Page 47 of Big Little Spells

I AM ONCE AGAIN wearing a Beltane prom dress.

And while I have had this exact nightmare many times, this is not one of them. I know this because no matter how many times I pinch myself I don’t wake up in my bungalow in Sedona. Like it or not, I’m heading for the prom. Up the hill to the outside door of the old high school gymnasium, set apart from the main building. I can see that inside it’s packed with students and, worse, decorated. And sure, there’s magic involved, so the decorations are better than a few sad streamers and insipid balloons. But it’s still the gym. Filled with teenagers.

The prom might kill me this time, I’d texted Aunt Zelda earlier.

If the prom killed people, maybe we wouldn’t have to suffer through them, she’d replied, and I could almost hear her funny little laugh. Sadly, you have to live through it. Again.

I’d soothed myself by imagining her saying that to Zander, who looks as if he’s attending his own execution tonight. No one else looks much happier.

I look over at my sister as we hover at the gym door, but instead of making a snarky comment I’m drawn to the necklace she’s wearing—the bluebell one Grandma gave her in our eighteenth year, because Emerson was born on the first day of the year and I was born on the last day of the same year, and there were even prophecies about the power we were supposed to have, psyche. The necklace seems to reach out to me. I find myself thinking about my ring, hidden away in the box beneath the floorboards back at Wilde House.

That locked little safe is where I keep my last memories of my grandmother and I don’t want to focus on them yet, but this feels different. As if the ring is looking for me tonight instead of the other way around.

I decide to lean into that notion, focusing on the ring as I whisper a spell beneath my breath. After a moment, it appears on my hand and the narcissus flower does match the whole relentlessly white Beltane ensemble, I guess. Maybe it didn’t bring me luck at my pubertatum last time, but it was a gift from Grandma. It has to have some magic.

Even if it’s just love from another time, I’ll take it.

I need it, I think as we step inside the stuffy gym, because this is a living flashback—and it’s disorienting because I somehow missed that the world went ahead and changed in the last decade. Even in St. Cyprian. There’s new technology, music, fashion, and even the decoration choices have evolved. It’s a Through the Ages theme, and there are different decades represented in dress and decoration—but it’s a current day take on the past. I know because I remember ten years back all too well.

Still, it’s the same old gym. The kids are disturbingly young and new, irrepressibly shiny in their Beltane whites and thrumming with excitement because they’re gearing up for their hopefully one and only pubertatum. Their first step into real witch life.

Assuming the Joywood aren’t gunning for them.

I feel an echo of that same old excitement inside me now, but it feels sharper than it should. Because I know how it went. I know what happened to us after our last prom.

It occurs to me then that while, yes, this is a humiliation, it’s also an exquisite sort of torture. In all the recovery groups I’ve ever attended, we always talk about how you can’t go back, you can’t have a do-over, you can’t change the past. No matter how much you want to do just that.

But what if I could is pure evil.

Because I can feel it snaking around inside me, giving me the kind of ideas that—if history really does repeat itself—will crush me long before the Joywood get around to it. Guaranteed.

I have to assume that’s part of the plan.

As is customary, all the fledging witches have to crowd together in front of the stage set up against one wall and wait for Carol, in full ruling coven regalia, to intone the opening incantation as the sun goes down and Beltane begins in earnest. You can already smell the smoke from the traditional bonfires on the breeze outside. Tonight is supposed to be a pageant of hope and celebration, but as I listen to the old familiar words from Carol’s mouth, all I feel is a creeping sense of dread.

Then again, that could be about the music that starts the minute Carol stops speaking.

In case I forgot I was at a school dance.

Teenagers are everywhere. Laughing, joking, posturing for each other. There’s a cascade of those fractured visions inside of me from all the people, all the feelings that make the air in here immediately feel much too close and clammy. My friends and I are all standing in a horrified line, staring out at the crowd. At these children who are much, much younger than we ever were.

Ellowyn tenses beside me and I glance at her.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” she says, and it’s not a joke. She looks as clammy as the air around us.

I give her arm a squeeze. “I’ll go grab you a drink.”

She gives me a wan smile, but Zander holds out a bottle of water he clearly magicked into existence. “Here,” he says gruffly.

Ellowyn doesn’t look at him, but she does take the bottle. “Thanks.” She takes a swig and then blows out a breath. “It’s okay, Rebekah. I feel better already. The water helps.”

She still doesn’t look at Zander as she says that, but I take that as her releasing me from having to go find her something to drink. Which is too bad, because I actually wanted a task. I look around the gym a little wildly. I can’t just stand here in all these feelings. I have to...move or something. Anything. “I’m going to walk around.”

“I’ll come with you,” Georgie says.

I raise a brow at Ellowyn, who makes a face. “I feel like if I move, I’m going to puke, possibly in protest, but I don’t want to give the Joywood the satisfaction.”

Jacob gives me a little nod as I hesitate. He’ll take care of Ellowyn. And Emerson and Zander are standing on either side of her like sentries.

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