Chapter 5: Stranger Danger

They started arriving around 6:00.

On the one hand, I felt irrationally grateful. An entire room full of adults who had just dropped what they were doing for me.

To keep me safe.

That probably hadn't ever happened before. Maybe when I was born.

On the other hand, I was going to be in an indescribable amount of trouble. I wondered if they'd search my room while I was away.

The blunt sat like a friendly little... well... blunt, against my skin inside my sock. I was glad I had left the house with it.

Still, I was going to be in so much trouble. I got the impression this was not going to be an instant fix, which meant I'd be hours late with no good explanation, because they'd never believe me. “You left for the store at 1:00 p.m.,” they were going to say. “What took you eight hours to get back?”

I was going to lose my shopping privileges. That stung.

It made me mad, like, truly mad. "Stupid Oinkers," I said to my pig—well, my soon-to-be pig partner. He chuffed affectionately and put his wet nose on my ankle.

We had been hanging out in Elsie's living room for the last hour, ever since she had tired of discussing the magical ecosystem that was her garden—an explanation I truly had been unable to muster any attention span for.

She watched game shows.

What had I done wrong in a past life to end up with a mentor witch who watched game shows and didn't even have any cats?

Anyway, I didn't have the attention span for another ritual, and so we'd delayed the pig-ritual until later.

Mr. Oinkers put his head on my foot and went to sleep. He was the best of hogs.

The first witch who entered the room gave me the cold up-and-down. I already knew her.

"So, librarians are witches," I quipped.

"I'm onto you," she said. "You need this, and I'll help you. But if I see you smoking your cigarettes and leaving the butts outside on Elsie's pretty front porch, I'll tell your parents you've been smoking."

Bitch! This did not seem like the right time. I was stressed enough about being out late, not to mention all the weird stuff, as it was.

It turned out witches came from all sorts of backgrounds.

Scarlett Humphrey was also known to me: She taught US history, volleyball, and sex ed. She'd never really bothered the quiet girl at the back of the class, and I'd never really given her a reason to bother me. I answered the questions she asked reluctantly. She was happy enough to get a correct answer that she only called on me a couple of times, and she'd known I was reading a book during her history classes and hadn't ever ratted me out.

I had never expected to see her with a magic wand.

The other five were strangers.

A larger woman with big friendly eyes and a warm smile gave me a hug that smelled like Pine-Sol. Three sisters in their mid-twenties introduced themselves to me rapid-fire, and I forgot which was which immediately: Melody, Harmony, and Janette.

"For my mother," one of them had explained. That didn't explain anything at all.

The last one, Flores, was the spitting image of a grandmother but scowled at me and didn't say a word. Perhaps I'd left a cigarette butt on her lawn at some point.

I really don't go out of my way to make enemies. There were only so many things it could be about.

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As it turned out, the unfriendly one was also in charge.

Yay, my life.

"Ahem," she said. I immediately hated her. "I'm calling today's emergency coven meeting to address the new responsibility Elsie has seen fit to take under her wing."

Not like I hadn't heard myself talked about that way before.

"Apparently," she went on, "Elsie needs us to assist with an astral tethering."

There were nods around the circle.

"And we are here to prevent Elsie and her husband from taking advantage of this poor little girl, whom Elsie could have left to her own devices."

"She's right to do it," said Mrs. Scarlett Humphrey.

I didn't know why I was thinking of her with both names.

"We didn't all grow up in an era of 'stranger danger'," said the older woman sarcastically. Her name, I gathered, was Marisol Flores.

"Back in your day," I spoke up, "girls carried hat pins and single-shot pistols, and traveled in groups, with chaperones, or not at all."

"That's a Victorian joke, Mari," said Scarlett helpfully.

She pronounced the 'i' like an 'ee'.

"Young lady," said Ms. Flores sternly, "do you always bite the hand that feeds you?"

"Do you always bad-mouth people who can't defend themselves?"

"I think you're doing a fine job," snapped the older woman. "May I continue?"

It wasn't a question.

"Are we going to keep bad-mouthing, or are we going to get to the part where you're the responsible adults in the room and we... do the thing?"

"As step one is to lock you in a closet," Flores answered, "I would think proceeding directly to that might be most pleasant for everyone involved."

I gave her an abortive curtsy. "I know you're doing something important, and I know you're doing it for me, and I appreciate you coming here," I said. "Sorry if I'm a little sensitive."

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

"She's had a bad day," said Elsie, "and she's going to have a worse night."

"I'll cover for you," said Scarlett Humphrey. "This one time."

"Scarlett," said the old woman.

"Marisol?" responded Scarlett in the same tone.

"...Thank you." It was gruff, but genuine.

Not bad people, I realized. Just people.

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And so, I walked into the closet. As promised, it locked from the inside.

They'd explained the ritual thoroughly, because, apparently, I needed to know. The way it usually worked—traditionally, among people who knew and trusted one another and weren't afraid of being taken advantage of—was that the entire group would get in the buff, because clothing messes with astral projection.

"Why can't I just wear clothes and be safe?"

"It distorts astral projection," Elsie explained, "making it less reliable, less clear, and less controlled. It doesn't stop it."

"That's possible," said one of the sisters—maybe Melody.

"If you slept in a coffin," grumped Marisol Flores.

"Never mind, then."

The traditional method involved naked witches forming a circle with their backs to the center. This was to handle the fact that some people are uncomfortable being naked and to avoid making it weird.

To mimic that, Elsie would be on the other side of the wall—naked—and I’d be inside the closet—also naked. We would lean against the wall, back-to-back. They’d marked the spot for it.

"I thought being back-to-back was about modesty."

"It may be," explained Elsie, "but with rituals, it's like they have a certain momentum. It's best to try to keep as close to the original as you can, just in case you don't understand why something's important and it turns out that it is."

And then, with all of that done, my job was to go to sleep.

They had immediately recommended that I take a Benadryl.

Scarlett Humphrey and I had immediately recommended that I not take a Benadryl.

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It's really hard to fall asleep listening to a group of women chattering in the next room.

They all knew each other. That made sense; this was a coven.

I have now met a coven of witches.

I have cast magic. I am now a witch.

I have a pig.

Where am I going to keep the pig? He can't stay in the bushes forever.

I did not want to know that about Janette's sex life.

I tapped on the door.

There was embarrassed giggling.

"You're supposed to be asleep!" yelled the one whose name I hadn't gotten.

"I'm trying," I complained, but quietly.

In gym class, they had taught us to lie back and relax all of our muscles, starting at our feet, going up our legs, to our core, to our shoulders, to our arms, and then relax our neck and our face. They'd let us sit there for a few minutes and then class would end. It was the best part of class.

I'm pretty sure the best class I ever had was probably nap time when I was in pre-K, too young to remember it or know to treasure it.

I thought about my classes, about the people in them, and pictured their faces. I wondered if any of them knew about magic. I'd have to ask what the population rate was.

That was a stupid question. Anybody could be magical with initiation. There were probably millions of us.

I was asleep.

I lucid dream a lot because I drink coffee before bed. I drink coffee before bed because a girl's got to drink something, and there's nothing in the Kimber house that tastes anywhere near as good as the pumpkin spice coffee creamer, and the tap water is terrible. Anyway, I blame the lucid dreaming on chemical influence of one kind or another.

And I was again, but this time, I was watching myself sitting in a closet.

Huh. I was drooling. Gross.

"All right," said Elsie's voice. "You've done it."

I looked down at myself. I was mist, formless and bright.

"Very good," said Elsie. "Now, look into your eyes."

They were shut.

With some experimentation, I discovered that I could put my face through my face. That was strange. In the back of my eye, there was a gleam of gold.

"You're looking at the seat of your own consciousness," said Elsie. "It's meant to be sort of sticky, so just put your hand in and try to draw a strand."

I did. I teased out a little bit of glowing gold through the side of my head. As I kept pulling, it thinned down to the size of a spaghetti noodle but didn't thin further.

"You have a tether. Now you must attach it to yourself," she instructed. "Look at it closely and touch it to your... well, you don't have a head now, but you should feel..."

A core, I 'said'—or thought. I have a core.

I plugged it in. It was as simple as that.

Whoops. I was awake again. Was I supposed to wake up?

"Um," said Elsie. "That was going to be lesson two! Good job."

"Do I have to do it again?"

"It's been long enough," Scarlett said firmly. "Her parents will have called the cops long ago."

No, they won't, I thought.

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They hadn't.

In fact, I don't know if they even knew I wasn't in my room before Mrs. Scarlett Humphrey knocked on the front door—firmly, primly, like Mary Poppins might have done.

"What's all this about?" slurred Zachary Kimber, otherwise known as 'Dad'—quotes essential. He'd been drinking, probably, or asleep on the La-Z-Boy, or both in sequence.

"Your daughter," said Mrs. Scarlett Humphrey, "ate some fruit from my friend's garden and had a bad reaction to it. We scrambled to get her the help she needed, but she's only just now able to get home. I don't think we've met. I'm Scarlett Humphrey, a teacher at her school. I’d have called ahead, but we didn't have your number."

I shuffled my feet. I knew the number, but I could play dumb.

"Oh," said Zack, eyebrows raised. "Are you okay... honey?"

He doesn't call me honey. Or really anything. He just says, "There's pizza in the fridge," or "The game's on," or "Do your homework." I don't really dislike him, except that knowing I'm going to get kicked out when I turn 18 kind of sours the feeling.

"I don't know," I said honestly.

Scarlett Humphrey had said that someday we might want to tell my parents what happened. I'd told her they weren't my parents.

Still, closer to the truth.

"She should be okay," assured Mrs. Scarlett Humphrey. "Do you mind if we check up on her tomorrow? My friend was feeling really guilty."

That would explain tomorrow, but I wasn’t sure how we were going to explain “every Friday”.

"No, that's fine," he said, then looked at me. "Maxine? Is that okay?"

I really don't hate him.

"Yeah," I said noncommittally. He toyed with the door, swaying it slightly, awkwardly leaving the goodbyes to one of us on the porch to handle.

"Well, we'll see you tomorrow then," said Scarlett. She gave me a friendly wave goodbye.

It was altogether less serious than the serious conversation we had had on the way back in her Volkswagen.

"This sort of thing is supposed to be taught in families," she told me. "There's supposed to be trust and boundaries and safety, and you aren't going to have the benefit of any of that. I want you to know that Elsie has taken responsibility for you in a way that goes beyond what I think you're thinking. In the community, anything you do with magic is both your faults: her fault and your fault. Any of her friends will know that treating you well is treating her well, and anyone who doesn't like her may spite you to spite her.

"That being said, she is not trained for this. If you have any concerns that anything she wants you to do is inappropriate, I want you to call me. I'll give you my number. I am a mandatory reporter, and I will tell someone if you are mistreated or taken advantage of, or put into uncomfortable situations without a good reason. There was nothing we could have done differently tonight that would have made it better, but that won't always be true. Elsie likes to go for the tool at hand instead of reaching for the best option. We all have our little ways, of course."

The tone of voice was very much what I would have expected to come along with little, comforting gestures, like patting my hand or something. She did nothing like that. Hands on the steering wheel, ten and two. Eyes on the road. I approved wholeheartedly.

When you're small, it's really easy to be aware of just how scary the world really is.

I was learning I was smaller than I thought.

I care, don't get me wrong, about being independent. Deeply. But today, I could appreciate having a real adult in the room.