Sex

Poe's house could easily be used as a Bed and Breakfast. It's a beautiful white Georgian Colonial-style mansion with black shutters and perfectly manicured lawns. The fact that it has ten bedrooms along with every other kind of room a New England billionaire family would need, means that even when the entire family is home the chances of you seeing another human being are slim to none. Her house is also a historical landmark with some great history and lore behind it. When we were kids her family was always responsible for throwing the Halloween parties and even when it was just her and me the ghost stories felt all too real at slumber parties.

It's early in the afternoon so her father is still doing whatever he does at City Hall and her mother is deep in a Xanax nap, meaning that for the most part, we do have the place to ourselves.

Strolling through the doorway into Poe's expansive room we waste no time kicking off our shoes. We were both wearing our cheer uniforms today in an effort to get the student body riled up about a little rally they're planning to have this weekend to kick off the sports year, so we weren't wearing any complicated heels or boots. Standard Adidas sneakers for us today.

"How are things with Law going?"

I huff out a breath, falling back onto her king-sized bed with a thud. "I don't know. I'm pretty sure she hates me. Or, resents me, at least. She's missing a semester at school and those things aren't cheap. She wants to sell the house and make me move to Boston with her."

Poe was in the middle of digging through her walk-in closet to pull out some boxes but backtracked into the room at the mention of what my sister was planning. "Is she for fucking real? In your senior year?"

Pinching my lips between my teeth, I lift a brow and give her a nod. "I turn eighteen in two weeks so it's not like she can force me to do anything. If she decides she has to sell the house for whatever reason, then I could always use my half of the equity to purchase something smaller in town, but that house is my home. It's where I grew up. I already lost my dad, I don't want to lose my home, too."

Poe drops a box to the grey plush carpet and crosses the room, hitching up a leg and sitting on her bed next to me. "Have you talked to Ramsay?"

I suppress the scoff that wants to burst from my chest at the suggestion that my uncle could be responsible for basically anything at this point, but my father did leave the majority of the shop to him with only forty percent of the business being split between Law and myself. He must have seen something in Ramsay that I wasn't seeing myself.

"I mean, I don't know what he's going to do. It's not like he has money to help me. Have you seen the apartments he lives in? Roach motels make better living quarters."

A chuckle leaves Poe's lips at the sentiment before she pushes herself off the bed and bounds across the room, grabbing the box from the floor and dropping it to the bed next to me before waltzing to the bookshelf in the corner of her room and pulling a few choice selections from the shelves and tossing them on the bed as well.

"Well, I said that I would teach you a few things. Maybe the first thing I can teach you is a persuasion spell."

I find my eyes narrowing at the suggestion. "A persuasion spell? Isn't that like, mind control?"

Poe shrugs. "No. It just might help your sister see your side of things a bit better. It does technically fall under the black magic category, but it's not like we're cursing someone or raising the dead or anything like that. It won't hurt her."

I shrug. Poe wouldn't ever hurt my sister. Or anyone else. She's a good person and based on the last conversation we had on this topic, she's been practicing since she was a young girl. Her mother taught her back before the Xanax and quack doctors got a hold of her. Unfortunately, that seems to be a side effect of being a political wife. Good thing that isn't something I'll ever have to worry about.

Poe digs a few things out of the box and sets them next to me before standing and returning to her closet. I can hear a few things shuffling around, some clanking, a chorus of shuffling before she returns to me with her arms full.

"Ok. Grab those yellow pillar candles, that black salt, and that pink salt, then bring your ass over here." She sinks to the floor on her knees and starts to spread out a few of the other things she brought with her to set them on the floor.

Once I had everything she requested in hand, I did the same, sitting directly across from her. One of the things she grabbed was regular table salt, which she stands and dumps in a circle around us. Apparently, the movies don't get everything wrong.

Crossing the room, Poe pulls her black curtains closed before returning to where I'm seated, stepping over the ring of salt and sitting across from me once more. Taking the pillar candles, she sets one on either side of her before handing me one and telling me to place it behind myself and light it, which I do.

"Alright. So, what we're going to do, is bless this salt. Not the circle of salt, but we are going to mix the black salt and the pink salt together. We're going to anoint it with some of this lemonwood oil, and say a few words."

I look at her with disbelief clear on my face. "And that's it?"

Her returning smile is wide and warm. "And that's it. Once we bless it, put it in your salt grinder at home, and then have a conversation about the house with Law about an hour after she eats it. She'll be far more open to suggestions. With as hard-headed as your sister is, you might really need to get some salt in there." We both laugh. Law is a natural attorney. She has little to no problem arguing her case and once she sets her mind to something she's like a dog with a bone. She won't let it go until you see her way of thinking. If her way of thinking is to make me move? I'm willing to do just about anything to get her to give my point of view at least the slightest amount of consideration.

Poe sets a beautiful gold bowl between us with engravings on the side that remind me of the chalice that I found in the box of stuff that was my mother's that I came across the other day, bringing that to the forefront of my mind.

"Poe? I got a box from the shop that was probably stored in my dad's office that was of my mom's old stuff. She had a chalice in there with these same engravings on it."

Poe nods. "It was probably some of your mom's stuff. Most of it is easily replaceable or doesn't keep. The herbs, the candles, things like that. But it would make sense that some of the things that are harder to come by would be passed down. That's where I got most of this. You can buy new ones, but they're expensive. They also carry some of the strength of the witches that owned them before, so you don't really want to start from scratch." That makes sense.

We pour both of the different kinds of salt into the bowl before Poe unscrews the lid to a small clear glass vial containing what I assume is the lemonwood oil. It's the color and consistency of olive oil so it's a natural assumption.

"Alright," Poe says, wiping her hands on her black and red pleated cheer skirt. "Give me your hands and repeat after me."

I nod, extending my hands to meet hers, the bowl in the space between both our bodies. Poe starts chanting a few words in what sounds like Latin and I do my best to repeat the same words with the same cadence as she does. It was pretty easy, actually.

She drops her hands after we had said the words in triplicate. "Alright. That's it."

"Hm. Who thought that mind control was so simple."

Poe snorts. "It's not simple. It's actually far from simple. The way that you and I did this, a normal Wiccan or Pagan wouldn't be able to complete it the way that we did. Our ancestral power, on the other hand, can do just about anything. Freezing time, pyrokinesis, telekinesis, and stuff like that can all be done with just the mind of a witch with a word or two. Some of the more complicated things take candles and trinkets and a basic understanding of Latin to complete."

I give her a shrug. "That makes sense, I guess. How do I get better at my other powers?"

She smiles at me. "Just practice. The only thing I would recommend that you work on between now and then, especially with everything going on in your life right now, is some meditation. Learn to clear your mind, and focus. Regardless of what skills or spells you're doing, that is going to be the most important part."

"Cool. So what now?"

"Now, you go home, and make your sister some dinner."