The Golden Thread by Suzy McKee Charnas

I’d only mess you up, and you’d end up sorry you ever asked. Look, I failed a French test last week, do you call that power?”
    I hadn’t actually failed, but it had been close.
    â€œOh, not you alone,” she said, frowning. “But with your friends, there is enough.”
    â€œEnough what?” I said, glancing around. “What friends?”
    â€œEnough power,” she said. “Among all the ones with you, New Year’s.”
    With me? New Year’s? Taken completely by surprise, I said, “You mean at Lennie’s party?”
    â€œComet Committee,” she said, nodding once. “What else? Bring them tomorrow after class, in the science room.”
    She walked away.
    If I had any doubts left about the reality of what had happened back in the jeans store, they were put to rest at that moment.
    Stuck on one side of the Denim Delight shopping bag she carried was a fat, wet, purple leaf.

 
    5
Silver Wishes
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    T HEY WOULDN’T LET ME SEE GRAN. The nurses said they had her on a different floor for tests, and I would have to come back later. I couldn’t even sit with her and talk to myself in hopes that she would open her eyes and answer me. I took a bus home, feeling wrecked, with so much to talk about and nobody to talk about it with.
    Now I knew what had crashed into us all the night of the Comet Committee. Our pouncing wildcat from psychic space had been Bosanka Lonatz, and now she was here . And she had homed in on me.
    Horrible possibilities kept flickering through my mind like trailers for bad movies: what if Gran’s “tests” did something to her and she got worse—ultimately worse—and what if once Gran died, the family talent was gone from all of us? What if I was going to be left facing Bosanka with nothing that I knew enough about to use for our defense?
    A little more of that kind of thinking, and I would go insane. Gran would be ashamed of me if she could hear my quivering thoughts.
    Didn’t she and Paavo teach me, didn’t they show me, that you don’t just sit around shaking and moaning. You get up, put one foot in front of the other, and do whatever you can. Even if the chances are good that you can’t actually do it at all, or that you can do it, but not walk away alive.
    The bus lurched and a large person standing over me lurched, too, and demolished my left foot. So much for walking.
    Besides, put one foot in front of the other and do what ?
    For starters, I had to relay Bosanka’s demand to the members of the Comet Committee and make them believe it. Not easy, since I wasn’t at all sure what she wanted beyond a meeting of the group.
    And how in the world was I going to tell them about what had happened in the jeans store? I trudged home from the bus stop, with pauses for the errands on Mom’s list, thinking about how Lennie and the others (especially Peter and Tamsin) were going to react to that one.
    Should I even talk to them at all? I was the witch’s grandchild, the one Bosanka had zeroed in on. Obviously it was my family talent that had made the Comet Committee into something more than just a party that night on Lennie’s roof.
    My family talent had drawn her, like lightning to a steel barn. I shuddered when I remembered that moment of impact, now that I had an idea of what—of who the intruder was. Without me, I was sure, none of this would be happening. But how could I convince them of that?
    I mean, they might believe strange things about Bosanka. But to reveal that I, Val, had a personal history with magic would really be asking for it. I couldn’t help wondering if because of that history I should be handling Bosanka on my own. But how? I didn’t have a clue. I desperately needed to talk it out with somebody.
    What about Barb? She had specifically asked me to include her in the next magical adventure that came my way. Only this present magic was about Bosanka,