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“Maybe you heard your mom mention them or something.”
    My mom is on the women’s guild at church and sometimes changes the hymn numbers or polishes candlesticks or arranges the altar flowers.
    I frowned, thinking back. “Maybe.”
    Within minutes we were in Red Kill, the next town to our north. When I was little, I had been afraid of going to Red Kill. The name itself seemed to be a warning of something awful that had happened there or would happen there. But actually, a lot of towns in the Hudson River Valley have the word kill in them—it’s an old Dutch word meaning “river.” Red Kill simply means “red river”—probably because the water was tinted from iron in the soil.
    “I didn’t know Red Kill had an occult bookstore. Do you think they’ll have stuff about Wicca?” I asked.
    “Yeah, Cal said they have a pretty good selection,” Bree answered. “I just want to check it out. After last night I’m really curious about Wicca. I felt so great afterward, like I just did yoga or had a massage or something.”
    “It was really intense,” I agreed. “But didn’t you feel yucky this morning?”
    “No.” Bree looked at me. “You must be coming down with something.You looked awful on the way home from the circle last night.”
    “Thanks, how comforting,” I said flatly.
    Bree pushed my elbow playfully.“You know what I mean.”
    We sat in silence for a couple of minutes.
    “Hey, do you have plans tonight?” I asked her. “My aunt Eileen’s coming over for dinner.”
    “Yeah? With her new girlfriend?”
    “I think so.”
    Bree and I wiggled our eyebrows at each other. My aunt Eileen, my mom’s younger sister, is gay. She and her longtime partner had broken up two years ago, so we were all happy she was finally dating again.
    “In that case, I can definitely make dinner,” said Bree. “Look, here we are.” She parked Breezy at an angle against the curb, and we got out, walking past the Sit ’n’ Knit, Meyer’s Pharmacy, Goodstall’s Children’s Shoes, and a Baskin-Robbins. At the end of the row of stores, Bree looked up and said, “This must be the place.” She pushed against a heavy double-glass door.
    Glancing down, I saw a five-pointed star within a circle painted on the sidewalk in purple—just like Cal’s silver pendant. Gold lettering on the glass door said Practical Magick, Supplies for Life. I wondered about the odd spelling of the word magic.
    I felt a bit like Alice about to go down the rabbit hole, knowing that simply entering this store would somehow start me on a journey whose ending I couldn’t predict. And I found that idea irresistible. I took a deep breath and followed Bree inside.
    The store was small and dim. Bree moved ahead, looking at things on the shelves while I hovered by the door and gave myself time to adjust after the bright autumn sunlight outside. The air was heavy with an unfamiliar incense, and I imagined that I could almost feel the coiling smoke brushing against me and winding around my legs.
    After blinking a few times, I saw that the shop was long and narrow, with a very high ceiling. Wooden shelves that looked homemade lined the walls and divided the store into halves. The half I could see down was floor-to-ceiling books: old, leather-bound volumes, bright-covered modern paper-backs, cheesy pamphlets that looked like they had been photocopied at Kinko’s and stapled by hand. I read some of the hand-lettered category signs: Magick, Tarot, History, Womancraft, Healing, Herbs, Rituals, Scrying . . . and within each category there were subcategories. It was all very orderly, though it didn’t give that impression at first.
    Just looking at the books’ spines, I felt that my mind was blooming like a flower. I hadn’t known books like this existed—ancient volumes describing magic and rituals. I was seeing a whole new world.
    Bree wasn’t in sight, so I walked down the aisle and headed for the other side of the store. She was looking at