Wicked Sense (10 page)

Kids at school don’t know me. Why should they care about my feelings? Besides
D
rake, only Priscilla has been nice, helping me at school, calling to check on me, visiting briefly after Drake left.

I can’t imagine who did this. It can’t be Jane; Priscilla had told me she too saw Jane in the crowd.
Besides, eve
n blind, I’d feel Jane
’s
magical
energy close to me
. N
obody can turn it off.

Nobody but the Singularity, that is.
Maybe.
But why
would the Singularity do it? It woul
d only attract attention and accomplish nothing, besides scaring me. And if she knows I’m a
Sister
, she knows Jane’s one too. The Singularity would feel threatened by Jane as well.

Bottom line is: s
omebody
tampered with
my face cream
.
It wasn’t a coincidence; i
t
was
planned.
I end
ed
up
naked, blind, defenseless
, and humiliated.

And
nobody besides Jane ha
s
been openly hostile to me.

Today I go back. I can’t apply make
-
up to hide the redness because it’ll irritate my skin. I don’t care
;
I’m not
so
vain that a puffy face will ruin my day.

Skincare
has
never
been
a concern for me.
A
ll my life the Allure took care of zits, small cuts, unwanted facial hair, and other small imperfections. Even the
moisturizer
cream wasn’t really needed;
I
was just trying to
accelerate the healing
. Not that I’m using it again: t
he dermatologist
didn’t detect any allergies
and told me to stop
applying anything to
my face.

Sometimes I wonder how I’d look like without Allure. I once asked Mum about it, and she looked at me as if I was crazy. “What are you talking about?” she said. “You are who you are. You and your magical energy are one, inseparable. It only leaves you when you die.”

I wish I
had
more days to hide, but I need to help find the Singularity.
I have no choice; I’ve been practically
brainwashed
to do it. For two years now, all
coven
s
have been reminded of the
danger
of letting the Singularity go unchecked.

At the age of fifteen
, a witch has a quantum leap in magical energy
:
it’s our Daybreak.
From
a very early age
, we emit a faint
magical
signature
.
When we’re that young, only people in close contact to us can feel it. Mothers, being so close to their babies, are generally the first ones to sense our magic.
When we reach fifteen
years
old
, give or take a couple of months, we’re the source of an outburst of magical energy.
Usually
other witches in the same neighborhood
can
feel it.
Two years ago, right after I had
my
Da
ybreak, the Singularity arrived with a bang.

Her
Daybreak was felt
over
the entire West Coast.

All witches have roughly the same power. But this girl,
whoever
she is,
is
thousands of times
more powerful than
any of us. She has the potential of doing things we can’t eve
n
imagine.

She also may sign
al
the dawn of a new era, an
age
of
great
witches. That’s why she’s called a Singularity
—
nothing will ever be the same after her arrival.

But
we can’t find her.
A
fter her Daybreak, a Sister emanates
energy
continuously.
A
ny witch could easily pick
up
the Singularity’s
huge
signature
from
miles
away
.
However,
since
her Daybreak, no one reported such
an
anomaly
.
She must have risen magical shields that mask her signature, something
none
of us can do,
not even
for a small amount of time.

We
are simultaneously terrified
of
and fascinated with the Singularity.
T
he effects of
her magic
could
be so
potent
that she’d
break the Veil, and people would
not be able to reconcile reality and magic.

The Sisters
assembled
a few
scientists with Intellect Charm
s
to create a model
to
predict what
that would
mean to us—and
to
the rest of humanity—if
the
Veil
were
broken.

Eighty
-two
percent of the
result
scenarios pointed to
persecution of some kind
.
The most common short-term
scenario
included mandatory
testing and
registration
, vague accusations of terrorism, confinement
justified by national security claims. The long-term ones spoke of special prisons or “designated areas” (an euphemism
for
ghettoization
), criminalizing magic use, and the formation of private
-
and government
-
sponsored militias to capture or kill magic users.

In other words, a new era of witch hunting.

So, we need to find her
and rescue her from herself, for her sake and ours. No
coven has
her, or so they claim. We believe each other, up to a point. That’s a
nother
side effect of the Singularity
’s arrival
:
it created distrust and animosity between
covens
, something unthinkable
just
a couple of years ago.

Also, we all fear she could join a Night
c
oven
and become a Night
m
agic
user. In this case, all bets are off.

If she’s here, in Seattle, close to Greenwood High, I have to find her. My Sisterhood gave me so much
,
and I’ve never given back. I’ve never accomplished anything or done anything, in part because I don’t know
what
to do. With no interests, no talent, no hobbies, what
can
I do? My True Sight is the only thing that distinguishes me
.
I have this golden chance to use it, but I can only help if the Singularity is around here.

I hate the situation, and I hate the Singularity.
I just wish I could be a normal
girl with normal-
girl problems. Oh, and
that I didn’t have to go to school after being humiliated in public.

Well, since I’m wishing, I’d prefer not to have suffered the humiliation in the first place.

I called my mother, but she simply didn’t understand. She saw it as a typical American high
school prank. Sometimes I think she does live in the movies and plays. Also, she has no problem with nudity (which always made her a big hit with directors and audiences), a
nd said it was no big deal. I hu
ng up on her after she said that.

M
ad at everybody
,
I march down the stairs,
dreading
the
glares
and whispers at school
—
and that’s the best case scenario. Each step is deliberate and hesitant, as if I’m going to my own execution. I’m waiting for a repri
e
ve
; I’m
looking for good news anywhere
.
And I
think I
get them
when I reach the last step and
my
cell rings, the name “
Connor
” flashing
on the display.

“Hi,
Connor
,” I greet him, anxious. I can barely conceal my excitement.

“Skye, you
r
mother called me. She said somebody pulled a prank on you in school?”

“Yeah, I—
”

He interrupts me,
“Was it Jane?”

What? “No, it wasn’t her,” I say.

“Good. I was afraid
she was trying to sabotage us,”
he says, sounding relieved. “Listen, I
’ve
got to ask you something; it’s important.”

“Okay,” I say, waiting. And maybe hoping.

“Did it have anything to do with the
s
earch
?”

I say nothing.
What about me,
Connor
?

He
misinterpret
s
my silence. “If it does, we need to know, Skye. We might be close.”

I take a deep breath. “No,
Connor
. It has nothing to do with it.”

“Okay. When are you back to school?”

“Today,” I say
. I bite
my
lower
lip.

“Excellent. Good job, Skye. Keep me posted
.” He hangs up.

He hangs up
. I stare at the cell for a few seconds, reading “call ended” over and over again.
I sit down on the stairs, trying to make sense of it.

He didn’t ask
how I felt; he didn’t ask
about
what happened
.
He just didn’t care.

What did I expect? That he would
show up at my door, all concerned, bringing flowe
rs
,
sweep
ing
me off my feet?
That he woul
d vow to kill the bastards who did this to me?

I expected… I do
n’t know what, but certainly not that. Not a perfunctory, cold bus
iness call.
Couldn’t he stop by? The University District is ten minutes from here.
He
didn’t
ask
how
I
was
doing. Even as a courtesy to our story together.

Even as a courtesy, period.

Maybe he’s keeping his distance, respecting me. He may not want to get involved, even a little, afraid that he’s going to hurt me.

My cell is still
open. “Call ended,” it reads. It e
nded, Skye.

He’s not being cavalier. That’s how things are now. The past is just the past.

A tear escapes my eye. I didn’t expect anything. When I came here, I wasn’t
hoping
we would get
back together
—
that both of us, older and
a tiny bit more
mature, would realize how much we meant to each
other, and live happily
ever
after. But I have to admit: in the back of my mind, I knew this was a possibility, one of the infinite possible outcomes of us meeting again.

Now, with one phone call, it’s clear it’s
over.

I
cry.
Not for me,
not for us, but for the death of this possibility,
for the
death of the what-if. It’s the end.
It
e
nded
. I cry because it’s sad
seeing a door closing
, that’s all.

I look
one last time at the cell phone
and see the time. I’m late for whatever punishment the mean kids will inflict
on
me today
at school
.
I turn the cell off, angry.
Connor
made it clear: I have a job to do, no matter what.