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  “I have to complete the coming of age ritual before I turn twenty-six in two weeks,” I told her. “I was hoping you might want to be my mentor. Before you say no, the crappy rumors that Thelma has been spreading around have no basis in reality. I asked Morgan, and—”

  “When I was ten, Thelma told me that ice witches all end up imprisoned in their own frozen tundra because we can’t control our ability,” Noelle informed me. “I don’t really care what she says.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief. “Good. That’s nice to hear. So what do you think? Want to help me out?”

  Belinda brought Noelle’s iced coffee and set it on the table. “Anything else, dears?”

  “We’re fine,” Noelle said. “Thanks, Belinda.” Once Belinda was gone, Noelle pointed a discreet finger at her ice coffee, and the cubes—which had already begun to melt and dilute the brew—solidified again. “I’ve never mentored anyone for the ritual before, but I remember what my aunt did for me. I’m honored that you asked, but why me?”

  “You’re kind of my only option,” I admitted. “Morgan can’t do it because she’s the coven leader, and no one else wants to because they’re afraid of Thelma and what might happen if they let an outsider into the coven.”

  Noelle wrinkled her nose. “You’re not an outsider. You’re one of us.”

  “Try telling that to half the coven.”

  “Screw them,” Noelle declared. “You just got yourself a mentor, Gwen.”

  “Really?”

  “Hell yeah. Let’s stick it to everyone who thinks you don’t belong here.” She lifted her cup in a toast to me. “What’s next? The mentor-mentee bonding spell, right?”

  I hauled Noelle back to the Summers house with a wide grin and presented her to Morgan in the kitchen. “Look!” I said, dragging Noelle by the hand. “I found a mentor.”

  Noelle waved sheepishly. “As long as you approve, of course, Morgan.”

  Morgan set down her afternoon snack—leftover bacon sandwiches between two waffles—dusted her hands, and regarded the both of us. “Interesting choice, Gwen, and a smart one too. Noelle’s got a good head on her shoulders, and she’s great in a crisis. You do know what you’re getting yourself into though. Right, Noelle?”

  “I don’t want to see Gwenlyn get kicked out of the coven,” Noelle replied. “I’ll do whatever it takes to help her succeed in the ritual.”

  “We need you to perform the bonding spell,” I told Morgan. “Then I can get started on this community task.”

  Morgan shoved the rest of her snack into her mouth. “Sure,” she mumbled around the food as she got up from the table. “Let’s do it.”

  The bonding spell proved more difficult than I anticipated, but not because of the spell itself. Morgan simply couldn’t find the things she needed to complete it, but after rooting around in the basement for several long minutes, she finally unearthed a cardboard box labeled “coming of age ritual crap” in her unmistakable, messy handwriting.

  “Here we go.” She dropped the cardboard box into my arms, and my knees buckled beneath the weight. “Follow me. We gotta do this outside.”

  Noelle and I tracked Morgan into the backyard, through the high grass, until we were smack in the middle of the large field that separated the house from the forest. The brush had been stomped down from all the times the witches came out to do spells here. There was something about standing in the middle of all this nature that charged our power. Witches were stronger away from all the distractions and privileges of modern life. Our connection with the earth fueled our craft before anything else.

  With a groan, I squatted to set the box down. Morgan rifled through it, all the way to the bottom, and came up with a single white ribbon.

  “That’s it?” I asked in disbelief. “That box weights eighty pounds.”

  “It’s a heavy ribbon,” Morgan said. She picked a stick up from the ground and drew three circles on the ground, each at the point of a triangle. “Noelle, stand in that circle. Gwen, you go in the other one.”

  We obeyed. The top circle, the one at the point of the triangle, remained empty. Morgan drew a book entitled The Keen Needs of a Young Adult Witch and How to Provide Them from the cardboard box and opened it to a earmarked page. She stepped between us and read off the spell, in Latin as always.

  “Purveyors of our ancient power,” she began, “We are here to ask for your blessing in the pair set before you. Gwenlyn Bennett must sit the sixteenth year ritual, and she has chosen Noelle Summers as her mentor. Today, we bring them together in the rite of bonding. Gwenlyn,” she added in English. “Please step forward into the top circle.”

  As my foot landed in the flattened grass of the new circle, the outline of it flashed blue. Morgan wrapped the white ribbon around my wrist. It adhered to my skin as half of the bonding spell took effect.

  “Noelle,” Morgan said. “Please step forward.”

  Noelle did so, but Morgan hadn’t drawn the top circle large enough for both of us to stand together comfortably. Noelle almost toppled out, but I steadied her at the last second. She wrapped a firm hand around my waist and offered her opposite wrist to Morgan.

  “With this ceremonial ribbon, we unite Gwenlyn and Noelle until the ritual is complete,” Morgan announced, wrapping the other end of the white ribbon around Noelle’s wrist. “I declare the bonding ritual to be complete.”

  Despite Morgan’s declaration, the ribbon did not stick to Noelle’s wrist as it did to mine. The blue flare around the circle flickered and died, and Morgan’s magic expired before the bonding spell took effect.

  “What the heck?” Morgan muttered. She tried once more to tie the ribbon around Noelle’s wrist. This time, the fabric fell apart thread by thread.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked. “Why won’t it work?”

  Morgan growled with annoyance. “If the ribbon doesn’t take, it means there’s a problem with your choice of mentor. Noelle isn’t fit for the job.”

  “I take offense to that,” Noelle said.

  “It’s not you,” Morgan assured her. What was left of the ribbon fell off my wrist. “There has to be some dumb rule why you can’t mentor Gwen. Either that, or someone else in the coven is doing their damndest to make sure you don’t get a mentor, Gwen.”

  I pressed my lips together, holding in my comment until I was able to say something more appropriate than what I had in mind. “You meant Aunt Thelma? How could she affect this? It’s ancient magic, beyond her control.”

  “There’s always a loophole.” Morgan tossed the book and the torn ribbon back into the box. When she snapped her fingers, the box jumped into the air and carried itself back to the house. She caught my annoyed look. “What? Carrying heavy things builds character.”

  “It’s not that,” I said. “It’s Thelma. I’m going to rip her a new one.”

  I marched off through the high grasses.

  “Wait!” Morgan called. “You could make things worse.”

  “Gwen, don’t make trouble for yourself!” Noelle added.

  “I’m not making trouble!” I hollered back. “But if Thelma wants some, I’m happy to deliver!”

  Thelma lived on a nearby street where the houses were secretly reserved for members of the coven only. Due to a crafty spell, no mortals had ever been interested in moving into any of the homes of that street or the cul-de-sac at the end of it. Thelma’s house was halfway down the avenue, and I had almost reached it when Morgan finally caught up with me.

  “I’m not sure you want to do this,” she said, catching me by the arm to slow me down. “Thelma’s a jerk, but confronting her isn’t going to solve anything.”

  “If I don’t have a mentor, I can’t complete the ritual.” I pulled myself out of Morgan’s grasp. “Thelma’s asked for confrontation when she did whatever she did to stop me from bonding with Noelle.”

  “We don’t know that—”

  I spun around to face Morgan on the front porch of Thelma’s quaint home. “You’re the head of
this coven. You’re supposed to stop bogus like this from happening. Are you on my side or not?”

  “Don’t give me that crap,” Morgan said, suddenly stern. “I’m trying to look after you, and I’ll be the first person to put Thelma in her place if she’s done something to interfere.”

  “Let’s find out then.”

  I sidestepped Morgan and knocked on Thelma’s door. A second later, the crotchety older witch answered, wearing a nightgown and slippers though it was barely dinnertime. Thelma looked me over head to toe.

  “What do you want?”

  “To know if you interfered with my mentorship,” I answered. “Morgan couldn’t perform the spell on me and Noelle, and if you had anything to do with—”

  Thelma laughed outright. “You see, this is what happens when a youngling takes over as coven leader. You two don’t know anything about the old rules, do you?”

  “Spit it out, Thelma,” Morgan demanded. “What are we missing?”

  Thelma poked me in the chest. “You’ve been tasked with performing the original ritual. That means you can’t choose any mentor you please. The witch who accompanies you throughout this journey must have also completed the original ritual during their coming of age ceremony.”

  “No,” I said. “That can’t be true.”

  “It is,” Thelma replied matter-of-factly.

  “But that means I only have two choices—”

  “Thyme or Alberta,” Thelma finished for me. “Both decrepit, one crazier than the other. Pick your poison, Gwen.”

  5

  I paced the kitchen from end to end. Morgan sat on the counter and kicked her heels against the cabinets. She said nothing, which was saying something. Usually, she never shut up. Her silence wasn’t an encouraging sign.

  “I’m screwed, aren’t I?” I said at last. “Aunt Thyme is, like, a hundred years old. She only leaves her house for the important rituals. And Alberta is downright nuts. How is either one of them supposed to help me?”

  “I told you yesterday that you should speak to them,” Morgan reminded me.

  “Yeah, speak to them,” I said. “To ask them about their experience in the ritual, not request their mentorship. Admit it, Morgan. You think I’m doomed.”

  Morgan took a pipe from a nearby shelf and packed it with a mysterious mixture of crushed herbs. She lit it with a common lighter and took a long draw from the mouthpiece. When she blew the smoke out, it smelled like cigars and roses. The scent alone was relaxing, as was the magic she’d infused in the herbs earlier.

  “I never said that,” Morgan claimed, calmer with the pipe in her hand. “But this does present a unique challenge.”

  “That’s what you’re going to call it?”

  Morgan offered me the pipe. I shook my head, but she said, “Trust me, you’re going to need it.”

  I mimicked Morgan’s movements exactly but ended up inhaling too much smoke. I let out a violent cough and a puff of glittery pink smoke like an angry dragon. The effects, luckily enough, kicked in anyway. A peaceful hum drowned out the negative thoughts racing through my head, and I was able to separate my emotions from the problem at hand.

  “What do I do?” I asked Morgan. “Who do I choose? Thyme or Alberta?”

  Morgan drew another breath from the pipe. “Thyme’s old, but she’s one of the wisest witches in the bunch. She won’t be able to accompany you on any of your tasks like a traditional mentor would, but she’d get the job done from afar. She wouldn’t let you down. Alberta, on the other hand, is a bit of a loose cannon. You know that.”

  “I sure do,” I muttered.

  Alberta’s ability allowed her to concoct potions with any available ingredients. Long ago, she was the go-to witch to solve anything from boils to attention deficit. If you had an ailment, Alberta could cure it with one of her potions. Unfortunately, she became erratic with age. These days, no one dared to drink anything Alberta had been around. She had the bad habit of slipping one of her potions into random drinks, much to the beverage owner’s chagrin. More than once, I’d let my guard down around Aunt Alberta and ended up with a weird case of skin issues. I didn’t trust her at all.

  “Then go to Thyme first,” Morgan said. “Be nice. She’ll need convincing.”

  As dusk fell, I returned to the witches’ avenue. The various women had come out of their houses to enjoy the pink and orange sunset from the comfort of their front porches. They gathered with their favorite sisters and aunts, swung to and fro on levitating swings, and cast spells to keep the mosquitoes at bay. In the cul-de-sac, the bigger kids played a game of kickball, but everyone kept cheating. When Aaron stepped up to the plate, one of the girls on his team enchanted his sneaker with a super bounce spell. The pitcher rolled the ball to him, and he kicked it with all its might. The ball absorbed the power from the spell and ricocheted across the cul-de-sac, far over the heads of anyone in the outfield. Aaron gleefully ran the bases.

  With a quick snap, I conjured a shield to stop the ball from traveling any farther. It stopped dead mid-air and dropped right in front of Ari at second base. She snatched the ball and tagged Aaron’s shin as he slid into the plate.

  “Interference!” he yelled, pointing an accusatory finger at me.

  “You cheated anyway,” I shot back. “Or are you going to tell me you actually kicked the ball that far.”

  Ari bounced the ball off of Aaron’s back. “You’re out. Back to the bench.”

  Aaron slumped up, but not before sticking his tongue out at me. Rosemary, who sat on the curb with her headphones in, looked up as Aaron walked by.

  “What happened?” she asked. “Did I miss something?”

  “Just Aaron being a baby,” Ari said. “The score’s still eight to two. By the way, you’re a crappy referee, Rosie.”

  “Don’t say crap,” Rosemary reprimanded half-heartedly. “Get back to the game.”

  The kids resumed play as I sat on the curb next to Rosemary. “Am I allowed to talk to me?”

  “Sure.” She blew a bubble with her chewing gum then popped it between her back teeth. “Aunt Thelma getting you down?”

  “How’d you know?”

  Rosemary rolled her eyes. “She won’t shut up about how you don’t deserve to be a true Summers witch because you don’t have our blood.”

  “What do you think?” I asked tentatively.

  “It’s so stupid,” she declared. “Who cares if you’re adopted? Why are old people so weird about that kind of stuff?”

  I waved away a mosquito as it aimed for my face. “It’s hard to change what you know works well, I guess. Do you mind telling me about your ritual? I know it’s supposed to be a secret, but you’re the one who’s done it most recently.”

  “Out!” Rosemary shouted as Ari tagged another runner out at second base. “That’s three! New inning!” She lowered her voice. “Whatever, I don’t mind telling you. It was boring. The tasks are supposed to, like, teach you something, you know? I actually combined my community task with the service hours I had to do for the mortal high school. Two birds, you know?”

  “What did you have to do?”

  “I helped pick up trash around the town square,” she answered. “When the mortals weren’t looking, I used my craft to shape the recyclables into clean, reusable things like glass jars and whatnot. Then I vanished the rest of the trash so there was no waste. I don’t get why we don’t always do that. The environment would be so much better off.”

  “Because vanished things have to go somewhere,” I reminded her. “They might disappear from your dimension, but they end up in another one. You could be polluting an alternate universe.”

  “Oops.” She shrugged lightly. “Oh, well. I haven’t done it since. Anyway, my self task was bogus too. I won’t bore you. The soul task was kind of freaky though.”

  Something in my chest tightened. “What do you mean?”

  “Morgan and her sisters put me in this weird trance so I could go into the soul realm—”

 
“And you had to do some impossible task?”

  “What? No, I had to find my true soul,” Rosemary said. “It was a pain in the butt. Everything looks exactly the same in there.”

  I pulled my knees in and hugged them to my chest. A small bug crawled over the toe of my sneakers. Rosemary misread the root of my melancholy.

  “Cheer up,” she said, hugging me into her side. “It’s not so bad. Every witch has to do it.”

  “Yeah. Thanks, Rosemary.”

  I got up and dusted dirt from the seat of my pants. Aunt Thyme’s house was right nearby, in danger of getting one of its windows busted if the kids continued to play kickball with so much gusto. As was appropriate to her namesake, several pots of fresh herbs balanced on the porch railing. I stopped to sniff each one, identifying them by sight and smell. The front window creaked open.

  “Beautiful, aren’t they?” asked a croaky voice. Aunt Thyme’s wrinkled features appeared in the bottom corner of the window. “Pick some mint for yourself. It grows like a weed. There’s scissors if you need them.”

  I took up the pruning shears and carefully cut away some of the mint. I lifted the bunch to my nose and inhaled, letting the fresh scent wash over me.

  “Come inside,” Aunt Thyme said. Her front door opened itself. “I’ll get you a little baggie to bring it home in.”

  I’d come to expect the homes of older people to have a particular scent, usually reminiscent of cleaning products or a doctor’s office, but Aunt Thyme’s foyer smelled strongly of the same herbs she grew outside. Candles flickered to life without help, and Aunt Thyme arrived to greet me.

  “I don’t like these newfangled lightbulbs.” She gestured to a set of LEDs in the sconces on the wall. “Morgan installed them for me. She says they’re more efficient, but they hurt my eyes.”

  Aunt Thyme was no longer mobile. She made her way around the house by way of portable armchair. She shuffled her feet along the floor, as if she scooted around in the large leather recliner that way, but if you looked closer, you’d see that the recliner itself hovered half an inch above the ground. She claimed it was far more comfortable than a wheelchair, though if she made a public appearance, she did so in a regular wheelchair so as to not weird out any of the locals.