Chapter 5
1328 Words
Chapter 5
I don't know how long we stayed like that, just holding each other. We weren't trading magic at the moment, and yet I could still feel the tangle of emotions running through all of us. Happiness, at having our memories back. Sadness from the memories themselves. But soon those collapsed down into just two things: confusion over what exactly had happened to us, and resolve to figure it out.
We sat back, no longer even holding hands but still within the magic circle we had conjured. The three clouds were now one, swirling darkly within the confines of the glass sphere. Brianna pulled one of the books onto her lap and started turning pages.
"I never knew my mother's name," I said. "Not until today, when Mr. Trevor showed us that photograph. Whoever put this spell on us, it must have been that very first day. I still don't understand how I just forgot to ask even that much when I got here."
"I don't remember the moment of the spell hitting us either," Brianna said, her eyes on the book as she scanned page after page.
"My father died in a car crash the day I was born," I said. "No one knew who they were or where they were going. But I kind of think now, driving that fast in that weather, they must have been running away from something. But what?"
"My mother was always looking over her shoulder," Sophie said. "She taught me that. Always keep my senses open, always stay hidden. If either of us felt anything even remotely magical, we'd run. I was better at sensing magic than she was. Even when I was just a toddler, long before I started kindergarten, she trusted me implicitly. If I felt something, we'd run."
"Maybe they were both being pursued by the same person, or group of people?" I suggested. We looked to Brianna, who was still focused on the book but sensed the lull in the conversation around her.
"Nothing like that with us," she said. "But we lived in an insular community."
"Surrounded by witches?" I asked.
Brianna looked up as she considered. "A few powerful witches like Sephora, although I didn't meet Sephora until I was in college. But my mother's coven had three witches of that level. The others were more witch-friendly. They had no real magic, but they were sensitive to it. Knowing what I know now, I think they might have been protecting us. We didn't go out into the world much."
"But no one ever went after my mother after the accident," I said. "We just lived normal lives. No magic."
"My mother died when I was six. The witches that looked after me kept me at home until I was old enough for junior high, but after that, I was out in the world all day, then back in their world at night. I don't remember ever feeling any danger or like I was being watched or followed," Brianna said.
"I always felt watched," Sophie said. "But I never saw anyone. I just felt the magic and ran. Maybe I was just being paranoid. But my mother did disappear. She just went out one evening to get something from the corner store and never came back."
"Did you sense anything? I guess I don't know how big your range is," I said.
"I could open myself up and feel magic for blocks and blocks," Sophie said. "I think I can do more now, especially when we're working together. But even then, I could sense magic much further away than the corner store. But I felt nothing. And no one saw anything. The police investigation went nowhere. I would've been in foster care if not for Auntie Claire. Who technically isn't even my aunt."
"What about your dads?" I asked. "Mine died in that car crash, and I guess I still don't know his first name. But what about you?"
They both shook their heads.
"My mother didn't like to talk about it," Sophie said. "She said it wasn't safe."
"My mom would just get sad," Brianna said. "But she wouldn't tell me anything. So I don't know his name either."
"Nor I," Sophie said.
"And do we know how old our mothers were?" I asked. They shook their heads. "No drivers licenses or nothing? In my case, my mother's identity was never confirmed. She didn't speak, and she had amnesia after the crash. If she had any memory of before it, she never gave a clue. My foster grandparents, the Schneidermans, named her Willow for the tree the car hit, but the date of birth on her government paperwork was just an estimate."
"I never saw any paperwork," Sophie said. "No drivers license either."
"Me neither," Brianna said.
"That picture in the hallway looks like what my mom looked like when I was born, or pretty close," I said.
"Same," Brianna said, her eyes back on the book.
"I don't have pictures," Sophie said. "My earliest memories… her hair was different, but I would guess she was only a few years older. Certainly not three decades older."
"And our own birthdays?" I asked. "Mine is August 10, 1997."
“March 2, 1998,” Brianna said.
"January 16, 1999,” Sophie said.
"You didn't tell us it was your birthday!" Brianna said.
"Really? That's what we're going to focus on?" Sophie asked.
"You keep a lot of secrets, Sophie," I said. "Was that another compulsion? Not to tell us we had a lovely excuse for a cake and ice cream and decorations?"
"I don't like a fuss," Sophie said.
"A fuss can be a nice distraction from all of this darkness," I said and looked down at the roiling cloud inside the glass sphere. What were we going to do with that?
"Your birthday might be the most significant one," Brianna said to me.
"Why's that?" I asked. It was still months and months away.
"Well, you're the oldest of the three of us for one," Brianna said. "Plus, if your mother really was actively fleeing something, that might be a clue. If the three of them had done something together, it might have happened just before that."
"What would they have done? Who were they running from?" I asked.
"Was it in 1966 or 1997?" Sophie added.
"All good questions," Brianna said, but she had that distracted quality to her voice, like something in the book was hogging most of her attention.
"Are we sure we have all of our memories back?" I asked. "There are still so many things we don't know."
"It doesn't feel like anything is missing," Sophie said. "I remember my mom. She was secretive. And yours never talked. We can't remember things we never knew."
"You don't know if your mother is alive or dead, right?" I said. "Maybe we can look for her. If we could find her, we could ask her all these questions."
"I'd love to do that," Sophie said. "But she disappeared in New Orleans. And we can't leave here."
"Not now," Brianna said. "But maybe someday."
"I hate feeling trapped," I grumbled. "I feel useless."
"We have things we can do," Brianna said, finally closing the book with a clap. "Someone put this spell on us for a reason. Someone wanted us to forget our mothers for a reason. We might remember more as things come back to us. Pay attention to your dreams for sure; there might be scraps there."
"Surely that's not all we can do," I said, itching for a foe to fight.
"Not at all," Brianna said. "The why might take a while to figure out, but in the meantime, we can figure out the how, and that might lead us to the who."
"You want to figure out how these clouds got into our brains in the first place?" Sophie asked.
"And figuring that out will probably tell us who did it," Brianna said.
"And when," I added, thinking of Evanora, biding her time in 1928.
"So how do we figure out the how?" Sophie asked.
A slow grin spread across Brianna's face as she pulled out her wand.
"We start by dropping our magic circle and smashing that glass," she said, pointing at the cloud-filled bauble.
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