Trial by Fire (Covencraft Book 1) (26 page)

But she didn’t want to screw it all up by not waiting the first time and then having to do it all over again and then wait three days. That would be even longer. Assuming it could be done again. She didn’t know if it was a onetime only deal or not.

Three days. Ugh.

She groaned. “Fine. Three days. Oh my god, I’m totally going to figure out a way to make these things faster.”

She looked over at Paris to see him smiling a little at her. Not a smirk or a snicker, just a pleased smile.

“What?”

He cleared his throat a bit. “That sounds like you’re thinking about staying. In fact, you’ve said a few things that possibly imply you’re staying with us.”

She rolled her eyes to hide the slight embarrassment she felt. “Yeah, well, I gotta live through the week first and then we’ll see.” She shuffled her feet a bit. “Speaking of, is the offer of crashing at your very nicely anti-demon warded place still open?”

“Of course.”

“Thanks.”

“I do think you’ll be happy at the Coven, Jade. Despite what you might think, you are a witch. You belong with a coven.”

Jade worried at the inside of her lip with her teeth. She’d never really belonged anywhere but it would sound plaintive and small to say that out loud. “I’m thinking about it. I guess it depends on how this situation shakes out. And you guys really fucked up the welcome wagon. I might’ve listened if you’d told me the truth from the start, about not being able to keep my power if I didn’t stay.”

“I realize that. I should have told you the truth from the beginning.”

Jade was surprised at his solemn and serious tone, the intensity of his gaze, the truthfulness she heard in his words.

“I can’t change the past.”

“No? Not one of your powers?” she said, a smile curling her lips.

“Not hardly.” He looked up at the canopy of trees above them, the sun moving lazily across the cool sky. She glanced up, the light of the sun making her head hurt and her eyes squint even with the shade of the trees. She touched the bandage on her head lightly, still feeling the tight, hot pull of the stitches in her skin and the sharp prickle of stubble.

She caught Paris looking at her carefully. “We should head in. You look tired,” he said.

“I’m fine.”

He didn’t argue with her but she could see he didn’t believe her. She didn’t know why she said it when she was obviously tired and beat-up from the day prior.

“We should head in anyway. We’ll come back in three days. All right?”

She nodded. “Three days.”

Chapter 13

Jade was drained when she went to bed that night, but she wasn’t as physically or emotionally exhausted as she had been the night before when she didn’t so much ‘go to sleep’ as ‘fall unconscious.’ She lay in bed, staring up at the dark ceiling, listening to the unfamiliar sounds of the house. The furnace came on at regular intervals but had a soft click-click-click sound as it ran. It took her a while to get familiar with the rhythm and then, once identified, discount it. She heard Paris make a few phone calls and she caught snatches of words to do with what she assumed was coven business. She didn’t hear her name, nor any mention of demons, so she managed to push that to the back of her mind as more white noise.

She could very faintly make out the sound of the train as it hoofed along the tracks about an hour after she turned out the lights. Its whistle sounded lonesome and far away. She heard the creak of the stairs as Paris came up to bed, heard him pause at the door to the room she was in, but he didn’t knock or enter. She imagined him on the other side, listening to hear if she was asleep and, not hearing anything, assuming she was.

Like most people, Jade endured infrequent insomnia, but she didn’t get worked up about it. She would just lie in bed, figuring either sleep would come or it wouldn’t, attempting to focus her mind on easy topics like something she’d seen on the science and nature network or a book she was reading. Sometimes, even work. Her job was mundane enough to not cause a lot of stress, but challenging enough at times that it kept her mind occupied.

She studiously avoided thinking about the past.

That night, she was not only trying to avoid thinking about the past, she was also deigning not to think too much about the future. A few times she felt herself drifting to sleep only to jerk awake, feeling slightly nervous and vulnerable. Paris had said she was safe and although she was inclined to believe him, she couldn’t quite make the leap of faith to just fall asleep.

Her wrist ached and felt tender and sore, even when she didn’t move it. Her head still hurt and when she rolled onto her side, if she wasn’t careful, she’d hit it against the pillow. Even the plush softness made her wince slightly. Her neck was still all bruised up and it too was tender. She tried not to move too much but found herself getting achy and fidgety in general.

Jade looked over at the closet, sizing it up. It was a good size. And there was nothing in it. She’d fit no problem.

But she was too old to be sleeping in closets.

Then again, if she couldn’t sleep in a closet when she felt like it as an adult, then what was the point in being able to make all her own decisions? Besides, no one had to know that she was sleeping in the closet.

Mind made up, she grabbed two pillows by their cases in her unbroken hand and managed to snag the comforter with the fingers of her casted one, dragging it toward the closet. As soon as she opened the doors, she felt a bone-deep relief settle in. She tossed the pillows in and then followed, curling up on the side that didn’t have stitches on her head. She dragged the soft comforter over her and managed to curl her fingers under the lip of the doors, pulling them shut.

She snuggled down into her little nest and blinked drowsily. It must be Pavlovian, she decided, as she felt sleep starting to tug at her immediately. Being in the closet made her relax in a way that was familiar and safe. She’d never been hurt any time she slept in one. It was like her own little cocoon.

Sighing a bit, she fell asleep.

She woke up with an aching shoulder and hip. Apparently, being an adult not only meant she could chose to sleep in a closet, but that she must also suffer consequences of doing so. Jade wasn’t eight years old anymore and sleeping curled up on the floor had left her stiff and sore in addition to her bumps and bruises. She opened the doors a crack and peeked out, seeing the clock read five in the morning. A little too early for her but she could tell by the way her brain was already going that she wasn’t getting any more sleep. She dragged all the bedclothes out and dumped them in a heap on the bed and figured she’d head downstairs and get some coffee.

She had to root around a bit in the kitchen to find filters and the coffee grounds but managed to get it all sorted out and brewing in ten minutes. Unfortunately, Paris didn’t have one of those pots that you could take out half way through brewing and pour a cup, a fact she found out the hard way after hot coffee spilled across the counter. She hastily mopped it up with a dishtowel and resolved to ask Paris if there was some kind of spell to keep the coffee from flowing while she grabbed a cup. It was just water, there had to be magic for it.

And yes, Jade decided she would totally abuse magical powers if it meant she could make her everyday life easier. No question. No hesitation.

Mug in hand, she wandered around Paris’ house. She saw his laptop set up in a small office and she ran her fingers over it and on a whim, tried out the username and password she’d been given at the library. It let her into the system and she poked around on the internet for a bit, checking her webmail and reading some of her favorite blogs. Paris’ office was definitely the most ‘witchy’ with magical texts lining the bookshelves. She tilted her head to the side and read the titles along the spines. Many didn’t have titles and she wondered if he just knew what they were; if he’d had them so long he recognized them by sight alone. On a whim, she reached out and touched one and was surprised by the tingle of magic that ran through her fingers and up her arm. She touched another and got a different tingle of magic. After touching about thirty books with each tingle being slightly different, she reasoned that was probably how he told them apart - running his hands along the shelf until he found what he wanted.

There was a photo tucked into a small corner of one of the shelves and Jade picked it up, staring at it for a moment. It was a young boy of about ten or twelve and a naturally beautiful woman with the same intense blue eyes and dark hair. Even as a boy, she recognized Paris’ facial structure and figured it must be him and his mom. They had teeth-baring grins, smiling so big both sets of eyes crinkled at the corners. His mom had an arm around him tightly and he was pressed up against her, oblivious to any personal space either one of them might want.

They looked really happy.

She put the photo back hastily. It was the only thing she felt bad about touching so far.

Jade continued her perimeter walk of the room, looking out the window that gave a view of a large backyard with a tall mountain ash tree starting to go yellow and red with the fall. The backyard wasn’t really manicured, but it looked somewhat tended to. The grass was long but there were no weeds, no obnoxious dandelions bursting forth. There were some annual plants around the edges - peonies with no blossoms, some rose bushes with the last stragglers trying to bloom.

Jade took another step and paused when she felt the same kind of tingle shoot up her bare foot as she had felt in her fingers from the books on the shelf. She looked down at the wood-paneled floor and rocked forward on her foot, feeling the tingle, and then back, feeling it dissipate. She crouched down, setting her mug on the ground and pressed against the floor boards with her fingers and found it loose.

It only took a little fiddling to get it to pop open and reveal a little cubbyhole. Inside were three dark covered books - similar to the ones on the shelf. She picked them up and wrinkled her nose. They felt slightly greasy, dirty, and she wanted to immediately rub her hands off on her pants but she resisted the urge.

She placed them down in front of her and picked up just one, opening it to the middle.

Magic spells and incantations were scrawled on the inside in a messy, but completely legible script. Also included were snippets of other books - pages torn out and fastened in with tape or paper clips.

Pictures of demons, demon spells, demon knowledge. Her heart twisted in her chest as she flipped through the book, not really understanding what she was reading. She flipped the book over, studying the outside cover again, looking for some identifying marks. She opened the cover and on the inside was a single word.

Sakkara.

“What’ve you got there?”

Her head snapped up to see Paris standing in the doorway of his office, holding a cup of coffee and gazing in her direction inquisitively.

Jade pushed herself to her feet, ignoring her body’s protest. “You said you didn’t know any demon magic. You said no one practiced it anymore.” She jerked the book at him, shaking it a bit.

He frowned. “I don’t. Except for what I learned in school when I was younger.”

“Then what the hell is this?” She stomped over to him and thrust one of the volumes in his face. He immediately recoiled, a look of distaste on his face, like the book offended him.

“What is that? Where did you get it?”

“From right there,” she said pointing to the hole in the floor. “You’re shit at hiding books, they gave off some ‘woo-woo’ just like the books on your shelf. I didn’t even have to look for them, I just found them.”

He set his mug down on one of the shelves and took the book from her gingerly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, these aren’t mine. I don’t have any hidden books.”

She looked at him disbelievingly. “This is your house, isn’t it? Your office?”

Brow furrowed, he flipped open the book, pausing when he saw the word on the inside cover.

“What’s that mean?
Sakkara
. What is that?”

He didn’t say anything at first as he ran his fingers over the script. “That’s my mother’s name.” As he flipped through the book, his face turned rigid as he perused the contents. “You said ‘them.’ There are more?”

Jade jerked her head towards the other two books that she’d pulled out. He went over to them and hunkered down, touching them gently and then recoiling.

“I’ve never seen these books before,” he murmured.

“Really?” she said dryly.

“I’m telling the truth. I didn’t know these were here. They’re definitely my mother’s. I recognize her handwriting and some of the magic, but…” He swallowed hard and looked solemn and grave. “I had no idea about these. She… I didn’t think anyone practiced demon magic. And certainly not her.”

He looked wrecked and she felt her anger chipped away by the lost, confused look on his face.

However, she pushed aside her useless sympathy. Paris peered down into the cubbyhole again and reached in deeper, pulling out a worn, water damaged envelope. He flipped it over in his hands.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“It’s addressed to me. I think it’s from my mother.”