Bewitched

CHAPTER 2

All magic comes at a cost.

For sorcerers, it’s their conscience. For shape-shifters, it’s their physical form. For me, it’s my memory.

I’m a bit of an oddity among witches. For the vast majority of them, the spell components pay for their magic. And if it doesn’t, the rest comes from their ever-replenishing life force. And while my own power follows the same rules, it also takes a few memories while it’s at it.

It wasn’t always this way for me. I had a normal childhood—well, as normal as one can have when their mother’s a witch and their father’s a mage—but ever since I hit puberty and my magic Awoke, it’s been this way.

I step out of Morgana Hall, staring up at the cloudy sky, excitement and gut-churning anxiety twisting my insides.

I pull out my notebook and flip to the first blank page. As fast as I can, I scribble down the important bits:

August 29

Had the interview. A witch named Constance Sternfallow said you will be accepted if you can meet the following two requirements:

1. Go on a bomb-ass magic quest

2. Get a familiar

I try not to hurl as I stare down at what feel like two insurmountable demands. Magic quests are incredibly subjective; I’ll be at the whim of whoever reads my paper on the experience. And finding a familiar, a witch’s magical animal counterpart, is much harder than it seems on the surface.

I take a deep breath.

It’ll be fine. It’s always fine. I’m smart, and creative, and crafty as hell. I’ll manifest the shit out of this.

Shoving the notebook back into my bag, I glance at another dark Gothic building to my left. This is the coven’s residence hall for attending witches, and it’s where my best friend currently lives.

I cut across the grass to it.

As I approach, I pass two massive lamassu—sphinxlike stone statues with a woman’s head and a lion’s body—that stand on either side of the porch, the hybrid creatures protecting the threshold of the house.

Ahead of me, the door opens, and a group of witches pours out, chatting among themselves. I rush over before the door can close behind them, and after catching it, I slip in.

Today, the residence hall smells like mint and fresh bread, and I can see wisps of red-orange magic drifting from the spellcasting kitchen to my left, where one of the coven sisters must be baking something literally magical.

All supernaturals have some identifying marker to their magic—a color, a smell, a texture. It varies depending on the type of being you are. Witches and mages in particular are known for having colored magic—supposedly no two hues are exactly alike. And only witches and mages—and a few other select supernaturals—can see these magical differences.

I nearly go snooping around the house, drawn in by the sight of magic and the cozy feel of the place. It’s been a long time since I lived among other witches, and I miss the way their power calls to my own.

Instead of exploring, I cross the foyer to the staircase ahead of me and climb it. Sybil lives in one of the many rooms on the second floor. When I get to it, I call out, “Sybil—it’s me!” then promptly enter.

At first, all I see is the greenery. Her room is a mess of plants, shelf after shelf filled to bursting with whatever species she’s currently fascinated with. The vined plants snake around the room, twining around framed photos and light fixtures. It’s probably some sort of fire hazard, but then, from the faint pale purple shimmer of magic above me, Sybil might’ve already warded the room against that.

She sits at her desk, her barn owl, Merlin, perched on her shoulder. When she hears me, she swivels around in her chair, causing her familiar to flutter his feathers before resettling.

“Selene!” she says. “Shit, is your interview already over? How did it go?”

I drop my bag and shake my head. “I don’t know.”

Sybil’s face falls a little. “Is that ‘I don’t know because I don’t remember’ or ‘I don’t know because I don’t know how to feel about it’?”

“The latter one,” I say.

I glance out her window, where I can clearly see part of Morgana Hall.

A coven is a strange thing—it’s a bit like a university for witches but also offers affiliated jobs and continuation classes for witches who’ve graduated. There’s also housing for those who prefer to keep their own company, and there’s even a graveyard for witches who want to stay with the coven even into death.

The truth of the matter is that joining a place like Henbane means joining a sisterhood, one that supports you and walks alongside you throughout your life. Who wouldn’t want that? Friendship, belonging, education, and a life that revolves around magic. I’ve yearned for it for as long as I can remember.

“You’ll get in,” Sybil says, drawing my attention back to her.

I give her a sad smile. “They told me my application was missing two requirements: a magic quest—”

Her brows furrow. “But you already had one of those,” she objects.

I lift a shoulder. “I don’t think they liked my Yosemite camping trip experience.”

Sybil makes an a

After a moment, Sybil says, “So they want a different magic quest. Okay, that’s easy enough to arrange. What else?”

“They want me to find my familiar.”

“What?” Now she’s starting to look outraged. “But that’s not even a requirement. I know five witches personally who don’t have familiars. These things take time.”

Sybil’s own familiar tilts his head at me, like he too doesn’t understand.

I press my lips together, not saying what to me seems obvious.

The coven is making me climb these hills because, at the end of it all, they don’t trust that I have what it takes.

Sybil grabs my hand and squeezes it. “Fuck them. You’ve got this, Selene, I know you do. You are a witch—you can literally make magic happen. So go home. Have a pity party. And then it’s time to plot.”

I do go back to my apartment in San Francisco, which is really nothing more than a basement converted into a studio flat, but it’s my little slice of heaven.

I close the door, leaning back against it while I debate giving in to that pity party Sybil talked about.

At my back, something crinkles. I turn around to see a sticky note pressed to the door.

Return Kyla’s call and apologize profusely. (She’s still mad at you for forgetting her birthday.) Also, buy groceries.

Damn. I pull out my big-ass pla

The pla

I’ll deal with you later.

For now, I have admission requirements to complete.

I walk past my bookshelf, which is filled with more of these notebooks and makeshift pla

There’s another mounted shelf across the room packed with homemade, handwritten grimoires, each one organized by subject.

My tables and counters are lined with stacks of blank sticky notes, my wall is covered with a zoomed-out map of the Bay Area, and all my most important places are pi

I was serious when I said I’d be an asset to Henbane.

Witchcraft is my purpose. I want to study it. I want to excel at it. I want to go out into the world and do big things with it. And I will, with or without the coven’s help, I reassure myself. But that doesn’t change the fact that I badly want to get in.

I cross to my desk and drop my bag next to it, then head to my kitchen.

I need tea before I settle in to work.

Unfortunately, when I get to my cupboard, a sticky note stuck to it says:

Buy more tea bags—you prefer the fancy herbal kind.

Well, damn.

I open the cupboard anyway, and sure enough, there’s no tea. There is, however, a bottle of wine.

There’s a sticky note on this too, only this one is not in my handwriting.

The booze-fairy was here!

<3 Sybil

Hell’s spells, I love that sneaky friend of mine. I grab the wine, thanking the triple goddess that it’s a twist-off cap. I unscrew it then and there and pad back over to my laptop, drinking straight from the bottle.

Probably not the best habit to drink alone, but whatever, I’ll call this my celebratory drink for standing up for myself and getting a foot in the door.

I set the bottle down and pull out my notebook before reading over the two requirements I scribbled down back at Henbane.

It’s the second one that’s going to give me hives.

Get a familiar.

I drink half the bottle of wine while I ponder how the fuck I’m going to do this. It’s not as though I haven’t already tried. The thing is, a familiar isn’t just any animal. It’s a particular creature whose spirit resonates with your own and literally binds itself to you. Supposedly, familiars are the ones who find their witches, but that hasn’t happened to me yet, and I’m increasingly skeptical that it will happen anytime soon.

Okay, screw number two for now. I take another swig of the bottle, feeling the first stirrings of a buzz. I’ll focus on the other requirement, the magic quest.

Every witch has to participate in one of these quests. The idea is you go out into nature, co

But whatever, the coven wants me to give them an exciting quest?

Fine.

I open an airline site, musing over where exactly I should go. I’m sure the admissions board believes an exciting quest begins with an unusual destination.

Siberia? The Kalahari Desert? The Gobi Desert? I could go to the North Pole, ride a narwhal, and call it a day.

Only, when I scroll through international fares, everything is so damned expensive. My god. I’d need to sell a kidney to afford the airfare alone.

Oh, wait. They have deals on flights under this little tab.

I click it.

Oklahoma City—that’s…hmmm. Could I make that work?

Nah, probably not.