Here Witchy Witchy Box Set 1

by A. L. Kessler

  CHAPTER TWO

  Levi had set the room up with a couple of pool tables and a mini bar that was rarely used. Simon leaned against the bar and swirled his drink around in the glass. I assumed it was scotch since that’s what he always drank at the bar.

  “Levi said I needed to make an appointment with you.” I stopped out of his reach and crossed my arms. “Something about the magical wards in your bar?”

  Simon nodded and ran a hand through his perfectly caramel colored hair. It fell back into place when he was done and his green eyes met my gaze. He was handsome, with the strong line of his jaw and his toned body. His white shirt tucked into his faded and torn jeans reminded me of a fifties punk. “I think someone broke them.” Simon had been trying to court me on and off. Some days we got along better than others. He was one of the strongest local werewolves, and honestly if I chose to date someone, I’d want him to be less complicated.

  “You don’t break wards.” I shook my head. “It doesn’t work that way, someone would have to modify them or deactivate them.”

  “Okay, well someone fucked them up. Can you fix them? I’ve got all kinds of weird shit coming into my bar.”

  I raised a brow. “Describe weird.”

  “Humans.”

  That jarred me a bit. “The wards are supposed to make the building seem abandoned to the humans.”

  “Exactly my problem. It’s dangerous for them to be there and then if word gets back to the PSD, they are not going to be happy to have an unregistered and non-human friendly business in their city.”

  The Paranormal State Department was established to help register all businesses owned by paranormal creatures. The problem was they tried to tell them how to run it and all businesses were supposed to be human friendly. There were of course people who didn’t agree with that and therefore went out of their way to hide the businesses from the human eye. Simon was one of them. I did the wards on his building and could lose my job if someone found out, but I felt that supernatural creatures and humans should have places to hide from each other. It was just courtesy.

  “I can be there tomorrow.” I rubbed my eyes. “What have you done in the meantime?”

  “Closed it for a few nights. Can’t come tonight?”

  I shook my head. “No, I have a case with the state to deal with and if I don’t have something by the morning Detective Mason will have me at the stake.”

  “Aw, who would want to burn a pretty thing like you?” Simon took a couple of steps forward and I stepped backwards. “Can I interest you in dinner?”

  “Sorry, I ate on the way up here. Tomorrow night, for the wards I mean. About eight?”

  I could see the disappointment in his eyes, but I thought he would have learned by now that I wasn’t interested in anything more than friendship. “Yeah, I’ll see you then, Abby.”

  He walked by me and luckily for me, didn’t try to brush a hand over my shoulder or anything. The behavior was unusual for him, normally he’d stay and flirt, or finish his drink, but tonight he respected me. Weird.

  I stood in the empty room for a few minutes, debating on what I wanted to do. I could drive all the way back to the city, or I could stay here and work out the runes that I had.

  Home didn’t have the magical equivalent of a bomb shelter. The mansion did. Levi had the basement modified when I was a child and learning to control my magic. It kept me from hurting myself and from blowing up the mansion by accident.

  First stop though would be the library. All of my parents’ research was there and there might have been something that could help me. I peeked around the corner to see if Simon was gone and if Levi was lurking. No one there, perfect. I went back down the hall, but turned left before I hit the main room, tucked back there was the library. I walked in and took a deep breath.

  The smell of books washed over me and I smiled. I used to spend hours curled up here reading books, anything I could get my hands on from magical practices to vampire history. Fiction of all kinds, journals and research-- anything I wanted was here. I’d read late into the mornings, and Levi swore my addiction to books was one of the reasons I was so powerful.

  I walked over to the shelf where I knew the research on runes rested. On a small table near the shelf was a picture of a smiling couple and a little girl. My smile had faded over the years and gone from innocent to cynical, but it was still obvious that it was me. My mother had the same brown waves and the bright gray eyes. I’d gotten my height from my father. My heart ached at the picture. I knew it had been taken the day before they were killed by the witch hunters.

  “They’d be proud of you.” Levi’s voice caught me off guard and I cringed. He hated when I grieved.

  “I know. I just wish they were here to guide me.”

  He snorted. “On what?”

  “How not to nearly get blown up by magic, how to not get caught and charged with warding a bar from humans, and maybe how to be normal.”

  “Normal isn’t an option for you anymore. Are you sure you don’t want to add how to get a date to that list?”

  I rolled my eyes and started scanning the tags on the notebook spines. “Nope. I take it you heard me turn Simon down.”

  “I did, and he told me that you turned him down again.” Levi didn’t sound pleased. “He’d be able to protect you if—“

  “If what?” A terrifying thought went through my head. “Oh no, no, no, no. You are not setting this up as a betrothal thing.”

  “If something happens to me. You can’t push everyone away, Abigail.”

  “I don’t need someone to protect me, Leviticus.”

  His eyes flashed red, but I stood my ground. “The answer is no. I’m not going to force a relationship, just because you think I need one so that I can be protected.”

  “You are such a stubborn human.”

  “I’m a witch.” I retorted and then went back to the spines of the notebooks. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have work to get done. I’ll be down in the chamber for most of the night.”

  He didn’t say anything, but I knew when he left. I felt the air shift and his presence disappear. I knew I pissed him off, but I didn’t really care. These weren’t the old days, I wasn’t going to start a relationship, be married off, and hidden away like some weak woman.

  I finally came across the notebook I was looking for. One my father had put together that detailed the base of many coven languages. It would be a great starting point, as would drawing the runes out in a larger size.

  I climbed down the stone stairs that led into the chamber. Brushing my hand over the doorway I activated the protection runes as I walked into the room. I pushed the heavy door shut and saw the purple glow of the main protection rune. This would keep any magic inside this room and keep me safe. It was best to work there since I was working with something that potentially killed someone, even if I wasn’t planning on trying to activate the spell.

  I grabbed some paper and a pencil from a drawer on the far side of the room. Nothing special about either, but just something to work with. I sat in the middle of the room on the floor and closed my eyes. I was one of the few witches that didn’t have to draw a physical circle to evoke one. I took a deep breath. Unlike at the crime scene, I had time to focus on what I wanted. A deep purple ring, calm and protective magic, something from Mother Earth, something deep and comforting. I conjured up the image of the circle in my mind and then pushed the magic outwards to invoke the circle.

  I opened my mind and saw the faint glow around me; just a mist of purple to prove to me that my magic worked and my circle was solid. I pulled my phone out. I’d be able to get to the photos, but the basement blocked the actual cell reception. I went to the first picture. Taking my time I drew out the rune, trying to imagine what power it held and trying to see if I could get any sense of it.

  The only thing I knew was that it was part of a powerful spell that could have killed me and two others and probably killed the man in the barn. No sense of evil or power ca
me from that single rune. Frustrated, I moved to the next and experienced the same thing.

  It was possible that I didn’t feel anything because I didn’t know the language. My father was the linguist of the family, not me. I knew enough that if I could find the base, I could figure out where the language came from. Once all the runes were drawn, I spread them all round me and pulled out my father’s book.

  Flipping through the pages, I tried to find the base of them, pausing to scan over anything that looked remotely similar. Nothing stood out to me in the modern languages, so an old coven maybe? Older magic, or ancient magic.

  Crap. Those were always harder to track down and trace to someone. Anyone who used older magic normally disappeared into the night, never to be seen again. They were normally someone who came in with a mission and were gone the moment it was complete. That wasn’t going to be a lot of help to the situation and if we had someone that old in the territory Levi would need to know, because it could be a threat to him.

  Crap crap crap.

  The door of the chamber opened and I glanced over to see who would come down, but I knew only Levi would dare.

  “What’s up?” I asked and turned back to my book. I flipped towards the back where the older coven languages were.

  “Someone sent me a note.”

  Not what I wanted to hear, it normally meant that I was going to be hunting down something else. “What kind of note, Levi?”

  “Have you found anything that matches the runes yet?”

  I ground my teeth. “That’s not an answer to my question.”

  “Nor is that an answer to mine.” He snapped back and stepped up to the circle. He couldn’t step through it. Nothing could that wasn’t originally inside. That was the great thing about circles, and I used it against him often when I was a child.

  “Not yet, but I’ve been looking in modern versions of the runes, now I’m going back towards the older ones. Now, what kind of note?” I ran my fingers over the pages while looking for something, anything that would be similar enough to give me a place to start.

  Levi cleared his throat and I looked up. He held it up and though I couldn’t make them out, I could see runes from where I was. Dread filled me. “They sent you a note in the form of a spell? What the fuck.”

  “Same ones?”

  I studied it and nodded. “Looks like it, but those are a little different, same coven though. I’d be stupid to think otherwise. The bases are the same.”

  “So whoever it is, they are sending me a message too.” Levi walked over to the desk and left it on top. “What do you know about them?”

  I shook my head and leaned back on my hands. “Not a whole lot. I have a feeling that they are old, super old, but until I find the base of those runes, I won’t know for sure. I’m hoping it’s someone who’s just more versed in old magic than I am, but my age or at least my skill level.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if they are sending you notes, it means that I’m going to end up facing them. If they kill again, it means I’m going to end up facing them. There’s only so much I can do against a witch or a warlock that is more powerful than me.” And that made me nervous. My bloodline came from the best of the best, traced back to the druids. We were all powerful; there were rumors that some of our line were so powerful that they went insane, a possibility with magic and those who never learned to control it. I don’t know about going insane, but I was powerful for my age and I know both my mother and father were legends in some parts.

  Levi tapped the table. “Best you leave it in here until you figure out what the spell is.”

  “Obviously wasn’t meant for you.” I muttered and closed my book. “Or it probably would have activated already.” I rubbed my eyes and gathered up the papers I'd drawn of the runes.

  “Do you think it was for you?” He raised a brow. “Isn’t that a bit pompous, Abby?”

  I snorted. “Who delivered it? What did they look like? Did they happen to give you a name?”

  “A young man, my height, brown hair, hazel eyes, no noticeable scars. Probably would have tasted good.”

  I shot him a look; I didn’t appreciate him talking about his meals. Vampire or not, I didn’t have to be comfortable with his feeding habits. His smile told me he was joking.

  “He didn’t leave a name, just said he had been paid to deliver it to an Abigail Collins.”

  As I had suspected, it was meant for me. “Must have just pissed him off when you said you’d have to give it to me.”

  “He wasn’t pleased. He had already tried your home residence.” Levi shrugged.

  I closed my eyes and drew my power in to close the circle. Once done, I stood with my gathered books and papers and walked over to the desk. Levi motioned to it.

  “It’s yours, do what you will with it.”

  I thought about where I was. The chamber meant that no one else in the mansion would be affected. I could use a protective circle to protect Levi, but if I needed help the circle would have prevented him from helping. No, no circle with this.

  “Step out of the room, if you hear me scream or fall or something, come back in.”

  “Why out of the room?”

  I licked my lips. “In case it explodes.”

  “Is that a possibility?” He asked, all humor drained from his voice.

  I looked at the paper, not touching it yet. “Yes, but these aren’t the same runes, so I don’t expect it. If it makes you feel better, just stand outside the doorway.”

  “I think that might be a better option for us here.” He marched to the door and stood just outside the frame.

  I turned back to the note. I didn’t like it, but there was no telling what the message was without touching it and activating the magic. I took a sharp breath and slammed my hand down on it.

  Blinding white pain took me over and I cried out. I knew I pulled away from the paper and crumbled to the ground, but I no longer knew where I was. I’d forgotten what I’d been doing and what was going on. The pain turned into tingling numbness, but my vision refused to come back. My heart pounded so hard I could hear it in my ears. My limbs refused to move and my mind started to slip away. I tried to cling to consciousness, focus on anything that might ground me into reality, call on my magic, anything, but nothing was going to keep me from being sucked into the spell that I had activated. Fuck. Me.

  “Stay hidden, Abby.” My mother’s voice whispered in my ear. “Daddy and I have this handled.” She put her bleeding hand against the drawn circle and I felt the magic flow over me.

  She was leaving me. I knew how this would end. It ended with Levi finding a witch to take down the circle and me seeing my mother’s body, but now…now there was something different about the scene. Runes, all over the house, glowing with red. Something I wouldn’t have been able to see at that age, because I wasn’t trained, but now…in this dream, this memory, I could see all of them.

  The world around me disappeared and I found myself standing in a different kind of circle. Two rings of red circled my feet with a rune in the middle. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t breathe. Evil magic crawled up my spine, magic that meant to kill. A cloaked figure moved in front of me and panic curled in my stomach.

  “Ra sent me to deliver a message to you.”

  I tried to meet the figure’s gaze, but it didn’t work. Shaded by the hood there was no telling who was under there. I wish I had been able to speak.

  “You do not know who you are dealing with. Let us complete our mission and then we will be out of your territory. With the spell, we left a little assurance that you would not bother us while we are here.”

  What the hell was he talking about?

  “You’ll find out when you wake up. Stay out of our way Abigail, unless you want to end up like your parents.”

  He faded away and so did the circles around me. I could move again, my heart started pounding, blood rushed in my ears. I was dropped back into my old home and watched as the four year old me c
ried and howled over the barely recognizable body of my mother.

  The mechanical beep was not what I had been expecting. I opened my eyes and cringed as my entire body felt like fire was running through it still. I groaned and suddenly a face was above mine. Clarissa’s eyes were wide and rimmed with red like she’d been crying.

  “Oh my Goddess, I’m not dead.” No, but I was in a hospital, which alone was scary enough. “What am I doing here?”

  “Levi said you touched a note and suddenly started convulsing on the floor. Your heart stopped and your body was reacting like you were poisoned.”

  That still didn’t explain exactly what I was doing here. “Clarissa, you could have healed poison, I know you have a concoction for that.”

  “I tried, I tried everything I could but with your heart stopping, we had no choice but to bring you here. They were able to revive you…” Her bottom lip trembled and I closed my eyes.

  I had flat lined and Clarissa wasn’t able to help me. What on earth was in that spell? “How long have I been unconscious for?”

  “Two days.”

  Aw fuck, probably long enough for those people to get away. I should have left it alone, but I couldn’t. I never could. It was just my nature. “Fantastic.” I sat up and cried out as pain laced through me. I fell back and took deep breaths. “I can’t move without pain.”

  She nodded. “Whatever spell it is, it’s still on you.”

  “You can’t break it?” It had to be serious if Clarissa couldn’t break it, she was the best when it came to hexes.

  “I don’t know what it is, Abby, those runes…they aren’t modern, they don’t belong to our country or to any covens here.”

  I needed my book. “Okay, listen closely. I need you to go to Levi’s and to the chamber. There’s a book on the desk with all my drawings of the runes. Grab me the book and in my house, there’s a box under my bed. Inside is a brown pouch with tealeaves. Get me those.”

  “Tea, Abby? At a time like this?” Clarissa raised a brow and I knew she thought I’d lost my mind.