Bone Witch

by D. N. Hoxa

  “Okay,” I said weakly.

  “I’ll be done in a minute,” Julian said from behind us, and with a kitchen knife in his hands, he walked all the way to the corner of the room before cutting the palm of his hand again. I flinched.

  “Is that really necessary?” He seemed to cut himself a lot to do spells.

  “I find that spells are much better rooted when their very source is involved in conjuring,” Julian said, then proceeded to chant under his breath as he let a single drop of his blood fall every few steps around the kitchen.

  I never claimed to understand blood magic, but it did make sense what he said. Good thing I’d never have to do the same thing. Cutting my own flesh wasn’t big on my favorites’ list.

  “Go ahead,” he said once his protective spell was done.

  “You’re sure that the ECU won’t be able to track this? Absolutely sure?” Amelia asked.

  Julian nodded without hesitation.

  “I’m sure.”

  “Looks like you’re on, Winter,” she said and took a step back.

  Every cell in my body wanted me to run away, far away, and never look back, but Julian stopped me. He’d said I needed to do this. As much as I hated it, he was right.

  Earlier that day in the garden, I hadn’t even felt the magic ignite when the spell worked. I’d had no idea that I’d hit Julian with it. It was obvious I had no control over my new powers, and that was dangerous. No matter what I told myself about the reverse spell—it might not work. And if it didn’t, I needed to be prepared. Strong enough to handle whatever powers Julian’s dragon blood was going to give me. Strong enough to be able to alter my appearance. Create the perfect mask. Fool the whole damn world with it. So, yeah, I definitely needed to be in touch with my magic, teach myself how to understand and handle it, so that when the time came, I’d be ready.

  “Give me the spell,” I whispered reluctantly. Amelia pointed right next to the stove where her phone was, right next to the empty spell stone I was supposed to fill with the spell.

  “It’s there.”

  With shaking fingers, I unlocked the screen and read the words. The fact that all of it was in Latin showed me just how old the spell was. Most spells Bones used nowadays were a mixture of Latin and English words. I read Jordan’s Curse four times before I was able to start chanting without having to look at the phone. This time, though, I kept my eyes wide open. I wanted to see everything that happened.

  Last time, I’d been so carefree in summoning my magic because I’d been so sure it wouldn’t work. This time, I was a lot more cautious. My magic aura was easier to find than I remembered. Its bright orange color flooded my mind completely. Just like before, my magic didn’t feel whole. It felt like thousands and thousands of strings knitted together. I was going to have to ask Amelia what it felt like for her.

  With barely a whisper, I began to chant the words of the spell. Like with any other, words were what directed magic, what shaped it into whatever a witch wanted it to become. My whisper began to move my magic around as, testing, trying, going back and beginning the spell again.

  Time lost meaning as I looked into the cauldron and the clear liquid in it. The steam coming from it had my face covered in sweat. My eyes were watery, but I refused to close them. Vision gave me the illusion of control, and I held onto it with all my strength.

  “Breathe, Winter,” someone whispered from right behind me. I realized I’d forgotten to draw in air as I focused on my magic. Julian’s presence was like a physical touch to my skin. “Let it go.”

  Slowly, I shook my head. “I can’t.” The need for control didn’t let me.

  “Then let it guide you. That’s the only way you’ll learn its language,” Julian said.

  For once, I decided to listen. He sure as hell seemed like he knew what he was doing. I barely knew three other people who could conjure spells in the blink of an eye like he had.

  Letting my magic guide me was easy. In my mind, I took a step back, and I just watched. I watched and chanted and let the words and my magic come to an agreement.

  Hours must have passed before the water in the cauldron stopped boiling abruptly. In my mind, I imagined the words of the spell laced with strings of my magic, and little by little, they were all clicking into place. With shaking fingers I grabbed the spell stone from the counter and dropped it in the cauldron. It made a loud noise when it breached the surface, then sank all the way to the bottom.

  This is it, I said to myself. This is where I was going to put the spell inside the stone.

  Having never done anything like it before, I was more than a little terrified. My magic burned brightly, the spell for Jordan’s Curse right in the heart of it. Imagining it like that made it easier for me to control it. If I could see where the spell was, it couldn’t go bad, could it?

  At first, as I called the spell to the stone, I didn’t know if it was even working. Good thing I was keeping my eyes open, though. I noticed the second the liquid in the cauldron began to go down. It was one of the most breathtaking things I’d ever seen. The cauldron was now half empty, and the liquid kept going down and down and down, until it disappeared completely. Only the stone remained at the bottom, steaming.

  “Is it…is it done?” I whispered, a smile stretching my lips. It sure looked like it.

  My God, I couldn’t believe it. I’d done a Jordan’s Curse!

  Mesmerized, I watched as streaks of white dyed the stone slowly. When it was done, I reached out for it. My first ever spell stone. I’d really done it.

  But before the tip of my finger touched the surface of the stone, Julian’s hand wrapped around my wrist.

  “Don’t.”

  Confused, I looked up at him. “Why?”

  “It isn’t over yet. The spell is still active. You need to seal it shut, Winter,” he warned.

  “What are you talking about? It’s over. See the streaks?”

  But Julian wouldn’t let go of my hand. “If you touch that stone, Jordan’s Curse will fall on you.” He did not look like he was kidding. “You need to seal it, trust me.”

  I did trust him, if only because the alternative was too terrifying. Without a word, I dove into my magic, headfirst, and began to feel it again. It was there, as I’d left it. How was I going to seal the spell into the stone?

  I could only think of one way that made a little sense: cut the strings loose. That’s what I did. Easier said than done, because it required me to imagine actually snapping my magic into two. The stone in the cauldron didn’t change as I tried to release it from my magic. It looked so innocent that for a second, I wondered if Julian had really just bullshitted me.

  “It’s done,” he whispered a second later.

  “It is?” What the hell? I hadn’t felt a thing!

  Julian looked at me, more concerned than I’d ever seen him. “It’s over.”

  “May I?” Amelia asked as she looked down at the cauldron and turned the stove off.

  “Go ahead,” Julian said with a nod.

  I stepped back, my whole body shaking. Just my luck. I couldn’t even be happy that I’d succeeded at something using the magic that I hated, but was also starting to kind of like.

  Dangerous, dangerous territory.

  “I need to go,” I mumbled. Before they could say anything else, I walked back in the guest room and shut the door.

  Seventeen

  Amelia informed me that the spell had worked. She’d carefully put the stone in a package to mail it to Elena Harrison. The witch was going to help us now. As soon as she could confirm that the stone really had Jordan’s Curse in it, she’d be there at our call.

  It was exactly what I’d wanted just hours ago, but now, it did nothing to improve my mood. I pushed the food around the card box, too distracted to eat. Amelia had it delivered because she claimed she didn’t know how to cook for three. We sat in the kitchen, complete silence around us. I almost wished Julian would come up from the basement.

  “You did wel
l, Winter. Cheer up,” Amelia said, her mouth full of chicken curry.

  “You and I have very different definitions of ‘well’,” I mumbled.

  “We’ll find out if it worked in the morning, but I really think it did,” she said, still clueless about what I really meant.

  “I can’t control it. My magic feels…strange. I don’t know how to shut it down, and even when I do, I don’t feel it.”

  Amelia flinched and looked away from me. “You’re just starting out. You’re going to need practice,” she whispered.

  “Yes, witches practice to be able to connect with their magic, not disconnect from it.” Dropping the fork on the box, I leaned back on the chair. “How does it feel to you? What does your magic look like?”

  Amelia shrugged. “I was never a strong witch. Spells are not my thing, so I never really tried to train. It drove my mother crazy,” she said with longing.

  It was strange to hear something about your own grandmother and not feel a thing.

  “But if I had to put it in words, I guess my magic feels like this small pond and doing spells is like filling a cup from it.”

  “A pond,” I wondered. “Does it feel like one pond, or like a million drops of water?”

  My aunt raised a brow. “Everybody sees their magic differently, Winter. Everybody feels it in their own way. That doesn’t mean that it isn’t the same.”

  But that was exactly what I was worried about. Before, my magic had felt whole. Now, it felt both connected and disconnected, and having transformed into a fairy physically, I couldn’t help but wonder if my magic had transformed, too. Just another thing to keep me up at night.

  “Thank you for the food, Amelia. I’m forever in your debt.” Julian’s voice brought goose bumps to my arms. I immediately grabbed my fork again and pretended to eat, just so I wouldn’t have to look at him.

  “You’re welcome,” my aunt said. “I trust everything is going well with your work?”

  “It is,” Julian confirmed. “It’s just very time consuming.”

  I refused to look up though I felt his eyes on my face.

  “How are you feeling, Winter?”

  “Great. Thanks,” I mumbled.

  Silence again. I could hear the sound of my heart beating. Nobody moved for what felt like hours but were mere seconds.

  “I’ve been meaning to ask you about those,” Julian finally said.

  When I looked up, he pointed at the beads floating around my left hand. Instinctively, I pulled my fingers into a fist.

  “Family heirloom.”

  Or at least that was all they had been before. Now, they looked a lot more like weapons to me.

  “My great-great-grandmother made the spell,” Amelia said, a sad smile on her face. “They say she was a very strange witch. She only ever did two spells in her entire life, one of them this.” She nodded at my beads.

  My mother had never told me any of this.

  “What was the other spell?” I asked. Suddenly, the urge to know more about the people who were my family grew.

  Amelia began to laugh. “She froze the body of her dead husband so she could keep him in the house with her, until she died, too.”

  My eyes almost popped out of my forehead. “Really?”

  She nodded. “Yes. That’s why she made the original bead. She wanted a piece of her to live forever.”

  Fascinated, I looked at my beads and tried to guess which one of them held the bone of the spell caster. They all looked identical. It was impossible to tell.

  “An amazing piece of work,” Julian said as he looked at my beads.

  “It really is,” Amelia said with longing.

  Since my mother was older than her, the first child, the beads automatically passed on to her. My aunt never had them.

  “They’ve changed, too,” I said reluctantly. “Before, I rarely used them in a fight. They were very weak. Now, though…” Shivers washed down my body as I remembered what they’d done to Johnny Darling’s face.

  “Our grandmother was a fighter, too. A vampire hunter back when vampires preyed on witches. She only ever used her two beads to fight. There are stories around the coven that speak of her bravery, of her power. Maybe you can learn to use yours the same way,” Amelia said.

  “Sound like you came from a very powerful bloodline of witches,” Julian said.

  “We sure did,” Amelia said, smiling proudly. “Our family has run the Bone coven for decades.”

  Until my mother. She chose me over her entire coven. That’s when the whole family fell apart. It was impossible not to feel guilty.

  When someone knocked on the door, I was on my feet, knives in hand in a second.

  “It’s Jeb,” Amelia said. “Just Jeb.” She pushed her box away and stood up. “Excuse me for a moment.” With her head down, she walked out of the kitchen in a hurry.

  My heart was already pounding. Even after I heard Jeb’s voice at the door, I didn’t put my knives away. Just the thought that the ECU would find us made me never want to sleep again.

  “We can leave tomorrow, if you’d like. I’ve healed completely, and so have you,” Julian said from behind me.

  He was right—we both were perfectly okay. We’d healed a lot faster than I thought we would, but now was not the time to ask questions.

  “That’d be great. I don’t want to put her in danger any more than necessary.”

  “Any idea where we’d go?” Julian asked, but I shook my head.

  “We’ll figure it out along the way. We can’t stay in one place for too long, anyway.”

  He took Amelia’s seat at the table and watched me with half a smile on his face. It was amazing how calm he was. It was as if he wasn’t being hunted down by the most powerful witches in the country.

  “What is it?” he asked when I just stared at him for too long. I took my seat again.

  “You never told me how it works,” I said. “Where did you even get dragon blood, and how can it enhance one’s powers?”

  Julian looked away from me and stayed silent for a long second.

  “Fairies used dragon blood to heal magical wounds. They dried it, then turned it to powder, and mixed it in their drinks,” he explained. “I got hold of some of that dust that was left behind on Earth ever since the portals closed.”

  “You found it, or the ECU?”

  His smile said it all. “The ECU paid for it and arranged the delivery, but I found it.”

  “If they paid for it, that means you stole it from them.” Which wasn’t all that surprising. They wouldn’t have come after us if the blood wasn’t theirs.

  “I worked for the Institute for a very long time. I was the only reason they discovered dragon blood and what it could do. It was my project. They had no right to kick me out of it,” he whispered. “And I believe you already know that the ECU doesn’t let anyone go, just like that. They were going to kill me, anyway. So why not take the blood for myself?”

  “And I just handed it over to you on a silver platter,” I said with a flinch.

  Julian’s smile grew. “I believe it was fate that brought you to the Institute earlier than scheduled. You were meant to be there. I was meant to see you.” With his elbows resting on the table, he leaned forward. “And I’m very glad I was.”

  “I don’t believe in fate,” I mumbled. I used to, once upon a time, but then reality happened.

  “You should. There’s a reason why our paths crossed. I think you’re much more than the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, and I’m dying to find out what it is.”

  Heat rushed to my cheeks, and my heartbeat tripled in a second. Was he flirting with me? Now?

  A look into his eyes confirmed it. The way he analyzed my face made me feel really hot all of a sudden. For a second, I wondered what it would feel like to kiss him. Touch him. Devour him completely. I also wondered if he was thinking the same thing.

  “Don’t hold your breath,” I mumbled, unable to breathe properly when he looked at me like that.<
br />
  “You concern yourself too much with unnecessary things,” he said with a sigh.

  Was he fucking with me? I’d said this to him before, but he needed to hear it again, apparently. “I look like a fucking fairy.” Really. Very hard to miss.

  “You look like Winter Wayne.” He searched my face as if he was trying to find something. “Does Bone magic have any spell to make you see yourself through my eyes? I promise you, you wouldn’t bother with all of this if you did.”

  Part of me desperately wanted to believe him. But I was no fool. “How do you know what I’m bothering with?”

  Julian shrugged. “Why else would you keep your spell a secret from me? You’re trying to undo this.”

  Damn it. Was I that easy to read? “I am. You would, too, if you were in my shoes.”

  He leaned back on the chair and looked down at his lap. “Maybe I would.”

  “You never answered my question. How does dragon blood work?” If he explained it to me, maybe I’d be able to believe him more than I did now.

  “Dragons are creatures of pure magic, created by fairies,” Julian said. “Every cell in their bodies contains it, especially their blood. It’s an unlimited source. That’s why it could heal pretty much everything. I’ve worked with a spell that can make blood cells multiply by creating perfect copies of every single cell.”

  My brows rose in confusion. “What, like cloning?”

  “Something like that,” Julian said. He looked so serious, so passionate about what he was saying. I wanted to hear him talk for hours. “But the spell I found was only half. I’ve been trying to figure out the other half of it. That’s what’s taking up my time. If I have enough dragon blood, all I have to do is revive it. Then, it’s only a matter of absorbing it, much like a Pretter absorbs a spell—then activate it—but because dragon’s blood is a limitless source of magic, the spell will never end.”

  “That…actually makes sense.” Holy shit, this could really work! But wait… “Fairy magic doesn’t work anymore. It hasn’t since the portals closed.”

  Pulling his lips inside his mouth, Julian looked down at the floor. That’s how I knew I wasn’t going to like what he said next.