Page 82 of Enchanted to Meet You

“See?” she said, when she noticed his stare. “I told you. You have the wrong girl.”

“Oh, no,” he said. His smile was wide. “We absolutely have the right girl.”

Jessica

A crow flying south means good fortune is about.

A crow flying north means trouble comes forth.

Goody Fletcher,Book of Useful Household Tips

“I don’t understand it,” Esther said. “I’ve never been able to do that before. Not likethat.”

“It’s because of her,” Derrick said.

It was a minute or so before I realized he was talking about me. Both he and Esther were staring in my direction.

“Me?” I shook my head. “Oh, no. I had nothing to do withthis.”

I looked down at the bits of shattered gourd on the cold, hard ground. There were pumpkin seeds everywhere. It was going to be impossible to clean up. I hoped Farmer Frank wouldn’t mind the mess we’d made. Maybe crows liked pumpkin guts?

“You haveeverythingto do with this,” Derrick said. His voice sounded unnaturally loud, but only because it had grown quiet in the field. The crows had stopped their outraged shrieking and, strangely, there were no other birds flying overhead. Even the wind seemed to have died down. “‘When the Bringer ofLight is joined by the Chosen One, her power will increase tenfold.’”

I glanced at Esther to see what she thought of this, and saw that an enormous grin had broken out across the girl’s face.

“Cool,” she said. “Let’s do it again!”

And so she did.

With the exception of Rosalie Hopkins, I’d never seen anyone with powers as strong as Esther’s.

But she was so casual about it. Just a wave of her hand, thenboom!A flash, and a pumpkin exploded to bits.

“Was that okay?” she’d ask. “How was that? Want me to do another one?”

Boom!There went another one.

When Derrick asked her to levitate a pumpkin instead, no problem. Suddenly one of the pumpkins was floating across the field, three feet in the air, seemingly without any effort on Esther’s part at all. It was a good thing Farmer Frank didn’t choose that moment to wander over to see what we were up to, since what Esther was up to might have blown his middle-aged, firmly-rooted-in-reality mind.

What Esther couldn’t seem to do, however, was concentrate on what she was doing for very long. The second her cell phone chirped—which it did constantly, because though the Internet was down, there was nothing wrong with the local cell towers—she pulled it from her pocket to look at the screen. While I didn’t exactly blame her—I was getting constant calls from Becca since we couldn’t do any credit card transactions at Enchantments—this did cause anything Esther was levitating to fall to the hard ground with asplat, or nearly collide with my new car.

Most of the time, the texts she was getting were from Gabby, asking Esther if she liked Gabby’s hair, her spray tan, her makeup, her nails, all sent with accompanying photos that Esther wasrequired to scroll through and like or otherwise express an opinion on. Everything we were doing in the field had to shut down until these replies were made.

“Can’t you do anything to stop this?” Derrick whispered to me when Esther began recording herself telling Gabby about how gorgeous she looked in the dress I’d dropped by for her that morning.

“Stop what?” I was texting my brother a photo of my new car.

“The chitchatting about the hair and clothes and makeup. What we’re doing here is actually important.”

“Um, excuse me, what those two are doing is actually important, too. First of all, they’re a couple. People who love each other share things. And secondly, people are always trying to brush off the things that women love, like fashion and makeup, as superficial or frivolous. But they’re not, because for some people, those things are armor they put on to feel more confident in a world that can sometimes feel cruel. They’re transformative and empowering.”

Derrick’s eyebrows were as furrowed as the field we were standing in. “I’m sorry. I get it now. But can you not see that mayberight nowisn’t the best time for those discussions? In a day or two, all of this land will most likely be underwater. And then it isn’t going to matter what color Gabby’s hair is.”

“Um.” I lowered my phone. “Good point. Esther?”

She looked up from her screen. “Yeah?”

“We need to concentrate on doing magic stuff right now.”