“Uh-huh. Two of them. The first one turned out to be… it was a bad fit. But the one I’m in now… well, it’s really great. I kind of started it. If you’re interested, maybe you could think about joining.”
Iris pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose and sat up very straight. “Really?”
“Really. Let me talk to the other girls. Maybe you could come to one of our coven meetings, check it out?”
“Really?”
Iris couldn’t believe her luck. She’d made a new friend—her first one since moving to Sorrow Point—who also happened to be a witch. A nice witch. And she’d just been invited (or sort of invited) to her very first coven meeting (not to mention her first social gathering of any kind since Abigail Roth’s disco-themed holiday party last year, which had been kind of a disaster—okay, a huge disaster, because Iris had hidden out in the bathroom the entire time because the loud music had hurt her ears).
“I have like a million questions to ask you. Like, how many witches are there at your… I mean, our… school? How do they… and you… keep it a secret? Are those three Antima guys dangerous? They are, aren’t they? How long have you known you’re a witch? What about the other witches in your coven? Those girls I saw you with this morning… are they in your coven? The Juilliard fan from my French class and the pink-haired one?”
“Ridley and Binx, yup.” Greta picked up the purring black cat, set it down on the bench next to Iris, and stood. “I so want to answer all your questions, but I really need to go. I promised my mom I’d make dinner. Can you put your number in my phone, so I can call you or text you later? Oh, but before I go—speaking of the Antima… and by the way, I cast a memory-erase spell, praetereo, on those three guys, so they won’t remember what happened here…” She paused and seemed to consider something. Then she nodded to herself. “I want to show you something.”
Greta reached into her backpack and pulled out a small, clear bag. Inside was a bunch of rosemary sprigs and a piece of paper with words and numbers on it.
Iris felt a sensation of icy cold spreading through her body.
“W-what is that?” she asked nervously.
Greta slid the paper out of the bag and held it out for Iris to see. “Callixta calls these shadow messages. Did you get one, by any chance? Or did you happen to cast a spell on this one?”
“What?” Iris peered at the writing:
YOU AND YOUR KIND NEED TO DISAPPEAR.
1415
The sensation of cold intensified. Iris crossed her arms over her chest, shivering.
“Wow, that’s creepy. And rude. No, I didn’t get one of these, and no, I didn’t cast a spell on it. Where did you get this? And what’s 1415?”
“I don’t know. I found it in my pocket before homeroom this morning. Another witch at our school—she belongs to the other coven—found the exact same shadow message in her locker. So you didn’t get one?”
“Nope.”
“We think it might be from the Antima. Maybe even one of those guys.” She gestured vaguely in the direction the SUV had driven off. “Plus, someone—a witch—seems to have enchanted it… enchanted both of them. We don’t know who, or why.”
“That’s so weird!”
Trying to ignore the cold, Iris leaned in and read the shadow message a second time. Her head and Greta’s head were almost touching.
The shadow message seemed to be calling out to her, trying to get her attention.
“Could I?” Iris reached for it.
“Are you sure you want to handle it?”
“I’ll be careful, I promise.”
Iris took the shadow message from Greta and laid her hand on it. The cold immediately dissipated and was replaced by heat. She took a deep breath and let her eyes close.
The images came to her, fast and furious. Flames. A crow skeleton. People shouting. A girl in a red chair, tied up with ropes.
1415.
14.
15.
A, B, C, D…
“Iris? Are you okay?”
Iris’s eyes snapped open.
“It’s… they’re… I think fourteen and fifteen might represent the fourteenth and fifteenth letters of the alphabet? So, what is that?” She quickly counted off on her fingers. “N and O, right?”
“How did you—” Greta gaped at her. “You figured that out just from touching the shadow message?”
“Yeah. It’s been happening to me more and more. I touch stuff, and these images appear. I’m not sure how, or why. But sometimes they’re clearer than other times, and this time it was really clear. So N… O, ‘no’? No to what? And why was it in code?”
“I… I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it.”
“And hey, Greta?”
“Yes?”
Iris wasn’t sure if she should tell her new friend about the other images that had come to her. The flames, the crow skeleton, people shouting…
… and Greta tied up in a red chair, a prisoner.
Of course, these visions might be nothing. She probably shouldn’t scare Greta unnecessarily.
“Be careful,” Iris said simply.
13 RETAIL THERAPY
Be wary of witch-hunters who may be disguised as witches.
(FROM THE GOOD BOOK OF MAGIC AND MENTALISM BY CALLIXTA CROWE)
By the time Binx and Ridley reached the mall, they were out of breath and completely freaked out. Who had spray-painted DEAD WITCH on those gravestones?
Antima, obviously.
Binx leaned against the outside of a photo booth, panting. She quickly texted the photo of the defaced gravestones to Greta with the message:
R and I just saw this in the cemetery. Antima???
Greta texted back:
That’s terrible!!! Whose graves?
Binx wrote:
Not sure. I’ll blow up the pix when I get home and try to read the names. R and I are at the mall now.
Greta wrote:
Be safe. I’m in the middle of something, but I’ll text you again in a few min. I have news.
Binx
