When Iris opened her eyes again, her field of vision shimmered. Sun. Sky. Wildflowers.
Breathe, she told herself.
“Are you okay?”
Iris’s head shot up. A girl emerged from behind a gnarled pine tree and was walking toward her.
“I… um…”
“Those guys are disgusting.”
“Um… yeah.”
The girl sat down on the bench and smoothed the skirt of her green velvet dress. She reached down and petted the black cat and murmured to it, occasionally glancing up to make sure the three guys were truly gone. They were.
Iris finally recognized her. It was the girl from this morning, at school, in the hallway. The one with the wand… correction, fountain pen.
“I’m Greta.”
“Hi… hey… I’m Iris.”
Greta continued petting the cat and speaking softly to it. Her skin smelled like lavender. Sunlight glinted on her long auburn hair and separated the individual strands into red and gold and copper.
Iris’s buzzing, crackling brain began to still itself. The lavender was nice. Calming. She tried to piece together what had just happened. Had those Antima guys really peed themselves at exactly the same moment? Slowly, things clicked into place and Iris looked over at Greta. Maybe the fountain pen hadn’t been a fountain pen, after all.
“Did you do that?”
Greta stopped petting the cat. “Do what?”
“Make those guys pee?”
“Ha ha, that’s funny. How would I even do that?”
Iris stared at her. Greta stared back, her eyes cool and guarded.
But there was something else in Greta’s expression. She seemed amused, pleased with herself.
She had made the Antima guys pee. With magic.
“You’re a witch, too!” Iris burst out before she could stop herself. “I didn’t know there even was a making-people-pee spell! Oh, and this morning at school? Your fountain pen wasn’t a fountain pen. It was a wand, wasn’t it? Am I right? Did you cast a spell on me? What kind of spell was it?”
Silence. Greta resumed petting the cat.
“Well?” Iris prompted her.
“You said ‘too.’”
“Excuse me?”
“You said, ‘You’re a witch, too.’ Are you telling me that you’re a witch, Iris?”
“Um…”
Iris fiddled with her smiley-face moonstone pendant, stalling. She’d said “too” accidentally, and now she couldn’t un-say it. Dumb. Should she do a memory-erase spell?
She’d never told a single living soul about her powers. She’d barely even known (or known of) any witches—just those girls who’d gotten into trouble at her old school, plus Veronica in Dr. Singh’s office, and they hadn’t known that she, too, was one of them. The only witches in Iris’s life were Jadora and the others in Witchworld, and they didn’t really count.
Now here was a real witch, sitting right next to her.
Someone just like her.
Someone who had rescued her from the Antima.
“Yes,” Iris whispered.
She waited for the sky to break open and unleash dark clouds and lightning and thunder. She waited for the police to show up and arrest her. She waited for Orion and Brandon and the Ax to reappear.
Nothing happened.
Greta smiled. “Well, that’s awesome.”
“It is?”
“Yes. It’s really awesome.”
Iris frowned, suddenly wary. This conversation seemed too easy. “You… you’re not tricking me, are you? You’re not an Antima member pretending to be a witch, are you?”
“Oh my gosh, no. Those guys were Antima, though—but you probably knew that.”
“How do you know I’m not?”
“I could be wrong, but I’m pretty good at reading people’s feelings. I’ve been trying to teach myself. I don’t sense any hatred in you.”
“Yeah, no, that’s not me. The only thing I hate is when my breakfast cereal gets soggy… oh, and when my clothes itch. Actually, JK, there’s a lot of stuff I hate. But not witches. Because I’m a witch, and… never mind, sorry, I’m talking too much. I do that when I’m nervous.”
“Why are you nervous?”
“I’m always nervous. Your mood-ring magic can probably sense that, right? ‘Nervous’ is my middle name. JK again, it’s Evangeline.”
“That’s pretty.”
“Thanks. Anyhoo, of course I’m nervous now, because it’s the first time I ever… I’ve never told anyone that I’m… and it’s terrifying. But also cool. But also terrifying.”
“I know what you mean.”
The black cat jumped up and curled itself onto Greta’s lap, purring.
“Hey, little one. You’re going to make Gofflesby jealous,” Greta murmured to the cat.
“Who’s Gofflesby?” Iris asked.
“My familiar. Do you have a familiar?”
“No. I mean, my family has pets. But I don’t know how you can tell who’s your familiar and who’s not your familiar, so maybe they’re all my familiars, or maybe none of them are.”
“Oh, you’ll just know,” Greta said, sounding unbelievably wise. “Have you read the book?”
“You mean Callixta Crowe’s book? Am I pronouncing her name right?”
“Yes and yes.”
“Only like half of it. I picked it up by accident in the library one day—but I didn’t check it out because I was worried that… well, the law and all that. I read like a bunch of chapters and took some notes, but that was it. The next time I went back to the library, it was gone.”
“So you didn’t read the chapter on familiars?”
“No. I’m only kind of familiar with familiars—get it, ‘familiar with familiars’?—from Witchworld. That’s a video game, FYI. But maybe you already know that, so sorry if I’m being redundant. Anyhoo, it’s not like I’ll find a dust dragon or a screaming unicorn or an ice-breathing devil squirrel in the real world, right?” Iris laughed awkwardly.
“Right. Well, according to Callixta, your familiar can simply be an animal you feel a special connection with. They don’t have to be magical or whatever. And you can have more than one familiar at a time. Or no familiar at all.”
“Oh! I didn’t know.”
Greta stroked the black cat between its ears; it lifted its head, purring with pleasure. “You said you’d never told anyone about your being a witch. That probably means you’ve never been part of a coven, right?”
“A coven? You mean like the Raven’s Rage Coven in Witchworld? Or the Healing Hearts Coven? I don’t like that one, though; the witches act
