The Crimson Brand (15 page)

Lunch at Sullivan’s, Susan’s store, followed, but it wasn’t as much fun without Katie.  Katie’s father had strictly forbidden her from going into Susan’s shop, so she was spending her lunches with Ellen and Chelsea in the school cafeteria. 

Even with Katie missing from their company, life had definitely improved since last fall.

When Penny thought back to the start of that school year, the looks, the whispers, all the small-town speculation about
The New Girl
, the teasing from Rooster’s gang, even the hostility from Katie, Penny had to admit things were much better now.  She still wasn’t a town girl, even though she’d been born there and her family had lived there since almost the dawn of time, it seemed, but acceptance was slowly coming, and she had a few good friends.

Of course, Zoe was in the same boat, but she tended to attract less trouble since most of the kids their age thought she could probably beat them up.  Zoe had enjoyed a greatly enhanced reputation since Trey Miller’s appearance at her birthday party.  New kid or not, Trey was the epitome of cool to most of the boys in school, and his apparent interest in Zoe had done nothing to stifle the fawning of Dogwood’s other girls.

Katie seemed to be as well-liked as ever, with the exception of what remained of her old clique, who usually ignored her.  Tori, the richest and meanest of the bunch, mostly called the shots for all of them now, and according to Susan all the Main Street businesses were learning to keep an eye out when those girls paid them a visit. 

Even the excitement of last fall’s kidnappings and the dramatic rescue were becoming old news, barely worth repeating, and it had been weeks since Penny had heard anyone mention the Dogwood Witches.

Life in Dogwood would have been almost boring, if not for their little secret. 

*   *   *

Though Katie was mostly absent during the day, she met them nightly at Aurora Hollow.  In fact, she’d become rather manic about their nightly practices, as if determined to rebel against her father’s prohibition in the only way she could.  They didn’t really do anything new that first week.  Mostly they read and studied, which Penny guessed was necessary, but it was also almost as boring as regular schoolwork. 

One night they studied the difference between
invocation
—magic that required spoken words, usually a simple appeal to an outside source—and
evocation
, magic that relied on inner talent, innate abilities and, of course, lots of practice. 

That night started with Penny’s least-favorite kind of assignment, a written essay. The page following the invocation/evocation lesson started blank when Penny opened to it, then quickly filled with text instructing them to explain the dangers of invocation and calling up unknown forces. After they finished, their essays faded away, leaving the pages blank again—there was nothing quite as frustrating as watching a newly completed piece of homework disappear from the page only seconds after completing it—and the book rewarded them with two pages on the differences between active and passive spells. 

Watching the still-drying ink of their essays sink into a blank page of the book gave them something to think about, though, and Katie was the first to raise the question.

“If it can understand what we’re writing, do you think it’ll answer questions?”

“I dunno,” Zoe said, yawning hugely.  “I’m too tired to think of any.”

Penny had a head full of questions, even after her last revealing chat with Ronan, but thought she should contain herself to the ones that were relevant to all three of them.  But before she could think of one to ask, Katie picked up her pen and began to scribble on the first blank page.

Penny and Zoe leaned in over her shoulder for a look.

Can we ask you questions
?

For a few seconds nothing happened.  Katie’s scribbles stained the previously crisp page, and Penny felt a rising disappointment.

“Maybe you should have used a pencil,” Zoe said, then yawned again. 

“No, look!”  Katie pointed at the ink that had stood out sharply against the white page only a few seconds earlier. Now it had begun to fade, as if aging years before their eyes.  A few seconds later it was gone, the page unblemished.

A reply rose to the surface and lingered for a moment before vanishing.

You can
.

“Excellent,” Katie said, gleefully regarding the newly blank page.

“Yeah,” Zoe said, attempting to rub a little liveliness back into her sleepy eyes with the heels of her palms.  “Very nice.”

Katie either didn’t notice Zoe’s less-than-enthusiastic reply or was ignoring it.

Zoe had all but fallen asleep the night before, and looked worse tonight.  When Penny had asked about it at school she’d admitted she wasn’t getting much sleep.  Between regular homework, late-night practice sessions at the hollow, and an early-morning alarm to wake her grandma up for medicine, she thought she was averaging four hours of sleep a night.

Penny suggested she take a few nights off and immediately wished she hadn’t.  The look Zoe shot at her was almost frightening.

“No!  What if something cool happens?  I don’t want to miss anything!”

The way it had been going, she could sleep through their nighttime sessions and not miss anything cool.

This was at least different.

Katie didn’t waste a second but scribbled a second question.

Will you tell us how to make more wands
?

Again, the fresh ink shone wetly in the firelight, then faded and vanished, but there was no reply.

Instead, the pages began to flutter, though there was no breeze in the hollow to move them, then turn rapidly.  They stopped about a quarter of the way through the book, and the blank page facing them filled with writing.  It was the same runic language they had seen every time they touched a blank page with their wands to receive a new lesson, but unlike before, the characters didn’t dance and rearrange themselves into English.

Zoe began to laugh, and Katie shot her an irritated look.

“Sorry,” Zoe said, and she did look it.  She also looked ready to burst into fresh gales at the slightest provocation, loopy from sleep deprivation.  “I’m just too tired to be upset.”

“Why aren’t they changing, though?”  Katie demanded.  “We can’t read that!”

This puzzled Penny too, but the answer, something she’d gleaned from the first page she’d read on passive magic, clicked in her brain: “Where in active magic, the practitioner introduces a new element or energy to
actively change
their environment, passive magic is subtler, working within the existing environment to assist natural processes ….”

Penny reached between Zoe and Katie with her right arm extended and touched the page with the tip of her wand.

“… or bring intended order from apparent disorder.”

Instantly, the letters began their familiar dance, and a moment later the instructions lay before them in easy-to-read English. 

Zoe giggled.

Katie crossed her arms over her chest and looked annoyed.

“Let’s call it a night,” Penny suggested, deciding that now would be a good time for Katie and Zoe to separate.  “It’s late and we’re all tired.”

“Awesome idea,” Zoe said, yawning for a third time.

“Yeah, sure,” Katie said, though not as enthusiastically as Zoe.

Zoe stumbled to the door, pulled the black wand from her waistband, and opened the doorway to her bedroom.  “You coming, Penny?”

“Naw, I’ll catch a ride with Kat.”  She’d been hoping for a chance to talk to Katie alone, and this was as good a time as any.

“’K,” Zoe mumbled.  “G’nite.”

A moment later she was through the door.

“Kat, there’s something I need to tell you.”

Katie regarded her dubiously for a moment, then seated herself next to the fire pit.  “Okay.”

“Last week I found an old photo album in my basement ....”

Penny kept it short, telling her about the old snapshots she’d found in the back of the album, some with her aunt in them, then about Ronan’s revelations later in the day.

Katie nodded, even smiled a little, though it was clear that her stores of energy were running low, but she didn’t seem surprised.

“I was wondering about that,” Katie said.  “Your family lived here and Aunt Tracy was their friend.”

The book was shut away in its chest, hidden in the hole in the old ash’s trunk, but Katie held the wand in her lap and regarded it for a moment. 

“That’s all, really.  I just thought you had a right to know before we told Zoe.”

Katie looked troubled.  “Ronan said that things ‘ended badly’ last time.  Did he tell you what happened?”

Penny had thought she might ask about that, and had prepared a response that was not a lie but slightly less than the whole truth.

“My mom was in a car wreck and my … father,” Penny still had trouble speaking about him; she didn’t know anything about him and could only guess the worst from how everyone else in her life loathed the man.  “My father left, and the rest of them just kind of went their own ways, I guess.”

“But Dad says that our aunts,” and now Katie was struggling with her words, and Penny could see a bright blush blooming in her cheeks by the firelight.  “Well, he says our aunts ran off, uh, together.”

Penny shrugged.  “Big deal, they were friends, weren’t they?”

Katie rolled her eyes.  “You know. 
Together
.”

For a moment Penny remained puzzled, then she got it.

“Ohhh!” 

Katie plunged on quickly.  Apparently Penny wasn’t the only one with news she’d wanted to share.  “Yeah.  I mean, that’s what he
says
.  I don’t know if it’s true or not, but that’s why he’s still pissed.  He didn’t approve.”

Well then maybe he’s the reason she never came back
, Penny almost said, but bit her tongue.  She still had Susan’s caution about not trashing Katie’s father firmly in mind.  She did have her doubts, though, and she wouldn’t be sharing them with Katie.

Ronan had mentioned a traitor, someone inside the circle who had betrayed them, and though he’d refused to tell her who it was, she hadn’t been able to keep herself from speculating.

They were not happy speculations.

Not Susan, he had said as much.  Penny deliberately turned her mind from the obvious choice, the one that meshed too neatly with her other suspicions, and focused on her favorite choice, the mystery girl Janet.  Penny didn’t even know her last name yet.  She seemed to have simply vanished fourteen years before, along with her aunt Nancy and Katie’s aunt Tracy.

Until she learned more she wasn’t telling Katie or Zoe that part of Ronan’s story.

Great
, she thought. 
As if I didn’t have enough to worry about. 

She hadn’t finished researching her own family’s past: she had to find out if her mother and father actually had been married, and the tattoo nagged at her.  Now she would have to search for the elusive Janet, and her and Katie’s aunts as well.

Not for the first time, an inner voice cautioned her.

You know there’s probably a reason Ronan isn’t telling you any of that stuff
. 
Probably a very good reason
.

As always, Penny tried to push that voice to the back of her brain and ignore it.

While she was silently distracted by these unhappy thoughts Katie had risen and approached the door.

“Hey, Penny, we should go.”  Her manic energy seemed to have burnt itself out for the night.  She looked as tired as Penny suddenly felt.  “It’s getting late.”

“Yeah,” Penny said, bringing her attention to the present once more.  “How about we go to my room first and you can take the wand home tonight.”

Katie nodded, smiling.  “Maybe tomorrow I’ll be able to make my own.”

*   *   *

But it wasn’t as simple as Katie had hoped.  According to the book, you couldn’t just pick up any old stick and do magic with it.  They put the next night’s lessons on hold while Katie puzzled over the instructions, and after a quarter of an hour Zoe sat tottering on the edge of sleep next to the fire, and Penny had to jab her to wake her up. 

“You two fill me in tomorrow.  I’ve got to get some … some …,” her mouth stretched in a huge yawn,  “ … some sleep.”

Katie threw a distracted wave in Zoe’s direction.  “Yeah.  G’nite.”

Penny amused herself conjuring handfuls of her harmless fire and tossing them into the air while Katie’s back was turned and her nose almost pressed to the page of the book.  The flames died a few seconds after leaving her hands but left bright streaks that lingered in the air. 

“Penny, what are you doing?”  Katie shut the book in irritation.  “You’re making it impossible to read.”

“You’ve read it a dozen times already, Kat,” Penny said, but threw the fireball she was holding into the crackling flames of the fire pit before Katie could see it.  “It didn’t look that complicated to me.”

“Well, good for you,” Katie snapped.  “You do it then.”

“Sorry, Kat,” Penny said.  “I just don’t know what you’re worried about.”

Katie kept her back turned and her arms folded, tapping the wand against her arm in her irritation.

“Just try it,” Penny encouraged and, though she knew from experience the answers to the next question were almost infinite, added, “what could go wrong?”

Katie chose not to answer this but ceased her distracting tapping.  “Fine.”

Katie held the wand over her head and closed her eyes in concentration, breathing deeply to steady herself.  When she opened them again, a point of light flickered at the wand tip.

Penny watched as it flared and swelled, then rose into the air.  It illuminated the hollow more brightly than the fire but burned out after a few seconds.

Penny thought this new trick would be useful, if they could make the light last a little longer.

“See,” Penny said, even though she knew the tricky part was still to come.  “You’ve got it.”

Katie did seem a little calmer as she approached the ash.  She stopped a few feet from it and searched the trunk up and down until she found the spot she wanted, a tiny knothole a few feet above her head.  She pressed the tip of the wand into the hole, and Penny saw light spilling from it as Katie made the light come again.  This time however she held her focus until the light spilling out around the tip of the wand grew almost blinding.