Authors: Nikki Jefford
Hannah fluffed her pom-poms with two hands.
“I’m sure S
eñora
Contreras would
understand if there was an emergency.”
“Don’t get any ideas,” Marco said.
Hannah removed her hands from her head. “If
duffers can get by without magic their entire life, I can make it
through three months.”
Gray raised a brow. “What’s a duffer?”
“A simpleton,” Will said.
“Oh, we call them normals.”
“
Beotas,
” Marco said. He rubbed his
chin. “Or
idiotas
.”
Gray frowned. Her mother had given up her
powers. She didn’t think of her as a duffer or
idiota
. She
didn’t think of Carlo that way, either.
“Why the face?” Hannah asked.
Gray stepped over a crack in the pavement.
“It just doesn’t sound nice.”
Hannah snorted. “Believe me, duffers would
call us a lot worse if they knew we existed. Demons.”
“Monsters,” Will said.
Marco held two fingers over Hannah’s head,
behind the pom-poms. “Devils.”
Gray laughed. She stepped closer to the
group. She’d made it to Spain, and she’d made good friends. This
was going to be the best summer of her life. She could feel it in
her gut, and her mother had once told her it wasn’t the heart but
the gut that knew best.
When they saw the line gathered outside the
double doors leading into the Sidecar Factory Club, Hannah
groaned.
“It’s not that long,” Marco said.
“It’s a line,” Hannah whined. “I don’t wait
in lines.”
Gray elbowed her playfully. “We’re duffers
for the summer, remember? We wait in lines.”
Hannah did not return her smile.
Marco removed a piece of lint from his shirt
sleeve. “I usually create a distraction . . . a fight at the back
of the line. It’s very effective.”
This made Hannah smile. “I put a glamor over
myself. Celebrity coming through!”
“You two are terrible,” Will said. “Both of
you.” He shot Gray a “can you believe them?” look.
Gray wondered what Will would say if he knew
she had once broken into her coven leader’s home and unleashed the
powers of a spiteful warlock upon the entire city.
“If I had the use of my powers, I’d teleport
inside.”
All three of her friends stared at her.
“You can teleport?” Marco asked.
Gray lifted her chin. “Impressed?”
“Very.”’
“Teach me!” Hannah said.
Gray chuckled. “I can’t.”
“After the retreat.”
“I can teach you, but it doesn’t mean you’ll
be able to learn.”
Marco clutched his chest in mock pain then
laughed.
Their conversation was interrupted by angry
shouts.
“
Es hijo de puta!
” a voice cried
behind them. This was quickly followed by a second shout. By the
time their group turned around to see what was going on, one guy
was punching the other in the face.
The front of the line snaked outward then
coiled back, forming a semicircle around the feuding Spaniards.
Gray looked from the fight to the empty space
between their group and the doorway. Her lips stretched into a
smile. “Well, what do you know?”
“Wasn’t me,” Marco said.
“Let’s go in then,” Hannah said, stepping
forward. “I want to dance.”
Inside the Sidecar, the music pumped from the
speakers. Strobe lights flickered across the late-night revelers.
Gray bit gently down on her lower lip as she looked around the
club.
“Let’s get a drink,” Hannah shouted.
Gray followed her to the bar. The guys held
back. At the counter, the bartender stared at Hannah’s pom-poms.
“We’ll take two pints of Guinness,” she told him.
“No, none for me, thanks,” Gray said
quickly.
Hannah shrugged and turned toward the
bartender.
“
Una pinta de la
cerveza
—Guinness.”
A young man turned on his stool at the
counter to look at Hannah. “Are you British?”
Hannah squared her shoulders, but the guy was
still taller than her on his stool.
“Who’s asking?”
“I’m visiting from Manchester.”
Hannah plopped an arm on the counter. “I’m
from Sheffield. How long are you in Barcelona?”
“I haven’t decided yet. What about you?”
Hannah rolled her eyes. “All summer.” The
bartender handed her a pint of Guinness.
“Cheers,” Hannah’s countryman said, holding
up a pint of something lighter.
Hannah grinned and lifted her pint. Gray
leaned into her. “Hannah, I’m going to look for Carlo.”
“I’ll see you on the dance floor.”
The volume from the music increased the
closer Gray got to the speakers. The room was already jam-packed
with people jumping and dancing to indie rock. She skirted the
brick-covered walls searching for Carlo. Even Will and Marco had
disappeared somewhere in the crowd.
The overhead lights switched to strobe. Gray
leaned against a brick column and shut her eyes. Strobe lights
always bothered her. They made her feel as though her own eyes were
flashing. She blinked rapidly to clear her vision, but that only
made it worse.
Better to come back at the end of the song.
Gray turned back to the bar. A girl rammed into Gray then glared at
her as though she were the one at fault for not moving out of her
way.
More people were pouring into the bar through
the set of glass double doors leading into the low ceilinged club.
Gray weaved her way around the black tables, past metal chairs. She
scanned faces, but they were all foreign in more ways than one.
Hannah and her Englishman were no longer at
the bar.
The band ended their song and started a new
one. The lights from above bathed the band and their instruments in
multicolored light. Gray made her way along the wall, stopped
suddenly, and smiled. She’d seen Carlo’s face in a brief flash of
blue. She stood on her tiptoes and looked into the crowd. In the
next glimpse, Carlo was dancing with a girl in a slinky red
dress.
No reason to panic. It wasn’t as if Carlo
couldn’t dance with other girls. And the way he pressed his body
against hers was just a European thing. Right?
Gray made her way through the crowd, barely
avoiding bumps and jabs as she pushed through. Once Carlo saw Gray
he would wave her over and move away from the other woman.
Gray watched his hands slide down the woman’s
body. She kept expecting him to see her, but he was too focused on
his dance partner. Gray recognized the look in his eyes. The one
that said “There is no woman on this earth I’d rather be with than
you.” Her heart dropped. As Gray opened her mouth to shout his
name, Carlo took the woman’s head in his hands and kissed her.
Gray stopped. The woman had tilted her head
and closed her eyes. Carlo’s lips moved slowly as though relishing
a juicy piece of ripe fruit . . . or an olive.
The bodies around Gray turned to shells,
numbed by alcohol and careless motion.
The she-devil in the red dress pressed her
lips all over Carlo and ground her body against him.
Gray’s fingers twitched and she lifted them,
tempted for the briefest moment to snap the harlot’s dress right
off her body.
Even if magic were an option, Gray knew
better than to use her powers for such petty revenge.
An electric guitar screeched, drowning out
the lead singer’s vocals. Someone stepped on her foot. Gray felt
like screaming. And why not? It’s not as though anyone would hear
her.
When Gray called her mom, it went straight to voice
mail. And thank goodness it did. She felt ridiculous crying over a
boy she’d only known for two weeks. She was tougher than that.
Hannah pounded on Gray’s door. Gray had
managed to avoid her friends for several days. She had bypassed the
sanctuary’s scheduled meals and ate alone in cafés, chewing her
food so slowly it went cold by the fourth bite. Yesterday, Gray
boarded the metro and let it carry her into parts of the city she’d
never ventured. It hadn’t mattered. She’d noticed nothing as she
walked around aimlessly.
Didn’t mean it hurt any less.
Now Hannah had both fists on the door,
beating a hasty rhythm. “Gray, open up!”
Gray looked at the door and smiled for the
briefest moment. S
eñora
Contreras’ rule of
no magic had its advantages. For instance, Hannah couldn’t unlock
her door unless she wanted to zip her lips for the rest of the
summer with S
eñora
Calida.
“Gray, this is Marco. You need to come
out.”
“We have an entire day of fun planned,”
Hannah said. “Starting with macchiatos.”
Gray lifted her head. “Macchiatos?”
“And pizza,” Marco said.
“Anything else?” Gray asked. She’d made up
her mind to come out at the mention of macchiatos, but she might as
well hear the entire menu before unlocking her door.
“Surprise entertainment,” Will said.
Gray frowned. “I’ll come out for the food and
drink, but I’m not in the mood for entertainment.”
“Too late,” Hannah said. “We already bought
the tickets.”
“Then take someone else.”
The two Dutch witches would probably jump at
the chance. They were always eyeballing Marco and chattering away
whenever he breezed past. Who knew? Maybe even Will would get
lucky. Double date. Witches and wizards. Not everyone was destined
to strike out that summer.
“No way,” Hannah said. “You’re coming. Trust
me. You won’t want to miss this.”
Gray opened her dresser drawer and reached
under her pile of neatly folded tank tops for her luck amulet. Her
fingers brushed against the stone and metal. Then she dropped it
into her purse. Gray would never remove it again.
Gray considered changing into a tank top and
shorts, then decided to stick with the sundress. If she could have
snapped herself into a wardrobe change that would have been another
story. Gray stepped into her flip-flops and reached for the door
handle. “I’m coming out but only for the food.”
Gray could practically see Hannah smile
through the door.
“Whatever you say,
chica
.”
Ten minutes later, Gray had her macchiato.
The drink slid down her throat bittersweet.
“Tourist. Spaniard. Tourist, tourist,
tourist,” Hannah said, watching people pass their table outside on
the Ramblas.
A middle-aged man stopped several feet away
to consult a city map. Hannah stifled a yawn. “Tourist.”
“And her?” Marco asked.
Gray followed the direction of his stare to a
tall, slender woman in a long clingy skirt and six-inch heels. She
had lush dark hair and gold jewelry clasped around her neck and
arms.
Hannah took a quick look. “Definitely
Spanish.”
Gray was glad to be in the company of friends
again. Or maybe that was the macchiato talking. Food and coffee
always made her feel better—so long as she didn’t consume them
alone. Gray took another sip and smiled.
“Feeling better?” Marco asked.
Gray ran a tongue over her lower lip. “A
little.”
“I’m sorry, Gray,” Will said.
Gray shrugged. “That’s what I get for dating
a normal.”
“That’s what you get for dating a Spaniard,”
Hannah said. “Watch out for any man who speaks a Romance
language.”
Marco grinned and winked. “She’s right. The
italiani
,
francesi
, and
spagnoli
are all great
lovers.”
Hannah rolled her eyes. “No kidding, you
don’t know when to stop.”
“How does one stop loving?”
“
Pfff
,” Hannah said. “And how many
hearts have you broken back home, Marco?”
Marco placed a hand over his chest. “I do not
break hearts. I make them sing.”
Hannah rolled her eyes. “That’s the
problem.”
Gray swallowed the last of her macchiato and
set the mug down. “I believe you promised me pizza next.”
“Pizza, shopping, entertainment, tapas, and
clubbing,” Hannah said.
“Such splendors; I ought to get my heart
broken more often,” Gray said, a bitter edge to her words.
“Your heart isn’t truly broken?” Will asked.
His forehead wrinkled. “Is it?”
“Hardly.” Gray rolled her eyes in a way that
must have been reassuring, for Will smiled and nodded, and Hannah
went back to identifying tourists and locals as they passed.
Carlo had not broken Gray’s heart. Not even
close. Her heart was already broken. He’d merely walked over the
shattered fragments and crushed them to splinter-sized slivers that
stabbed at Gray’s insides.
Well, no more! She’d sworn off magic for the
summer, and she’d swear off men, too. S
eñora
Contreras didn’t need a man in her life. The
witch ran a successful retreat in the heart of Barcelona and was
never without company. Maybe Gray could come up with her own way to
live independently while providing sanctuary for the gifted. She
would talk to
Señora
Contreras before the
summer was out. Perhaps the Spanish witch would agree to take her
on as an intern.
Gray’s shoulders relaxed.
Later that afternoon, with a belly happily
filled with wafer-thin pizza, and a wrist adorned with a new woven
bracelet, Gray consented to follow her friends to the Teatre
Poliorama. Before they rounded the corner to the theater, Hannah
put her hot clammy hands over Gray’s eyes.
“Hannah, what are you doing?”
“It’s a surprise. You’re going to love
this!”
“So long as it’s not a comedian.”
“He is not a comedian,” Marco said. He
sounded excited, too.
“He?” Gray asked.
“Just wait and see,” Hannah said.
“I can’t at the moment—your hands are
covering my face.”
“Patience. We don’t want you to see the
playbill.”
Gray tried not to sigh as Hannah kept her
fingers pressed over her eyes. They were sweaty and smelled like
pizza. Conversations in Catalan surrounded them as they inched
their way through a line then made their way presumably inside the
theater. Gray caught snippets of Spanish while they waited, but
mostly Catalan. She was surprised to hear English as well.