Page 27 of Practically Magic

I’m so angry, I don’t know who to be mad at first: Mom for claiming she trusted me to do the rituals when she didn’t, or for my entire family for asking Harry to be my babysitter. Her being here is going to ruin everything I have planned. “You’re lying! I’m calling Mom.” I rush out of the room to grab my phone from the living room. But the second I spot it on the coffee table, it disappears. I spin around and see Harry has it in her hand. Show-off.

“Do not call Mom.” Her voice is eerily calm.

“Give me my phone.” I lunge at her as Great-Aunt Aida’s portrait glares at us both. Harry smells like cardamom, and her summer tan seems to have faded to a warm glow. This close, I can see a freckle above the right side of her lip, in the same spot I have one. Harry holds the phone out of reach, and a strange feeling comes over me. She’s hiding something. “Why are you really here, Harry?” I try to match her calm tone.

Harry hesitates for a second, then drops my phone into my outstretched hand. I hear it rumble with new texts. “Fine. Mom and Dad didn’t tell me to come, okay? I did it for the good of Samhain. We both know you can’t handle this on your own.” She stands there for a minute, then her eyes narrow. “You’re having a Halloween party, aren’t you?”

Grrrr . . . Harry and her witchy ESP. My heart bangs in my chest, and I try not to give myself away. “No.”

“You are!” Harry sounds triumphant. “And it’s here on Halloween night when you’re supposed to be focusing on the protection spells!”

I crack. “Mom and Dad said I could have one. Everyone will be gone before I cast the spells. I’ve got it all under control.”

“HA!” Harry says, slapping the island counter and sending wooden spoons rolling. “You never have it under control! And then what happens? I have to clean up your mess!”

“You’re not my mother, Harry!” I’m shouting now.

“Then stop making me act like one, Kat.” Her voice is deadly quiet, but I can sense what she’s going to do before she does it.

“Don’t!” I yell as she grabs a piece of mail on the counter, then rushes to the stove and flips on a burner. The scrap of paper goes up in flames before I can even reach her.

“What did you just burn?” I ask through gritted teeth. But I have a feeling I know. The invitation that the aunts got to a new show opening. It doesn’t matter what it’s for—it matters what it was. An invitation.

I whip out my phone and scroll through the messages. The evite. The party texts. They’re all gone. Harry canceled my party!

“You’ve ruined everything,” I say.

“That was your plan, wasn’t it?” Harry asks, guessing perfectly as her nose twitches. “To get a boyfriend. Because I know you don’t already have one.”

Because who could like Kat Hadley? She doesn’t need to say it, but I can all but hear the unspoken words in my head as she smirks at me. She is so smug. I want to knock that stupid smile off her face. My fingernails bite into the palm of my hand with a sharp flicker of pain, and when I draw them back, I can see I punctured the skin in one spot and a tiny needle point of blood rushes up, then drops to the wood floor.

A crash startles us as the knives all leap from their block. Wow, that was . . . sort of something. Not quite what I meant, but the intention was there.

Harry looks at me in surprise. “This is not a game. You know the spells have to be done by two connected souls! You can’t do them on your own! What are you trying to do? Break the town’s magic?”

How dare she? “This is so typical. The perfect Harriet Hadley trying to swoop in and do everything better than me. Guess what? I don’t need you here. I am not trying to break magic! I know the protection spells need to be done by two people and they will be! I am doing the rituals with . . . Peter!” Shoot. I almost forgot my fake boyfriend’s name. “Who is my boyfriend!”

Harry catches my mistake and her eyes flash. “Your boyfriend, huh?” Harry sneezes, the sound as loud as a gunshot. “Then why has no one met him?”

“The aunts met him yesterday.”

Harry’s nose wrinkles, like she’s about to sneeze again. “Kat, stop lying to me. I know you don’t have a boyfriend. You can’t!”

I hold my crystal tight, feeling my fingers warm. “Why not! Is it so hard to believe that I found someone who likes me?” I say, and Harry falters.

“I didn’t say that,” she says hoarsely. “But the boys every Halloween . . . you’ve always fallen head over heels for a stranger. Someone you don’t know, who doesn’t know you. I just want to protect you.”

“Because if someone knew me, they couldn’t possibly like me?” I yell back. If she’s gunning for a fight, she’s going to get one. For the first time in forever, it’s just the two of us in this house, and I won’t hold back any longer. “And news flash, Harry. I know you feel like I’m your responsibility as your nothing little sister, but you’ve been gone. You haven’t been ‘protecting me.’ You haven’t even been talking to me. I might be invisible at school, but you’ve made yourself invisible to me.”

“That’s not true,” Harry says, but her voice betrays her. We both know I’m right.

“Just go back to Boston, okay?” I say. “You don’t even live here. This isn’t your house. Go back to being the perfect daughter with the perfect grades and the perfect hair and the perfect boyfriends. You don’t want anything to do with me? Fine. Then don’t have anything to do with me. I’m going to get a boyfriend this Halloween. And you can’t stop me.”

“I already did!” Harry cries.

The phrase seems to hang in the air.

“What?” I ask, my voice low.