Page 65 of Prodigal Son

“One day you’ll come into your power and understand exactly how blessed you are. You’ll see. But until that day comes, you need to master other skills, like algebra.”

She rolled her eyes and collapsed back on the bed, covering her face as she groaned into her hands. “Why?”

Aunt Bel collapsed next to her. “Because we all had to. Consider it a torturous rite of passage.” She patted her knee and got off the bed, pausing by the light switch at the door. “And you’re grounded until you get that grade up to at least a C.” The lights went out. “Sweet dreams.”

There was no arguing her way out of her punishment. Aunt Bel had voiced the threat long before the quiz and Juniper bombed it anyway. Maybe she did need a tutor.

After she changed into her pajamas, she went to the window to adjust the blinds and paused as she stared down at the street. The sidewalks were fairly empty and the restaurants had mostly closed. There was one hour until midnight.

She should have told her aunts about the guy in the woods, but she didn’t see the point. Let him tell the town they were witches. It wasn’t like they’d show up with pitchforks and torches. Hell, sometimes her aunts told fortunes for extremely prominent figures like senators and celebrities. No one would care what some Amish guy said.

She shut the blinds and crawled into bed. Tomorrow morning she’d speak to her guidance counselor about possibly getting a tutor and see if there was anyone she might recommend. Until then, she didn’t want to think about algebra anymore.

Her dreams were chaotic, short stints of visions that made little sense. A salamander raced over her legs, but she couldn’t catch it. She faced a door of an alchemist’s shop and stared at the triangular symbol, much like the symbol for the element of fire. A fox was trapped in the display window and then she was the fox, sitting in an antique barber chair getting a tattoo of a flaming phoenix on her arm. The tattoo parlor was hot and loud, but she couldn’t open her eyes. The singe of the needle buzzed in her ear—

“Juniper, wake up!”

She jerked awake, unsure what was happening. The room was engulfed in flames and the crackling hiss of the fire was deafening.

“Get up! We have to leave. Now, Juniper!”

“What’s happening?” Juniper jumped out of bed, shocked by the heat of the floor making it impossible to stand in one place for more than a few seconds. “The house is on fire!”

“I know. We have to move! The firetrucks are on their way.”

Juniper instinctively ran to the door only to bolt back when the heat of the knob scorched her palm. “What do we do?”

“Get away from the door! We have to go out the window!”

“The window?” There were no trees by her window. Nothing to hold onto. She could hear the sirens but they were still too far away to see the lights.

“Now, Juniper! We can’t waste anymore time.”

The house whined as if a freight train were stuck inside, and glass shattered below. It sounded like the fire had spread to her aunts’ apothecary room.

“Where’s Aunt Venus?”

“She’s spending the night at a friend’s.” Aunt Bel ripped the sheets off her bed.

Another crash of glass shattered below. “The store.”

“That’s not important. You have to get outside. We can’t wait any longer.” She tied the sheets together in a long rope. “Put this around your waist.”

Juniper did as instructed, but her hands shook terribly and she couldn’t stand still due to the increasing heat burning the soles of her feet. The sudden reality that they might die tonight hit with paralyzing force.

“Keep moving. Let’s go!”

Fear choked her and she hacked, coughing brutally and tasting the thick smoke sneaking through the rafters and under the door. When her aunt opened the window, the flames roared against the walls and the bedroom door blistered, the paint melting right off the wood.

“Go! I’ll hold this end and lower you down.”

Juniper stared down at the sidewalk, certain the sheets wouldn’t reach. Flames whipped into the night, setting the first floor aglow. There had to be another way.

Aunt Bel grabbed her shoulders and stared into her eyes. “Ad Deam voco te ad protegendum. Elementum aquae invoco ut te ab igne custodiat. Libera neptim meam incolumem in auroram et ab injuriis.”

Juniper jerked back as if injected by energy. “What was that?”

“A protection spell. Go.” She helped her out the window, and Juniper’s first thought was how cool the air felt on her hot skin. “Careful. The walls aren’t secure.”

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