by Sara Stone
“Y-y-yes, I am,” I squeaked, my breath catching in my throat, making me sound like a prepubescent child. I couldn’t physically get myself to stop the shudders that took over. The fact that I was able to even respond was only thanks to the adrenaline pumping through my body, giving my now frantically racing heart extra work. There was no denying my fear.
“I have your key, but in exchange for the key, I give you a warning,” her voice lowered to a threatening level as she said “warning,” sounding like distant thunder, scaring me.
“I accept.” I needed the key. I needed to see what was in the book, and if it meant this goddess warned me of something, so be it. I should have known it was not that easy. Her stoic face took on a hideously scary look as her eyes turned coal black, and she started talking ominously.
“My children are being killed for their power, the power I gifted to them. This fight is yours to bear, for you will stop those who steal what is not theirs. The fight is coming even with your power at its weakest. The key I give you shall unlock your weapon, for only you can wield it.” With the vague warning, she vanished, the circle closing entirely behind her, leaving a tiny key in the middle of it. All traces of her and what had happened gone into thin air.
I hesitantly picked it up with shaking hands. It was brass and worn down, to a flat finish like it had been held a million times. I sat back in the chair, cradling the book so I could see the lock. I slipped the key, and with a tiny click, the straps holding it closed fell away. Just as I was about to open the book, Judson and Ulric flew into the room. Their expressions filled with concern.
“Are you alright?” Judson questioned, looking me over for any signs of injuries, his hands gently moving me back and forth as he went.
“I’m okay, I’m fine...” I stammered. I really wasn’t. A lady appeared in the circle I didn’t mean to sit in, and now I had a warning on top of dying witches to deal with. This day was turning craptastic.
“No, you aren’t. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” His voice held so much concern. I felt his fear as it twisted my insides like it was my own.
“Well, not quite a ghost.” I tried to laugh, but it came out as more of a grunt, making him wince.
“What happened, Lia?” Ulric asked, stepping up behind Judson, who was now kneeling in front of me.
“Um... I’m not really sure...” I trailed off, staring but not really seeing anything. The scene playing out in my mind over and over. The way things happened was too quick for it to be a prank. No one could have known I was going to take the steps I did. My mind was trying to grasp reality when there were too many signs that said this was reality.
“Lia, look at me,” Judson whispered. I did as he asked, focusing on his eyes, partially taking in his nose. At this close, I could see it was slightly crooked.
“Is she in shock?” Judson asked Ulric, not taking his eyes off me.
“It’s possible. Lia, you need to tell us what happened.”
“Uh, well, I tried lighting a candle again, and as you can see, it didn’t explode in my face, so that’s good. I also got the book open,” I mumbled, as I held it up for them to see.
They stared at me silently yet impatiently, waiting for me to continue. I swallowed, trying to dislodge the lump in my throat. I was close to tears. The lady goddess apparition had scared the crap out of me, and to make matters worse, her warning was even scarier than she was.
“I was trying to get the book open...after looking for the key everywhere, I reread Gram’s letter, and it mentions fire, so I tried the candle thing, which didn’t work. I mean, it worked because it lit, but it didn’t open the book, so I sat down to find my spark and inadvertently sat in that circle.”
“You what?” Judson yelled so loud the pictures on the walls shook, “Do you have any idea how many things could have gone wrong?”
“Did you catch the part where I said I didn’t mean to? Anyway, as I was saying before you so rudely interrupted me, I found my spark, but the circle started glowing, so I jumped out super quick, and a lady appeared...”
Judson let out a frustrated sigh putting his hands on his face as if to stop himself from blowing up at me, but before he could, Ulric stopped him and waved me to continue.
“The lady claimed she was some goddess with the key I needed. She gave me some crazy warning, then poof! She disappeared, and the circle stopped glowing.”
“Did you get her name?” Ulric questioned, only to be cut off by Judson. Both men went to talk at the same time.
“What did you say in the circle to make her appear?” Judson asked.
“I only said, please let this work, and she said her name is Hekate,” I said, shrugging my shoulders. It was exhausting the first time it all happened; recounting it was making it even more so.
Ulric froze, his face blank of all expression. Judson hopped up and started pacing the room. I knew it was shocking—without trying, I had just summoned a witch goddess—but she didn’t hurt me; she had helped me find the key to the book. I was still shaken up, but they obviously knew something I didn’t, and once again, they weren’t sharing.
“What did Hekate say?” he asked, slowly and carefully, his face still not giving anything away. Judson wasn’t saying anything, but he would wear a hole in the floor if he didn’t stop his pacing.
“She told me that her children are being taken for their power and my power being at its weakest, then something about a fight is mine because I can stop it. She also said the book will have answers as to how to figure out my magic. I don’t know. It was all bizarre,” I sighed.
Ulric had enough of me being in the dark and explained everything he could about Hekate being the goddess of witches, magic, the night, the moon, ghosts, and necromancy. He also explained she had a thing with portals and keys. She was a powerful goddess, and I hadn’t summoned her on accident. She does what she wants. She is a freaking goddess; she only appeared after being summoned every once in a blue moon. She had come to me on purpose to relay her message. The key I was looking for had been just a bonus for me listening to her warning. By the time he was done, I was hyperventilating with all the information he had overloaded me with. My brain scrambling in my head to retain the essential parts.
“Don’t mind me, I’ll just be over here in the corner, having an existential crisis,” I muttered through my hands, holding my head between my legs, so I didn’t faint with the growing anxiety.
“We need to focus here. Witches are dying, and your book obviously holds the information we need to find and stop whoever is behind it,” Judson said, giving me his usual not in the mood glare.
I grabbed the book and opened it. Hundreds of pages were written out with spells, lists of ingredients, and other things my ancestors deemed necessary. I searched and searched until they told me to ask it to show me a spell, which it promptly did, flipping its pages until it opened to a detailed finding spell which was very intricate and involved items I was sure I didn’t have, even with all the stuff Gram had lined on her shelves.
“This is going to be hard. Why don’t you do it, Ulric?” I grimaced, hoping to take the pressure off myself, even though it seemed selfish to do so. I hated the idea of having to do something that I didn’t know how to do, let alone something that didn’t even really seem possible two days ago.
“Those spells are written specifically for your bloodline, tailored to your type of magic. I could do the spell, but it wouldn’t turn out as well as if you did it or if I were using my own,” he explained patiently.
He checked over the list and decided we needed to head to a store in town, as they had what he was looking for. I had only two out of the six ingredients required for the potion. We needed this spell to work. There was no option for failure. I didn’t know any of the deceased witches, but that didn’t stop me from worrying, knowing they had been killed for their magic, since Katie AKA Hekate dropped that nice little info bomb on me.
Ulric and I got into my car, driving down to the main street,
passing coffee shops, a general store, a pizzeria, and my favorite Chinese food restaurant. The store we pulled in front of seemed like just a typical antique shop I hadn’t noticed before. He swore up and down, much to my hesitation, this was the correct place. The storefront had a rustic dinner table in the glass window and signs about new prices on old things. The brick was painted a pale pink, and all the signage was a shiny silver that caught your eye in the sun. This was, without a doubt, the wrong place. There was nothing witchy about it at all. It was overly girly with a French boutique vibe.
The overhead bell chimed as we walked in, announcing our arrival loudly. We had to walk past old furniture, dishes, and other such things to the back of the store. There was an unmarked door that was unimpressive compared to the rest of the shop. I was sure we would be walking into an office or bathroom.
Instead, we walked into another big room filled with shelves upon shelves of some truly different things. The whole feel of the place changed. Here it felt alive, like it somehow caressed everyone that came in with a cool breeze scented with fresh lavender after morning rain. Some shelves had herbs in tiny bottles or bundled up as Gram had hers. Some had different crystals ranging in various sizes. There was weird stuff like dried chicken feet, the eye of newt floating in a green liquid, squid ink in the smallest bottle I had ever seen, graveyard dirt, and that was only just scratching the surface. There wasn’t an inch of space in the room that wasn’t covered with shelves of things. It was a hoarder’s playground.
It wasn’t your typical storeroom. Nothing was labeled or priced. For the number of things piled in the room, it was in orderly chaos. The only order was that some things went together, like candles with other candles and such. Nothing out of place or covered in dust like you would imagine. Cobwebs didn’t even make an appearance. It was blowing my mind. I would hate to be the one in charge of keeping this place in line.
As we walked to the glass case counter, there was a bright red bottle on a top shelf that caught my eye. The mist inside was swirling and changing in tones of red, glowing with a pulsing light. I had the strangest urge to touch it. I leaned forward, and Ulric grabbed me, halting my reach.
“You have no idea what could be in there. I wouldn’t touch it,” he said, keeping his hand on my arm.
He set our list on the counter, and a lady came around to pick it up. She didn’t acknowledge us at all, just went to collect the stuff we needed. I raised my eyebrows at him, but he shook his head as if to tell me not now. Well, I wanted to tell her how horrible her customer service was, but then again, with all the magical stuff in here, she would probably be able to curse me before I even set foot on the sidewalk. She returned and placed a brown bag on the counter. Ulric produced some money and thanked her politely. She still didn’t respond. Something was just not right about her. The longer I stared, the harder it was to keep my mouth shut until I realized she wasn’t moving at all, not a blink, breath, fidget. Nothing.
“She’s not moving! People move! They breathe!” I whispered harshly. If I hadn’t seen her move, I would have thought she was a statue. People generally don’t notice, but they are almost continually moving while they are awake.
“She’s a clone of sorts, a spell for help essentially. She helps in the back when the actual owner is running the front store, dealing with normals. It’s so she doesn’t have to hire anyone. Genius really,” he said, calmly. I could spell a clone? Magic was this far ahead of science, and no one knew? It felt like part of my brain broke with the information.
“So, what happens if a normal person walks back there?” I wondered, whispering loudly.
“They wouldn’t be able to open the door,” he said, “She wouldn’t let them see what’s in here.” Duh! He didn’t say that, but by his tone, he might as well have.
As we walked out of the front, the real version of the lady waved. Strange, so strange. I was so preoccupied with thinking about how she pulled that type of spell that I ran right into a man walking by.
“Oh, crap on a stick. I’m sorry.”
“It’s no problem at all,” his voice was like velvet. I took in the man that still had his hands on my arms, keeping me from falling over. He was a bit taller than me, but not by a lot. His clothes said he was important but not overly dressed. He was handsome, in a charming boyish sense of the word.
“I should pay attention to where I’m walking,” I said.
“If you had, then my day wouldn’t have gotten better,” he said, his small smile cracking into a handsome full one. The intrigue in his look gave me butterflies. His dark hair contrasted with his hazel eyes making me want to keep looking. There was an edge to him that screamed bad boy, and it was working for me.
“You’re Dahlia, right?” he asked, eyes growing with shock.
“Um, yeah, how did you know?” I prayed this wasn’t another thing that had to do with the craziness of magic.
“I’m Brad Colson. I was in your chem class senior year.” Thank God or the goddesses or whoever was listening. I didn’t want any more surprises. Horrible with faces, and now I had to pretend I recognized him. I didn’t want to give it away, so I tried like hell to play it off.
“Oh right, I remember,” I said, laughing it off, hoping he didn’t see the complete blank I was drawing.
I wasn’t sure what to say otherwise. I could do nothing but stand there leaning from one foot to the other, hoping he would fill the silence. I was mortified, wondering if he would see through my horrible acting. I wasn’t used to being blatantly flirted with, and I sure was shocked this kid remembered me. I’m not the type that guys stop and fawn over, let alone think about after high school.
“Since you ran into me, do I get your number? You know for insurance purposes?” He wiggled his eyebrows, making me giggle. Lord have mercy, I am not the giggling type. Where that came from, I have no idea. He was straight cheesing it, being just a bit over the top in his come on. He had just enough confidence to pull it off without sounding like a jerk.
“I think I can manage that,” I said, blushing a bit and writing my number on his hand with a pen he pulled out of his pocket. They were soft, so he wasn’t a hard labor type man. I guessed that from his clothes, but his hands with no callouses confirmed it. As soon as I wrote it, I wanted to back out but couldn’t figure out why. He was good looking, but something felt slightly off. My intuition was telling me something. I just couldn’t figure out what it was.
“Great, I’ll call you later,” he said with a wink and went on his way. I couldn’t remember the last time I had been asked for my number, let alone hit on. It had been way too long to even think about. I felt like a high schooler, getting all nervous around a cute boy. Man, I was losing my edge fast. I blamed it on my lack of dates over the past year.
I climbed into the driver seat and just sat there. Surprised I brave enough to hand out my number to some guy I literally ran into. Ulric looked at me, a look I couldn’t decipher on his face. He smiled to cover it, but it didn’t reach his ice-blue eyes. He ran a hand through his long hair and looked out the window giving me a perfect view of his sculpted features, a look most women would kill for.
We walked into my house and hit the kitchen first. It smelled like someone was cooking. Judson was at my stove frying up some chicken fried steak. My mouth watered instantly, thinking about the crispy meat slathered in gravy. I stood there for a minute, appreciating the view of such a well-toned man cooking me dinner. I hadn’t used the kitchen much since I had come home, so it was nice to see someone cooking an actual meal in it. Also, a gorgeous man cooking dinner for you was a plus.
All three of us ate in companionable silence, enjoying the meal. His gravy was on point. Ulric had been quiet since we got back from the store, and I couldn’t quite read his mood. When we were talking, I would try to include him, and it didn’t work. It’s hard to have a conversation with someone after so many grunts and noncommittal shrugs, which wasn’t at all like him, well, at least from what I had seen so far. It was
like he traded personalities with Judson.
I started cleaning up dishes and the kitchen since Judson had cooked. It didn’t take me long to finish and keep sneaking bites of everything until I felt like I was going to pop. I joined the guys in the living room, ready to figure out what we should do next. I was hesitant to try the finding spell without even testing my magic and getting it under control, not to mention before gallivanting off to play hero because a coven and goddess asked me to.
Judson was scowling, and Ulric looked like he wanted to be anywhere else but here. I couldn’t understand the mood change between dinner and now. I sat down in the armchair and looked between the guys waiting for someone to tell me what was going on.
“Do you really think that you need to worry about your dating life right now?” Judson snapped; his scowl turned into a snarl on the word dating.
“Who says that’s any of your business?” I snapped back. He had no right to be upset. Thank you, Ulric, for announcing it. I hadn’t known he had heard it all. He got into the car as it was all happening.
“You can’t date a guy who doesn’t understand magic, Lia,” Ulric added softly, looking apologetic.
“Who makes these rules up?” I asked, throwing my hands up, frustrated with the way the conversation was going.
“The coven...they don’t want normal people getting mixed up in all this.”
“They don’t get to dictate who I will or will not date. I just found my magic, and I will not bend to some asinine, possibly archaic, rule.” I crossed my arms, closing myself off.
“You are not normal,” Judson argued, “Coven rules dictate what you do, especially considering you are the leader of one now. You don’t get to go around breaking the rules.”
“I lived for almost thirty years of being normal! If I am the damn coven leader, I decide who I date and what I do. I can make up rules making the old rules irrelevant, and you don’t get to tell me otherwise.” With that, I stomped upstairs to start setting up the spell, only hearing the front door close quietly. I wasn’t sure how to feel about him leaving like that.
