Trial by Fire (Covencraft Book 1) (25 page)

“Would you hold out your cast?” he asked carefully.

She hesitated and then held it up in front of him. He passed his hand over it, reciting an incantation as he did and resting his fingertips lightly on the fiberglass mesh. She felt a strange tingling pass through her hand. Not painful, not unpleasant, but strange and slightly cool. He raised his hand and said the incantation again, touching the bandage on her forehead lightly, like a benediction.

“Now they’re waterproof,” he said, his voice quiet and low. “And I’ve warded the mirror in the bathroom both with the anti-demon wards and also an anti-hex ward that I’m confident in. My mother used it to keep items from… Becoming something they aren’t. It keeps magic from touching them.”

“Uh, thanks.” She hurried into the bathroom and shut the door behind her, locking it with a flick of her wrist.

The mirror still gave her the willies and she avoided looking in it, both because she didn’t want to take stock in how she looked but also because she was afraid that once she looked at it, she’d be too scared to look away and then she’d end up trapped in a bathroom, staring at herself in the mirror like a crazy person.

God her brain got the better of her sometimes. She sighed. Most times.

The water was hot on her skin and muscles and she washed every inch of herself, including the little stubbly patch where her hair had been shaved. It was amazing to watch the water divert its course, dodging her cast. She presumed the same thing was going on over her bandage and when she touched her fingertips to it, it was warm but dry. She spent a solid five minutes moving her cast around under the spray just to watch the water dance away, like a magnet being pushed by another magnet.

Totally one point on the ‘stay with magical coven because they can do awesome stuff’ list she was making in her head.

She remained in the shower a bit too long, her skin turning pink and the bathroom completely fogged up by the time she reluctantly shut the water off, dried and got dressed. She tossed some stuff in her smaller carry-on bag, leaving her suitcase in the bedroom. If she did end up staying at the Coven, she’d have to go back to her apartment, shut it all down and clear out.

Move everything.

For now, she was content to take a change of clothes, her toiletries and her little shoebox that she kept with her wherever she went. She felt foolish for always lugging it around when she left for holidays or business trips, but she’d tried to leave it behind and always ended up feeling sick about it. She’d had it since she was little. It was beaten up around the edges, covered in old magazine pictures, glued on, taped over, glittered from her teen-fueled glitter-glue phase. It was hideous but she kept it safe always. She put it in her bag, wrapping it in a t-shirt first.

After gathering her meager necessities, she headed downstairs again and had to call out to find Paris. Hearing him in the kitchen, she unenthusiastically made her way over. He’d said the place was safe, and he had it warded but he also said he wasn’t one hundred percent sure.

He was hunched over the kitchen table when she went in, some things spread out in front of him. There was a piece of fabric, some small bits of debris, some powder, some glass. As she approached, she caught a whiff of something vile.

“Holy god, what is that?” Jade asked, covering her nose with her hand.

Paris was poking at the items on the table with a chopstick he must have liberated from the kitchen drawers.

“Hex bag. The kitchen was the source of the portal and our first demon, Bob, had to have had something that drew him here, to this precise location. Your magic would have been a beacon for him, but if it were only your magic, the portal should be in your bedroom - where you spend the most of your time, albeit asleep. After searching, I found it in a cupboard, against the wall that’s shared between the cabinetry and the pantry. It must have been placed here by our unknown witch.”

“What’s it do?”

“I’m not sure. I believe it’s some kind of a chaos spell. Likely to keep you confused or conflicted in general. Keep you off balance. It’s a low level spell, but the intent behind it is negative. The negative intent would’ve assisted Bob in breaking through.”

“Ugh, how did I miss it?” She gagged a little bit and then pulled her shirt up over her nose, breathing in the scent of her shower gel and deodorant instead. Paris’ wrinkled his nose slightly but wasn’t as dramatic.

She didn’t care. Blergh. It was revolting.

Paris hovered over the hex bag like a medical examiner over a body in the morgue - intense focus and no indication that what he was doing was a little distasteful and creepy. “It didn’t have a smell until I took it apart to figure out the ingredients. When you break a hex bag up, the magic dissipates. It will take on the smell of the ingredients but also partly, from the intent of the magic.”

“It’s filthy mcnasty,” she said, her voice muffled from the cotton of her shirt. She was acting like a six-year-old and she didn’t care. “That smell is going to linger, you know. I’ll have to bleach everything.”

She heard herself making commitments like she was planning on staying at the Coven.

Huh. Maybe she would.

“It should get better after the magic finishes decomposing.”

“Yeah but I’ll
know
it was there. It’s going to need a full decontamination scrub down. How would I ever eat in here knowing that smell touched stuff?”

He looked up from the hex bag. “Smell doesn’t touch things.”

She knew she must look ridiculous, rolling her eyes when that was all he could see of her face. “Yes it does. Smell is in the air and air touches everything. Ergo, smell touches things and makes them gross.”

He looked back at the ingredients, poking a small crystal with the chopstick. “I’ll take your word on that.”

“You do that, English.” She craned her neck trying to see better without getting closer. “You got anything?”

He tilted his head and shrugged one of his shoulders. “Possibly. Some of these crystals are rarer than others. We can check the supply shops around town. I think our better bet though is to use the fabric from the bag and see if we can scry for the person that touched it last, other than me.”

“We can do that?”

His eyes met her and she realized she’d used the term ‘we’ the same way he had, like they were a sort of team, or partnership. “Yes. We can.” He found a plastic sandwich bag and using another chopstick, managed to fold the fabric up and slide it inside without touching it.

“First we need to do a little shopping.”

*

They stopped off at a dollar store to purchase a mirror.

A dollar store.

“Don’t you have some kind of witch-crafty store you can go to for stuff like this?” Jade asked, staring at the little drink umbrellas that were ten for a dollar by the front till. She picked up a packet of happy face stickers and then put them down wiping her hands a bit on her jeans.

They scared her. Bright yellow smiley faces. Creepy.

“It’s not a magical item until we make it one. Until then, it’s just a mirror.” Paris declined a bag for the mirror, taking it as is.

“And an ugly one at that,” she said. But for a buck-ninety-nine, she guessed it would do.

They headed back to Paris’ place while he explained a bit about making a scrying mirror. Unlike a portal, which truly was a gateway to another dimension, a scrying mirror allowed a witch to see things on this side - lost things, missing things, unknown things. The idea of other dimensions wasn’t as freaky as she would have thought and she felt a little vindicated in thinking about all the sci-fi she watched as a kid, believing in other worlds and far-off places.

Back at Paris’ house, Jade watched with keen eyes and even pulled out a little notebook to record what she saw as Paris worked. Her hand was awkward and stiff around the pen, trying to work with her cast. She ended up with scratchy, uneven scribbles across the page, the point of the pen digging in hard and sharp, creasing the paper.

Paris explained what he was doing as he worked. He meticulously polished the entire surface with a pure cotton cloth, wiping away any touch of another person and then dabbed the whole thing down again with newspaper to take off any stray traces of lint. He brought out a tiny tool kit that held all sorts of implements - a small screwdriver, a wishbone, some pliers, a spool of copper wire, a drafting pencil and a few slivers of soap. He used one of the pieces of soap to trace runes over the edge of the mirror, cleaning up his lines with the polishing cloth when necessary. When he was satisfied with the placement and shape, Paris took a small etching pen and traced over his soap marks.

It was pristine, perfect work. He was silent as he traced the runes, brow furrowed in concentration, and she didn’t interrupt with any questions. When he finished, he started polishing the soap off the mirror, leaving only the etching behind. He explained that while he worked, he tried to remain as focused as possible on what he was doing, imbuing the mirror with his magic. From his closet, he pulled out several cloth bags, checking the size until he selected one that looked like it would fit the mirror.

He glanced down at her tattered notebook and her scribbles.

“I’ll have to get you a proper grimoire,” he said, wiping his hands off and then sliding the mirror into the bag. He carefully opened the plastic bag that had the piece of cloth from the hex bag and slid it inside as well. “Every witch has at least one. A place to capture their studies, their thoughts, write new spells or copy down favorites.”

She thought about it for a moment. “Could I use a tablet?” she asked.

He considered her words. “I don’t actually know. Everyone I know uses a book. If you wanted, we could try. Although part of the process is letting the books be saturated with your magic. They travel with you, get handled by you, are surrounded by magic. It might not be the same if you kept replacing your tablet with the newest upgrade.”

“Old school witches,” Jade mused. “Maybe I’ll figure out a way to get you into the technology age yet.”

They headed back to the car, Paris grabbing a shovel and handed it to her on the way out. He drove for a few miles, leaving the population behind and entering some kind of park area with clay-red pathways and large trees that hovered dense and heavy overtop. It appeared to be a nature preserve with a few signs pointing out hiking trails and sites of interest. It was neat, but not manufactured. There wasn’t any trash or clutter, but there were large, overgrown bushes pushing their way into the paths. Heavy foliage draped alongside the walkways, waiting for the chance to crawl across them and take over. The air cooled once they were a little deeper in the forest and Jade wished she brought a spare jacket or kept the sweater Paris had loaned her the other night. It was a little darker too, the sunlight choked off by the leaves up above their heads, only barely peeking through.

He stopped when they reached a crossroads of sorts - two pathways meeting at nearly right angles and then heading off again. He motioned her off to one side, giving her the mirror to hold onto while he took the shovel. He stood in the center of the crossroads and turned three times and then struck the shovel down hard into the packed dirt. It barely went in and he ended up putting his foot on it and leveraging most of his weight to start digging. He dug about a foot down and then motioned Jade forward with the mirror and directed her to put it in the ground.

“It’s okay if I do it?” she asked, suddenly a bit nervous. She looked up at him with wide eyes even as she crouched near the ground. Though she disliked asking for his permission or his assurance, she wanted even less to mess it up.

“Your magic is quite powerful. It would be a great addition to the mirror,” he said simply.

Jade laid it carefully in the small hole and then straightened up. He flicked out a Swiss army knife from his pocket and she smirked.

“You’re a real boy scout, aren’t you?”

He leveraged one of the blades open and nicked the fleshy part of his palm underneath his thumb, letting three drops of blood fall onto the cloth bag before stepping back and pulling a small handkerchief out of his pocket and pressing it against the wound quickly and hard until it stopped bleeding.

He covered the mirror with dirt, smoothing out the top layer of earth and then crouched to etch one more rune into the soil with a fingertip.

“How long does this take?” Jade asked, kicking herself for not asking before.

Paris seemed a little indecisive. “Well, that’s a choice we have to make. For best results, three sunsets.”

“What?” she said incredulously. “I’m a child of the internet and microwave ovens and fast food. I can’t wait three days. How do we make it faster?”

“We can dig it up faster, but the less time we leave it, the less powerful it is,” Paris answered. “It has to at least be one sunset but there’s no way of knowing if it would be strong enough to work.”

She looked at the soft mound in front of her and back at Paris. Three days seemed like a long time. In the grand scheme of things, she knew it wasn’t, but she felt like everything had been happening so quickly that it had a kind of momentum to it, like a train going down a track. If she had three days to wait, that was three days to start thinking really hard about things. She generally did a lot better when she just reacted and didn’t give herself too much time to let her brain fuck her over.