
Cora reaches for the broom and starts sweeping. Silas doesn’t take his eyes off of her as he begins to speak. “Zeke is an Alpha Lux wolf. For him, violence is an act of dominance. He kills to make a point.”
I use the rag to start wiping flour off of an island in the middle of the small kitchen, while Silas talks. Marley is brushing flour off of shelving with her sleeve. Annie’s tackling the stove top.
Silas moves towards the door as he speaks. “Penny, you were saying that the town is going to have some sort of gathering tonight, right?”
“Yeah,” I say.
Silas leans down and grabs a dust pan. He then squats and places it on the floor next to a pile of flour that Cora’s been sweeping up.
Cora shoots him a smile as she starts sweeping flour into the waiting pan. “A bonfire dance,” she says, dreamily.
“That's right,” Silas says. “A bonfire dance. Zeke will wait until everyone’s gathered, and then he’ll go in for the kill—of the leader of the humans in Hillcrest.”
“Mayor Haywater,” I say.
Silas stands, and walks the dust pan over towards a trash can. As he empties the flour into the trash can he says, “He’ll want to make it public. He’ll want the humans of Hillcrest to know who the true Alpha is. And he won’t stop there. Next, he’ll go for the leader of this coven—the one who started the group.”
I feel Annie, Marley, and Cora’s eyes land on me.
“Penny,” Marley whispers.
“We can’t let it get to that,” I say. “We have to stop Zeke before he makes even one attack. Silas, do you think you could fight him?”
Silas shakes his head. “Zeke is far too powerful for me. With my pack, maybe. But on my own...” He shakes his head again.
We keep cleaning. For the next hour, we toss around ideas.
Marley suggests setting a trap for Zeke in the trees, but we quickly realize that we have no idea how to build such a trap. Annie wonders if we could lure him in with baked goods, but Silas promises that Zeke eats a strictly Paleo diet. What is it with these magical creatures and their healthy habits? They’re making us Earth Realm witches look bad. Except for Cora. Her diet is beyond reproach.
Cora is too busy flirting with Silas to make any helpful contributions to our strategy session, and I’m too frazzled by our disaster of a practice session.
I wanted to be able to use the Banishing Spell on Zeke, but now that I know how bad we are at it, I don’t think it would work.
Slowly, the kitchen begins to shape up. It’s far from sparkling clean, but it’s also no longer looking like a war zone.
“That’ll do for now,” Annie says, pushing a pile of flour over the edge of a countertop, into a waiting trash bin. “I’ll finish cleaning tomorrow. For now, we’d better get ready for this dance.”
“I need a shower,” I say.
Every time I blink, flour seems to fall into my eyes. If I’m going to be of any use tonight, I need to give myself a good scrubbing.
Everyone agrees, except for Silas, who didn’t get coated in flour in the first place. “I’d like to get the lay of the land around the hotel,” he says. “I want to know what kind of a space we’ll be working with, tonight.”
“Good idea,” I say. Then, I glance over at Cora. She’s still gazing at Silas with dreamy, love-struck eyes.
“Cora, why don’t you show Silas around the inn?” I say.
Cora smiles. “I have to go home and freshen up first,” she says. “But after that, I’d be happy to.”
“I don’t mind waiting,” Silas says.
“Well, that settles it!” I say quickly. “You two will do some reconnaissance around the inn. The rest of us will meet you there around—what...” I look over at Annie and Marley. “Six?” I say. “Seven?”
“Better say six,” Annie says. “We don’t want to miss anything.”
Right. We wouldn’t want to miss any murderous attacks. We want to be there when all the fun starts happening. “Six it is,” I say.
We give each other floury hugs before parting ways.
Marley decides to go to Annie’s house for a shower instead of coming home with me, since Annie’s place is closer to her van. That’s fine with me.
At least, it’s fine with me at first. I’m so caught up in the excitement of introducing Silas to Cora and practicing magic with my coven to feel lonely. But as some of the excitement wears off, my doubts and fears surface.
By the time I reach my apartment, I’m deep in a downward spiral. It’s the same spiral that I fell into when we were trying to cast the Banishing Spell. What makes me think I can do this? Who am I to believe I can be a witch? I’m nobody. I’m terrible at magic. I’m not going to be able to protect my town tonight, let alone the Earth Realm as a whole.
I must have been delusional to think that I could.
I climb the stairs to my apartment with heavy feet.
My eyes are still scratchy with flour, and the more I try to rub the flour out, the more irritated my eyes become. They’re so blurry, and my glasses are so smudged, that I can barely see the stairs.
I stumble along, and finally reach my door. Beyond it, I see the walkway that leads to Chris’s place.
A loneliness that I haven’t felt in years strikes me. It’s a deep ache that drills down to my core, and makes me feel hollow—like a part of me is missing. It makes me desperately want to feel whole. I want someone to hold me and tell me it’s okay.
This hollow, scared, lonely feeling is familiar. I remember the last time I had it.
It was when Chris dumped me the first time. Five years ago.
And before that?
It was when my mom died—when I was seventeen.
My blurry, irritated eyes are tearing up now. I’m not sure if it’s because of the flour imbedded in my eyelids, or if I’m crying.
Oh, man.
Yep.
Tears are now trickling down my cheeks.
I’m definitely crying, for the second time today.
I hate crying.
I hate feeling this lost—this weak and scared and needy.
But I feel it, nonetheless. I’d give anything to have Chris open up his door and run over to me right now. He’d ask me what was wrong as I collapsed into his arms. ‘I need you,’ I’d say, pressing a tearstained cheek against his solid chest.
He would hold me up, just like he always has before.
I look longingly down the walkway to Chris’s unit.
It remains empty.
I turn to my own door and push it open.
Turkey is inside, waiting for my arrival home. On seeing me, he starts swishing his tail side to side.
I raise the corners of my mouth and wipe a stray tear from my cheek. “At least I have you,” I say. “You and my coven.”
After giving Turkey a quick pat and several kisses, I make my way to the bathroom. When I strip off my clothes, a light cloud of flour rises up into the air. I guess I didn’t brush all of it off.
It takes a full half-hour to wash all of the pasty clumps of flour off of me. When at last I’m clean, I step out of the shower and wrap myself up in a towel.
Out of the corner of my eye, I catch a glimpse of my reflection. I look scared.
I feel scared.
Scared about what the night might hold. Scared that I’m not a good enough private investigator, and that I’ve completely let this case get out of control. Scared that I’m not a good enough witch, and that I won’t be able to stop Zeke.
Scared.
A line from ASBW floats into my mind: ‘Thus, you may banish such intangible items as feelings, memories, or those things that are too large or disperse to be illuminated with light.’
Fear is intangible. Could I banish it?
I walk up to the sink and place my hands on it. I lean into the mirror and look at myself. My pupils are dark black holes. As I look into them, I think: There’s more. There’s more than fear in there.
My mind goes back to the loneliness that struck me so forcefully as I climbed the stairs to my apartment.
Chris, rejecting me.
Chris, stepping away from me.
How abandoned I felt the first time he dumped me, and then again, earlier today.
And before that—my mother.
My knees go all wobbly. I clutch the edge of the sink.
When she died, I felt angry at her. So angry at her—that she left me here. She left me behind and I was just a teenager. A girl of seventeen. My life was chaotic enough, and then she had to go and die.
I poured all of my attention into obsessing over Chris, didn’t I?
I grip the sink harder, leaning my weight against it.
If I didn’t have a mother to make me feel safe and loved, at least I could imagine that Chris could give me those things.
I took all of my need, and pivoted it squarely onto his shoulders.
It’s rested there since she passed away.
I wanted Chris to take care of me. I wanted Chris to protect me. I wanted Chris to love me.
I transferred it all onto him, instead of ever facing my loss head on.
It still lives inside of me: all of that pain; all of that need.
That’s what I need to banish. If I can banish it, the fear will go too.
There’s a little candle sitting on the edge of my sink. I grip the wick with my finger and thumb, and twist it in my hand until my fingers are black. Then I draw spirals on each of my palms. Next, I light the candle, and I turn off the bathroom light.
I take a deep breath, and open my medicine cabinet. I need something to draw with.
I spot an old tube of lipstick. I got it a while back, when I went through a short-lived phase of wearing red lipstick. I was twenty-one, okay? Everyone knows that twenty-one year olds are fashion challenged. I pull out the red lipstick, and then close the medicine cabinet.
Another deep breath.
I pull the top of the lipstick tube off, and then start to draw on my mirror.
I need a symbol that will represent the feeling I want to banish—this deep-seated feeling of abandonment and loss—this root of all my neediness and fear.
I draw a heart. Then I add a little frowny face inside of it.
I know, I know. It sounds so cheesy! But you know what? I know, right now in this moment, that the symbol I’ve drawn is perfect. Precise.
I step back, and look at the symbol. It’s illuminated in the flickering light.
Do I remember the words?
I have to think for a moment, but then they come to me. It feels so natural to gaze at the illuminated symbol and move my hands, slowly and rhythmically counterclockwise while I say the poem aloud. The verses roll off my tongue. My focus never wavers.
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“Banish, banish, banish,
Thrice times I banish thee
Gone for good, forever,
All before me that I see.
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“Banish, banish, banish,
With this witch hand, this heart, this mind
Gone for good, forever,
In your absence peace I find.
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Banish, banish, banish
From without, within, below, above
Gone for good, forever,
Not in hatred but with love.”
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As the last of the phrase leaves my lips, I close my eyes.
I have this whooshing feeling inside of me, like a door that’s been closed inside of me is opening up.
For an instant, it feels like the whole world disappears.
When I open my eyes, I feel different.
Now, if you’ve known me for a while, you know I’ve had this different feeling before.
I’ve felt changed so many times. It’s hard to imagine that before my witchy journey began, I always felt ‘the same’. It seems that now I go through major life-changing personality shifts every few months. Ah, well. It must be a part of the journey.
I lift my gaze and look into my eyes in the mirror again.
My pupils look different.
It takes me a moment to recognize what the difference is.
That blackness inside of them—before, it seemed to be a void. Now, it looks full. The black carries a wholeness that I’ve never recognized before.
Hunh.
Imagine that.
Well—maybe I’m a better witch than I thought.
I stare at myself for a moment, until my lips curve into a smile, almost involuntarily. As soon as I smile, the flickering candle goes out.
The room is dark.
My smile grows broader.
In the past, the candle going out has been a good sign. A sign of completion. A sign of work well done—a spell well cast.
I reach for the light switch, and flip it on. Bright light fills the room. I start to hum, happily. I did it! I completed the Banishing Spell!
Now that I know it’s possible, surely I’ll be able to do it again and banish Zeke from Hillcrest.
It’s not impossible. I can do this.
Right?