"I'll come get you. Say, one-thirty?"

"Okay. See you then."

I hung up the phone. My mom lowered the newspaper and looked at me over her reading glasses.

"What?" I said self-consciously, a big grin on my face.

"Everything going all right with Cal?" she asked.

"Uh-huh," I said. I could feel my cheeks reddening. It felt weird to talk to my parents about my boyfriend—especially since he was the one who had introduced me to Wicca. I'd always been able to discuss my life with Mom and Dad, but Wicca was a part of it they wanted gone, forever. It had created a wall between us.

"Cal seems nice," Mom said brightly, trying to put me at ease and fish for information at the same time. "He's certainly good-looking."

"Um… yeah, he's really nice. Let me go take a shower," I mumbled, standing up. "Then we'll go to the store."

I fled.

"Okay, first stop, coffee shop," Mary K. directed a half hour later. She folded Mom's grocery list and stuck it in her coat pocket I wheeled Das Boot—my massive, submarinelike old car— into the parking lot of the small strip mall that boasted Widow's Vale's one and only coffee emporium. We dashed from the car to the cafe, where it smelled like coffee and pastry. I looked at the board and tried to decide between a grande latte or a grande today's special. Mary K. leaned over the glass case, gazing longingly at the bear claws. I checked my cash.

"Get one if you want," I said. "My treat. Get me one, too."

My sister flashed me a smile, and I thought again that she looked so much older than fourteen. Some fourteen-year-olds are so gawky: half formed, childlike. Mary K. wasn't. She was savvy and mature. For the first time in a long while, it occurred to me that I was lucky to have her as my sister, even if we didn't share the same blood.

The door swung open, bells jangling. Bakker Blackburn came in, followed by his older brother, Roger, who had been a senior at Widow's Vale High last year and was now at Vassar. My insides clenched. Mary K. glanced up, eyes wide. She looked away quickly.