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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

If hope can make magic real, then our charging spell should work in spades.

It’s been an odd ten minutes, but at least now I know how to use an herb bundle.

Avery has cleansed me, my amethyst, herself, and her living room in its smoke.

And yeah, it smells really good. She blew my mind when she showed me her beautiful wand—not a ten-dollar toy, an actual magic wand.

It’s made of selenite and mounted on a handle of ornately carved silver.

With it, she cast a circle around us and the coffee table where she’s set up our tools and ingredients.

Candles flicker and stick incense fills the room with fragrant smoke. Talk about a heady sensory experience. In the center of the table sits a small plate, and on it lies my necklace inside a circle of sprinkled salt and herbs.

“Now for the hard part.” Avery orders me to have a seat on the floor on one side of the narrow table while she settles herself across from me. “Have you ever meditated before?”

“I do yoga.” The relaxing, stretchy kind.

To my surprise, she approves. “Good, then you know how to be quiet and still. ”

I can be quiet and still for hours if I have a good book. Doing witchcraft? Who can say?

“We start with a grounding meditation,” she says, crossing her legs and straightening her spine like a yogi. “It’s something you should always do before any kind of working. But that’s all in the book I gave you.”

As she instructs me to close my eyes and imagine I have roots, I think of the fallen tree Leo and I dined on during our hike.

It’s easy to picture its torn roots as my own, burrowing into the ground through all the layers of soil, clay, and rock, digging deep for the earth’s core of energy.

When I find it, I use those roots to draw the energy up, feeling it pulse through them, thick and rich.

I pull it up and up and up until it spills throughout my whole body, filling me with a sensation that’s at once both powerful and tranquil. It’s pure and strong, and it feels like…

Leo.

I don’t dwell on this association, not right now. I simply bask in this rare, peaceful confidence. How nice it would be if I could feel this way every day of my life.

Although Avery could probably ground herself and prepare for our ritual in less than a minute, she talks me through all the steps.

Together, we touch the herbs and salt and invoke their aid, then we hold our hands above the burning candles and call upon the transforming power of fire.

Finally, Avery passes the amulet through one of the dancing flames and lays it back on the plate, cleansed and ready to be charged.

At her command, I take it into my right hand and let her put hers over the top of mine. Her directions are similar to Leo’s, only they make more sense to me now. Probably because I’m sober.

“Take all that energy you have in you and channel it,” she says. “Feel it coming down your arm and into your hand. Then push it out into the crystal.”

My whole arm tingles and burns, like it’s being directly hit by the summer sun.

I close my eyes and clench the pendant tightly, pouring my energy into it as Avery begins to chant.

Her words aren’t in Latin, nor are they a sing-song rhyme, but as she murmurs them over and over, they lull me into a trance.

“Filter out pain, let in truth, absorb what intends to do harm. Filter out pain, let in truth, absorb what intends to do harm. Filter out pain, let in truth, absorb what intends to do harm…”

She squeezes my hand, and I join in, chanting along with her. Our voices blend and our chant speeds up until our whispers become nothing more than a low hiss. I sink into the restful, all-consuming darkness, letting it close in on me as I feel the last of my energy drain into the crystal.

Avery lets go of my fist. “Open your hand.”

I uncurl my fingers to reveal the necklace and the red marks its pointed edges have left on my skin. The amethyst looks different somehow. Brighter, maybe. And it’s burning hot. I swear I can feel it vibrating when I touch it with my other hand.

Avery wears a satisfied smile. “It’s charged and ready.”

“Holy shit.” I did it. Magick. And it was incredible.

I exhale and sag against the couch behind me.

“Tired?” Avery asks.

“I feel half dead. Like PMS tired.”

She laughs. “That means you did it right.”

“PMS?” I’m so wiped, I’m slaphappy.

“Ha ha. The ritual, you dork.” She comes round the table to settle beside me. “You’re a natural born witch.”

I’m too exhausted to consider the weight of that assessment. “What now?”

“Now we ground again so we can balance our energy.”

She takes me through another meditation, this one faster, until we’ve both played give-and-take with the earth long enough to feel replenished.

At least now I’m able to get up off the floor.

I perch on the couch and put the necklace back on.

It feels as if it’s alive—with a heart that’s beating in time with mine .

“Last step of any intense ritual—” Avery licks her lips and grins. “Chocolate.”

So that’s what the M she would recognize the signs.

Idly, I fiddle with an M&M’s bag, feeling the round candies through the plastic. “How did you get out?”

“I figured out what I really wanted, and I started doing it.”

I snort. She makes it sound so simple. The figuring out part alone would take me twenty years. “But you wanted to be an art major.”

She snaps her fingers for the candy bag. “I’m getting a degree without going into debt and I’m taking a ton of art classes. I’m happy with that.”

So she’s taking the education her parents are willing to pay for and making it work for her. I should figure out how many credit hours I need to get that women’s studies minor. It’s a place to start.

Once the chocolate has rejuvenated us, I take Avery up on her offer to drive me home. “By the way,” she says as she pulls up close to Newberry’s entrance, “I want to apologize for misjudging you, you know, when we first met.”

“Oh, uh, that’s okay.” I don’t know what to say. “I mean, I am a sorority girl.” Or I will be.

“Maybe. But you’re a lot of other things, too.”

Feeling awkward, I change the subject. “So, the book you gave me—where’s a good place to start?” I’m looking forward to Thanksgiving break when I’ll have the time to really delve into it.

“Hmmm, shielding might work for you. But before you do that, read the first chapter and work a little more on the basics—the stuff we did today, like grounding. You can’t do any kind of magick without it.”

“The basics, then shielding,” I repeat with a nod. “Okay.”

“And do all the exercises. They might feel weird at first, but just keep practicing.”

Weird how? Because our charging ritual didn’t feel strange at all. I was too relaxed and caught up in the moment to feel self-conscious. In fact, I’m shocked by how natural and effortless it was.

“Text me if you need me,” Avery says. Then she smiles. “Or just, you know, text me.”

“I will.”

I get back to my room to find Liv and her laptop asleep on top of her covers.

Gently, I nudge her and invite her to go to dinner.

She never asks me where I’ve been and I don’t volunteer the information.

It’s not that I’m being secretive, it’s that I don’t know how to explain to her any of the things going on inside me.

After my failed attempt to tell Zander about my ability, I’m gun shy.

Hardly anyone gets what it’s like to be sensitive, much less psychic.

I simply have to accept that, even if it puts me in the uncomfortable position of straddling two different sets of friends.

No, two different worlds .