Page 15 of A Winding Wave of Magic
Several blurry visions immediately sprang to mind through my fingertips. Gran as a young woman, being twirled around to a waltz under twinkling lights of what looked like an actual ballroom. A torrid kiss that made my lips ache and my heart pick up a beat. The calloused grip of a stranger’s fingers on her waist, the smell of salty sea air as he pulled her against him.
And heartbreak, immediate and debilitating, like a winter wave toppling you over on the surf.
“Dang, Gran,” I murmured as I hung the dress in my closet. “You had some times in this one, didn’t you?”
The visions disappeared, though the music lingered as I turned back to the package. To my surprise, there was one more item at the bottom. Another smaller cardboard box smelling heavily of sage and juniper and other herbs I couldn’t name that told me if I touched it, I’d encounter another protection spell.
I frowned at it. Gran didn’t usually enchant her packagesthisintensely. Whatever was in here was important.
Hairs on the back of my neck rose. My Sight prickled in the center of my forehead. The juniper and dresses I’d take, with their frothy memories and practical magic, but suddenly I wanted to repack what was left and send it right back to Oregon.
Trust your intuition, Gran always told me.It’s a seer’s greatest gift of all.
“Stop being a baby,” I told myself, then reached in and took out the last box.
Immediately, everything felt…wrong. And lookedverywrong.
In my hands, the cardboard shook, then sighed. I could See it starting to move as if the items on top of it had forced it to hold its breath for several days and it was finally allowed to exhale, inhale, and exhale again.
“What the hell,” I murmured as I watched. I was given to visions, but not full-on hallucinations. In all the time I’d been away, I’d never been sent a fully animated box. That was simply not something we did.
Was it?
Gingerly, I opened the flaps. At least fifty pellets of Styrofoam popped loudly out of the box and directly into my face.
“What the f?—”
I batted the pellets away as they continued to pop. Whatwasthis? As a seer, Gran was decent at charming live beings, but I’d never seen her enchant an inanimate object before. Seers required conscious thought to work their magic. This wasn’t right.
“Cass?”
The apartment door slammed shut, followed by the sounds of Aja’s boots flopping on the ground and the jingle of keys on the table.
“Shit,” I muttered, frantically trying to beat the pellets back into the box. “Oh my gods, will youstop!”
“Cass! Everything all right?”
Aja’s voice called through my door. Perfect. Just perfect.
There was a knock as the box continued to spew styrofoam. “You okay? You don’t light the apartment on fire unless you’ve had areallybad day. Was it James again? What’s that noise?”
I scowled. Aja was nice enough about my occasional pyrotechnics, but an animated box wasn’t something I’d be able to explain away.
“Just dropped a few things,” I called back, trying desperately to calm the popcorn. “I’m fine. Just, um, getting ready for bed.”
I turned on some music, hoping The Clash would mask the machine-gun rhythms of the packing materials. After the last piece smacked me in the center of the forehead with a final, resoundingpop, the entire mess completely disappeared. It had been an apparition—nothing more.
“Ha, ha, Gran,” I said aloud as if she could hear me, though I was a bit unnerved.
I had felt the texture of that stuff on my fingers. Heard it banging in my ears. Was there truly nothing to it? Goddess, it was so…real.
Gran would immediately seek out the memory as soon as I returned home—along with my reaction to it, which would make her cackle like a crow. Right now she was probably enjoying a nice glass of whiskey, imagining my reaction while she watched the late winter storms blowing across the dunes in front of her house.
“All right,” Aja said. “Just, um, let me know if you need anything.”
“Thanks.”
I peered inside the box, eager to find what treasure my grandmother had sent this time now that she’d gotten her jokes out of the way. There lay yet another box, a homely wooden thing that had once been black but was now scratched on almost every visible surface. It was about the size of a recipe container that would fit a thick stack of three-by-five cards.
