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My shoulders dropped as all of me cringed. “Uncle, I’m so tired already, please—”
“Druella.” His voice was now stern. “We do what we must today so we can rest tomorrow.”
“Except it is never tomorrow!” I snapped, wanting to stomp my feet and scream as I used to when I was a kid. I was turning twenty-six next month. “I’ve spent all my life waiting for this tomorrow that you keep saying is coming. Work hard now, Druella, and tomorrow will be better. Tomorrow comes, and I’m still doing the same thing I did the day before. Why do I have to do the summoning? I am not strong enough—”
“If not you, who else can?” It wasn’t my uncle who said it, but Mrs. Reyes as she and the other seven elders all came onto the top of the cliff, the shimmer of their mirrors disappearing behind them.
The elders were of all varying backgrounds and ages, and the oldest being Old Man Easton, who was nearly eighty, with blue eyes he could barely keep open, wrinkled skin, and short, white hair.
“Good morning, Druella.” The older man grinned as he saw me and lifted the fruit in his hands. “You seem fit as a plum…plum…like the sugar plum that becomes a jar of rum.” The fruit in his hand shifted into the jar he desired, and he snickered happily to himself.
“It is a bit early for that, Father,” Mrs. Magus, who had bright-blond hair and always wore an apron to these meetings, said as she snatched the jar from her father and handed it to her husband.
Mr. Easton sighed. “Must you always ruin my fun?”
It was times like this I wondered if this was my future? That I’d grow up to become coven leader and deal with all the same things I had to deal with as circle leader.
“You wish to do a summoning?” Mrs. Reyes said to my uncle.
“Yes, but Druella seems to be doubting herself,” he replied.
“I am not. I’m just saying maybe…maybe I don’t have to—”
“Druella, did you forget who you are?” Mr. Magus said to me with his thick British accent, despite the fact he’d lived here for the last twenty years. Just like my uncle, he threw the jar of rum, much to Mr. Easton’s horror, at me, and once again, I froze it in place, the red liquid suspended in midair.
“You are a boundless witch, Druella,” he continued. “The first boundless witch in generations. You have the ability for magic long forgotten in this world. It is the thing of myths, and yet here you. Wiccans across the world would love the honor you have been blessed with by the goddess. And yet you always seem unsatisfied? Why is that? Why do you not burn with the desire to see what you are truly capable of?”
This was why I hated these meetings. Each time I came, they tested me, lectured me, puffed me up with how great I was, how rare it was to be a witch who did not require a grimoire or spells of any kind. My magic was linked to my desires. So long as I wanted to do something, my magic would find a way. I never understood it as a kid because when I was learning magic, I had to learn spells, but as I grew older, stronger, the less spell casting I did. I just made up whatever I wanted, commanded whatever I wanted, and my magic obeyed. It drove Simone crazy. Because it never made sense to any of us.
Why me?
We were all strong, but why was my magic so different?
They said it was a gift from the goddess. Free magic. I thought it was amazing, too, when I was younger, but now it felt like shackles around me, forcing me.
“Leave her. She is young, and she still doesn’t understand,” my uncle said, putting a hand on my head like I was still six, but I moved it away.
I wasn’t a child anymore. “I do understand,” I said back to them. “I get it. But as great as I am, there is still a limit to what I can do. I’ve tried over and over again to summon this great weapon you are talking about, but nothing ever happens.”
“Today, something might,” Uncle Axel said, lifting the crystal up for me to see. “You want to see a better tomorrow. Then we keep trying today. The moment summoning works, we will finally put an end to the curse that is the vampires. We will live freely. You can live freely.”
I frowne
d. Because I still didn’t get why they wouldn’t give up. If it were so easy to summon a great and powerful weapon against the vampires, wouldn’t we already have it?
They weren’t listening to me.
I wanted to curse.
Instead, I moved to the center of the cliff and sat down in the grass as they all moved to set up the nine-point star with their crystals.
And this really was stupid.
I was an adult.
A grown-ass woman.
Yet, I was still being forced to do things I didn’t want to do.
