“You didn’t hit your head.”
“Ivy, how do you know?”I say, exasperated.“I woke up, I thought I saw something, then I nearly fell down the stairs, but the cat managed to keep me from doing that and I fell backward instead.”
And then the cat talked to me.
I narrow my eyes at where the black… feline rubs against the door jamb, tail curled into a question mark.
Same, buddy,I think at her.
“I know because you’re one of us.”
I pause.“You realize that doesn’t make sense, right?What you just said.”
“How do you think I knew to call you tonight, Sylvie?Right after you heard your familiar talk?Huh?”
She keeps muttering something about how I’m stubborn enough to believe I’m concussed but can’t believe in anything that isn’t right in front of my nose, but my attention snags on the word familiar and I hardly notice the rest.
“Familiar.”I repeat.
“Yep.Familiar.”Ivy looses a long sigh, and I just know she’s pinching her nose.“Listen, I wish I could come down there and stay to help you get all this figured out, okay, but shit is going down here in my town too.This time of year is always nuts.”
I get the weird, uncomfortable feeling she’s not just talking about the approaching holiday rush.
In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever felt so weird and uncomfortable in my entire fucking life.
“I need you to put a pin in that and explain what you mean by familiar.”
“You’re a witch, Sylvie.The bookstore is your inheritance.That town is yours to help protect, just like my sisters and I protect our town.Things are about to get really strange as the veil thins, and I don’t know exactly what that looks like where you are, but I know what it looks like for us, and I don’t love it.”
“Witches aren’t real.”The words are a whisper, and the denial does nothing to stifle my budding excitement.Which is absurd.
“I’m not magical,” I tell Ivy.“I’m a librarian.”
“No, you’re not a librarian.They fired you, witchy-poo, and now you’re a magical bookstore owner.Listen, your familiar is like a… battery, or a TV antenna.Do people still use those?Whatever.She’ll help you charge your magic and can help you dial into what you’ll need.By the way, what woke you up?Was it the storm I hear?”
“Ahhhh.”I’m not sure I want to tell her.If she thinks I’m a witch, I’m not sure how nightmare shadow creatures in my room are going to sound.“Do you believe in ghosts?”I try for levity and fall about a football field short.
“Fuck.Yes.A ghost woke you up?Okay.Shit balls.Listen, there are other witches in your town.I don’t know who they are because frankly, your shit is all clouded up for the three of us?—”
“Your sisters are witches too.”It’s all unbelievable.
“Hecate forbid I be saddled with a witch with a brain cell,” the cat says.
I hold my finger up at her, and she returns to cleaning her asshole.
So.Rude.
“Did your familiar just say that?”Ivy sounds like she’s holding back laughter.“God, I’ve wanted to see your familiar for ages.”
It dawns on me then, the mopey block-headed lab that’s always sitting in Ivy’s shop isn’t just a dog.
“What the hell, Ivy?You mean you’ve known I’m,” I choke on the word witch.
“A witch?”She pauses.“I suspected.I mean, you didn’t have magic yet, but the signs were there.You know how much I listen to signs.It’s not something I could just tell you, you know, in case I was wrong.”
Idoknow how Ivy loves signs.I want to ask what the signs are, but also, I don’t.I don’t know that I want to know anything new right now.How un-librarian of me.
“This can’t be real,” I say.“I’m going to go back to bed, and this will all have been a freaky dream.”
