Succession of Witches (The Familiar Series)

by Karen Mead

  Just as he moved to get dressed, the creature in the wall resumed its struggles at a frightening pace. Whatever it was, from the sound it seemed like it was throwing its whole body against the plaster.

  Maybe it was the close call when he’d crafted the earrings for Cassie the night before, or maybe it was just sleep deprivation, but something in Sam snapped. He’d never sought a comfortable life—quite the opposite, actually—but having to continually listen to the panicked thrashings of a mad, trapped animal while everything he tried to do with his magic blew up in his face was just too much.

  Suddenly angry, he picked up the old floor lamp he used for reading and moved toward the wall. He unscrewed the lightbulb with deliberate care and put it gingerly on the table, moving towards the bed to zero in on the spot where the banging seemed to be the loudest.

  “I’ve had just about enough of you,” he muttered, then raised the lamp over his head; this thing was going to get out whether it liked it or not, and Sam didn’t particularly care what condition the thing was in when he was finished. Anything to make the noise stop.

  Taking a deep breath, he slammed the head of the lamp into the wall, feeling satisfied when chunks of cheap plaster went flying. Repositioning himself for a second swing, he began to hack away at the small hole his first swing had made, widening it with every blow.

  “Get! Out! Of! My! Wall!” Sam yelled as shards of plaster sprayed all over his bed. One of them nicked him as it flew, creating a small, bloody mark under his collarbone.

  When the hole had reached the size of a pizza, and his upstairs neighbor was banging on the floor with impunity to protest the noise, Sam took a deep breath, feeling the anger slowly leave his body. Now that he’d taken his anger out on the wall, it was hard to see why he’d been so upset in the first place. Sheepishly, he put the lamp back down in front of the bed and slowly screwed the lightbulb back in, waiting for the plaster dust to clear.

  Sam expected the creature to emerge from the hole, assuming it was even still alive, but after a minute, nothing happened. Sighing, Sam put his right knee on the bed so he could slowly move his head into the hole, trying to keep alert in case a raccoon jumped out and tried to claw his eyes out. A little later on, it became clear his uninvited guest did not hail from that particular branch of the animal kingdom.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “So, can you take it away?” Sam asked, leaning on an outstretched arm next to the hole in the newly-destroyed wall. The man in the white jumpsuit with the words “BAT RESCUE” stenciled on the back paused before answering.

  “Well, you did the right thing by calling us, Sir, you certainly did,” he said, gently examining the small creature on Sam’s reading table with gloved hands. “This time of year, it’s not common, but sometimes they wake up from hibernation too early, and then the cats are after ‘em. Or worse, people get scared and try to kill them themselves, and the little critters are harmless, really. Bats are some of the most misunderstood—”

  “Yes I know, but can you take Vladmir here to an animal shelter or something?”

  The pudgy man frowned as he administered a bottle to the small creature perched in front of him, which made a small hissing noise before beginning to drink. Was it milk? Sam hoped it was milk.

  “I’d like to Mr. Andrews, but this here, this is a common Big Brown Bat, Eptesicus Fuscus. They’ve got a real healthy population, and all the local zoos are full of ‘em. Not endangered at all. Plus, despite being stuck in your wall for lord knows how long, she seems perfectly healthy, so there’s no need to take her back to the facility.”

  “She?” asked Sam, incredulously. “You can tell?”

  “Yep. This here ain’t Vladmir, it’s Vladmira, heh. And I guess she must’ve maintained a healthy weight by eating all the stuff back there behind the wall. Must’ve been chock full of bugs.”

  “Wonderful. So I’m stuck with her?” Sam asked, eying the odd creature drinking from the bottle a few feet away. Small enough to fit in his hand, the fuzzy brown creature had cowered behind the wall for nearly an hour after Sam’s attack, only flying out to take cover under the reading table when Sam temporarily left to go to the bathroom. Now that he could see how helpless it was, he felt guilty for breaking the wall so aggressively; it was a miracle he hadn’t killed the thing. Still, he really wasn’t looking for a pet.

  “No sir, you just keep the window open and I’m sure she’ll fly out of her own accord. She’s had a good scare, so she might stay put for a while, but eventually they always go outside. They don’t like people y’see, they’re scared of ‘em. Should be too, considering how people are their biggest threat, destroying their nesting sites and what have you, but anyway, I can assure you this little lady wants nothing—”

  At that moment, Sam flinched as the bat suddenly flapped its wings and vanished, flying up and out of his sphere of vision too quickly for his eyes to track. Before he had a chance to wonder where it was, he felt a tiny weight on his left shirtsleeve; the bat was hanging from his outstretched arm.

  “—to do with you….well now! You don’t see that everyday.”

  “It’s on me, isn’t it,” said Sam through gritted teeth.

  “Yep, I guess she must like you after all. Hell of a thing, I’ve been rescuing bats for 25 years and I’ve never seen that. Never say never.” Shaking his head with a smile, the volunteer packed the bottle in his tool case and moved to go. Sam moved to intercept him, keeping his left arm straight out awkwardly so as not to disturb the bat. It’s not that he wanted it to stay there, but he was less comfortable with the idea of it relocating to another part of his body.

  “Can’t you just take her off me with pliers or something? I can’t go out like this!”

  “Mr. Andrews, I’m telling you, just keep the window open and the problem will take care of itself. I’m sure she’ll want to get back to nature soon enough.”

  “But what if she doesn’t? What if I have some kind of rare pheromone or something that makes her think I’m another bat?”

  The volunteer stifled a laugh. “Mr. Andrews, if that’s the case, then you can call me back. But I promise you, just move near the window and she’ll be gone before the end of the day.” With that, he tipped his hat to Sam and closed the motel room door behind him, leaving Sam with his tiny new roommate.

  Sam sighed and rotated his arm so he could see the bat better. She did look kind of cute, with her pointy little black ears sticking out and her tiny toes (or whatever they were) attached to the fabric of his long-sleeved T-shirt. Carefully, he walked towards the open window, opening it even wider with his right hand.

  “So, Vladmira. It’s been fun, but it’s time for you to go back to your world. Can’t you hear other bats out there, echo-locating? It’s time for you to join them,” he said, feeling utterly ridiculous but sensing that some element of ceremony was appropriate. “Begone!”

  Gently he moved until his left arm was out the window, only Vladmira somehow maneuvered so that she was closer to his torso. She made a clicking sound, then a hiss, and for all the world, looked perfectly content at her perch. Sam stood with his arm out the window for a good ten minutes, and the bat didn’t so much as budge. Finally, he pulled his arm slowly back inside, only for Vladmira to make even more satisfied noises.

  “You aren’t going to fly out the window before the end of the day, are you,” said Sam. It wasn’t a question.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Cassie got to work close to an hour before her shift on Friday afternoon, feeling on edge. She and Sam were supposed to start training today, whatever that meant, and then she had to get him to agree to something he wasn’t going to like at all.

  After Khalil finished serving a customer, he turned to her and grinned. “Ready to start training? Sam’s in the back, but be careful; that whip of his looks pretty sharp.”

  It took concentrated effort to keep her expression frozen. “You are making that up.”

  “Yes, but I had you for a second there.�
�

  “No you didn’t,” she muttered as she walked past him to the back.

  “Diiiiiiid,” he crooned, turning to another customer. “Hi, what can I get for you?”

  When Cassie entered the break room, she saw that the plain metal table in the center of the room now featured three candles: one black, one red, and one white. They were large, almost the length of her forearm. There was also a flower pot filled with dirt, but it seemed to be missing a plant.

  “I wasn’t sure you’d actually come,” said Sam, wiping his hands on a hand towel over by the sink. Apparently he had just been doing something with the dirt. “Ready to learn more about magic?”

  “Sure. Who’s afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?” said Cassie, stepping forward to put her palms on the table. She wasn’t even sure why she said it; it just came into her head.

  He laughed nervously, taking up a position across the table from her. “Before we start, I…I have something for you. ”

  Cassie raised an eyebrow. A present from Sam? This could be ugly. “It’s not a rat for a potion or something, is it?”

  He pulled a jewelry box out from behind his back. Cassie barely suppressed a gasp as he flipped open the lid with his index finger, revealing a pair of beautiful earrings. They were large, almost the size of one of her fingernails, and seemed to contain shimmering hints of every possible color. As she looked at them, they seemed to change color from light blue to pink, then back again.

  “Take them,” he said softly.

  Cassie licked her lips. This, she really hadn’t expected. “Sam, they’re really beautiful, but I can’t…I can’t accept such a nice—”

  “Shut up and take them,” he said a hint of a smile playing on his lips.

  She obeyed, cradling the box in her hands, still not quite sure she believed what she was seeing. “Why?” she finally asked, looking up at him.

  He averted his eyes, and put his hands in his pockets. “If you put them on, I won’t be able to read your mind. I thought they would make you feel more comfortable with…with our situation. They should stop you from receiving my thoughts by accident too.”

  Cassie’s eyes widened. Having her thoughts be guaranteed private again, truly private, was like a dream come true, but it still seemed so very unlike him.

  “Ser came up with this, didn’t he?”

  His face colored slightly. “Why does no one ever believe this was my idea?”

  “This is for real, right?” she said, running her pinkie finger over the creamy surface of one of the precious stones. “You’re not just saying that you won’t be able to read my mind when you really can, right? Because it’s not like I have any way of knowing whether they work or not.”

  He scowled. “Do you honestly think I would lie about this?”

  “Uh, you’ve lied to me before about reading my mind. You’ve lied to me about a lot of things, actually.”

  “It’s the truth,” he muttered. “I spent an hour slaving over a hot cauldron Wednesday night to make them. If you don’t believe me, ask Serenus.”

  Satisfied that he probably wasn’t lying, Cassie quickly took out her small silver hoops to put on the enchanted earrings. She stopped with one of them halfway to her ear. “Um, you didn’t put any other spells on them, did you?”

  “Yeah, one to make you stop asking annoying questions,” he snapped, turning his back to her. He began arranging the candles, moving them so they were more evenly dispersed on the table. “No, I didn’t. Now put them on and let’s get started.”

  Cassie did put them on, noting that the regular buzzing sensation between her shoulder blades intensified briefly when she did so. Well, clearly they were enchanted with something, at the very least.

  Sam motioned for her to sit down at the table, which she did. He sat across from her, then pointed to the white candle.

  “Drakan,” he whispered, and a flame sputtered to life. “Did you feel that at all?”

  Cassie blinked. “No. Was I supposed to?”

  Sam raised his palm to his forehead and sighed. “Of course, the earrings. You actually have to take them off for this, otherwise our mental connection is too muddled.”

  As she took them off, Cassie voiced a question that had been on her mind for some time. “You always say a word before you do any kind of magic, even if you’re just mouthing it; do you have to do that to use magic?”

  “Yes. I’m Wordlocked.”

  Cassie plunked the earrings down on the table. “What does that mean?”

  “It means I’m cursed so that I can’t perform any magic without authorizing it with a word first. I have been from birth.”

  Cassie processed that for a moment. “That’s for your own protection, right?”

  “And everyone else’s. You know how when someone tells you not to think of the word ‘Elephant,’ suddenly all you can think of is elephants?”

  She nodded.

  “Well for me, if my magic were completely thought-activated, it would be ‘try not to think about cursing everyone in the room.’ Constantly.”

  She leaned back in the metal chair, thinking. “I get it. So by having you need to say a specific word, that makes it so that you can only use magic when you mean to. Are all demons like that?”

  “A lot are, I don’t know about all.”

  “So the words themselves aren’t really spells, right? They don’t mean anything…they’re just like…a password to unlock the real spell.”

  “Exactly, and everyone has their own. My mother helped me pick out a set of words for different kinds of spells from the time I learned to talk,” he said. Something flickered over his face and he looked down; Cassie wondered if he felt like he’d shared too much.

  “Anyway, let’s try again. Drakan,” he said, pointing to the black candle.

  Cassie squinted; she might have felt a prickle of energy in her back, but she may have just imagined it because she thought she was supposed to feel something. “I don’t know if I feel it or not,” she confessed. “If I feel anything, it’s slight.”

  “Okay. To be honest, I didn’t really expect you to feel that. Let’s try something else. May I tap in?”

  He extended his hand to her, which Cassie looked at. It would be the first time they’d shared magic since London. “O-okay,” she said, taking his hand. There was a sudden warmth, her back prickled, and then it was over. He hadn’t taken very much at all, leaving her relieved.

  “Okay. How about now?” said Sam, pointing to the last candle and igniting it, mouthing his code word. Cassie felt a subtle tug in her stomach.

  “Okay, that I felt,” she said. “It was like I felt a pull as soon as the candle lit.”

  “So you can feel it when I use your magic. Let’s try something else,” he said, shifting the flower pot over so it was between them on the table. “Hollis,” he whispered, holding the sides of the pot with his hands. “And now?”

  Cassie watched in awe as a tiny tendril of green shot up through the dirt, budding into a purple blossom in a matter of seconds. The flower was growing normally, but thousands of times faster than usual.

  “This is something I could never do by myself,” he said quietly as she watched the head of the flower pivot towards the beam of sunlight coming in through the window. “It takes white magic to do this.”

  “I…” Cassie started, waiting to feel a tug in her stomach, an itch in her shoulder blades, anything. “I can’t feel it at all.”

  Sam’s eyes widened. “Really? That’s strange. I thought if you would be conscious of anything….” He looked down at the flower and pulled his hand away, but it was too late. The flower started to blacken, covered with a layer of soot. A moment later, the blossom dropped to the dirt.

  They both sat in silence for a moment. “Sorry, looks like I ran out of white magic,” he muttered.

  She knitted her brow. “Hey, if you can’t do white magic, why do you even have a code word for making a plant grow?”

  Sam slid the flower pot over to the s
ide of the table, not meeting her eyes. “That’s a word to make anything grow. Including a tumor.”

  “Oh,” she said. She didn’t really want to know if he had much cause to use that one. “What’s next?”

  He steepled his fingers and rested his chin on them, thinking. “I was planning on trying different things with white magic and having you rate how strongly you felt them on a scale of one to ten, but if you can’t feel it when I use white magic at all…” he trailed off. “I don’t know. I’m confused, honestly.”

  “You want to stop for today?”

  “Maybe we should,” he said, standing up. He looked down at her and smiled, and her stomach did a little flip flop that she briefly hated herself for. “Nothing with you ever goes as planned. I’ll clean up here, get in the front and help Khalil.”

  “Uh, actually, before I do that,” said Cassie, putting in her new earrings quickly. “I have a favor to ask you.”

  “What?” said Sam, putting out the candles by pinching the flame with his fingertips.

  “Remember that boy I told you about, Ethan? Well, his master is going to be away this weekend, so I was thinking it would be a good time to rescue him.”

  Sam stopped what he was doing with the candles and met her eyes. It took an effort of will to continue meeting his gaze; she had a powerful urge to look down at her shoes. “Cassie. You’re talking about stealing another demon’s familiar.”

  “Not really. He’s 11 years old, he shouldn’t even be a familiar.”

  “That doesn’t matter in court. You know I have that blood status hearing coming up in a few months. I can’t be running around stealing people’s property.”

  “He was kidnapped from his parents, Sam. They think he’s dead, and if we don’t do it this weekend we may not get another chance—”

  “Look, I understand how you feel, but—”