Destruction: The December People, Book One (27 page)

“I’m still not happy about you poking holes in my brain. I wouldn’t bring it up as an argument against me if I were you.”

“Fine, then, tell me. Why in the world do you think we should practice magic?”

“So we know what we’re doing. Even if magic is like a baby defusing a bomb, wouldn’t it be better if the baby had a little bit of training? If the bomb is going to go off either way. You said yourself, wizards do magic on accident. I’m sorry, but that seems a lot more dangerous than doing magic on purpose.”

“It’s not just the actual spells that are dangerous. It’s the magical energy that’s created when you practice. I can already feel it in the house. It’s like the air is heavier. Can’t you feel it?”

Yes, he could.

“That’s why I forbid it,” she said. “Some accidental magic is better than lots of magic on purpose. The more magic in the house, the more likely it will mess with people’s minds. And we have
eight
powerful wizards living here. Six of whom are going through hormonal changes that make even normal teens act crazy. That has a lot of potential for disaster. As you may have noticed, it’s not going well so far.”

“Yeah, it’s
not
going well so far. Because we’re doing it
your way.”
He shouted the last two words for emphasis. “Your way—which as far as I can tell, is all just hate and lies. Hating who you really are and trying to hide it. Hating everyone else who is like you. And the lies—forbidding magic left and right but then still doing it yourself whenever you feel like it. That’s what you’ve been doing. And that’s what’s not working.”

She stared him down with eyes that seemed to spit sparks. David backed up. He had to admit, his wife’s glares looked more threatening now that he knew she was a witch, and a wicked one at that. He hadn’t won many arguments in their marriage and felt he had poor odds on this one, too. He also usually didn’t get the last word… but he did this time. For once, she had no reply, no counter-argument. She turned away from him and left the room.

David retreated to his office. Being a wizard felt lonely. No parenting books or websites existed about how to guide your magical children effectively through their formative years, and David had no one to ask. Not counting his kids, he knew only one dark practicing wizard who hadn’t died. Perhaps, he had no better option. He opened a blank email and stared at it.

atrick overheard his mother on the phone cancelling an appointment with a locksmith. From what he caught from her side of the call, she wanted him to put locks on the outside of all the bedroom doors, but she changed her mind. Perhaps she wanted Patrick to overhear it as a warning. One more magical infraction and she would lock them in their rooms until they were old enough to vote. She might do it too. His mom loved control, and she would get it one way or another.

For now, all the kids were grounded, but Mom and Dad allowed them to move around the inside of the house at their own free will. Patrick enjoyed this freedom by pacing around the upstairs family room, practicing for imprisonment.

Samantha appeared in his path as suddenly as if she had materialized by magic. From his limited understanding of magic, he doubted anything that dramatic could happen. But she could enter a room like an Olympic diver entered a pool. No splash.

Samantha moved close to him. His heart began its predictable hammering.

“May I check something?” she asked. “I’m curious.”

“Okay.”

She placed her hands on his chest, as Emmy had done to Jude before she went crazy. Patrick pushed her away.

“I know what I’m doing,” she said.

“Emmy always knows what she’s doing too.”

“It’s not like that. I know how to be careful. And it’s not a spell. I just want to taste your magic.” She licked her lips.

“What does that mean?” he asked, although he barely cared. He wanted her to do it.

“There are flavors of magic for every second, of every hour, of every day of the year. Every wizard has their moment. The moments closest to the winter solstice are the darkest, and the moments closest to the summer solstice are the lightest.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m a spring witch. We’re about fertility and youth and change.”

“We’re winter?” he asked. He knew it instinctively.

She nodded.

“The opposite of spring,” Patrick said.

“No, summer is the opposite of winter. Spring and winter lie next to each other.” She lined up her hands, thumb to thumb, to illustrate her point further, as if she needed to. “And I am a March. Right where winter and spring touch. The gateway.”

That almost sounded like a come-on… maybe. He had enough trouble understanding girls without the magical riddles.

She replaced her hands on his chest and then leaned the side of her face between her hands, right over his heart. He knew she could hear it beating out of control. He could live with that as long as she didn’t press herself close enough to feel what went on below his belt. Well… he did want her to do that. He wanted her to do lots of things.

She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. “Hmm…”

Patrick breathed deeply, too, but his breath sounded jerky. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her closer.

She looked up at him and licked her lips again.

“Autumn, I think,” she said. “Perhaps even, September.” She said the word
September
like she might say the word
chocolate
. “You’ve been misplaced somehow. You don’t belong with them.”

“September really is the opposite of March.”

“Opposite maybe, but not that different. It’s the other equinox. Equinox wizards sometimes have trouble learning magic because their magic is too complex, light and dark in equal measure. But once they figure it out, they can be the best ones. The most versatile. They’re more moderate, less overwhelmed by extremes, so they can be more precise. At least, this is what my mother told me to make me feel better when I couldn’t do spells.”

She stayed in his arms. Her lips glittered.

“Everyone in your family is winter,” she said.

“You’ve tasted them?” he asked.

She giggled. “Well, not like
this
. The closer a wizard is to the solstice, the more obvious it is. You’re complicated. I had to get really close. The others aren’t so complex.”

Their foreheads touched.

“They’re close to the solstice then?” he asked. “The darkest wizards?”

“I think so. I’m not good enough to pinpoint dates. But I would say they are all either December or January. Some of them could be November, or February, perhaps. I’ve only really checked Emmy and Jude. She’s a January. He’s a December.”

He couldn’t help but picture her ‘checking’ Jude and wanted to punch him in the stomach for about the millionth time in his life.

“But you all shouldn’t be so concerned about being dark. Darkness doesn’t mean
bad
. Winter isn’t
bad
. It’s just a season. The Earth needs winter just as much as summer. And Texas could probably use a lot more of it.”

She giggled at her joke. He caught her parted lips in a kiss. He had kissed two other girls before and didn’t think it had gone well, but this went differently. She placed his bottom lip between hers and parted his mouth more. She gently dragged the tip of her tongue along the side of his. He had never felt less wintery.

One of David’s earliest memories was about Christmas. Lately, he had run the memory through his head over and over, wishing he could make it ‘sticky’ so he could live it again. With so much missing, this memory of his childhood felt like a nugget of gold in his brain.

The Vandergraffs didn’t celebrate Christmas. As a child, he would have at least known why. They would have celebrated the Solstice, instead. Although, of course, he didn’t remember any of that. He just remembered the absence of Christmas and how much he hated his parents for not letting him have Christmas like all the other kids. Even as an adult, he never forgave them for this, especially since, as an adult with no understanding of wizardry, he had seen this as an arbitrary cruelty, a child abuse in its own right, one of the many things that had made Amanda’s job of gently removing the Vandergraffs from David’s life easy. As she had said, she had removed only memories of the actual physical abuse. David still had plenty left in his mind about his parents to piss him off, and no Christmas topped the list.

In first grade, right before Christmas break, all the kids talked on and on about Santa Claus. David remembered asking his teacher, Miss Atwood, why Santa Claus didn’t visit his house and if that meant he was naughty. He remembered this in part, because Miss Atwood cried when he said this, and he hadn’t seen many grown-ups cry. She had seemed old to him at the time, but David guessed Miss Atwood had just graduated college, in her early twenties. She had very curly blonde hair and wore glasses.

She told him, “No. It doesn’t mean that you’re naughty. You’re a very good boy. Santa tries very hard to visit every child, but sometimes even Santa makes mistakes. Sometimes he will spill milk on parts of his list or he will accidentally leave pages at home. He has a very hard job, you see, and he’s very old.”

The next day, she pulled him aside before recess and said, “I called Santa, and he wanted you to know he’s very sorry for missing your house. He said one of his reindeer ate some pages of his list. The missing pages were from the Nice List, and you were on it.”

“Really?”

“Yes. He wants to make sure he doesn’t miss you this year. So he wants you to write him a letter telling him what you want for Christmas. He said to give the letter to me, and I’ll make sure he gets it.”

David rushed home that day and told four-year-old James all about how Santa Claus had missed them by mistake and would come this year. They just had to write him a letter. James opened his eyes wide and ran to find David a piece of paper and a marker. David carefully wrote two letters, one for him and one for James, starting with Dear Santa and followed by a list of toys. When he couldn’t write the words, he drew pictures. He signed their names. James leaned over him and watched carefully to make sure he got it right.

David took the letters to Miss Atwood so she could give them to Santa. On Christmas Eve, he started to get nervous. They didn’t have a fireplace for him to come down. They didn’t have a tree or stockings where Santa could put presents. He should have warned Santa in the letter. Maybe that’s the real reason Santa had never come. He saw their house and thought they didn’t believe in him.