Life's A Witch

Chapter Seven

I don't remember the drive home. At some point I must have told Jasmine to call an emergency meeting with the other twitches. Someone tried reaching Jackson again, but only succeeded in getting his voice mail. Either he'd been with the rest of the elders, which was highly possible, or he was out there and unable to connect with us. Whichever it was, it became clear at that point that we were on our own.

I wasn't looking forward to telling the others what I feared had happened, but by now, I would've done just about anything to get away from the wreckage that used to be the construction warehouse.

There was so much wreckage.

As soon as I realized exactly what it was I was looking at, I'd gone numb with fear. The place was a charred mess. Everything was burned to the ground, and what wasn't completely incinerated was covered in black soot, masking any evidence of what had once been standing in its spot. One look at the steaming acre of burned wood and steel and I knew nothing had survived.

And no one.

Before I knew what I was doing, I began to stagger forward, stepping onto the brittle remains of the grounds, not realizing until I'd already walked a few feet that the remnants were hot enough to melt the bottoms of my shoes.

That's when I knew I was officially out of it. I was aware that my brand-new Jimmy Choos were being destroyed and I didn't stop walking. I just didn't care. I kept moving forward, even as I slipped on the loose pieces of debris below my feet. I slowed down only when something caught my eye among the sea of black.

It was shiny and small.

I veered over to see what had been reflecting the light of the moon, approaching where I thought the glint was coming from. The ground wasn't as hot here and I crouched down, hoping to see a little better.

There it was again. Just a tiny hint of gold among the darkness.

I got down on my hands and knees and began to pick through the ashes and toss burned-up objects behind me. Clawing through the debris, I briefly wondered if I'd been seeing things, and then my hand hit something warm and smooth in the dust. Carefully withdrawing my hand from the mess, I knew from the feel of it that it had a chain. Either a necklace or a medal, maybe. Pulling the scarf out of my hair, I spit on the object and begin to polish it. A thought came to mind about how disgusted my girlfriends would be to see me crawling around in the dirt and spit-shining trash, and found I didn't care.

All I cared about was trying to figure out what the hell had happened here. And whether our worst fears had actually come true.

When I was sure I'd gotten the object in my hands as clean as I could without taking it to my jeweler, I tossed my scarf aside and held it up in front of me—and gasped.

It was a gold necklace, thin and delicate, with a pendant about an inch in size attached. The medallion read, "Be the change you wish to see in the world," and it hung from a fourteen-inch chain. The piece was beautiful and obviously handmade.

And completely familiar to me.

Because it was the same necklace my mom had worn as far back as I could remember. My dad and I had both bought her other jewelry over the years—some expensive, some one-of-a-kind, one piece was even priceless—but she never took off the necklace engraved with the quote from Gandhi.

Except she wasn't wearing it now, because it was here in my hand, covered in soot and still warm from the fire. As I thought about what that meant, my head drooped to my chest, defeated.