Witch's Bell Book One (9 page)

Now she knew how to meet the day,
Ebony dressed quickly and was out the door in under five
minutes.

“
Ah ha,” she said as she closed
and locked the door behind her, “wear a summer's dress, and invite
in the sunshine,” she said, her face angled up to the perfect blue
sky above her.

It was a truly dazzling day.
There wasn't a cloud in sight, and the sky was a bright shade of
azure blue. The slightest breeze gently moved the leaves on the
trees and played against the tips of Ebony's loose hair. The
background hum of insects was in the air, and there was such a
pleasant hush to things that Ebony almost felt like she was off in
the country somewhere
– not smack bang in the middle of a
city.

Ebony gave a happy sigh as she walked
along the street, her heels clicking softly against the
pavement.

She made quick time to the post
office. The day simply moved around her
– not dragging or sticking, like some
days did – but gliding gracefully like a bird on the
wing.

“
You're in luck,” one of the
post-office-workers declared as Ebony walked in, “Bob was late this
morning, and still hasn't delivered to your shop. We can have him
deliver these postbags and pens to you, if you'd like?”

“
Hmm,” Ebony smiled
appreciatively, “you mean rather than have to walk two boxes back
to my shop, you can have someone else actually drive them there.
Well,” she said, beaming at the man, “I think that would be
lovely.”

“
Okay then,” the old man tipped
his hat at her in a gentlemanly fashion, “you have a nice day
there.”

Ebony waved at him as she left
the shop.
“Oh,” she touched the rim of her own hat, adding a wink, “I
think I will.”

By the time Ebony had made it back to
her shop, she was literally shining. It was just such a nice day.
Everything was going right: the sun was bright, birds were singing,
people were smiling. It was almost the type of day where nothing
could go wrong.

Almost.

Ebony announced a
cheerful
“good morning” to her store as she opened the door. It
replied with a warm silence, dust motes drifting to and fro in the
bright sunlight that shone through the open door.

“
It's going to be a good day
today, Harry,” she said as she walked behind the counter,
retrieving a file she kept there. “All I have to do is look through
these files for Ben, do a tiny little bit of work down at the
depot,” she patted the counter, “and then I'm free. To do what?”
she continued the one-sided conversation with just as much
engagement and passion as she would with an ordinary person. “I
simply don't know. I might just go down to the Turkish take away,
grab a bag of pastries and Turkish delight, and go and catch a
movie.”

Ebony bit lightly into her
bottom lip, securing the file under her arm.
“But for now, I bid you adieu.”
Ebony winked, grabbed a candy from the glass bowl on her counter,
and walked back out of her store. While she could easily just stay
there and do her work, leaving her store open for the rare customer
that might walk in – Ebony just had to get out today. She had to
sit at a nice cafe somewhere and stare at all the happy people from
over the rim of her chocolate milkshake.

By the time Ebony actually found a
cafe she liked the look of, it was pushing past midday. She would
spend an hour or so on these cases for Ben, she reasoned, then pick
up her candles, and finally head to the depot.

A young, thoroughly handsome
waiter handed Ebony her towering chocolate milkshake, a
pressed-lipped grin on his face.
“Here you go, ma'am,” he said softly, “a
lovely drink for a lovely lady,” he added, widening his
smile.

“
Hmm,” Ebony replied easily,
“aren't we charming,” she flashed him a mysterious wink and quickly
took a sip of her ice-cold drink.

When she was sure no one was paying
her too much attention, Ebony opened out the file on the cast iron
of her outside table. Though she was never usually so public about
her work, and was certain Ben would have a fit if he knew what she
was doing, Ebony didn't care today. She was always sure to cast a
babbledegook spell over all her important documents. Ensuring that
if any non-magical person, or someone outside the confines of the
Pact, saw the documents, all they'd see is a bunch of images and
words that meant nothing at all. So what did it matter if she chose
to read in the sun, rather than in her stuffy store?

“
Hmm,” Ebony ran a finger around
the rim of her glass, collecting the excess chocolate sauce, and
popping it in her mouth, “what have we here?”

There were seven or so cases in total,
ranging from the innocent to the criminally bizarre. In one case a
university student had become just a bit too interested in some
reproduction of a rare grimoire he'd found on the Internet, and
accidentally summoned a monkey-demon. The demon had quickly gotten
out of his control, trashed his basement apartment, and escaped,
only to be found later by police, taunting the other monkeys at the
zoo. The student in question had been brought in, given a warning,
and had voluntarily agreed to have his future Internet searches
filtered for potential accidental-zoological-summoning. The monkey
had quickly been sent back from whence it had come, but only after
it had managed to steal two police hats, one badge, four cups of
coffee, and Ben's lucky tie.

Ebony giggled to herself. It was
remarkable how much of the crime they dealt with was essentially
random. Just accidents from people who had no idea what they were
doing. They'd run into a spell on a chat room, buy a strange book
from a store, or accidentally pick up cursed souvenirs from their
overseas travels.

By and large, they didn't mean
to do these things, and they certainly had no idea what magic was.
It was all just accidental. Which while it was sometimes annoying,
Ebony noted, was better than the alternative. Accidents were
random, patterns weren't. Patterns always linked back to purposes.
Patterns had points, had meaning, were part of stories. And
stories
...
they had power.

Ebony remembered, with an
uncomfortable tingle along her spine, that terrible day she'd had
with Flora several weeks ago. Sheesh, that fool was infuriating.
She had no clue, simply no clue. Ebony had warned her in, all
sincerity, that powerful-magic performed without patterns
attracted
... others. The one-time, accidental cases Ebony was
looking at now weren't the same thing. A ratty kid in a basement
that accidentally summons the monkey of death is only going to make
that type of mistake once. And while it is technically possible
that some passing force might latch onto his purposeless-magic, it
is unlikely. But the more someone practiced purposeless-magic, the
more likely it became that they'd attract attention from all the
wrong kinds of creatures.

Flora was playing a very stupid game.
She was playing with something she didn't understand. Like a child
playing with a lighter and petrol, she'd probably be surprised when
it all blew up in her face.

It was the entire point of magic,
after all, that it had a purpose. Magic was used to make the
unlikely possible. It brought about mini-miracles, small pockets of
the incredible. And just like a miracle, magic had to be part of a
story. You called on magic when you needed something. When you
stared into the face of the undesirable-probable, and somehow
plucked the impossible out of it. Magic was at its best when it was
finding fire-swords for heroes in need, or reducing the shackles of
the bound to sudden piles of dust, or giving wings to the damsel
flung off the wall of the castle.

Magic had to be part of a story for it
to be appreciated as magical. If magic was purposeless, if it just
happened for no reason, then it was nothing more than
chaos.

It was the first lesson of raw
magic: give it purpose, and you'll bend it to your will. Practice
the force without a goal, and a stronger creature than you will
take it from you
– bending you into the arc of their own, greater,
story.

Regardless of what Nate
thought, magic was one of the universal forces. But it was curious
in the extreme, and incredibly hard to understand. And that is what
Ebony had tried to teach Nate all those weeks ago
– that magic was
indeed a force of Nature, even if it did sit outside his square,
objective, scientific world. It was a type of Movement – a transfer
of energy, a means of change, a way to alter. And just like motion,
magic could gain acceleration. If directed along the correct path,
if given purpose and led forward, instead of being allowed to
branch off in any old chaotic direction – magic would gain inertia.
But, just like other forms of movement, if the magical came up
against a greater force, it would be stopped. And that greater
force would seize upon the power, the inertia, the potential, and
bend it to a new purpose. It would redirect the flow, change the
story, and replace the author.

This was the risk Flora ran, that her
pattern-less rambles of magic would be picked out by a creature, a
creature far more powerful than her. They would absorb Flora into
their own story, taking her magic for their own, directing it along
their own lines, for their own purposes. She would become a
sideline, a footnote, a character in the background. And so she
would be owned, taken over, and absorbed. She would be transmuted
from gold into lead.

Magic, in this way, was like
marbles. Unless your aim was steady, right, and true
– the person with
more marbles would win, and claim what you had as their
own.

Marbles, creatures, magic, and a whole
lot of trouble. Flora simply had no idea.

Ebony gave a shudder. It all
depended on what creature took hold of her, too. Being owned was
one thing, but being taken by a full-demon of Hell, or a vicious
wizard, or a homicidal witch
.... Well, it wouldn't be pretty.

Ebony eventually took the last sip of
her milkshake, returning it to the metal table with a clang, and
wiping her lips with delicate pats of her fingers.

She finally closed the file,
satisfied she was up to speed. She always liked to stay up to date
with the cases she wasn't directly involved in, just so she could
keep the general pattern of random magical-crime in her mind, if
that made any sense. She was like a film editor, she reasoned,
sitting on the carpet with every single frame of a movie cut up and
sprawled out before her. If Ebony could keep every single possible
scene in her mind, then she was more likely to be able to predict
how they all fitted together
– if they fitted together.

“
Okay,” Ebony said softly to the
remainder of the day, “on with the show.”

She walked gingerly to her next
appointment, though not in the same happy daze as she'd met the
morning with. Though she was ready to totally dismiss it, she had
to admit that some of the shine was gone. The sun was still warm
and lovely, but the breeze was picking up ever so slightly, her
skirt playing against her legs with little tugs and
pulls.

There were even a few small wisps of
cloud in the air now, just dotting the edge of the horizon like
specks of dust on an otherwise clean windscreen.

Ebony walked quickly to Wonda's Witch
Wonders, one hand occasionally securing her hat in place as the
wind picked up even more. The other hand pressed her file into her
chest protectively.

Wonda's Witch Wonders was
situated down a dark lane-way in the industrial district of town.
Ebony had grinned as she'd received more than a couple of
appreciative whistles from construction workers as she'd made her
way there. It was such a strange and dingy part of town for a
store
– but
she understood the rationale for its location – it was out of the
way, remote, and unlikely to be chanced upon. Vale may have been
sitting right on top of a magical Portal with incredible power, but
ordinary Valians would be no more likely to believe in witches than
Francis Bacon would. They had no idea of the secret underground of
magic that pulsed through their city, and Ebony was sure they
probably would like it to stay that way. Magic was confronting,
after all, and made people question their reality in fundamental
ways.

Just like the little Detective Nathan
Andrew Wall, Ebony smiled to herself cheekily. It had now almost
been a month since Detective Nate had transferred to the Vale
Police Department, and watching him come to terms with magic had
been as entertaining as the circus was for a five-year-old on a
candy-high.

He would sway fitfully between being
in control, and being hopelessly out of his depth. Just the other
day he'd managed to take down a possessed motorbike all by himself,
only to stare in slack-jawed horror when a cursed mannequin had
taken a stab at him with her plastic pointed hands.

He was such a strange
mix
– Ebony
thought to herself as her steps bounced along the pavement –
strong, in control, and as abrasive as steel wool. But the fact
was, much to Ebony's disappointment, he was beginning to settle in.
Ben had stopped calling him rookie, and had even started ensuring
Ebony didn't steal Nate's doughnuts from off his desk. The office
ladies all said warm welcomes to him as he walked in every morning,
and Ebony was sure that Barney from the depot was doing an extra
special job of keeping Nate's gun cleaned and serviced.