Hexed

After another hour of staring, with Bishop splayed out on the couch, reading Catch-22 with Lumpkins at his feet, my internal dialogue becomes noticeably more terse. Move it, goddamn it! I haven’t got all day. Move it or I’ll snap your twisty metal limbs in half.

 

Despite the threats of violence, the clip doesn’t budge.

 

“Ugh!” I chuck the clip across the room. It lands with a plink against the desk.

 

Bishop doesn’t even glance up from his book. Maybe because it’s the third time I’ve chucked the paper clip, and the third time I’ve picked it up and refused his offer to break for a snack. I want to get this right. I have to get this right. Mom wanted nothing more than to be a witch all her life; it would somehow make this whole mess just the tiniest bit better if I got to carry out her dream.

 

“You need to relax,” Bishop says.

 

I walk over to the couch, blocking the last of the sun from his face. He still doesn’t look up. I pluck the book from his hands and drop it on his stomach.

 

“Hey,” he grunts. “I was just getting to the good part.”

 

“How sad. So look, can we not try something a little more exciting? Flying, maybe?”

 

He rolls his eyes. “How do you expect to fly if you can’t even summon your magic? You’ve got to learn the basics first.”

 

It’s my turn to roll my eyes. “Can I get a little more direction here? It’s obviously not working.”

 

“You need to find it on your own. But no worries—this is the hardest part. Once you know how to find it, it’ll always come easy. It’s like riding a bike: you can’t unlearn it.”

 

“If it’s even there,” I mumble. “What about candles? Energy drink for witches and all that.”

 

He snorts, which turns into a cough, and I get the distinct impression he’s fighting hard to rein in a huge grin.

 

“What?” I tilt my head to the side, hands on my hips. “You made that up, didn’t you?”

 

He shrugs and sucks in the corners of his lips.

 

“You jerk!” I punch him in the shoulder.

 

“Ow.” Bishop cradles his arm, full-on laughing now. “What’s with you being so violent?”

 

“You make me this way.”

 

“Oh, sure. Abuser blames the victim. Classic excuse.” He picks up his book and flips through the pages, searching for the spot where he left off. “Channel all your pent-up anger and you could single-handedly wipe out the Priory.”

 

“Hardy har har.” I turn to retrieve the paper clip from the desk but Bishop’s words, intended as a joke, bounce inside my head. Couldn’t hurt to try, I decide.

 

I think about everything that makes me angry: Bishop, reading his stupid book while I struggle; Bishop, using his magic like it’s the easiest thing in the world, while I burst a blood vessel in my brain from all the concentration and get nothing, nothing for my efforts; the fact that I have to do this at all, because there’s a group of evil sorcerers that wants me dead, all because I might be a witch, something I never asked to be.

 

My nostrils flare, and my breath comes hard and fast. I clench my fists and dig my nails into my palms, knuckles turning white. A warm sensation starts low in my stomach, like I’ve just drank hot chocolate too quickly. Sheer excitement almost knocks the heat right back to where it came from, but I force myself to concentrate, to think of the thing that makes me angriest: that they killed Mom, took her from me forever, and in the most brutal way possible.

 

The heat moves up into my chest, igniting into the ball of fire I felt earlier when Bishop summoned Mom’s voice, pulsing not just in my veins but in every cell of my body, surging from my center out into my arms with every beat of my heart.

 

“Do you feel it?” Bishop asks, bent low to my ear. I didn’t even hear him get up.

 

I nod.

 

“Repeat after me: Sequere me imperio movere.”

 

I glance over my shoulder at him, simultaneously shocked to hear this strange language slipping so easily from his mouth and sure that he’s screwing with me, because I’ve never heard him utter a word to make his magic work, but he repeats it again, urging me to copy with a little shove.

 

“Sequere me imper … imperi-something or other—” I groan as I feel the heat slipping away.

 

Bishop squeezes my shoulder. “Concentrate. Focus on the clip. And repeat after me. Sequere me imperio movere.”

 

I sigh, leveling my gaze at the paper clip on the desk. “Sequere … sequere me imperio movere.”

 

The left end of the desk pitches up so quickly that loose papers flutter to the carpet. A gasp tumbles out of my mouth, my heart pumping at a dangerous speed. The break in concentration makes the desk thunk back to the floor. But before Bishop can say a word, I lock eyes on the desk again and repeat the words. “Sequere me imperio movere.”

 

“What the … ?” Bishop’s hand falls from my shoulder. He steps in front of me, eyeing the levitating desk with a mixture of awe and incredulity.