Page 20 of Practically Witches

I should wait her out, not push her because pushing her makes her withdraw. “What’s up?” But I can’t sit still. It isn’t who I am.

“I’ve been thinking.” She’s started about a thousand conversations a month this way, but there is something different. Aimee is sure of herself. Every minute. Every day. Every conversation. She doesn’t speak unless she’s sure of what she’s about to say.

She hands me a page. It’s a drawing in the blacks and grays of pencil. She is a talented artist. Every picture of hers conveys all the emotions, ideas, and thoughts she had while creating it. This is no different. I can feel her fear. Every stroke of her pencil is guided by it.

She’s drawn the syphoner who took her power and she’s drawn herself in a heap. Even Margery is in the drawing, also in a crumpled heap on the ground. In the background there is a light pole with sparks showering the air. The picture is vivid enough I am there again, in the park.

“It was like she knew how I would react. What defenses I would try to throw at her.” She shakes her head. “I tried a protection spell.”

Maybe that was why the syphoner hadn’t been able to get to me. Because the spell had shrouded me and not Aimee. “A protection spell?”

She nods. “Yeah.” I don’t want to tell her that the syphoner hadn’t been able to take my power but had gotten hers, and it’s probably her spell that saved me and not her. But at least my theory about the syphoner knowing my powers were weaker is wrong. It’s a relief I don’t particularly want to examine.

“When I threw the spell, she blocked it.”

Maybe I should’ve paid better attention in Spell-Defense class which taught us how to defend ourselves against rogues who throw evil spells, and also against inadvertent spells. I’d thought the class was useless. I know better now. “Blocked it?”

Aimee nods and the exhaustion on her face is obvious. She looks a decade older than her twenty-one years. “Batted it away. When I threw the deflection spell, same thing.” Of course, Aimee would think to throw spells. So, the syphoner expected it. “It’s like she was connected to mythoughts, leeching off them. I felt so violated.” She looks down. “I still do.”

I want to console her, protect her, find the asshat who did this and make her fucking pay for what she’s done to Aimee. My confident, beautiful sister looks haggard, sounds beaten.

“Did you recognize the syphoner?” We’re without a doubt now that syphoners exist. One certainly has Aimee’s power. And where there is one, there may be more.

“Maybe. I thought so, but then I couldn’t do more than watch her take my power. I thought maybe feeling like I’d seen her before was because we were so connected and she was inside my mind.” She stares at me and it makes sense, especially since I can’t come up with a place I might’ve seen her before.

“Do you think we did this with the grimoire? Summoned her?” I don’t want this to be our fault, but somehow, I can’t shake the feeling that Mom’s right. We did this. Or more specifically,Idid this.

Aimee shrugs. “It doesn’t really matter now. We can’t undo it. So we have to figure out how to fight it. How to get my power back.”

She’s right. Thoughtful, logical Aimee is usually right.

“So, what do you want to do?” Aside from getting her powers back.

She sits for a moment, crosses her legs, and pulls them up so she can hug her knees. “Do you have a plan?”

Now I know why she’s here. I think for a minute. “I think we have to track the syphoner. Figure out where and why she strikes.” I watch crime TV. Not the made-up shows with actors, but the real stories of real-life crime. And I listen to detectives and podcasters who investigate. And maybe I see danger everywhere. And maybe she’s going tothink I’m imagining the conspiracy, but this time it’s real. “She went for you first.”

Guilt drags the words out of me, or maybe I’m trying to be the analytical one, to think before I act.

“So?” Aimee stares at me with her brow pinched and her eyes narrowed. “What does that mean?”

“It means I was a step closer, but she went for you instead.” It’s a detail I hadn’t thought of and I want to write it down before I forget it again, but I need to think about it for a second or two. Figure out if it matters.

I look down at Aimee’s drawing. Maybe the syphoner didn’t see the angle, that I was the closer of the two of us because Aimee was in her sightline and I was in her periphery. But Aimee saw it. Had drawn it. My body was between hers on the ground and the syphoner. “See?”

She’d drawn the scene exactly as it had happened, as if she’d seen it from some other view point than her own. She had all the same details I’d seen, things she wouldn’t have been able to see from her place during this…event. The light pole was behind her, she’d had her back to it. But she had the sparks, had somehow conveyed the flicker of the streetlamp.

And she had drawn one half of my face and one half of the syphoner’s, as if she’d been standing behind all of us, watching as it all unfolded. So it isn’t my viewpoint either. It’s someone else’s.

It’s not something we can use as a clue, but it’s intriguing, nonetheless.

“We need to do some research.” My voice is confident because I’m confident we can figure this out. At least, for Aimee’s sake, I hope we can.

I will my tense muscles to unclench as I breathe in slow and deep. I’m going to need a clear head to figurethis out, to center myself, to feel nothing but confidence and power. Fortunately, I can usually turn my emotions off when I need to. Although this is a taller order. There are a mess of emotions connected to this. Sadness. Guilt. Shame. And even if I don’t understand why they exist, they do.

Aimee weeps silently. “What if I don’t get it back, RJ? What if my magic’s gone forever?” My door pushes open as Mom rushes in.

She looks at me almost as if she’s going to blame me, but then she glances at Aimee. “Sweetheart…” She rubs her hand down Aimee’s back, smooths her silvery hair.

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