Jessica
Write the name of thine enemy on paper. Hide the paper in the icehouse. Thine enemy’s power against thee will be frozen.
Goody Fletcher, Book of Useful Household Tips
At first I didn’t understand what was happening. Why was Bartholomew Brewster, the self-proclaimed Grand Sorcerer of the World Council of Witches, calling Derrick Winters his brother?
This was surely some kind of joke. Derrick couldn’t possibly be related to the man who’d founded the most despicably elitist organization in all of witchkind.
Then again, Derrick did have the symbol for that organization tattooed on his arm. And he did hand out amulets belonging to that organization pretty freely.
And he’d told me that he had a lot of half-siblings.
He wasn’t denying that Bartholomew was one of them, either.
True, he wasn’t leaping onto the stage to join him. Instead, he was glaring daggers at Rosalie. In fact, if I were Rosalie, and Derrick was glaring at me like that, I’d have run far, far away.
But instead Rosalie was standing behind Bart, grinning like the proverbial cat who’d swallowed the canary.
It’s possible she couldn’t see Derrick, or his glaring silver eyes, since the lights on the stage were so bright, and we were sitting at the back of the room. Far enough away that when Esther whispered, sounding confused, “Derrick? Does he mean you?” probably not that many people heard her.
But Derrick did.
“Yes,” he said, shortly. And then instead of offering any sort of explanation, he simply said, “Excuse me.”
Then he reached into his pocket for his phone, got up, and left the room.
Everyone definitely saw that. Including Bartholomew Brewster.
“Ah,” the professor said, with a flippant smile and shrug. “My brother seems otherwise engaged at the moment. Well, we can choose our friends, but not our family, as the saying goes.”
This earned him a gentle and understanding chuckle from the crowd. Oh, ha ha. Yes, families are such a pain.
“Shall we carry on?” the professor asked, and pulled a stack of note cards from the breast pocket of his smoking jacket. “What can I tell you about the girls you’re about to meet that you don’t already know yourself?”
Esther touched my hand. When I looked at her, I could see that her dark eyes, behind the lenses of her glasses, were wide and troubled.
“Aren’t you going to go after him?” she whispered.
I nodded. Of course she was right. I should go after Derrick. That’s what a good girlfriend would do.
Except that I wasn’t really Derrick’s girlfriend. Our relationship was only temporary, while we worked together to try to save my town, after which he’d be moving on, and I’d be . . . well, no longer the Chosen One. I was only Derrick’s fake girlfriend.
How much of what I knew about him was fake, too?
I stood up and slipped from the room, leaving my coat and bag behind. I’d find Derrick, get a reasonable explanation out of him, and be back in time for whatever this ceremony was. What was it his brother had said? We can’t choose family.
No, we certainly can’t. None of this was Derrick’s fault.
Was it?
Except that when I got out to the bar area, Derrick was nowhere to be seen. There was no one there at all except the bartender, busily cleaning glasses, and the jazz trio, packing up to go home.
“Excuse me,” I said to the musicians. “Did you see a man in a motorcycle jacket come through here just now?”
“Tall, blond, chiseled cheekbones?” asked the drummer.
“That would be the one,” I said.
He pointed toward the double doors to the parking lot. “He went that way. He was on his phone.”
Of course. Derrick was always on his phone. Who was he talking to? I had no idea.
Maybe it was time I found out.
I was about to hit the double doors to go looking for him in the parking lot when someone called my name. I turned and saw Rosalie standing behind me.
“Jessica.” She no longer wore the cat-who-swallowed-the-canary grin. If anything, she looked somber. She still clutched her tablet, but she’d ditched her headset. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
I turned back to the doors. “Now is really not a good time. And that was a very shitty thing to do, Rosalie. I don’t know what’s going on between those two, but there’s obviously bad blood, and you just—”
“I know. And I’m sorry. Jessica, I’m pretty sure we’ve both been played.”
That caused me to drop my fingers from the door handles. “What? How?”
“I think it has something to do with this.” She lifted the tablet. “Does this look familiar to you?”
I knew I shouldn’t. I had no reason to trust Rosalie Hopkins. Sure, she and her husband had given me a car, but honestly, after everything they’d put me through, they owed me that car. That didn’t make us even.
But somehow I found myself crossing the bar to see what she wanted to show me, aware that the guys in the jazz trio and bartender were watching my every move. Oooh, cat fight! they were probably thinking. I didn’t care. I had to see what Rosalie was talking about.
When I got to her side, I saw the last thing I was expecting on the tablet between her French manicured fingers.
It was the prophecy. A photo of the exact same page from the grimoire that Derrick had given to me a week ago, predicting the prevention of the destruction of West Harbor by the Chosen One and Bringer of Light.
“What?” I snatched the tablet from her hands in order to get a better look. “How did you get this? Who gave it to you?”
Rosalie glanced at the men in the room, all of whom were staring at me in alarm due to the intensity of my reaction.
“Uh,” she said. “Why don’t we step into the ladies’ room to discuss this, so we can have some privacy.”
Even though the last time I’d stepped into a ladies’ room with Rosalie, it had not gone well, I agreed. I needed to know what was going on. Besides, back then I’d been a young and naive witch. Now I was older and, if not wiser, at least less willing to believe Rosalie’s crap.
She started ladling it on the second the door closed behind us.
“Jessica, I’m so sorry,” she said, taking the tablet from me, then gliding over to the nearest couch to sit down on it.
That’s right. There were couches inside the West Harbor Yacht Club ladies’ room. Two of them, in some kind of retro pink-and-green Laura Ashley floral pattern. I guess they were there for women to stretch out on in case they fainted from having seen a circumcised penis, or something. I don’t know.
There were also baskets of Tampax, Halloween candy, and hairspray by the sinks. Those I remembered from the few times Dina and I had been there as tweens. A part of me wanted to inhale the candy, but I knew I had to focus.
“Rosalie, did Professor Brewster send that to you?” I demanded, pointing at the tablet. “And tell you that you’re the Chosen One?”
Rosalie crossed her legs and rested her hands on her knee, looking prim. “Jessica, I know it’s hard for you to understand since you’re not a member of the WCW. But the fact is, he didn’t have to send it to me. I have the original. I’m the Chosen One.”
It was a good thing I didn’t have Esther’s particular gift of magic, because I for sure would have blown something up at that moment. Probably the couches.
“Rosalie, that’s simply not possible,” I settled for saying instead.
“Why? Did Derrick tell you that you’re the Chosen One?” Something in my face must have given away the truth, since Rosalie went on, knowingly, “I was afraid of that. I suspected the moment I saw that you were wearing the amulet. That’s why I called the professor. You know, he told me that Derrick isn’t even a member. He’s never had any affiliation whatsoever with the Council.”
“I’m aware. Rosalie—”
“Well, if you knew all along, why on earth did you believe him?” Rosalie was gazing up at me, her perfectly threaded eyebrows constricted with phony concern. “Not that I’m blaming you. It isn’t your fault. I know it must have been hard for you all these years, not qualifying for membership in the Council, and never having been part of a coven. You were easy prey to anyone who came along and said you were special.”
I felt my blood beginning to boil. “Rosalie—”
“But don’t worry.” She had the gall to reach up and pat my hand, like I was Esther’s age. “No harm’s been done. And Bartholomew says his little brother really does mean well. He just has a bizarre antipathy toward authority figures. Something to do with how he was raised. No respect for tradition—which is why, of course, he hates the WCW. Funny, you two seem to have that in common.”
I chose to ignore that last dig. “Rosalie, what did you mean when you said you have the original of this prophecy?”
“I’m sure Derrick told you about the witch to whom the grimoire belonged, the one who hid it inside a wall in a home in upstate New York?”
“Yeah. So?”
“So that witch was my eleventh great-grandmother, Elizabeth,” Rosalie said. “The one I told you about, who was found guilty of witchcraft right here in West Harbor—well, what would become West Harbor, but was then just a settlement, like the professor said.”
I stared at her. “You said she was banished instead of executed.”
“Yes! But only because as a widow, she was wealthy enough to bribe a judge.” Rosalie’s gaze had moved so that it was on my reflection in the mirror instead of on me. What it was actually doing was moving between me and her own reflection as she delivered her news, enjoying watching herself as she talked. “She had just enough money left afterward to flee to New York. That’s where she hid the book that prophecy came from—the one that said the Bringer of Light who would save this place would come from the thirteenth generation—my daughter’s generation.”
It took a moment or two for the information to register.
“Wait,” I said. “You think the Bringer of Light is your daughter?”
Rosalie frowned. Now she wasn’t looking at our reflection. She was looking directly at me.
“I don’t think it,” she said. “I know it. And Bartholomew does, too. So does Derrick, of course. He admitted as much to me last night.”
“Last night?” None of this was making any sense.
“Yes, when he asked to meet with me during Trivia, and begged me not to tell you the truth.”
She lifted the tablet and scrolled to another page, then handed it to me. On the screen was a photo of the deck outside the Brewport. It was difficult to make out because it had been taken at night, at an odd angle, and there appeared to be moisture of some kind on the lens.
But I could clearly see two people standing close to one another. The woman’s back was to the camera, but her hair gleamed as gold as the rose on Rosalie’s stationery in the fluorescent security lighting, and she was wearing the same sweater set that Rosalie had worn last night.
And there was no doubt whatsoever that the man glaring down at her in the photo was Derrick. I’d recognize those furiously lowered brows and that sarcastic frown anywhere.
Rosalie must have seen the dismay in my face, since she said, “Oh, don’t be too hard on yourself . . . or him. Apparently he’s done this to dozens of women—convinced them that he’s working for some secret organization, and that their town is in mortal peril, and they’re the Chosen One and only they can save it. Bartholomew says he’s been doing it for years. I guess he’s always had issues. Their mother is supposedly a very refined and cultured woman. She obviously prefers spending time with Bartholomew, who’s done so much with his life. Derrick will do anything to get her attention. His father is just a farmer, or something, whereas Bartholomew’s father was a dean at Oxford. Look, I’m sorry. I know you like him, which is why last night I tried to get him to promise he’d tell you the truth. He said he would. But I’m guessing, from the look on your face, it didn’t work.”
I couldn’t tear my eyes from the photo. When had Derrick snuck out of Trivia to meet with Rosalie? And why? Surely not because anything she was saying was true. Derrick and I were in a fake relationship, but not all of it was fake. You couldn’t fake the light Esther made when she used her powers and I was with her.
And Derrick couldn’t have faked what he and I had together in bed—or the glow in his eyes when he looked at me. Could he?
There was no way I was going to let Rosalie—or Bartholomew Brewster—know that I had any such doubts, however.
“Huh,” I said, and handed the tablet back to her. “I guess he forgot to mention it.”
I saw Rosalie’s shoulders relax. She’d won, and she knew it. Her gaze swung back toward her reflection, reveling in the knowledge that once again, she’d defeated me—even though I’d never wanted to be in competition in the first place.
“I’m really sorry,” Rosalie said, smoothing another invisible hair away from her face. “I can’t imagine what you must be going through right now.”
I eyed the Snickers bars in the basket on the sink. Never had I wanted so badly to cram something into my mouth. “That’s okay,” I said. “I’ll get over it.”
Rosalie reached for the hairspray. “You really do have the worst luck with men,” she said, giving her head a couple spurts.
There was no point in denying it. “I do.”
“If it’s any comfort to you, Professor Brewster says Lizzie’s one of the most gifted witches he’s ever met. He’s been working with her all week.”
“Great. That is so good to know.” Screw it. I grabbed a Snickers, unwrapped it, and shoved it into my mouth. “Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“What’s his plan for tomorrow night? You know, to stop the rift?”
“Oh, Jess.” Her gaze on my reflection was pitying. “You poor thing. You know I can’t tell you that. But don’t worry. It’s a good one. Do you really think I’d put the lives of the people I love at risk otherwise?”
I swallowed. “I guess not. What’s Lizzie’s gift?”
“Her what?”
“Lizzie’s talent. Her magical gift. You know. What kind of witch is she?”
“Oh!” Rosalie laughed, gave her hair one last pat to make sure every straight, silken strand was in place, and headed for the door. “To be honest, we’re not really sure yet. She’s very good at glamours. Heavens, I better get back out there. The professor’s speech was only supposed to last twenty minutes! I’ve let him drone on way too long about West Harbor history.”
I nearly choked on my mouthful of chocolate, peanuts, nougat, and caramel. “Glamours?”
“Uh-huh.” Rosalie flung me a sunny smile on her way out of the restroom. “Lucky little thing. Haven’t you noticed how great she always looks? Her selfies are just perfection, no need for filters. She was outside on the dock with her friends taking some last night when she saw me with Derrick. That’s how I got that photo. She was worried he was being mean to me, can you believe it? So she took that snap. More proof she’s the Bringer of Light—so protective! Well, got to run. See you later.”