Page 13 of Spelling Disaster

Not everything, I want to say. My family is—My breath catches in my chest.

“Remi,” I whisper.

I saw her run toward the library before the ceremony commenced. What if she was inside? What if she’s hurt?

Mom’s fingers dig into my flesh to keep me in place when I try to run.

The strange fog is gone as though it never existed in the first place and amid the crackling sound of hungry flames, the rest of the coven members shake their heads.

Lark grabs her cheeks, her face frozen in horror.

Mom is the only one still willing to look at me while the others groan, lifting hands to their faces to match Lark.

Wood and stone groan, the library structure more than likely succumbing to the flames, and with the efficiency of a timer going off, everyone drops their hands to their sides. Their faces clear and Lark is the first one to come to, to be freed from whatever had fogged their minds.

Like the blast woke them from some kind of trance.

“I’m not sure what’s going on,” one of them mutters, sounding disoriented.

The tears fall harder until I see Mom through a blur. On my twenty-first birthday, as the coven librarian’s daughter, I’m supposed to ascend to the caste of Clerics as is my divine right. Instead, I’m failing, I’m hurting people, and I’m seeing things, while everyone else around me struggles to figure out exactly what’s going on.

Mom takes me by the elbow and drags me out of the clearing. The cape loosely draped around my shoulders drops forgotten to the ground and I kick up dirt, not fully in control of my feet.

“This is an outrage,” Mom mutters under her breath. “What did youdo, Yasmine?”

It’s on repeat, not only on her tongue but in my head.

What did I do?

What did I do?

I can hardly look at the smoldering library with bright blue and orange flames reaching up toward the clouds. Whatever blast took it out did quick work and the books inside, all those lovely books, all that knowledge, is gone.

We wait in the parking lot for the local police and fire departments to arrive to put out the flames, now that the coven has woken up.

Woken up from their trance only to point the finger at me, and maybe it belongs there. Maybe I really did this. But my magic has never been strong enough to accomplish anything close, and fire is not my element.

Although the heat is enough to dry my tears, they keep falling, more and more in a desperate bid to escape my body. I would, too, if I was able.

Escape.

I want to be anywhere but here faced so completely with my failure. My thoughts attack me harsher and with more accuracy than any of Mom’s questions, wanting to know how and why.

Why?

Eli materializes out of the confusion and works a little bit of magic. Something to keep the humans from seeing anything supernatural, a spell he’s woven to confuse and obfuscate many times before, for the magic hidden here. Outsiders aren’t welcomed in our sacred circles but the community is already involved. We need their help.

To them, this is our family home.

To our coven, it was our history and our lineage.

More firetrucks rush into the driveway with a buzz of sound and sirens, hoses at the ready.

It takes them way too long to extinguish the last of the flames. All that’s left is a charred husk of everything I love. It’s the only home I’ve known and the world I’ve wrapped around my shoulders like a safety blanket since Mom found out I have magic.

Home is gone now. Everything is gone.

The library and my future and my ascension. I don’t need to be told to understand the grim reality of the circumstances and what I’ll face once the mele has calmed.

---