“Hi Bea!”
“Hi Wren!”
Beatriz Marin was standing outside of Xiomara’s Cafe taking orders from the line out the door. Her grandmother was the cafe’s namesake, also one of my Aunt Rhi’s best friends, as well as one of the coven matriarchs that made up the Conclave. She was also the most powerful spirit witch in the whole of Sedgwick Cove. Since the summer, when I’d discovered I was a pentamaleficus, she had been helping me to develop my spirit abilities.
“Are you coming over tonight?” Bea shouted to me.
“Of course. You think yourabuelawould let me skip a session?”
Bea just grinned. “No way. See you, then!”
“Is Eva around?”
“No, she’s got that test today! You just missed her!”
Shit, I’d almost forgotten. Eva had been obsessing for weeks over this test, which was meant to assess her abilities as a water witch. If she passed, she would be allowed to begin more advanced studies as a waterworker—a skill she’d been working toward for half her life already. Ichecked my watch. If I pedaled fast, I might be able to catch her before she went in.
One of the many ways Sedgwick Cove was unlike other towns was that we didn’t have a typical school system. As a town populated entirely by witches, the skillsets we had to learn were not exactly to be found in your average curriculum. Most of the kids were homeschooled, which made perfect sense because each coven had their own unique magical traditions and abilities. But we all had to attend a smattering of classes at Cove Academy as well, to keep the State Board of Education out of our hair. I wasn’t sure the State Board of Education would have approved of these classes, as everything from American History to Mathematics was taught through a lens of the witchcraft tradition; but, as Xiomara said, “What the government doesn’t know won’t hurt them… unless we decide it should.”
Cove Academy was a collection of antique Victorian houses that looked down over Main Street like colorful sentinels from a grassy slope. Each was painted in its own bright palette of colors and adorned with ornate gingerbread trim that made them look like overgrown dollhouses. I pedaled hard up the hill, panting in the humidity, and came to a stop at last in front of the mint green house with a frilly front porch, and a doorknocker shaped like a phoenix in flight in the center of its cheerful, lavender door. I was relieved to see Eva sitting on the porch steps, head bent over her stack of flashcards.
I shoved my bike against the bike rack—no one bothered to lock their bikes up in Sedgwick Cove—and hurried over to Eva. She was muttering under her breath with her eyes closed, and I had to say her name three times before she looked up, startled.
“Huh? Oh, hey, Wren,” she said, in a slightly manic tone.
“You okay?” I asked her, smiling sympathetically.
“Oh yeah,” Eva replied, puffing herself up with manufactured bravado. “Never better. Totally gonna crush this. Supremely confident.”
“So, freaking out, then?”
“Big time.”
I laughed and sat down next to her. “Hey, you’ve got this. I’ve never seen anyone study harder for anything in my life.”
Eva sighed. “I can’t be the first water witch in my family not to become a waterworker. I just can’t. I’ll never live it down.”
“Are there a lot of water witches in your family?” I asked.
“One in every generation, typically.”
“Okay, yeah, I guess that’s a lot of pressure. But if you don’t pass the test, can’t you just take it again next year?” I asked.
This was apparently the wrong thing to say. Eva turned on me, glaring.
“Not that you’re going to fail, obviously,” I said quickly. “Supremely confident, remember?”
Eva’s glare melted and her shoulders sagged. She dropped her head forward into her hands, so that her braids swung down over her face like a curtain being closed. “It’s not that simple. The test isn’t even really about all this.” She held up the flashcards. “I mean, I have to know it, obviously, but I’ve known it for a long time. It’s about my magic. It has to be powerful enough to work the spells.”
I put an arm around Eva’s shoulders. “Hey, six months ago I didn’t know I was a witch, and now half the town is afraid of me. If I can do that, then you can most definitely do this.”
Eva laughed—it was shaky and uncertain, but at least it was genuine. She took a deep breath, and blew it out slowly before getting to her feet. She threw her shoulders back and whipped her braids behind her. “You’re right. I’ve got to get out of my own head. I’m psyching myself out. Wish me luck. Not that I need it, of course.”
“Good luck,” I said and, pulling a polished piece of jade from my pocket, I handed it to her. “From all the Vespers. We all imbued it with intention.”
Eva smiled, rubbing her thumb over the smooth surface of the jade before pocketing it. She started bouncing back and forth from foot to foot, and shaking out her hands. As she did so, the water splashed up and out of a nearby birdbath. She looked over at it and grinned. Then she bounded up the steps and into the house.
It was good to see Eva smile, but I still had a little knot of anxiety for her in my stomach as I walked up the steps of the next building over, this one painted in Easter egg shades of pinks and purples. Inside the doorway was a curtain of bells, feathers, and gemstones hung on braided silk ribbons that I had to part with my hands and walk through to reach the secretary. It tinkled and swished behind me as I walked into the Sedgwick Cove version of a front office.
