Besphinxed

  “It’s all Poppy’s fault,” said Oleander.

  “The Brighton brothers sent you a package to welcome you back from Vermont,” Poppy told Heather. “It was maple candies. I maybe had one.”

  “Or five,” said Oleander.

  Poppy stuck out her tongue. “But you weren’t back, so I asked the resident advisor on our floor to do a locator spell on you. I was positive that stupid mirror had dumped you halfway around the world or something. But then when Laddany said you were already back in Nocturne Falls, we didn’t know what to think.”

  The pressure Heather had been feeling behind her eyes from the moment they’d left Mummy’s Diner was now a full blown headache. “You didn’t try to call first?”

  “You didn’t answer,” said Oleander.

  “Which means I was busy,” Heather snapped. “You know the drill.” Heather pulled her phone out of her bag.

  It was off.

  She always turned it off before she traveled through the mirror. She’d accidentally left it on once—passing through the magic field had drained all her battery, rearranged her apps, and deleted a random assortment of very important music, photos, and contacts. She never wanted to go through that again. But she always turned it back on when she arrived. Always. Except this time, apparently. The one time anyone cared enough to welcome her back. The one time her life was more complicated than usual. The one time she’d stepped inside a bubble and allowed herself to have fun with…someone she shouldn’t.

  But she wasn’t about to apologize to her friends for not turning her phone on. Apologies opened the door to let someone else take control of a situation. Heather preferred to be the one in control.

  “Vermont wiped me out,” said Heather. “My sisters were both complete jerks.” Everything was fine as long as Poppy and Oleander restricted their questions to her trip and the stupid traveling spell.

  They didn’t.

  “So what’s the deal with cat-boy, anyway?” Poppy asked. “I mean he’s pretty, but most shifters are. I just didn’t think working class guys were your type.”

  “Unless you’re training him to be your servant,” said Oleander. “Oh, please tell me we’re going to have our very own servant.”

  Heather clenched her hands into fists beneath her pashmina, where her friends couldn’t see them. Not just because she didn’t want to talk about Owen, but because Oleander sounded—

  Yes. That is how you usually sound, said the voice in her head. Wretchedly elitist. Almost as snobbish as your mother.

  Heather tried not to throw up at the thought. “Shut up.”

  “What? What did I say?” asked Poppy.

  Oleander sniffed. “Someone’s a little touchy about the stray she was forced to take in.”

  You are who your friends are, said the voice.

  “Everybody, just shut up!” Heather yelled.

  Poppy and Oleander went quiet.

  You want things to change? The voice was annoyingly persistent. Then you have to change.

  The car drifted to a halt in front of the school.

  Oleander scowled at Heather. “What’s your damage?”

  Heather shook her head. “I told you, I’m really tired. Can you please just tip the driver so we can go to bed?”

  Thankfully, Oleander did as she asked.

  Poppy placed a comforting hand on Heather’s arm. “Yes. Sleep sounds good. Let’s do that.”

  Heather reached for the door handle. She couldn’t get out of that car fast enough.

  The trio had gone up to the room they shared and changed into their pajamas—as black as everything else they wore. They performed their usual nightly rituals and made an early night of it. Poppy and Oleander both fell asleep almost at once, but Heather’s racing brain hadn’t stopped.

  After listening to Oleander’s soft snores and Poppy’s little wheeze for what must have been an hour, Heather got back out of bed. She rummaged in her medicine bag and pulled out the precious vial of sleep dust she’d stolen from her mother’s cabinet. But instead of using it on herself, she sprinkled a tiny bit onto the foreheads of her roommates. She didn’t want to wake them.

  It was time Heather and her guardian angel had a conversation.

  She pushed aside the coffee table in the common room and stared at the empty carpet, unsure of what to do. In Professor Blake’s office, there was already a sigil. If she drew a fresh one here, some alarm would probably go off in the Head Witch’s office, alerting her that Heather was performing an unapproved spell on school grounds.

  Heather stepped closer to the large picture window of their tower room and took a moment to look out over the moonlit forest that surrounded Harmswood. Protected it. That forest was protecting her too, in a way. Heather wriggled her bare toes in the square of light cast on the floor. She looked up into the clear sky. The moon was almost full…and there were thousands of stars. She removed the choker that had been wrapped around her wrist and held it up into the light.

  She didn’t need a sigil. She had everything she needed right here.

  Reclasping the choker around her neck, she settled, crosslegged into the light on the floor. She rested the backs of her hands on her knees. Stretched her neck. Closed her eyes. Took three deep breaths and prepared to start her chant.

  “So tell me about this boy.”

  Heather peeked out of one eye. The angel sat beside Heather in the moonlight, looking as substantial as if she’d just entered the room and plopped down next to her. She was old, but not elderly…maybe Professor Blake’s age. There were laugh lines around her eyes and mouth. Her thick hair floated to her brown shoulders in waves. Her irises were dark, but sometimes green and sometimes blue…and they sparkled like starlight. Her eyes were the only otherworldly things about her; if Heather hadn’t known better, she might have mistaken the woman for a nanny. Or a cleaning lady. Or José’s mother.

  If José’s mother was a ghost.

  Heather didn’t bother trying to ask the woman who she was again. “You sound like Poppy and Oleander,” she said instead.

  “Oh, Koukla,” the woman said with great pity. “If you were any other girl, you would have said I sounded like your mother.”

  Heather didn’t know what a “Koukla” was—she assumed it was some sort of endearment in angel language. She felt a tear slide down her cheek, but she did not bother to stop it. This woman lived inside her head. It would have been futile for Heather to hide any feelings from her now. “Why is everything such a mess?”

  “Life is messy,” she said. “Love is messier.”

  Heather hiccuped a laugh. “Now you sound like a fortune cookie.”

  The woman reached out to Heather as if to touch her, but stopped herself. Like a ghost, her guardian angel couldn’t make physical contact. “You told me before that you had never been loved.”

  Heather thought about the kids at school. “Admired, maybe. Feared. Tolerated.” She thought about her family. “Ignored, definitely.” She looked out the window. The black sky there felt almost comforting. “I’m not even sure I know what love feels like. If someone ever loved me, I don’t know if I would recognize it.”

  “Part of love is allowing yourself be loved,” said the angel. “What about me? Could you let me love you?”

  Heather smirked. “If you’re my guardian angel, aren’t you supposed to love me anyway? Isn’t that in your job description or something?”

  It was the angel’s turn to laugh. “Maybe. But I would rather love you out of desire than duty.”

  “I think I’d rather you did that too.” Heather looked into the woman’s kind eyes. “I don’t even know your name.”

  “Efthimia,” said the angel. “But you can call me Effie, if you like.”

  The name suited her. She looked more like the sort of woman who would be hauling around babies and bags of flour rather than flitting about weighing hearts or playing a harp. Heather bet she probably knew how to make cookies without magic. Or a recipe. Blindfolded. The next time some a
rtist drew a waifish pale thing and called it an angel, Heather would laugh.

  “Okay. Effie it is.”

  “So,” Effie went on. “Do you think you could let that boy love you?”

  “Wow. You don’t beat around the bush, do you?”

  “I’m a meddler,” Effie said proudly.

  “Not the only one in my life, apparently,” said Heather. “I don’t even know what to think about Owen. He’s part of the messiness.” A stray cloud went over the moon and the image of Effie went hazy and silver around the edges. Heather decided to be bold and ask the hard question before she disappeared again.

  “Effie, why are you here?”

  “To help you,” Effie answered. “To guide you.”

  “Yes, but why me? What makes me so special?”

  “You are a bellwether, my dear. A catalyst. Not only do you make things happen, but things also happen around you. Important things, always coming together and tearing part. You are an instigator of change.”

  Of all the things Effie might have said to Heather, this was the least heartening. “So you’re telling me I’m the Tower card in the tarot deck. The breaker of eggs. Destined to screw up everything.”

  “You’re so much more than that, Koukla. You are a force of nature.”

  The idea that the rest of her life would hold nothing but chaos was even more exhausting. And depressing. In her mother’s eyes, Heather was good for nothing. Maybe she was right. Heather couldn’t see good in any of this.

  “Do I get to be the eye of the storm, or do I have to sit inside it the whole time?”

  “You can learn to separate yourself from it all and be the eye if you wish, but why would you? And let everyone else have all the fun? There is something to be said for getting your hands dirty. Leading the charge. Dancing in the rain. Kissing on the edge of a volcano. Flying into the wind.” Effie spread her arms wide. “I flew once.” She leaned closer to Heather. “What would happen if you let go? Lost control? Embraced the chaos?”

  Heather knew exactly what would happen. “I’d become Katy.”

  Effie waved a hand in the air, as if flitting the idea away like a gnat. “Your little sister uses chaos as a weapon. Your older sister chooses to remain in the eye of the storm. Plays it safe. You, Goldilocks, have the power to do both. It is a great power, if you choose to use it properly.”

  “What’s so great about it if I can’t even get out of the mess I’m in now?” Heather asked.

  “Can’t you?” Effie raised an eyebrow.

  “If there is a way out, I can’t see it.” Heather shook her head. “I just want to be happy. Is that so much to ask?”

  “It is not,” said Effie. “The harder question is: What would it take to make you happy? Most people achieve happiness by surrounding themselves with the things they love. What do you love? I asked you before.”

  “Not quite,” said Heather. “You asked me what I would miss if I died.”

  Effie waved her hands in the air again. “Practically the same thing.”

  Was it really that simple?

  “Yes,” said Effie, who could apparently still read Heather’s mind while the image of her lounged in a pool of moonlight. “It really is that easy. Find what makes you happy in this world, and then try to put those things first.”

  Heather was skeptical. “That sounds selfish. I’m accused of being selfish enough as it is.”

  “Ugh!” Effie grimaced. “I really want to reach through the ether and hug you, but I can’t.” She sighed then, her broad shoulders relaxing a bit. “At some point in your life, someone should have taught you the difference between ‘being selfish’ and ‘self-care.’ What we’re talking about right now—the you being happy part—that’s caring for yourself. That’s not a bad thing.”

  “I still don’t see the difference,” said Heather.

  “Selfish people don’t care about others, right?”asked Effie. “They don’t help others in any way.”

  “Right.”

  “But how can you care for someone else if you’re too broken or hurting or—”

  “—dead?” Heather finished.

  “That’s extreme, but yes,” said Effie. “If you think about other people a hundred percent of the time and never think about yourself, you could do yourself great harm.”

  Every thought in Heather’s brain did feel like it always belonged to someone else. What did her friends think about this? How would her mother react to that? What would Professor Blake blame her for this week? She was always so worried about what other people would do or think or say that she’d given away any power she’d had over her life. She was so used to thinking twelve steps ahead, that she let all those possible circumstances dictate her every action.

  It was time to take her life back.

  But if she did what Effie was suggesting—if she figured out what things in her life made her happy and put those first—it was possible that the life she created would look very different. Because…

  She liked Owen.

  The time they’d spent in that kitchen tonight was the most fun she could remember having in a long time. If she died tomorrow, she would miss every other opportunity she would have to get to know Owen better. But if she let that happen, she ran the risk of losing the friends she had now, the elite group she’d worked so hard to forge.

  On top of which, Kai Xanthopoulos might kill her, if the feather didn’t do it first.

  “The great thing about being a bellwether,” said Effie, “is that you take your flock with you wherever you go. Don’t be afraid to lead them into unfamiliar waters.”

  Uncharted territory, Owen had called it.

  “But you’re going to have to believe in them,” Effie added. “Trust that your friends will remain beside you when you change direction.”

  Heather wasn’t sure she had that much faith in any of the people she knew. “And if they don’t?”

  “Then they probably weren’t your friends to begin with.”

  Heather closed her eyes. She knew Effie was right, but she didn’t trust that her friendships were true enough to withstand a reinvented Heather. She couldn’t be sure they really liked her that much. She wasn’t sure she liked herself that much. If the designer shoe was on the other foot, it probably would have walked away.

  Poppy and Oleander might stick with her. Well, Poppy, anyway. Duko and his werewolf pack could go either way. Their loyalties were to each other, not anyone else. But Heather was responsible for leading the cheers for every sports team they were on…

  There was just no good answer. Heather wouldn’t know for sure until she made a change.

  She warred with herself over this dilemma until dawn. At some point Effie had disappeared, maybe when the moon set…definitely before the sun rose. Heather stood up and stretched her legs, looking out over the forest as the orange-pink dawn kissed the tops of the trees. Her head hurt from inventing possibilities all night. She could see no way to play this game to achieve the desired outcome.

  Maybe this was what Effie meant by letting go. Embracing the chaos. Big Things happened around Heather, and she needed to accept that.

  She just hoped that somewhere in the wake of the storm, she wasn’t left standing alone.

  She slid the table back into place, got dressed, and headed down to breakfast before Poppy and Oleander were awake. She needed more time to think.

  Unfortunately, time didn’t seem to help. Before she knew it, Poppy was sliding a latte in front of her.

  “Thank you,” said Heather.

  Poppy and Oleander exchanged looks, and then sat down on either side of her.

  “You never say ‘thank you,’” said Oleander.

  “Are you feeling all right?” Poppy asked.

  “Not especially,” said Heather. “Is that okay?”

  “What?” asked Poppy. “Of course it’s okay.”

  “I don’t feel all right pretty much every day,” said Oleander. “You two never seem to mind.”

  The p
essimistic show of solidarity made Heather smile. “Can I ask you guys a question?”

  “Of course,” Poppy chirped.

  “If I did something crazy, would you stop being friends with me?”

  Oleander raised one of her severely arched eyebrows so high that it almost disappeared behind her straight black bangs. “How crazy are we talking? Like, not wearing black anymore kind of crazy?” She took a sip of her coffee. “Because if you started dressing in rainbow colors, that would definitely be a dealbreaker.”

  Poppy leaned in and whispered, “I would wear colors with you.”

  The laugh that burst out of Heather surprised her so much that she almost spit coffee all over the table. “I love you guys.”

  Heather felt the looks again.

  “You never say ‘I love you’ either,” said Oleander.

  Poppy put a hand on Heather’s forehead. “What happened to you in Vermont? Should we be worried? Do you have three days to live or something?”

  Maybe. Heather shook it off. “I’m fine. It’s just…my sisters are unbearable.” She raised her cup. “You guys make much better sisters.”

  Poppy and Oleander raised their cups too, joining Heather in the toast. “Yes we do,” they said in unison, and then the three of them dissolved in giggles.

  Heather suddenly felt much better about the future.

  The next step was confronting Owen. She had no idea what to say to him. If anything. Heather and her school-sisters took their sweet old time getting to Consumer Magics, in an effort to spend as little time in the classroom as possible. But the alarm rang anyway, so Heather moved to her seat.

  Owen wasn’t there.

  Heather breathed a sigh of relief, until she realized Miss Sunshine wasn’t at her desk either. But then the door opened and the substitute walked right in, just like it was any other day.

  “Good morning, class. If you’d like to spend this hour working on your final projects, that’s fine. Everyone else is welcome to watch a weaving demonstration I’ve prepared for you.”

  More weaving. Just like a good spider was meant to.

  Heather pulled out her notebook and her phone. There was no way she’d be participating in any sort of trap “Miss Sunshine” might lure her into. Now was as good a time as any to make a list of all those secret hints, like Owen had suggested the night before.