Witch's Brew - Spellspinners 1 (Spellspinners of Melas County)

by Heidi R. Kling

He didn’t want to hurt his best friend—but the fury boiling in his gut was practically impossible to contain. The eerie doll stared at him: beady eyes, pink button nose, X-crossed mouth, ugly substitutes for everything beautiful and alive about Lily.

  “When I found it, this was sticking out of its arm.” A long, sharp needle lay flat in Chance’s palm.

  Logan’s eyes narrowed. “Which arm?”

  “Left. Why? Was Lily hurt there?”

  The wound on Logan’s left arm burned, as if the bite happened mere seconds ago.

  “No, I was.”

  “What happened to you after I left?”

  The bonfire felt like forever ago. “It’s too much to explain right now. Does Jacob know I was gone?”

  “Nah, I covered for you. He was distracted anyway. Conference call.”

  “Thanks, Chance.”

  Logan’s mind felt like it would implode. Who was behind this? Had to be one of the warlocks. But who? Jacob? Jude? But what would they want with a voodoo doll of Lily?

  “The serpents were sent,” Logan said, testing Chance’s reaction.

  “Slow down. Serpents?”

  Chance’s eyes were honest. He couldn’t have done this to Lily, or him. Of all the warlocks, Logan trusted him the most. Always had. Plus, he’d kept his secrets about Lily this far. What choice did he have but to trust him?

  Cradling the doll in his hand like an injured bird, Logan said, “If you aren’t lying, prove it. Tell me everything you know about voodoo dolls. And don’t leave anything out, Chance. I swear. You better be telling the truth.”

  Lily

  “Lily Rose! Where have you been? I’ve been worried sick!”

  “I … spent the night at Orchid’s.”

  I guarded the truth I couldn’t tell her. Iris would forgive me—she’d understand up to a point—but making out with the warlock we all suspected to be the Roghnaithe on the beach, without even searching for the mark, because I was supposed to wait until Camellia gave me the order to be with him alone?

  “Orchid said she didn’t know where you were.”

  “You know how she likes to mess around with you, Mom.”

  She looked at me strangely, but then blew it off. “The orders came in! You have to get ready. Tonight is your enchantment.”

  “Enchantment?”

  “Yes. Lily! Listen! You’re going to find out if Logan wears the mark of the broken rose moon.”

  “Tonight?”

  “Yes. And you look terrible. Did you sleep at all?”

  “Orchid’s dog… kept me up.”

  “Why are you lying to me?”

  I hated lying to her, but could I tell her the truth?

  “Lily, your arm!”

  I glanced down and gasped. My left arm was swollen to twice its size.

  “What happened to you?” Under the swelling was a bite that only began to hurt when I looked at it. Why hadn’t I noticed it before?

  “It looks infected. I’m calling the doctor.”

  “Mom, wait. Tell me more about the enchantment. Why do I need to be enchanted to look for Logan’s mark?”

  “So he’ll be willing to show it to you.”

  “Why would I need to trick him into showing it to me? “

  “Why wouldn’t he need to be tricked to show it to you?”

  I didn’t know what to do. Tell the truth and admit I’d completely ignored explicit orders to stay away from Logan, or lie and go along with a stupid enchantment to trick him into showing it to me?

  Logan

  “Voodoo dolls aren’t always meant to harm, Cheese. My ancestors used them to cast love spells and ask Loa for guidance. See this wrapped around the sticks? It’s Spanish moss—this is an authentic doll, woven from one long piece of moss. Spanish moss doesn’t grow naturally here—whoever did this went to a lot of trouble to find the correct ingredients. And these eyes…”

  “Black-eyed peas.”

  “Right. Also not native to Northern California. But they were glued on. Pretty recently it looks like.”

  Logan fingered the knife on his hip. “Let’s go find its maker then.”

  “You can’t very well run up to the lox and accuse them. Just wait—I have an idea—I’m going to try and reverse the curse.” Chance reached into his satchel and pulled out a sponge with a rainbow of pins sticking out of it. “White pins are positive—good karma—red means power, purple spirituality, green represents tranquility, blue implies love, black repels negative energy and illness, light blue represents family, and pink....”

  Under purple canvas material, a pink-knobbed pin dug deep into the doll’s side.

  “This canvas was taken from her tennis shoes. She left them on the beach last night. Chance, someone was following her.”

  And if someone was following Lily when she was with him on the beach…

  Whoever did this knew about them. The two of them together.

  “And pink means?”

  Chance fell silent.

  “Chance,” Logan pressed, urgently.

  “Death. Pink means death.”

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  Children of Darkness & Light

  Lily

  Feeling like I’d just awakened from a nightmare, I jerked up awkwardly, and slipped off the rock. Groggily, I felt for my weapon, but other than my trembling swordfinger, I was unarmed. Sparking erratically, like a light bulb sputtering to its death, my finger looked the way I felt. What had happened to me?

  And where was I?

  My eyes focused on the ridge I was on the edge of, the edge of…

  A black hill loomed in the distance.

  A fog-covered eucalyptus grove.

  Warlock territory.

  A sense of foreboding crept over me—a feeling of being watched. But it didn’t make sense. If the warlocks had enchanted me, why would they leave me here to wake up alone? Why hadn’t they taken me unconscious?

  As I came to, I became aware of a strange pain in my hip. The tender skin stung as if bitten by a hornet—probably from a fall onto the hard ground? I pulled down the elastic rib of my pant waist for a look, and was alarmed to find a red blotch forming—an almost translucent mark on my pale skin. My eyesight was still so blurry; I couldn’t make out the shape.

  Tall, dead wild grass whispered all around me. My memory of the afternoon came back in pieces. The hike. The search for euca leaves. Euca leaves. Could the mere scent of the magical grove have been so powerful as to put me out completely? And then awaken me into this edgy state? I looked up at the cloudless blue sky, trying to calm my breathing. Was I hallucinating? Still dreaming?

  Or worse, still trapped in someone’s—or something’s—spell?

  Strange, dark shadows of fog crept down from the grove, slowly enveloping the thicket.

  My body, my instincts pulled me toward the forbidden region. It took everything in me to resist the urge—I couldn’t recall another instance in my life when I’d felt such conflicting instincts to flee and fight. To stay and go. And the unrelenting rush of sensation felt inexplicably like both the beginning…and the end.

  Logan

  Logan snuck into the mansion quietly; he didn’t need a key, the door unlocked for him automatically. But if he were caught coming home after curfew, it would infuriate Father. Normally that’s all he’d be concerned about, but tonight Logan’s head was whirling from the girl. He could still smell her flower scent when he lifted his hand, the piece of flesh that met with the curve of her hip. He could still feel the buzz of energy from that minute exchan
ge, which had left in him a deeper sense of longing than he could remember.

  Something about her…and it was more than her beauty, which matched or bettered an illustration of a goddess from the antique books in Father’s den; it was as if, when his eyes grazed her face, her ivory skin, the arch of her neck…there was a sense of recognition. Like they’d met somewhere before—not only met, but had lived a lifetime together. At the same time, she was a brand new person, a stranger he was dying to get to know; an end destination on a mysterious map of his life, which, thus far, was so full of hidden symbols and double meanings. Full of mystery and confusion.

  Though he’d met with nothing but dead ends when he tried to figure out who he was, and how he ended up on Father’s doorstep so many years ago, Logan was going to figure out who this gorgeous creature was, and why in the universe she was sleeping on a rock so dangerously close to the warlock boundaries.

  Hands tucked into his pockets, he made it up the marble stairs, and past enormous paintings of the Ancients that Father had put up in homage to the ‘good old days’ of mayhem and madness. Dark art of twisted, writhing bodies being mutilated by medieval weaponry. As usual, Logan averted his eyes, struggling to pretend the torture-art didn’t creep him out, and leave him with a huge sense of guilt over his ancestors’ crimes. But they had—ever since he was little. He was just past Father’s room, past the largest framed picture in the house of a young Jacob, strapping and handsome, maybe twenty-two years old. Long dark hair hung just past his ears, and his eyes were bright and smiling, an almost shocking color of green—though his mouth was clenched hard. The eyes, so out of sync with the lips, always made Logan feel like Father and the painter shared a secret.

  Young Jacob’s eyes followed him as he went past, and he was nearly to the safety of his room when an angry hiss cursed the air. Tripping over an arched, black-haired back, Logan tumbled into a gilded picture frame.

  Damn cat. Ignoring the shriek of pain in his shoulder, he straightened the frame, hurriedly.

  “It’s not Cleopatra’s fault,” a voice growled. Logan’s stomach lurched when he saw Jacob there, standing stiff and irritated in his silken night robe.

  Logan pulled his hand off the corner of the frame.

  “Sorry, Father. I didn’t see her.”

  “Where have you been?” Father asked, his voice like a razor. Reaching down creaking arms, he picked up the cat, stroking her fur. “It’s okay, baby girl,” he cooed, while sneering at his son.

  Logan stood awkwardly, shifting from one foot to the other. “Nowhere. Just out.”

  Father was used to liars. But not people lying to him.

  This version of Father was so different from the man in the painting, the most charismatic and talented of all warlocks. Not that Logan had been lucky enough to know Father then. He only knew this shadow of a man: angry, bitter and fading further each day.

  Now, what was left of Father’s wiry black hair hung limply over shriveled shoulders; his coal-blood eyes bored into Logan’s cerulean ones. “The truth.”

  Logan buried the image of the girl. Tugging on the back of his hair, he forced his mind quiet. “I was practicing weaponry in the forest,” he said, as nonchalantly as possible.

  Grey-streaked eyebrows raised, one higher than the other.

  Keep your mind quiet. “Up in the eucalyptus grove.”

  “You are to stay away from that grove.” Father’s glare pierced Logan’s skin.

  “I was. I am. It’s just a good place to practice.”

  He felt her body stir. Smelled the lilies on her skin…

  Quiet. If Father were to find out…

  “Open your mouth.”

  “I didn’t chew any…”

  Lurching forward, Jacob shoved a pungent finger into Logan’s mouth, forcing his jaw open. Logan gagged at the taste of his skin, the smell of his rotten breath. After, Father didn’t bother to wipe Logan’s saliva off on his robe, but Logan couldn’t wait to rinse his mouth.

  “I see you’ve shown restraint,” Father said finally. “Well done.”

  “I told you I didn’t do anything wrong,” Logan said. “I’m not a cheater.”

  “You’re blocking your thoughts.” Pause. “ You are getting good, Son. Maybe too good. You didn’t leave our boundaries, did you?”

  Could he See her?

  Urgently, Logan painted a picture of the coastal redwoods in his mind: walking alone, swinging his shinai through misty trees. Father’s face calmed. The deception was working. But then the pain started again. Dull at first, and then sharper. He felt the pinch of metal claws.

  Logan’s eyes watered, but there was no way he was going to cry. As a young boy, the humiliating pain would have broken his concentration, but those days were over. Long over. He focused on a red-haired woman in the painting, her eyes wide with horror as she was drowned in a wishing well. A gaggle of men, warlocks guised as Puritans, looked on, not entirely unhappily.

  “I never left the boundaries,” Logan said, firmly.

  And suddenly, just as quickly as the venom appeared, a still washed over Father’s face. It had worked. For now, the effervescent girl on the mountain was protected.

  The tortured eyes of the witch in the painting seemed to soften under his gaze. Logan blinked, looking back at Father before he noticed the strange magic.

  “Well, get to bed then, off with you,” he said in a crisp but friendly voice. “We have a big day tomorrow. The Gleaning is on the horizon. It means everything, Logan.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  Jacob turned toward the double doors. Then, he curved his neck slowly, and pointed his nose into the air.

  “Do you smell flowers?”

  “No.”

  Father sniffed the air again, his face twisted in revulsion. “It smells like the wedding hall of an over-eager bride.”

  Logan sniffed the air too, playing along. “Now that you mention it, there were some wildflowers in the grove today. Maybe they rubbed off on my clothes.”

  Fiercely, Jacob shook his head, as if the very thought of flowers pained him to the core. “Take a hot shower and scrub that stench off you immediately!” Burying his nose in his sleeve, he slipped into his bedroom, leaving Logan alone in the hallway.

  Logan winced as the door slammed. But he was finally able to breathe.

  Lily

  Splashing water on my face, I tried to clear my mind, to focus.

  What had really happened last night on Black Mountain? Why had I felt like I was being watched?

  It was the creepiest sensation, and I had ended up sprinting the last mile home, berating myself for thinking I could get that close to warlock territory with no repercussions. I knew I should tell someone. My mom. Orchid. Camellia.

  But I didn’t want to admit I was trying to cheat, and I didn’t want to lie.

  Mostly, I didn’t want to confess that I could make such a bad decision. That I would risk endangering our coven, simply for my own gain.

  So I decided not to say anything, and hope for the best.

  Tugging on a pair of black yoga pants, I noticed that the spot on my hip was still glowing; I hastily tied a sweatshirt around my waist to make sure it stayed hidden. Barely glancing at my reflection in the mirror, I headed downstairs and grabbed a protein shake and special elixir out of the fridge before slipping out the door.

  First came the run up Seagull Beach. I bent over, stretched, and grazed my purple painted toes. Lifting my arms to the sky, I raised my chest.

  Inhaled.

  Then took off.

  Slowly at first, and then faster and faster, I didn’t have to look back to know sprays of sand flew into the air as fast as my bare feet pounded the ground. I ran faster than a human girl ever could. Faster than most witches, too.

  Faster than I ever had before. And I was hardly winded.

  This was strange. Maybe that whiff of euca leaves up near Black Mountain was all I needed to get my mojo back?

  Whatever it was, this was why we
ran at 5 a.m., when no one but the seagulls could witness our magic.

  Five miles zipped by in minutes.

  When I saw the cliffs looming in the distance, I slowed down.

  Impressive red rock cliffs enclosed the circle with its half-moon shape, keeping guard over the coven. Half-Moon Cove. A place where the air tingled—a known vortex even among humans.

  From the other side of the cliffs, I heard lilting female voices. Breathing in sweet scents of my friends. Of honeysuckle, orchid, violet, I waited until the tide washed out before leaping from sea stone to sea stone and sprinting into the circle. I made it around the bend as frothy waves crashed down behind me.

  Maybe I was better now. Maybe my magic was fixed.

  With a burst of confidence, I fell into my assigned place in the circle. As Leader, I stood opposite my Mistress, while the other girls filled the spaces between us. I didn’t have to glance at a watch to know I was right on time.

  When Camellia nodded in my direction, I took note of her indigo eyes, the thick dark ringlets piled on top of her head like a twisted crown. Camellia was Mistress of the Light, and didn’t need to remind anyone she was our queen.

  “Good morning, Daughters of Light,” Camellia said, glancing at each of us.

  “Good morning, Mistress,” we said in unison.

  The sun, just starting to peek up over the ocean, turned the sky a vibrant mix of cotton candy and citrus. I hoped today would be a sparring day. There was nothing I liked more than a tangle with a sassy witch.

  “Girls, your energy this morning is much. I applaud that. But we must be careful how we channel it. If all your body wants is a fight, conflict, then you aren’t using your energy as it’s intended.”

  My best friend Orchid raised her hand. “Then why does my body feel like a fight?” she challenged, dancing on the balls of her bare feet. Orchid’s dreadlocked hair hung to her flat stomach, exposed by the tight half-shirt she was wearing. Her glimmering yellow eyes made her look even cooler in the pre-dawn light.

  “Your bodies don’t want to fight, your bodies want to engage,” Camellia continued. “Think of the baby tigers on the Savannah. Picture them tumbling around with their brothers and sisters. They don’t want to hurt each other—they want to connect. To explore each other’s bodies—to get a taste of one another’s spirits.”