“Hey, are you okay?” Binx said, looking concerned.
Ridley was touched; Binx didn’t usually do concern. “Not really. But I’ll get over it.”
Binx hooked her arm through Ridley’s. “Don’t stress. We have our pleukiokus spells to protect us, right? And we won’t let the Antima hurt Greta. Or any of us. We’ll Moonblast their sorry butts!”
Ridley made herself smile. Binx didn’t know that her tears were about her big brother, not about the Antima. Ridley had never told Binx about Daniel, or about all the other stuff having to do with her old life back in Cleveland. She hadn’t told her about being a trans girl, either. Someday she would, though. Hopefully soon.
She was just glad Binx was her best friend. It had been this way since last September, when she’d first met her two coven-mates. Of course, Greta was awesome—nurturing and protective and kind, like a big sister. But Ridley and Binx had just connected. They laughed at the same stupid stuff. They liked to binge the same TV shows. They had long conversations (at the mall, at the beach, during sleepovers) about magic, especially in terms of discovering their own unique paths as witches—Binx as a cyber-witch and Ridley as a… whatever she was meant to be. (She wasn’t sure yet, she was still figuring that out.)
And speaking of figuring things out…
“Hey, Binx? Do you know a girl named Penelope at our school? She moved here, like, over the summer,” Ridley said casually.
“Penelope. Hmm. What’s her last name?”
“Hart. She told me she has a YouTube channel. It’s called Just Faces or something.”
Binx lit up. She always got excited about anything and everything online-related. She began scrolling and tapping and typing on her phone.
“They really need to put a cell tower in this place,” she murmured under her breath. After a moment, she held up her phone for Ridley to see. “Her?”
A YouTube video began to play. Penelope’s smiling face filled the screen. She wore a pink V-neck blouse, and a small heart-shaped tattoo (or birthmark?) peeked out from under the neckline.
Ridley felt that wobbly-on-the-inside feeling again.
“Hey, guys! It’s Penelope! Soooo… many of you have been asking me about how to rock a dark lipstick without looking like the undead. Today’s tutorial is all about dark matte lipsticks, and tomorrow’s tutorial will be part two, dark glossy lipsticks.”
Binx hit pause.
“Yeah, that’s her,” said Ridley.
“She has over sixty-five thousand subscribers. Impressive. So, what about her?”
“Nothing. I met her today, that’s all. She’s nice. She’s dating this guy, Colter—”
“Colter Jessup?”
“He was the guy talking to Iris Gooding this morning.”
“Yup, Colter Jessup. Mira used to go out with him. It was, like, ages ago.”
Ridley blinked, surprised. “Mira and Colter? Really?”
“I’m pretty sure. Wait, let me check her social.”
Binx resumed her scrolling and tapping and typing. Ridley tried to imagine Colter and Mira dating. Mira seemed kind of shallow, like she was into surface more than substance. If that was the kind of girl Colter liked, then what did that say about Penelope? Or maybe there was more to both Mira and Colter than met the eye? Ridley didn’t know the guy. Maybe he was just as great on the inside as on the outside.
Ridley and Binx were getting close to the hillside that sloped down to the mall. In her peripheral vision, Ridley saw Daniel’s tree to the right, by a cluster of laurel bushes. There it was, not the tallest tree in the cemetery, but not the smallest, either. A teenager. Its large, verdant leaves fluttered in the breeze. A crow hovered on a low branch, preening its shiny black feathers. For a moment, Ridley wondered if Daniel might send her a sign… but how? By making the crow speak to her? By rearranging the leaves into symbols?
Dumb, she chided herself.
Still, she wished she could talk to him. About what happened. About Momma and Daddy. About everything.
“Got it!” Binx announced. “Sorry it took forever.” She held up a photo of Mira and Colter in front of Dahlia’s Ice Cream, which was downtown. Mira’s arm was outstretched in selfie mode as she and Colter exchanged a kiss. Mira’s hair was different… shorter.
“Huh,” Ridley said.
“I would totally date him, too,” Binx murmured. “He’s a snack.”
Ridley shrugged. “I guess so. If you like that type.” Which Penelope obviously did.
“What’s not to—” Binx stopped in her tracks. “Pleukiokus,” she murmured under her breath.
Ridley stopped, too. “Binx?”
“Say it—now!”
“P-pleukiokus,” Ridley blurted out. “You’re scaring me. What’s going on?”
Binx put her hands on Ridley’s shoulders and spun her around. She jutted her chin at a row of gravestones just beyond a grassy berm.
In a garish red hue, someone had spray-painted the word DEAD on one and WITCH on another. Ridley stifled a cry as Binx snapped a quick photo of the atrocity with a shaking hand. She grabbed Ridley’s arm and tugged.
“Let’s get the hex out of here.”
The two girls ran, putting the horrible message behind them, but every time Ridley closed her eyes it was as if the words had been burned across her retinas.
DEAD WITCH.
12 RESCUE ME
Psychometry and prophecy are powerful sisters in the practice of Magic and Mentalism.
(FROM THE GOOD BOOK OF MAGIC AND MENTALISM BY CALLIXTA CROWE)
Iris speed-walked down Sycamore Street, wondering how she’d managed to get so lost on her way home. She’d had to stay after school to meet with her bio and algebra teachers, and figure out if there might be overlap with what she’d studied at her old school. Now she was late, and her mother was counting on her to watch Nyala and Ephrem while she helped Grandma Roseline at the restaurant.
Iris was thankful for the GPS app on her phone, which was named Ravenscroll. (Phones were kind of like scrolls carried by ravens, right? As in, methods of communication? Or maybe she was just a big, giant dork.) She’d hardly ever needed the app to navigate her old neighborhood in Harlem, which had numbered east-west
