Derrick
Any spells cast by a Witch must be to seek harmony with—not harm—humans and the earth.
Rule Number Two of the Nine Rules
*World Council of Witches*
Derrick gulped down the remainder of the coffee in his compostable cup from Wake Up West Harbor. He had to admit it wasn’t the worst coffee he’d ever had. It was actually pretty good.
He also felt much more awake, which was a relief after the miserable night he’d spent in the cramped seat of his rental car outside Jess’s cottage. At least now he was better able to focus his gaze on the front doors of West Harbor High, through which he’d watched her disappear an hour earlier.
For such a relatively small town, West Harbor seemed to have a decent high school. This one boasted an eleven-hundred-seat auditorium, a newly resodded football field, and a four-bay auto shop garage with two lifts.
He only knew this last part because he could see the lifts from where he was parked, since the bay doors had been open to let in the sea breeze. Some of the kids had even come out of the shop to vape and enjoy the warm midday sun on their faces.
At least until that sun suddenly disappeared behind a dark bank of clouds. The wind picked up, too, right around the time he received a text from Jessica saying that she thought the girl was the Bringer of Light. The wind sent autumn leaves streaming past his car, and caused the kids to duck hastily inside. The American and Connecticut state flags, which had been hanging limply from a pole just outside the school’s front doors, swelled and snapped in the gale, and thunder rumbled—not in the distance, but seemingly directly above him.
Derrick decided to recheck the weather app he could have sworn had told him only a few hours earlier that the day would be clear. Yes. It still said conditions in West Harbor were sunny, with zero percent chance of precipitation. What was going on? He was used to the changeable weather conditions of the plains out west. No one had warned him it could be like this on the East Coast, as well. Was this because they were near the sea? Or were more insidious forces already at work?
Then he heard a bang. He swiveled in his seat—as much as he could in the confined space—to make sure the kids in the auto shop were all right, but it turned out the sound hadn’t come from there. It came from a side door in the opposite direction.
Through that side door burst Jessica, a panicked look on her face. She ran across the courtyard toward the parking lot as if she was being chased, though as far as Derrick could see, there was no one behind her.
Then there was a blinding flash of lightning—so bright that it illuminated the entire schoolyard—and thunder boomed again, this time sounding as if it was directly over the school.
And the first hailstone hit.
Derrick had been in hailstorms before. They happened frequently out west—though not as often as snowstorms.
He’d rarely seen hailstones this big, however. The first one landed with a thud on the hood of his rental car. He stared at it in confusion, thinking that maybe some kids were playing baseball out over on the field he’d seen behind the school, and someone had just hit a really long homer.
That’s how big this hailstone was. Baseball-sized.
Then, when he saw the dent in his hood and realized what was actually falling out of the dark gray clouds overhead, he glanced at Jessica. She had frozen in the middle of the courtyard, halfway between the door she’d just burst through and the parking lot. He could practically hear the wheels of her mind spinning as she tried to decide which was faster—a dash back into the school, or to her own car?
“The school. Get back inside,” he growled, switching on the ignition to his own vehicle as hailstones continued to smash all around it—and some on top of it, judging by the thumps he was hearing on the roof.
But for some reason, Jessica decided it was safer to make a run for her car. She began sprinting across the school courtyard as hail crashed down around her like rocks hurled from some unseen catapult.
“What are you doing, Jessica?” Derrick smashed his foot down on the gas pedal. For such a small car, the Fiat had a surprising amount of pickup. “What the hell are you doing?”
She’d clearly made the wrong choice. She only got as far as the sidewalk when the largest of the hailstones began to fall, smashing to the ground all around her as if targeted directly at her. Fortunately there seemed to be something hard in the tote bag she’d lifted over her head. It was acting as a protective shield against the projectiles, saving her from concussion.
But it couldn’t protect the rest of her body, which was taking a beating . . . at least until Derrick steered the car up over the curb and onto the sidewalk, slammed on the brakes, then leaned over to throw open the passenger side door.
“Get in!”
Jessica hurled herself into the little car, slamming the passenger door closed behind her. He wasn’t sure she even knew who was behind the wheel.
“Drive,” was all she said, panting hard as the hail pelted the tiny vehicle. “Get out of here. Drive, drive!”
Derrick didn’t ask questions—then. He jammed on the gas, sending them skidding across the hail-slick sidewalk and bumping down the curb back onto the circular driveway. Then he headed straight for the school’s exit. All the time, thunder crashed above, and hail pelted the car.
“Are you all right?” he asked, sending her what worried glances he could spare from the road as he tried to maneuver through the storm. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine.” She wasn’t moving like someone with significant injuries. She’d lowered the tote bag to the floor of the car and slipped on her seat belt. Pushing her damp dark curls from her face, she looked over at him in confusion. “What are you doing here?”
“‘Thank you for saving my life, Derrick,’” he said as he drove, sarcastically. He had no idea where he was going. Every street in this town looked the same to him, each dotted with picturesque Colonial-style houses and shops, except where the land met the sea. There it was dotted with touristy lobster shacks or docks.
But it didn’t really matter, because right now everywhere he looked, all he saw was hail. They were driving at a crawl while the wipers worked frantically to clear the stones away so he could see. A spidery crack had begun to form across the windshield where a larger stone had pelted a hole into it. He’d have quite a story to tell the rental car people.
“Oh, you’re welcome, Jessica,” he continued in the same sarcastic tone. “It was my pleasure. So glad I could be there to rescue you when the rift beneath your town tore open and unleashed meteorological death upon you. Does this kind of thing happen often around here? Because weirdly, they didn’t mention it on Tripadvisor.”
She grimaced as she prodded tenderly at one knee. “This one wasn’t the rift. It was Rosalie Hopkins.”
“What?” He slammed on the brakes—not because he was shocked at what she’d said, but because the car in front of them had stopped.
She nodded. “I didn’t see her at first, but it turned out she was there the whole time I was talking to Esther.”
“Did she see you?” He dreaded the phone call he knew he was going to have to make, explaining all of this, even though none of it was his fault. “Talking to the kid?”
“No. Calm down. She was at a table around the corner, trying to get girls to sign up to be this year’s Harvest Princess, whatever that is. Why?” Jessica continued to massage her knee. “What would be the big deal if she saw me talking to Esther? Rosalie’s a member of the World Council of Witches. Do they not know about the rift and prophecy?”
He’d been sworn to secrecy. But how could he not tell her? It had been easy to shrug and say he’d stay silent when he hadn’t met her.
But now that he had, keeping the truth to himself felt like a betrayal.
“They do, but they have their own theories about it,” he settled for saying. “We were hoping to confirm our opinion on Esther before sharing it with the rest of the witching world. Would you care to tell me why Rosalie Hopkins would want to unleash a hailstorm upon you?”
Jessica shrugged and pulled her cell phone from her bag, then began swiftly texting someone. “Rosalie and I didn’t get along so well in high school, that’s all. And sometimes when she sees me now, she’s reminded of it and gets . . . upset.”
“That wasn’t upset, Jessica. That was homicidal. She was trying to kill you.”
She continued to text. “Don’t be dramatic.”
“I know West Harbor is sitting on the brink of disaster, but has your entire town lost its collective mind, as well?” The assault from the sky had gone from massive hailstones to rain. It was pouring. But at least the clouds had lightened, and now he could see that the reason the car in front of them had stopped was because the traffic lights at the intersection were out, making it into a four-way stop. Every car was patiently waiting their turn. Rosalie’s assault had caused a citywide power outage. “That woman just tried to murder you in front of my eyes and you’re saying I’m being dramatic?”
She turned her brown eyes toward him. They were so big and so many fathoms deep, he felt as if he could dive into them. “What do you want me to say? That Rosalie Hopkins is a storm witch who can control the weather, and that she occasionally uses that power to intentionally hurt people? Yes. But because she’s a board member of the World Council of Witches, she’s never gotten caught, or even remotely reprimanded for doing so? Also, by the way, yes.”
“Wait.” He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Are you telling me that Rosalie has done this before?”
She snorted. “Oh, this is nothing. Do you remember the Valentine’s Day Blizzard of 2006?”
“Why would I remember the Valentine’s Day Blizzard of 2006?”
“Because that’s the year we got thirty inches of snow in one weekend.”
“Jessica, I’m from Montana. We get thirty inches of snow every weekend.”
“Oh. Well, that much snow is pretty rare here in Connecticut. It’s only happened here one time in my memory, and that’s because Rosalie was mad at me over a love spell.”
“A love spell?” He narrowed his eyes at her. She hadn’t struck him as the type to dabble in love spells. “Why was she mad at you over a love spell?”
“Because I gave it to her, and it didn’t work.”
“How is that your fault?”
A car horn sounded, long and loud, from behind them. The electricity to the traffic light had come on again, and he’d failed to notice because he’d been looking into Jess’s eyes.
“It’s a long story,” she said. “You’ve got the green light. If you make a left here, we’ll be at my house. I’m sorry, but I need to check if my cat is okay.” She waved the cell phone she was holding. “I already heard from my assistant manager Becca that Enchantments is fine. It didn’t even rain downtown. The entire storm was focused on this side of West Harbor. But Pye isn’t at the shop, so I’m a little worried—”
He turned left.
“Isn’t Rosalie a little old to still be upset about a crush she had in high school?” he asked, as they pulled onto her street.
“I know, right?” Jessica rolled her eyes. “But it’s slightly more complicated than that. Are you living in this car?”
Startled, he looked away from the hail-capped piles of leaves around her street and glanced instead at her. “What? Why would you ask that?”
“Because.” She pulled a pile of compostable coffee cups from Wake Up West Harbor from the compartment on the inside panel of the passenger door. “There are so many of these in here. And your bag is in the back seat. And this book.” His copy of Plutarch’s Lives. “And that smell—”
Alarmed, he asked, “What smell?”
“I don’t know,” she said, sniffing delicately. “It’s so familiar. I think it’s . . . cannoli? Have you been eating cannoli in here?”
“No.” It wasn’t his fault Wake Up West Harbor also had such a fine selection of pastries in addition to such good coffee. “Cheese Danish.”
“Oh, yes. Those Danish at Wake Up West Harbor are hard to resist. Wait, stop. This is my house.”
She pointed at her cottage, so he didn’t have to pretend he didn’t know which one it was. The storm did not appear to have done any harm to the cheerful yellow exterior or the already weathered shingled roof. Even the bright marigolds on either side of the steps leading to her front porch looked unbattered by either wind or hail.
“It looks okay.” Jessica heaved a sigh of relief. “Thank God, because I’m positive my car is destroyed. Do you want to come inside for a minute? I just need to check to see if Pye is all right. He has a cat door in the back. I hope he had the sense to use it.”
Did he want to come inside? He hadn’t been inside a home—a real home, not a hotel room or some European villa or the bunkhouse at his father’s ranch, which hardly qualified as a home—for as long as he could remember. He couldn’t agree fast enough, though he tried to seem casual about it.
“I guess I could come in,” he said. “Do you have any coffee?”
“Of course. I suppose coffee’s the least that I owe you for getting me out of there,” she said, as she unbuckled her seat belt and opened the door to exit the tiny car. “Though I wouldn’t have been there in the first place if it weren’t for you.”
“Sorry. But it’s your town I’m trying to—” He bit off the rest of what he was going to say when he saw her step out of the car, then wince in pain and clutch at the knee she’d been rubbing. In a split second, he was at her side, offering a supportive arm. “What is it?” he asked. “Are you hurt?”
“It’s nothing.” It wasn’t nothing. She was grimacing. “I think I twisted my knee a little when I dove into the car, is all.”
“Let me look at it,” he said.
She laughed and rolled her eyes, though it was clear from the way she was limping as they made their way up the marigold-lined path to her front porch that she was in pain. “I told you, it’s fine. You’re not going to look at my twinged knee.”
A second later, however, she stumbled, and let out a little cry of pain.
“That’s it.” Derrick leaned over and scooped her up, sweeping her into his arms and carrying her up the steps to her front door.
“What are you doing?” Her voice rose. Fortunately none of her neighbors appeared to be home, or if they were, they were used to hearing her yell, since none of them seemed disturbed by it. “Put me down!”
“I understand your embarrassment,” he said in the same calm voice he used to speak to agitated animals on the ranch, “but you shouldn’t be walking on it. This is a medical emergency, and you’re only making it worse. Could you unlock your door? I have my hands full at the moment.”
“It’s not a medical emergency,” she said, but she did in fact reach into her bag to pull out her keys, then insert them into the front door’s lock. “I’m perfectly capable of walking.”
“It’s better to stay off it until it’s been medically assessed.”
“You’re going to throw your back out.”
He grunted. “Not likely.” If she’d only seen what his father had forced him to lift regularly back at the ranch.
The inside of her house looked exactly the way he’d expected it to. Small and cheerfully decorated, with all the original white wainscoting and moldings, it was a classic 1920s seaside cottage—though the “sea” was only a tidal estuary a block away, and a chimney had been added during some long-ago effort to winterize the place. Floor-to-ceiling bookcases built on either side of the fireplace were crammed with books of every size and length, from tomes on witchcraft, alchemy, herbology, Italian cooking, sewing, fashion history, and the occult, to celebrity memoirs and even murder in the British countryside.
She’d furnished the living room in beachy pale blues and white, so that the black cat curled in a comfortable ball on her sofa stood out in sharp contrast to all the pastels in the room. It raised its head when Derrick deposited its owner on the sofa cushion beside it, and let out a sleepy Meow?
“There,” Derrick said. “The cat is fine.” And so was its owner.
Jessica pushed back some of the dark curls that had fallen into her face and smiled down at the cat beside her, which was stretching luxuriously in place and letting out an enormous yawn. “Yes. I guess he is. Thank you.” To the cat, she said, scratching it beneath the chin, “Hello, Pye. You’re a very good boy. Thank you for staying home like a gentleman and not getting killed by hail.” The cat looked pleased by this praise, and stretched some more. To Derrick, Jessica said, “But listen, you can’t go around grabbing women like that without their permission.”
“I didn’t grab you.” He felt a little wounded that she wasn’t more impressed with his chivalry. “I carried you because you were hurt. I already explained, it was a medical emergency—”
“Was it, though? Or are you so enamored of my body that you couldn’t wait to get your hands on it?”
She was joking. But he understood now that she used humor as a defense mechanism when she was uncomfortable, so he responded in kind, hoping it would set her at ease.
“Yes.” He sat down on the couch beside her—only slightly disturbing the cat, who gave him a suspicious glance, then resettled a few inches away—and gently lifted the leg she’d injured, placing her foot on the driftwood coffee table in front of them. “This whole thing, including the storm, was all part of an elaborate plan I concocted so that I could ravage you.”
“Ha!” Her dark eyes danced. She was suppressing a smile, too, so he knew his attempt at humor had worked. “I knew you were lying when you said you weren’t here to implant the light in me.”
He nodded and reached for the wide hem of her trouser leg. “Now that you got that out of your system, let me look at that knee.”
“No!” The smile vanished, and she leaned forward to swat at his hand. “My knee is fine. There’s no need for you to—”
But it was too late. He’d peeled back the flowy material of her pant leg and seen what had been causing her pain: a red welt, already purpling around the sides.
“Jessica,” he said, his eyes snapping wide with concern. “Did one of those hailstones—?”
“It’s fine.” She tried to cover the welt by tugging down the hem of her pants. “I’ll just put some ice on it later.”
“It’s not fine. Jessica, let me help you.”
Before she could stop him, he laid his fingertips gently across the warm, tender skin of her knee.