Page 9 of Demon and the Raven

I nodded. “I had a roommate from Kona when I was in college.”

She looked at me oddly.

“Kona is on the Big Island in Hawai'i,” I explained.

“I know where Ko— I’ve just never heard you say blessed be.”

“I usually say it to other witches, and while there are a few in town, you might not have been with me when we crossed paths.”

“Okay. How do you know if someone is a witch?” Skylar asked that time.

“Well, normally they tell you.” Her question made no sense. “Don’t you all follow several on Instagram?”

“Yes, but how do you know?” Cass pressed me.

I knew who was magic because I could see and feel their power. That was the blessing I received when I was branded by the god Arawn. A branded witch could easily tell a magic user, and in most cases, could counteract any enchantment used against them. I, for example, could always pick out a witch or wizard, sorceress or warlock, but I was truly powerful only on my own land. Separated from Corvus, where I lived, my magic was limited to what many could do—or maybe slightly more, since I came from a line of guardians.

Historically, those lines were chosen to be caretakers by a god or goddess. Some watched over great libraries in castles and manor houses all over the world. Others guarded sacred groves where deities met with those forbidden to them, while still others, like me, kept safe small areas of land with rifts that deities used to move from one plane to another. All those trusts between protectors and the protected were sacrosanct, and when those places were threatened, the guardian’s power would rise to meet the challenge. Taken together, being branded and being a sentinel answered the question of how I knew a witch when I met one, but for Cass and her friends, the answer needed to be simple, redacted.

“I don’t really know,” I replied, which was a lie, but to say any more was not something I could do. “I just have to wait and see.”

The girls all nodded.

“Did anyone in your family die in Salem?” Hailey asked me.

I squinted at her. “No witches died in Salem, only innocent people. You can look that up.”

“Yes, but members of the Corey family were killed.”

I had heard this particular question my whole life. “It’s a common surname,” I assured her. “But really, if those people had attacked real witches, don’t you think there would have been a completely different outcome?”

“Yes,” Cass agreed. “But back then, all the things you do, like making witch’s ladders and spell bottles and even mixing tea and crafting wreaths could have gotten you thrown in prison.”

“Certainly, yes.” I didn’t add that if crazed, intolerant bigots had come for me on my land, they would have never left.

“So when people tell you they’re witches, do you just believe them?” Delia wanted to know.

“Of course.”

When I met new people and they told me they were a witch, I always treated them as such. Because really, if you felt magic move inside you, who was I to judge? Everyone got to have their own journey. What I didn’t like were the people who said they were witches merely to make a buck. The people who put tap water in small glass bottles with cork stoppers, added ribbon and glitter and sold it as moon water, those were the people who drew my ire. Fake magical items, from wands to scrying mirrors to heating amethyst to pawn it off as citrine, pissed me off.

“So I could say blessed be to you,” Cass said, distracting me, which was good. Getting mad at people selling fakes would make me rabid. It wasn’t a good use of my energy.

“You certainly could,” I told her.

“There are different meanings of candle flames, aren’t there?” Skylar inquired. “Like how high or low it is.”

“There are. And there are excellent graphics on Pinterest about that.”

“Really?”

“There are,” Delia assented. “I just like to check with Xan on anything I’m not sure about because I don’t want to do it wrong.”

“For the most part, nothing you do will be wrong if you follow your intuition,” I promised them.

“But you said for the most part. What did you mean?” Jewel asked.

“Like, I understood that you were getting a Ouija board to try out.”