The back of Molly’s phone was warm in her palm, making her hand sweat. She had been using apps nonstop for the last hour with two of her fifteen-year-old freshmen friends, showing off spells they had learned the night before. The new magickal apps that had come out in the last month were so lively and compelling that Molly found herself unable to stop. She just had to try them. They sparked a desire in her that left her thirsty for more.
By how her friends were acting, she figured that they felt the same way.
“Look! This one’s cool! Took me over an hour last night!”
Molly turned her attention to her friend Rexa as the three of them walked down the bright street. Rexa snapped her fingers once before swiping across and down a deep blue app that Molly hadn’t seen yet. Five burning white balls like stars rose from the screen and connected, making a constellation above Rexa’s phone.
Rexa stopped and flashed her flawless white smile, her brown eyes glistening.
“Perfection!” She blew a kiss at the balls of light above her, the highlighter on her dark cheeks shimmering gold. One of the balls floated over to the non-magickal medical clinic across the street and vanished when it hit the red and white sign on the door that read “No Magick Allowed.”
Rexa slapped her hand across her mouth to hold in a laugh, then shook her head, bouncing her black curls. “Oops. I should have aimed it that way.” She looked over her shoulder to the magickal medical clinic with the letters “MMC” glimmering the color of ocean waves above its door in the hot summer sun.
“It’s not your fault,” Val said, smirking at the non-magickal clinic. Her straight blonde hair with purple highlights fell over her shoulder. “The world has been changing drastically since new magick was introduced. Things will only continue on that trend. They need to get over it. At some point, magick will be everywhere. Who our age isn’t using it?”
She peered at Molly with sassy blue eyes. They narrowed until Molly nodded in agreement, although Molly didn’t quite agree with people and companies needing to get over magick becoming a part of everyday life. But Val wasn’t wrong about how things were changing even more now than when their parents were young.
Magick was proven to be real to the non-magickal world only twenty-three years ago, thanks to the internet. Countries away in 2007, magick had been caught on video repeatedly, spreading everywhere over the web. It was horrifying how non-magickal people would capture those who they assumed were magickal and force them to do things. It even got to the point where magickal people were caught and taken into public viewing. There, they were coerced to show magick. That magick, called old magick, had used symbols and raw materials to create, transform, and fix things. Now, years later when the chaos finally calmed down, they had “new” magick that had to do with spells one could do with technology.
“I don’t know. There are a ton of annoying parents who still refuse to use any kind of magick, like um….” Rexa put her fist to her mouth and fake coughed. “Molly’s parents… And they were teenagers when it was discovered that magick has always been a part of our world.”
The way Rexa eyed Molly degraded Molly to her core and made her feel like an ant on the sidewalk. Molly’s parents were not a fan of magick, but that wasn’t her fault.
“Yeah, that generation are weirdos. Why would they be upset at something that fixed the hellscape they lived on? Can you imagine school shootings every single day? Why would your parents want that, Molly?” Val sneered at her. “What’s wrong with them?”
“I… I don’t think they want that. My mom just liked things how things were when she was younger.”
“So, she liked being shot at?” Rexa said with a nod.
“No—I don’t think she ever—”
Val put up her manicured hand, not giving Molly the chance to explain, which was fine. Then at least Molly wouldn’t make a fool of herself by tripping over her words even more.
When magick had been deemed undeniably real, a massive spell had been cast that got rid of any weapon intended for harm. To this day, if any weapon is made, it disappears in a cloud of smoke.
Although to Molly it sounded petrifying the way her parents had lived as young children, some adults still talk about it as if control had been taken away from them. Which was confusing. Wasn’t there less control with countless weapons in the hands of almost everyone?
Molly’s parents were not one of those parents. They never liked weapons. But they were vastly different than Rexa’s and Val’s. Although Molly’s were around more, they hated magick, well at least her mom did. Rexa and Val who rarely saw their parents had an indifferent attitude toward the subject of magick.
Rexa’s leftover glowing stars from her app, which were still suspended above them, flickered out with the odd smell of burning timber wood.
Val rolled her eyes and pursed her pink lips. “Look at this one.”
Val shook her phone and touched the screen to her nose before closing her eyes. Molly watched as her friend hummed a few syllables Molly couldn’t comprehend before she pulled her phone away. A long string of droplets rested between Val’s nose and the screen, becoming level with Val’s eyes. They then splattered to the ground.
“Snot. That’s snot!” Rexa said with a shake of her head.
“No. That’s real water,” Val defended.
“Not possible. Cell magick can’t make real things like that. I don’t care how many pixels of your soul you give up,” Rexa said.
Molly sighed. Her friends had been fighting a lot more lately since they started using cell magick. She wondered how many pixels of her soul Val had given to the app to be able to make something that looked so real.
“Your turn, Molly,” Val said, bumping into her and scratching the top of Molly’s curly head with her long pink nails.
“I’m… I’m a little over it. My phone’s burning up.”
“Oh, come on! One more. Impress me,” Val pushed.
Molly looked down at the magickal apps she had downloaded on her phone and flicked past the first page on her screen to the next. Her favorite was one that made sounds come to life. Sometimes, when she couldn’t fall asleep, she would lie in bed and listen to the drops of rain from the magick she created and feel them touching and tapping her skin even through her clothes. It was comforting, like having a nightlight in the dark.
Molly didn’t want to share this part of her with her friends, but it was the only app she had that could measure up to theirs.
Molly opened the app, prepared to give it one pixel of her soul. Out of all of her friends, Molly had been the most reluctant to become a cell witch. She had only tried it when her friends convinced her by explaining how little a pixel really was and that she could do thousands of spells and still have most of her soul to herself.
The problem was that none of them knew how small a pixel really was. No one knew how cell magick really worked. Everything was new. It was only because of how easy the apps were to find and the fact that no kids had experienced any issues yet that people deemed the magickal apps safe.
Molly pressed her thumb into the screen. At first, something trickled through her like a shot of caffeine in her veins before a heaviness rested right behind her eyes. Even though a pixel was small when it came to a soul, she swore she felt a little part of herself leave her body when she swirled her thumb to the top left of the screen and then to the bottom of the yellow glare coming through the glass. Her soul and body felt as if they were cement for a moment before whatever had ahold of her let her loose.
It was all just part of the magick.
Molly turned her thumb on the screen, giving her phone her identity, and then whistled a tune in her head, calling to what she wanted to come. Hushed whispers blew and wisped around her. She swore it was shaking Val’s dangling blue earrings.
She wanted a cold wind in this heat.
The wind started slowly, but the cold bite on her skin was harsh once it picked up. The red flush she had from the sun beating down on her arm was starting to fade.
“Oh, okay—enough!” Val yelled, grabbing the phone from her hand.
Molly hadn’t realized that Val had been shaking. Rexa was too, her arms crossed over herself. She was biting her lips that were beginning to turn blue.
“It affects you guys too?”
“Yeah.” Rexa rubbed her arms with goosebumps all over them. “What kind of spell was that?”
“I don’t know. I thought it only worked on me.”
“Well, don’t do it again. Or at least, next time, call something more pleasant.” Val shook her head.
Val gave Molly back her phone and pointed to the place she wanted to go: A shop with a big green sign that read “Trennly’s Drinks: Where You Can Get Your Trendy Drinks” in cursive. It had an outdoor serving window and the owner, a mini-troll they knew as Trennly, in the front. His was one of the most popular shops on this street.
Molly let her eyes travel over the different shops next to it.
Next to Trennly’s Drinks sat a tanning salon called Aged To Bronze, where people went to get their skin tone changed for months. They had packages where a customer could get a tan or lighter undertones layered into their skin by a magickal mist. Molly had seen some kids come to school with a hint of a tinted violet orchid to their skin. It all depended on how much one was willing to spend. Val had tried it but complained that the orchid coloring had stung her too much. Her skin had smelled like flowers for days.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
There was also a small clothing boutique called Swipe For Change that catered to cell witches. The clothing could change its color and the textures of its frills with a specific app, but it lasted only a short time. Some of the more expensive clothing lasted only three days before turning grey and dull, no flick of color ever returning to them.
Lastly, there was a coffee shop owned by another mini-troll named Kren. The shop, called No-Jitters, sold boring drinks and concoctions that no one cared about. It wasn’t like Trennly’s Drinks, where drinks were sold that kept up with the magickal trends like glimmering eyes, bunny ears, and even sometimes a lion’s tail.
Molly had always wondered how two mini-trolls had come to own two shops on the same street. She swore that mini-trolls were not common in any part of the world.
But ever since magick became known, more and more creatures and beasts of myths were finding their way into society; creatures that had been hidden before with spells and by magickal specialists. There was a griffon that came to town quite often. Everyone left it alone, unsure what it would do to them with its thick eagle’s beak and giant talons if they approached it.
Kren, with downturned lips, a stout body, and a stiff brown button-up above his creaseless black pants, watched them walk over to Trennly’s Drinks. When he noticed Molly studying him, his lips formed a thin line before he turned his attention to the metal chairs in front of his small coffee shop. He straightened them as a breeze rustled his unkempt green hair.
Molly’s steps were heavier than they were before. She looked back down at her phone and a wave of lightheadedness had her blinking to steady herself. Had they been on the magickal apps too long?
She pocketed her phone.
“Don’t you guys think we should try to learn old magick?” She had often considered it but had no one to teach her and didn’t want to try any sketchy spells from unreliable sources. From what she had researched on the internet, old magick didn’t require giving up parts of your soul.
“I don’t care to. Too much work and no time,” Val said with a dismissive flip of her blonde hair.
“But I did hear there’s this school—” Rexa stopped to dodge Val’s hand, which almost hit her in the face.
Val was waving at someone, her pink nails glistening in the sun.
Trennly, the troll who owned the trendy drinks shop, waved back with a sneer, his bright violet mohawk standing still in the breeze. He was short, the top of his head stopping at their waists. When they stood over him, the pleasant-smelling and most likely magickal hair products he used wafted up into Molly’s nose.
“Unicorn Surprise?” Trennly asked with a smile, running his hand through his purple mohawk that stood straight back up after his fingers left it. He knew they always wanted whatever drink on the menu was trending.
“You know it!” Val said, leaning into a table to get closer to his hair. Molly could see her taking in his scent, which disturbed her. She knew it smelt good, but just like the refreshments he would give them, who knew what kind of magick he used on it.
Trennly turned, and Molly couldn’t help but hold her breath. She didn’t know why. He had never done anything bad to them in all the times he had served them. Besides, all her friends thought he was cool.
Rexa reached for the sparkling purple and pink liquid with the shimmering blue straw, but Val ripped it away from her reach. When she did, Trennly gave Val a wink, which made her smile as she took in a big mouthful of the cold frothy liquid.
At first, like a figure of a ghost before it turned solid, a twinkling unicorn horn about half a foot tall grew from Val’s forehead.
Rexa had taken the next drink and beamed with her own purple twinkling horn.
Molly knew hers would be light blue, like it always was.
Trennly handed Molly her drink with another wink. His green eyes bronzed for a split second as Molly took a drink. It was as if a silent scream was building up inside her head, with the pressure she felt rising as she took a long sip. Then, all of a sudden, that scream dissipated into a relaxing chemical throughout her body that made her feel sluggish for a moment before her horn grew.
She knew the horn would last for three hours. Even though it wouldn’t last long, she did it because it was the hip new thing. Some kids came to Trennly consistently in the summer to keep their horns, but Molly and her friends only came every few days to at least keep up with the trends. To some, it made them feel more connected to magick. Molly didn’t feel that way. If anything, she felt like whenever she had any of the trendy drinks, it caused more problems for her than it was worth.
Like the problem coming toward her now.
Two spirits.
She sighed inwardly. Spirits always targeted her, for some reason, while leaving her friends and everyone else she was around alone. It had started when she was little, but now, when she had drunk a trendy magickal drink, they seemed to notice her more. As if they were drawn to her.
Her friends couldn’t see them. But they knew that she did.
Rexa rolled her eyes, taking another sip of her drink. “How many?”
They must have noticed that her eyes had gone wide.
“Two,” Molly answered. The spirits of two older men were running to her as if some musical horn was calling them. They were stumbling over their feet and bumping into each other.
“What do you mean how many?” Trennly asked behind her.
She had never had an encounter near him before. Usually, it happened when they were further away from his shop after she had a drink. But Trennly’s Drinks had opened only recently, last year.
“Ghosts. She sees ghosts,” Val said, glaring where Molly’s eyes were glued.
“Ahhhh,” Trennly said, an amused inflection to his voice.
Molly set down her drink and took out her phone. She hated it. She would have to give another pixel to fight them away. She had no other choice. Whenever one touched her, they tried to take over her body. In the past, before cell magick, she had almost been taken over multiple times. It wasn’t pleasant at all.
She opened the app. A source on the internet had said that it was the new way to use old magick when it came to spirit hunts. It was the closest thing she could find when researching things about spirits and ghosts and how to get rid of them. In the black screen were lines upon white lines that had to be connected and pulled from one side of the screen to the other to form some kind of diagram with a symbol in the middle. The symbol in the middle was always the same.
She began working and pulling. Trying to form the picture that was hinted at really small in the right corner. How the phone knew what kind of diagram she needed for the spirits, she didn’t know. But this was a complicated one. Was it because there were two ghosts?
One spirit pushed the other. The second one grabbed the back of the first one’s hair and dragged him down, giving her more time.
From the corner of her eye, she saw the green-haired troll coming over from his shop. He was studying her intensely. Her horn was warming in the sun, making her dizzy as she tried to work the lines.
But something was wrong. Her fingers would no longer glide any of the strings.
She hit the screen twice. Three times. Pounding it with her finger.
She looked up to see that the ghosts were closer now. Close enough to touch.
Molly took a step back.
“Are you done yet?” Val asked.
But Rexa must have read that something wasn’t right. “What’s wrong?”
The next thing Molly knew, Trennly pushed her aside with a confident shrug to face the two ghosts himself. The ghosts stopped for a second, unsure of Trennly. Then, with a clap of Trennly’s hands, they were gone, splattered across the sidewalk.
“How…how did you?” Molly gasped.
The troll went over to where the ghosts had been and laid his hands flat on the ground. He was drawing over the leftover blue transparent bits, and they disappeared in his hands.
“Old magick,” Rexa breathed.
“Well, duh,” Val laughed. “How else do you think he makes our—?”
Val stopped talking. Stopped moving. Molly realized she was paralyzed. Trennly held up his two hands, symbols glistening on his thick palms, as he trudged toward Molly. They were the same symbols that had been on the app.
“What are you doing?” Molly asked, stepping back and accidentally hitting the table behind her. Her drink splattered on the ground like those ghosts had been splattered moments before.
“I help you, you help me,” Trennly winked.
But why? Why wasn’t she frozen like Val? Like Rexa? She looked at her friends and then across the street. She saw they were frozen, because that other mini-troll was still approaching them. But why? And what did those symbols on Trennly’s palms mean? Why was he coming toward her?
He reached out his hand. The symbols were gone. Her friends were moving again, but this time she stopped when she saw a bluish transparent hand stretching through Trennly’s solid one. It reached out for her like she had seen many spirits try to do without a physical body. It wanted to grab her and take her over. She tried to scream. She didn’t want to go through again what happened when a spirit touched her.
She pulled her arm away, but not before Trennly grasped it with that ghostly hand.
And then she was gone.
She was not with her friends anymore. She was under a dark blue sky on a thin sheet of purple ice. A lake where she had been too many times. Every time a spirit tried to overtake her, she came here and fell through the ice.
It was a place she could only be saved if an outside force disrupted whatever had ahold of her. She had no control here.
She hated it. She hated herself. She just wanted to be normal. She wanted to do what her friends did. She wanted to drink magick drinks and follow magickal trends and fit in.
Not end up here.
The ice cracked, and she fell through.
But just as the water covered her head, something grabbed her and yanked her out.
She was standing on the street. Kren had his hand wrapped around her arm, his brown eyes boring into hers. With his other hand, he held Trennly by the hair, with Trennly yelling out at him to stop.
Kren pulled Trennly’s hair harder and then let go, making Trennly fall to the ground. Molly watched as Trennly opened his hand. He quickly hit his palm to the cement and then he was gone.
“Are you okay?” Val scrambled to her.
“Get your hands off her!” Rexa said, diving to grab Molly’s hand to tear her away from Kren.
But then they stopped. The symbols that had once been on Trennly’s palm were now on Kren’s.
“What’s going on?” Molly asked. Her heart was beating so fast she could barely breathe. She had almost just drowned and lost herself again to that nightmare. Then she came back to this? Trolls with powers? Trolls freezing her friends? Spirits splattered on the sidewalk?
Kren tsked and looked into her eyes again. “I saved you. You are lucky.”
“Saved me from what? Trennly? The trendy drink troll?”
Kren bit his lip and shook his head, throwing away Molly’s arm. “You not belong here and not belong using that kind of magick.” He pointed to her phone. “You are going to get yourself killed.”
“Everyone uses it,” Molly said, looking to her friends, with their phones still clutched in their hands.
He shook his head. “Pixels…” he tsked again, then grabbed her phone, throwing it to the ground before stomping on it with his thick brown shoes. The screen shattered as he stamped on it again, crushing it to pieces. “You need to learn who to trust. You need to learn where those come from.”
She didn’t understand what he meant. Her friends knew who to trust. She trusted them. She trusted their judgment.
“You…empty vessel, see ghosts, spirits, yes? You go to place in mind when touched?”
How did he know?
“Trends,” he pointed to her horn, then put down his finger and sighed. “You are going to get killed. Get new phone. One less tainted.”
Her mom was going to be so angry with her. “Why would you…? Why did you—what do you mean less tainted?”
This time he pointed at her face. “You need to learn. At Lockdrest.”
“Lockdrest?”
“School. So can learn to survive.”
“But… how? Wh—why?” She didn’t understand what he was talking about. She didn’t know if she should be listening to him even though he had saved her life. Even though he had grabbed her out of that place that was her prison. A place where before when she was younger, if she happened to escape, it was only out of luck.
She looked to her frozen friends again, desperate for their opinions, but their eyes were only glossy marbles looking at her.
“To keep you from slipping into your mind. To keep you from being taken over by spirit magick. You will learn old magick.” He waved his hand. “Better than giving pieces of soul to who you don’t know.”
“I can’t. I already go to school. My parents...”
“You want to survive?”
Her friends unfroze when he squeezed his hand into a fist in front of her face. The horn on her head crumbled, and pieces of it fell to the ground as her friends gasped and jumped away.
“Yes, but…”
“Then I will get you there. To your world, to them, you are now dead.”
He snapped his fingers, and all went black as Molly heard a scream.