Cate Tiernan - Book of Shadows

I nodded, hoping my expression of sympathy was winning out over my feelings of relief.

"Yeah. It's starting to really annoy me," she said glumly.

I thought about telling her that I had done a spell for Robbie and that I was waiting to see what would happen. But, I couldn't form the words, and it, along with my feelings for Cal, became another secret I kept from my best friend.

On Wednesday morning Bree and some of the other members of the circle were sitting on the benches as usual. When I walked up to them, Raven gave me a snide look, but Cal seemed completely sincere when he invited me to sit down.

"I really am sorry about Saturday," I said, mostly to Cal, I guess. "I was all set to drive over to Jenna's when this woman my mom works with called and insisted on dropping by to pick up some stuff. It took forever, and I was so frustrated—"

"I've heard your excuse already, and it's fairly lame," Raven interrupted.

I waited for Bree to step in and defend me in our traditional best-friend solidarity, but she was silent.

"Don't worry about it, Morgan," Cal said easily, washing away the awkwardness left hanging in the air.

At that moment Robbie appeared, and we all just stared. His skin looked better than it had since seventh grade.

Bree's dark eyes flicked to him, grazing his face and processing what she saw. "Robbie," she said. "God, you look terrific."

Robbie shrugged casually and dropped his backpack on the ground. I looked at him closely. His face was still broken out, but if his skin before had been a two on a scale of one to ten, with one being the worst, now it was up to a seven.

I saw Cal glance at him thoughtfully. Then he looked at me, as though assessing my involvement. It was like he knew everything. But he couldn't didn't so I kept quiet.

Keep it to yourself , I commanded Robbie silently. Don't tell anyone what I gave you. Inside, I was elated and flushed with a sense of awe. Had my spell potion really worked? What else could it be? Robbie had been seeing a dermatologist for years, with no visible improvement. Now he shows up after two days of my tincture and looks great. Did this mean I was actually a witch? No, it couldn't be that. I reminded myself. My parents weren't blood witches. I was safe from that. But maybe I did have a small gift for magick.

Jenna and Matt drifted toward us.

"Hey, guys," Jenna said. The October wind whipped her pale hair around her face, and she shivered and clutched her books tighter to her chest "Hey, Robbie." She looked at him as if trying to figure out what was different.

"Hey, does anyone have a copy of The Sound and the Fury ?" Matt asked, pushing his hands into the pockets of his black leather jacket. "I can't find mine, and I've got to read it for English."

"You can borrow mine," Raven said.

"Okay. Thanks," Matt said.

No one mentioned Robbie's appearance again, but Robbie kept looking at me. When at last I met his gaze squarely, he looked away.

By Friday, when Robbie's skin looked smooth and new and completely blemish free, when practically every student in school recognized that he was no longer a pizza face, when girls in his classes suddenly realized that hey, he wasn't bad looking at all, he decided to tell everyone how it happened.

On Friday afternoon I was in my backyard, raking leaves or, rather, raking occasionally but mostly seeing stunning maple leaf after stunning leaf, picking them up, examining them, admiring the passionate blotch and smear of colors across their finely veined skin. Some were still half green, and I imagined that they felt surprised to find themselves on the ground so soon. Some were almost completely dry and brown, yet with a defiant border of red or bloody tips as if they had raked the bark on the way down. Others were ablaze with autumn's fire of yellow, orange, and crimson, and some were very small still, too young to die, yet born too late to live.

I pressed my palm against a crisp leaf as big as my hand. Its colors felt warm against my skin, and with my eyes closed, I could feel impressions of warm summer days, the joy of being blown in the wind, the tenacious hanging on, and then the frightening, exhilarating release of autumn. Floating, finished, to the ground. The smell of earth, the joining to the earth.

Suddenly I blinked, sensing Cal.

"What is it telling you?" His voice floated toward me from the back steps. I startled like a rabbit and rocked backward on my heels. Looking up, I saw Mary K. at the back door, directing Cal, Bree, and Robbie to the backyard to find me.

I looked at them in the darkening afternoon. I glanced around for my leaf, but it was gone. I stood up, brushing off my hands and my seat.

"What's up?" I asked, looking from face to face.

"We need to talk to you," Bree said. She looked remote, even hurt, her full mouth pressed into a line.

"I told them," Robbie said bluntly. "I told them you gave me a homemade potion in a container, and it's fixed my skin. And I… I want to know what was in it."

My eyes opened wide in dismay. I felt like I was being judged. There was nothing to do but tell them the truth. "Catnip," I said reluctantly. "Catnip and chamomile and angelica and, um, rosemary and cucumber. Boiling water. Some other stuff."

"Eye of newt and skin of toad?" Cal teased.

"Was it a spell?" Bree asked, her forehead wrinkling.

I nodded, glancing down at my feet, kicking my clogs through the leaves. "Yeah. Just a beginner's spell. From a book," I looked up at Robbie. "I made sure it wouldn't have any harmful effects," I said. "I would never have given it to you if I thought it might harm you. Actually, I was pretty sure it wouldn't do anything at all."

He looked back at me. I realized that he had the potential to be good-looking, behind the clunky glasses and the lame haircut. His features had been obscured by his awful acne. His skin, now almost perfectly smooth, was etched very slightly with fine, white lines in a few places, as though it was still healing. I stared at it, fascinated by what I had apparently done.

"Tell us about it," Cal invited.

The screen door opened again, and my mom poked out her head."Hey, honey. Dinner in fifteen," she called.

"Okay," I called back, and she went in, no doubt curious as to who the unfamiliar boy was.

"Morgan," Bree said.

"I don't know how to explain it," I said slowly, looking down at the leaves. "I told you about the abbey upstate with an herb garden. The garden… I felt like it spoke to me." My face got red at the far-fetched words. "I felt… like I wanted to study herbs more, know more about them."

"Know what, exactly?" Bree asked.

"I've been reading and reading about medicinal, magickal properties of herbs. Cal said I was… an energy conductor. I just wanted to see what would happen."

"And I was your guinea pig," Robbie said flatly.

I looked up at him, this Robbie I barely recognized. "I've been feeling really bad about missing two circles in a row. I wanted to work a little on my own. I decided to try a simple spell," I said. "I mean, I wasn't going to try to change the world. I didn't want anything huge or scary. I needed something small, something positive, something whose results I could evaluate pretty quickly."

"Like a science project," Robbie said.

"I knew it wouldn't hurt you," I insisted. "It was just ordinary herbs and water."

"And a spell," Cal said.

I nodded.

"When did you do it?" Bree asked.

"Sunday night, at midnight," I said. "I guess I was feeling pretty depressed about being stuck home Saturday night during the circle."

"Did anything happen when you did the spell?" asked Cal, looking at me with interest. I could feel Bree's anger.

I shrugged. "There was a storm." I didn't want to talk about the candles going out or the crack of thunder that had been so amazingly loud.