She’s sitting on the couch, watching the news on TV while she folds clothes. I settle down beside her and grab some pants to fold. We watch the news in silence for a few minutes. They’re covering a new scandal I haven’t heard about before. Apparently, the CEO of a big magitech corporation was recently busted for forcing witches at his company to share magic with him so they could get promotions. It’s majorly messed up. What does he even need extra magical power for? He’s a CEO. He doesn’t work on making or developing products himself. It’s obviously just a power trip.

“Never share magic with someone to get something, Shay,” Mom says. Her face has a hard set to it. “Never ever.”

“I won’t,” I say, wondering why she’s being so intense about this.

“White men in this country think that they can still take our magic to use whenever they want. Like it’s a gift they gave us that they have some right to.” She pulls me over and kisses me roughly on the top of the head. “They don’t own you, baby.”

“Yeah,” I say awkwardly, because this is happening out of nowhere. She always gets so riled up about the news. To make things worse, they’re introducing a new segment about communes. I only make it through a few minutes of them interviewing some semi-hysterical wizard about his daughter going to a commune after her fourth gap year. “Can we watch something else?”

“Sure,” Mom says, grabbing the remote. “Potion Wars?”

“Yes, please.”

She finds a rerun of Potion Wars that’s playing. The show is almost over, but it’s from a season that we’ve seen before anyway.

“Fatima should have won this round,” Mom says, shaking her head. Fatima was her favorite competitor in this group of apothecaries.

“That’s true,” I say. “She makes better potions. She only lost because Lisa took some of the supplies she needed.”

We watch the rest of the episode, and even though we knew what was going to happen, Mom still looks personally offended when Fatima loses. She clicks the TV off with a disapproving sniff.

“Did you see the email I sent you about the big broom sale?” I ask. “The dealership is really close to our apartment.”

“Shay, enough with the broom stuff.”

“I don’t need one that goes fast or anything, just something to get me around.”

She purses her lips. “You know how many people die on brooms every year?”

Yes. I looked it up, hoping that I could prove her wrong next time we had this argument. The number was bleak. “I could get a slow one with lots of safety magic built in. Plus, I’ll carry healing potions and Light as a Feather potion with me whenever I ride it.”