“It’s the ASD,” Cadence quickly explains. “Autism spectrum disorder? My sensory processing is all over the place. Before, it was just synesthesia, but now, it’s like my magical wires get crossed too.”
“Before?” I ask, turning from Arla to her. “You mean, you haven’t always been this way?”
She seats herself on the edge of the ottoman. “If by ‘this way’ you mean neurodivergent, then yes. My parents suspected as much when I peeled most of the wallpaper away in my bedroom as a little girl. And then I started assigning flavors to everyone I met. Well, not so much ‘assigning’ as just blurting them out when I tasted them. Yours is lime Jell-O, by the way.”
I raise my brows, uncharacteristically impressed. “What about his?” I ask, pointing at Brennan.
“Brennan?” she clarifies, sparing him a glance. “Vanilla soft serve.”
I can’t help chuckling at that. My eyes dart to Arla, but before I can ask, Cadence blurts, “Absinthe.Withoutthe sugar cube.”
I decide I don’t want to know Rock’s or Twig’s. They’re probably something gross like blutwurst or those candy cigarettes that taste like sweetened chalk.
“But,” she goes on, “if you mean magical AF, then no. I had precognitive dreams as a little girl growing up in Toledo whenever someone in my family was going to die, same as my grandmother used to. But I didn’t start to pick up on other psychic data until after puberty. And after meeting Arla, my system is so flooded it’s a constant battle to sort it all. Plus, living over the club creates its own hazards for someone with my sensitivities.”
I’m shocked to learn Cadence lives here too; I thought she’d only passed out here like me. Though I guess it makes sense if everyone else is also rooming with Arla. But the headphones are much more understandable now. I look at Brennan. “What about you? Did you grow up making brooms sweep the floors for your parents?”
He laughs. “Are you kidding? My parents would have disowned me for shit like that. Gay, they could handle. Witchcraft, they could not. Unlike Cadence, no one in my immediate or extended family was telekinetic. The first time I discovered it I was throwing a tantrum because I wanted my older sister’s Barbie doll and all the doors in the house slammed shut at once. Of course, I didn’t really understand it was me at the time. Neither did anyone else. Later, I connected the dots whenever I would get sad and the houseplants would wilt, or I would start dancing and the coasters would spin on the coffee table. I was careful after that. I never let on that it was me.”
“They never suspected?” I ask, remembering my own early experiences setting fires and manipulating electricity, my mother always glaring down at me.
“If they did, they quickly chalked it up to coincidence, put it out of their minds. As I got more careful, I didn’t give them reason to.”
I turn to Arla, confused. They all seem to specialize inonething, except for her. Why is she different? But that question is quickly replaced by the hope that maybe she can teach me what she knows, maybe she can answer the questions that have plagued my family for generations, maybe she can change the way we understand our magic and relate to it.
But Arla just stares through me.
“What about you?” Brennan asks, drawing my attention. “Were you born setting fires, making the lights flicker? Do you have a pyro grandma or great-aunt hiding in your family tree?”
I glance at Arla again, but her poker face doesn’t give away how much she already does or doesn’t know. “Magic runs in our family,” I tell them, my voice heavy. “Fire for the last few generations. Before that, other things…”
“What other things?” Cadence asks.
“Stories of psychics like you,” I say to her. “Oracles, I guess. And other powers, like with water.”
“Water diviners,” Arla says. “A very old witch tradition.”
I notice Brennan’s eyes slide to hers, troubled.
“Isit witchcraft though?” Cadence asks no one in particular, and Brennan rolls his eyes as if he’s heard this before. “I mean, we don’t really have any specific beliefs or use any special ingredients. No one’s riding a broom around here.”
Brennan sighs. “We’ve been through this, Cadence. Special powers equal witchcraft. I don’t think it matters how you exercise them. Don’t be so literal.”
I want to pipe up, to say that my mother, though she seldom used the wordwitch, acknowledged as much about our family.
What are we?I’d asked her once.
We’re Coles,she’d replied. But after a moment, she’d conceded,We are women with extraordinary abilities. Power, Judeth, is something a woman is not supposed to have. They have a word forpowerful women, adirtyword—witches. I suppose that’s us. Your grandmother called uselementalwitches because we are born to our magic. We don’t have to contrive it.
Do they have a dirty word for powerful men?I’d asked her.
No.She’d glanced toward the door of the great room, where my grandfather was tucked away, nursing his gin.Men with power are just men.
Can men do what we can do?I pressed.
Not in our family, she whispered, watching the door.Thankfully. But they don’t need to. They have other ways of getting what they want.
Before I can tell them any of this, another voice cuts in.
