Derrick
A True Witch keeps the existence of magic and witchcraft a secret from the non-magical, knowing that their minds are too fragile to handle the truth.
Rule Number Eight of the Nine Rules
*World Council of Witches*
Derrick was in trouble. He’d known it when the server at Wake Up West Harbor looked at him as soon as he and Jessica sat down and said, “Cheese Danish and an Americano, black. Am I right?”
But he’d had an inkling even earlier, when he’d been on his run and someone living blocks away from Jessica opened their front door to pick up the newspaper, saw him, waved, and called out, “Congratulations on the win last night!”
At first he hadn’t understood what she was talking about. Then he’d remembered: Tuesday Night Trivia.
They knew him. The people of West Harbor were beginning to recognize him on sight.
Not just recognize him, but smile and wave to him, and recall his favorite breakfast order.
None of this was good. None of this was good at all.
It confirmed what he’d already realized that morning, waking in Jessica’s bed—Pye a dead weight on top of him, a gentle rain pattering down on the roof above him, Jessica sleeping there so peacefully beside him. This was the happiest he’d ever felt in his life.
All signs pointed to the fact that West Harbor was about to suffer another of its ninety year calamities. In forty-eight hours—maybe less—this town would be underwater, on fire, or possibly simply a gaping hole. And because the population of this sleepy village was now so dense, this time the death toll would be staggering.
Yet he could not remember ever feeling this happy.
How was he supposed to do his job if he couldn’t be impartial?
He’d thought that dragging himself out for a run in that cold, stinging rain would cure him, smack some sense into him, bring him back to reality.
But the only thing that happened was the rain stopped, he saw the neighbor, and then he saw the object of his happiness herself, standing outside her house in her robe, and his heart seized up—until he realized she was safe.
That’s when he knew that he wasn’t going to be able to run away from the happiness he was feeling. Worse, that he wanted to stay. He cared. He actually cared. He wanted to come home to her like this every day.
Except that unless something extraordinary occurred, she soon wouldn’t have a home.
This awareness pressed down on his heart more heavily than a hundred Pyes.
Not that there was anything he could do about it at the moment. Jessica had gotten over her perfectly legitimate fear that Rosalie had somehow booby-trapped her new car almost as soon as she got behind the wheel.
“I never thought I could love any car as much as Bluebell,” Jessica said later, after their shower (and subsequent return to bed). They were sitting inside Wake Up West Harbor, at a table where she could gaze at her new car through the window. “But I think I could learn to.”
This became even more evident when the server who’d brought them their breakfast suddenly let out an expletive after attempting to run Derrick’s credit card to pay for breakfast—they were on paranormal business, Derrick reasoned when Jessica tried to argue with him that they should at least split the bill, so he should pay.
“Internet is down,” Stacy, the server, groused.
Jessica reached immediately for her bag. “Ugh, again? I know how you feel. The Internet goes down at my shop all the time. But that’s okay, I have cash. We really have to go.” She wanted to get back into her new car as quickly as possible, to drive it some more. They were delivering more gowns she’d hemmed, including Gabby’s.
“Yeah, but this time the Internet’s down all over town.” Stacy shook her head. She’d picked up her phone and was scrolling her texts. “Online school is canceled today. God knows what my kid is up to instead.”
Jessica instantly snatched up her own phone.
“Oh my God. It’s true.” She leaned forward to show Derrick a text from Dina. “The king tide from last night took out a chunk of the road where, in their infinite wisdom, they laid the Internet cables.”
Derrick knit his brow. “So what does that—”
“Sal’s declared it a day of community service. He wants all the kids from the high school to go over to the village square to help clean and paint in preparation for tomorrow’s festivities since they can’t be in class.” She shook her head so forcefully that her curls swayed. “Ha! Good luck with that.”
Derrick considered this. “It might work to our advantage, though.”
“How?”
“Now is the time for me to be training Esther—and you—for the fight ahead.”
Anxiety creased Jessica’s forehead at the word “fight,” but she lifted her tea. “Let’s go.”
Which was how, a few hours later, they ended up standing in a barren field in front of a line of pumpkins Derrick had balanced along a wooden fence several dozen yards away.
“You can’t be serious,” Esther said, after Derrick had explained to her what he wanted her to do.
“Just try it.”
Jessica was leaning against the hood of her car. Of course she knew the farmer who owned the field. She’d supplied his wife, daughters, and one son with clothes for all the important occasions in their lives—proms, graduations, weddings. Farmer Frank was more than willing to give her some of his more misshapen pumpkins that were unlikely to sell. He’d also allowed her to park on his back field for what she’d called “a little target practice.”
“But I don’t want to hurt you,” Esther protested.
“They’re pumpkins, Esther. And they’re fifty feet away,” Derrick pointed out. “And you didn’t hurt anyone yesterday in Jessica’s office.”
“Yeah, but I could have.”
Esther was hugging herself miserably. She’d been less than thrilled when Derrick and Jessica had shown up at her front door. Dressed in her pj’s and fuzzy slippers, the kid had been watching a Marvel movie with her younger brothers, unbothered by West Harbor’s lack of Internet. She surely wasn’t the only teen in town who’d completely ignored the principal’s plea to come to the village square to help clean it.
“Why would I want to do that?” she’d asked, when Jessica had whispered—unsure whether or not the girl’s parents were within earshot—that today was the day to begin training for Thursday’s supernatural battle with the powers of evil. “It’s cold outside.”
She wasn’t wrong. It was cold. The sun continued to remain hidden behind a bank of gray clouds, and flocks of birds that hadn’t already made their way south for the winter were darkening the sky as they fled for a warmer—and safer—location than frozen, doomed West Harbor.
The birds knew what was coming. Birds always knew.
But Jessica kept her tone upbeat, even as she turned up the faux fur collar of her coat against the icy gusts of wind that kept sweeping in from the Sound, tearing at the leaves that still remained on the trees at the edges of the field.
“Oh, come on, Esther,” she’d said. “It will be fun! Don’t you want to see what you could do with your powers if you really tried?”
The kid had glanced uncertainly back at the soft warm couch on which her brothers were piled with a bowl of popcorn, a blanket, and a big slobbery dog. “I guess. But I thought this whole thing was going to be more about learning how to do rune or tarot card readings. Are we actually going to be blowing people up?”
“Manipulating the energy around you,” Derrick corrected her quickly. “No one is going to get blown up.” He hoped.
For a moment the kid had looked disappointed. It was evident she’d have been more willing to come if blowing up people was on the table.
“Well,” she’d said finally. “Gabby’s at the salon all day, getting a blowout and spray tan for the stupid Harvest Princess selection thing tonight. So I guess I might as well come with you. I’ve seen this movie a hundred times before anyway.”
Which was how they’d ended up in Farmer Frank’s field, the kid having exchanged her pajamas for her usual Converse, sweatshirt, and leggings, this time paired with a down parka and a knit cap with a rainbow pom-pom on the top.
“So,” she said, squinting through the lenses of her glasses at the pumpkins on the fence. “What is it that you want me to do again, exactly?”
“First I want you to feel the magic,” Derrick said.
The kid looked skeptical. “There’s magic at Farmer Frank’s? My parents have been making me and my brothers come here to pick pumpkins since I was a little kid, and I’ve never once felt anything magical about it.”
“There’s magic everywhere,” Jessica said from the warm hood of her new car. Derrick could tell by the dimples at the sides of her cheeks that she was trying not to laugh. “Its energy is present in every grain of salt, the leaf of every tree, every animal, and every person that inhabits the earth.”
Esther scratched her nose. “You mean like the Force?”
“If that’s how you want to think about it,” Jessica said. The dimples deepened. He couldn’t believe he’d never noticed them before. “The ability to manipulate that energy is one that every witch possesses.”
Derrick was startled to hear his own words—or a version of them, anyway—coming out of Jessica’s mouth.
“Magic is similar to the Force,” she went on, “but it’s more complicated than that. Magic is in the sun, the moon, the stars, and the rhythms of the sea. And a good witch learns to harness that magic and create positive things from it—kind of the way a seamstress creates something beautiful out of a bunch of cloth. In some ways, a witch—a good witch—is a seamstress of the universe.”
“You’re already very good at harnessing magic, Esther,” Derrick said. “But I—we—need you to get even better.”
The kid nodded. “Because of the prophecy?”
“Right. Because of the prophecy.”
“Okay. I’ll try.” Esther pulled her hat down more snugly over her ears, then turned toward the pumpkins. “What do you want me to do?”
“Try knocking down one of the pumpkins,” Derrick suggested. “Like when you shut the window in Jessica’s office.”
“All right.” Esther shrugged. “But I’m just letting you know, I’m pretty bad at sewing. You guys probably have the wrong girl.”
A second later, she glanced at the misshapen pumpkin sitting on the fence post to the far right, then lifted a single hand. . . .
There was a flash of light, and then an explosion. Bits of orange pumpkin went flying everywhere, causing crows, perched high in the bare treetops, to take flight with loud, indignant cries.
Even though they were standing carefully out of range, Jessica let out a cry as well, and ducked behind her new car.
Derrick stared at the pumpkin carnage before them. Then he looked at Esther, who had her gloved fingers over her face, clearly as shocked as he and Jessica were by what she’d done.
“See?” she said, when she noticed his stare. “I told you. You have the wrong girl.”
“Oh, no,” he said. His smile was wide. “We absolutely have the right girl.”