Tragic Magic: Wards and Wands #3

by Royce, Rebecca

  A witch learned a spell and then didn’t have to say the spell anymore because their body could simply perform it, like muscle memory. Repeat it enough and you could just do it. Some people—Lawson—could make up a spell in his head and never need to say it aloud. Elliot, too, for that matter.

  For some things, that was true for Melanie. She didn’t have to learn a spell and teach it to herself to cook. That she could mostly figure out and just spell it instantly. But other things she’d had to work hard to learn to do.

  The question was could she still learn things or had she become too set in her ways and unable to keep expanding.

  If she was going to try to make sense of that journal, she had to figure it out. Thunder bellowed in the sky, and she sighed. No, she wasn’t going to be afraid of this. Not today. There were assassins who wanted to kill her, storms in the sky, ghosts on the premises, and Elliot was forgetting things. All of these things could terrify her into non-movement except that she wasn’t going to let them.

  She wanted to learn the first spell in the journal. It had to do with controlling the flow of water. Outside of the Boothe house was a river. She used to walk up and down it when she was a girl, getting her feet and the bottom of her pants wet as she splashed. There were tadpoles turning into frogs, and she’d never been able to resist watching it happen, year after year.

  Melanie walked there now. Learning a spell from a book was a skill she’d forgotten. Still, maybe if she just read it aloud, that would help.

  She cleared her throat and set her shoulders. Melanie would do this until it worked, to reteach herself how to learn, and then she’d write a spell to rid the house of ghosts. That sounded as good a plan as any to not let herself cry over Elliot.

  What would he forget next?

  She shook her head. Couldn’t think about that now. No, she had a project. She was going to do it.

  “Water up, water down. Water, water, turn around.” She read the words and then stared at the river. What in the hell was that? Melanie took a deep breath. Elliot’s ancestor who’d written this book must have been an idiot.

  It was like the kind of spell you would give a child. It rhymed. Adult spells were single words. Sometimes numbers and degrees, depending on what the practitioner wanted to do.

  Why don’t you play with me anymore, Melanie?

  The sound made her turn around. Standing at the window of the house, staring down at her, was a little girl. Not just any girl but the occupant of the room Melanie was temporarily calling her own. The room Elliot said was creepy.

  Melanie stared up at her. Fuck. She’d played with the ghost many times before her mother had made her ghost blind. She just hadn’t known the little girl was dead.

  Her breath caught in her throat. The gardener had rambled, been unaware. But the little girl—Elliot’s dead ancestor—had called her Melanie.

  What did that mean? Mel shut the journal. The strange water spell could wait. She was starting with her former playmate.

  Chapter 11

  She made her way upstairs and into the bedroom quickly. Her arms were wet, a result of being rained on, and she shivered as the cooler air inside hit her damp skin. Yes, she was going with that and not that she was terrified to do this.

  Melanie could vaguely remember this ghost and how they’d played together. Her mother had thought it was cute and one day used the word ghost to describe it. That had been the end of it for Mel. How was it that at five she’d known it wasn’t okay to hang around with ghosts but every other person in this space was so fine with it? She shook her head.

  Whatever the reason, enough was enough.

  “Melanie, why don’t you play with me anymore?”

  Mel steeled her spine. “I don’t play with anyone anymore. I’m… an adult now.”

  The little girl was dark haired, pale, with big brown eyes. She would have been a beautiful child and probably not scary in life, as she was in death. The too pale skin and the big eyes made her creepy when living they would have made her stunning. Funny how that worked.

  She put her hand on her hips. “Well, pooh. You’ve been ignoring me.”

  Melanie continued to stare at her. “I couldn’t see you.” Or hear her, apparently. She shook her head. How did the spell work? She’d have to look it up, later. Truth was she had enough spells going on to deal with that one. It was what it was, and she couldn’t undo it. Nor would she want to. She’d been blissfully unaware of ghosts during her early years, and she wouldn’t mind being blissfully unaware of them now.

  Well… maybe not.

  “How do you know me? How do you know things? The man outside… he doesn’t.”

  She sat down on the floor. A doll appeared in her arms, and she rocked it slowly. “The man upstairs says I’m special because I’m family.”

  Melanie blinked. “The man upstairs? Who is that?”

  They were never able to find anyone up there despite the noise. The girl lifted her eyebrows and threw her hair over her shoulder. “I want to play. Not talk.”

  That was too bad. Melanie really didn’t know how to compel a ghost to speak. She hadn’t seen anything about that in the books she’d been given. Humans sometimes used boards called Ouija to speak to them but the ghosts seemed happy to communicate. How did one force a ghost to talk?

  For now, maybe she’d go along with this and hope that she got some kind of information she needed. If that didn’t work, the only thing she’d lost was time.

  Mel plopped down on the floor. “All right, what are we playing?”

  For the next hour, she moved blocks using magic, talked to the dead girl’s doll, and hid under the bed for the sake of keeping the ghost happy. They were children’s games she’d once played, too. Particularly the moving of the blocks. It was a standard game for learning to control magic.

  It was terrible even if it was surreal. “Why are you here?” She eventually had to ask the question. “I don’t see ghosts other places. Ever. Just this house. Do you know? Is it some kind of magical portal or…”

  The little girl—whose name she had learned was Hannah—leaned forward. “It’s because the man upstairs, my grandfather, did something. And we are stuck. I don’t want to be here. I want to go. Like my mama went, like my papa went. Like most everyone else goes. Like Elliot will go. Unless he gets stuck, too.”

  Melanie hated that idea on so many levels. First the idea that Elliot was going to go at all made her stomach clench and even worse was the idea he might be stuck in this house. All of it was just too terrible for words.

  “Why can we never see the man upstairs? We hear him, but we can’t see him?”

  The little girl shrugged. “I guess you’re blind.”

  Wait… she wasn’t. She was going to ask Hannah what she meant, but the ghost vanished like she’d never been there, even her toys poofing away. Melanie sighed, rubbing away the goosebumps on her arms.

  Okay, she’d gotten through that and had some information. There absolutely was a ghost in the attic. And somehow she was blind.

  * * *

  Days later, Melanie wasn’t any closer to understanding anything than she’d been before. Lawson had been in touch and there was no movement. She chewed on her fingernail as she stared at the river. It had been raining every day, so hard that she hadn’t wanted to risk going anywhere near the river to try her spells from the odd book.

  Not to mention, Elliot’s rapid paced memory loss made her want to never leave his side. But she wasn’t going to reach her goals any quicker if she didn’t start to do something about them.

  “Tell me again what you’re doing with the river?” Elliot came up behind her. “It’s not a memory thing. I just don’t get it.”

  She couldn’t blame him on that. “I don’t really know.” She leaned back against him for a second to feel his body heat before she pulled herself forward. Concentration was the name of the game. “I just want to see what happens. This has something to do with the river, and it’s in a book I found.”r />
  That was easier than the journal discussion. When he forgot something, it was best just to act like it didn’t exist at all. So far that had been the journal, her parents’ visit, spaghetti, and the color of his mother’s hair. The last one seemed the trickiest because he would think about her often and stumble through that moment. It was hard for him to not remember something like that. She was certain there were other things he’d lost, but they simply hadn’t discussed them, so she had no idea what those things were.

  “Well, get to it.” He shook his head. “I’m tired of being wet.”

  “Listen, Mr. Fussypants, you can go back inside if you want to. I’m going to do this until I figure it out.”

  He groaned. “That nickname is not sticking. I refuse to allow it.”

  She smiled. “If the shoe fits, wear it.”

  Melanie spoke the words from the journal. “The water runs, never stopping. Until now. When I say go, the river will flow in the opposite direction.” She paused as the journal said to. “Go.”

  Pain surged through her veins, like a jolt of electricity. Nausea rocked her, and she almost vomited, but the river switched direction.

  “Holy shit!” She walked toward the water, glad she’d managed to keep her food in her stomach.

  “What happened?”

  “The river, it changed direction.”

  His mouth fell open. “For real?”

  “Yes.” She bent over to touch the water. “Did you feel the magic? How awful that felt? It wasn’t… natural, not like using my own feels. I’ve even done other people’s spells before and had no problem. This was painful, as though my body revolted from doing it.”

  He shook his head. “I didn’t feel a thing. Can we get the fuck inside?”

  She sighed. He was getting testier and testier. Edward had even mentioned it to her this morning. Melanie couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept. Even sex didn’t tire him out. He just stared at the ceiling all night, seeing nothing but the white in front of his eyes. Frankly, she was shocked he stayed as pleasant as he’d managed to do.

  “You should go in. I’m going to watch this for a second. I mean, why have this spell?”

  He blinked. “Why have this spell? It’s financial, obviously.”

  There was nothing obvious about it to her, and she was plenty smart. “Explain, please.”

  He sighed. “Sorry. I… I’m an ass.”

  She waved her hand. “Don’t worry. Financial?”

  He walked toward the river, stopping before he almost fell in. “Without water this land is useless.” He paused. “Maybe not this land. But the land everywhere. It flows the way it flows and eventually empties out into a basin that is used for distribution to the herb companies, the ones the healers use, for example. Other stuff, too. I don’t know because I never paid attention to it, but we own it. Well, I do. No more after me because they’re all dead.” His face fell. “What color was my mother’s hair?”

  Melanie rose, touching his shoulder. “Brown. So you own that basin and eventually we could drain the basin if I don’t put the river back the way it goes.”

  “Yes, exactly. The water around here determines a lot of business. Fishing. Where the white water comes from there are tourist places, I’m sure you’ve seen those. It’s small here, but it starts to widen before it gets to that basin. And… there are other things. I can’t think of them. Fuck, this is happening a lot, isn’t it?”

  She nudged him. “Doesn’t matter. I don’t want you to worry about it. The finances of the river.” She turned to look at the house. “So conceivably if I didn’t put this back, a lot of people would be out of work, that basin might dry up, the whole economy of the area would change.”

  “Yes, I guess it could.” He ran a hand over his face. “Does that matter?”

  “It might.” She shivered. “This is not magic anyone should be doing. It feels wrong. I don’t like it, and I don’t like it in conjunction with your house being loaded up with ghosts.”

  He scrunched up his nose. “What is the correlation between the two? A bad spell you’ve found somewhere and the ghosts in my house? They may have nothing to do with each other.”

  Maybe that was true. Maybe it wasn’t. He didn’t remember the journal. She didn’t think it was a happy accident that the box hidden in the attic with the journal that had this spell was important. At the end of the day, this all came down to money.

  Sometimes she just knew things. The law. Who should date who. And why this whole mess had started in the first place.

  It just meant she was going to find a ghost no one could ever see and get some answers.

  Melanie squeezed Elliot’s hand. None of this necessarily had any bearing on the curse. That was the unfortunate part. She might solve a mystery and it would still have no ability to make what she really wanted fixed any better.

  “Give me a second. I have to turn the river back around.” Her stomach clenched. “This is going to hurt.”

  * * *

  The moonlight traveled through the window, bathing the bedroom in an almost surreal comfort considering the night. Elliot was awake, staring at the ceiling but seeing nothing, and Melanie had almost gotten used to his being that way.

  She couldn’t sleep and so they shared that for the evening. Mel leaned her head on his shoulder. “You have something on your mind. You’re not writing.” Most of the time when he was up the pencil moved on the paper, nearly silently, a noise she’d gotten so used to it was almost like white noise at this point.

  He sighed. “I think you should go.”

  Dread filled her. Yes, she’d annoyed him outside by the river by keeping him out in the rain, but the rest of the afternoon had gone pretty well. He’d laughed a little bit, written, and they’d had a nice dinner. “I’m sorry if I’ve done something but…”

  He put his hand on her arm. “No, it’s not you. Trust me on that. I’m not even a little bit wanting you to go. I… I want to keep you with me every day that I’m breathing. No, it’s that I can see the handwriting on the wall. See what I did there? See?” He gave her his sardonic grin that she loved so much that she had to reach out to touch his lips just to feel it.

  He brought her hand to his mouth and kissed it. “Let me finish, Mel. I need you to go before you’re in danger here. I know I’m forgetting things. You’re being kind about it, and I can hear you doing it. What concerns me is that I will lose the magic and not know it. You’ll be exposed; the security spell will be gone. I can’t promise that I’ll be able to remember to tell you I’m losing it. I think it makes the most sense for you to go while I still can have this much sense inside of me.”

  She hated that he was right but she wasn’t ready. “We have a little time before that happens. I know we do. I promise to leave before we get there, okay?”

  He winced. “Honey, I’m not sure you will know. The way it’s working with me is so different than my father. How do I know I won’t get up tomorrow from this bed and have no idea who you are?”

  Her chest ached at that thought. “I need… I need a few more days. I’m not ready. I haven’t done what I said I would do, and I’m not ready to say goodbye to you.” She wiped away the tears that flooded her eyes. “Because it will be the last time I see you. I know you. Even if you retain your memory, you won’t let me back, won’t let me see the decline. Please. Not yet. I’m being selfish.”

  He held her close, drawing her against his chest. “Why did it have to be now? Why couldn’t we have found each other five years ago?”

  “How could it have been any other time?” She lay across his chest, listening to his heartbeat. “You said it yourself. You never let anyone in.”

  He ran his fingers through her hair. “I’d have let you in, Mel. I wouldn’t have been able to stop it.”

  No, she couldn’t spend another night crying. There was just so much pain in the world that she could tolerate.

  He looked over at her. “Where are you going?”

  “I�
�m not going. I’m just summoning a pen and paper. I’m going to write a spell.”

  “Mel.” He shook his head. “We can’t both be exhausted. You have to sleep sometime. It’s been a long day. You temporarily altered the natural flow of a river.”

  “What if I didn’t? What if someone else altered the natural flow of a river, and I temporarily put it back the way it was supposed to be?” She’d been quietly dwelling on this for hours. “At this point there isn’t any changing it. Too many people depend on it to go the way it’s going, but what if that was the point of the spell to begin with? I’ve found”—how to do this without mentioning the journal?—“other spells around the house that seem to all be about altering things, including the creation of magic itself. I’m not even sure what to make of that because how does one create magic? But I digress. What if the river is already running incorrectly?”

  “I don’t know that rivers run incorrectly in magical places. There are rules in nature for these kinds of things by the humans but there are no rules of nature around us. You know that. But I take your point. We moved in and presumably someone—my family?—altered the river to suit their needs with that unhealthy spell?”

  She thought for a second. Was that what she was saying? “Yes, that’s it.”

  “I don’t know that there’s anything to do about it now. And we’ll never really know.”

  That wasn’t true. “We might know.” She pointed at the ceiling before she remembered he couldn’t see it. Sometimes she just forgot. “The guy in the attic is your ancestor. I just have to stop being unable to see him. So I’m… going to work on it.”

  He shook his head. “If anyone can figure it out it’s you, that’s for sure. If you’re going to do that, then I’m going to write, too.”

  She shoved his shoulder. “You were going to do that anyway.”

  “True.”

  Melanie stared at him for a second. Dark circles under his eyes marred his face. She hated seeing them because of what they meant. “Do you want to try to sleep?”