“So I hear.” She smiles and nudges my tea closer. “Finish up. We have a ritual to do.”
At her request, I tell her, in more detail than Leo apparently did, about what happened to me at the ghost town.
“You’re powerful,” she asserts.
I squirm. “I don’t feel powerful. I feel like a neurotic mess.”
“That’s because you haven’t learned how to protect yourself. With some work, you’ll be able to control your reactions and harness that power.”
I frown. Harness? As in deliberately seek out and invite in the energies I feel? I can’t for the life of me imagine why I would do that. What purpose would it serve, other than turning me into a shaking, bawling, crumpling mess?
“I just want it to go away.”
Avery’s sympathy surprises me. “Oh, believe me, I get it. That’s exactly how I used to feel. Like,am I cursed? Why am I such a freak?” She smiles and opens her arms wide, as if presenting herself to the world. “But now, I totally embrace it.”
Could I ever be like Avery? I want her confidence so badly, but all I feel is vulnerable and small.
“What changed?” I ask.
“Ownership,” she answers, without missing a beat. “Your ability belongs to you. You’re the boss. You get to decide when and where and how you use it.”
Wow. What would it feel like to arrive at that point?
Avery reassures me, “It’s not gonna happen overnight, but it will happen if you put in the work.”
“Okay, then—” I set down my empty cup and smile, “—let’s do my very first ritual.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
If hope can makemagic real, then our charging spell should work in spades. It’s been an odd ten minutes, but at least now I know how to use an herb bundle. Avery has cleansed me, my amethyst, herself, and her living room in its smoke. And yeah, it smells really good. She blew my mind when she showed me her beautiful wand—not a ten-dollar toy, an actual magic wand. It’s made of selenite and mounted on a handle of ornately carved silver. With it, she cast a circle around us and the coffee table where she’s set up our tools and ingredients.
Candles flicker and stick incense fills the room with fragrant smoke. Talk about a heady sensory experience. In the center of the table sits a small plate, and on it lies my necklace inside a circle of sprinkled salt and herbs.
“Now for the hard part.” Avery orders me to have a seat on the floor on one side of the narrow table while she settles herself across from me. “Have you ever meditated before?”
“I do yoga.” The relaxing, stretchy kind.
To my surprise, she approves. “Good, then you know how to be quiet and still.”
I can be quiet and still for hours if I have a good book. Doing witchcraft? Who can say?
“We start with a grounding meditation,” she says, crossing her legs and straightening her spine like a yogi. “It’s something you should always do before any kind of working. But that’s all in the book I gave you.”
As she instructs me to close my eyes and imagine I have roots, I think of the fallen tree Leo and I dined on during our hike. It’s easy to picture its torn roots as my own, burrowing into the ground through all the layers of soil, clay, and rock, digging deep for the earth’s core of energy. When I find it, I use those roots to draw the energy up, feeling it pulse through them, thick and rich.
I pull it up and up and up until it spills throughout my whole body, filling me with a sensation that’s at once both powerful and tranquil. It’s pure and strong, and it feels like…
Leo.
I don’t dwell on this association, not right now. I simply bask in this rare, peaceful confidence. How nice it would be if I could feel this way every day of my life.
Although Avery could probably ground herself and prepare for our ritual in less than a minute, she talks me through all the steps. Together, we touch the herbs and salt and invoke their aid, then we hold our hands above the burning candles and call upon the transforming power of fire. Finally, Avery passes the amulet through one of the dancing flames and lays it back on the plate, cleansed and ready to be charged.
At her command, I take it into my right hand and let her put hers over the top of mine. Her directions are similar to Leo’s, only they make more sense to me now. Probably because I’m sober.
“Take all that energy you have in you and channel it,” she says. “Feel it coming down your arm and into your hand. Then push it out into the crystal.”
My whole arm tingles and burns, like it’s being directly hit by the summer sun. I close my eyes and clench the pendant tightly, pouringmy energy into it as Avery begins to chant. Her words aren’t in Latin, nor are they a sing-song rhyme, but as she murmurs them over and over, they lull me into a trance.
