Bad Impression : A Sadie Salt Novel (Sadie Salt Series Book 2)

by Ware Wilkins

  "Ms. Nickles, you are looking splendid this evening." That's not true in any way, shape, or form, but that doesn't matter. In the south, you are always polite. In the drab yellow light of her porch lamp, Ms. Nickles looks closer to a washed out corpse, than she does to any kind of genteel woman. Her cardigan is an awful pomegranate color that clashes with the fake red dye she recently put in her hair. She looks like the crazy cat lady you expect every witch to be. The fact that she could completely annihilate me from the earth with a tooth and a thought is something I have to keep in the front of my mind.

  "Sadie, you've been avoiding me." Ms. Nickles stands from her creaky chair. At her full height she still manages to have two or three inches on me even with the curve in her spine. That's the bane of being short I suppose.

  There’s no point in lying. “Yeah. Part of it is Benji, but I guess… well, that book only gave me more questions than answers.”

  She rolls her eyes at me. “You’re so stubborn. Come inside. I’ve got tea and we can talk about it.”

  The inside of her house continues to creep me out, feeling as much a staged representation of what an older woman’s home should be as resonating with a subtle power that I don’t understand. Ms. Nickles is a bone witch-- a practicing bone witch at that-- and she’s managed to stay hidden all of these years. I don’t know if it is because she doesn’t cast often or if she’s managed to create such an illusion that no one could conceive of the old, crotchety lady being one of the deadliest beings in Grimloch, but it makes me shudder nonetheless.

  She hobbles to the kitchen and I sit on one of her old, velvet couches. It groans beneath my weight and I wonder if it tried to hold Abe if it would just collapse.

  Ms. Nickles is back sooner than I expect, carrying a tray loaded with tea cups and a tea pot. When she’d said “come in for tea” she wasn’t kidding. I usually microwave a mug and a cheap tea bag. She’s got loose leaf and these delicate mesh strainers that perch on the rims of the tea cups. Fancy.

  “What questions do you have?”

  “Can we start with Baba Yaga? I thought she was just a Russian myth.”

  “Most myths stem from realities. You’re snogging a vampire and a werewolf. You should know better.”

  My face burns and I look at my knees, picking at the denim beginning to fray there. “I’m not snogging either of them. Not really.”

  “Mmhmm.” Ms. Nickles’s look lets me know she thinks I’m full of shit. Well, okay. I have kissed both of them, but there haven’t been repeat performances. And according to Ingrid, I’m behaving like a spoiled teen in a young adult novel. That accusation still stings, by the way.

  “So she’s the bone mother, and she’s the one who gives us her powers?”

  “Yes, she’s the bone mother.” She tips the teapot and steaming water streams into the cup, the strainers catching any soggy leaves that spill out with it. The tea itself is a beautiful red color and the smell of hibiscus hits me. “She doesn’t just give away her powers. It’s a trade, you see.”

  “I don’t see. That’s why I’m asking questions.”

  Another spearing look from Ms. Nickles and my mouth clamps shut. I might also be a bone witch, but I have no doubts she could toast my ass before I even start to try and defend myself.

  “Each spell we do takes a bit of our life essence. That essence feeds the mother. Keeps her alive. We keep her alive and in return, we get powers that are ten times stronger than anything some hedge witch could produce.”

  “But we get the power from the teeth and bone, so why does it leach our own life force?”

  She smiles and I feel like I’ve won a point in a game weighed against me. “The power from the teeth and bone acts as a catalyst. The extra component is your life force. When we cast, the bone essence allows us to tap into our life force, siphoning off enough to expend for the spell. The marks appear after so we know how much we’ve spent.”

  “And when it’s tapped out, we become wraiths.”

  She shudders. It’s rare to see Ms. Nickles react to anything with a response that isn’t sarcasm or disdain. “Yes. Wraiths can be controlled by the coven, and they can do terrible things. They are practically indestructible.”

  “Right. They become imprisoned… like your sister.”

  “Yes.” The hint of sadness makes my chest tighten.

  “How much of your life force have you used?”

  We meet gazes, hers cold and unrelenting, and I wonder if I’ve asked a taboo question. But she sets down her tea cup and stands, lifting her skirts as she does. I bite my lip to stifle a gasp. Her legs are covered with glyphs, from feet to high thigh. She drops her skirt and lifts the bottom of her shirt. Her torso is also covered. They’re beautiful and terrifying. It’s hard not to stare. When she tugs down the collar of her shirt, I can see them along her collarbone, trailing to her shoulders. “I have one forearm remaining of skin I can cover. Then fingers, toes, neck, and face.”

  “That’s not much,” I whisper.

  “No. It’s why I was sent to watch you. I’m chained by my sister, and I’ve outlived my usefulness as a witch to the coven.” The bitterness in her tone is not hidden. Then, she rearranges her posture as if shaking it off. “You, on the other hand, have much usefulness for them. Your body is practically free of the glyphs.”

  I shake my head. “Nope. I’ve lost most of a leg.”

  “That’s nothing. And it’s because you’re burning too much essence on your spells. You’re an amateur caster, so when you finally do the magic you were born to do, it explodes out of you.”

  This grabs my interest. “Wait, explain that more.”

  “You can control the bone essence. It doesn’t all have to be released at once. Absorbing one or two teeth can sustain you for weeks of spells. Like I said, it’s just the catalyst. Unless you’re casting something massive, you don’t need to burn it all out at once.”

  “But it itches and…” I don’t want to mention the supreme, almost sexual euphoria of it. “I’ve been trying for months to get over the addictive qualities.”

  “Ah, well.” Ms. Nickles’s face softens. “That is the other upside to learning to control the release, eh? You can keep feeling great while you’re harboring the power in the body. No need to go chasing more day after day.”

  My whole world feels as if it's shifting. The only reason I agreed with Uncle Oliver and Benji to stop using bone magic was seeing my skin get taken over by the cyrillic glyphs and feeling the marrow-deep pain of withdrawal after each spell. If there’s a way to control it…

  “But why haven’t you been caught? Why don’t they smell the magic on you like they do me?”

  “Defensive spells,” she says nonchalantly, as if I should have known the answer all along. “I cover myself with a shell that keeps in the smell and taste of the magic. My home, too, has it. That’s why I’m able to cast and remain in secret. How else do you think we’ve survived all this time?”

  “I didn’t know.” Already my mind is whirring like a clock’s insides with the possibilities. “And what kinds of spells? Is it just battle spells? Or could I, I don’t know… heal with the power?”

  “You can do anything you want with it except kill the mother who gave it to you.”

  “Baba Yaga is immortal, then?”

  “Are you dumb as a brick, Sadie? I just told you she feeds off our life force. She can’t be destroyed by any magic or object, but she can be starved out. Good luck getting the coven to give up their magic, though.” Her lips purse, like she’s trying to decide how much more to tell me. I keep my mouth closed, because it seems like if I don’t antagonize her, she’s willing to share more. It is the right decision. “The coven is trying to starve her out, Sadie. It’s why they want you so much.”

  I choke on my tea. Its floral, red liquid sputters from my lips, staining my shirt. “What?”

  “It’s hard for bone witches to conceive. Regular humans can’t do it. It takes a long time for a womb to catch, and it needs
a powerful, magic sperm to create a new bone witch.”

  Suddenly I’m transported back to middle school, to the god-awful class with a giant cartoon sperm and egg on the chalkboard and an unimpressed teacher trying to explain conception to a bunch of mortified kids. Ms. Nickles, in her grandmotherly clothing and house, is talking about sex with me. Conception, to be precise. I never wanted to hear the word “sperm” come out of the mouth of someone over ninety. Oh god. Maybe I am a teen in my heart, all angsty and moody and immature, because this conversation is gross.

  “Sadie, you were going to do more than snogging with those boys. Anyone can see how desperate you are. So please don’t get prudish on me now.”

  At first I’m embarrassed at being called out, but then what she said clicks in my head. “What do you mean, ‘anyone can see’ I’m desperate?” My voice is too loud and shrill.

  She ignores my outburst, though. “So your mother was the first to conceive and manage to carry a child to term undetected by hunters. You have the most… potential of any member of the coven in a hundred years.”

  My hands rake through my hair, gathering it at the back and twisting it so I can fiddle with the ends. “How is that possible? How old are you?”

  “Three hundred and some change. I’m aging now because I don’t have much life force left to keep up my longevity.”

  This means my mother wasn’t just a bone witch, but she’d been around for so long before my birth. Blips of all the cool things she could have told me about her life keep popping up in my mind. Increasingly my frustration and anger snowball, becoming a heavy ball in my stomach. I feel cheated because I was taken from her. “So what do they want me for? Other than my unspent skin?”

  Her smile is not comforting. There’s a dark quality to it that makes my blood chill. “If only they weren’t such spiteful, controlling bitches. They’ve… caught Baba Yaga.”

  “What?” I shout.

  “My house is sound proof, but that doesn’t mean it is polite to yell, Sadie,” she scolds me.

  “But you just said they’ve caught BabaYaga. The bone mother. What in the hell for? Have you seen her? What does she look like?”

  “None of us have seen the old crone except for the coven leader, Matron Freda. But they’ve caught the bone mother, and they are trying to discover a way to keep our powers while starving her out.”

  “So…” I try and make sense of the image I’m picturing. “They want the power but… unlimited.”

  “Yes,” Ms. Nickles croons. “Wouldn’t that be something. No more wraiths like my sister. Just pure power and strength. We wouldn’t have to stay hidden. We wouldn’t have to cower despite our strength.”

  The wistful notes resonate and yes, don’t shoot me, I see the appeal. Except… “You’d still need bones, yes?”

  Ms. Nickles waves her hand. “Sure, sure. But there are plenty of those.”

  “But the essence isn’t ours to take.”

  “What are they doing with it?” I can only hope she means corpse bones. Because if we’re talking living bones, then I’d argue they were doing plenty with them.

  I try to remember a story my uncle told me a long time ago. About how the tales of our lives were written in our bones. That it was our story, if it was interesting enough, that persuaded the ferryman to take us to the afterlife. To take someone’s teeth and bones, to steal their essence, is like removing chapters from their books. I thought it was just a story, of course. An uncle trying to entertain his niece. But it had always stuck with me and, with it, guilt when I consume someone else’s essence.

  After all, as Ms. Nickles just admitted, myths are born from truths, right? Aside from basically desecrating their bodies, what if we’re stealing their chance at an afterlife, too?

  The direction this conversation is turning is raising the hackles on my neck. I’m thankful for my neighbor, truly, because I would be lost in a storm without her knowledge. But it’s easy to forget that she’s not a friend. She’s not an enemy--not yet at least-- but I don’t know all of her motives.

  “Okay. Tell me about this shield you use to keep yourself hidden.”

  There’s a glimmer in her eyes and she knows I’m changing the subject on purpose, but she thankfully goes along with it. “You’re thinking of trying some magic?”

  “Abe’s an alpha.”

  Her laugh is a cackle and man, could she be more of a stereotype? Only if she drugged my tea and cooked me for dinner. Of course, she’d save my bones for more nefarious things, probably. It’s a silly thought, but I shift a little further from her anyway.

  “I’ll tell you the spell and how to practice limiting your magic expenditure. But I’m sure your nosy vampire boyfriend will notice if you come here too often, so practicing is on you, got it?”

  Over the next few hours, she gives me a tooth to absorb (I try hard not to think about it) and the words to the spell. I manage to snap the defensive spell on, but I wrestle with the buzz caused by the residual magic.

  Practicing magic like this can only be described as joyful. It isn’t just the rush of casting in the physical sense, although my body is alive and thrilling with each spell. It’s the sheer freedom of not worrying so much. Guilt-free magic. I’m exuberant as I cast small spell after small spell. I’m able to create illusions, move objects across the room, and even cast a few offensive spells at Ms. Nickles. She counters each one, of course, and we don’t do many. After all, she has limited magic left and isn’t about to waste it helping me get better.

  After all of the spells and practice, I still have a large cache of magic inside of me. It makes every nerve feel wired, humming with an intense pleasure that makes focusing hard. In fact, it makes me feel a bit crazed and wild. Maybe there’s some of the punch-drunk love of finally, finally feeling the potential of what I can be and not worrying myself to death over it. But mostly I think it’s the magic, its potency rushing like endorphins and oxytocin. Like I’m on the cusp of an earth-shattering orgasm. “Is this normal?” I ask as I explain the sensation on the way out of her door. “And does it go away?”

  “You adjust. There are ways to help mitigate it, but you’ll figure those out, I’m sure. Now get out. I have a crossword I want to finish and last night’s Jeopardy to watch.”

  As soon as I’m in the parking lot, I look up at the moon. It’s bright and detailed in a way I’ve never noticed before. My eyes seem to be able to draw it in, magnifying it the more I stare, until I can see the craters and ridges on its surface. Or that’s my magic-brain playing tricks on me. Does it matter? It’s delightful.

  Moreover, this gives me a new lease on my magic. If I can practice and learn to not burn up my life essence… I might be able to find a spell to help Abe. There’s got to be a way to help un-alpha him. That way he can stay in Grimloch. It’s his home. His family has been here since it was first settled. While Alec is a decent guy, he’s made it clear he won’t leave the town, either. His pack has made a place for themselves in the clean, dense forest of the Pisgah. There are paranormal resources here.

  Hell, they are right down the way from the world’s only paranormal dentist. This thought sends off a spiral of other realizations. Like… if I’m going to be doing this, saving Abe, I’ll need juice. I don’t care about Ms. Nickles apathy-- I don’t want to use bones. Ever. I’m a teeth-only girl, and only teeth I pull.

  Which means I’ll need to restart my practice and come up with a good reason to ask for teeth as payment. Alec won’t like that at all. Screw Alec. If I can help Abe, help suppress or remove the alpha-qualities, I’m doing both of them a favor.

  It’s hard to feel helpless, and like a burden. It’s even worse to feel like you might be able to help, but you can’t because you’re fettered by rules and risks. As the magic dances in me, grinding and flirting with nerve and hormone, I feel enormous. Little Sadie Salt, petite and “helpless”, might do the saving.

  My feet feel light. The scrape and press of my jeans on my inner thighs is a bit, um, un
settling. In a hot and bothered way. The buzz isn’t driving me crazy, but maybe Ms. Nickles was right; maybe I’ve been desperate. I certainly feel desperate now. It’s embarrassing, but as the cold breeze makes my nipples hard peaks begging for attention, it is also a fact.

  As if honing in on the world’s most awkward moment, a slight flutter behind me gives me pause. When I glance over my shoulder, I see black eyes, with only the slightest ring of green, staring back at me. Benji’s mouth is open, his fangs glinting in the moonlight.

  I want to lick them.

  Wait, what? What is WRONG with me?

  “You’re hungry,” I say like an idiot. The huskiness in my voice is ripe and horribly embarrassing.

  “Sadie,” he growls, and it sends shivers and ripples to all the right spots. “I can feel you.”

  Because my brain is muffled by magic, it takes me a few seconds to connect the dots. He fed from me recently. “So it's true. You feed and--”

  “For a short time after, I know any sharp--” his eyes narrow, dragging up and down my body “--emotions you’re having.”

  Well, fuck me. That means he knows I’m horny as hell right now. You’re doing this for Abe. Abe, the one you’ve wanted for so long. My brain is pleading. Benji takes a stealthy step for me, his hand shaking as it reaches out to touch me. My loins tell my brain to take a hike. “I can’t promise anything, Benji.”

  The corner of his mouth tugs up. “I know that, Sadie. But I need you to take care of yourself, or I’m going to do something stupid. Like, might have to call up the queen and invite myself over stupid.”

  Jeremy, queen of drag and vampire nest, and Benji’s ex-lover. He still wants Benji, bad, but Benji broke it off. Going back would make things even more tangled than they already are. I can’t do that to a friend.