“A crystal’s not enough to keep you tethered to this plane. You need someone else to bring you back when you can’t do it yourself.”
I think of what she told us before we started the ritual: that our spirits could get lost or stolen.
Holy shit.
“I had my tourmaline.” I produce the black stone from the front pocket of my jeans.
“Not enough,” Avery declares with a shake of the head. “You’re powerful, witchling, but you’re as ignorant as a newborn baby.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means your natural ability far exceeds your knowledge. You’ve got a lot to learn if you want to use your power safely.”
“Use my power for what?” The million-dollar question.
She shrugs. “There’s only one way to find out.”
I giggle. I might’ve had too much mead. “So I should just go shooting my power all around, hoping something happens? What am I, a superhero?”
“No, you’re a psychic.” She grins. “And a witch.”
Two things that, until recently, I didn’t believe actually existed. Now I’m coming to terms with the fact that I’m both.
In typical Avery fashion, she abruptly changes the subject. “Shit, I’m wiped. Where’s the chocolate?”
Aaron mutters, “I can barely keep my eyes open.” He’s slumped in the armchair, head tilted back and glasses on his lap.
“Really?” I turn to Leo. “Are you tired, too?”
“Exhausted.”
“Huh,” I muse, giddy and agitated. “I’m not. I’m all revved up.” I hop to my feet and dig the candy out of my bag.
“Then no chocolate for you.” Avery makes room on the coffee table for the Ghirardelli bar and the M&M’s. While everyone reaches for the candy, Leo retrieves my half empty glass of mead from the end table. “Try this instead.”
While I drink and my friends perk up, we discuss what we each experienced during the meditation.
“I set out to contact my dad’s dad,” Aaron tells us. “Because he’s where the musical genes come from. But it wasn’t him who talked to me. It was my mom’s dad.” He shrugs. “He died when I was three, so I don’t even remember him, but I know it was him talking to me. He didn’t say anything about being psychic, but still, it was pretty cool.”
Avery, who’s already contacted most of her family line, tells us she intentionally called on her Great-Great-Aunt Laura, her favorite spiritual guardian. “I suspect she’s the psychic in my bloodline because my grandmother used to say how strange she was.”
“Strange how?” I ask.
“She was agoraphobic.”
I nod. It seems perfectly reasonable to me that a psychic overwhelmed by constant messages would never want to leave her home. Especially in a day and age when any woman who behaved oddly was thrown into a sanitarium.
When Aaron asks what relative I contacted, I turn pink and confess, “I don’t think I did it right.”
“You did something,” Avery says. “Because you weren’t here.”
No, I definitely wasn’t here. Maybe I went too far back into the past. So far back, I was a single-celled organism swimming in the primordial soup.
“So what happened?” Leo gently urges, his deep voice vibrating against my back.
“It was weird. I was hoping I’d get to visit with my Grammy.” Mypaternal grandmother, a gentle, sensitive soul who died when I was eight. I show everyone the opal ring I wear on my left hand. “This was hers.” It wasn’t her most valuable piece of jewelry, but it was her favorite. When I was little, I liked to turn her hand this way and that so that the stone would catch the light and I could see all its different colors. “But she didn’t show up. None of my ancestors did.”
“Then where did you go?” Avery asks.
