Witch Rising

Book 2: B*WITCH

by Paige McKenzie, Nancy Ohlin

Genres: YA Coming of Age; YA Wizards & Witches

Synopsis

Sorrow Point High's witchiest have returned in this conclusion to the thrilling B*Witch duology—and this time, the danger is even closer to home. Two rival covens, led by frenemies Greta and Div, are investigating a radical anti-magic faction—the New Order—for the murder of a sister witch. In fact, Div and her coven mate Mira are pretend-dating a couple of New Order members to infiltrate it and bring it down for good. But when the president of the United States aligns himself with the dangerous group and local police ramp up their search for suspected witches, the covens must be more careful than ever. Even outside of politics, complications abound as Iris and the new witch, Torrence, fight for Greta's affections...and Ridley can't get over her crush on a dead girl...and Binx's own crush turns out to be harboring deadly secrets. If the covens wish to solve their friend's murder and protect their kind, they'll have to rise above their problems, big and small. But as they grow closer to the truth, one thing becomes certain—trust no witch.

Release date: September 14, 2021

Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Print pages: 288

Sample

A sign can appear in many forms.Your intuition will yield the most authentic interpretation.

(FROM THE GOOD BOOK OF MAGIC AND MENTALISM BY CALLIXTA CROWE)

The forest air was cool and damp as Ridley stepped carefully along the trail, keeping a distance behind the others. Her polished brown loafers sank into the loamy earth, and mud peppered her new khakis. Why hadn’t she worn hiking boots and jeans? But she’d rushed out of the house this morning, not remembering that the Kai Rain Forest field trip was today.

She used to be more organized than this. Laying out outfits the night before, keeping elaborate color-coded to-do lists, constantly updating her electronic calendar. The stress of the past month had been getting to her, obviously. If only she could deploy cessabit to center herself and maybe tersus to clean up a bit. Yeah, dream on.

Also, stress wasn’t the exact right word. Upheaval would be more accurate. Or trauma. Or calamity. Or how about end-of-the-world disaster of epic proportions?

Up front, Mr. Terada was walking backward, tour-guide-style, and lecturing to the students off a pile of index cards.

“So, the main theater of the American Civil War was in the East and South. That’s ‘theater’ as in a military theater where battles take place, not a movie theater,” he said with a grin. “But there were other theaters besides the eastern and southern ones. In fact, regiments were stationed in the Pacific Northwest, including right here in the Kai Rain Forest, in case the Confederates attempted a sneak attack by sea.”

Ridley knew a lot about rain forests—last year, she’d written a research paper for freshman bio about regeneration strategies, and she’d turned in three times the minimum two thousand words—but she hadn’t known there were rain forests in Washington. Looking around, she marveled at the tall, curved trees that were covered entirely with lush green moss and were strangely human-looking. At times, they seemed to close in on the trail like a Hansel-and-Gretel ecosystem on steroids. At other times, the trail was more open, flanked by small fields of grass, ferns, and wildflowers. Ridley found it fascinating that this surreal and eerily beautiful landscape had a military backstory.

“We’re going to connect up with another trail soon. That trail will take us to the ruins of a fortress where Union troops were garrisoned,” Mr. Terada explained.

Mr. Terada, with his man bun and flannel shirt and faded denim jacket tied around his waist, looked barely older than the students. He was already sub number four in US history this year, and it was only October. Ms. Hua, their regular history teacher, was out on maternity leave. The first sub, Ms. O’Shea, had left in September because of a family emergency. Sub number two, Mr. Eggars, had broken his arm in a boating accident in Puget Sound.

Sub number three, Ms. Gillespie, had been fired last week for wearing a pentagram amulet. She’d claimed it was just a cheap piece of Halloween jewelry from the mall, but Principal Sparkleman had refused to hear her out. Presumably, he couldn’t take the chance that a Sorrow Point High employee, even a temporary one, might be in violation of Title 6 of the US Comprehensive Code, Section 129. Might be a witch.

“Here’s an interesting piece of pre–Civil War trivia. Did you guys know there were territorial disputes in this area between the British and the Americans? Have any of you ever heard of the Pig War of 1859?” Mr. Terada asked.

“Bored out of your mind yet?”

Ridley whirled around to see who had spoken to her. Boxer braids, black leather jacket. Aysha Rodriguez.

“I-I didn’t know anyone was behind me,” Ridley stammered. She’d made a point of hanging back so she could be alone.

“Well, I can be very super-sneaky,” Aysha replied without smiling. She rarely smiled.

“What do you want?”

“That’s nice. Hello to you, too.”

Ridley furrowed her brow. Seriously, why on earth was Aysha talking to her? She was technically a rival, i.e., a member of Div Florescu’s coven.

Although Ridley’s best friend, Binx, was now a member of that coven, too, so maybe she should be thinking less… divisively?

“I guess you’re in one of Ms. Hua’s other history sections?” Ridley asked politely.

“Yup. Fourth period. Have you heard when she’s coming back?”

“I heard January or maybe later.”

“Huh. So what happened to the first sub? O’Shea, right? Did she really have a quote-unquote ‘family emergency’ or—”

“Oh my gosh, look at that adorable squirrel!” Ridley said loudly. “Calumnia,” she whispered into the collar of her white oxford shirt, trying to move her lips as little as possible. With a calumnia spell, anyone listening would think that she and Aysha were discussing hairstyles or homecoming or some other equally banal topic.

Of course, Ridley shouldn’t be using any magic in public, but Aysha had forced her hand. What had the girl been thinking?

“What squirrel? And why did you do calumnia?” Aysha asked, frowning.

“I’m sure there’s a squirrel around here somewhere. And why didn’t you do calumnia?”

“Because our bossy overlords, I mean our beloved coven leaders, said we’re not allowed to? Besides, people can’t hear us back here, and no one cares about some rando sub.”

Bossy overlords? Interesting. Ridley had never heard Aysha describe Div that way, although it was 100 percent accurate. Greta, not so much, although she could be bossy when the mood struck her. Mostly, she was like a nervous mother hen.

“Ms. O’Shea is a witch,” Ridley reminded Aysha. “If anyone here is aware of that fact, and they thought we were connected to her…”

Her voice trailed off as she glanced worriedly at the pack up ahead, at the three dozen or so sophomores trailing behind Mr. Terada. She wished her coven-mates were here—she always felt better, felt stronger, in their presence—but Greta and Iris had Mr. Lemire for history. So did Binx.

Ridley’s other ex-coven-mate—or, more accurately, her ex-almost-coven-mate—wasn’t here, either. Penelope Hart. A transfer student from Ojala Heights, she used to be in Ridley’s history section at the very beginning of the year. Used to be, until she died… was murdered for being a witch. The police had ruled it a suicide, but the two covens, Greta’s and Div’s, knew better. They were in the process of figuring out who the killer was so they could be brought to justice. Which wouldn’t be easy, given that the entire country seemed to be consumed by an anti-magic fever.

Penelope. Ridley’s chest tightened at the thought of her. They’d been just starting to become friends before she died. And they might have become more than friends, or at least that’s what Ridley had wanted….

Aysha’s voice cut into her thoughts.

“Do you guys have a theory about what happened to O’Shea?”

“Calumnia,” Ridley repeated, to make doubly sure that they were safe, even though calumnia didn’t really work that way. “We don’t know if Ms. O’Shea really had a family emergency or not. Greta and Iris and I’ve been trying to locate her, but she never gave us her contact info, and none of the usual scrying spells have helped.”

“Huh.” Aysha seemed to consider this. “The laptop witch mentioned O’Shea at our last coven meeting, which is why I was thinking about her.”

The laptop witch? “Is that what you call Binx?”

“Yeah. You know, if the name fits…”

Ridley’s BFF happened to be a cyber-witch who was skilled at interfacing computer code with magic spells. Binx kept her grimoire on her phone, and her wand, Kricketune, was permanently disguised as a gaming console. But… laptop witch? Ridley wondered if Aysha had a funny-not-funny nickname for her, too.

“How’s she doing, anyway? I mean, is she happy in your coven, or…”

“Dunno,” Aysha said, shrugging. “If it were up to me, I’d send her back to your coven ASAP. She’s a bad fit. You guys are into your cute l’il healing potions and world-peace spells and all that crap. Our coven is into much more hardcore stuff. Real magic. But I’m not the leader; I don’t make those decisions.” She added, “Besides, don’t you and the laptop witch hang out? Ask her yourself.”

“Yeah…”

That was another piece of Ridley’s recent stress, upheaval, etc. Binx’s coven switching hadn’t been an easy, amicable transition. Rather, it had been triggered by a drama-filled falling out with Greta. Binx had wanted their coven to be more aggressive against the radical anti-magic groups—the Antima, not to be confused with Antifa, which stood for “antifascist”—that were proliferating across the country. Binx had suggested to Greta that their coven join forces with a secret witches’ rights organization called Libertas, which she’d apparently learned about from an online gamer friend named ShadowKnight. In response, Greta had read Binx the riot act, saying they couldn’t trust some random Internet stranger who might or might not be who he claimed to be. They’d argued, and Binx had stormed off, saying that if Greta wouldn’t support her in her quest against the Antima, she knew a coven leader who would….

It was so bizarre. Binx had always disliked, even despised, Div. Not to mention, she’d had a not-so-playful prank war going with Aysha and with Div’s other underling, Mira Jahani, since forever. Although, it wasn’t like Binx had a lot of options. As far as they knew, Div’s and Greta’s were the only covens at their school… and in all of Sorrow Point.

Mostly, Ridley just really, really missed Binx, who’d been her closest friend since beginning of freshman year. Sure, they saw each other at school, and they still texted lots and exchanged goofy memes and GIFs. But soon after Penelope’s death, Div had upped the frequency of her coven meetings to practically daily. So between those meetings and everything else in her life, Binx always seemed to be too busy for shopping, sleepovers, and their other beloved rituals.

Aysha was jabbing Ridley with her elbow.

“See him?” Aysha jutted her chin in the direction of a red-haired guy who was standing near Mr. Terada. Francisco something. “He’s wearing that ugly camo hoodie now, but, this morning—he’s in my homeroom—I noticed he had an Antima patch on his T-shirt. There.” She touched a spot on her left shoulder. “I’m pretty sure he didn’t have a patch on his clothes last week. Might be a new recruit?”

“Another one?”

“Right? It seems like there’s another new recruit at our school every day. Soon, it’ll be the entire student body.”

Ridley shuddered.

“I think those two girls are new recruits, too,” Aysha said with another chin jut. “Valerie Yeargan and that girl with the ponytail who’s talking to the blond dude. Sylvia… no, Siobhan. I saw them with Orion Kong yesterday, and as we all know, he’s basically the Antima poster boy of Sorrow Point High.” She sniffed. “I could have predicted Valerie. She’s a jerk and a racist. It makes sense she’s anti-magic, too.”

“This is why we need to be using calumnia right now, okay? Even though we’re not supposed to,” Ridley said in a tense voice. “That’s three possible, probable, Antima members on this field trip. At least. If they figure out we’re witches, they’ll turn us in to the authorities in a heartbeat.”

Just then, Mr. Terada caught Ridley’s eye and gave her a small wave. Ridley smiled uncertainly and rainbow-waved back. What did he want? Was he signaling to her—and Aysha, too—that they should stop chatting and pay more attention to his index-card commentary about pig wars and such? Or was he simply being friendly? Or…

They’d reached a fork in the trail. Oh, so maybe that’s why he was waving. Because we’re stopping. Mr. Terada turned to consult a worn wooden sign at the intersection of the two paths. The students bunched up in a semicircle behind him, waiting. Ridley and Aysha joined them at the rear.

“All right, the Union garrison is this way,” Mr. Terada said, pointing. He untied his denim jacket from his waist and shrugged it on.

That’s when Ridley saw it. Mr. Terada’s jacket was decorated with patches and enamel pins. Wedged between a Super Mario Princess Peach pin and a Star Trek United Federation of Planets pin was a patch with a cage suspended over a bonfire.

An Antima patch.

Aysha elbowed her again, harder this time. She must have seen it, too. Ridley responded with an almost imperceptible nod. Up until now, they’d been aware only of Antima students at their school. There were Antima teachers, too?

Aysha, who usually exuded total fearlessness, showed a glimmer of fear as she pivoted toward Ridley.

“Soooo. Are you going to the Homecoming Dance?” she asked casually.

It was not a calumnia-scrambled question. With this new revelation about Mr. Terada, Aysha had apparently abandoned any attempt at magic talk, calumnia or no. Ridley was right there with her.

“Um, maybe? How about you?”

“Yeah, I kind of have to. I’m on the organizing committee.”

“Excuse me, what?” Ridley couldn’t picture that. “You’re on the organizing committee?”

“Yeah. Long story. Div’s on it, too, and Mira and Binx just joined. Anyway, you should go. It’s gonna be lit.”

“Um… okay?”

As the two girls continued fake-discussing homecoming, Ridley side-eyed Mr. Terada and wondered how many other adults at Sorrow Point High wanted to see witches rounded up and arrested…

… or eliminated. Like poor, sweet Penelope.

The afternoon sky, or what Ridley could see of it through the dense canopy of moss-covered hemlocks and cedars, had turned an ominous dark gray. An approaching storm. The air felt thick and charged with electricity, and mist blanketed their feet. Ridley wondered if they would make it back to the school vans in the parking lot before the rain started.

Aysha was up ahead, snapping photos of birds and insects with her phone. The other students were scattered about, taking pictures or just talking. Ridley and Aysha had decided that it might look suspicious for them to be huddling and whispering during the entire field trip, even with calumnia obscuring the true nature of their conversations, and so they’d split up before lunch and barely spoken to each other since.

Now, in hindsight, Ridley wished she hadn’t deployed calumnia at all. Just recently, Greta had made the executive decision that their coven shouldn’t use witchcraft in public unless it was an emergency, and Div had declared the same for her coven. The two covens had always used magic surreptitiously because of 6-129, but now, they had to restrict themselves even more. After what had happened to Penelope, and with the ever-increasing Antima presence, they couldn’t afford to be discovered.

You have to be more careful, Ridley chided herself.

A shimmering haze through the trees caught her attention. She blinked.

Is that…?

No, it can’t be.

But it is.

Tucked away in the middle of the Hansel-and-Gretel rain forest was a house. Not an ordinary house—a mansion. Gothic-style, with a steeply pitched roof and gables.

And Ridley wasn’t seeing just the outside of the mansion. She could see the interior, too, as though the walls were invisible. A roaring fire in the grate. A velvet settee. A round mahogany table.

Ridley gritted her teeth to stifle any emotion, any reaction, lest she call attention to herself. There couldn’t possibly be a mansion in the middle of the rain forest. Or any structure… granted, there was the Union garrison that Mr. Terada had shown them earlier, but that had been just a pile of ruins, the crumbling remains of a stone wall. Surely, this “mansion” had to be an optical illusion? An alchemy of mist and Ridley’s own agitated mood?

She blinked again.

On top of the round mahogany table, thirteen unlit candles suddenly materialized, encircled by a ring of gems and herbs.

“Aysha!” Ridley burst out before she could stop herself.

Aysha was a few yards away, photographing a cluster of dark purple mushrooms. She rose to her feet and scowled at Ridley. “Yeah? What?”

Ridley noticed that Valerie and Siobhan and Francisco had stopped midconversation and were looking with interest at her and Aysha. Mr. Terada was, too.

Quick, make something up.

Ridley pointed in the direction of the mansion. “Um… could you take a picture of those cool trees? My phone’s out of battery.”

Aysha cocked her head. “Sure, because I’m your personal photographer?”

“Please?”

Aysha sighed and snapped a few quick photos. By her bland demeanor, it was clear to Ridley that she couldn’t see the mansion.

“I’ll text them to you when we have service,” Aysha said.

“Thanks.”

“You’re not welcome.”

Ridley turned her attention back to the mansion. Someone—or something?—had lit the candles on the mahogany table. Thirteen tiny flames flickered, illuminating the gems and herbs—black onyx, bloodstone, mugwort, wolfsbane….

What. The. Hex.

A second later, the sky flashed silver, and it began to rain—huge, pelting drops.

“This way!” Mr. Terada shouted as the students covered their heads with their backpacks and began running in the direction of the parking lot.

As Ridley turned to go, she swiped the rain out of her eyes and glanced at the mansion one last time.

It had vanished.

Feelings are a potent weapon.

(FROM THE GOOD BOOK OF MAGIC AND MENTALISM BY CALLIXTA CROWE)

Alone in the girls’ bathroom, Iris peered into the mirror and smiled. She tried a smile with teeth, then without teeth, then with teeth again. Definitely with teeth.

“Oh, hey, Greta! Fancy meeting you here!” Iris said to her reflection.

Sounds forced.

“Oh, hey, Greta! Long time no see!”

Same.

“Sup, Greta?”

Ugh. No.

“Hi, Greta!” Better. Iris added a hair flip. “So, yeah… what are you doing on November eleventh? Oh, is that the Homecoming Dance? Gosh, I totally forgot! Well… uh… so, since we’re on the subject, do you want to go? You know, as friends? We could invite Ridley and Binx to come with us. Except, oops, I forgot, Binx is our mortal enemy now. You’re right, maybe ‘mortal enemy’ is a bit harsh. How about just plain old ‘enemy’? It’s a dilemma either way, or quel dilemme, as we say in Madame Moutillet’s French class. Anyhoo, so, maybe we could just go, the three of us? You and me and Ridley? Or it could be just the two of us, you and me, and… and… and…”

Iris’s voice was rising in a semihysterical crescendo. Breathe, relax, she told herself.

“… no, it wouldn’t be a date, exactly,” she continued in a lower, slower voice. “Unless you want it to be a date. Do you want it to be a date? Because if you want it to be a date, well, I’d be down with that. I’ve never been to a Homecoming Dance with a date. Actually, I’ve never been to a Homecoming Dance. Actually, I’ve never been on a date with another person, I mean, I’ve never been on a date not with another person, either, since by definition dates are with other people, and… argh!”

She stopped and face-palmed and shook her head. In the mirror, her doppelgänger was blushing—not an attractive blush but a splotchy, beet-red, ugly blush. The homecoming thing was a bad idea. An awful, terrible, horrible idea. What was she thinking? Greta didn’t like her in a romantic way. She liked her in a friendly, witch-sister way.

Things used to be so much easier when Iris had liked Greta in a friendly, witch-sister way, too. When had her feelings morphed into this messy mess? Could she unmorph them somehow?

Iris sighed and returned her shoulder-flipped hair to its original position, then peeled a strand that had gotten stuck to her Red Any Good Books Lately? lip gloss, which she’d seen on a “Brown Girl Mini-Makeover” tutorial. She needed to give up and move on, maybe ask someone else to the dance. But how? She wanted only Greta. Kind, smart, pretty Greta, who talked to animals and who smelled like lavender.

Lately, Iris had been experiencing crush symptoms every time Greta was around, like sweaty palms and a racing heart and major awkwardness. She knew th. . .