The Best Kind of Magic Read online

  “Mom, John’s here. Wants to see you.”

  Her expression darkens. “Yes, send him in.”

  It is rare to see her so grim. Being a witch means being able to channel the energy around you; usually she makes a conscious effort to let positivity in and filter negativity out. I can’t feel it, being so low on the magical totem pole, but there must be something wicked in the air.

  “Is everything okay?” I ask.

  “Amber, we’ll talk about this later.” Which means no. I hurry back to John, who is pacing between the displays of soothing sleep tea and skin-calming balm, and escort him back.

  “Lucy, I—” he starts, once behind the curtain, but Mom nods sharply, indicating he say no more. I don’t know if this is to keep potential secrets from me or from any lurking Navy Pier patrons, but either way it’s annoying. Clearly something is going on, and it’s the most action the shop has seen all afternoon. I want in.

  But I’m most rudely shut out. Mom promptly pulls the curtain closed, and after two audible finger snaps, all sound from the other side is dampened. A soundproofing spell. Dammit.

  I slump back to my post. Although I’m technically responsible for the entire shop while I’m on duty, I usually stick by my matchmaking table. Mom set it up for me when she felt my skills were ready to go pro. It’s just a square folding table covered with a pink crushed-velvet cloth, but many a wandering soul has been set on the path toward love after sitting here with me. Above the table hangs a sign:

  FIND TRUE LOVE! CONSULT A MATCHMAKER!

  I even added the glitter-encrusted hearts myself. I’m so crafty.

  I no sooner sit down than am greeted by a good-looking guy with nicely defined biceps straining against the confines of his rain-flecked T-shirt.

  “Hey, are you available?” he asks.

  I blush. Maybe I won’t mind being on this side of the curtain after all. He shifts uncomfortably, waiting for me to make the next move, which is when I realize he isn’t asking if I, Amber Sand, am available, but if I, random possessor of matchmaking abilities, can help him out. Of course. No one is ever looking for just me.

  “Yes. Please sit,” I say, feeling embarrassed and stupid for ogling. While checking out extremely attractive people is essentially harmless, it’s also frustratingly pointless in my case. Sure, I can take in any attractive view, but the moment my eyes meet theirs, all I see is their soul mate, and not once has that person ever been me. Talk about a mood killer. It’s kind of hard to properly work up a full-blown crush when you know you’ll never be the endgame. To be clear, I have dated, despite never locking eyes with my particular Romeo. I never let things go too far, but a girl gets lonely, okay?

  Once he’s seated, I notice his ear tips poking out from his shaggy haircut. Pointy. Yup. Definitely of elfin descent. It’s a common misconception that all elves are short. Maybe back in the day of knights and dragons they were, but centuries of interspecies hookups have made elves almost indistinguishable from humans. Except for the ears: they seem to be self-conscious about those things for some reason, always trying to hide them under creative hairstyling.

  “What brings you here today?” I say, trying to segue back into professional mode.

  “Well, I’m pretty sure I already know who my true love is, but I just want to know, you know? She’s pressuring me to propose, and I really want to, but…I heard you’re the girl to see about these kind of things.” Supernatural creatures are way more accepting of magic than your average human.

  “You’ve heard right! This shouldn’t take long.” Making a confirmation of someone’s match is the easiest (and most cost-effective) of my services. “Do you have a picture of her so I can confirm?”

  “Oh yeah, tons.” He pulls out his phone and starts smiling as he scrolls through the pictures. Finally he settles on one of her laughing while mixing a bowl of something in a kitchen.

  “She’s lovely,” I say, which she is, but I always say that regardless. It seems to help calm down those on the other side of the table before I peer into their souls. “Place your hands in mine.” I lay my forearms on the table, palms facing up. I don’t really need to hold someone’s hands, but it seems to be more satisfying for the patron if there’s a physical connection; it makes my conclusion feel more real. It’s all about creating an experience. “Look into my eyes, and open your heart.”

  He takes my hands and goose bumps spring up at his touch. I can’t help it; it’s been a long time since I felt a boy’s hands. I look deep into his brown eyes. Suddenly, there she is, the girl from his phone, surprising him with a steak dinner and picking up their pink-tutued daughter from ballet class.

  He sits in suspense, waiting for my verdict. “Congratulations,” I confirm. “You’ve found your match.” I release the cute elf’s hands, and he smiles with relief, thanking me profusely and paying my fee before bolting out of the shop, no doubt on his way to propose. Geez, so adorable. I like when people get excited; it makes me feel worthwhile, and I can’t deny that sometimes a speck of hopeless romanticism worms its way into my crusty old heart. I’d be a pretty crappy matchmaker if I didn’t still believe in love.

  It’s right before closing when John and Mom emerge from her room. His cheeks are splotchy, like he’s been crying, and it’s strange to see a face so regularly splattered on newspapers and football paraphernalia look so defeated. Mom speaks to him in hushed tones, patting his back as she walks him toward the door. I manage to hear a “don’t worry, we’ll find her,” which gives him some comfort. The whole scene is screaming TOP SECRET EMOTIONAL TRAUMA, which makes me want to know what’s happening even more.

  As he is putting on his raincoat, the diamonds from his Super Bowl ring catch the light, spreading some sparkles over his grim expression. “Good night, Amber,” he says through residual sniffles. “Have a good day at school tomorrow.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Blitzman.” I want to say more, like, “Whatever is wrong, my mom will fix it,” but decide to let it lie.

  “I’ll let Charlie know you say hello,” he adds, before walking out.

  My face falls. Dear Gods, please don’t do anything of the sort.

  Ugh. Not Charlie.

  I HAD TO TELL MY best friend, Amani, about it the next day during a particularly awful period of gym class.

  “The Blitz breezed through the shop last night,” I say as we both do our best to look like we’re participating in the designated gymnastics unit, which we, of course, are not.

  “Reeeeeeally,” Amani replies, throwing her hands up in the air to appear as if she just completed a cartwheel. “Did he come to finally sweep your mom off her broomstick?”

  I make a face. “You know that’s never happening. No, he came in and was very upset, very mysterious. I thought maybe you could dust off your crystal ball and fill us in on what’s going on with him.” This is a pointless request, yet I make it anyway. Amani is a precog: she can see the future. But while I am plagued with this unavoidable urge to help people find their happy endings, Amani doesn’t share my altruistic views. “It might distract us from the sea of terry-cloth shorts,” I say, tugging mine down. I’m generally not a fan of exposing so much leg, especially for such an unworthy cause as tumbling.

  “Why do we have to do this anyway? Who ever heard of gymnastics for teenagers? Isn’t this better suited for toddlers?” she complains. Amani loves to complain.

  “Agreed,” I say, crouching in a ball as if about to perform a somersault. “So what do you say? Can we find out what’s troubling our dear mayor?”

  She gets down on the floor with me, making a half-assed attempt at the splits. I know that my question, while seemingly simple, is making her brain swirl in an unpleasant way. We made a pact back in middle school not to let our supernatural tendencies interfere with our friendship. In fact, she first approached me in sixth grade because she’d already seen we would become best friends. Usually, she can’t have premonitions about her own life, so I think technically she was having one about mine
. That seems to be a common magic drawback—your talent will not work on yourself. I guess the Fates decided that would make life too easy, tipping the scales unjustly. Bastards.

  From my uncomfortably balled-up position, I notice her brown roots have recovered from her blond dye job. A few weeks ago, we both decided to color our hair together, just to mix things up right before senior pictures. Amani, who has always been infatuated with Cinderella, decided to finally go for it and commit to the blond tresses of her fairy-tale idol. She has said to me COUNTLESS TIMES how she wishes she could meet a prince and lead a life of wonderment. As if being a freaking fortune-teller was not amazing enough. But I digress. Once we started painting on the bleach, she had a change of heart, worrying Momma Sharma would be upset at seeing her only daughter as a blond beach babe. I know she would’ve rocked it had she gone through with it, but I helped her rinse out the bleach before it was too late.

  I went for something a little more random; my hair is naturally black, making color changes kind of a pain, so instead, I added some jade-green and cobalt-blue streaks to the top, creating a cool peacock effect. I loved it, until some jackasses at school started calling me “peacock” with extra emphasis on the latter syllable because teenage boys are just so charming and worthless.

  “Ugh. No one should ever have to be this flexible,” Amani says, trying (and failing) to touch her toes.

  “Amani!”

  “What?”

  “Are you listening to me?”

  “Yes! Gods! But what do you want me to do? Read his palm and say ‘great danger lies ahead’?”

  “Yes, exactly that. I always get left out of the actual magic, and it sucks. I want to be part of an adventure and not just fast-forward to the ending.” I try to conjure the saddest puppy-dog eyes ever, even though I already know she won’t go down this path.

  Amani is a superior human, but as a supernatural being, there are some struggles. If it seems like fun, having a fortune-telling friend who can save you from upcoming embarrassing mishaps and bad choices, in actuality, it’s not. During the infant stages of our friendship, she’d tell me everything about my life before it happened; her visions came to her fast and furious, just like mine, so she couldn’t help but tell me what I was going to get for my birthday, or how a movie we’d never seen would end. It got to the point where I felt like everything I did was old news, every adventure a repeat. So we agreed to keep our visions to ourselves, unless something legitimately life-threatening was around the bend. (Not that I’d ever see anything of that nature. I only see fairy-tale drives into the sunset and happily-ever-afters.) And in case this isn’t already blatantly clear, yes, Amani is much more magical than me, a point she’s been very gracious to never rub in. On the scale of magicality, it goes: witches > precogs > birthday-party magicians > matchmakers.

  The suppression of her visions worsened after that; as her talent continued to grow, her parents were scared she was having some sort of psychotic break and immediately put her through intensive “deprogramming” therapy. Needless to say, it had a pretty rough effect. They are psychologists, which I guess is why they veered this way, especially since as far as we know, there’s no magical lineage in her family. Amani’s precognition seems to be a freak occurrence.

  And it can be freaky: I’ve seen her deliver premonitions to others, though not for a while, and it’s crazeballs. Back when she was fast and loose with her visions, they came to her without side effects, but now that she’s spent so much time keeping them at bay, it’s a real effort to make them happen. There’s a wildness in her eyes, almost as if her visions were actually germinating from the eyeballs themselves. Her pupils start to dilate, and her gaze refuses to rest on any particular thing. There’s been one or two times in the past few years where a vision managed to break through her vault of self-control, and we’re convinced those precognitions only came through because nearby supernaturals used her like a magical conduit. Jerks. Mom says the more one willingly denies her talents, the more likely those talents will fade away completely. I’ve tried to tell Amani this, but she brushes it off. I don’t always like that she’s given up magic so completely, but she’s my friend and I support her no matter what. If my gift came with a side helping of Exorcist, I probably wouldn’t do it on command either.

  She groans and swings around to sit cross-legged. “Amber, you are awesome and will therefore lead an awesome life, full of crazy awesome adventures. Your brand of magic is just as valid as anyone else’s.”

  “There. Was that so hard?”

  “Not as hard as it will be to get up off the floor now.”

  And simple as that, the subject is dropped.

  Just then, an aggressively perky body flips and lands mere centimeters from where we sit. Amani and I jerk back so as not to be toppled on, but the girl sticks her landing perfectly.

  “Watch it, freaks!” she shrieks, despite the fact that everything is fine and we had absolutely no effect on her trajectory. “You could have made me fall!”

  I wish, with every beat of my heart, that Ivy Chamberlain was not such a stain on my existence, but sadly, life is full of unavoidable pests. Every school seems to have one: that insanely good-looking blonde who terrorizes the student body with her unattainable perfection. Head cheerleader, student council president, loved/hated by girls and guys alike…blah, blah, barf. It’s sickening, right? Well, rest assured that no one is that flawless without some sort of black magic at play.

  Ivy’s a siren: a real-life femme fatale. Instead of calling out to weary sailors with hypnotic songs, she mesmerizes the school with simplistic cheerleading rhymes. Even her name embodies her ability to strangle living creatures into submission. Sirens are notoriously manipulative, probably because their gift comes with an expiration date. It is physically impossible to be so beautiful and powerful their entire lives, so they are forced to rely on a concentrated dose of influence. Ivy, being the one-woman brain trust that she is, decided to use up her power in high school; a poor choice if you ask me. Why be a world leader or cure cancer when you can spend your time standing on top of human pyramids and lying underneath idiotic football players? It’s so cliché I almost feel bad for her. Except that she’s a conniving, terrible wench, so I really don’t.

  “Good Gods, Ivy, you’re the one who came barreling into us,” Amani sneers.

  “Not that ‘Gods’ talk again. Do you really believe there’s more than one? You two decided you’re not undesirable enough, so you keep throwing mystical garbage into the mix?” Ivy asks, twirling the end of her golden ponytail.

  “Um, hello, it’s called religious freedom. Welcome to America circa 1776,” I say. While Amani and I are both technically pagans, we aren’t exactly zealots. We’re more like the Catholics who only show up to church on Easter. Still, even if I’m lapsed, I’ll take any chance to pick a fight with the school’s head wench.

  “It’s too bad your Salem ancestors never lived to see that day,” Ivy says with a grin.

  “Yeah, it’s a shame. They were really good at sniffing out supernatural sea garbage on the Massachusetts coastline,” I throw back. I take a few overdramatic whiffs of air. “In fact, I think I smell some now!”

  She puts her hands on her hips and looks down at me, trying extra hard to think of a clever retort. Ivy knows I know she’s a siren, just as she knows I’m a matchmaker. You know how dogs always sense other approaching canines? Well, supernatural beings can sniff each other out too. (Not literally, of course. That would be awkward.) For us, those facts are clear as day, even if our peers never take notice. It’s like our own little game of covert affairs, except with the entire school under her spell, she’s taken a gigantic lead. She doesn’t have to hide her siren abilities; she doesn’t need to. Even if she stood in the middle of campus and screamed, “I’m manipulating you all!” the response would be a series of cheers.

  Finally, she comes up with something. “I’m glad I have no idea what you’re talking about, just like no one else at this
school does. You’re just two little weirdos who will only ever have each other.” And there it is. Even though I know Ivy is a siren and her sense of power is false and fleeting; even though I know she is a horrible creature whose presence should be disregarded at all costs, it still sucks ass to be verbally attacked when you’re wearing unflattering green gym shorts.

  Once Ivy leaves, Amani lies back on the gym floor, letting out a low guttural groan. “Uggggggh. She is the wooooooorst.”

  I nod. “Please tell me she gets eaten by sharks or sucked into a cosmic wormhole in the future.”

  “As satisfying as that would be, I don’t even want to spend the energy trying to find out,” she replies.

  Mercifully, gym class finally comes to an end, and we shuffle into the locker room to change from one uniform to the next. Uniforms are a simple fact of private school, and Manchester Prep is no different: green plaid skirts for the girls, ties and coats for the guys. I think it’s hilarious how school administrators think making kids dress alike for school will force them to view each other as equals. It is the furthest from the truth. Uniforms inspire students to be more creative, to really dig deep and search hard for character flaws and other irregularities worthy of potential abuse.

  Anyway, we are walking down the wood-paneled hallways, when out of nowhere, I’m shoved into a locker by some meathead man-beast who calls me a “witch bitch,” which honestly is not very clever, and seriously, who pushes a girl?

  Amani immediately jumps in, pushing back on my perpetrator. “What was that for?” she screams at Trent Simmons, who is a school football “star.”

  “I hear you tripped Ivy and almost made her break her ankle,” he growls, a purple vein bulging from his neck. Gods, we’ve been out of gym for what—six seconds?—and Ivy already used her siren song to rally her troops.