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“You’re sweet on that one. And you’re playing a dangerous game, baby witch.”
I shrugged and didn’t even try to hide my amusement. “It’s fun to look.”
All of them were deliciously handsome and built. But I only had eyes for one of them.
She shimmered into visibility right where I suspected she’d been. She wore a stern look on her face.
Needless to say the last year had been one of discovery. I hadn’t spent nearly enough time in Drowsy Hollow, but I’d spent a lot of time learning. And dabbling. And getting wrist slaps for it.
I still wasn’t allowed to write my own spells, but I had performed a few simple and proven beginner spells. And I’d played with a few simple potions and had created this one, though mine didn’t last very long and it took a lot of effort to grow, cultivate, and activate one of the herbs that was essential in the mix. I’d been growing things like crazy. Plants. Flowers. Vegetables.
And I’d seen my sisters’ gifts for myself and though I had nothing to compare us to, I had to say… we were a powerful coven. Vivi was all-knowing, all-seeing, or so it seemed. It was astounding to hear her talk of coming events and then witness those events with your own eyes.
If you handed Ronnie something that belonged to somebody, she was often overcome with their personal stories, particularly if they were deceased. Sometimes it was painful to watch as she’d be overcome with emotion after learning someone’s truth. Sometimes she’d shake someone’s hand and have to fight to stop her face from showing them everything she felt. Her gifts had recently meant finding an abducted child just in time, because the clock was about to run out.
Jessica was still working hard at perfecting her skills as a medium, but she was already damn good at it. And Danica hadn’t had a whole lot of opportunity yet to use her skills as a healer, but she’d dazzled us a couple times and also held a skill she was just starting to tap into – one that Aunt Mimi was terrified of.
It was the opposite of healing. Dani and Ronnie could work together to siphon certain types of energy from objects and from people, making someone’s health, emotional capacity, or their memory wither. As far as healing went, though, they were able to get an old man at the nursing home Dani volunteered at, to remember his wife for a brief time the other day and he hadn’t remembered her in a decade. She was terminally ill, and her time was coming to an end. The woman’s greatest wish was to have one more afternoon with the man she’d loved for fifty-five years. Dani was elated to be able to give that to her.
Collectively, we were getting stronger. And it felt like we were gearing up for things that were important, things our great aunts didn’t want to talk about, so it was easy to surmise it was because they were preparing us so that we could function without them some day.
Aunt Mimi was in her sixties, Aunt Lyrica seventy-nine, so this made sense, though it didn’t make any of us happy. We’d all become even closer in the past year and the ability to draw from their knowledge was priceless to us. They encouraged us to learn, to study, to connect with one another so we could leverage one another’s strengths while building upon our own strengths and knowledge. They were all excited about my supposed skills – skills I wasn’t really allowed to dabble much with since I was still in the early phases of learning. I was so entrenched the past year in learning about herbs, crystals, about energy, learning to listen to the earth, the environment, growing things, and poring over old grimoires and ledgers that I’d had plenty to keep me so busy that I wasn’t too tempted to write spells. Though I did dabble a little more than I should’ve.
***
A Month Before My 20th Birthday
I saw Riley again, but not because I’d spritzed myself with a potion. I spotted him in the supermarket in Drowsy Hollow when me and Vivi were picking up supplies for Aunt Lyrica’s eightieth birthday dinner.
I went into a mini trance when I saw him pushing a cart of groceries while two women who I suspected were relatives filled it. He looked amused as they talked amongst themselves. Dressed in worn and faded jeans, construction boots, and a faded soft yellow t-shirt, he made my mouth water. He had a baseball cap on and when he made what was clearly a smartass remark, one of the two ladies pulled his baseball cap off and walloped him on the behind with it before he threw his head back and laughed heartily.
