Feral Magic

by Nicolette Jinks

“Eleven...twelve...thirteen...”

  I bolted upright in a coughing fit, spitting up red wine onto the ground and over my shirt, making a mess all over my numb hands and arms. Sputtering, I had a feeling that a fair deal of wine made its way into my lungs as well as into my stomach. I cleaned my face with my shirt.

  My head throbbed and I couldn’t stop gasping for breath. Once I calmed, I crawled to my knees and blinked in the light, surveying the spook house in front of me, its aged shingles hanging to the roof by a nail, its turret supported by toothpick columns attached to the porch, its wall that had English Ivy instead of wood siding. The front gate squealed behind me when the wind pushed it. And there, at the foot of the ivy, was the garden gate where the man had talked to me. I was in the same place, but on the other side of the fence.

  “Railey?”

  She did not answer. She could not answer. I fought back a memory of buying ice cream with her as per our usual celebration ritual; her favorite flavor was bubblegum, mine was cookies and cream. I bought ice cream with her and no one else, at first I thought it was childish and a little embarrassing to be buying two ice cream cones, and later it was a way for me to cling to her. The last time we had done it was Sunday, just because I had a feeling about it, and I enjoyed watching her rendered to nothing but a floating, dripping ice cream cone that caused a few bike crashes and many excited dogs. She did not drop it, she refused to the same way that runners refuse to drop the Olympic torch.

  And now she was part of the shadow dragon.

  I stopped my panicked gasps and took in a long, shaking breath in the afternoon sun. In the tree watered by the neighbor’s sprinklers, a black songbird burst into a solo. As I went searching for a shovel, which I found against the fence in the neighbor’s yard, I pondered my death and new life. Had I not hacked up my lungs to expel the wine, I would have dismissed my conversation with Death as a hallucination, something to be forgotten. But, when that ghost by the garden gate touched my head, he left an impression I could not shake no matter how hard I tried. It was like he left memories, and now that I was alive again, I could not shake them. Death had killed me, and then brought me back. But why? Was it an initiation for all agents, or was I special because I had been cursed by a griffon and only death could cure it?

  I stood next to the garden gate and looked up at the climbing roses struggling to survive past the rains of spring and into the dry heat, then I started to dig. If what I saw was no hallucination, I would find one or more of those ceremonial bones buried here. It was the same spot that Railey had been digging before she died, and the thought sent shivers down my spine, but I kept on digging, eager to hit and get before Gregor decided to check on this house. About two feet down, I found what looked like a stick. Bending down, I scraped away the soil using a rock until I pried the bone loose. Tapping it against the ground, I shed the layer of dirt and saw the carvings; averting my eyes, I did not read the symbols but took care to notice the style of them. It was the same style as the ones that had been in Gregor’s book.

  There were more. This one was a femur, and there should be another femur, two humerus, and a skull hidden around on the property relatively close. I could waste a lot of time digging, and I did not think that my energy reserves were going to last long enough for me to be making mistakes. Perhaps it was the task before me, but I had aches and chills like I was going to be ill. I decided to trust my intuition, and rushed to find the other bones.

  There was a dimple in the middle of the lawn that I thought looked suspicious, so I dug that up and was rewarded with one humerus. It did not feel very happy to be found, so I put it with the femur and kept searching. I wandered on the property for a few minutes, then, feeling a cold draft from underneath the steps onto the porch, I laid on my belly and pulled out several sticks, a dead raccoon, and finally a second femur. This one made me shudder to even touch; I dropped it with the rest and wiped my hands off on my pants as though I could get rid of bone dust that easily.

  By now I swore everyone and everything was watching me, ready to call the police or Gregor, or even the Magic Constable. What would I say if the police showed up? Could I outrun Gregor a second time? And I doubted the Magic Constable would be much more forgiving than Gregor...I was trespassing for real, and intentionally this time.

  I rushed to find the other two, and was not so overjoyed when I saw them together in the bush. They radiated nervousness and fear, and I honestly thought that should I touch them, they would bite. Except that they couldn’t. Nor could they actually harm a living person, I reminded myself as I picked them up and deposited them with the rest.

  I couldn’t dispose of them fast enough, and I wrecked my brain for ideas about what to do to neutralize them. Nothing came to mind at first. Not for a long time, actually, but my unease at being discovered made me act. Shaking, I drew a circle in the soft dirt around the bones, and then I drew some symbols I remembered Father making years ago while I was tagging along during a Persian possession plague. I proved to be the only reliable one during the case due to the way my curse refused to allow magic to flow into me. He had only shown me the symbols once, but I inherited his knack for not needing to be shown twice.

  The bones clattered together, knocking dirt loose, blood seeping from their carvings, then came a piercing whistle that drove needles into my ears. Gritting my teeth, I continued my symbols and the closer I got to the end, the louder they became until I heard five distinct human screams coming from them. Ignoring the pleading was the worst part as I sealed the circle with the seventh and final symbol, noticing against my better judgment that their blood filled the trench encircling them. I lifted my finger, and the shrieking stopped.

  The bones shriveled, becoming smaller and smaller, collapsing in on themselves, drained of their magic and cut off from the spell they had been serving. They dried up, becoming like burnt pages crumbled up together, and a brisk wind kicked them away, taking them up into the air and swirling them until there was nothing left.

  Fatigued and feeling several years older, I stood up and held the compass in front of me, thinking of the next place that the man had left imprinted on me. I would track down all the bones; there were six more houses, and I was determined to cut off the dragon’s energy supply. It might be too late already, but it would make a difference in a complex spell that needed every step to go correctly.

  My compass needle twirled in a circle, going faster and faster until the pointer was a blur that emitted light and a tiny buzzing sound. Wind moved around me, giving my quivering muscles strength, spiraling around me, and taking me to the next place.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Magic is a strange, wild breast that some claim can be harnessed and used as a means to an end, but little is further from the truth. Magic is no beast, it just is, and it has a will and a mind all its own; if one tries to enslave it, they will only succeed for a short time before it rises up and takes back its brethren. Sorcerers don’t simply use magic, they are in turn used by it, and like any relationship it takes time and experience to strike a balance. Most sorcerers gain momentum over years, as their magic grows with them. If even a young sorcerer is cut off from that magic, they go into shock. At the age of eleven, my magic was ripped from me, and I nearly died. I should have died. Though I was not a powerful sorcerer, I was in constant contact with it in a way that only those several times my age could stand to be. I did not notice magic until it was gone. It was another sense.

  I did not notice when it returned to me. I did not notice that sometime between the third house and the seventh, I had gone feral.

  Time had no meaning to me, aside from the time it took me to seek out the ceremonial bones, gather them together, and draw symbols to terminate them. Time was getting out of there before my pursuers (Gregor Cole, his servants, and law enforcement) caught up to me—and that time grew slimmer and slimmer with each hit. On the seventh house, I killed the bones in record time, but a gnawing in my gut drove me to the neighbor’s house, as these bo
ne-houses drove out an residences as well as food.

  Once inside the neighbor’s, I sensed the man tending to his baby, the wife newly gone in the car. I knew better than to harm them. Thinking to grab the loaf of bread off the counter, I instead grabbed the chuck roast out of their crock pot and darted out the door as the man called, “Honey? Did you forget something?”

  My body rushed with the thrill of stealing, and I ran away into the shrubs to eat. Only when my hunger was placated—how long had it been since I last ate? Last slept? I did not know—did I look down at my meal, and discover that it was completely raw but for a faint browning on the bottom. Throwing the meat away, I emptied my stomach right there in the bushes.

  Shaking and wiping my mouth with the shirt I suddenly noticed was coated in dirt, blood, ash, and who knew what else. I realized what had happened.

  I had been living off magic, purely off magic and nothing else, and it had taken me in return. I could not remember anything past the first two houses, and that sent cold chills down my back. Cutting myself off from leaning on magic again, trinkets included, I balled up my soiled shirt and put it in a trash can, glad that I had decided to put on a tank top however many days ago it was.

  I should talk to Trish, I knew, but I felt like I had gone on a grave digging and robbery spree and I wanted a shower before talking to her. Even minus my outer shirt, I looked very much like the sort of woman who would go postal just for being smiled at.

  Not daring to use my compass again—it had scratches up and down its face and had a singe mark on it now—I found the nearest bus stop and boarded it. “Can you drop me off at the nearest hotel?” I asked the driver.

  The portly man grunted and motioned that I should stand close to him. I did, and the other passengers gave me nervous glances and scooted away. That did not surprise me, but they made me more and more uneasy and I was not sure why until I snared a crumpled newspaper off the floor on the way out of the buss.

  There was my picture in the right-hand column, front page of the local section. I was hunched in a window, my mouth posed in what must have been a hiss, eyes as crazed as a cat’s, accompanied by the words, “Off-Med Schizo Terrorizes Residences, Disturbs Cemetery.”

  I wanted a shower and change of clothes very, very badly all of a sudden. And a haircut. Maybe a new color. And anything else I could think of to alter my appearance so I did not resemble that wild woman in the paper. Sighing, I realized I would need to make some false trails to deter investigators of both the normal and sorcering kind. First, to get cleaned up.

  Two hours later, I had a room, got cleaned up, dried my hair and pulled it up, and purchased a new set of clothes completely out of my style, a flirty red dress with strappy heels. I only had to dress like this until I put the investigators on the wrong trail, I told myself. I even wore mascara and lipstick. Odd as it was, my jewelery fit right in with this new style, giving it an eclectic twist I was tempted to wear them, but I bought a clutch to put my trinkets in, just in case they would be recognized.

  Following magic is a skill that only certain people possess, people called seekers, and most advice for escaping these seekers is entirely wrong propaganda spread by the seekers to make their jobs easier. My parents knew the right way to escape them, and I learned their tricks during my teenaged years. The true way to lose a seeker was to use no magic at all, just like not using cards or checks while on the run. I checked up on all my trinkets and discovered that at some point I had recorded myself running away using the citrine ring. The citrine ring was one of my favorite trinkets, and it replayed a very convincing illusion of the most recent recording. I used it often with the invisibility ring, a plain silver band that needed only to be worn to be effective. During this time, I went to several places and made trails, allowing people to see the illusion-me run away, only to disappear. Usually I timed it right so it would run around a corner or through a crowd, but there was once the recording cut off in midair. To be cautious, I would cloak myself with the invisibility ring while doing this.

  After spreading around a few trinket-spells in the area, I decided I had done what I could and went to get a real dinner, staying near my hotel room. Choosing one of the busier restaurants that had outdoor sitting, I managed to coax the host to seat me, offering that I would share the table if another lone diner or two showed up. He seated me outside beneath old-timey lanterns that radiated heat, not that the sea breeze bothered me. I ordered water, soup, and steak and was mulling over why I wanted nothing to do with the basket of bread sticks in front of me by the time the host brought out two men to the table. They had weary eyes and sat heavily in the chairs though they smiled at me. The taller man started to give a bow but stopped, then said, “Do you mind if we share a table?”

  “By all means,” I said and motioned to the empty chairs across from me on the round table. The shorter man gave the fourth chair to a table of five, then scooted the other two so I would have space to myself. I observed them out of the corner of my eye as they situated themselves.

  The shorter man wore a blue uniform with brass buttons, though he had a glamour magic on it to make it look like a button-down and jeans. A handlebar mustache swept from his bulldog jawline and curled twice while his head shone with bare skin. Magic rolled off of him, a slow boil that showed he had been using a good deal of it lately; it felt cool and orderly, leaving the people around him more at ease and trusting. He was a Constable. I should be fine so long as I did not arouse his suspicions.

  If the Constable looked like a bulldog, the man next to him looked like a lion. Long, wavy locks fell about his shoulders in every shade of red possible, blending to look natural though not entirely human. His eyes were the same, almost a golden color with bits of green speckled throughout, brown rims making him appear like he had hazel eyes. While not a massive man, he was proportioned so he seemed taller than he really was, and depending on his expression, the man could be either warm and welcoming or downright threatening. Constables never left their territory without a protector, and my bet was this was him. The lion like man wore a black cotton button-down and dark pants. The three of us talked about nothing for a few minutes, they ordered—the Constable fish and chips, the protector the same steak and soup that I had ordered. It was to the point in the conversation where it was getting awkward to talk without names, and much too awkward to stop altogether.

  “I am Mordon, and this is Barnes,” the protector said, and I felt a wave of power behind the names. While most sorcerers refused to provide real names for fear of them being used against them, the more potent people used their real names freely without concern. I, however, was concerned about my name—not only the magical aspect, but also for fear that they had discovered my real name with the investigation.

  “My name’s Hope,” I said, and it wasn’t a lie. Middle names counted. I avoided eye contact; it had a certain power to it, formed a bond that could never be reversed. It was said you would expose your soul to the other person, and they to you, but I could not claim any firsthand knowledge on the subject, nor did I want to find out.

  Night crowds came and went, browsing the windows and talking with cups in their hands, some people went to stand in line for our restaurant, others kept moving. But a griffon disguised as a great dane caught my eye, and with him two other people, walking back and forth as though searching for something...or someone.

  “What are you looking at?” asked Mordon, starting to turn to look over his shoulder.

  I smiled and gave a little shrug, “Just watching the crowd and thinking.”

  “Ah,” said Mordon, smiling to cover embarrassment over being jumpy.

  Barnes spoke, a gravelly voice with a Victorian lilt, “What do you do, Miss Hope?”

  “I help families sort out issues,” I said. “Though I’m taking a break from it for a little while to spend some time by myself. And you two?”

  “Law enforcement,” said Barnes, ripping into the bread sticks when he noticed that no one else was touc
hing them.

  “Off duty?”

  Barnes snorted and twitched his mustache, “Not hardly. Never had a case take so long.”

  “Oh?”

  Mordon gave Barnes a shake of the head, but Barnes ignored him, instead taking the opportunity to rant a rant that Mordon seemed to have heard several times, “Right when we get close, bam! our suspect disappears. No rhyme nor method to the next place, the victims are all a bunch of snobby aristocrats or so blindly ignorant they wouldn’t know if an elephant flew over the moon and squished their grandma.”

  “I hope you’ve had a night off,” I said, wanting to know how long I had been feral, wishing that the article had been more than a stub detailing the public to report strange sightings to the nearest policeman.

  “Not for two days, never know when that feral is going to strike next, gotta get ‘er into a doctor soon,” he grumbled. A feral was a term for a sorcerer who lost control of their magic and was subject to its whims entirely. My experience was nearly textbook except that I had a clear goal, and once that goal achieved, I seized control of myself again. I needed to be careful when I discovered what the next step was to free Railey so I did not go feral again. History was against me coming out of it again.