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

by Heidi R. Kling

  “Partner up, girls. This morning we are going to practice energy balls,” Camellia said.

  “Awesome.” I rubbed my palms together.

  “Ensure that the receiving witch is standing in the ocean.”

  Orchid and I clasped hands. “I’ll receive,” I said.

  “Generous this morning, are we?” Orchid said, raising an eyebrow.

  “Hey, what are friends for?” My adrenaline boost and rebounded energy had put me in an excellent mood.

  Camellia paced barefoot in the wet sand, watching us. I waded in knee-high water while Orchid created an energy ball. When it sparked to life, she tossed it out to sea. I dove into the air and snatched it out of sky. It sizzled into my palms and gut as I fell backwards into the saltwater.

  “Nice!” Orchid said.

  “Thanks.” I grinned, bouncing easily back on my feet in the thrashing waves.

  “Stretch it out, make it bigger,” Orchid suggested.

  Squeezing my eyes shut, the beads of saltwater lifted from my eyes and face like a string of pearls. Wow! And I wasn’t even tired after.

  Golden electric circuits danced between my palms as I created a new orb. Bigger, and more powerful than anything I’d created before. The ball glowed in my hands like a miniature star.

  “Ready?”

  Orchid braced herself, eyeing the ball. I reached over my shoulder and threw it as hard as I could. It whizzed over Orchid’s shoulder, zipped through the air, and slammed into the cliff. We heard a rumble. Soft and then louder. I watched in disbelief as a whole pyre of red clay crumbled to the sand. “Avalanche! Girls, look out!”

  The witches scurried for safety.

  Camellia raised her arms into the air asking the sun’s energy to empower her. Fingers glowing with magic, the red clay clods scurried back together and crawled back up the cliff like an army of red ants. As if nothing had ever happened.

  But we all knew something had.

  My Mistress looked at me with flashing indigo eyes, “Lily. I’d like to speak with you privately.”

  Logan

  Logan’s brothers, his Cerulean class, were sitting at their assigned seats around the long glass table when Logan entered the ornate, high-ceilinged dining room. His eleven classmates, all seventeen years old, sat upright, stiff, at attention. The enormous room housed twelve other glass tables, each seating its respective class of twelve boys.

  The youngest residents were five years old—the traditional age when especially gifted Sons of Darkness were either brought to Jacob by their parents for consideration, or were recruited by the Academy. Though swordplay didn’t officially begin until their formal initiation at age twelve, the boys started training in simple spells and martial arts from the time they arrived. The young ones ate up the magic training, but it was apparent they missed their families back home. It pained Logan to see the little boys sitting so politely, napkins in laps, hands crossed, waiting to be served. He knew Jacob was hard on them. Father had high standards and ensured they were met. Discipline. Honor. Order.

  The boys needed to be strong while they were still able to cling onto their youth. He wasn’t sure why, but warlocks aged prematurely. This had its drawbacks, naturally, but also some benefits. For instance, a five-year-old boy possessed the poise to go to a boarding school away from home; a twelve-year-old could draw energy from the moon that only someone of Crimson ranking could have channeled before the curse.

  Logan guessed it was also why a teenager like himself could breathe underwater, a skill no other warlock in modern times possessed.

  Father expected so much of them, because in warlock society, youth was power. Youth was strength.

  Being a child here at the Academy wasn’t about being coddled, or playing in the sand with buckets the way he’d seen human children interacting with their parents. Being a child was revered.

  For that reason, the house was always tension-filled, never at ease. Once a month, the one woman in the household—who was replaced every few months when she got sick of working for Father (or, more likely, he ran out of patience with her)—presented the boys with a traditional “good old-fashioned American breakfast.”

  Father kept a woman on staff to serve as a maternal figure for the homesick boys, and to create a sense of familiarity for later in life, when they chose to marry a human woman. (Logan resented Father’s insistence they refer to this hired stranger as “Mother,” but when Jacob was around, it wasn’t optional.)

  This latest Mother, a human woman with a heart and body as soft as pie dough, scooped a large helping of flapjacks and bacon onto his plate. Compared to his usual bland breakfast of oatmeal, wheatgrass shots and egg whites, the buttermilk pancakes and crisp bacon smelled divine.

  “Good morning, Logan,” she said.

  “Good morning, Mother.”

  “Call me Maggie,” she whispered.

  “Ah, right. No Jacob. Good morning, Maggie. So where is he anyway?”

  “He took the jet to New York this morning.”

  Unbeknownst to the witches in the Congression, Father secretly owned one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the United States, Hemlox, Inc. He wasn’t transparent about the product, but Logan got the feeling it had something to do with Father’s rapid aging. Lately he’d become more vocal, ranting about the witches and the unfair advantage they had over the warlocks. When he returned from a business trip, the boys avoided him even more than usual.

  “When will he get back?” Logan asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Maggie said. “But I doubt it will be today.”

  Cool relief flooded Logan’s body. So he really did have a day off.

  “How is training going?” Maggie asked. “The Gleaning is coming up so soon.”

  “Pretty well.”

  “I’m worried for you,” she said quietly, resting her hand on his shoulder. “Sounds like this group of young witches is especially talented.”

  If Father were here, Maggie never would’ve had the nerve to talk about the witches, not even under her breath.

  “Where’d you hear that?” Logan asked.

  “I hear things. And sometimes Jacob forgets to clear my memory of them.”

  Maggie was especially cunning for a human. If Jacob knew she was paying so much attention, she’d be out of here. Or worse. Maybe he could use her as a spy. Logan quickly dismissed the paranoid thought.

  “What did you hear specifically?” he pressed.

  “I can just tell he’s fretting over it. And his brush has been full of hair.”

  Logan’s stomach turned at this intimate observation. As far as he knew, the “Mothers” had separate bedrooms, but the whole situation was bizarre. He remembered far too clearly a young “Mother,” maybe twenty-five, whom Jacob had had a special fondness for. One night Logan heard him screaming at her, accusing her of being a succubus, a female demon infiltrating his home to destroy him.

  After that, the Congression ruled that the Academy’s housemothers must be at least middle-aged, and that Jacob refrain from having any sort of “special” relationship with any of them.

  Despite her kindness, Logan felt relieved when Maggie shuffled off to the next table.

  “Hey, where’d you take off to last night?” his best friend Chance asked, wiping his mouth with a napkin. “I looked for you in the barn after dinner. You weren’t there.” He eyed Logan intently, waiting for his answer.

  Chance had arrived at the Academy after Hurricane Katrina wrecked his home coven. He was an especially talented young Voudoun priest—more popularly known by its vernacular Voodoo—and was widely known throughout the Spellspinner community as a warlock to watch, as he had a rather unique relationship with loa, the god-spirits.

  Father had recruited him hard, tempting him with everything Melas and the Academy had to offer: first-class gym, access to medieval weaponry, and one of the best ancient libraries in the world. And—to top them all—the magic ring of Solstice Stones themselves, the most powerful conduit to
otherworldly powers in the Western Hemisphere.

  Since he’d started later in life than the rest of the boys, Chance wasn’t as habituated to Father’s rules, or as threatened by him. In fact, he didn’t seem that impressed at all. He found the Academy’s food “tasteless” and missed his Voudoun family.

  For those reasons, at first, Logan was drawn to him: Chance offered a fresh perspective Logan hadn’t understood before.

  Logan never lied to Chance. “I’ll tell you later,” he said.

  Chance nodded. “So glad You-Know-Who isn’t around today.”

  “Yeah, no kidding.”

  “Wonder if there’s any credence to what Maggie just said—a specially talented group of witches?”

  “I don’t know. I assume they are all talented.” Chance’s comment was met with strange looks from the other boys at the table. “I mean, they are training to fight us. They have to be somewhat capable, right?”

  In reply, Jude, an English guy whose crisp accent added a false air of civility to his voice, made a crude crack about the witches, which caused Logan’s hackles to rise. Often mistaken for someone with manners, Jude sucked up to Father and the Congression whenever he could.

  Jude wore his uniforms perfectly pressed, and his face always beamed with confidence. But for all his outward gentility—for instance, even on dress down day, Jude came to breakfast clad in Burberry London, from his sculpted hair right down to his shiny loafers—Logan knew Jude was one of the most dangerous warlocks around.

  “What do you know about witches?” Logan asked sarcastically.

  “Some.” Jude rested his chin on his palm. “Lean in, brothers. Last week I happened to be passing by the exterior door of the Master’s office. He was going on about a witch to watch out for. A huge threat apparently—he was quite worked up about it, really.”

  “Did he mention a name at all?”

  Jude shrugged, sipping his orange juice and tapping the corners of his mouth with his folded linen napkin. “No. Not that I could decipher. But when he returns, I’m planning to find out more. And you gentlemen might consider keeping your ears open, too.”

  After breakfast, as Chance and Logan headed toward the Solstice Stones, Logan checked over his shoulder, clearing his mind to make sure no one was Listening.

  The memory was still so vivid. He’d been practicing in the grove alone. The fog had rolled in pretty quickly, which was strange, so Logan had ducked his head through his black t-shirt and pulled it down over his sweaty chest. Suddenly, a rattlesnake had landed in the dirt in front of him. Dead. Then he’d heard his hawk scream. Why would Clay gift him a rattlesnake? When Logan peered outside the protected glen, the air smelled like rinsed metal and something else.

  Flowers.

  Eucalyptus branches curled down from the sky like serpents’ tongues. The fog was so thick he could barely see. Clay, his red-tail, landed with a pinch on his shoulder. “Hey, boy,” Logan said. “What’s going on?”

  The hawk cocked his eye tellingly.

  “Magic, eh? What made the fog roll in?”

  The bird swooped out of the grove, tempting Logan to follow.

  Suddenly, out near the cliff, the fog cleared. Fragrance flooded the wet, white air. A girl about his age was curled on the ground like a sleeping child. Logan approached, hand resting on his weapon. Sheets of white-blond hair spilled over her shoulders like new-fallen snow. Her cheeks were flushed, maybe from the cold, maybe from her dreams.

  Logan surveyed the tops of dried hills. Nobody. Did she come up here alone?

  Then he noticed a silver chain around her neck bearing a single tear-shaped stone. When his eyes caught its indigo light, the amulet pulsed. Logan peered closer.

  No. It couldn’t be.

  The amulet looked exactly like his own.

  “You sure she was a witch??” Chance asked, wide-eyed, when Logan finished his story.

  “Well, there was the amulet. And then when Father caught me sneaking in late, he said he could smell flowers. And why would a human girl be naïve enough to take a nap so close to our boundaries?”

  “In that same vein, why would a witch? That seems incredibly dangerous.”

  “True.”

  “Unless she was a spy. And it was a trap.”

  “It could have been. I have no idea. But I need to find out about her necklace. I mean, why would she be wearing one so similar to mine?”

  “Tread lightly, yo. You aren’t allowed to meet a witch in any context outside the Stones.”

  “I know. But Chance, this is huge. This could lead to answers about my real parents.”

  “Can you wait until after the competition to start digging around? I think, after, the Master will be more chill, and if you get caught, the punishment wouldn’t be as extreme.”

  “I’m not sure. I mean, that’s still a ways off.”

  “Listen, Lo, I see that look in your eyes and I’m not liking it. I haven’t heard of a witch and a warlock meeting up outside of the Stones in my life…” He stopped and tugged on a piece of his hair. “Except for this warlock Hunter.”

  “Hunter?”

  “He was a friend of one of my Voudon Priest buddies.”

  “I haven’t heard of him.”

  Chance put his hand on Logan’s shoulder and lowered his voice.

  Logan followed Chance down a trail and walked quietly for several hundred yards before stopping in a clearing of coastal sagebrush. Chance leaned back against a tree.

  Storytime.

  “So they attended the academy at the same time. This guy Hunter bragged about hooking up with a witch. His friends didn’t really believe him, not at first, I mean that is unheard of, it’s treachery and all, but he swore. He claimed they would meet up out here in the forest in some glen and Hunter was completely enchanted by her. He spoke of her long red hair, her fire-green eyes. How he felt stronger and happier in her presence, all this gooey romantic crap.” Chance squatted in the dirt, grabbed fistfuls of earth into his closed hands, deepened his voice. “They planned to run off together. But the headmaster caught him and you can guess how this ends. Not good at all, yo.” Some of the dirt slipped between Chance’s fingers. Logan watched it drift onto the pebbles in the undergrowth like acid rain.

  “The headmaster—it wasn’t Jacob then—assumed he’d been bewitched and made him go through that exorcism that Jacob’s often threatened us about. Warlocks, head warlocks, flew into Melas from the islands and Asia and shizz. Hunter was locked away in the dungeon. His friends weren’t allowed to see him. The Master claimed he was undergoing a ‘treatment’ and that he was fine and safe but this had to be done for his own good. A group of friends got so worried one night they snuck down there and tried to find him but everything was locked up tight.”

  Chance rubbed his face with both of his hands.

  “What?”

  “Screams. Coming from down there. It was Hunter.”

  “What kinds of screams?”

  Logan braced himself for the answer. He could tell by Chance’s haunted face he didn’t want to say it, never mind relive it again.

  “My friend said they tortured him, Logan. That he sounded like an animal caught in a trap.”

  Logan shook his head. A sliver of sun peeked through the forest, making the dust in the air appear effervescent. He watched the dirt float slowly down. Watched Chance empty the rest of the dirt from his clamped hands then rub his hands together wiping his hands clean of it.

  “What rank was Hunter?” Logan asked finally. Something like “How sad” or “Man, that sucks” might be a more appropriate response. But in this moment Logan had more practical questions to ask before Chance got tired of the conversation.

  “Cerulean. Why?”

  “Huh,” Logan said thoughtfully.

  “Huh? That’s your reaction to DUNGEON TORTURE? Two words, bro: cautionary tale! Besides…”

  Logan cut him off. “What happened to the girl?”

  Chance shrugged, but he looked like he knew
and just didn’t want to talk about it. “Don’t know for sure. Doubt her outcome was good.”

  “What happened to Hunter? After.”

  “Apparently the headmaster claimed he was sent abroad to study, but rumor was he was banished to the island that used to be a leper colony. They use it now for wayward Spellspinners. And by 'wayward’ they of course mean those of us who lose in the Gleaning.”

  “I guess if you have to be banished, Hawaii’s not such a bad spot,” Logan remarked.

  “I never said Hawaii. Were you even listening to me? If he’s there he’s imprisoned for treason. In a leper colony. That doesn’t exactly spell Mele Kalikimaka to me.”

  “That means Merry Christmas.”

  “Whatever. Listen dude, when you get to thinking about this witch, flash your mind on that dungeon and ask yourself, is this where I’d like to spend my time instead of hanging with my buddy Chance?”

  Logan slowly squatted down to the earth, scratching his back against the euca tree. “You make a valid point.”

  “So drop this thing, okay?”

  Spreading his legs out in front of him Logan closed his eyes, listening to the rustling leaves.

  When he opened his eyes, Chance was staring at him with a horrified expression. “Dude. You are so gone. Look at your face!”

  “I can’t see my face. What does it look like?” he tried to joke.

  Chance bounced to his feet and pointed at him. “She bewitched you!”

  Logan wasn’t impressed. “Please. I’m a Cerulean. I’m a warlock. I’m beyond that kind of vulnerability…besides she was sleeping. Not spellspinning.”

  Chance started pacing. “How do you know? Maybe their leader found out where you’d be and she staged the whole thing?”

  “You’re paranoid. And, you know—Jacob may be a lot of things, but he wouldn’t condone torture against his own kind. I’m sure your friend wasn’t spinning a tale, but rumors have a way of getting exaggerated over time. Plus that was a long time ago, right?”