She showed up at the shop in a faded black dress and a copper cuff stuck with a hunk of raw citrine. There was a new edge to her, a bad radiance. Something had changed since we’d seen her last, and she looked all at once like the witch she wanted to be: famished and startling.
We thought she’d ask what we’d been up to, but instead she went on and on about a ritual given to her by the occultist’s book, meant to increase the body’s magical potency: the strength of your blood, urine, spit, nails, all the cheap ingredients you can harvest from yourself. Her bag clanked with hellish-looking roots steeped in dirty city rain, the teas she fed herself in place of food. Her skin smelled piney and metallic.
And there was something else, she said. Something she had to show us.
Neither of us wanted to go. We’d been up late the night before, dealing with my dad, and were brittle with exhaustion. But when we got off work we trailed her to the bus stop anyway.
It was late August and the vibe among us was as suffocating as the weather. When we got off the bus we didn’t go to her parents’ house. She led us through campus instead, past university buildings and green spaces so verdant they felt sinister, to a Disneyland downtown of shops.
We stopped in front of one of those Clark and Belmont–type places where wannabe witches shopped: blown glass pipes and cheap fetishwear, jewelry embedded with fake lapis or mother of pearl. It had the dorkiest name—’Twixt and ’Tween—and I felt embarrassed going inside, because the cool record shop boys from next door were on the pavement having a cigarette.
The shop smelled like sandalwood and was stuffed with stuff, one-hitters and hesher tees and tie-dyed wall hangings. Then a woman came out from the back and wrapped Marion in her arms. “Hey, pretty girl.”
She was a white woman in her late twenties, I’d guess, but she vibed like an old punk. Her skin was sunbaked hardpan, her eyes a quartz blue. She had a dandelion of black hair and triangles and stars tattooed over the backs of her hands. She didn’t look at Fee or me. Still holding Marion, she said, “Did you bring the book?”
Fee and I glanced narrowly at each other as Marion fished around in her bag, then took out the occultist’s book. The woman laughed softly, hands up like Marion might give it to her. When she didn’t, the woman finally looked at me and Fee.
“So this is your coven.”
I ticked my chin at her. “Who’s she? Why are we in her crappy store?”
The woman laughed again, but Marion tensed. The cords in her neck were unnerving. “This is Sharon. She’s another practitioner.”
“You can say witch, honey.” Sharon tongued her lip ring. “It’s not a bad word.”
“It’s limiting, though,” Marion said earnestly. Always so humorless around magic, all her borders down. “We’re more than that. I want to be more than that. Don’t you?”
“Sure,” Sharon replied after a pause. “For sure I do.”
Marion was nodding. “Yeah. So. Sharon’s shop is kind of a meeting place for … for practitioners. I came in to buy supplies the other day and we ended up talking for, what, two hours?”
“That’s right,” Sharon said, looking at me.
Marion cradled the book, her voice dropping into a reverent register. “Something happened the night after I met Sharon. The book gave me a spell for four workers. It’s never done that before.” She looked at us solemnly. “I think Astrid wants us to work with Sharon.”
I scoffed. “What, is she our pimp? I’m not working with someone I don’t know.”
“I like this one.” Sharon’s eyes were hard with liking’s opposite. “I like you, honey.”
“Your admiration and a nickel, honey.”
Sharon pursed her lips and breathed out. An impossibly long whoosh that filled my nose with licorice and made the lights flicker and broke the room’s tension into mosaic pieces. Fee’s eyes widened, fingertips pressed to the place her crucifix had scarred her.
“We’ve got time.” Sharon seemed happier now that she’d impressed us. “Let’s talk. Let’s drink some tea. I’ll send somebody out for Jimmy John’s.”
I got one of my occasional flashes of clarity then. A glimpse of Sharon’s aura. It was ultraviolet and an orange that was hard to look at, striated like a tiger’s fur. The only dual-toned aura I’d ever seen. I had no idea what it meant.
I looked at Fee. She raised a brow.
“Yeah, all right. We can talk.”