It made no sense that Jade should feel a similar sensation from the lake now. She and Daniel were on the other side of the Preserve from where Paris and Jade had been. She never felt the lake on this side of the Preserve until today. Her chest felt like a hollow drum, her skin stretched tightly across the cavernous emptiness. The thumping sensation she felt was as though someone were striking the surface with deep, hard blows, sending the reverberations rippling through the space, rattling the edges. While running always made her breathe hard, today she felt like she couldn’t catch her breath, couldn’t get in enough oxygen. Her legs slowed down until she was stopped, bent over, hands on her knees, trying to breathe. Her lungs felt small and inadequate, unable to pull in enough air. The light from her headlamp made a circle on the ground in front of her, illuminating the dry twigs and desiccated leaves that littered the pathway. She focused on the bright area in front of her, willing her lungs to open up. There was a hot press against her chest and she fumbled with her gloves, pulling one off so she could dig under her coat and sweater. Her salamander charm, the one Paris gave to her, was hot to the touch. She pulled it away from her skin, pinching it between her fingers.
“Rough run today?” Daniel asked. He’d stopped a few paces in front of her and turned back, jogging little circles around her while she panted. She rubbed at her chest. Some running days were easier than others, but this was different.
Without warning, she dry heaved, making a choking-gagging sound. Daniel immediately stopped, standing still beside her.
“Hey, hey,” he said, placing a hand on her back and rubbing a small circle. “You okay?”
Jade nodded, still gasping. Focus, she thought. Breathe in and out. In and out. It seemed like the silver weight of the salamander increased for a moment and then released. She wasn’t sure if the charm was magical. She’d thought that it was only symbolic, but as she clutched it in her hand now, she felt safer, calmer. Slowly, it felt as though some kind of wall was coming up in her mind, blocking the sensation of the lake. Between the comforting warmth of the charm and the sudden scent of citrus, the empty-drum feeling ebbed and her body no longer felt like it was betraying her with its weakness. She stayed bent over and focused on the feeling of Daniel’s hand on her back, feeling the pressure through the layers of her long-sleeved shirt and coat.
“You must really be in the inner circle now. I didn’t even flinch when you touched me,” she joked.
He huffed with laughter. “We’ll work you up to hugs.”
“Hey now, let’s not get crazy.”
He laughed again, the sound warm and friendly. “Seriously. You okay?”
She nodded again, this time managing to stand upright. He stepped back, out of her space. It was one of the reason’s she was so comfortable with Daniel. Jade always got the feeling he respected her space. That and he was gay. He didn’t want anything from her. Or rather, he would never want from her something she couldn’t or wouldn’t give.
“Yeah, I don’t know what happened.”
“You sick?”
“No, I don’t think so. Just… tired lately. Not sleeping well.” It was mostly the truth.
Daniel nodded. “Well, let’s cut it short today. It’s all fun and games till someone dry heaves.”
“And then it’s a sport.”
“Or a reality show.”
Daniel turned around on the little pathway and started walking back the way they came, keeping his pace easy. They worked their way toward the outer edge of the Preserve, away from the lake. Jade took several deep, icy breaths, almost relishing the way the cold air bit at the soft tissue of her lungs as she did. By the time they were back at Daniel’s car, it was hard to remember she’d ever felt sick in the first place.
As per their usual routine, Daniel drove her home, instead of Jade hiking her way back through the alleyways and paths. Back at her cottage, he turned to her once last time.
“You sure you feel okay now?”
Jade rolled her eyes. “Yes. I didn’t even really get sick. I just got all…” she made a churning motion with her hands.
He studied her for a moment, as if weighing the truth of her words. “Let me know if you want to take any of our other running days off this week. It’s okay to have a rest period.”
“I’m fine. Just tired.”
He made a ‘hmm’ noise, as though he’d wait to see how she was himself. “All right. See you at work.”
She got out with a wave, watching his car pull away. The sun was just barely coming up, making the sky dirty grey-blue with touches of pink and orange. She knew by the time she saw Daniel again at the Counter-Magic offices, it would be pinky-orange with the arc of the sun crowning.
Heading up the walkway, she checked in with her demon locks, more out of habit than any real need. It wasn’t like she had a lot of visitors. The locks would keep anyone out other than herself, Bruce and now Paris. She had to add him one day and just hadn’t bothered re-configuring the locks. Her steps slowed as she reached her front door. The magic felt sluggish and slow in her mind. Normally, it was a big puzzle box and Jade could feel the gears of it turning and twisting as she moved through the space - like it was stretching open around her and then sagging closed again. This morning, it was like the gears and cogs were cold, like the weather - moving slowly and with protest.
Or maybe it was her. It might be because she was tired. Jade wasn’t sure. While she had been proficient enough to cast the spell, she didn’t know enough about demon magic to be able to troubleshoot why her locks weren’t acting the same. Maybe the spell needed touching up? Maybe it was responding to how she felt? Maybe this just happened to demon magic in the winter? She’d have to check Sakkara’s demon grimoires.
It’s not like she could (or would) ask Paris. While his mother, Sakkara, had been a beloved Coven Leader and seemingly good mom (if the way Paris turned out was any indication), she was also quite the demon spell hoarder and conjurer. Sometimes (okay, most times) Jade felt bad for how much she liked demon magic given how adverse Paris was to it. Not only did he, and the Coven, consider demon magic taboo, Jade didn’t think he’d ever really gotten used to the idea that his mother had regularly practiced it and had been damn good at it. Finding not one, but three demon grimoires in Sakkara’s handwriting had been a blow to him.
Jade would have to go through the books on her own and see if she could find a reason why her locks were acting weird. Or maybe they would be better tomorrow. But she wouldn’t ask Paris about it. Not yet.
Bruce came charging out of the kitchen when Jade came in, like he was surprised it was her at the door. He pushed his way past her, sticking his snout out the front door and giving a deep, hard sniff. A laugh escaped Jade at the sight of him wiggling his lizard-nose back and forth.
“Getting some fresh air? You know you can go out the window for that.”
He huffed as if he was expelling something out his nose and then turned, sauntering back inside. His long, scaly tail swished behind him as he made his way to the stairs and then started hobbling up them.
“All right then,” Jade muttered, closing the front door. She watched Bruce labor up the stairs enviously. No doubt he’d crawl back into bed, or into a pile of her laundry and go to sleep. Jade didn’t have such luxury. It was time for a cup of coffee and then getting ready for work. Her cube at Counter-Magic awaited.
#
After taking the bus to work, Jade always wanted to wash her hands. Maybe her face. Maybe all her clothes. Ugh, public transit. Gross. Plus it was really inconvenient to pick up coffee before work when you took public transit. It meant finding a bus route that stopped by a coffee shop, getting off, getting coffee and then waiting for the next bus. No, thank you. So after her cup at home, Jade resigned herself to wait until she, Callie and Henri went for their usual ten-thirty coffee break in the Coven’s cafeteria. The coffee wasn’t bad and it gave Jade something to break up her morning.
She needed to get her car and bring it to the Coven
.
She’d been getting ready to move to the Coven. Honestly. But then Dex, one of the other Coven Leaders, had gone all dark side and Jade ended up getting involved. Okay, she threw herself into the mix, but she knew Dex was bad news from day one and guess what? She’d been right and it was thanks to her that he hadn’t gotten his bat-shit crazy paws on Sakkara’s demon grimoires.
If only the Coven were grateful about it. They seemed mostly grateful. Partially grateful. Reluctantly grateful. They gave Jade sideways glances and not-so-covert looks for the most part. Jade could feel the equal parts of discomfort, distrust and grudging gratitude in their expressions. It wasn’t Jade’s fault that in the process of stopping Dex, Coven magic got sort of broken and Paris had to reset it.
According to the Coven, it was apparently Jade’s fault that Paris reset Coven Magic to resonate with Jade’s personal magic. A magic that was slightly different than what everyone else had been born into. Of course it was.
Jade couldn’t help that. Her magic was just her magic. At first, people seemed intrigued by the difference. It was like a shiny new car that had the new car smell. But now, the new car was making a clunking noise that couldn’t be fixed, it guzzled gas like it had a hundred cylinders and the dealer was saying no take-backs.
Jade was the only one who was proficient at ‘driving’ it. She felt bad. Sort of. Obviously it was great for her because her magic was what she was used to. It must totally suck for everyone else trying spells they’d been using for years only to have them fizzle out, or blow up in their faces. Literally. Penny Simpson had a bad experience with a scrying spell she’d done for years and her eyebrows hadn’t grown back yet. Hannah, their sometime-resident magic expert, said the residual magic had to dissipate on its own before the hair follicles would resume their natural cycle.
Still, it’s not like that was Jade’s fault. But try telling that to Penny and her horridly drawn-on eyebrows. Yeesh. Penny should just… not do anything with them. Although that would mean she’d have to walk around with that perpetually surprised look people with no eyebrows have.
Whatever. It wasn’t life-threatening. No one had died. No one would die. Probably. So long as they didn’t go crazy with their magic until they got it figured out, it would all be fine. She was trying to help by reconfiguring spells at Counter-Magic, but even if she hadn’t been helping, she couldn’t force them to like her.
Plus, she didn’t need to be liked. Being liked wasn’t important in the grand scheme of things. Right? Still, when she walked into the Coven and Henri, already at his reception desk, looked up and gave her a big smile and wave, she felt warm and pleasant in her chest. He had his headset on, taking a phone call, but he still managed to point at his watch and mouth ‘ten-thirty?’ and then mime drinking a coffee. Jade nodded, passing by his desk on her way to Counter-Magic. Once there, she took off her coat, straightened her keyboard and then settled down in her chair. Time to work.
She had some emails waiting for her - a couple of minor spells that Coven witches had been using, but couldn't get working since Coven magic had been reset. Jade’s job at the moment was to slog through spells that were failing, see if she could figure out why, and tweak them. She liked it. It wasn’t as much fun as demon magic, but it was puzzle solving and no two were the same. She worked on easy and simple spells assigned to her by Daniel or Josef after they had reviewed the Counter-Magic Incident Report log. Coven members called in, their issues got logged and then assigned out to appropriate witches. Sometimes spells went wrong due to bad ingredients or improper casting. Sometimes people just weren’t as good as they thought they were. Counter-Magic ensured that nothing too horrible happened to the Coven and that things were mostly put right in the end.
Except for Penny and her eyebrows.
Jade was just glad she was finally getting work, even if it was simple fire creation spells, house-cleaning charms gone awry or positive mantra magic not working. At the end of the day, she could point to the number of emails she’d resolved and say, ‘Yeah. I did that.’ Simple, but gratifying.
Daniel came in about ten minutes after her and raised his eyebrows in question. Jade guessed he probably wondered if she was feeling well after her dry heaving incident that morning. She gave him the thumbs-up and then went back to her spell work, trying to untangle why Lucy DeWinter hadn’t been able to scry for her favorite necklace yesterday. Or rather, why she’d found four lost socks and a ball of dryer lint instead. Jade wasn’t sure if she wanted to first figure out how Lucy could find her necklace, or if she should figure out how to cast a spell that would perpetually locate lost socks. She hated losing socks.
Ten-thirty rolled around faster than Jade expected and she grabbed her purse to head to the cafeteria. Callie and Henri were already there, at their usual table, heads bent together. Callie’s fine blond hair was pulled back into a simple French braid and Jade wondered if she should or could try something similar with her own hair. Maybe she could ask Callie to try it out on her. Did women do those kinds of things when they were adults? Or was that a ‘teenage sleepover’ thing, complete with requisite pillow fight and giggling? Absently, she reached up and tugged on her usual ponytail, tightening it at the crown of her head, feeling it swing as she grabbed her coffee, pulling at her scalp. She never did anything with her hair other than pull it back. Hair was a hassle.
Henri and Callie both had their smartphones out, looking up from their screens as Jade sat down, half-heartedly stirring cream into her coffee.
“Oh good, you’re here. What are you doing the day after tomorrow. At night?” Callie asked immediately.
Jade frowned. “Nothing. Why?”
Callie smiled, her brown eyes going wide with excitement. “Booty yoga!”
Jade felt her insides go a little cold. “What?” she asked weakly.
“It hear it’s amazing,” Henri said, voice colored with enthusiasm. “It’s all the poses that target your booty. Lifts your butt. Makes you look like a dancer. It’s like hot yoga and booty boot camp with some Pilates thrown in.”
Jade took a sip of her coffee. “That sounds horrible.”
Callie rolled her eyes. “You promised you’d try a fitness class with us. We’ve picked. Booty yoga. Seven p.m. I’ll pick you up at quarter to.”
Jade hoped she hid her nose wrinkle behind her coffee cup as she took another drink, wracking her brain for some reason she could get out of it. She’d already said she wasn’t doing anything. It’s not like she could lie now. Besides, she didn’t have anything believable to lie about. She didn’t have a social life before she moved to the Coven, never mind after. She woke up, sometimes she ran with Daniel, then she worked. She read books and streamed TV on her laptop. She fiddled with demon magic and tried to learn some regular spells. She talked to Bruce. Such were her hobbies.
Henri waved a hand. “It’s going to be so good for you. Runners always have really tight hips and lower back. I’m going to try to drag Daniel as well. He never stretches after he runs with you. He’s going to snap an achilles tendon or something, I swear.”
“If you get Daniel to booty yoga, I’ll buy you coffee for a week,” Jade told him.
“Deal.” They shook on it.
They exchanged the minutiae of their lives. Henri brought up the last episode of the sci-fi show they were all watching.
“No, I’m telling you, Peter is the alien and they’re going to kill him when they find out. They need to write him off the show. The guy who plays him just got offered the lead in that sexy remake of Frankenstein.”
“Spoiler alert!” Callie yelled, slapping him on the arm.
“It’s not a spoiler! It’s speculation,” argued Henri.
“Wait, how are they going to make Frankenstein sexy?” Jade asked.
“Meh,” mused Henri. “It’s cable TV. They make everybody good-looking and mostly naked.”
“That has nothing to do with Frankenstein!” Jade protested.
“I repeat, cable TV.” Henri too
k a sip of his coffee, giving Jade knowing eyebrows from over the rim as he did. “It doesn’t matter what the original story is.”
“Well, be that as it may, it’s not Peter. Jackie is the alien.”
Callie made a face. “Jackie? What makes you say that?”
Jade stirred her coffee and then gnawed on the stir stick. “Didn’t you see her face when Dr. What’s-his-name was trying to put the moves on her?”
Callie and Henri both shrugged. Callie leaned in. “She didn’t look interested.”
“That wasn’t disinterest. That was disgust. Little lip-curl, slight nose-wrinkle.” Jade touched her lip and her nose as she spoke. Jade knew what disgust looked like. She spent a lot of time schooling it off her face when she was hit on.
Callie thought about it. “I’m going to have to watch that again.”
“Plus, whenever the doctor stands too close to her, she moves back.”
“I never noticed that,” Henri mused.
Jade nodded. “She’s totally not into it.”
They chatted for a bit longer before heading back to their respective jobs; Henri to reception, Callie to the library and Jade to Counter-Magic.
Just before Jade sat down at her desk to get back to work she used a bit of magic to lob a paperclip at Daniel, clipping him lightly in the back of the head.
“What was that for?”
“You’re about to owe me your eternal gratitude,” Jade said.
“Eternity is a long time.”
“Okay then weekly gratitude and maybe some coffee. Henri’s going to try to get you to booty yoga this week. Day after tomorrow at seven. Make plans with someone else or suffer the consequences.”
Daniel frowned. “What the hell is booty yoga?”
“I’ve no idea but, apparently, I’m going to find out. Save yourself.”
Double-Sided Witch (Covencraft Book 3) Page 2
