Watch Me Burn: The December People, Book Two (5 page)

Evangeline stopped looking at him then, but he kept close watch on her for the rest of the night, trying to avoid having his back to her…not as if that made any difference. He couldn’t imagine why she would want to cast a spell on him, but that made it more nerve-wracking. Maybe this premonition came early enough that whatever he did to piss her off hadn’t happened yet. He didn’t get the sense she meant to harm him—her magic always looked dark, because she was a dark witch. That didn’t always mean she had malicious intentions. Patrick could see the spell following her around as a black cloud ready to dive toward him at any minute.

Patrick didn’t play with fire too much himself. Compared to everyone else, his fall magic was boring. He ate chips and salsa, while Dad filled the bubble with the smell of sizzling burgers and charcoal, and his siblings filled the bubble with light. Emmy and Evangeline engaged in a fireworks battle. Xavier kept to himself, drawing patterns of light in the air, occasionally spouting a shower of sparks at Evangeline or Emmy if they got too close. The girls ran around the perimeter of the playscape, their shoes crunching in the gravel, and flung light from their fingers at each other in a good-natured-to-the-death showdown. They excelled at creating sparks, but they also could throw gleaming balls, and release glowing currents, like slow moving-lightning. And the light didn’t dissipate right away. Leftover light scattered through the park like fireflies. He hadn’t seen Emmy play like that in a long time, and he had never seen Evangeline
play
. Before that night, he had almost forgotten Evangeline had barely turned thirteen. She was still a kid—or at least, she was supposed to be a kid.

All the while, even though Evangeline ignored him, Patrick saw her spell waiting for him. A dark cloud sucking up the fireflies.

Patrick watched the cloud hover for a week. Occasionally it would fade, or disappear briefly, most often when Evangeline had her nose in a book. That made Patrick wonder if his predictions could change. Perhaps the cloud faded if Evangeline changed her mind, or forgot about it for a while, like while she read. He wanted to see proof that the future could change, despite his prophecies.

However, the cloud still looked strong a week later, and he had grown tired of pretending he didn’t know about it. Or…he was just having a bad day. The temperature had reached over one hundred degrees, and he had texted Samantha five days earlier and still hadn’t heard back. And Evangeline walked past him, briefly blocking the television screen with her black cloud, just long enough to prick his frayed nerves.

“What?” he barked.

Evangeline stopped and turned to look at him. She looked around the room as if expecting to see somebody other than Patrick. She cocked her head and narrowed her eyebrows, a tiny version of the wrath Emmy would have served if he had yelled at her for no reason.

“Are you talking to me?” she asked.

Patrick regretted shouting at her, but kept with it. That damn cloud had to go. No one else may have seen it, but she
had
started it after all.

“Yes, I’m talking to you.”

“I didn’t say anything to you. I just walked by.”

“I know what you’re planning. And I want to know what I did to you to deserve it.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You are planning on casting a spell on me. And a dark one by the looks of it. I can see it.”

She cocked her head at him again, but this time she raised her eyebrows.

“You can
see
it? Really? That’s…so cool. What do you see, exactly? Do you know what I’m going to do?”

“No. I see the spell, like a dark cloud. I can’t tell when you’re going to strike, or what it’s going to be. And I certainly don’t know
why
.”

She nodded. “Hmm. I wonder if that’s because I haven’t decided yet.”

“You haven’t decided why you want to curse me?”

“No. I know why. I just don’t know the best way to do it.”

“Okay…are you going to tell me why?”

“I saw what you did. In the park, on the Fourth of July.”

“I didn’t do anything interesting that day…or, any other day for that matter.”

“Yes, you did. You stole my spell.”

“I what?”

“I cast my repelling spell around the park. You were standing in front of me, also preparing to cast. But when I cast mine, you grabbed my magic out of the air, and made it your own. And you made it better. I’ve never seen a repelling spell like that. When I lived with my mom, we had repelling spells around us all the time, so I know. You act like you don’t know what you’re doing, but you stole my spell and made it better.”

“Evangeline, I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. If I did do that, it wasn’t on purpose. And I doubt I did it at all.” Patrick thought about the magic he had seen around him that night. The wispy demons. When he cast his spell, they had disappeared, leaving a dense black shell of darkness around them. So, maybe….

“I saw what happened,” Evangeline said. “I don’t know if anyone else noticed, but I did. Your spell was better. Much better. A repelling spell might confuse people who come around, maybe hurt their vision, but yours…I think we were invisible. No one can cast a repelling spell like that.”

“Well, I’m sorry I stole your magic. I didn’t do it on purpose. So can you get over it? I thought you were more laid-back than this. Getting pissed about something small and holding a grudge that looks like a swirling vortex of darkness and evil seems more like an Emmy thing.”

“That’s not what I’m doing,” she said. “I’m not mad. Well, I was mad. But that’s not why I wanted to cast a spell on you.”

“Well, then…” Patrick couldn’t finish his question, because the dark cloud swooped in on him. His whole body burned, a cold burn, as if he had fallen in a pool of liquid nitrogen. The chill went deeper than physical pain. The darkness sucked out his light, eating away at him. The darkness that filled his mind felt so complete, so irreversible, it could only be death. But at the moment he thought he might actually die, the sensation faded. He shivered violently. Every single muscle tensed in pain, as if he had gotten frostbite from the inside out.

When he could see again, he had to look up to see Evangeline because he had fallen to the floor.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

His throat felt frozen and clogged. He couldn’t talk, but he knew his glare answered her question.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Didn’t work, I guess.”

She held out her hand to him, and when he didn’t take it, she grabbed his arm and pulled on him until he stood up.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” she said.

avid woke up with a headache. He felt hung over, and wondered if he had gotten drunk the night before and forgotten. But he didn’t think so. He remembered watching television on the couch with Amanda, talking about…something. He buried his face in the pillow and tried to go back to sleep. Amanda had left for work and the kids slept in.

After a few minutes of throbbing pain, he gave up. He took three Advil and stumbled to the coffee maker. He stared at the pantry for a full minute before he remembered he was looking for coffee grounds. He wouldn’t call himself a morning person, but this was ridiculous. The process of making coffee took three times longer than it should. He rubbed his temples as he watched the coffee drip into the pot.

He had a sudden panic he had forgotten something. Did he have a job? Should he go to work? Should he take the kids to school? There must be something he was supposed to do in the morning.

David felt a presence behind him and jumped.

“Did I scare you?” Xavier asked.

“Yeah, I guess you startled me.”

“Did you mean to do that?”

“What?”

“You put juice in your cereal instead of milk.”

“Oh…no,” David said, looking at the soggy orange mess of juice and granola.

Xavier walked past him to stare into the refrigerator.

“Do you need a ride somewhere?” David asked.

“Where?”

Xavier pulled a carton of eggs out of the fridge.

“I don’t know. School?”

“It’s summer.”

“Right.”

Xavier cracked eggs into a bowl. He didn’t look up at David to question his behavior.

“And…am
I
supposed to go somewhere?”

“What?” Xavier asked.

“A job or something I’m supposed to do?”

Xavier looked up at him now, and squinted at him with that tiny flicker that showed he noticed something happening outside of himself. That was all the reaction he ever gave.

“No,” he said. “Not since last month. You worked for Amanda’s brother for a while, but he fired you when he found out you were practicing magic.”

“Oh, that’s right. Son of a bitch.” David had forgotten for a moment, and became angry at his brother-in-law all over again. And the anger distracted him further. He had glared at his reflection in a spoon for some time before he heard Xavier’s voice.

“Dad?”

David put the spoon down. “Is there a spell that could give you a bad headache and make you, I don’t know…stupid?”

Xavier shrugged. “Sure.”

David waited for more explanation, but it didn’t come. Xavier lifted the bowl of three raw eggs and drank them in one gulp.

David recoiled. “Ugh. I thought you were about to make scrambled eggs.”

“That’s a lot of work,” Xavier said.

“You can’t eat raw eggs. They have salmonella.”

“Since when?”

“Always.”

Xavier shrugged. “Okay.”

David had landed on a coherent thought and now Xavier’s
breakfast
had distracted him again.

“You think someone cast a spell on you?” Xavier asked.

Right, that was it.
Fortunately, the coherent thought had been related to the only subject Xavier found interesting.

“Maybe. I woke up feeling confused. And my head is killing me. I don’t know why.”

“Maybe some kind of misdirection spell. It will probably wear off.”

Amanda.
Nothing she did made him angrier than when she used magic to try and control him. The first time she tried it, she irreversibly removed many of his memories. She thought she did it to help him, but he would never forgive her. He felt so violated when she messed with his head.