Natural Witch

by K. F. Breene

  His gaze landed on my hair for a moment, as if he somehow hadn’t noticed my wrestling match with it, before he shifted his focus back to the spell. “Do you have any training at all?”

  “No. Though…I do know how to make women into zombies.” I settled for patting my hair this time, trying to get it to flatten.

  “You know how…to make women…into zombies,” he said in bursts, like he was digging into a suitcase and pulling each cluster of words out at a time. “Uh-huh. And where did you learn that?”

  “It was a retreat gone bad. In New Orleans. I just read the directions and the coven copied me. I mean, you know, they repeated the directions after me.”

  “You read…the directions…on how to make women…into zombies. Mhm. And the coven was okay with you joining them so that they might turn into flesh-eating creatures?”

  The way he said it, blasé and light, had me shaking with silent laughter. “I’m not sure they knew what it did. I took over because it seemed out of their league.”

  “‘They’ being the witches, I presume?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you knew what the potion did?”

  “No! I would never have participated if I’d known. There wasn’t a title or description or anything. But it just…called to me. I took over for the leader of the coven without meaning to. Then I just started to read it, and it felt right.”

  He pushed his hands out and up, and the ball of magic he’d been knitting into existence drifted into a lumpy, sloppy plane before disappearing from sight.

  “How come I can’t see it anymore?” I asked, taking a step forward.

  He lifted his hands again, and more streams of magic rose from around him, an entirely different set than before. “The power is spread too thin. Wards aren’t spells. They are called into reality the same way, but they exist in nature differently. I’ll teach you more later. Now, let’s get back to your slumber party with a group of zombies. I’m not quite done with my line of questioning.”

  I bit my lip to keep a smile away. The situation had been dark and horrible, so much more serious than what he was portraying. I felt bad for laughing.

  “This coven had a leader?” he asked.

  “I don’t really know, but she was taking charge.”

  “Until you, an untrained mage who’d never worked a potion before, relieved her of her duty?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mhm. And how did you come to be at this…retreat, did you say? Magical retreat?”

  I told him about the whole sorry situation, which spilled into a story of the potion, and how I’d hidden from the zombies in the closet. By the end, he was laughing helplessly and his magical work was completely stalled. He shook his head when he was through and layered the new spell onto the ward.

  “You are something, Penny Bristol. Of all the decisions a person could make in their lifetime, you make the oddest ones, and put them together even more strangely.”

  “Yeah. Well.” I didn’t really know what else to say to that. It was true, after all.

  “And the other night. Why did you run over those bodies?”

  I choked on my spit as he turned and strode back toward me. He stopped in front of me and looked down onto my face. Confusion seeped into his expression.

  “No reason,” I said, about-facing and marching into the house. “Will we be protected?”

  “Your mother will, yes. Hopefully you won’t be here.”

  “She won’t let me go if she thinks I’ll come to harm.”

  “I gathered that, yes. So let’s hope she convinces herself. I think that is the missing ingredient. I hope that is the missing ingredient. I don’t have any other ideas.”

  “For a so-called powerful natural mage, you certainly don’t have all the answers,” I teased.

  “I never claimed to have all the answers. Or a well-thought-out strategy, as your mother has so kindly pointed out.”

  My humor dried up as I caught sight of my mother, sitting stone-faced at the dining room table, worry in her eyes. Emery’s confidence and know-how made it so easy for me to forget the danger I was in. But if he and my mother were to be believed, soon things wouldn’t be this quiet. Soon the guild, whoever they were, wouldn’t be watching—they’d be attacking.

  “Sit,” my mother barked.

  Both Emery and I took chairs dutifully, and I saw that his humor had dried up as well. He was deadly, knowledgeable, and powerful, but that didn’t mean squat when it came to taking orders from my mother.

  Her gaze fell on Emery. “I assume you know how tarot works? That you will need to focus?”

  He was looking at her worn and beat-up deck, one of her very first, which she only brought out for heavy decision-making. I had seen that deck a few times, including just after my father had died. Unlike when I “read” for paying customers, she did not take these readings lightly.

  “I know how it works, and I know what the cards mean,” he said in a heavy voice.

  “The cards don’t always mean what you might imagine,” she replied, her attention shifting to her deck.

  Her fingers worked in practiced movements, shuffling so fast that I was amazed a card didn’t break free from the pack and fly across the room. Her eyes lost focus, staring into nothingness. I’d always thought this was when the real magic started. But now, as I experienced it with new eyes, I knew this was when the real magic started.

  Energy rose and moved through the room, hovering around us. An electrical current ran along my arms and stood small hairs on end. My stomach dropped, like the first plunge from a high rollercoaster.

  A large, rough hand covered mine, and I started with the contact. Emery was staring at me, his eyes slightly rounded and his gaze deep.

  “What?” I mouthed, careful not to interrupt my mother.

  His little head tilt made it seem like he was asking, “What do you mean, what?” But whatever he saw on my face or in my eyes changed his expression to incredulous confusion, and he pulled his hand away from mine.

  “The question has been asked,” my mother said in a haunting, faraway voice.

  She must’ve asked it internally, which she sometimes did. Just because she said she was going to read for you, didn’t mean she planned to do a reading of you. I’d learned that the hard way a few times over.

  She reached the card deck across the table to Emery before setting it down. Her gaze focused on him. “Cut.”

  He took half and placed it to the side of the deck. She took the untouched group of cards and placed it on the group Emery had set down. She was about to lay them in a pattern on the table when she paused. Her brow furrowed.

  She looked at me for a moment before shifting the deck over to me. “Cut.”

  I stared at her for a moment. That wasn’t right. One person cut.

  My mother’s glower kept my argument trapped within the cage of my teeth.

  I followed Emery’s example.

  She slapped the cards down in front of her, the configuration not one you’d see in any books, just like the description of what she was looking for wasn’t in any how-to blogs. If Emery was taken aback by that, it didn’t show.

  Silence descended, thick and syrupy. Her eyes darted from one card to the other. Back again. In zigzags and patterns that she probably couldn’t have explained if she’d tried. When she was done, she leaned back in her chair, sagging heavily.

  The pressure in the room popped, and with it, my ears. Expectation rose.

  “You must go, Penelope,” she said into the silence. “He was right. To stay would be disastrous. If you go, you at least have a slice of a chance. Any way I read it, that’s the result. I would never have believed it. Had I read the cards after he’d left, it would’ve been too late.” Her troubled, sorrowful gaze came up and hit Emery. “If you go, you must use your friends. You will know which ones when the time comes. You won’t want to, but you must. It will be the difference between loss and a life fully lived. For both you and my daughter.”

>   He stared at her for a moment, something passing between them. He nodded solemnly. “I won’t let you down.”

  She wiped her face and gathered up her cards. “You need to put a ward on her friend Veronica’s house. Mine won’t hold up.”

  “Of course.” He shifted, watching the cards go back into their deck. “The ward is still a warning, but I layered it with a spell that will make the eyes slippery. They should glide right past your house. I didn’t have time to figure out how to limit that to just a magical person. I’m not even sure it can be done. But you’ll have a little more protection, at any rate.”

  “That’s not important,” she said, worry etching her face and fear ringing in her tone. She didn’t look at me. “My little girl is about to head into battle with no preparation or training. The last thing in the world I care about right now is myself.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Hey!”

  I startled out of my light sleep. A shaggy head leaned over me, attached to a hulking body.

  Terror flooded me. I flung my hands up to ward off the shape.

  “No, no, no, no.”

  I knew that deep, gravelly voice, but it was too late.

  A stream of white exploded from my palms. His large hands spread and blackness enveloped the white. The two turned and turned together, the solid colors creating a murky sort of smoke. Magic pulled at my middle and electricity sizzled through my bones.

  “It’s me, Penny. It’s Emery. Pull it back. Imagine sucking in that white. Close your eyes and imagine it.”

  The tremors from my abrupt awakening faded and I did as he said, feeling that string on my ribs and then consciously reeling it back in.

  “That’s right. Good,” he said, his voice strained.

  I opened my eyes with his sigh. The two whirling colors were gone, but electricity still charged the air between our bodies.

  “Was that me?” I asked, lowering my hands slowly. “Did I do that?”

  “Yes. I’ll explain later. Hurry. We’re out of time.” He reached out a hand to help me up.

  I took it without thinking. The electricity pulsing between us soaked into the touch. A blast of fire raced up my arm and boiled through my middle. It traveled the length of my body until it bled out, into the floor. My legs and arms stung in the aftermath and our quickened breaths replaced the silence.

  I could just make out his wince in the failing light of the living room. “What makes that happen?” he muttered, sounding mystified.

  A charge of electricity using our bodies to find grounding seemed logical to me, whereas a white stream of light shooting out of my palms did not, but since he was supposed to be the expert, I didn’t bother answering.

  “What’s going on?” I let him tug me off the couch and then rolled my stiff neck. “How long was I out?”

  “Most of the day. Come on, we’re out of time. We have to go.”

  “But I thought we had a couple of days.” I staggered next to him, trying to get my aching body to work. I probably should’ve lain down on my bed, or spent time packing, or said goodbye to Veronica, but I hadn’t thought I’d be out that long. His hand was back, steadying me, but the charge from a moment ago was gone.

  “We should’ve had a couple days. They should’ve sent minions for at least that long. After the minions couldn’t crack the ward, someone else would’ve come to check it out. That’s when you’d get bumped up on the importance scale. At least, that’s how it used to work. If anything, their organization should’ve become less effective, not more. I’m missing something.”

  We hurried into the dining room, where a cloudy crystal ball sat on the table, the white inside of it rolling lazily. My mother was sitting in the seat next to it, leaning over a metal plate filled with water.

  “What the hell?” I said, stopping dead.

  “Do not swear in this house, Penelope Bristol,” my mother snapped, not looking up from the water-filled plate.

  “Don’t swear? Really? That’s a real crystal ball, isn’t it? Because the white part of the twenty-dollar version does not spin and whirl like that.”

  “Of course it is a real crystal ball. And if you’d had only Seer abilities, I might not have hidden all of this from you. But since you got the magical talent from your father, here we are. Don’t hate the player. Hate the game.”

  “You are too old to use that expression, Ma,” I groused.

  “I’m not too old for anything.”

  “Fine. You’re too uncool.”

  She straightened from the plate and looked at Emery. “The problem is something to do with a white stream of magic. I can’t tell much more. It is appearing on a small rectangle.”

  “Shit.” Emery crossed his arms and studied the ground between his feet.

  “Do not swear in this household, young man,” my mother yelled, moving down a chair to sit in front of the crystal ball.

  “Someone must’ve been there the other night.” Emery scratched his head. “They must’ve gotten video. And since you drove through the place”—I got a cockeyed look—“it would’ve been easy for them to get your license plate. So here they are to investigate.”

  “Which means they also know you’re in town, Emery,” my mother said, her hands on either side of the crystal ball, her eyes closed.

  “You don’t even look at it?” I muttered. “Jeez. You could’ve given me a pointer or two. I probably looked like a dope.”

  “Your way sells better,” my mother said, touching the sides of the glass.

  “They already knew I was in town,” Emery said darkly. He studied me for a moment. “They’ll send everything they have. They won’t take any chances with you.”

  I opened my mouth to ask why, but he was already striding away.

  I glanced at my mother, feeling the energy of her magic once again fill the room.

  My answers weren’t with her. They would be filtered through Emery. My life was tied with him now. My survival with his.

  My premonition from the other day zipped through my mind, and suddenly I knew what everything meant. This was the something that would happen soon and change my life forever. Emery and the guild shoving me onto another course. But the journey had already started in New Orleans, or maybe even before. And no, clearly I couldn’t hide from it or turn away. All I could do now was hold on, and do everything in my power to live long enough to claim my destiny, whatever that might be.

  Shivers washed over me. I hadn’t inherited many Seer abilities, maybe, but I sure had ended up with a couple of the most irritating ones.

  I rushed after Emery. “Why won’t they take any chances with me?” I asked, climbing the stairs after him.

  He got to the top landing and turned left, toward my bedroom. He pushed open the door, and shivers of a different nature coated me.

  “What are you doing?” Silence met me as he kept moving. “And why won’t you answer my damn questions?”

  “Don’t swear in this household,” he said, and I narrowed my eyes at his teasing tone. He glanced at my bed but passed by. He finally slowed near the window. Magic rose from various places in the room. This time, I recognized the elements, as he’d called them. Some were natural things—my plant in the window, a couple of power stones on the dresser, the dirt from my shoes, something from my hamper (which made me frown and want to throw it out of the room in embarrassment). Others were from treated items, like the dresser or my cotton blanket.

  I didn’t recognize the properties like he seemed to, but I did recognize the patterns. The colors. The way they all wrapped around each other, some braiding, others fusing. It was complex and exciting.

  “That’s the spell that makes the eye slide by, right?” I asked, chewing on my lip. “Or is it the ward? But why would you do the ward in here? So the eye one is my final answer.”

  He shook his head. “What would it have been like to learn all this with your brain? How much easier would it have been?”

  “Just one answer would do. Just one.”<
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  “It’s the eye-sliding spell, yes. There’s a name for it, but it’s Latin, and my Latin sucks.”

  “You know Latin?”

  “A bit. As will you. And you’ll probably learn it at three times the speed I did, with a pronunciation that’s twice as good. That’ll be a fun pill to swallow.” He smeared the spell across the window before leaning in and looking down to the front yard.

  “Competitive, huh?” I rushed up next to him, accidentally jamming my shoulder into his.

  He bumped over. I bounced off, grabbed the chair to steady myself, and brought it crashing to the ground with me.

  “At least I’m not clumsy. I have that going for me,” he said, not glancing over at me sprawled out on the ground. He also didn’t bother helping me up. Somehow, it was less embarrassing that way.

  I climbed to my feet and shoved in close, trying not to notice the huge size difference between our arms. I really needed to lay off the TV time.

  “Won’t they have seen you put that spell up?” I whispered.

  “I’ve only known three naturals. Four, now. Three of those four could see the magic creating a spell with their bare eyes. You are one of those three. As far as I know, no other mages have that ability. Certainly no witches. And you’re the first person I’ve met who can feel the magical intent of a spell. Your parents seem to have created a superhero, then hidden her away from the world. It’s a tragedy and a blessing at the same time, given the organization on your doorstep.”

  “Right,” I said. I didn’t know what else to say in response to his babbling.

  A woman stood on the sidewalk off to the right, at the corner of our house. She had her hands in a satchel resting on her hip. Two men stood across the street, side by side, each with satchels, similar to what I’d seen in the church in New Orleans. The one on the left, a grizzled older guy with straggly white hair and a lean body, had his arms crossed in front of his chest. The stocky middle-aged man next to him was talking and pointing in turns.

  Lewis stood at his window behind them, his scowl apparent even from the distance. He’d blame my mother for all this, I had no doubt.