Chapter 2

Chapter

Two

T he sun is shining, at least, while I’m waiting out front of the Institute for Aimee. If it was raining I would’ve already given up, but I have a few minutes more patience left in me thanks to all the vitamin D from the sun.

The Institute is made up of four large brick buildings with ivy crawling up the outsides. They sit in a slight arc with the outer buildings on each end angled and the two center building next to one another. The grass is green and lush and there is a wrought iron gate around the property, which includes a soccer field, a baseball diamond, a swimming pool, and a large wooded section in the back outside of the fence.

Three of the buildings have multiple floors, a hundred or so classrooms, and offices for the administration and department heads.

The fourth building has the cafeteria, library, band and choral rooms, and a lounge. A couple streets over there’s a dorm and some cabins buried deep in the woods that are used for specialty magic—whatever that is. I have never taken a class in one of those buildings and I’m kind of glad.

From where I’m standing, leaning against a tree in the common grassy area across the drive from the buildings, I can see the front doors of all the buildings. And Aimee has yet to walk out of any of them.

She’s a big joiner at school. She sits on four councils—Students for the Equitable and Responsible use of Potion Sales; Spells and Magic Apprenticeship; Real World Applications of Magic; and Chess Club. It could be that she’s busy with one of those, but she usually mentions it ahead of time so I can get a ride home with someone else.

It’s Wednesday, and unless something has changed since last period when she went to Philosophy of Magic and I went to Alchemy and Ancestral Magic, she should’ve been here ten minutes ago.

Finally, she runs out of building four’s door, looks around until she spots me—in the same place I wait for her every day—then waves and jogs over. It’s not a good sign that she doesn’t have her book bag. I know for a fact she has homework in Portal Science.

When she gets to where I am, silvery-blonde ponytail swinging, breaths heavy—she bends and puts her hands on her knees. “I’m staying after today to try out for choir.”

I’m not annoyed. “You’re trying out for choir?” I tut because this is a magic school, not a singing school. Although our first year she played softball and ran track. I guess choir isn’t so out there.

She nods. “I’ll be home around six.”

I shrug. “Okay.” Not like I’m her keeper. And maybe I can work on the magic, build my confidence and figure out for myself what I’m doing differently when Aimee is there and when she isn’t .

By the time I get home, I’ve gone over the spell twenty times in my head. “How was class today?” Mom is home, fresh from the garden and hasn’t even taken her gardening gloves off yet. She is a green witch, which means that she draws her power and the tools she uses in her magic from the earth. She’s also a hereditary witch so her power was passed down the same way the color of her hair—silvery like Aimee’s—is also passed down.

“It was fine. Aimee is trying out for choir.” She’s washing the vegetables she’s picked from the plot she planted in the backyard so she doesn’t see my eyeroll. It’s our last year at the Institute, why Aimee wants to be in choir is beyond me. We could use that time to work on spells and potions. Things will make us money in the future.

“I told Madeline Hughes about your oven mitts and she wants to order a pair to hang in her kitchen.” Mom’s smiling and so proud, I feel moderately bad for deceiving her.

“Oh, okay. Well, she can have the pair we already made.” Simple solution.

“But I wanted to keep those.” Mom tilts her head, and I don’t know if she knows or if she’s really put out because I was going to give the mitts to her friend.

“Oh, okay.” I nod like I understand. But I don’t have a plan. I can order more. Or I can muddle through making her a pair myself. “We can always make more.”

Mom smiles. “Good.”

She even winks at me, and I head for the upstairs. “I’m going to drop my stuff off in my room and get to work.” I’m a liar and I hate it, but it’s not because I want to lie. I have to. She doesn’t understand that the world isn’t black-and-white .

But it is what it is. I can’t be the only student at the Institute who flunks out because I can’t get my spells right. I won’t be.

By the time I get upstairs, I can hear her playing the radio. She loves the oldies—the songs from the seventies and eighties—and is probably dancing around the kitchen singing into her broom. And I like thinking of her that way. It’s a simple vision in my head, but so clear, so happy.

I don’t think about it as I shut the door to the attic loft. Mom’s innocent, trusting us, and I’m the one taking that away from her. It skews my perception of her. She’s never been the enemy but she’s a master at her magic. She won’t understand why I can’t do it. Why I have to go behind her back.

And because I’m not thinking about getting caught, I’m not as careful. I don’t hush the sound of the cabinet door as I open it to retrieve the napkin. And I almost don’t bother with the grimoire, but after so many missteps, I don’t trust myself, so I open the panel not half as quietly as I should and pull the ancient book—it looks ancient, anyway—from its hiding place.

The leather cover is scarred and the pages are brittle and yellow. But it’s handwritten with drawn pictures and pressed leaves, flower petals and parts crossed through. We haven’t made it all the way to the end, but we’re trying different parts because my final in my practical applications class has to be something useful to the home. Aimee and I chose the cleaning spell we found in the book, partly for its simplicity and partly for its real world uses. And I’ve already submitted it to our professor for trial.

After I lay out the napkin, I flip to our page. It’s marked by a long slim blue ribbon. The words aren’t English. I suspect they’re Romani, and when Aimee pronounced them as written, they worked, so I close my eyes, finding my focus, then imitate the way she said them.

After I speak the last syllable, for a second, nothing happens. But then the cabinet starts to shake and the book slides to the floor with a loud thud. And then, while I’m being very still, looking left and right—and unless she’s gone deaf, there’s no way she missed the sound of the book falling—the napkin spontaneously bursts into flame. “Shit!”

I try to grab it, but a sudden and mysterious breeze in the attic carries it away and with it, the flames. There are old things in this place. Old, brittle, and probably flammable things. I can’t let the house burn down.

But magic is unpredictable. At least, it is when I do it. So I have to dive to catch the still flaming napkin, and I thud onto the floor beside the book, miss the napkin completely and the fucking thing is floating, undisturbed, still burning.

Then, because Mom is a conscientious homeowner and has two smoke detectors on every floor, both the alarms in the loft sound.

I plug my ears and look at the still burning napkin. This has got to be some kind of trick. It should be nothing more than ash by now, but it’s some sort of poly/flame retardant blend and flames are dancing on the surface, burning the poly off but the retardant part lives on.

As the alarm continues blaring, Mom bursts into the room, and I don’t know what exactly she sees, but the napkin is floating like it’s on wires that cross from one side of the loft to the other. The book pages are flipping open and closed as it rumbles on the floor as though we’re in the middle of an earthquake, and I’m flopping across the splintery hardwood, chasing the grimoire like I actually have a chance to catch it, like it isn’t hopped up on magic .

Mom waves her hand in the air and the fire dies, the book stops, the alarms silence, and I look up at her. “Thanks?”

“Stand up, Robbie Joe.” Sometimes, usually when she’s pissed, she calls me by the name she’d given me when I was born. Robbie after my dad and Joe because she thought if she put two boy names together, it wouldn’t sound so masculine on her girl. Her “two negatives equals a positive” logic didn’t translate to baby naming so she’d shortened my name to initials. Except when she’s pissed off.

Like now.

I come up off the ground with the grimoire in my hand. In my defense, when I realize it, I move my arms to hide it behind my back.

“Seriously?” She holds out her hand, flexing her fingers. “Hand it over, Robbie Joe.”

Twice. She’s bypassed the initials twice now. That she’s so in control of her magic is impressive, though. Once, when we were young—I was maybe ten and Aimee was twelve—Aimee got spitfire mad at me. Literally. Her natural magic welled inside of her. She said it felt like a tornado, and she didn’t mean to let it out, but she did, in fact, spit fire and a wall of magic knocked me flat on my back. It held me there until Mom saved me.

Mom’s control is tighter than Aimee’s, but her voice is burning with anger. She’s holding the book in one hand with far less reverence than Aimee and I have for the book. “Do you have any idea how dangerous it is to dabble in magic you don’t understand?” She shakes her head. “And unsanctioned magic will get you kicked out of the Institute.”

This isn’t headline news. I’m well aware of the rules at the Institute .

“We understand it, Mom. And we aren’t dabbling.” Technically, we aren’t doing anything. Somehow, I don’t think she’ll appreciate that observation, and any other day I would tell her that Aimee is innocent, but today I’m not saying anything to defend Aimee. If she was here, I would’ve never been caught.

“So you meant to set the house on fire?” Her tone cracks and the real anger is simmering close to the skin, ready to boil over.

“No! Of course not.” What kind of question is that?

“You’re reckless, Robbie Joe. And you don’t think before you act. It’s not just me you’re hurting, you know. It’s your sister, too. Do you see that?” She’s not only angry. She’s disappointed. After the last nineteen years, it’s one of her tones that I’m more than familiar with so I recognize it right away.

“I would never hurt Aimee.” And I don’t care for the implication, so my tone is icy, hard even.

If she notices, Mom ignores it. “But you do. Every time you drag her into one of your schemes.”

One of my schemes? Aimee found the book. She’d found the cleaning spell. She wrote the card for me to give to Professor Alex. But aside from my mother never believing it if I deigned to say it, I’m not the kind of sister who would snitch.

Although, I would say I’m sorry if I thought it would do any good. But I’ve tried it before. She always says it’s just lip service. Instead, I sigh, and it’s as petulant as I dare get when she’s this keyed up.

“You know you’re not supposed to practice magic—any magic—outside of the Institute, too, RJ. Agreements were signed. Promises were made. Does your word mean nothing?” These are rhetorical. I want to tell her that I’m doing this for a reason and that my word means everything to me. But I have to pass. Being a witch is all I know. I can’t fail now.

I want to explain it all to her, but I can’t. I don’t think I can bear more of her disappointment. As a daughter it’s one thing. Maybe the shame is even a choice I make by what I do. But as a witch without skill? That’s a whole other level of humiliation that my mother will never understand.

“It’s bad enough you’re jeopardizing your own future, but now you’re also jeopardizing Aimee’s. It’s selfish is what it is.” She stamps her foot. I have to give her the anger, or at least the right to it. I almost burned the house down, and I broke the rules of the Institute.

“I’m sorry.” It’s the absolute least I can say. I could explain, but it won’t make a difference, and I really don’t want to tell her the troubles I’ve been having. She’s angry. I’ve done wrong. Nothing else matters.

“You’re grounded.”

“What? Grounded? Are you kidding me right now?” I’m old enough to move out. Old enough to vote. Don’t have the money to move out. Don’t have the knowledge to vote. But definitely too old to be grounded.

“You live in my house.” Of course, it always comes back to this. Her house. Her rules.

“And I’m grounded?” It sounds ridiculous to say. Twelve-year-olds get grounded. She nods and crosses her arms. “So I can buy a lottery ticket, play a slot machine, get into a—” I almost say club , “R-rated movie, but I’m grounded?”

“That’s right.” She nods as if she’s proud, and she’s still holding the grimoire when she turns and marches down the stairs .

Grounded. It’s such a ridiculous concept. And she took the fucking book. Aimee is going to be pissed.

But there are things my mother said that make sense. Maybe I am holding Aimee back. Not that Mom said that but it’s the gist. Or maybe that’s just my personal feelings on the subject.

Certainly, I’m a liability to my sister. Obviously. She has magic I don’t have. Or at least she’s better at magic than I am. And that means…something. And it isn’t good. Also obviously.

If we don’t talk about the past and only concentrate on today, I’ve almost set the house on fire and now Mom has the grimoire so I’m a liability to myself, too.

It’s a lot to think about. Fortunately, since I’m grounded—at nineteen—I’ll have plenty of time to do just that.