Witches of East End by Melissa de La Cruz

She lit the candle and mumbled a few words. Turning to Tabitha, she said, “You trust me, don’t you? I’m trying to help you.” They were colleagues but friends as well, and Ingrid hoped Tabitha would trust their friendship enough to allow her to do this. She continued to work in a serene and thoughtful manner, but her heart was leaping in her chest. She was doing it—she was practicing witchcraft again. Magic. Freya was right, it was as if something that had been deeply buried in her soul was coming alive again, as if she just discovered she could breathe underwater all along. Ingrid felt dizzy and giddy. She hadn’t done anything like this in . . . longer than she could remember. She waited for a thunderbolt to strike. But there was nothing.
    With the witch sight from the pentagram she took a good long look at her friend, until the junior librarian squirmed under the penetrating gaze. The pentagram revealed what Ingrid had always suspected. There was something blocking Tabitha’s energy, a darkness in the core, a silver-colored mass, tight and constricted, knotted, like a fist or a tumor. No wonder she couldn’t get pregnant. Ingrid had seen them before, but nothing quite this deadly. She placed a hand on Tabitha’s belly and yanked it out, almost falling backward in her attempt. But she got it out, all right. The malignancy dissipated as soon as it had been removed from a physical host.
    Tabitha just stared at her as if Ingrid had gone insane. She hadn’t felt a thing; it looked as if Ingrid was just waving her hands about and babbling. “Are we done now?”
    “Not quite,” Ingrid said. Removing it was only the first step. She flicked the lights back on and blew out the candle. “You also need to do something about your hair,” she said.
    “My hair! What do you mean?” Tabitha looked skeptical.
    Ingrid realized, in all the time she’d known her, she’d never seen Tabitha wear her hair down. Tabitha’s hair was brushed back from her forehead so tightly it looked painful, and then it was knotted and woven so that it was almost as thick as rope. Ingrid noticed other things, too: Tabitha’s clunky oxfords were tightly laced. Her sweater (it was chilly indoors with the air-conditioning) was tied with ribbons instead of buttons. The woman had more knots on her person than a sailing ship. If she kept it up, there was a possibility that the silver evil could form again. The darkness fed on constriction; it was attracted to it, like moths to flame.
    She whispered fiercely, “Try it for once. Wear your hair down. And get rid of those shoes. And that sweater. Wear slip-on shoes. One of those cardigans that open in the front. No zippers. No buttons. Nothing but free-floating fabric. Free. And no knots.”
    “What does that have to do with anything?”
    “Just try it for a couple months. I read somewhere that it might work, it’s like a karma thing.” These days New Age wisdom was an easy enough explanation for a little bit of white magic. Tabitha told her she would consider it, but she left the storage room shaking her head.
    Ingrid brushed off signs of the pentagram and went back to work, her mind still racing. Of course, wearing flowy fabrics didn’t cut it on its own. She had to fight fire with fire, or knots with a knot of her own. When Tabitha wasn’t looking, Ingrid took some of Tabitha’s hair that had shed on her office chair. Now all she needed was one of Chad’s. . . . Then she thought, Tabitha kept an afghan in their car. . . . Chad had dark hair, so it would be easy enough to find one of his since Tab was blond. During her break, Ingrid let herself into Tabitha’s Camry and found what she was looking for. Back at her office, she threaded the two strands together, making a tiny, insect-size knot, while she hurriedly chanted the right words for the charm.
    Her heart thrummed within her chest, and goose bumps prickled her arms as her fingers worked quickly, twisting and turning. This wasn’t