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Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
— Robert Frost, Fire and Ice
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St. Charles Avenue came into view when One Of Us started playing.The song sent her through a crack in space and time. She remembered all the times she would listen to it in the backseat of her mother’s car, holding onto the underside of her seat because those were the days when nobody wore a seatbelt. She looked down at her torso. She'd forgotten to wear hers somewhere between loading her luggage into the taxi trunk and making small talk. The taxi driver was a woman in her mid-fifties. She’d asked her where she was headed, and her eyes twinkled in recognition when she gave her the address. Everybody in New Orleans knew of Miss Robichaux’s Academy for Exceptional Young Ladies: witchcraft enthusiasts, religious fanatics, chauvinistic pricks. Everybody took an interest in its students. So she’d struck up a conversation with her, even though the quizzical look on her face suggested she’d expected her to look like Nancy Downs.She was wearing an Animaniacs jumper.“I’m sorry, miss. If I may—” Mallory looked up, “—this school you go to, how’d you get in?”“I had an interview with Cordelia Goode, the headmistress.”Calling her headmistress felt reductive. Calling her Supreme, however, brought along magical connotations, and therein laid the risk. The Academy had opened its doors to young witches needing guidance, although not without setbacks. The Hawthorne School for Exceptional Young Men, an adjacent warlock school burned down by locals in Central California, was a clear example. “And she helped you control your—” she seemed to struggle to find the right word, “—gifts, right?”Mallory nodded, she couldn’t help but notice the unrestricted edge of her voice, “She did.”“She’s good?” Mallory nodded again, “She’s incredible, honestly.” When she found herself at Cordelia’s desk two years earlier, her mother was the one to talk.She was seventeen years old at the time, wide-eyed, and grief-stricken. She was experiencing an existential crisis shortly after the passing of her father, a God-fearing Catholic, who had a deep-seated hatred for witches. He’d been struggling with lung cancer for years by the time of his passing, wilting and wasting away, but still finding the time to kneel by her bed. In his darkest days where there was little left for her to recognize, he would look skywards with his hands in prayer, praying not for his soul but for hers—for darkness was coming to get her.He’d been dead for two days when Mallory’s mother walked in on her levitating.“You’ll see, miss. I have a niece.” Mallory’s ears perked up. “She feels things. She’ll be with me and my sister, eating lunch, and suddenly she’ll get cold. I mean it’ll be ninety-three degrees outside and she’ll start shivering.” “After that happens, she says a random person’s name,” she continued. “A friend. A relative. One time she mentioned a married couple that used to live next door to us. Shortly after that, we found out the wife was divorcing the husband because he was abusive. Another time it was a second cousin. We found out he’d died in a mountain climbing accident a week later.” God was back up to heaven all alone by the time they reached Prytania Street.“Sounds like your niece could be clairsentient. She might have the ability to perceive things that are imperceptible to others.” Mallory spoke carefully, empathetically. “Sounds like it.” Clairsentience was not exclusive to the witches, but in her experience, it was one of the most common abilities in witchcraft. This sixth sense—this ability to discern energy and emotion—was impossible to duplicate, to anticipate, to control. It could be present in an eighty-year-old provincial woman during the Second Bourbon Restoration. It could be present in a preschooler in present-day Pasadena. It could be mistaken for a coincidence, a hunch, a superstitious mind. Moreover, some witches would merge with the ether before experiencing the feeling.“She’s not been herself lately,” she confessed. “She can only handle being around people for so long before she gets in a bad mood. She says large groups of people make her uneasy. We thought she was anxious. She’s told us it’s because it feels like everybody’s inside a force field. And when she touches them, or gets too close to them, she absorbs them.” Mallory fell back against the windowpane and sighed.The branches of the weeping willows were touching each other from opposite sides of the street, creating a canopy and casting shadows upon the road that looked like fingers interlocked. The houses in St. Charles Avenue looked the same, their grandeur unchanged, their wrought-iron fences as sturdy as ever. There was no reason for her to be as overcome as she was by a feeling sharp enough to cut her.She went home thinking that’s how she would feel. Flashforward two weeks, the feeling misplaced, the point of her fleeing unclear. She was tempted to let the silence between her and the driver stretch, try and find herself in the patterns of the music, and the home that was not. But she snapped out of it and looked away from the window as they left the Elms Mansion behind, its marble cornices a white smudge.“If I may,” it was her turn to say. “Is there a history of witches, in your family?” “We’re religious people.” The lady spoke with such conviction, that she was afraid she’d offended her. “We’re part of the Baptist Church since we moved here from Louisville.” That’s never stopped anybody, but Mallory wasn’t feeling like adding insult to injury. The God-fearing were amongst the most common denominators in witchcraft, should American History be taken into consideration. The Salem witch trials came to her mind immediately, after all, she was a descendant of one of its surviving witches: Mallory Howland. Mallory had survived witchcraft accusations, lycanthropy accusations, scarlet fever, measles, and childbirth. She survived three different husbands. Most importantly, she survived the God-fearing people who brought her into the world for they were the ones who tried to end her life during the trials.The greatest misconception was the rock upon which theocracy shattered was put there by skeptics.“I’m sorry if I overstepped. It wasn’t my intention.” “I’m just saying we’ve been living here for decades, you know?” She sounded conflicted. “We’ve heard plenty about witches, and vampires, and voodoo. We’re never around that stuff—we’re good Christians. She’s a good Christian.” “She can be a Christian, and still have gifts.”Mallory took a pause, fearing she wouldn't find the right words.“Listen. I know you don’t know me and what I say might not hold much weight. But I went through something similar to what your niece is going through and it was hard. I come from a religious family. I also come from a family of witches. I had no clue about it because my mother inherited no powers.”You could trace the Howland bloodline up to Mallory Howland’s bones. The tattletale sign of a Howland woman were the birthmarks on their hands, little constellations scattered on their skin, in the shapes of Pisces—the sign of both Mallory and her first husband, Edward. She’d hoped to be reunited with him after being separated from him during the witch trials, but he died from consumption before she was acquitted. She’d also given birth to their only daughter, Felicity Howland, while she was in jail.She was the first to be born with the birthmarks.For generations, her descendants were born with constellation birthmarks. Sometimes they would be different; they would show up on their backs, or their cheeks, or they would be different constellations. But then Mallory’s mother was born in the mid-sixties, without birthmarks or magic. She sheltered herself by living religiously and isolated her own daughter from the world hoping she would never ask questions about her extended family, or the stars on her inner wrists.“I didn’t know what was happening to me. I thought I was possessed,” Mallory said. “That’s what brought me here. The moment Miss Goode and I spoke everything started looking different. I found my place.”She smiled at the memory. “Listen. Whether your niece is a witch, or she has any sort of—” she shrugged, “—preternatural gifts or not, speaking to Miss Goode might help! She’s good! She’s good to all of us.” The driver looked unconvinced. She was afraid in an attempt to help another witch she’d overdone it. “You’re telling me she’s good, this headmistress?” “Yes.” She hoped she’d say something else. But the taxi went around the corner, and through the canopy of trees, The Academy slowly came into view. Looking at it in person was coming out of a two-week daydream, heavy and drowsy, feeling like she’d returned to her hometown rather than from it. She’d left the city fearing the heat would suffocate her and it was now the second to last week of the summer.She couldn’t help but notice something was lingering in the air, other than the suffocating heat.Mallory asked awkwardly, “What do I owe you?” She paid the taxi driver, rummaging through her purse looking for that last dollar. While gathering herself, Mallory saw she still had a couple of business cards she’d taken from Cordelia’s office—with her permission, of course—earlier that summer. Without second-guessing, she handed the driver the bill with Cordelia Goode’s business card carefully tucked underneath. A sensitive girl might have been mistaken for a witch, after all, it wouldn't be the first time. A heightened sense of empathy mixed with a new environment. It could be adolescence wreaking havoc. It could be that her intuition was off the charts; a string of coincidences with no more bite than bark to them.It could be nothing. But whenever she thought about it, Mallory could feel the dread and taste it coming up her throat like something poisonous, choking her, spurting out of the corners of her mouth. The cold bite of hopelessness, the lifetime misspent feeling alone, and the magic fast asleep inside her.The driver took the business card in her hands. “We’re very family-oriented, miss.” “We’re all family here!” she assured her. “And we’re always on the lookout for any witches that might need guidance. And we’re also allowed to visit our family from time to time. I just got back from visiting my mom.” The same way she knew her mother loved her—despite hiding so much from her—she knew the driver loved her niece to pieces. She grew up with a glaring lack of aunts, or any family, for that matter, so she often dissected other people's families. She knew love's concerned face when she saw it. Mallory held onto her purse strap with a pleading look on her face, “Tell me you’ll call?” “I’ll call.”“You’re not going to regret it! She’ll love it here!” she beamed.Mallory slid out into the sunlight and grabbed her luggage from the trunk: the chenille carpet bag she’d bought in Oak Street and the old JanSport duffel bag her mother insisted she take with her. The Academy stood three stories high, wreathed by the trees—one of which she supported herself on after shutting the trunk—and as familiar as it was alien. The driver turned off the radio as what might have been Sixpence None The Richer came on and Mallory peeked her head through the passenger window.“Tell them Mallory sent you.” “That’s you?” She smiled. “Yes.”