Champagne, Misfits, and Other Shady Magic (Dowser 7)

by Meghan Ciana Doidge

  “Called away from the engagement party?”

  “Yes. Yazi invited me to come along. But then Pearl had words with him about my almost missing the party in the first place.”

  I laughed at the idea of my father going toe-to-toe with my grandmother and trying to justify Warner leaving so soon after just arriving. Still, the guardians were off saving the world from disaster while I complained about itchy feet. But I quashed the thought before its critical tone could take hold of me.

  “Needless to say …” Warner smiled tightly. “Yazi graciously suggested I stay.”

  “I imagine he did.”

  A comforting silence settled between us. And for the briefest of moments, I managed to enjoy the warmth of Warner’s hand in mine and the feel of my silk skirt shifting around my knees as we slowly traversed the sidewalk.

  Then the rest of Warner’s comments about ‘power surges’ sank in. “Power surges at fortified places? Such as the tomb of the phoenix?”

  “No,” he said. “More like the dimensional pocket we found within the lighthouse.” He was referring to Hope Town in the Bahamas, where I had collected the first instrument of assassination for the treasure keeper. And where we had inadvertently freed Shailaja in the process.

  “Sorcerer constructed?”

  “No, all dragon wrought. The dysfunctional magic appeared to be drawing undesirables.”

  “Like what? Demons? And the elf with the blade that cut you so badly?”

  Warner nodded, but he didn’t elaborate. Though he appeared more thoughtful than secretive.

  We reached the corner at Macdonald. From there, turning left would circle us back toward Gran’s, while continuing straight would eventually lead to the bakery.

  “Let’s set a date,” I said. “For the wedding.”

  “What about tomorrow?”

  I laughed. “That doesn’t give me much time to plan.”

  “But it’ll be done your way, not your grandmother’s.”

  “She had the engagement party. The wedding is ours.”

  “I will walk down the aisle wherever and whenever you wish.”

  “How about December 21st?”

  Warner grinned, brushing a kiss across my knuckles. “The winter solstice it is. Shall we book a church? Or find a secluded beach?”

  I shook my head. “I’m not sure yet. I just … I just want to marry you. However we decide. No uninvited guests, no securing of alliances. Just you and me and everyone who truly matters to us.”

  He tugged me toward him, pressing his lips to mine. I wrapped my arms around him, holding us within the moment for another soft, lingering kiss.

  “Speaking of uninvited guests,” he murmured. “I wasn’t quite sure how to refuse Suanmi when she demanded that Yazi and I escort her and Drake to the party. In fact, I’m fairly certain that Haoxin and the healer were planning to show up as well. They must have been called away.”

  “I don’t want to talk about guardians right now.” I smiled teasingly. “And I don’t want to go back to the party.”

  “Shall we run away together?”

  “Yes. Straight home.”

  “And into bed?”

  “What do you think? You still owe me two more orgasms. That’s one of your rules, isn’t it? That I get three to your one?”

  Warner threw his head back and laughed.

  I smiled, letting his unbridled joy carry me all the way out of my head. Whatever was really going on around me would soon reveal itself. And it wasn’t likely to do so any quicker just because I was obsessing about it.

  Maybe, just maybe, we would recast the grid at midnight and everything would settle. The rain would come and clear away the smoke. And I could focus on opening the bakery in Whistler, and on getting married.

  By unspoken agreement, Kandy met Warner and me in the bakery kitchen about twenty minutes before midnight. All three of us had swapped our finery for jeans and T-shirts, but Kandy and I hadn’t washed off our makeup yet. With the combination of her thick eyeliner, gold cuffs, and a plain black T-shirt and jeans, Kandy looked seriously badass.

  Of course, the cake crumbs across her chest kind of ruined the image.

  “Where did you get the cupcakes?” I asked, hopeful that there were more.

  “All gone now,” she said, still chewing her way through the last bite. Then she reached down to grab the purple dinosaur backpack resting at her feet. “I had to occupy myself somehow. You, Warner, and Kett completely abandoned me at the party.”

  “At the party where there was copious food, you mean?”

  I opened the back door and wandered out into the dark alley.

  Warner chuckled quietly to himself, tucking his hands into his front pockets while he trailed behind Kandy and me onto Yew Street and down the hill.

  “Still. Abandoned, dowser. Not cool.”

  “Where did Kett go?” I asked.

  Kandy snorted, displeased. “Off with you-know-who. Times two.”

  At the crest of the hill, I paused to let a car pass, gazing out at the dark mountains. The sky was a mixture of deep blue and dark gray, not a hint of light remaining. “To meet up with Jasmine, maybe,” I murmured, stepping off the curb and continuing down the hill toward the beach.

  “Jasmine?” Warner asked.

  “Kett’s new vampire baby,” Kandy said. “Wisteria Fairchild’s cousin.”

  “What?! The vampire turned a witch?”

  “He had permission,” I said mildly. I eyed Kandy, who was grinning to herself with much satisfaction. “Are you going to hold it against him for long?”

  She shrugged. “I might.”

  I shook my head, glancing back over my shoulder at Warner. “A lot’s been revealed in the last twenty-four hours. A lot of little things. Little annoying things.”

  He rubbed the back of his neck. “It felt like more than a day for me.”

  “Tell me about it,” Kandy grumbled. Then she wove her arm through mine and leaned her head against my shoulder. The werewolf really wasn’t a fan of change, or of being out of control.

  “I’m sorry we all abandoned you at the party,” I said.

  “Whatever. I was doing nothing but fending witches off anyway. Once you go guardian, you don’t go back.”

  Warner sputtered out a laugh from behind us. I couldn’t help but chuckle myself, even though I seriously hoped that Kandy wasn’t serious about pursuing the fire breather.

  As we stepped off the curb, crossing West Second Avenue, one of the puffy spikes on Kandy’s backpack pressed against my side.

  “Seriously, wolf,” I said. “What the hell is up with the backpack?”

  She huffed. “You won’t like it.”

  “Well, I’m not sure it suits you. But if you like it, then fine.”

  “I was … Drake gave it to me. From Chi Wen.”

  I paused, looking at her in the light of the overhead streetlamp — to see if she was serious. “Chi Wen?”

  “Yeah. You know, like with the cuffs.” Kandy raised her arms, and magic glistened across the diamonds embedded in the gold of her rune-carved cuffs.

  “The far seer asked you to wear this hideous backpack?” Warner asked doubtfully. “And he gave it to Drake to deliver it?”

  “Yeah,” Kandy said, getting testy. “So?”

  “What exactly did Drake say?” I asked.

  “He said, ‘The far seer would like to see you wearing this backpack.’ I assumed it was probably only necessary when I was with you, dowser. Since you’re the one who gets in all the trouble.”

  I glanced over at Warner, struggling and failing to quash my grin as I figured out what was going on.

  Warner threw back his head and started laughing.

  “What?” Kandy cried.

  Giggling myself, I said, “ ‘The far seer would like to see you wearing it.’ ‘See,’ not ‘sees.’ Not ‘The far seer sees you wearing this backpack.’ ”

  Kandy glowered, thinking fiercely. Then she snarled. “Asshole. Thinks he
can prank me, does he?”

  “Who?” Warner asked, still chuckling. “Drake or Chi Wen?”

  “Either one,” Kandy snarled. “It’s so on now.”

  “Didn’t you start it?” I asked. “With the T-shirt? The one with the three bananas that you made Chi Wen wear?”

  “That was punishment.” Kandy pointed at me. “And you stay out of it, dowser.”

  I raised my hands in surrender.

  Kandy shook her head, still peeved. Then she checked the time on her phone as we passed a closed Starbucks on the corner of Yew and Cornwall. “Enough dillydallying, my beauties. Time to run freely.”

  And with that pronouncement, she darted across the street against the walk light, heading into the darkened park beyond.

  Warner laughed, swept me forward into a blistering kiss, then took off after the wolf.

  Apparently, we were jogging the rest of the way.

  Burgundy was already waiting at the grassy park off Ogden Street in Kits Point. Warner, Kandy, and I strolled across the short brown grass at exactly ten minutes before midnight.

  The witch had pulled back her blue-streaked brown hair into a loose bun, and was wearing jeans paired with a dark-blue hoodie. She settled her gaze on me and didn’t look away. And it wasn’t because she found me the most reassuring. She was nervous, repetitively petting a smooth rock about the size of her palm.

  “Burgundy.” I smiled.

  She bobbed her head, glancing briefly toward Warner and Kandy. Neither offered a greeting, so she returned her gaze to me. Her feet were already bare, her socks and shoes neatly tucked beside a small satchel in a crook of the large roots of a chestnut tree about a dozen feet away. Since she was standing practically on top of the anchor point, she’d presumably been walking around and feeling for its energy. Her own green-watermelon magic flickered around her hands.

  To our far right, the Maritime Museum was a large, peaked shadow on the edge of the shoreline, with the lights of the city spreading beyond the beach across the water.

  Kandy pressed the crumpled piece of paper containing the runes I was supposed to reuse into my hand. Then she and Warner peeled off in separate directions, prowling the edges of the park.

  “We’re going to take down the grid in a couple of minutes,” I said. “Then you’ll step in and take my place.”

  Burgundy swallowed. “Yes. Scarlett … your mom called me.”

  “I have to replicate the runes I used.”

  Burgundy stepped forward onto the grass, leaving the paved seawall open for me to chalk. Behind the junior witch, the lights of the city blazed against the deep blue of the mountains. A quarter moon had made an appearance over the bay, and the wind coming off the water informed me that it was definitely going to rain tomorrow.

  Finally.

  “I brought water,” Burgundy said, babbling a little as she hustled over to grab a bottle from her bag. “And a drying spell. So I can chalk a simple circle in place of yours. If I move quickly enough, the drying spell should fade and not affect the grid casting. But I was worried about chalking a circle on a wet surface.”

  “Okay. Sounds good.” I crouched down, feeling the magic of the grid where I’d anchored it to the concrete. Retrieving the pink chalk from my satchel, I set out to carefully replicate the symbols my mother and Gran had fought over, including the extra flourish on the one that looked like a triangle with feet.

  Burgundy watched my every stroke, turning the rock over and over in her hands.

  “Is that a focal stone?” I asked, making conversation because the night was dark, Warner and Kandy had wandered far, and the witch was nervous.

  “Oh. This?” Burgundy sounded surprised that I had noticed the stone.

  I glanced up. Her face was deeply shadowed, but I could see a starburst of her blue witch magic softly glowing around each of her irises.

  “Right. Dowser,” she murmured, curling her toes in the grass. “Yes. I’ve lived in the same place my entire life so far. In Dunbar. Though I was thinking of moving into residence at UBC. And, um, Scarlett … your mom … thought that a touchstone might help me access my, um, latent magic.”

  I nodded, still chalking the runes. “I met a witch in Scotland once who worked with a set of stones like that. Creating circles and such.”

  “For casting?” Burgundy had gone a little breathless. “Like instead of chalk?”

  “Yeah. She was waiting behind a shield spell when we met.”

  “Invisible?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you saw her?”

  “Tasted. But then, it’s difficult to hide from me, and she was acting contrary to protocol.”

  Burgundy thought about that for a while. I double-checked the runes I’d chalked.

  “She was probably full-blood,” the junior witch finally whispered.

  I straightened, stepping into the circle of pink runes. “We all have different talents. And not all magic is tied to ancestry.”

  Kandy appeared out of nowhere beside Burgundy, who squeaked but held her ground.

  “Ready, dowser?”

  “I’m standing, aren’t I?” I flashed a saucy grin at my werewolf BFF.

  “But you’re wearing things you shouldn’t be.”

  Burgundy frowned, first confused, then concerned — like she was thinking that Kandy meant my clothing, rather than my necklace and knife.

  “I’m pretty certain that breaking the grid is different from calling it forth.”

  Kandy sniffed, glancing at her phone. “Thirty seconds.”

  Burgundy tucked her focal stone in the pocket of her hoodie. Then, juggling the bottle of water, she pulled a piece of white chalk and a small white rock — tasting of my grandmother’s lilac magic — out of her bag.

  At the last second, I reached for the bottle of water, and the witch dropped it into my hand without hesitation. Magic sprang forth under my feet as the other twelve witches activated their individual circles around the city. I responded with a slight push of my will, adding my own magic to the mix with a long, sustained exhalation. My rune-marked circle sealed itself.

  I tasted lilac, strawberry, nutmeg, orange, rosemary, and fresh-baked bread … then the power abated to a simmer that simply tasted of grassy witch magic.

  Before I could become giddy off the energy, I uncapped the bottle and carefully sloshed water over the pink-chalked runes encircling my feet.

  The magic died instantly, severing my connection to the grid. The other witches would wait for Burgundy to take my place, then would reestablish the anchor point.

  I poured out the remainder of the water, pushing the residual pink chalk to the edges of the path. Then I stepped onto the grass.

  Burgundy rushed forward, placing the white rock in the center of the wet area.

  “That’s it?” Kandy asked.

  I shrugged. “I can’t feel the magic anymore. But it isn’t a done deal until Burgundy claims the anchor point for herself.”

  The junior witch pressed a finger to the rock, murmuring something under her breath.

  Nothing happened.

  She moaned nervously. She tried again. Still nothing.

  “Your focal stone,” I whispered, prompting her.

  Burgundy dug the stone out of her pocket. Then, holding it in one hand, she tried to trigger Gran’s premade spell again.

  A small burst of magic flashed out from the white stone on the ground, drying most of the wet path.

  Burgundy muttered excitedly, already stepping forward. Placing her chalk to the concrete, she spun clockwise, forming a perfect circle.

  Kandy grunted in approval as Warner appeared beside me.

  “Where have you been?”

  He flashed a grin at me, then nodded toward the large building that housed the Maritime Museum. “Looking at boats.”

  “You broke into the museum?”

  He shrugged. “They’d left an upstairs window open.”

  Kandy laughed huskily.

  Energy shifted aroun
d Burgundy, stirring her hair and amplifying her watermelon magic.

  “Oh,” she cried, reaching out to the power now coursing through the circle and allowing it to play through her fingers. Her eyes were shining bright blue.

  Standing back from the circle, I could actually see the streams of magic in a way that I hadn’t been able to on the night I cast — emanating out to the left, to the right, as well as straight out through the park. The third stream cut between Kandy and me, just a foot or so away from where I stood.

  Something about that was wrong.

  “Each point links to three others?” I asked.

  Kandy nodded. “They all link to the anchor at Pearl’s, then to whatever points are next to them.”

  “Okay, so …” I gestured from Burgundy along the seawall to my left. “This section anchors to Gran’s directly to the west. And then this …” I gestured to my right, tracing the second stream of magic. “This connects somewhere on Boundary Road on the east edge? Yes?”

  Kandy nodded. “At the base of Second Narrows Bridge.”

  “So what’s the third point?” I traced the beam of magic simmering before me, cutting through the park and the houses of Kits Point. “What is it anchored to?”

  Kandy shook her head, looking confused. She pulled out her phone and a copy of the map she and Gran had slaved over for months.

  Holding my arm aloft and following the path of the third stream of magic, I tried to imagine where it might have been pointing. “There should only be two connecting points for this anchor, right? Not three. Because this is the anchor point east of Gran’s, it doesn’t need to connect separately.”

  “Southlands?” Kandy asked. “That would be Rochelle’s place. Scarlett is anchoring the grid there. Maybe your magic was somehow drawn to your mother’s as well? Except … you should have just severed your connection … I felt the anchor point disconnect.”

  “No.” Dread settled in my belly as I picked up a familiar tenor in the power stream. “Not Southlands.” I met Warner’s shadowed gaze. He was watching me intently. “The bakery. Did I somehow anchor the witches’ grid to the bakery?”

  Kandy shook her head insistently. “Even if that was the case before, that should be canceled out now. Burgundy has reconnected this grid point.”