Dangerous Magic

by Evie Hart

The words changed.

  And it was written in today’s English.

  I dropped the book like it was on fire. What the hell was going on? No book was supposed to do that.

  “It’s spelled,” Snow said sleepily. “Any descendant of Ada Thorn is able to read it in a language she’ll understand.”

  “You could have told me that before I opened it,” I grumbled, picking the book back up.

  “Nah. It’s more fun when you flap like a chicken. Gives me nice dreams.” She rolled onto her side and got comfortable.

  “How do you know that? The language?”

  “Magic. If you listened to yours, you’d have known.”

  Of course I would have.

  I went to respond, but Snow was already asleep. At least, she was pretending to be.

  Ugh.

  Cats.

  Why couldn’t my familiar be a dog?

  “Heard that,” Snow muttered. “And it’s because dogs are dirty, disgusting, needy creatures.”

  “From the cat who demands tuna on a daily basis.”

  “Be thankful I don’t demand sushi from you. I’ve seen that Nobu place on the Internet.”

  “No more reading the Daily Mail for you.”

  “How else will I get my Kardashian drama fix?”

  “They have an entire show dedicated to it. I’ll get you a subscription to Hulu.” Provided it’d work here. “Now, shut up.” I put my hand over her face for a second and turned my attention back to the book.

  A warm tingle of magic washed through my body as I touched the book again, dancing beneath my skin, and I smiled.

  The power in this book was immeasurable—but it didn’t want to hurt me. It only wanted to help me.

  I took a deep breath. The magic in the book called to me. It felt familiar now. Like a part of me that was encased in paper and ink and leather.

  I ran my finger over the page. It was thick but old, crumpled and stained and torn at the corner, but it only added to the charm of the page.

  With the words now readable, I leaned back against the headboard and rested it on my thighs.

  Then, I read.

  June 15th

  Something weird happened today. A fire broke out on the neighbor’s property, and when I saw the animals rushing from the farm, I panicked. I ran toward the farm when a weird feeling came over me.

  All I remember is a surge of something unfamiliar and the fire dying before I collapsed.

  Mama doesn’t know what it is, and neither does Grandmother.

  I’m scared.

  I swallowed. The year date said that Ada was fifteen when she first felt the power. Hell, I was afraid of it, and I was ten years older than she’d been. I couldn’t imagine being a teenager, trying to save the neighbor’s animals, and feeling all of that.

  June 18th

  Great Aunt Bathilda has explained the surge. She said there are members of our family who have extra power. It’s why I don’t have a specialty like my cousins. Elizabeth is a garden witch, while Tabitha is skilled with ghosts. I’ve never fit in with them.

  Great Aunt Bathilda said I’m one of the rare Thorn witches. I have a reserve magic source, one that is greater than one can imagine. It’s potentially dangerous and deadly, and she said the last Thorn witch to possess it was her grandmother.

  She knows little about my power, but she’s agreed to teach me what she does know in the hopes I can learn how to control this new magic.

  I hope I can, too.

  June 22nd

  My training started today. Great Aunt Bathilda said that meditation would help me find the magic. The local Elven Council has permitted us to use a small area of the forest behind our house so I have somewhere safe and protected to meditate. He assured us his wards will hide all kinds of magic.

  If anything, finding this magic has made me more isolated than ever. I’ve always been the weird freak without specialty, and now I’m more of a freak than I was before I discovered this new magic.

  I’ve never felt so alone.

  Slowly, I lowered the book to the bed, staring at it.

  Ada had been alone.

  Much like me, all she’d had was a guiding word from an elderly relative.

  Unlike me, it seemed as though she didn’t have a relationship with her cousins.

  I did. I was lucky. Nicole and Dotty were more like my sisters than my cousins, and if Dotty was awake right now, I know she’d be holding my hand through this. She was the smartest person I knew, and she’d search high and low in books I didn’t even know existed to find answers.

  Goddess, I missed her.

  A faded, fraying ribbon trailed across my sheets, and I slid it between the pages and sat back. The book closed itself, the pages fluttering.

  Snow opened her eyes in time to see the book float itself over to the bookshelf in the corner of my room and slot itself onto a shelf. “That’s one fancy dang book.”

  “That’s one powerful book,” I replied.

  “I know. It’s like a tiny ball of power ready to explode. I kind of want to play with it.”

  I put my hand on her back. “I’ve seen your claws around paper. Play with this instead.” I snapped my fingers and conjured a ball of yarn.

  “Ooh, goodie!” She threw herself off the bed and after the unraveling ball as it went through my now-open bedroom door.

  Sure, she was smarter than the average human being and capable of single-handedly saving my life, but she was still a cat.

  Balls of yarn were thrilling to her.

  I mean, come on. They unraveled and rolled all by themselves.

  Or with a little help from a witch.

  Some people get by with a little help from their friends. In this house, balls of yarn need a witch…and a whole lotta patience.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  I AWOKE THE next morning with a renewed sense of purpose. Weirdly enough, knowing that I wasn’t alone in navigating my new power reinvigorated me.

  Which was exactly why I was standing behind the counter of Paws and Claws watching Nicole feed all the birds. I’d stopped by to see Ana-May on my way over here to see that she’d introduced a new item onto her menu—a shot of potion. She had everything; a mood booster, confidence, hope, all positive things like that.

  I’d gotten both Nicole and I a shot of hope. Goddess knew we needed it.

  “What do we do now?” Nicole asked, tapping a bird on the top of the head when he tried to nip her. “Enough of that, Horace!”

  “The parrot is named Horace?” I raised an eyebrow.

  She opened her mouth, then paused before she sighed. “He wants you to know that not all parrots are named Polly.”

  “Yeah, and not all cheerleaders are easy, but in my experience…” I coughed back a laugh.

  Nicole did the same. “Horace, behave. She’s not a pirate, she’s my cousin.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Parrots. They’re all the same. Does he want a cracker?”

  At that, my cousin shot me a dark look. “You’re not helping.”

  “Then he shouldn’t be such a moody little—”

  “You never said what we’re going to do now,” she interrupted. “About Dotty? About Betty Lou? Hell, what about Grandma?”

  Sighing, I leaned forward. “Well, I can answer about Grandma. I got a letter this morning informing me that the Town Council regarded my agreement with Betty Lou as unbreakable. The leaders of all the paranormals agreed that the agreement stands until they have a new Head Witch installed and Grandma’s behavior improves.”

  “So she stays bound?”

  “Yep. It’s not a bad thing. There’s enough going on in town without her raising hell.”

  Nicole threw her hands up, knocking a bag of birdseed off the counter. She muttered a word her mother would spank her for before quickly tidying it with a flick of her wrist. “Too damn right,” she said after the seed was safely back in the bag. “Were you thinking about undoing her binding?”

  “No. I’m no idiot. I knew the
Witch Council would demand her binding be kept, never mind the Town Council. If all the leaders want her constrained, there’s a hell of a lot more going on than we know about.”

  Nic sighed and picked up her coffee. Today’s takeout cups were decorated with a cute forest scene, complete with a deer. I didn’t know how Ana-May had the patience to change them so often.

  She wasn’t Starbucks with their holiday cups, although I couldn’t wait to see what she came up with for Christmas.

  “Okay, so what do we do?” Nic leaned against the counter, pausing to snap at the ferrets that she’d be right there, and she wasn’t their slave.

  I raised my eyebrows, but I chose to ignore her snapping. She was under as much stress as I was, and those ferrets were grumpy little gits. Like Grandma Cherry, but rodents. And alive. “Okay,” I said. “I do actually have an idea.”

  “Hit me.”

  “We’ve hit a dead end with Betty Lou. Her letter to investigate her poisoning is useless without her being alive.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I think we need to focus on Amelie. There’s no way her murder and Betty Lou’s poisoning were unconnected. You don’t get two major crimes in one night, in the same building, in Haven Lake.” I shook my head. “Betty Lou dying is where the police will be looking right now. My gut says Amelie is the anomaly, and all anomalies need to be investigated.”

  Nicole sighed. “We’re not on a human ghost hunt.”

  “I knew introducing you all to Netflix was a bad idea.”

  She shot me another look. “All right, Ms. Marple. How do we investigate Amelie’s death? We know her ex wasn’t responsible and that it was someone in town. Where do we go next? I don’t even know where she lives.”

  I finished the last of my coffee and checked the time on the pawprint-shaped clock on the wall behind me. “What do you know? It’s time for lunch. You think Ana-May has her BLTs ready for takeout?”

  My cousin’s lips curved to one side. “There’s only one way to find out.”

  • • •

  And find out I did.

  The second I walked into the café, the scent of Ana-May’s famous BLTs assaulted my nose. She made them in a vegetarian version for the earth-based paranormals, but I wasn’t here for that.

  No, siree. I wanted my BLT with extra bacon.

  I didn’t have to wait long to get to the front. The second Ana-May’s eyes landed on me, she had one young faerie take over her position at the counter and rushed to me, grabbing my hand before I could say a word.

  She dragged me through the café and out to the back room. Muttering something under her breath, she clapped her hands together and blew what looked like a crap ton of glitter at the door.

  “There,” she said, clapping her hands once more so that no glitter remained. “Now nobody can hear us.”

  I raised my eyebrow but said, “If you’re planning on killing me, I should tell you that Nicole knows I’m here.”

  She laughed. It was a light, tinkly sound. “A little something new. You know how I like to add flair to my magic.”

  “I remember your birthdays well,” I said dryly. “Now, why’d you drag me back here like you’re a succubus and I’m a paying customer?”

  She tutted. “Don’t taint them all with the same brush.”

  “Clearly, you’ve never been to Las Vegas. The succubi there go nuts for paying customers.”

  “Yes, well, human men are weak people. Like humans in general.” She sniffed. “I’ve met some lovely sex demons.”

  “Seriously? I can’t call them prostitutes, but you can call them sex demons?”

  She leveled me with a glare. “Do you want to know what I know or not?”

  “That depends. Is it about Amelie or Betty Lou?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I want to know.”

  “I heard that Betty Lou was a huge supporter of magically installing boundaries between the shifters and the earthworms.”

  “You mean the elves and the druids.”

  “Whatever.” She batted her hand. “Apparently, she was leading the charge, and the shifters weren’t happy about it. The druids have doubled their numbers in the last ten years, meaning they’re going to need more forest. We can’t rightly extend the boundaries of the town without extensive evaluations on how it affects the humans. Rumor has it the shifters felt discriminated against.”

  “Magically installing. Do you mean physical boundaries?”

  “I don’t mean a line of ice cream machines that give out 99 cent cones to those who touch the border.”

  “Don’t be snippy. You’re the one who dragged me back here like a ragdoll.”

  “Are you a succubus or a ragdoll? Make up your mind.”

  “Ana-May, if you don’t have anything real to share with me, I’m going to order my BLT and get on with my day.”

  She sighed and sat on the chair opposite me, tucking her bleach-blonde hair behind her ear. “Amelie was a shifter, Avery. The land shared by the shifters doesn’t discriminate by their bloodline. It’s why it’s such an issue for the werewolf pack—being the largest and most dominant of the shifters, they don’t want to see their land shrunk even more. Especially when you consider those shifters mate like rats.”

  She was not wrong. Some of those suckers had more kids than I did pairs of shoes. And I liked shoes.

  “You think Amelie was responsible?” But why the hell would she shoot herself? Unless someone saw her poison Betty-Lou…

  Ana-May shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve just heard a lot from the shifters who come in here. They’re not exactly quiet, ya know? It’s like listening to a vacuum while being inside the bit that collects the dust. They’ve got some temper on them.”

  Yup. I knew that. Their temper was almost their calling card. “Have you told Sheriff Bones this?”

  “That old fool? No. Besides, I hear he’s sitting this one out and letting Officer Hottie deal with it.” She batted her lashes at me. “Y’all know each other well.”

  I pointed a finger at her. “Stop that right now, Ana-May Dorset. I can’t stand that man, so get any romantic ideas right out of that pretty head of yours and go make me a damn sandwich.”

  She fanned herself as she stood and removed the spell from the door. “You sure know how to treat a woman, Avery Thorn.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. She was something else—what that something was, I didn’t know, but she was definitely it.

  • • •

  “Are you sure about this?” Nicole whispered.

  I nodded. “The police are all over Betty’s place. They aren’t interested in her assistant.”

  “Why? Aren’t they both murders?”

  “Yes, but the death of the Head of the Witch Council is far more important than her new, irrelevant shifter assistant,” I said, trying to hide my bitterness. “The way I see it, these murders aren’t a coincidence, and this is the only chance we have to explore Amelie’s house uninterrupted.”

  I could already see from the windows that her house was small. It was the kind of house the Council gave to newcomers who were willing to contribute to society—they had two months to settle in and find a job to pay rent, or they were removed from town.

  It seemed harsh, but magical towns needed rules. The red tape was what kept us thriving. We all needed the structure the extensive and sometimes harsh rules required of us.

  Nicole grabbed my arm. “Are you sure about this? Can’t we send in the cats?”

  “Really? You want to send Snow into a house of a murder suspect?”

  A familiar presence wound herself around my ankles despite the fact I was crouched behind a tree. I’d be a good investigator, she purred into my mind.

  Yeah, and I’m as dumb as a bag of rocks, I shot back. Absolutely not.

  She let out a loud meow in protest, right at the same time Samson did.

  “No,” Nicole hissed. “You two are not going in there and raising hell. I don’t trust y’all ar
ound my fish, never mind this.”

  Both cats took one look at us before they disappeared.

  “How did they even get there?” Nicole asked me.

  “Familiar freaks,” I muttered, looking at Amelie’s deserted house. “Okay. I told you what Ana-May told me in the café, but I don’t think that’s enough.”

  “Right. Amelie was a shifter, but too new to hold any position in the pack. She’d be at the very bottom of the totem pole. Unless she was with Betty Lou?”

  “I doubt it. Her pack position would outweigh her job. Plus, she had to fit in with the other werecats. Fitting in depended on her compliance with their rules. We don’t have to like it, but the packs do things their own way.” I bit my lip. “I don’t like how Amelie fits in. It doesn’t make sense to me.”

  “And you think violating a crime scene will give you information?”

  “No. This isn’t a crime scene. There’s no tape.” I grinned. “Would you prefer if I cast a concealment spell on us?”

  Nicole paused before she nodded. “Yes. Unless you want to make us invisible?”

  “Not really. That can be tricky to counter if we get split up.” Like the time we were teens and I turned us invisible and we all got lost, sparking mad panic until I figured out that I could turn myself back. “Okay, hold on.”

  I slid my wand from my pants. I didn’t use it often, but it was a tool that could be used to help focus magic. I figured it would be helpful if I had to cast a specific spell that drew on the silver magic that lived deep inside me.

  Nicole’s eyes widened briefly. “Your wand?”

  “Precautionary,” I said. “Do you mind if I use it?”

  “No. If you’re more comfortable using it, then I am, too.”

  “I’m going to cast on you first. Okay?”

  She nodded.

  I pointed the extravagantly engraved wand in her direction and took a deep breath, focusing my magic. “Slap my butt and dig a ditch, from prying eyes conceal this witch.”

  A ripple waved over her body, but I could see her perfectly.

  “Did it work?”

  I nodded. “I’m not prying eyes, so I can see you. The bonus over using invisibility.” I tucked my wand back where it belonged and, pointing my finger at myself, cast the same spell.