Chapter 1
It was like being able to breathe fire.
I feared I could destroy everything around me in a blaze of power. Just one exhalation, and it would all be gone, and all because of me. I belonged in this ring of flames.
It was really my bedroom. I'd locked myself in for almost a week, barely opening the door except to eat meals that I wasn't hungry for. I just couldn't let myself do it again, couldn't give myself the chance. And I still hardly even knew what I'd done!
I had never really been afraid of myself until now.
Even to me, it seemed ridiculous to feel such paranoia from something that was normally so harmless. I had only sung a few notes, yet those notes were fatal. I've hardly spoken since the incident.
I'd love more than anything to just make it go away so I can get on with my life as usual, but unlike the more normal troubles a teenager faces, this one refuses to die.
The train I'm on will periodically hit a bump that will snap me out of my hollow reflection, and I've only been able to mull over the same restless bits of information that I've been told. Among these things are that I have some gene that doesn't always reach each generation of girls in my family, but it came to me, and because of it, I have...abilities.
Allegedly. I've only encountered the one.
After the incident, I might call it an affliction.
I'm some kind of monst-
Bump.
What if I hurt someone agai-
Bump.
I bet I'm about to be institutionalized or impriso-
Bump.
I complied limply when my parents held me and said they had found a boarding school to send me off to even though I didn't want anyone's support but theirs. I don't know when I'll see them again; I tried to ask, but I was so afraid to open my mouth that I couldn't raise my voice above an indecipherable whisper. But maybe it's better this way. I wouldn't want them to sit helplessly or fearfully while I desperately attempted to get my conditions under wraps. A teenage girl is hard enough; they certainly don't need a teenage witch.
Yup. A witch. That's what they called it.
It's definitely better this way. Far, far better.
Soon, I feel the train slowing down in front of a station. A nearby sign says, "Welcome to New Orleans!" No one had actually told me where I'd be going, but I didn't expect to be sentenced to the town famous for VooDoo and Mardi Gras parades. Myrtle Snow, a quirky looking woman with blown-out, carrot-colored hair and pointy, black glasses and head of the so-called "witch council" has basically provided me a complete history of New Orleans' long-held connection with witchcraft. I guess it only makes sense that I'd be coming here, following the path of the witches that escaped Salem during the trials.
The train comes to a complete stop. The two bodyguards who escorted me rise and take my things outside. Myrtle motions for me to stand, and I follow her out of the train.
After another car ride, a huge, white mansion appears in my vision. "Miss Robichaux's Academy for Exceptional Young Ladies" a plaque on the wall around the building says. I'm lead to the gate with my suitcase at my side. I turn to see if Myrtle or the bodyguards have given me the okay to pass through, but as I do, they're nowhere to be seen. I turn around myself multiple times like a dog chasing its tail, feeling a sudden unease, but they're gone. Even the car I had just gotten out of has disappeared.
If this is what it's going to be like living as a witch, I'm not sure I can take it.