Trial by Fire (Covencraft Book 1) (19 page)

“There’s got to be a spell,” he said, summing-up, “that will keep a demon out of an area. I just don’t know what it is.” He paced behind one of the bookshelves, keeping an eye on Jade through a small break in the shelving. She was looking back and forth between the two computer screens, typing now and then on her keyboard and then back to the coven computer again, then keyboard. Back and forth.

Hannah was silent for a long minute on the phone and Paris checked his cell to ensure their call hadn’t been dropped due to bad reception in the dungeon.

“Did your mother give you her grimoires?”

He was surprised by the question. “Yes. Several. I know them quite well. I don’t recall anything about demon magic,” he said assuredly. “My mother didn’t pursue dark magic, Hannah, you know that.”

Another long silence and he felt something in his stomach turn. “Did she?” he asked, suddenly unsure.

“I never saw her practice dark magic,” Hannah replied and while it was an answer, it wasn’t the definitive ‘no, of course not’ he’d been expecting.

Doubt surged up in him. “That’s not a ‘no.’”

“If you say there is nothing in her books then it’s of no consequence right now,” Hannah said smoothly.

“Hannah...” Paris began, feeling his stomach twist.

She cut him off before he could continue. “I’ll start researching immediately. I know several… Avenues I can pursue. I should have something for you by tonight.” He could hear her hedging over the phone. “It probably won’t be as clean as the magic you’re accustomed to.”

He didn’t like the sound of that but he was low on options. “Alright. I’ll wait for your call.”

“Paris,” she said quickly. “You might want to… Think about looking through your mother’s things.”

He set his jaw. That sounded ominous. “I’ll do that,” he said, already making plans.

He hung up with Hannah and made his way quietly back over to where Jade sat behind the main information desk. She glanced up briefly as he came into her line of sight.

“If you’re looking for something to do, I need breakfast,” she said dismissively.

While he generally wasn’t a proud man, he
was
Coven Leader and being instructed like some kind of lackey was galling. Jade hadn’t been raised in the Coven and didn’t realize that he had always been treated a little distantly, separately, than the rest of the witches. With his mother as Coven Leader and the suspicion that he would someday take over, he’d been somewhat segregated his whole life. Now, as the leader, he had to keep himself set apart. Paris was friendly, polite and tried to foster a spirit of camaraderie but always managed to keep himself a little isolated from everyone else.

Jade didn’t know that and what’s more, he realized even if she did, she wouldn’t care. To her, he was someone who had shown up in her life, turned it upside down and then lied to her to boot.

And now he was little more than a glorified attendant - there to assist her in what she wanted, but nothing more.

“I can help you, whatever it is that you’re doing,” he offered.

She looked up at him, her cool grey eyes like mirrors. “No thanks.”

He managed to catch Callie before she made it all the way to the Covenstead and she promised to stop off and get something for them all to eat. She arrived ten minutes later, coming down the steps to the library quietly, carrying a tray of coffees and a brown paper sack. Her blonde hair was in a messy bun, pieces and strands falling out of it already and she was dressed in slightly wrinkled dress pants and a shirt that had what looked like a pasta sauce stain on the front.

She caught him staring.

“When you call at four in the morning, you don’t get to judge,” she said, looking up and down at his jeans and sleep-mussed shirt. “I bet you don’t even know what your hair is doing right now.”

He patted the top of his head with a frown, feeling his hair sticking up. Callie took a nervous stance next to him and glanced over at Jade who had made herself at home in Callie’s usual spot at the information desk.

“So what the fuck is going on?” she asked quietly.

Paris motioned toward the bag and coffee. Callie handed them over wordlessly and he stepped over to the desk.

“Callie brought breakfast,” he said inanely, handing over a cup.

Jade took the drink without looking at him and then snatched the bag out of his hands and started rooting around, coming out with a muffin. “Your indexing system is crap,” she mumbled around a large bite.

“Pardon me?” he asked.

Jade looked over his shoulder at Callie. “You’re running your database on title and author searches but that implies the user knows the title and author of the book they want. It looks like you started adding dates but you’re doing it inconsistently. You’ve got some summaries but they read like book reviews instead of a table of contents. It tells me if the spell-book is good, if the spells are neat and organized, but gives me no idea what they are
about.
You haven’t even begun to tag your collection by keywords or metadata, so unless someone helpfully titled their book
How to Keep Demons at Bay
, I’m never going to find it.”

Callie was in his line of sight now and Paris saw her turn toward him.
Demons
, she mouthed. He gave a gesture back that he hoped conveyed,
in a minute
.

Callie turned back to Jade. “I can help you search for whatever you want. I know the collection. We haven’t had a chance to start indexing it. We were hoping to finish the scanning first.”

“Bad priority. You’ve got the physical location of your books and your database isn’t online. Anyone who’s searching has to be here. You should have indexed it first.”

Paris could see Callie bristle slightly. The library was her baby. She loved the books and the organization, treasured cataloguing and reading them. He willed her not to get into this now, before she knew the full details of the situation. Callie gave Paris another look and his thoughts must’ve been written on his face because she nodded and turned back to Jade.

“I’ll get on that.” Callie jerked her head at Paris toward the back shelves of the dungeon. He shook his head and indicated a spot closer to Jade, where he would still be able to see her, but be out of earshot.

“So?” Callie’s eyebrows both went up. “Talk.”

Her eyebrows became a barometer as told her what had happened. He told her about the demon and they went impossibly high, creeping up her forehead and making her eyes look bigger than he’d ever seen them. He told her what the demon had told Jade and her eyebrows came back down, frowning as she realized the implications - that there was someone in the Coven with a decidedly unfriendly interest in Jade. When he told her about Jade finding out the details of her wanting to leave the Coven, how breaking her magic would probably kill her or at the very least damage her, Callie’s eyebrows softened into regret and remorse.

“Oh, shit,” she murmured as she shook her head. “I don’t understand. Why would someone be after her?”

He said the first thing that came to mind, the obvious thing. “She’s powerful, Callie. More powerful than anyone else in the Coven. That kind of magic… We shouldn’t be surprised someone wants it. We should probably be surprised that more people don’t.”

Callie pursed her lips in disappointment. “Look, I know that not every witch is a bastion of warm, fuzzy feelings and goodwill, but a certain amount of our power relies on our intentions being in-line with nature and the natural order of things. If Jade, or anyone, has a lot of power then they were meant to have a lot of power.”

“You’re a good witch and a good person,” Paris said gently. “But magic is power. Someone is always going to want it. Someone is always going to be jealous.” He paused, waiting for his words to sink in, watching Callie’s face fall. He gave voice to the things he’d been thinking for the last few hours, wondering how this happened, why this had happened. “Jade’s got a lot of power and no training, no control. She’s like a big, waving beacon to anyone who ever felt cheated or like they deserved more.”

Callie sighed, head tipping back, more hair falling out of her bun. “Okay, fine. I know you’re right. I don’t like it or want it to be true but I get it. But how would someone even get her power? I didn’t even know that was possible?”

“That’s what we also need to find out,” Paris said darkly. “I need you to start doing research on that. But discreetly. If other witches or other covens find out what we’re looking into-”

Callie exhaled, pushing her hand through her hair, getting stuck by her bun and undoing it, quickly wrapping it back up and securing it again. “Jesus, yeah. It doesn’t matter why you tell someone you’re researching that. No one will believe it’s for altruistic motives.” She huffed, “I guess that explains why our jealous witch went to a demon. A lot less questions that way. I just… I just don’t want to believe that someone in our coven is like that. I know we’re a big coven and it’s not like we’re all buddy-buddy, but still.”

He agreed with her to some extent - their coven was a family of sorts, albeit a large, extended one.

But every family had their black sheep. He didn’t know every witch in the Coven personally. His mother had known most of the families, and he tried to keep the same system she’d had - knowing a few family members and then knowing the rest by extension. Most everyone in the Coven was like that - close to a few people, acquaintances with the rest, like a small town.

He wondered how many more witches had slipped through the cracks. What if this one witch was only a symptom of problems in the Coven?

His
coven.

Paris wondered if he was the best leader for the Coven. He didn’t want to be a tyrant, to police other witches, nor did he want to be a sentimental leader - offering smiles and hugs to everyone. He just wanted everyone to work within the system, to use magic fairly and justly. To adhere to their most basic rule - do what you will, though it harm none.

If that didn’t work, if witches didn’t want to follow that rule, couldn’t follow that rule, Paris didn’t know what kind of a leader he would have to be to fix it. Or rather, he knew what kind of leader he’d have to become and didn’t know if he could stomach it.

“I know,” he finally replied, agreeing with Callie’s sentiments but not willing to express the rest of his thoughts. “I know it’s unpleasant work, but if you can find out about how to steal another witch’s magic, maybe we can predict what will happen.”

Callie nodded. “Speaking of prediction…” She began, trailing off and raising her eyebrows expressively. He wondered if it was just that he’d known her for so many years, but he really thought he could have an entire conversation with her eyebrows, without her saying a word.

“Yes?”

“Have you thought about prognostication?”

Paris immediately shook his head. “No,” he said quickly. “I don’t deal with the future. No one should. It’s too dangerous.”

Callie hesitated, licking her lips. “I know, but this could be the time when it’s worth it.”

“It’s dangerous magic. No one should know the future. It’s too… Convoluted. There are too many variables. Are you seeing what’s going to happen? Or what’s going to happen because you know it’s going to happen? Do you do something to change it? Or is based on you doing something you never would have done if you hadn’t tried to view the future in the first place? It’s too complex, too fluid. Everything we do, every action is a bit of the puzzle and our brains just aren’t meant for it. We’ll only end up making it worse or driving ourselves mad.”

Callie chewed on her thumb, worrying the hangnail. “Stop that,” he said gently and she yanked it out of her mouth.

“Fine,” she said grudgingly. “I know you’re right. About future-telling, it’s just… This is a really big fucking mess, Paris.”

“I know. But we’ll figure it out.” Jesus, he hoped his voice conveyed ‘strong, confident leader’ because he sure as hell wasn’t entirely certain.

His tone must have been reassuring because Callie was nodding and looking a little relieved. “Okay, I’m going to see what I can find and if I can help Jade with what she’s doing.” Callie looked over her shoulder at where Jade sat working away. “What
is
she doing?”

Paris shook his head. “I’ve no idea. She’s not exactly the most trusting right now. She wants to see all the paperwork we have on everyone in the Coven and I don’t know what I’m going to do about that. I can’t just hand over that kind of personal, confidential information. It has everything - names, social security, power levels.” He sighed and rubbed his forehead. “But I don’t want to tell her ‘no’ either. She doesn’t trust us. Frankly, she’s got no reason to trust us.”

“Fuck I’m glad I’m not coven leader,” Callie muttered under her breath. She clapped him on the shoulder. “Well, that’s why they pay you the big bucks, I guess.” She made her way back to Jade, approaching cautiously and asking if she could work alongside her.

Jade looked Callie up and down, waited a cool beat and then shrugged. Callie offered a small smile and then went around behind the desk, sitting down at another computer. She gave Paris a little thumbs-up.

At any rate, he was going to have to pull files on coven members, even if he didn’t hand them over to Jade.

He needed to go through the files himself and see if he could figure out who in his coven would want Jade’s power badly enough to deal with demons. His conversation with Hannah also had his mind turning. She’d seemed skeptical when he’d professed his mother didn’t deal in dark magic. Though she hadn’t said anything outright - indeed, Hannah rarely did - her tone and answer had implied that she believed his mother had practiced darker magic and possibly even dealt with demons.