Cupcakes, Trinkets, and Other Deadly Magic

by Meghan Ciana Doidge

  I hated it when Sienna murmured about magic. A murmur had led to many a close call in our youth. I’d lost my bangs at sixteen because of one of her murmured caveats. It took two months for the skin to regrow on the back of my left hand when I was twenty, also due to a casual warning murmured by Sienna that I didn’t quite catch.

  Why I kept following her into these situations was pure stupidity on my part, but it seemed she always caught me at just the right time. This time, I was angry and needing to prove I wasn’t just worthless garbage to be left on the side of the road.

  Hence, the grime now coating the ass and legs of my second-favorite pair of jeans. The floor was hard packed, but the dirt still rubbed off.

  Sienna had known the location of the door — currently accessed through the bakery’s pantry — which mildly surprised me until I saw the witches circle already inscribed on the floor, about five feet from the eastern wall. It was obvious this wasn’t Sienna’s first spell conducted in the basement. I bit my tongue regarding her practicing magic on her own. Sienna really wasn’t powerful enough to do much damage, so it would be a little petty of me to deny her fun.

  A few older boxes that predated my occupancy were piled on wooden pallets against the north wall, but I didn’t know what they contained. I hadn’t bothered to look very closely. I sat, beneath the glare of the single bare bulb that hung from scary-looking wires. I was at the east side of the circle facing west, fuming about Hudson while Rusty and Sienna set out the candles and other supplies.

  “Sienna, where did you get this spell?”

  Sienna pulled an ancient-looking spellbook from the satchel she wore strung across her body. I could feel magic sparking off the tome in little pings.

  “That’s Gran’s,” I whispered.

  Sienna shrugged as she spread the book open on her lap. She sat cross-legged on the opposite side of the circle from me, facing east, by choice.

  “Shrugging isn’t an acceptable answer.” Yes, I was channeling Gran a bit, but I was shocked that Sienna had removed a book of power from Gran’s study. I was also surprised that the wards on Gran’s house hadn’t prevented this removal.

  “You didn’t ask a question,” Sienna met my gaze across the circle.

  Rusty slumped to the south side of the circle, between and beside us. He was exhausted; in fact, he seemed tired all the time now.

  I scanned the items placed before me. Unlit candles were set at north, south, east, and west. Each candle represented water, fire, earth, and air respectively, even though this was an earth-based spell. All witch magic was earth-based, except the kind of magic that had ruined the trinket the vampire had shown me on the bridge. That was black magic, and as the Compendium preached, black or blood magic was the ultimate of evils. Within the circle sat what looked suspiciously like the wing of a crow, a broken china cup, and a metal bowl filled with water. Between these items sat a small teepee of incense sticks, which were to be lit to start the spell.

  “What’s with the crow wing, Sienna? That isn’t cool,” I said.

  “It’s long dead, Jade. From Rusty’s collection.” I looked at Rusty for confirmation.

  “My mom’s,” he said. Right, some necromancers liked to collect parts of dead animals. That wasn’t deeply creepy at all.

  “I didn’t rip it off some bird. You’re so squeamish for a witch,” Sienna said, the derision in her tone as obvious as it was typical.

  I shook my head but didn’t bother to argue further. We had no hope in hell of casting a spell from this powerful a book. None of us, even combined, had access to that kind of focused power. I might as well let Sienna play witch and then go to bed in peace.

  “We light the incense, then light our candles. I’ll cover west and north. Then, Jade, you drop a bit of blood into the bowl of water —”

  “Excuse me?”

  Sienna huffed out a sigh like I’d impolitely interrupted her, and not at all as if she’d just casually suggested I add a drop of blood to an unknown, untested spell.

  “Please, Jade. It’s a single drop. You want to be specifically included in the spell parameters, don’t you? It’s not like I’m suggesting you step into the circle with the other items, am I?”

  “But blood —”

  “Oh, please. We aren’t sacrificing anything. Plus, it’s Gran’s own spell. There’s nothing dark about Gran, is there? You’ve used your blood to fortify your knife, haven’t you? This is a lot less than that.”

  I hadn’t actually fortified my knife with my own blood, though it would have been an extra layer of protection for the weapon and myself. I could then spell the knife to never draw my blood again, or just strengthen its physical properties with the magic bound to my blood. If done correctly, I could stop anyone else from wielding the knife altogether. I had done none of these things, though, because blood magic was dangerous and temperamental. Especially if you were still learning the extents of your own power, as I obviously was. I wasn’t completely oblivious to the vampire’s observations about the trinkets or my necklace.

  “Let’s wait. Wait for Gran —”

  “Fuck, Jade. You are always like this!” Sienna snarled. “Afraid of your own fucking shadow. I can’t believe you actually made a date with a werewolf. Maybe you were mistaken. Are you sure he wasn’t just some nobody who likes yoga? You sure he likes girls at all?”

  I clenched my teeth, feeling the anger that had been settling into a heartache I couldn’t rationally justify refocus on Sienna. A ripple of pain ran up my jawline. “You aren’t going to bully me into anything, Sienna.”

  “No? I guess I’m the wrong gender … and race. Maybe if I had fangs —”

  “Not even remotely relevant, sister,” I sneered.

  Sienna lost a little of her fierce indignation. “I can’t do it without you, Jade. I’m not powerful enough, and I’m … I just thought you’d want to know what everybody has obviously been hiding from you.”

  I hadn’t thought about it like that. If the vampire was correct and my father wasn’t human, then for sure my mother would know that. Even at sixteen, she had to have known if she was having sex with a normal or not. And Gran — with how powerful she was, how could she not know?

  “We can wait,” Sienna continued. “We can ask Gran, but why would she tell you now? She’ll use the presence of the vampire as an excuse to coddle you further, protect you from the big bad magical world. Praise your cupcakes and trinkets, and cash your rent checks.”

  Sienna was right. If Gran had been in town, the vampire wouldn’t have gotten near me the second time. Hell, if he’d tried, I probably would have been gifted with a ticket to Las Vegas or wherever my mother was. An impromptu vacation, probably with a companion ticket for Sienna. And I would have gone — blissfully ignorant and utterly stupid. Duped … again.

  I reached up and removed my necklace. As Sienna smiled, I tried to ignore the smug edge to it. I pooled the necklace by my right knee, easily within reach if I needed the protection I felt it provided. Before the vampire had admired it, I would have thought it just a useless hodgepodge of magically imbued wedding rings and mixed metals. Now, I wondered if it had blocked or somehow dampened other spells I’d attempted unsuccessfully. Even though I thought it useless, maybe it held just enough magic to interfere.

  Sienna didn’t remove the trinkets she wore around her neck. She snapped her fingers and Rusty, who must have been dozing, sat up with a start. He leaned into the circle and lit the incense.

  Sienna, her eyes locked to mine, leaned forward and blew lightly into the smoke trailing up from the incense sticks. Then I did the same.

  Many witches had opening sermons or blessings they invoked to begin, but Sienna and I always chose to start our spells with a bit of breath as Gran had taught us. No power words or evocations that we had no hope in hell of controlling. Just a little bit of our magic carried on our breath and offered to the circle.

  Rusty lit the candle at the edge of his side o
f the circle. He passed the long taper he’d used to Sienna, who lit her candle and the northern one. Taking the taper, I lit the candle in front of me. I felt the magic stirring, contained within the circle. It was familiar and comforting. I could control this … I owned this, no one could take it from me except by killing me. It tempered my wounded pride and bruised ego.

  Sienna bowed her head to the spellbook held open in her lap. She muttered words that spoke to the magic drifting lazily in the incense smoke. I didn’t bother listening to the exact syllables Sienna used. Words only conveyed belief or intention, and this was Sienna’s spell, not mine. Gran could cast a spell without a circle or written words. She called up her magic, focused it, and it did her bidding.

  I pressed my hands into the earth on either side of the candle I’d just lit. Gran claimed that our witch magic was earth-based and -bound, which is why I always sat east where the earth candle was traditionally situated. I’d never felt magic rise and fall from the earth like Gran described, though. I’d never been able to tap into the spirit of the earth, as Gran called it, her voice hushed and reverent. My eyes never shone blue when I exercised my magic like other witches, though I understood that not everyone could see a person’s magic in his or her eyes the way I did. My eyes didn’t shine any color at all. Neither did Sienna’s or Rusty’s.

  Sienna turned her palms toward the broken teacup handle that sat before her, just inside the circle. The handle vibrated in the dirt. This I could feel. This I could see, though I knew the same wasn’t true for Sienna and Rusty. They could see the effects of the magic, as the teacup appeared to grow out of the broken handle and resolve itself into a fully-formed yellow-rose china cup. Gran collected this Royal Albert china pattern. I hoped Sienna hadn’t snapped off a handle of one of Gran’s teacups just for this spell.

  Rusty laughed. Then he reached toward the crow wing placed in front of him. The magic shimmered and shifted. The tea cup reverted to a broken handle — Sienna pouted a little, but allowed the magic to flow toward Rusty — and the feathers on the wing started to ruffle as if touched by a light breeze.

  Rusty’s brow furrowed with the effort but nothing else happened. Sienna reached out and wrapped her hand around his left wrist. He grinned at her, but then quickly returned his attention to the bird wing. It flopped in the dirt as if it might be trying to flap. I was surprised that Sienna and Rusty had enough of a connection to share magic. That was something she and I might be able to do, having known each other our entire lives, but I didn’t know she was close enough to him to offer him some of her power.

  The magic resolved around the wing and a ghostly image of the crow appeared, but I knew this reveal was too much to ask of our magic abilities. It was one thing to manifest a tea cup, or some other inanimate object, but Rusty was trying to reveal an entire crow — a complete being — from its wing. Actual life force of some sort was involved in this manipulation. He did have the touch with dead things, such as my ever-suffering plants, that he’d inherited from his mom, but —

  “Jade,” Sienna prompted with a snap.

  I sighed, very sure her unarticulated request was useless, but I reached out to wrap my hand around Rusty’s right wrist anyway.

  The magic in the circle bloomed, and the image of the crow resolved into a solid figure. I gasped. The crow turned its head toward me.

  “Oh my God,” Rusty said.

  The crow opened its beak and cried at me. A full-throated scream of a caw. I flinched and dropped Rusty’s wrist. The image — it had to just be an image, right? — flickered and the crow disappeared.

  “Did you see that?” Rusty cried. “It looked so damn real!”

  I looked down at the bowl of water before me, shaken but emboldened. I drew my knife.

  “Jade,” Rusty said, some cautionary but unspoken warning in his tone.

  When I looked up at Sienna, she just nodded for me to continue. I pierced the tip of my left forefinger with my knife. The blade was so sharp it didn’t even hurt. I reached into the circle, feeling the magic moving around my arm, inviting but not aggressive.

  I squeezed a drop of my blood into the bowl of water. It barely broke the surface tension, instead shimmering across the liquid in a blurred ripple. I leaned forward in anticipation, expecting — hoping really — that an image would resolve itself out of the drop of diluted blood. It would tell me who I was, somehow negating — or perhaps supporting — the vampire’s claims of my magic and birth.

  I waited, forgetting to breathe, as the magic swirled around and around the blood in the water. Then the shimmer brightened into a glow. A small pinpoint of light rose out of the water, hovering about an inch above and then slowly growing until it was the size of a golf ball and hovering at chest height. I peered at the glowing sphere, not knowing if it was made of water, or blood, or magic … I guessed that it must be a combination of all three. It hovered as if patient, pulsing lightly … in time with my heartbeat, I realized with a flicker of fear. This was not what I had expected. A bowl of water was usually used to scry. Not by me, of course — that magic was beyond my ability, but —

  “Command it, Jade,” Sienna said, her whisper breaking my focus on the glowing magic ball.

  I hesitated, knowing it was important to convey exact intention with my wording.

  “It’s in the circle, Jade. We’re warded. Command it,” Sienna repeated.

  Something wasn’t quite right with her assessment of the situation, but I was too enamored with the idea of knowing my true self, and I ignored the nagging worry.

  “Show me,” I said. “Show me who I am.”

  The glow brightened and grew to the size of a tennis ball. It wavered as if observing me. I waited for it to resolve into an image. I waited for the spell to reveal some secret hidden in my blood. The secret the vampire suggested he could discern with a single taste.

  Suddenly, the glowing sphere streaked toward me. Fueled by my blood, it slipped through the barrier of the circle without impediment — I’d never known something like this was even possible, but I realized instantly what had happened. I had stood outside the circle, reaching through and offering my blood to the spell.

  I shouted as the light hit my chest, though I saw rather than felt this contact. I screamed and instinctively grabbed my necklace, which was still curled on the ground by my right knee. Without thinking much about it, just reacting in fear, I reached my left hand to my chest as if I could actually grab at the magic that sat there, glowing on my sternum and pulsing with my heartbeat. Perhaps it was waiting for further instruction. Perhaps it was attempting to answer my command on a level I didn’t understand.

  I grasped the magic and pulled it from my chest. It had grown to the size of a baseball. I didn’t stop to wonder at my sudden ability to hold this kind of power in the palm of my hand — not that I had ever tested such a thing. No, scared out of my mind, I simply flung the magic back away from me … behind me.

  I was shaking, but the reveal spell hadn’t hurt or harmed me. My heart was beating wildly. I looked up at Sienna and stuttered, “It … it… breached the circle. Could you see it? Sienna?”

  Sienna didn’t answer. She wasn’t looking at me at all. She was staring behind me, her eyes wide and her mouth forming a small O. Then she smiled. A smile full of satisfaction, and something else I couldn’t quite figure out through my own adrenaline rush and fading panic.

  I turned and looked back. I must have thrown the spell hard enough that it hit the eastern wall of concrete and brick behind me. But instead of dissipating as it should have, though I hadn’t given it specific direction, my ‘get thee behind me’ intention must have been clear. It had spread its glow — a glow that was now slowly fading into an outline that looked to be the height and width of a large door or doorway. A doorway revealed by the spell I had commanded and then haphazardly flung away. I had never manipulated magic in this fashion before.

  “Now what do you think is hidden behind that door?” S
ienna asked, her voice husky with anticipation as she rolled to her feet.

  “If it’s a door,” Rusty answered. He quickly leaned over to snuff out his candle.

  “Don’t,” Sienna said, but Rusty had doused the candle and scuffed his edge of the circle before she spoke. The magic within evaporated.

  Rusty shrugged apologetically but didn’t actually seem contrite. Sienna narrowed her eyes at him, but then returned to gazing at the outline. Its glow, slightly fainter than before, still held its rectangular shape on the wall.

  Sienna skirted the dormant circle and crossed by me toward the outline. Still cross-legged on the dirt floor, I grabbed her hand as she passed. She looked down at me with just the tips of her teeth showing in a smile. The light was behind her head and I couldn’t see her eyes, just two deep shadows carved out of her face.

  “ ‘Show me who I am,’ you said, Jade. And look what it has shown you.” Sienna’s voice was heavy with implication.

  “No, Sienna. The two things aren’t related.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I don’t see a handle or anything,” Rusty murmured, making me start badly. I hadn’t realized he’d moved from the edge of the circle.

  “It’s a door,” Sienna said, as she brushed off my handhold. “And I can’t wait to see what’s behind it.”

  Oh, God. That sounded like the opposite of a good idea. Hidden doorways, if that was what it was, were always hidden for a reason … ‘abandon all hope, ye who enter here’ reasons.

  “Do you think Gran knows it’s here?” I asked.

  “Of course, she knows, dummy,” Sienna answered. Then she reached out to touch the brick wall in the very middle of the outlined rectangle.

  I waited for something to happen but nothing did. Rusty and Sienna continued to run their hands around the door outline. The glow continued to fade.

  They turned to me in unison.

  “No,” I answered before they asked. Sienna opened her mouth to cajole me and I said, “That’s enough!”