Page 12 of A Bond with the Dark

“Well,” Hilda says, switching with Maggie to look at the runes, opening the pouch with her knobby, arthritic hands, “you have a sister. Just not one you’re close to.”

“Understatement of the year,” I add, shuffling to the following picture.

It’s hard not to acknowledge Laureya when the box is filled with pictures of the two of us as kids. Although there are more pictures of me smiling and laughing with my longest friend, Ayris, than there are pictures of Laureya among them. Always scowling, never smiling. It’s as if she was born with a dark soul and succumbed to the darkness.

“Have you heard from her at all?” Hilda asks, pouring the runes onto the table and flipping over the ones that are face-down.

“I tried calling her earlier today,” I reply, coming across another picture of a younger Mama. “It took five calls for her to finally pick up. I was so frustrated that when she answered I blurted out, ‘Our parents died.’ She said, ‘Cool, gotta go, bye,’ and hung up.”

“Do you think it’s because she doesn’t care?” Maggie asks inquiringly, setting the wand carefully back down on the table. “Or is it something else?”

“Honestly, it doesn’t matter to me if she cares. She’s had so many chances to be a part of our lives. And somehow, she always seems to fuck it up.” I wrinkle my nose at the way she blisters me. “You know she’s never met Gauge, right?”

“Yeah. We knew that,” Hilda replies.

“I’m at the point where it wouldn’t bother me if I never saw her again.”

“It’s too bad,” Hilda says soberly. “There were five of us, so we always had a friend. Maggie and I have always been together since we were the eldest. And your mom was best friends with Janet and Pricilla, though not always at the same time, since Janet and Pricilla never were close.”

“I knew Mom and Janet were close during their teenage years,” I say, setting down my pile of pictures. Shifting in my chair, I say, “So, when did you all get into magick?”

I think it’s a good segway into the topic I’m intrigued to learn from them. I have known some from my mom but never got to talk about it with my two eldest aunts. My cousin, Francine, isn’t too keen on the whole witch thing, so the aunts keep it under wraps around her.

“We all came into it at different times,” Hilda states, picking up a rune and looking more closely at it. “Our mom was Wiccan, but our father was Christian, so we never got to see her practice much. She did her spells in private. But it’s funny how the path picks you because no one ever told us about it; we all happened upon it.”

“I started in high school,” Maggie says, leaning back and crossing her arms. “Just with tarot and herb magick. Hilda got more into the crystals, and your mom was into all of it. Janet was into altars and seasons and celebrated the solstices. But Pricilla never got into it much. Your mom and Janet were the two of us most into the magick.”

“So, you don’t come from a long line of witches or anything?”

“Not that we know of,” Hilda says, gathering the runes and funneling them back into the pouch. “We knew Mother had a gift. She was able to talk to spirits and see the dead. It was enough to scare her, but she never talked about that or if her mother was a witch.”

“And what is it with the fire?” I ask timidly. I’ve been hesitant to bring it up.

Maggie and Hilda exchange looks then glance elsewhere, avoiding my eyes.

“What? What is it?”

“We believe a curse was put on us,” Maggie replies tersely, shifting in her seat. “Every witch with a child in the Cartwright line seems to die by fire.”

“But that would mean . . .”

Is that what the dreams are trying to tell me? Are they foretelling my end?

“This is why we didn’t want to bring it up,” Hilda says, reaching for my hand across the table. “Please don’t think that way.”

I take her hand, but it doesn’t quell my fear that the fire will come for me too. “That means I have the same fate?”

“It’s not set in stone,” Hilda says soothingly, grabbing my other hand. “Don’t scare yourself thinking like that, okay?”

“But if it’s a curse, who placed it? And how do I break it?”

Maggie looks at me with consternation. “We don’t know. We think it was placed on us before Grandma’s time.”

I let go of their hands and hug my chest. “She died by fire, too, right?”

“She did,” Hilda answers solemnly, her voice a low whisper. “Her sister and their mom also.”

Nox, my black cat, bounds into my lap, purring as though trying to comfort me.

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