Jessica
Boil together equal parts fountain water and pure honey. Add a little nutmeg and dressed ginger, along with the rind of half an orange or lemon (if one can be found). Let stand till lukewarm, then add three parts rum. All who drink in good cheer will be friends for life.
Goody Fletcher, Book of Useful Household Tips
“Wait,” Dina said over hot toddies that night on her brother’s front porch. “This guy wants you to what?”
“Implant the light into this girl,” I said. “And then guide and protect her. Because she’s the Bringer of Light.”
“What does any of that even mean?”
“How should I know?” I took a sip of my drink. “But the fate of West Harbor depends on it.”
“Well, screw that.” Dina—still as petite as she was in high school, but now brunette with blond highlights—sat cross-legged on the porch swing beside me. “Why doesn’t this Derrick just do it himself?”
“I told you, he can’t. Only I can do it, because I’m the Chosen One.”
“Yeah, about that. How do you even know any of this is legit? There isn’t a single guy on here who matches his description named Derrick Winters.” Dina waved her phone at me. “Not on any social media platform that I can find.”
“Not everyone is on social media, Dina. Especially witches.”
“Yeah, but this guy isn’t on Classmates.com or LinkedIn or anything. Did he not go to school? Has he never had a job?”
“Apparently this is his job,” I said. “Driving around, telling women their towns are in mortal peril, and that they’re the Chosen One.”
“I’m the Chosen One!” Dina’s seven-year-old nephew, Toby, out in the front yard, declared as he swung his light saber in the direction of his older brother, Daniel. “Stand down, villain!”
“You’re not the Chosen One,” Daniel scoffed, his own glowing plastic saber cutting a swathe of brilliant red light across the darkened lawn. “I am. Prepare to meet your doom.”
“Neither of you have been chosen for anything except bed,” their mother, Yasmin, declared as she came out onto the porch carrying a thermos containing more hot toddy, since our mugs had been running low. “Head on inside now. Your father’s waiting for you upstairs to help you brush your teeth and put on your pajamas.”
“Aw, Mom!” Both boys put up considerable resistance, but were eventually wrangled inside, leaving us in blissful quiet—for the moment, anyway.
“So let me get this straight.” Dina’s sister-in-law settled onto one of the cushioned wicker couches and pulled a faux fur blanket over her lap, since the autumn air had become more chilled than brisk once the sun went down. “You’re saying a wizard walked into your shop today and said the world was going to end if you didn’t find this little high school girl and implant the light into her? And you believe him?”
“Uh,” I said. Dina and I exchanged glances. Dina and Yasmin got along well—well enough that they’d taken over Dina’s dad’s old real estate law office together, right across the street from Enchantments, and adorably renamed it DiAngelo & DiAngelo, Sisters In Law.
But that didn’t mean book-smart but tenderhearted Armenian American Yasmin was a believer. She tolerated what she called our “little hobby,” but only because she seemed to view it as a harmless vestige from our school days together—like cheerleading, except that school spirit had been the one kind of spirit that had never held any interest for Dina and me.
“First of all, a male practitioner of witchcraft is a witch,” I said. “Not a wizard or a warlock. The word witch is gender neutral.”
“All right,” Yasmin said. “No need to get defensive.”
“And he didn’t say the world was going to end,” I went on. “Only West Harbor.”
“Well, that’s a relief.” Yasmin’s tone was mildly sarcastic. “But what does this male witch expect you to do? Just walk up to this girl and say, ‘Hi, hello, I’m the Chosen One, come with me if you want to live’?”
“It is hard to believe,” Dina said. “I’m not saying the stuff he said about the rift isn’t true. Obviously we’ve seen the flooding with our own eyes—and Mark’s wolf, if it even is a wolf, which I still doubt. Mark knows Italian food and cars, not wild dogs. But how does this guy know about our rift, especially if he isn’t affiliated with the WCW?”
I shrugged. “How would I know?”
“So why do you even trust him?”
“I . . .” I held my mug in both hands, letting the hot beverage inside thaw my chilled fingers as I remembered the look on Derrick’s face, so urgent and serious, as he’d spoken to me that afternoon in my office. But more than that, I remembered the shock of electric warmth that had gone through me when he’d touched my shoulder—and the oddly reassuring comfort of his sarcastic words: Other entities exist in the world besides the World Council of Witches. Entities that care as much as you do about saving this town from evil.
“I don’t know,” I said, finally. “I just do.”
“Great.” Dina pushed her foot against the porch railing, making the porch swing we were sitting on sway. “So you just have a feeling this guy is legit. A feeling that has nothing to do with those great big shoulders of his that Becca keeps talking about.”
I frowned at her. “Give me a little credit.” But Becca wasn’t wrong about the shoulders.
“Are you sure he didn’t put a spell on you?” Yasmin asked worriedly. “Or a hex, or whatever it is you witches do?”
“He didn’t put a spell on me.” I put out a foot to still the porch swing. The delicious dinner we’d had—takeout from Mama Giovanni’s—wasn’t settling too well in my stomach. I told myself it was because of the swaying of the swing, but I worried it was due to the memory of Derrick Winters and his impressive . . . message of impending doom. “Clearly the guy knows what he’s doing. Why else would I be picked out of all the witches of West Harbor to be the Chosen One?”
Dina nearly spat out her drink. “Oh, right! Sorry. I forgot. Your spells always work out great.”
I laughed, but Yasmin looked confused.
“Wait.” She looked from her sister-in-law to me. “I thought there was that whole thing in high school with—”
“Honestly I am a little astonished they picked me and not you,” I said to Dina, to change the subject from Billy. “Your bakes are legendary. I don’t know why you went to law school instead of culinary school.”
“One chef in the family is enough.” Dina meant Mark, with whom she’d moved in after returning to West Harbor post–law school. Mama Giovanni was not happy that they’d yet to tie the knot.
“I just want to know what long-ago injustice was committed here in this town that never got rectified, and created this so-called rift.” Yasmin was looking thoughtful. “West Harbor’s crime rate is really low. The only thing I can think of that might remotely qualify is the Valentine’s blizzard of 2006. Do you remember that one?”
Dina and I exchanged uneasy glances, neither of us certain how to reply, but Yasmin, not noticing, continued. “Sal was telling me about it. West Harbor was the hardest hit area in the state. It came on so suddenly, everyone was completely unprepared, and the power went out, and some people got trapped in their cars on the interstate? But I wouldn’t consider that a crime. It was just weather. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. It was . . .”
Her words trailed off as she finally caught a look at our faces. Then she slapped a hand over her mouth, her eyes wide as she whispered, “Wait. Was it someone’s fault? Was it . . . was it witches? Can witches do that?”
“Some witches can,” Dina said. “A storm witch, especially. But Jess and I aren’t storm witches. We’re cottage witches. We can both do amazing money spells, but we had nothing to do with that blizzard.” Her dark-eyed gaze narrowed, sending me a clear warning: Do not talk about this with my sister-in-law.
No worries. The last thing I wanted to do was dredge up the memory of the blizzard I—however accidentally—had a hand in causing.
“But that’s terrible,” Yasmin cried. “Does this Witch-Council-whatever-it-is punish witches who do that? Generate giant storms that hurt people?”
“Sure.” I took a big gulp of my drink, hoping the alcohol would help. It didn’t. “It punishes nonmembers, like us, who they don’t consider true witches.”
Now Dina was rolling her eyes at me. “If the witch has a good enough reason—”
“No,” I said firmly, cutting Dina off. “That’s the whole reason the World Council of Witches was formed, back in the eighties. Too many people were running around doing horrible things to other people in the name of witchcraft. Something had to be done to separate them from real witches, so this guy—Bartholomew Brewster, who’s descended from a man accused of witchcraft in Salem—founded the WCW. It started out as a tiny group.”
“But over the decades the group’s gotten bigger and bigger.” Dina took over my explanation, probably because she was worried I was going to start popping off about what really happened that Valentine’s Day. “Especially as people have found out through DNA ancestry research that they’re related to someone who was once accused of practicing witchcraft. And now Bad Old Bart calls himself the Grand Sorcerer.”
“Wait.” Yasmin blinked at us. “So a guy started it?”
“Yes,” Dina said. “Of course a guy started it. In ancient times, it was usually women who practiced the art of healing. Every society had goddesses to whom they prayed for health, who helped supply the herbs they needed to cure what ailed them, and midwives and priestesses to apply them. It was men who began accusing these women of being witches, and the medicine they used magic, because they were fearful of losing their power and status in society. So they had them killed. Because men are and always have been jealous of women’s power, especially our innate psychic power, and always attempt to co-opt it whenever—”
Now I rolled my eyes. “Dina. Come on. Not all men.”
She scoffed. “Oh, really? Fine. With the exception of Mark and Sal and maybe like four other guys I—”
This was the point at which Dina’s brother, Sal, opened the porch door and stepped outside, a bottle of beer in his hand. “Well, the kids are down, finally. I had to read them two chapters of a book about a half dog, half man who solves crimes. What are we talking about out here?”
“Oh, not much.” Yasmin slid over on the wicker couch to make room for her husband. He was as large as Dina was petite. Strangers found it hard to believe the two were related. “I was just getting a history lesson about the World Council of Witches.”
Sal looked puzzled. “The World Council of—?”
“A man came to visit Jess in her shop today,” Dina interrupted her brother, loudly, “and said she was the Chosen One, and that if she didn’t implant the light of magic into a girl, West Harbor is going to be destroyed by Halloween.”
“Oh.” Sal sucked on his beer. “That’s a new one. What girl?”
I pulled out the papers Derrick had given to me. He hadn’t told me that I had to keep my mission a secret, after all. And if there was anyone in town I thought might know Esther, it was Sal.
“Oh, sure,” he said, after giving the photo a quick glance. “I know her.”
Bingo. I feigned surprise. “You do?”
“Sure,” he said. “Esther Dodge. Smart kid. Quiet.” After a devastating knee injury that had ended his fledgling pro football career, Sal had surprised everyone by returning to college, getting his masters and PhD, then becoming principal of West Harbor High. He now ruled over our former school like a firm but gentle giant. “She’s a witch?”
“Only potentially.”
“Wait. We know the Dodges!” Dina plucked the page with Esther’s photo on it from her brother’s hand. “They own West Harbor Brewport! Yaz, we helped them with that property line dispute, remember?”
“Oh my God.” Yasmin’s dark eyes went wide. “That’s right. The Dodges are so fun—they still give us free nachos at Tuesday Night Trivia. Is Esther as fun as her parents?”
“No.” Sal stretched, then wrapped one of his comparatively massive arms around his wife, who snuggled up to him for warmth. “Esther’s shy. I’ve hardly ever seen her talk to any of the other kids in school. She doesn’t do any extracurriculars. And at lunch she sits under the Emo Dome by herself.”
“Oh!” Dina clutched her heart, looking stricken. “The poor thing!”
“What’s an Emo Dome?” Yasmin asked.
“It’s the part of the cafeteria that’s under a large circular skylight,” Sal explained. “It’s supposed to give the kids some natural light during the long winter months, but instead all it does is flood every time it rains.”
“But why is it called—?”
“Oh, right. Because the goth and drama and band kids traditionally sit there.”
“Jesus, dude.” Dina glared at her brother. “How have you still not put a stop to that?”
Sal shook his head, looking confused. “To what, the flooding? Do you think I haven’t tried? No one can figure out where the water is coming from. The roofers say it isn’t coming from the skylight, and the plumbers say it isn’t coming from underneath—”
“No! To the kids calling it the Emo Dome. It’s pejorative. And this is the twenty-first century. Why are kids still segregating themselves into these dumb groups, anyway? The goths and the emos and the band kids and the jocks. Why can’t they all sit together?”
“Uh, gee, Dina, I’m sorry if the high school where I work is actually reflective of what is happening in society today. People tend to want to hang out with people they like. Why don’t you and Jess start hanging out with Rosalie Hopkins? Why do you have to be so pejorative?”
“That’s not even how that word is supposed to be—”
“Would you two knock it off?” I rolled my eyes. This was one of the problems with being friends with a brother and sister. The squabbling didn’t end. “May I remind you that we’ve just been told our town is in mortal peril? Who cares about the Emo Dome? Sal, can you write me a pass or something so I can go over to the school and have lunch with Esther on Monday? I don’t want to get in trouble for trespassing on school property as a nonparent, or whatever.”
“Oh, that’s so sweet.” Yasmin stroked her husband’s arm. “Sal, write her a pass. Then Esther won’t have to sit alone under the Emo Dome at lunch anymore.”
“No, I can’t write her a pass,” Sal said. “That would break about ten state and probably federal laws. Especially for Jess to come onto school property and proselytize about witchcraft—”
“It’s not proselytizing when it’s to save the town,” Dina snapped.
“I highly doubt the school board will see it that way,” her brother snapped back.
I realized as I listened to my best friend bicker with her brother that I’d made a mistake: I probably should have kept my mouth shut about Derrick’s visit to my shop.
Except that West Harbor was a small town, and Becca couldn’t stop blabbing to everyone she knew about the tall, handsome stranger in biker boots I’d spent such a long time talking to in my office. They’d have heard about Derrick eventually.
But I could have told them what I’d told Becca: that he’d been an eccentric billionaire, looking to buy property in town, including Enchantments, as an investment, and that I’d sent him on his way.
“Listen,” I said, putting my mug down on the porch railing with a thump. “If this whole prophecy thing that Derrick told me about really is as dangerous as he says, maybe I should have left all of you out of it.”
Dina stared at me with her mouth hanging open. “Left us out? Are you serious? Of course you had to tell us!”
“Yeah,” Sal said. “I need the advance notice to get gas for the generator for when the End of Days comes.”
Yasmin gave him a sour look. “Of course you had to tell us, Jess. How could you even think otherwise?” She turned her big brown eyes toward her husband. “There must be some way you can get Jessica a pass to talk to Esther during school hours without upsetting the school board.”
“Why can’t Jess talk to the kid outside of school hours?” Sal asked. “Then none of it will be my problem.”
“Yes, but then there’s a chance Esther’s parents will find out.” Yasmin blinked. “And you know how people can be about witchcraft.”
“Actually Esther’s parents would probably be pretty open-minded about it.” Dina looked thoughtful. “Remember last year at the Brewport’s Halloween costume contest? Virginia Dodge dressed like Ursula, the witch from Disney’s The Little Mermaid. Of course you can’t guarantee that anyone who loves Disney movies enough to dress like the witch from one of them is going to be open to the idea of their kid actually being a witch, but—”
Sal looked upset. “Isn’t Ursula an evil witch in that movie? The boys were just watching it. That witch was definitely evil.”
“It depends on your point of view,” Dina said. “Ursula made a business agreement with the Little Mermaid—her voice in exchange for a pair of legs—and then the Little Mermaid tried to renege on the contract. Personally I don’t blame Ursula for being pissed.”
“The mermaid was underage,” Yasmin disagreed. “You know perfectly well that contracts signed by teenagers can’t be enforced and are therefore voidable.”
“Whatever,” Dina said. “The fact remains that witches are notoriously misrepresented on film. Look at almost every female villain in every princess film ever—”
“Oh, for God’s sake.” Sal started to get up. “If the world’s really going to end, I’m going inside to play as much Call of Duty as I can.”
“Wait!” Yasmin turned to her husband. “What about that mentor program? The one that helps pair local business owners with high-achieving students, and guarantees them college scholarship money? You were telling me just the other day that you need volunteers, so I’m sure there must be room for Jess—”
Sal winced. “That program is so that students can learn about the advantages of a business education,” he said, “not witchcraft.”
“I’ll tell Esther all about the challenges of being a female entrepreneur,” I promised. “And witch.”
“The Brewport is one of the most successful businesses in town,” Dina pointed out. “Why would Esther’s parents sign her up for a mentor?”
“Hello,” Yasmin said, rubbing her thumb and fingers together and waving them in Dina’s face. “Free scholarship money. Doesn’t matter how well you’re doing financially, every parent wants more. Of course they’re gonna sign her up. I’m going to sign the boys up when they’re old enough.”
Sal dropped his head into his hands. “This is not happening.”
“It’s okay, Sal,” I said. “I’m the Chosen One. I’ll be a good mentor to Esther. I won’t let anything weird happen to her or your school.”
“Oh, sure,” Sal said through his fingers. “You mean like with Billy?”
In the stunned silence that followed, I could hear Sal’s neighbors’ television next door, and farther off, the soft sigh of the sea. No one spoke—no one even seemed to breathe—until Dina said, finally, “That was harsh, Sal. Way harsh. You know that wasn’t Jessica’s fault.”
“Yeah, come on, Sal.” Yasmin looked mortified on her husband’s behalf. “Billy is completely over Jessica. He’s married now, with kids. Dina and I saw him the other day at Stew Leonard’s. He seems really happy.”
“See?” I smiled, though I wasn’t sure it was convincing. “I’m not saying Billy didn’t go through a hard time—who didn’t, as a teenager? But he’s happy now. Everybody’s happy. Now let’s make sure they stay that way. Write me a pass so I can meet with Esther.”
Sal lifted his head, but he didn’t look thrilled. “Fine. Whatever. You witches are going to do what you want anyway. You always have, and you always will.”
“Yay!” Yasmin flung her arms around her husband’s neck and kissed him, while Dina and I exchanged looks of relief. It was a small victory, but it’s important to celebrate the small victories.
“Oh, shit,” Dina said a second later, after glancing at her phone. “I gotta go. Mark’s working late at the restaurant, and one of us has to go home and let the dogs out. Jess, did you walk over? Do you want a lift home? Or would you rather walk?”
“Ride, please.” I only lived a couple blocks away, but my feet were aching from having been on them all day. The Fall into Fall sale had been a success, but it had taken a physical toll. I couldn’t help thinking about the warm, restorative blanket in which Derrick’s touch had wrapped me earlier, and how it had made all my pain disappear. Was it only his fingers that possessed this magical healing power?
Oh my God, what was the matter with me?
“What’s up?” Dina demanded, as we got into her car. “You’re so quiet. You’re not pissed at Sal for that dumb thing he said about Billy, are you?”
“What?” Startled, I reached for my seat belt. “Oh, no. No. Sorry. I was thinking about something else.”
“About Billy? I thought you’d let that go. It wasn’t your fault. And he’s completely over you. Yasmin and I really did see him with the kids at Stew Leonard’s the other day. He honestly does seem happy now. Ish.”
That ish caused my heart to twist with guilt. I hugged myself, even though it wasn’t all that cold out. “I wasn’t thinking about him, I swear.”
“Okay, good.” Dina switched on the engine. “Because I want to hear more about this guy from the store this morning. Did he really have silver eyes? Because that’s what Becca is going around telling everyone.”
“I wouldn’t say they were silver, exactly. . . .”
Except that, as we pulled away from her brother’s house, I could have sworn I saw Derrick’s silver eyes flash at me from behind the wheel of a Fiat 500 parked just down the road.
But that was impossible. Because that would mean Derrick Winters had been sitting in an absurdly small car watching me drink hot toddies all night.
And that was too stupid to possibly be true.