Page 34 of Witchy Chick

“Of course I can. I’m learning magic. I’ll be able to do all sorts of useful things. Maybe I can ban dust while I’m at it.”

He beamed at me with his cute teeth gaps. “The house is so dusty! When is Dad coming home? He’ll love the woods.”

My heart constricted and ached, and my throat grew tight. “I don’t know. Get dressed while I go put on some cereal.” I ruffled his hair then got off the floor and headed downstairs, feeling all kinds of weird. I needed answers about the last Hoar House residents. I could ask Ray of Sunshine, but then I’d have to explain about last night. And I’d have to ask what he’d really been doing in the bar. Although, did it matter if he’d planned to kill me if he changed his mind? He wasn’t a killer, not really. He wanted to hang out with plants not drain people of their life and magic. Maybe.

“Come on, we need to go if we’re going to make it before the bus gets here,” Sage said once the boys had eaten. She just took an apple, like that was enough.

“I’ll walk with you,” I said, and grabbed a pair of boots from the night before. They were dry and mud-free, like the cloak still hanging over the banister. It hadn’t moved, but it had been cleaned. So creepy. But magic was doing its thing in my life.

I threw the cloak over my robe then walked with them. I’d search the cemetery for my phone on my way back.

The kids ran up and down the road laughing while I walked with Sage.

“You don’t have to walk with me. You look like a witch. Other kids will be at the stop.”

“Anyone other than Donny?”

She hesitated. “No.”

“Do you think he’ll mind if I look like a witch?”

“No. But the kids on the bus will gossip. It’s bad enough that we moved into the big haunted house.”

I slowed down, unable to not look at the cemetery. I’d actually raised bones last night. “I don’t mind if you take the kids without me. But I am a witch.”

She looked at me with big eyes. “I guess. Me too.”

“We’ll have to work hard to make that not a negative thing.”

She nodded soberly. “Yeah. See ya!” She ran ahead to catch up to her brothers, leaving me standing there, next to the cemetery gates. I waited until they’d turned the bend then I climbed the embankment. I hesitated there, staring at the still and quiet graves. Maybe I’d imagined that whole thing. Except that my imagination wasn’t that good. Was I really the Hoar Heir? Impossible. And yet the house had made me a cup of tea last night. Unless I’d done that.

I sighed then went into the cemetery, walking around hunched over, trying to find my phone. It took me twenty minutes to spy the small metallic glint of one corner sticking out above the soil. I took it out of the dirt and, although the screen was cracked, it seemed to work okay.

I really, really wanted to call Clark. Could I do that? We were getting a divorce. But maybe we could be friends afterwards? I really needed someone normal in my life.

I called his number before I gave myself the chance to think about it.

He answered almost right away. “Is everything okay?” he asked, so concerned, so sweet. Such a liar. But I was a witch. Maybe a normal person couldn’t stay with a witch forever. Maybe I sucked out his life force or something.

“Yeah. Jerome asked when you were coming home, so I thought I should find out exact dates.”

“I’ll be sure to look that up today. So the kids are all right?”

One of them slept with a jar of bugs. Another one tried to kill people with garbage cans. “They’re great.”

“And you?”

Raising the dead and kissing teenagers. Also Teeth. “Great! How are you doing?” It was a mistake to call. My chest was hurting so bad, my heart aching and breaking all over again. Fresh pain I didn’t need on top of all the weirdness.

His voice was low, intent, more hot than warm. “I miss you. So much. You’re my life. My sanity. My⁠—”

My phone caught on fire. I dropped it, watching it burn with dark flames. Was that me? I didn’t want to ruin my phone. But maybe I also did.

I waited until it stopped burning. When I tried to turn it on, it buzzed and then came on. No way a phone could survive dark flames. Maybe that hadn’t happened. Maybe this whole thing was one long psychotic break.

I plodded toward the house, feeling like the mess I was. When I got there, I stared at the large gothic beast, trying to understand what it really was. What I really was. It looked back at me back, like it was waiting for me to decide what I wanted so it could be that thing. That’s what I was doing, too. I needed to decide what I wanted so I could work towards being that thing. What did I want? Perfection wasn’t going to happen. But the house could be clean, and I could be dressed in actual clothes instead of a robe from who knew where, and a cloak that was definitely not from this century.

And I was going on a hot date with the Council’s Teeth. I should definitely dress to impress.