War of the Rose Covens

Chapter 1Blue-tinted magic, strong enough for me to see without trying, cocooned my house. As usual. Fat, fluffy flakes drifted out of the morning sky. The snow melted where it touched the road and the driveway. An inch-thick layer of white covered the grass and clung to the trees and the bare canes of my mother’s prize-winning rosebushes. Above the driveway, black plastic covered my destroyed bedroom window, held in place by silver duct tape. A week ago, on Christmas Day, I left with friends to go save the city. They’d smashed my bedroom window to get me out. Mom had said not to bother coming back. Until now, I hadn’t. New year, fresh start. School started again tomorrow, so I at least needed my backpack. Which put me on the front porch, working up the nerve to ring the doorbell. Some people might walk right in, I thought, but not me. I stared at the door, piecing together my worst-case scenario. Mom could answer the door and spray magic in my face. Dad could answer the door and look at me like I’d murdered his puppy. My brothers answering the door didn’t seem bad. Wait, no, Mom could answer the door and want to talk about my decision to leave the Petal Society coven at length and in detail. That sounded much worse than anything else. Either I rang the bell or I didn’t. Two choices. One left everything unresolved. The other sucked. With a sigh, I stared at the door for another few seconds. My family mattered. I could get a new one, so to speak, but I needed to try with the one I already had. They’d been fine until I met Drew. Drew, a boy my age and one of those friends who broke the window, had needed help. I’d done what I could. I reached out and pushed the doorbell. Ding-dong. My belly churned. Too soon, Mom opened the door. Her strong blue aura flared in my face as if to fill the space around me and make up for my weakness. For three long heartbeats that stretched into forever, we stared at each other. Her blonde hair, the same shade of light yellow as mine, hung to her shoulders, ending with thick, fake curls. The tiny lines at the corners of her blue eyes seemed more tense and tight than usual. Mom lunged and wrapped her arms around me. She held me tighter than I remembered her ever hugging me before. “I was so worried!” Still wary of what might come next, I returned the hug and waited. Mom let go and herded me inside. Her warding on the house rippled across my skin and clamped down on my meager abilities. She’d removed me from the protections. Maybe she’d done it in anger right after I left. Once done, she wouldn’t have been able to add me again without my presence. “Where have you been staying? Are you hungry?” She stopped in front of the couch in the living room and pressed on my shoulders to make me sit with her. I didn’t resist. In her house, suppressed by her magic, I had few choices. “I’m fine.” She held my chin and made me look at her. “You’re not fine. There’s something off about your aura.” Not sure what to say, I shrugged. My aura had a link to Drew, and we’d formed a coven together. Mom could read auras better than anyone else I knew, so she’d see it. Mom frowned. “What have you been doing?” Saving the world. I didn’t say it because it sounded ridiculous. “Helping my friends.” “More like letting them help themselves to you,” Mom muttered. She scowled at me. “This is about that boy.” I wanted to roll my eyes but didn’t. Not with Mom staring me in the face. “His name is Drew.” Abandoning me on the couch, Mom stood and paced. “If your father was here, he’d tan your hide for letting some boy take advantage of you. Lucky for you, he left with your brothers already.” Until Mom mentioned it, I hadn’t realized how much I regretted missing our annual New Year’s hike. Every year, we packed lunches and spent the day in a giant park. Last year, we’d gone to Multnomah Falls. This year, he’d talked about Mount Hood. When Mount St. Helens had erupted a few days before Christmas, he’d reconsidered and suggested someplace south of Portland instead. “We can still handle this,” Mom continued. “I know you were upset on Christmas. I was too! But we can fix everything now. You can rejoin the coven and never see that boy again. It’ll be like nothing happened.” “But I don’t—” “Hush. I know that seems hard.” Mom patted me on the head. “I’ll sponsor you again. No one will bat an eye. You’re a teenager. Teenagers sometimes do rash things, and we all know that. We can go tomorrow, after school.” “Mom, I just—” “Don’t worry about any of it. I’ll take care of everything.” She turned her back on me and left the room. “Do you want some juice?” “No.” I huffed and stood. Nothing had changed. Strike that—one thing had changed. I now knew I deserved better than a mom who couldn’t believe I’d aged past twelve. I had friends, and I had another group of people willing to take me in, so I didn’t have to stay at home. I rushed upstairs to my bedroom. If I had to leave, I wanted to take some of my stuff. My pink backpack hung on the chair at my white desk. Yanking it off the chair, I surveyed the room. Next to a picture of Mom and me, I had one of the coven. All the women in it were related to me one way or another. Another showed me with my cousin Ashley, my best friend. Leaving the coven meant leaving Ashley behind. Staring at the photo, I tried to decide if I wanted to take it or not. Her mom had snapped it last summer, on our shared sixteenth birthday. We wore glitter-covered party hats and grinned for the camera with fresh, expert-level makeup. Mom and Aunt Mimi had taken us to a fancy salon where they gave us the works. I’d known Ashley all my life. We called ourselves twins. Maybe I should’ve gone to see her first, but coming home had seemed more important. “What are you doing with your backpack?” Startled, I spun to find Mom in my doorway, one hand on her hip, the other holding a plastic cup. Probably, it held the juice I’d said I didn’t want. She scowled again. Unable to tell her the truth for no reason I knew, I looked at the strap over my shoulder. “Holding it.” The muscles around her mouth twitched. She didn’t like the answer. “You’re too old for a security blanket, even if it is a backpack.” Her unspoken command made my shoulders tense. I set the pack on my chair. “Now have a seat.” Mom waved at the bed. “Drink some juice while I break these odd links to your aura.” I froze. Other people couldn’t break a coven link. Mom had taught me that. Had she lied? “Sit.” Mom shoved the cup into my hand and pointed at the edge of my bed. My gaze followed her finger. More tension bunched at the base of my skull. If I sat, she’d do everything in her power to break my links with Drew. I didn’t want that. He’d done some stupid crap, but had never hurt me on purpose. He tried to be kind and supportive, even if he sometimes failed. We’d linked our auras and formed a coven for a reason. No matter what my mom thought, it was a good reason. One week ago, I’d faced the most powerful witch-ghost-thing imaginable and lived to tell about it. Drew and a bunch of other people had done most of the work, but I’d helped stop it from devouring the entire world. My mom scared me a lot more. I hesitated. “Sophie.” Mom used her stern voice. Her aura flared. Magic wrapped around me in a suffocating embrace and shoved me toward the bed. “Sit down.” Compared to Mom’s blazing sun of witch power, I nursed a tiny candle flame of disappointment. Through my link with Drew, I could overcome that. If she hadn’t removed me from the house’s protections, that is. Under the restraints of her warding, I had no chance of resisting her. My body sat on the edge of my pink bedspread. I opened my mouth to complain. Pressure snapped my jaws shut. “No backtalk,” Mom said, her words clipped. She sat beside me and took my hand. Her power flooded over me. I drowned in an overwhelming wave. In that unbearable moment, I hated her. Four years ago, she’d forced my latent witch power awake and found the result disappointing. Now she forced my aura clean because she didn’t approve of my choices. At least, she tried to force those links to break. I imagined myself holding the focus stone I wore under my shirt. Using it helped me concentrate and direct power better. Then I created a mental picture of my link with Drew. It looked like a shining, sky blue cord. Still gripping the focus stone with one mental hand, I used the other to grab the cord and wrap it around my arm. Mom could clamp down on my body and my power, but she couldn’t stop me from protecting my own aura.