Page 84 of Big Little Spells

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THREE WEEKS PASS IN a whirl of sex and magic, pressing worry and simple delight. The classes and practicums don’t get easier. Nicholas was right to warn me about Felicia, who takes a sadistic pleasure in making sure I fail everything I try to do. My mother doesn’t get any less shrill, because how can I expect to pass the pubertatum if I can’t master the practicums?

But there’s a delicious immortal to make up for the tedium and embarrassment. There’s the sex, but there’s also the classes he teaches me in his library, where the spells that somehow get flipped on me in St. Cyprian High turn out just fine.

I’m also not the only one sneaking out at night, because Emerson insists that seeming to stay at Wilde House despite the fact she’s engaged will help lull everyone watching us into thinking the Joywood have succeeded in humiliating us enough that we pose no threat.

It’s a bonding experience, really.

The flip side of high school, when everyone was certain we were the farthest thing from threatening but we were sure we had power.

It’s tempting to imagine we might actually win this time.

Today’s Joywood exercise in embarrassment is an assembly about safe magic and responsibility I vaguely remember from back when I first dozed through it. The witchy version of a human “abstinence only” program before being sent off into the wide world to ignore everything they told us.

Even Emerson can’t drum up her usual enthusiasm, possibly because it’s an assembly she’s not in charge of. But we’re both more worried about the fact Jacob and Zander are running late. And about Ellowyn being in the gym again, when this sweaty place might have been the source of what came over her on Beltane. She’s acting a little strange, which doesn’t help. I try to draw her out, but for someone who can’t lie, she’s excellent at changing the subject.

“Did you know men account for 84 percent of lightning-strike fatalities and women only 16 percent?” she asks brightly.

“And witches none of them,” I return, scowling at her.

Kids are laughing, flirting, arguing—this time in casual attire. The brownnoser from our morning class waves at Emerson eagerly. Emerson waves back.

As we make our way through the gym, we all feel the electricity of new, palpable magic filling the air. I see Georgie shiver. Emerson frowns and looks around as if she’s sniffing out an attack. I feel the hair all over my body try to stand on end. I glance at Ellowyn.

She blows out a breath. “Feeling fine so far. Maybe it was the punch.”

We both know she didn’t have any punch, but I don’t say anything. Not in enemy territory. Emerson leads the way to a row of seats and we arrange ourselves there, saving two for Jacob and Zander.

My nerves feel oddly stretched tight, when I would have said there were few things more boring than a school assembly. Georgie is the only one who doesn’t seem equally antsy, but only because she’s not paying attention. She’s looking off to the side, where Sage Osburn is standing with the faculty. I still can’t seem to help thinking that she’s punching way below her weight there. Emerson and I share a glance, and I know she agrees.

But no one asks us, so Georgie keeps smiling and mouthing things at her beau and I look to the stage, where the Joywood have assembled themselves. Self-importantly, as ever.

I don’t think it’s paranoia to think they’re looking our way. A lot.

Maybe that’s when I realize that I haven’t thought of them as anything but hard-core evil in a while now. That feels important.

But Carol approaches the podium then, and everyone hushes automatically. The assembly is starting, and Jacob and Zander still aren’t here.

I’m surprised there’s no point made of it. Because there’s no way their absence hasn’t been noticed. Evil, my mind keeps chanting, and then I begin to go off in a million terrible directions that are a little too close to visions—

Luckily, that’s when Jacob and Zander appear at the end of our row to take their seats.

“Not good,” I hear Jacob murmur to Emerson as he takes the seat next to her. Zelda, I think, and that same grief wells up inside me as Zander moves to take the empty seat next to me. Emerson brushes her hand across Jacob’s temple. I don’t have to look at my phone to know she only texted me once today.

Remember, sweet girl, she’d written in response to my usual morning text about the day ahead, you don’t have to prove anything to me. You never did.

Yet she texted nothing else, not even when I sent her the photos of Smudge she usually loves.

I lean into my cousin, wishing I didn’t hear Nicholas’s words in my head.

There’s nothing to be done.

But even in distress, we feel like a unit. An actual coven, even, with all the power and strength that implies. I’m not naive enough to think that will keep us safe, but it sure doesn’t hurt.

“The pubertatum is an important ritual,” Carol says, opening the assembly, her voice booming with the help of a microphone and magic. “It isn’t just about you and what you will become, but about all witchkind. The safety and sanctity of what and who we are.”

The crowd of teenagers is hushed, and mostly rapt. Sure, a few lean over to the person next to them and whisper something. And there are the occasional muffled giggles, proving they’re not all automatons.

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