Chapter Eleven

CHAPTER ELEVEN

She knew exactly what she was going to do the second she got in the house: use everything she had so far learned, and this book, to work out how to prepare awesome potions. And then make Seth an extra-strength, super-long-lasting potion that communicated to him exactly what his gift of the book had communicated to her. That told him she would do what would help him, even if it meant she got nothing from him ever again.

I won't let you think that's all this means to me, she thought.

Then started in on the book right there, while standing in the hallway with her jacket still on and mud and twigs in her hair.

She examined the cover first—which was just as bonkers as the title suggested. The background was a sickly cream color, with a swirling pink title at the top, and the strangest-looking illustration in the middle. A smiling moon, hugging a fabulously overdone purple flower, above a name—Dr. Annie Taylor Watts—that felt strangely but powerfully familiar.

Though if she was being honest, everything about the cover gave her that same feeling.

But it was only when she opened the book that she realized why. Because there was a tasteful black-and-white photo on the inside flap. And in it, Dr. Watts seemed to be wearing an enormous pair of glasses, and a turtleneck, and a big, floppy wig of the sort Cassie remembered from so many sick days and summers spent watching daytime TV.

She looks like Sally Jessy Raphael, she thought.

Then knew what the book reminded her of:

A self-help book from 1987 about exploring your inner self.

She'd seen a million of them on her mother's nightstand over the years. And this one would have fit right in. It had the right look, the right author, and if the contents page was anything to go by, the same tone and style and way of describing things.

She spotted chapter headings like "Accessing Your Inner Witch" and "Maximizing Spell Potential" and "Maintaining Healthy Magic Boundaries."

And when she flipped to page one, there was more of the same.

"When your magical inner being first manifests, you may find dealing with this blossoming a little difficult," Watts had written, and all Cassie could think about was the textbook people had been given in school, to inform them about their first periods. She wanted to race to the end of that chapter—"So You Think You Have Become a Witch"—and make sure that she wasn't about to start bleeding out of another orifice once a month.

Which thankfully didn't seem to be the case.

But apparently, according to Watts, there were other symptoms of being a witch. "The main indicators of your possible emergence," she had written, "are as follows." And below that appeared an actual list. An incredible, ridiculous, nightmarish list that included things like:

* Excessive night sweats.

* Urge to wear hats massively increased.

* Chances of cats adopting you very high.

* People stop liking you.

* People like you to a disturbing degree.

* You may only want to eat potatoes.

No real explanation was given for why any of this might happen, however. And, okay, Cassie could guess the reason for some of them. They were practically witch clichés that Watts most likely just thought would sound right.

But then there was the thing about potatoes. Why on earth would she only want potatoes?

And that wasn't even the weirdest one. The last on the list read simply, "Trolls." Which left Cassie wondering what these trolls might be about to do. Did witches attract them? Was she likely to wake up one morning and find a great swarm of them scaling the front wall of the house? Or was she now mortal enemies with troll kind?

She didn't know. And Watts didn't say.

But she did say that the best way to avoid causing too much destruction was, of course, to try exercise: "A brisk constitutional, taken twice daily, has been known to decrease the instances of accidental melting of household appliances and unfortunate family members threefold," Watts had written. As if the disintegration of your mom was just a slight aberration in an otherwise completely normal existence. And if you felt like it wasn't, well.

Walking would really help with that.

Yet, somehow, Cassie still couldn't stop reading.

She sat on the stairs, devouring every word. And at least some of the words were as useful as she had imagined when Seth first handed the book to her. There was stuff in there about how to gather moonlight (coat the inside of a lidded Tupperware container with witch saliva, then poke a hole in the top and cover the hole with plastic wrap), how to keep spiders from your house forever (stash goblin whiskers beneath the floorboards), how to obtain goblin whiskers (leave a tomato out on a silver plate on the fourth of any month).

Plus at the end of the book was a straightforward glossary, which plainly explained what certain terms meant. "Knack," for example, was used to describe what exactly manifested a witch's powers. And apparently it could be done in all sorts of strange ways.

Baking and cooking were of course familiar to Cassie. But other possibilities ranged all the way from writing or painting or dancing, to weird things like data processing and wall building and wearing things. You put your shoes on just a little bit wrongly and there it was. You were a shoe witch. Forever searching for just the right sandal to hang on one of your ears, in order to make time turn backward or make night into day.

All of which, according to Watts, were absolutely feasible.

"Anything is possible," read the final sentence of one chapter.

Though Cassie couldn't really be sure if that was just yet more self-help, can-do-attitude speak, or an actual fact. All she knew for sure was how she felt when she read the book:

Both disturbed and thrilled at the same time.

And even more so when she read something similar to what Seth had said: "Your spells or potions or curses will be at their strongest when your Knack and your desire and your instincts all converge. If one fights the other, the magic will not be as strong or as accurate as you might wish it to be. Therefore, it's very important to not fret if conventional wisdom tells you that what you are creating is wrong. Feelings, a tingle inside, a strong sense of self—all will better inform you which is the correct path to take," she read, and her heart pounded harder and harder as she did.

Because a tingle was exactly what she had been feeling.

Plus, she knew for a fact that desire was making it stronger. Even as she devoured the book, she could feel that need to make the potion for Seth. And that need was sharpening every idea and instinct in her head. It made them crystal clear and almost bright—until she stood, and went to the kitchen, and started rifling through her grandmother's recipe journals again.

Then when she found the recipe for Feel Better Soup, she grabbed a blank journal. And she opened it to the first page, smoothed it out on her knee, and started writing. No rational thinking about it, no troubled doubts allowed in, just whatever came to mind. "Extra-Strength Soup," she wrote at the top, underlining it firmly.

But god it was a shock, when everything just flowed.

The soup needed fewer garlic bulbs. But more chili. And beans had been a substitute for something stranger. Something that her mind hadn't let her imagine. Something like a supernatural caterpillar, she felt, then flicked to the "Creature" heading in the glossary.

And there it was:

"Hogarth," she read. "Often found in fairy hollows, commonly used by such creatures as a method of transportation. Skins may be obtained by leaving out a thimble of honey next to any tree of a good nature." Then all she had to do was find a thimble in her Gram's sewing kit, and grab an old, sticky jar of Goodwin's, and head outside. And she did, without even thinking about things like It's pitch-dark outside by now , or A second ago you were afraid of shadows .

All that mattered was seeing if her insect-attraction method worked.

Even though it was actually scary outside.

She had the strangest feeling when she stepped out the door—like in the woods with Seth, when she'd thought something was watching her. Only this time, that feeling wasn't just familiar. She knew why she had it. She remembered how she and Seth had stopped using the stairs by the science wing in high school, where it was too easy for the Jerks to see them coming, but impossible for them to know the Jerks were there.

Ambush Alley, Seth had called it.

And that was what it had felt like earlier that day in the woods.

And what it felt like now. It made her stop and scan all around the house, straining her eyes to see if she could make out one of those assholes. Even though it wasn't going to be any of them, of course it wasn't. They were probably off having football careers, or busy fucking up Wall Street. They hadn't stayed around to live in what they had always thought of as a loser town.

So she took a bracing breath. And plunged across the dew-dipped grass.

Only to discover that she'd been so rushed and so distracted that she hadn't put on shoes. She was just in her goddamn socks. By the time she got to the tree line she was soaked all the way up to her ankles, and so cold her teeth were chattering. She could hear them going and going, as she assessed the trees for something as seemingly daft as a good-natured one.

Does it give you a hearty hello , the rational part of her brain tried to sneer, as she stood there in her soggy socks, shivering, staring dumbly at the four or five live oaks that stood between her garden and the woods beyond. Then just as she was starting to think her rational side had a point in mocking her, one of the trees groaned. It groaned .

And it seemed…

To almost…

Lean toward her. Like it really was greeting her somehow.

Then, even wilder, she felt something in her head. A sort of voice, a kind of word, something that seemed like speech but wasn't, and had to be translated somehow before she could understand it. Same as you did automatically with the fairies , she thought.

And she knew all at once what she was hearing: the tree's name.

A big, blank space of weird symbols, it sounded like, and the closest human-language approximation she could get was Ivor . So she said it aloud, in greeting, and watched the tree shimmy its remaining leaves in response. Before it reached a branch down, pointing to where she should put the thimble full of honey.

All of which was overwhelming enough.

But then she did it, and the creature actually appeared. And oh, she didn't even know what to think of it. What to do with the sight of a caterpillar, with a fairy riding on its back. The former barely the size of a thumb, crawling slowly over tree roots and other rubble. The latter urging it on, proud and pleased as punch about it.

And very visibly one of the same fairies from earlier.

"Sorry about the intrusion," she managed to squeak out, once she had gotten hold of her senses. But the fairy didn't seem to care. It said something like well, if we knew you were going to bring honey for our horses, we wouldn't have chased you . Then it made the Hogarth drop something that looked very much like the skin she needed, and the fairy attached the thimble to the Hogarth's saddle, and both of them disappeared.

Leaving Cassie completely buzzed about two things:

Fairy forgiveness, and the Hogarth skin she held in her hands.

Plus a third thing that made a little less sense. It had a tiny saddle , her brain kept gasping, for some unaccountable reason. But by the time she returned to the kitchen, it was cooperating again. It told her to grind the surprisingly substantial shells using a pestle and mortar, before she'd even taken off her soaked socks.

Though she barely noticed her wet feet anyway.

She was too busy building up a sweat, creating what looked like a bowl full of sparkly, incredibly thick peanut butter. And then she lit the ancient burner under her Gram's big old pot, and dumped in the stuff, and poured in some water.

And not from the tap.

From the barrel outside.

Because before, she'd been afraid that rainwater in a potion might poison someone.

But now she knew it wouldn't. It wouldn't hurt anyone, and it definitely wouldn't hurt Seth. Nothing can , she thought absently, as the brew began to bubble and the kitchen filled with a too-thick, strange-smelling steam.

Like smoke, but less acrid.

Spicy, she wanted to call it. But that wasn't it either. In truth, it was more a feeling than a smell. Like lying under a blanket on the couch as Gram brings me ginger ale . And just as she had this thought, she tossed in five whole garlic bulbs all at once. And got the exact reaction she'd expected. In fact, she jumped back the instant she did it, and sure enough: the pot rattled. It shook.

Then it let out an almighty POP . As if she had stuffed several balloons in there.

Funny, she thought. But amusement wasn't what she felt. No, what she felt was satisfaction, unmistakably satisfaction. And it was so strong, she didn't really know what to do with it all. It filled her body all the way up, until it simply had to overflow.

So it wasn't a surprise when tears spilled down her cheeks. When she had to sit down. When she had to think over all the fears she had ever had, and all the ways they were no longer true.

"I think I'm okay to do this now, Gram," she said to the spirit that was sometimes there, and sometimes not. And in reply that spirit brushed a hand over her hair, gentle but unmistakable.

I think you are too.