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A hundred bad days at work wouldn’t kill me.
Besides, I owed Mémèreeverything. Without her, I wouldn’t exist. I would have died when my parents did. I would have been killed or lost or starved. No one else in this place was about to take in a little orphan kid who couldn’t do spells. Nobody. Yet my grandmother was ready.
My grandmother was brave.
I reached for the door and pressed my hand against it, but I didn’t turn the knob. Not yet. I needed a few more minutes to be alone with my thoughts, to focus on the fact that today had been the worst day yet. Today seemed different somehow. Part of me thought that after awhile, things at work would get easier. I thought that they’d improve and that I would finally begin to connect with people who understood me.
I was so wrong.
I’m not understood now, just like I wasn’t understood before.
A tear slid down my cheek and I brushed it away. I look around wildly, like someone could see me, even though I was completely alone.
“I know you’re out there,” I heard her voice through the door. “Come on in, love. I won’t bite.”
I gulped.
Yeah, my grandmother definitely knew something was up. She didn’t want me working in town, anyway, but I had convinced her that I needed to. The reality was that I knew she didn’t have a lot of money and I felt bad for not contributing to our family. The café didn’t bring in a lot of money, but I was finished with school and wasn’t really doing anything else with my time.
There weren’t a lot of job prospects in Brookville, but the café was something. It enabled me to make some money, spend time socializing, and get to know people who lived near me. It meant I could be around other people, for once. It meant I could explore the world, if only just a little.
The front door opened before I could turn the knob, and there stood my grandmother: tall, lean, and silvery.
Fierce.
My grandma was fierce.
Everything about her screamed strong. She was taller than me, which was sometimes hard for me to grasp since at 5’7”, I wasn’t a tiny girl. Although she was getting older, she still had strong muscles that were clearly defined. Whether it was from being a witch or from years of exercise and hard work, I wasn’t sure. I just knew that my grandma wasn’t the type of person anyone messed with.
Not if they knew what was good for them.
“You’re late,” she said simply, but she glared when she did. Her eyes narrowed a little: not too much. She didn’t quite look mad. It was more like, a cautious sort of look, as though she was waiting for me to say something first. I knew exactly what she wanted from me. She wanted me to admit that working in the shop was a bad choice and that I was ready to stay home with her.
After all, even if I couldn’t use magic, I could still learn about it, and my grandmother loved it when I studied.
“Not by much,” I responded, but I knew instantly it was the wrong thing to say. My grandmother didn’t yell at me or raise her voice. She never had. We didn’t have that kind of relationship. Besides, disappointment was so much worse than yelling, anyway. If I wanted to trick Gram, I should have acted stupid. I should have pretended like I didn’t know just how late it was. Then I could have pretended that I was lollygagging or chatting with someone and just completely lost track of the time.
My answer let her know that I knew I was late, and that there was a reason for it.
“What happened?” She said gently. Her eyes softened when she looked at me. Mr. Boo, my familiar, came out of the cabin and rubbed against my legs. I reached down and picked up the fat, black-and-white cat and held him in my arms for a minute. Somehow, Boo always managed to calm my racing heart when I felt stressed. I might not do magic, but Grams had given him to me just the same.
“Every witch should have a familiar,” she had told me that day. Boo had been a full-grown cat already. No one knew exactly how old he was or where he’d come from, but Gram had chosen him and he turned out to be just as special as she thought he would.
“It’s nothing, Mémère,” I told her. “I just got caught up at work.”
“Did you get busy at work, Maxine, or did someone make you stay late out of spite?” She didn’t ask it in an accusing way, but I knew what she was thinking. Mémère didn’t like me working for my boss. She didn’t understand why I wanted to work or why I thought it was important that I have a job of some sort.
Any sort.
In her mind, my time would be better spent helping out on the property, working in the yard, or memorizing spells from the big, heavy book she kept on the kitchen table. The pages were worn with years of use, but Grams told me every day how important those spells were.
Not that I’d ever use them.
The little cabin we lived in was surrounded by a wide yard and then trees for as far as the eye could see. Our driveway itself was almost a mile long. That’s how hidden away we were. Unless someone was looking for us specifically, they’d never find us. We didn’t even get mail at the house. Everything went to a post office box in town that one of us would check on a weekly basis.
Mémère and I were isolated, and she worried about me.
“You know Tony likes to have me stay late sometimes,” I finally said. It wasn’t a lie, but it was sort of a half-truth. I didn’t know if Tony actually liked having me stay or if he just liked having me miserable. Did I get paid for staying late? Yeah. Of course. This wasn’t some sort of illegal café. That said, it was still a nightmare working late after I’d already been on my feet for an eight-hour shift.
