Page 49 of Witch You Would
“Well, the first step to”—he made the same shape—“maaanifesting is to have a goal, so she’s not totally wrong. We have a goal:win.”
“Right, there are just a lot of question mark steps between step one: manifest and step whatever: win.”
He shifted to one butt cheek, pulling a deck of cards out of his pocket. God, dude pockets were so usable.
“Let’s try some luck magic,” he said.
“Seriously?” Luck spells were sketchy. It was pretty much impossible to tell whether a thing might have gone better or worsewithout the magic.
The cards flew between Leandro’s fingers like a manifestation rainbow. “You’re going to pick a card, and if it’s the queenof hearts, that means we’re going to win.”
I squinted at him. “No illusions?”
“No illusions.” He leaned closer and dropped his voice. “Honestly, I’m not great at those. My visualization skills aren’tstrong enough.”
“I had a friend in school with aphantasia,” I said. “Sometimes they had to do alternate spell lessons.” Illusions required really good mental picture-making abilities. You could do a basic copy illusion if you stared hard enough at a picture, but for anything more complex, you had to build it in your mind. Lots of people weren’t good at it.
“See? You understand.” Leandro fanned the cards out in front of his face, and one of them stuck up a little higher than therest. He raised his eyebrows a few times as he looked at me over the top of the deck. “Pick a card, then flip it over on three.”
I was so not taking that sticky-uppy one. I grabbed a random card from the left side.
His grin didn’t change. Did I get the queen?
“One.”
A striped butterfly drifted past, oblivious.
“Two.”
The sculpture colors shifted and squirmed.
“Three!”
I turned the card around and stared.
The queen of hearts. No way.
“Presto!” Leandro said. “Impressed?”
“How did you do that?” I asked. “Let me see that deck.”
“A magician never reveals his—hey!” He fell sideways as I tried to grab the deck out of his hand.
“You used a trick deck!”
Leandro dodged and held the cards up where I couldn’t reach them, but he was laughing too hard to really fight me off. I tackledhim and used both hands to crawl up his outstretched arm, prying the deck from his fingers. With a triumphant yell, I raisedthe cards into the air, grinning at him.
And then I realized I was sitting in his lap, and his face was inches from mine.
Chapter 11
Penelope
My brain almost never stopped. I’d lie awake at night with my eyes closed and imagine random, pointless things. Spells I couldn’tafford to try. Conversations with people I’d never meet. Moments from a million years ago that any normal person would haveforgotten. Just a constant background noise, like a fan whirring, a refrigerator humming, traffic zooming.
I stared into Leandro’s dark brown eyes, and my thoughts dissolved into a cloud of butterflies that flew down into the pitof my stomach. The garden was already hot, but my skin felt like the sun had noticed me and come in for a closer look.
I had two choices: I could climb off him and make a joke, or...
