"That too," I said, and gave her a smile. She made a mock-disapproving face.

"Over in Burdocksville," she answered, fastening a pearl necklace around her neck. "At the community center. We should be back by eleven or so, and we told Mary K. we'd pick her up on the way home. Leave a note if you and Bree decide to go out."

"Okay," I said.

"Come on, Mary Grace, we're going to be late," my dad said.

"Bye, sweetie," my mom called. Then they were gone, and I was alone in the house. I ran upstairs and changed into an Indian-print top and a pair of gray pants. I brushed my hair hard and decided to leave it down. I even opened the bathroom drawer, looked at Mary K.'s huge collection of eye shadows and blushes and concealers. I had no idea what to do with most of the stuff and didn't have time to learn, so I just put on a layer of lip gloss and headed for the door.

Jenna lived in Hudson Estates, a fairly new subdivision filled with mansions. I grabbed my keys and a jacket and shoved my feet into my clogs. I was thinking, Circle, circle, circle, and my mind was spinning with excitement. As I was opening the door to leave, the phone rang.

To answer or not to answer? I lunged for the phone on the fourth ring, thinking it might be Jenna with a change of plans, but I suddenly knew even before I had the receiver to my ear that it was Ms. Fiorello, my mom's colleague. "Hello?" I said impatiently.

"Morgan? This is Betty Fiorello."

"Hi," I said, thinking, I know, I know.

"Hi, hon," she said. "Listen, I just got your mom on her cell phone, and she said you might be home."

"Uh-huh?" My heart was racing, my blood pounding. All I wanted was to see Cal, to feel the magick again flowing through me.

"Listen. I need to stop by and pick up some signs. Your mom said they were in the garage. I have two new listings, and I'm doing three open houses tomorrow, if you can believe it, and I seem to have run out of signs."

Ms. Fiorello has the most annoying voice in the world. I wanted to scream.

"Okay…," I said politely.

"So is it all right if I come by in, say, forty-five minutes?" Ms. Fiorello asked.

I glanced at the clock frantically. "C–Could you come a little earlier?" I asked." I was, um, thinking of going to a movie."

"Oh. I'm sorry. I'll try. But I just have to wait for Mr. Fiorello to get home with the car," she said.

Crap, I thought. "I could leave the signs outside," I suggested. "In front of the garage."

"Oh, dear," said Ms. Fiorello, continuing to ruin my life. "You know, I think I have to look through them myself. I'm not sure which ones I'll need until I see them."

My mom had about a hundred real estate signs in the garage. I couldn't pile them all outside. Thoughts flew through my head, but I couldn't see a way out. Dammit. "Well, I guess I don't absolutely have to go to the movie," I hinted ungraciously, hoping she'd take the hint.

She didn't. "I'm so sorry, dear. Was this a date?" she asked.

"No," I said sourly. I needed to hang up before I started screaming at her. "See you in forty-five minutes," I said curtly, and hung up the phone. I felt like crying. For a bitter minute I wondered if maybe my mom had put Ms. Fiorello up to this to check on me. No, that seemed unlikely.

While I waited for Ms. Fiorello, I cleaned the kitchen and started the dishwasher: Cinderella, getting very late for the ball. I put a load of my clothes into the washer. Then I played music really loud and sang along for a while at the top of my lungs. I put my wet clothes into the dryer and set the timer for forty-five minutes.

Finally, over an hour later, Ms. Fiorello showed up. I let her into the garage, and she poked around in my moms signs for what felt like a lifetime. I sat on the garage steps glumly, my head in my hand. She picked out about eight signs, then cheerfully thanked me.

"No problem," I lied politely, letting her out. "Bye, Ms. Fiorello."

"Good-bye, dear," she said.

By the time she left, it was almost ten o'clock. There was no point in driving twenty minutes to Jenna's house when the circle would already be underway. I couldn't just break in three-quarters of the way through.

As I collapsed on our living-room sofa, my misery was compounded by the fear that I was falling too far behind the rest of the Wicca group to join in again. What if Cal gave up on me? What if they wouldn't let me come to another circle?

I felt almost desperate. I seized on an idea that had been floating around my brain for a while. If I couldn't explore Wicca with the group, I could at least work a little on my own. Then at least I could prove to Cal and the rest of them that I really was dedicated. I was going to try to do a magick spell. I even had an idea for a spell to try. The next day I would drive up to Practical Magick and buy the ingredients.

Sunday my family and I went to church, then to the Widow's Diner for brunch. As soon as I got home, I called Jenna. She was out, so I left a message on her machine, explaining what happened the night before and apologizing for not making it to the circle. Then I called Bree, but she wasn't home, either. I left a message for her, too, trying not imagine her at Cal's house, in Cal's room. After that I sat the dining table for hours, doing homework and losing myself in complicated, tidy mathematical equations, so satisfying in their clear solutions, they seemed almost magickal themselves.

I stopped by Practical Magick just before it closed, at five that afternoon. I bought all the ingredients I needed, but I waited until later that night, until my parents and sister were already in bed, before I began my spell.

I left the door to my room open a crack so I could hear if my mom or dad or Mary K. suddenly stirred. I took out my book on herbal magick. Cal had said I was sensitive—that I had a gift for magick. I needed to know if that was true.

Opening the book Herbal Rituals for the Beginner, I flipped to "Clarifying the Skin."

I checked my list. Was it a waning moon? Check. In my reading I had learned that spells for gathering, calling, increasing, prosperity, and so on were done while the moon was waxing, or getting fuller. Spells for banishing, decreasing, limiting, and so on were done while the moon was waning. It sort of made sense if you thought about it.

The spell I chose specified catnip to increase beauty, cucumber and angelica to promote healing, chamomile and rosemary for purification.

My room is carpeted, but I found I could still make a chalk circle. Before closing the circle, I moved my book and everything else I would need into it. Three candles made enough light to read by. Next I trickled a line of salt around my circle and said, "With this salt, I purify my circle."

The rest of the spell consisted of crunching things up with a mortar and pestle, pouring boiling water (from a thermos) over the herbs in a measuring cup, and writing a person's name on a piece of paper and burning it over a candle. At exactly midnight I read the book's spell words in a whisper:

I read this quickly while the clock downstairs was striking midnight. At the very last bong of the clock, I said the final word. In the next instant all the hairs on my arms stood up, the three candles went out, and a huge bolt of lightning made my room glow white. The next second brought a boom of thunder so loud, it reverberated in my chest.