Page 4 of Everything She Does Is Magic

He’d muttered that last part to himself, but I’d heard him. He was frustrated with me for once again sitting quietly through one of his lectures on our family history. He wasn’t the first to mistake my silence for disinterest, but he was the loudest about it, thinking that if he made enough sly comments on the subject, I would transform into a social butterfly through the strength of his annoyance. I was twelve years old at the time, and my life was already hard, moving from family member to family member to hone my powers and learn our coven’s ways, never staying in one place long enough to get comfortable.

I’d thought the easiest thing to do would be to give it all up, so I’d asked Uncle Edward what would happen if a witch failed to join our coven. He’d told me, “We’d use a very old spell in the family grimoire, and we’d strip that person of their power. No one in the family would ever speak to them again. It would be a very taxing process for everyone. It’s only happened once, centuries ago. I would tell you more, but there isn’t more to say. We don’t know what came of her after the family banished her.You don’t want that, do you? So why don’t you start acting a little nicer?”

It scared me so much that I still have nightmares to this day, imagining my entire family locking hands around me, chanting some Doyle spell in Gaelic as they pull my powers out of me like steam hissing from a teapot, until my gift has evaporated into nothing and they’ve left me lying on the ground to fend for myself.

Returning to the flowers, I squat down again, touching the asters that remain. “I’m sorry, I only meant to fix your friend,” I whisper.

No matter what I do, that phone call with my parents can’t be erased from my memory. Nearly a year’s worth of lies all came to a head with a five-word sentence, spoken without consideration.

Her last name is Keller.

For months my mom and dad had been thrilled to hear about my new best friend, Darcy. Everyone in the family thinks I’m too intense for my own good. While that’s usually a frustration, it’s made telling this lie much easier, because my parents have been so happy I’m giving them any information at all that they haven’t wanted to ruin the moment by asking too many questions, knowing that with one wrong word, I might stop talking altogether.

At no point had I been consciously withholding Darcy’s last name. It just hadn’t come up. Probably because this lie has been such a delicate dance, I spend most of my calls with my parents talking around it as much as possible. But tonight I said “Keller,” and my mother shrieked so loudly, I dropped my phone.

“How wonderful! That’s Pam Keller’s daughter!” she shouted, audible even from the space between the couch cushions. “I can’t believe I didn’t put it together with Darcy’s first name. It’s justbeen so long since I’ve been to Fableview. But I know her parents. And her grandmother protected yours. Oh, this is incredible. I always knew Fableview would be the place where you finally figured it all out. I bet Aunt Cal is just as thrilled as weare.”

Aunt Cal is my guardian here, chosen as my final mentor because she has the least patience for young children. She didn’t want to work with me until after I turned seventeen. My mom assured me that Cal and Fableview would make me fall completely in love with my magic.

Cal hasn’t spoken to me out loud in six weeks. Through a note she scribbled onto handmade paper, written in a cursive so close to chicken scratch I had to use my mending magic to turn it into something legible, she wrote,I am exploring new depths of my magic through limiting access to my senses. I will no longer be using my voice to communicate. There are pizzas in the freezer. Do not use my eggs.

Okay, I’d written back.

I knew this Darcy Keller lie would one day come back to haunt me. I had hoped to make at least one actual friend before that happened.

But here I am, guilty, friendless, hovering around the entrance to Pam’s Paints and burning flowers instead of going inside to ask Darcy to come to a dinner with my parents at the end of the month. The usual activity of a brand-new acquaintance. No pressure at all.

Oh, and, by the way, I’m a witch and I need to bring a mortal friend to my coven initiation in November. Are you free?

I’m very sorry, Emily Dickinson, but my nerve will always deny me.

And soon my family will too.

3

Darcy

“Howdy, painters!” My dad jogs down the stairs that separate the art shop from our condo above it.

My mom follows behind him. “Welcome to witchy paint night!”

My parents rarely let me teach a class without making at least one appearance. Tonight my mom is dressed as Sandy fromGrease. Not the bodysuit-wearing, hair-teased Sandy from the end of the movie, but the poodle-skirt-and-cardigan one from the beginning. My dad is dressed as Rick Moranis’s character from the originalGhostbusters. Over forty years ago, someone told my dad he looked like that actor, and Dad took that as a lifelong oath he must honor every single year.

Both of my parents have worn these costumes so much that it’s how I picture them when we’re not together—my dad with his cardboard ghost-busting backpack, and my mom in a poodle skirt with her hair in a curled ponytail that swishes from side to side as she flits through our art shop.

“We’re so thrilled to have you learning from the great and powerful Darcy,” Dad says, kissing me on the cheek as he addresses tonight’s painters. Shifting his focus to the corner of the shop, he takes out his ghost gun and makes a show of pretending to attack an invisible intruder, adding in his ownpew-pew-pewnoises to go along with it.

My mom inspects my lips. “Where’s the pink?” she whispers, voice full of concern.

“I ran out of lipstick.”

The truth is, Grace gave me a red lip stain she didn’t want, and she insisted I wear it tonight.

“I’ll go out and get you some tomorrow morning,” Mom says.

In our painting, the witch’s lips are nothing more than a needle-fine prick with the smallest brush we provide. Changing my own lip color from pink to red is not going to rattle our customers’ foundation of belief. Deep down, they have to already know I’m not a real witch. “Witch” is a title people give themselves when they want to read tarot, like Piper Blake’s family, or when they need a good excuse to keep their spooky decorations up year-round.

I used to believe when I was a kid. Just like I believed in Santa Claus. The Easter Bunny. The tooth fairy. One by one, my parents revealed the truth about those other things. They haven’t said anything about witches being fake, but they don’t need to. They are real because collectively we commit to the idea that they could be. It’s way too vital to Fableview to do otherwise.