Hello everyone!

I'd like to thank: Aviangc, HeartlessNobody13 and yuki0123 for the alerts!

Also, Guest, thank you for the review, here is the update you were asking for :D

My choice of casting:

Coven Mistress: Andie MacDowell

Enjoy!

Chapter 2: Kittens

A couple of days later and the routine in the Jones household was still the same. Mr. Jones would rush out first, taking his sleek Mitsubishi to work. The two women of the household spoke politely to each other, but both knew that it was just a mask. The argument from a couple of days ago still hadn't settled and another one was coming, with the young teen's headstrong personality.

Every witch knew, after all, that not heeding the call of magic was more than foolish. The young girl had told her mother what she thought her dreamwalking meant, and she had requested to change her high school for the next year, to follow the call. Mrs. Jones wasn't too keen on the idea. At the tender age of sixteen, her only child wanted to leave her home and everything she knew because of magic. She wanted to go to the Beacon, the place that attracted the supernatural like a magnet. Mrs. Jones wasn't going to allow for that to happen.

Around noon, when Simone was in her room, reading and her mother in the back yard, taking care of the garden, the doorbell rang. The teen turned down her music and crept down the short hallway all the way to the staircase. She leaned just a bit, so that she could see the door when her mother opened it.

"Blessed be." Her mother spoke and Simone instantly frowned. It was that woman. Cruella, Simone chuckled in her head.

"May the Gaia watch over you, sister." The sickly sweet voice of the Coven Mistress carried through the living room as she waltzed in like she owned the place. Which she pretty much did, by the way Simone's mother was acting.

The woman was tall, like her mother. However, unlike the soft face of Mrs. Jones, the Coven Mistress had sharp features and high cheekbones. Her nose was bent and she always seemed to be looking down at you over it. She wore long dresses of vibrant colors, mostly deep purple, signifying the power that she had. On her head was always a complicated hairstyle, her mop of dyed red hair looking very unnatural with her black eyebrows. The thing that irritated Simone the most about her, though, was the smell of smoke that never left the wretched woman.

"Could I offer you some tea?" Mrs. Jones politely suggested. The Coven Mistress positioned herself on Mr. Jones's sofa chair, the biggest one in the living room and took out her long cigarettes.

"Nonsense, Catherine." She smiled at Mrs. Jones and lit one of her cancer sticks. Simone covered her nose and mouth with the long sleeve of her thin shirt, already smelling the terrible fragrance. "We should drink wine, sister! To celebrate!"

"Wine? But it's noon, Amalia." Mrs. Jones was frowning a bit, confused. Finally, Simone grumbled in her head. Maybe her mother would finally see what a daft cow the Coven Mistress was.

"But, yes, my dear!" The sugary voice of the older witch caused Simone to wince again. "Your cat is due any minute, after all!"

"Yes!" Simone's mother went to the kitchen then, searching for the fanciest glasses that she had. Of course she would. She always acted like this when the Coven Mistress came over. Like she was some lowly witch that had to serve her boss. Idiot, Simone thought. If her mother would just be a Traditionalist, like her grandma, a true Crafter, she wouldn't need to let this imbecile run her life. But, no. Her mother needed to listen to someone, else she was lost.

Simone stood up, having heard enough and headed for her room. Whenever the Coven Mistress came over, Simone and her mother would argue later. The older witch thought that Simone was a failure and a disgrace to her mother's name of a proper witch. Much like Christians looked at paganism as primitive, the new-age Wicca community looked at their Traditional ancestors as uncultured.

"So, it will be five kittens, right?" The young witch froze, crouching back to listen further. Mrs. Jones was a classic witch, with her own black companion. On a rare occasion, the strangely smart and even tempered cat would get a litter of kittens. Some of them were normal, regular cats when they grew up. Yet, a couple could become as long lived and as magical as her cat. They had the potential to become familiars. This would be the first litter that Medea, her mother's cat, would have. Simone had been waiting since the moment that the cat showed signs of pregnancy, as one of those kittens was supposed to be hers. Like her grandmother had gifted Mrs. Jones Medea from her own cats first litter.

"Yes." Mrs. Jones supplied, offering a decorated glass ashtray to the smoking witch. "This will be her first litter and I'm very excited to see how many familiars we will have." The woman actually sounded very ecstatic about the future addition to her family. Simone frowned. If the Coven Mistress was interested in the kittens, it wouldn't end well. She was a selfish woman, rotten to the core.

"Perfect! Considering how the numbers of potential familiars drops in second litters, we are in luck." The Coven Mistress drawled on with a wide smile on her face.

"What do you mean, Amalia?" Mrs. Jones asked gently, sipping her wine gracefully. Her mother was a pretty woman, Simone would give her that. Everything she did was graceful and pretty. Something the young witch couldn't seem to do herself.

"Why, you and I are the only witches in the Coven who have familiars! We need to distribute the little ones among the sisters to make our magic more powerful." Simone jumped up, her sleeve dropping from its place on her mouth. She must've made a lot of noise as both women turned to her.

"Simone, dear, how are you?" The Coven Mistress leered at her from her father's sofa chair proudly. Simone didn't even bother to answer at first. There was a sickening feeling in her stomach that made her want to slam something and then slam it again until it broke completely. Her mother's surprised face and silent mouth did nothing to help with the rage that had built up inside of her like lava in an active volcano.

"I'm great, Ma'am. Thank you for asking." She replied in a tiny voice, politely, averting her gaze from the leer that was just daring her to explode. With that, Simone left for her room in a hurry, closing the door silently before going to her headset. She put the huge headphones on her ears, separating herself from the high-pitched laughter of the Coven Mistress that was coming from the living room.

As soon as the grunge of the guitar riff blasted into her ears, Simone sighed lying back on her soft pillows, relaxing. She had hoped that her mother wouldn't let the disagreements that they had come in between them as a family of witches. It was rare for a witch to have a proper familiar these days. There were so many ordinaries who were calling themselves Wicca that it was rare to even find a real witch. Simone had always dreamed of getting a familiar from her mother's first litter. Like her mother had gotten hers from her mother as it had been done that way all through the generations in their family.

But, now, Simone would have no familiar. After all, Mrs. Jones would no doubt give the little kittens to the wretched Coven Mistress, leaving her without a companion. The pale teen felt her anger completely fading away, instead being replaced by a feeling that she hated. Her throat closed up on its own and her eyes pricked before the tears came, as usual. With another sigh, she turned to her window, watching as the lighting flashed across the skies and the raindrops that fell in a flurry.


That evening, Mr. Jones arrived at usual time, around seven o'clock in the evening. He unlocked and opened the door with a smile, entering his home and waiting to see his precious family. However, he was greeted by silence.

"Cath?" He called out, putting his briefcase on the counter and shrugging off his suit jacket. "There's no need to prank me, it's not Halloween yet!" The handsome, middle-aged man looked around the living room and kitchen, not finding anyone. With a sigh, he climbed the stairs, fearing that his wife and daughter had had another row. He passed next to his daughter's pink door, noticing the absolute silence that came from the room. Yes, he nodded to himself. They had had another fight.

"Cath, honey, we need to talk." Mr. Jones entered the master bedroom, noticing his wife right away. She was kneeling next to the foot of their closet, her head inside.

"Oh, Sam!" His wife's head appeared from the clothes. Her face was lit up with a brilliant smile of pure joy. It was a look that he hadn't seen on her in a long time. "Oh, come and look at them!" She beckoned him over with her hand and he complied.

Despite the somber mood that he had fallen into when he noticed Simone's silence, he couldn't help but smile at the sight. In the foot of their closet, there was a wooden basket that had a fluffy blue blanket in it. There lay a familiar black cat (which Mr. Jones hadn't been overly fond of in the beginning), Medea, with six little kittens.

"Cath." Mr. Jones kneeled, accepting the side-hug that his wife was offering. "They are beautiful." He gave her a small kiss on the cheek and then turned to Medea. "Good work, girl. Now I will never be able to brush the hair off of my suits." She meowed, and turned her head away from him, as if she were exasperated.

The Jones couple laughed it off, standing. "You don't have to worry, dear, we won't be keeping all of them." Mrs. Jones supplied helpfully as the two left Medea to feed her family.

"Oh?" Mr. Jones asked, taking off his shoes and beginning to change from his suit into more comfortable clothes.

"Yes. Amalia came by today." Mrs. Jones didn't catch the way her husband paused in unbuttoning his shirt at the name. "She says that she will take them off our hands. You know, give them to the sisters from the Coven to raise." When the man didn't answer, Mrs. Jones spoke again. "What's wrong?"

Her husband turned around, a frown on his face. "You know how Simone-" he pulled his sweatshirt over his head, muffling his words. "-feaws apoud her." At the confused, yet loving, look that his wife gave him, the man repeated. "Simone doesn't like her, Cath. Couldn't you meet at a café in the center instead of here?"

Mrs. Jones frowned. "I can't bring my friends home?"

"That's not what I said, Cath." Mr. Jones sighed, flopping on the bed. "I'm just worried about her. She's been shutting herself away from us for a while now. I'm afraid that she will get into something bad."

"And what does Amalia have to do with that? She's my friend, Samuel. Simone is sixteen!" Mrs. Jones stood up and started pacing next to their bed. "She should be old enough to understand that I will always have some friends that she doesn't like."

Mr. Jones sighed and threw up his hands. "I'm not sure when this argument became about your friends, Catherine. I'm just worried about our child." He quickly folded his used suit and placed it in the dirty laundry. "In fact, I think that it might be a good idea for her to go to Beacon Hills. She could stay with Evie."

Mrs. Jones looked at her husband in shock. "You want Simone, our Simone, to leave home?" She shook her head in displeasure. "And just because of a couple of stupid dreams?"

"No!" Mr. Jones pointed at the door which lead towards their daughter. "This is because of our daughter, Catherine! This is important to her, can't you see that? Give her some freedom, for God's sake!" With that, Mr. Jones left their room, heading downstairs to eat his dinner alone while reading through his papers.


It was a couple of hours later, when Mrs. Jones had fallen asleep, that Simone found her father still sitting at the counter. The glass ashtray was sitting in front of him, like it always did when he was irritated about something, and he stubbed out his cigarette. Just as he was reaching for the next one, Simone spoke up.

"Those will kill you, you know." Her father looked away from his files and gave her a tired smile. He returned the cigarette into its packet and reached out with his right arm, inviting his daughter for a side-hug. She eagerly accepted. "What's wrong, dad?"

Mr. Jones kissed his daughter's head gently and turned a little bit more towards her. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but, you aren't getting into anything bad, are you?" When his daughter gave him a questioning glance, he explained. "You know, like drugs, rock n' roll and bad boys on motorcycles? Or, even more bizarre, dark magic?"

Simone laughed, throwing her head back. "I have to admit, I do love rock n' roll." The young teen went to the fridge and took out some of the lasagna leftovers. She didn't bother heating it up and got a fork.

"That may have been my fault." Her father admitted with a smile.

"That was your fault." Simone replied with her mouth full. The two shared a smile before Mr. Jones stared at his files for a few more moments. Simone kept eating, at peace. She loved these simple moments with her father.

He was a complete outsider to her magic. Sure, he tried to understand and to learn, but it was different form being born with it. She surely knew more than he did, and it was mostly because of her grandmother. But, despite the fact that Simone was the most boring and ordinary creature without her magic, she loved the non-supernatural moments that she shared with her father. They would play soccer in the back yard, breaking her mother's pots and causing her to yell at them. Or, they would make dinner together, where he mostly did the cooking. Sometimes, her dad would even let her in on some of the details from his current cases and then they would attempt to connect the dots. It was so simple, so pure, that her head didn't buzz with inside sarcasm like she was used to it doing.

"You really want to go to Beacon Hills, don't you?" Mr. Jones asked after a while, interrupting his daughter's messy chewing.

"Yeash." She answered through her lasagna once more.

Mr. Jones let out another sigh, running his hands through his hair. "Pack your suitcase, then." He said, flipping his files closed. Simone stared at him in wonder. He couldn't be serious. Her mother would never allow it. "C'mon, honey, I thought that you wanted this."

"You're serious?" She pointed her fork at him. After he nodded, there was another question that still didn't allow for her to start jumping. "What about mom?"

"I'll talk to her." Mr. Jones told both himself and his daughter.


Simone couldn't help the jolly mood that had overtaken her. Despite the regular visits of the Coven Mistress to their house to monitor the kittens, she felt great. With her father's permission and her grandmother's support, surely they could convince her mother to let her take the trip to California.

She had dug out her old suitcase, the one that was usually used for family vacations, and began packing different clothes inside. Of course, she still kept it under her bed, safe and sound. However, the ten minutes that she spent in the morning, choosing the next outfit to pack into it made her day more than bearable.

Simone didn't hate her mother. No, she loved her in fact. Mrs. Jones had been the one to introduce her to magic, after all. And magic was something that Simone was good at. It was that one thing that made her special. She was painfully average at school (unless she studied like Hell) and more than a failure at sports, since she wasn't much of a work-out person (you could tell by the small amount of belly fat that caused most of her complexes).

Like every teenager, Simone had felt as an outsider more than once. Seeing the talented girl next to her drawing in her notebook during class. Or watching the other kids try out for the school's hockey team. She had always been the invisible one on the bench, but it never bothered her. She knew, that she was the most special of the lot of them. After all, she could do magic. One little spell and she could make things move without touching them. One little rhyme and a cut would heal. One special blend of herbs and she could literary carry luck in her pocket. Simone had never felt the need to fit in, because she knew that she couldn't.

So, she couldn't resent her mother, despite all the recent arguments. She instead quite strongly disliked the Coven Mistress, Cruella as she called the woman, because the woman was the cause of her mother's change. Since Mrs. Jones had joined the local Coven of witches to both limit her power and contain it, the woman had become meek. Simone was used to being quiet herself, but not for her mother to be like that. Mrs. Jones had always been a strong woman in her eyes. A role model.

But, nowadays, she was against Simone using magic, claiming how she needed a Coven to practice the art. This had caused a great rift to build in between the two, and Simone wasn't even bothering to attempt to mend it.

"Simone!" Speak of the devil, the teen thought, rolling her eyes. "There you are!" Her mother rushed at her in a flurry of motions, hurrying her up and making her nervous. "Where have you been all day?"

The teen took off her sunglasses and placed them along with her messenger bag on the counter. "At the library." Lie. "I wanted to finish reading 'Catcher in the Rye'. It's our next book at school." Lie. She had been at the local bus station looking at ticket prices and then she had gone for ice-cream, both things that her mother would disapprove of.

"Alright, honey, but now you really need to hurry up!" Mrs. Jones ushered her daughter upstairs, grabbing the bag from the counter.

"Hurry up?" Simone asked. "Are we going somewhere?" It was always like this after an argument with her mother. Leave a little time to cool off, and then forget that it ever happened. Just sweep it under the rug. If there was something that her mother loved to do, it was pretend that everything was fine.

"No, honey. The sisters will be coming here to choose their kittens." Mrs. Jones gushed with happiness. The little ones were a mere two weeks old, completely tiny. Simone had managed to sneak a peek at them while her mother was working in the garden a couple of days ago. Despite Medea's pure black fur, the kittens varied in color. There was one, however, that had caught Simone's eye. The only white one. It was the smallest of the bunch, the runt.

On some level, Simone hoped that it would be too small and not healthy enough to catch any of the sisters' eyes. Because then, she might actually get to keep an offspring of her mother's familiar, as was tradition. She felt bad about thinking such thoughts, but she still did. She wanted a familiar from her mother's one. From the first litter. She had been waiting for that moment ever since her grandmother told her how Mrs. Jones had gotten Medea.

"Alright, I picked out the outfit for you. It's on your bed." Mrs. Jones spoke as soon as they reached the upper floor of the house. "None of those baggy sweatshirts for today, honey. I want you to look pretty."

You mean you want to show me off to your friends. Simone bit back her words, instead giving a shy smile. "Of course, mom."

As soon as Mrs. Jones left the room, slamming the pink door behind her, Simone let out a sigh. She looked around and noticed that her mother had 'tidied up' her room. With a groan, the teen undid her Dr. Martens and tossed them off into a corner. If her mother had fixed up her room, then she wouldn't be able to find anything for a while.

Simone quickly threw off the dark green (very large) sweatshirt that she had been wearing. She liked those kinds of clothes. That way, there was no way that anyone would be able to see her belly. She located the dress on her bed and let out a groan. Of course, her mother would choose that dress. It was frilly, pink and came to her knees. Of course, it left her back open and showed off her waist.

The teen threw off her old jeans and quickly put the dress on. She located a modern kimono in her closet and threw it over, clasping a button at the front to hide her waist in the layer of loose fabric. Good, no one would see her stomach this way. And, the kimono top had little pink flowers on it. She was set. The teen put on her maroon Dr. Martens in rebellion and ran downstairs.

"Oh, Simone!" Mrs. Jones immediately noticed her. "You look beautiful! Now, let's just do this." Her mother undid the front button of the kimono and let the fabric fall down her sides. Mrs. Jones quickly went behind her daughter, braiding her hair expertly into a fancy braid in mere minutes. "You look perfect! Now, if you would just wear some more elegant shoes…"

"Of course, mom." Simone said as her mother left for the kitchen. Of course not, the teenage witch repeated in her head, closing the kimono yet again. A wonderful aroma floated from the kitchen into the living room and Simone found herself wandering towards the source. She found her mother arranging cookies on various plates.

"Take these out." Mrs. Jones said without looking up from putting some frosting on top. Simone grabbed two plates, forcing herself to look away from the delicious treats and placed them next to the two pitchers of fresh lemonade on the counter.

If there was one thing that her grandmother and mother had in common, that was their love of theatrics. Simone liked to call it 'hotel mode'. Everything in the house had to be made so perfect, that it almost looked like they were living in a hotel. The living room had to be properly arranged, every notion of the fact that they had been there removed. Her mother always made their house look like it came from a magazine.

The doorbell sounded and Mrs. Jones ran towards it in her heels. Simone noticed her mother's dress then. It was a form hugging red satin one that went perfectly with her lipstick. Oh, yes, this was going to be Hell, the teen thought.

Then, the door opened and the women pooled in. Simone found her breathing nervously hitched and her palms icy as her mother greeted the Coven witches naturally. Just breathe, she told herself as she felt the pull of her magic pump in the back of her head. She was uneasy, and her magic was doing the same thing. They were essentially one and the same.

The teen politely smiled at the group as they began to make themselves comfortable and then rushed into the kitchen as quickly as possible. She took a deep, shaky breath as the pounding in her head calmed, her legs regaining their feeling slowly. One of the small kitchen lights above her head flickered. The girl looked up. It blinked again.

Deep breath. Her fingers stopped tingling. The light went on. The pounding in her head lessened. Another flicker of the light. Deep breath. The light stayed perfectly on.

"Simone, honey, why are you hiding over there?" Her mother had come in. "What are you looking at? Do you see something?" Mrs. Jones took on a well-known tone. She wanted to know if Simone was doing anything with magic.

"No, mom. I was just going to bring the rest of the cookies out." Simone quickly supplied a lie. If her mother knew just how nervous the girl was. Well. We will leave it at if. Mrs. Jones had always been a confident woman. Seeing anything less than that from her daughter wouldn't be good.

"Great idea!" Her mother didn't notice the slight tremble of Simone's hand as she grabbed the last plate. "Melody brought her daughter, you should come meet her." Mrs. Jones gushed as she undid the button of Simone's kimono once more, leading her into the living room.

"Of course, mom." The teen repeated once again, holding her sarcasm in.

That's all folks!

Hopefully, you're enjoying the story and will leave me some reviews?

Fun Fact: The name Amalia (Coven Mistress) comes from the villain of the first book of the Dragon Slippers children's' books series.