Chapter Text
After helping Mama carve up the pumpkins, make pumpkin bread, and can the leftover pumpkin for Thanksgiving, Eric creeps up to his room. He’s incredibly relieved to find it empty, clay doll still safely tucked behind Señor Bun. He grabs his backpack, pulling out a couple notebooks and textbooks at random and spreading them out on his desk before he takes Mama’s fifth edition copy of Principle Magic Adapted from the Roman Tradition out of his desk drawer. He flips to the chapter about spirit summoning and wedges the corners under his school stuff.
As much as his mother is willing to forgive him for getting into her books, Eric doesn’t want to stretch her patience further until he has a better idea of why things went weird with the spell. He wants to be able to do more than just drop a problem into her lap without any way to help.
Eric scours the chapter on calling lost spirits again, but it still isn’t helpful. He pauses over the section about calling the spirits of possibility threads, stares at the curling script of the subheader for a long wistful moment, before he flips back to the index to see if he can’t find something that sounds like it might be vaguely related in another chapter.
He pours over the book for a few hours before giving up. Maybe he’ll think of something during baking club later.
Pulling out his homework, Eric puts any thoughts of magic and unintended mayhem out of his mind for a couple hours.
)
The baking club meets every Saturday evening, expect for Christian holidays and New Year’s Day, in the basement of an old Methodist church on the outskirts of Lawrenceville. On one side is a nursery and a bookstore on the other where Mama’s book club is held every third Wednesday of the month, both owned by baking club members.
Mama sees him looking at the bookstore and sighs, exasperated but still mostly fond. “I suppose you’re old enough to come with me if you want. But we’ll discuss when you get to participate, alright? We don’t want you kids to get yourselves in trouble by dabbling where you shouldn’t.”
Eric is thankful Mama’s turned the other way as she climbs out of the car. He’s not sure what his face looks like right this moment and isn’t about to pull down the mirror in the visor to check, but it’s probably guilty-looking and suspicious. He tries to arrange his expression into something a little less likely to get him found out, and gets out of the car. He grabs the pie and the bags of cookies they brought.
They go in through the foyer, and there is a pair of little bronze and antimony bells tied around the knob of the door to the stairs. Mama taps the bells gently and lets them ring quietly for a moment before she pulls open the door. Eric goes down after her and the bells ring as the door closes behind him.
The basement spans the entire length of the church so there’s more than enough space for Eric, Mama, the sixteen other baking club members, the table of food, and several chests and large locking storage cabinets filled with various items for communal use. Most of the floor is carpeted but there is a large bare patch on the far side where a few members have set up small fires or camp stoves under cauldrons of various sizes near the old fireplace and the vents that hooked up to the chimney. The corner of the carpet closest to the fireplace is peeling up from the floor again, probably from the most recent refreshing of the teleport circle sigils.
Mrs. Tubman holds court at the head of the food table and Eric makes a beeline for the opposite end while Mama goes to pay their respects to the host. He sets down the box of cookie bags and puts out the pie, cutting it into neat even slices. At least a half dozen members drifts over as soon as they see Eric, filling their plates while making polite small talk before drifting away again.
Krissy McCormick tries to take two slices of pie. As Eric sees her going for a second piece, he pulls the pie tin away and hovers his hands over it protectively as he scolds, “You know the rules, Krissy. No seconds until everyone who wants some gets some.”
“You’re not the boss of me.” She glares at him and probably would be crossing her arms if she wasn’t holding a slice of pie. “You’re just a stupid boy who can’t even play football. You’re not even that good with magic. You shouldn’t be here.”
“Rules are rules,” Eric says with a shrug. He’s not about to let a little viper like Krissy get under his skin, lest of all over some of his pie. And, really, if he wasn’t any good at magic, not half as many people would devour his enchanted pies. Well, they probably would, because his pies are delicious and Moo Maw’s recipes have won more contests than anyone else’s in the county, but they wouldn’t be quite so happy or relaxed after eating. As much as the baking club likes to laugh over the fact that Eric’s only ever enchanted pies, no one has had one word of complaint in a long while.
Mrs. McCormick notices the slight commotion from the head of the table and meanders over, sliding a hand across Krissy’s back until it curled around her shoulder. “Something wrong, Eric?”
“No, ma’am, Mrs. McCormick,” Eric replies. “Just making sure every has firsts before anyone gets seconds.”
Mrs. McCormick doesn’t even look around before she replies, “Well, it seems to me that everyone who wanted firsts got them.”
Eric imagines arguing for a moment, but then he sees Mrs. Tubman looking over and slowly slides the pie back over. Krissy’s face is incredibly smug as she helps herself to another giant slice and some the filling left on the bottom. She sticks her tongue out behind Mrs. McCormick’s back as they walk away.
Baking and magic: awesome. Baking club: not so much.
There’s safety in numbers, he knows, especially since Mrs. Tubman’s the Reverend’s wife and Mrs. McCormick’s head of the PTA, but Eric dislikes it when everyone talks over and around him. Never really to him unless it’s to tell him to be quiet. Like baking, magic in Lawrenceville is a woman’s thing as far as anyone’s concerned. Only most of the men don’t know and most of the women accept his baking far more than his magic.
Especially since magic is an outlet for most of the baking club, something to make them feel confident and powerful that the men can’t wrestle the control of and aren’t really interested in, that they actively dissuade their sons from pursuing. Eric’s honestly not interested in trying to control anything or anybody and definitely does not want to head up the baking club. He has enough problems of his own right now. He can’t imagine how difficult it would be to manage his own problems and then also baking club problems.
It’s also kind of awkward how half the moms eye him as if he kills kittens in his spare time and the other half like he might be breeding stock. Mama’s line is full of powerful witches even if the Bittle side might be as non-magical as it gets, so good breeding stock isn’t exactly an unfair comparison.
It just really creeps Eric out because most of the girls are only a little older than Eric. Which is way too young to be even thinking about babies. Even if it’s the South and there’s always at least three couples getting married right after high school graduation.
Eric’s thirteen. He’s not ready to be responsible of anything more than maybe a fish, and a hearty one at that.
Eric leaves the food table to check out what’s brewing in the cauldrons on the other side of the room. Mrs. Tracy smiles at from where she’s stirring a cauldron filled with some thin blue concoction that smells like azaleas, olives, and poppies.
“Anti-anxiety potion,” Mrs. Tracy tells him. “My eldest’s got SATs next month and is just about at his wit’s end. Barely sleeping anymore and when he’s not got his nose buried in one of them prep books, he’s avoiding them as much as he can. The agate and amethyst under his pillow aren’t helping much so thought I’d give it a try.”
She leans down a little, whispering and pointing a few cauldrons over. “Sarah Landon’s trying to make somethin’ to do with thread sight, so you best steer clear if you see her looking around. I hear she’s wantin’ to use someone tonight as a guinea pig and, well, everyone knows you and your mama aren’t some of Franny’s favorites.”
Eric’s tried untested potions before. None of them have left lasting marks, but it hasn’t happened recently since Mama had raised quite a bit of hell because Eric isn’t a position to say no most times. He’s not even technically a member of the baking club and only allowed in meeting because Mrs. Tubman wants to keep Mama in the baking club for the prestige. But that’s not going to last much longer with Mama making noises about moving to Madison once the high school football coach there retires.
If Eric wants to keep attending meetings and stay in the relative safety of the baking club, he needs to stay on Mrs. Tubman’s good side. Which means if someone makes a potion, Eric’s always volunteered and saying no risks them either finding another tester who’s farther in Mrs. Tubman’s good graces or the potion-maker going straight to Mrs. Tubman to complain there’s no way to test their potion and what might that mean for the baking club.
“Thanks for the warning, Mrs. Tracy,” Eric says, trying to spot Mama in the room. “I’ll make sure to let Mama know too.”
Eric doesn’t get more than two steps away from the cauldrons before there’s a hand on his shoulder, sharp nails digging in and holding him in place. He squeezes his eyes shut and takes a deep shaky breath before turning his head and greeting warily, “Hiya, Mrs. Landon. How’re you?”
“Just peachy, Dicky,” she says brightly, steering him back towards the cauldrons. Mrs. Tracy winces and gives him a sympathetic look as they pass her. Mrs. Landon continues, “Now, I had this wonderful idea for a potion, and I think you’re just the one to try it out. Don’t worry, no poisonous ingredients this time!”
“Lucky me,” Eric drawls dully as he stares at Mrs. Landon’s thick, rolling cauldron of black goo. He holds his breath and tries not to inhale any of the smell. He can’t imagine it’s pleasant.
While Mrs. Landon ladles some the goo into a plastic cup, Eric searches the room for Mama. He finds her in the group clustered around Mrs. Tubman, her posture bored and her face turned away. Yelling’s not going to do anything but embarrass himself and Mama, so Eric tries shouting at her in his head.
He’s completely unsurprised it doesn’t work.
Mrs. Landon pushes the cup into his hand with a cheerful, “Drink up, kiddo!”
Eric delays the inevitable by sniffing at the goo. It doesn’t smell as bad as it looks, which is a small mercy, but the scents of roses, whitecedar, almond, and candle larkspur are overwhelming. He tries not to think about what it’s going to taste like.
With a half-hearted prayer to whatever deity is listening that he lives through the experience, Eric starts to drink. The goo is thick on his tongue and in his throat, like he’s trying to swallow molasses or a glob of peanut butter. The texture is enough to make him gag, and the taste of gym socks and those terrible sawdust protein bars doesn’t help. He squeezes his eyes and chokes it all down. He hands Mrs. Landon back the cup and refrains from trying to scrape the leftover taste off his tongue with his sleeve. For a moment his stomach rolls violently and Eric has a flash of vomiting all over Mrs. Landon and her cauldron of nasty-ass goo for a glorious moment. But the nausea passes harmlessly.
Eric’s only a little disappointed.
“C’mon, Eric, open your eyes. Let’s see whether this batch worked or if I’m back to the drawing board.”
Eric opens his eyes, but there’s nothing new, so hr starts to say, “I don’t—” but then he looks down.
There are dozens of threads coming out of his shirt, like they’re tied to the middle of his chest. They fan out in front of him in several directions, in a variety of sizes. The biggest, probably about the weight of a thin rope, is shades of dark lavender and violet and tangled around his right hand before it shoots off towards the northeast. A pair of nearly indistinguishable thick blue strings are under it, each going farther east than the lavender thread but not by more than a few degrees. Just slightly to the left of the pair of blue strings is a thinner blue string crossing over a blue, just faintly purple, thread heading more eastward. There’s some pointing northwest, mostly blue but one or two faintly pink ones. One thick teal string points strongly west. It might be a trick of the light, but Eric thinks there’s a red thread, thin as spider silk, that’s heading west and just a little north that also seems to be going up where most of the others are tilted down.
Without really thinking about it, with only the first inklings of dim hope and leaden dread, Eric tugs on the lavender thread wrapped around his hand.
One moment the floor under his feet is carpet and the next it is some white speckled linoleum with what looks like the edge of a hospital bed just inside his field of vision. The lavender thread wrapped around his right hand is pointing to the bed. Eric glances up and amends, connected to the guy lying in the bed.
Eric takes a deep breath and tries not to freak out. Then he recognizes that it’s Jack lying in the bed, pale with lines of pain around his closed eyes and grim mouth and shiny tracks at the corners of his eyes.
He takes another deep breath, holds it, and lets it out slowly. He wonders if he should get the sexuality freakout out of the way now, or wait until he gets back to the church where Mama’ll kill him dead and he won’t actually have to think about it ever again.
Because, really, purple possibilities threads, especially as thick and dark purple as the one Eric’s got, are just as damning as red ones.
Add in how Eric’s been havin’ thoughts about some of the football boys and none at all about all the cheerleaders his classmates are fawning over—well. A jury would be hard pressed not to convict on evidence like that.
Eric slowly lowers himself to the ground, breathing in and out slowly like his third grade skating coach had taught him when Eric had been ready to throw up or faint right before his first skate at nationals.
It doesn’t have to mean anything, Eric tells himself. He can just ignore it. Grow up, go to college, get a job, and just…be alone for the rest of his life.
He can’t tell his parents. He’s already failed them so much already and this—him being gay—well, that’s certainly enough to be the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Maybe when he gets back to Lawrenceville, he can sneak onto the family computer and search for techniques on how to stop noticing guys. Eric doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to notice girls, but he thinks he could make do with just not noticing anyone. Would definitely help him be less paranoid about whether or not he’s being obvious, whether people could tell he’s had thoughts about boys.
Eric’s not going to be able to think about anything else for days. Except maybe the possibility thread that connect him to Jack.
That definitely opens up a whole ‘nother can of worms Eric’s not looking forward to sifting through. However, it’s also a lead on why the spirit summoning went weird.
Still, he’s just going to tuck that away in a nice little box and forget about until he’s back home and alone.
Eric pushes to his feet and then just sort of stands there. He has no idea how to get home. Absolutely none. He’s not sure he’s even actually here, wherever here is. Probably Montreal, since that’s where Jack was last he knew, and Jack’s right over there, even if he hasn’t noticed Eric yet.
Eric puts his hand against the wall and isn’t surprised when it goes through. So, yeah, spirit of a living person. At least, he hopes he’s still alive.
Either way, Mama’s probably having one hell of a fit back in Lawrenceville.