Dime Store Magic

by Kelley Armstrong

  With the ceremony book in my bag, I turned my attention to looking for potential secondary-spell grimoires. That didn't take long. Of the forty-three books in the library, there were only four that I hadn't read before. A flip through each assured me they were just as dull and useless as their titles implied.

  "The grimoires are all right here," Margaret said, waving at a half-shelf near chest level. "All of them."

  "All of them" comprised exactly six books. One contained the current collection of Coven-sanctioned spells. Another held spells that had been removed in the past few decades, which my mother had let me copy from her grimoire into my journals. The other four were books of spells long forbidden to Coven witches. There were two reasons why these hadn't been destroyed. First, my mother would never have permitted it. Second, the damn things were practically useless.

  For years, I'd known that these "forbidden" spellbooks existed. For years, I'd pestered my mother to let me see them. She finally capitulated by sneaking them out for me as an eighteenth birthday gift. Inside I found useless spells, like ones to evaporate a puddle of water or extinguish a candle. I hadn't bothered to master more than two dozen of the hundred-odd spells in these books. Most of them were so bad, I almost didn't blame the Elders for removing them from the Coven grimoire, if only to conserve space.

  As a last resort, I flipped through one of these grimoires. I paused at one spell I'd learned, an incantation for producing a small, flickering light, like a candle. The Coven-sanctioned light-ball spell was far more useful. I'd learned this one only because it involved fire, and I was always trying to overcome my fear of flames.

  When I glanced at the spell, something in it snagged in my brain, made me pause. Under the title "Minor Illumination Spell" the writer had added "elemental, fire, class 3." I'd seen that notation before ... just a few minutes ago, in fact. I yanked one of the two secret grimoires from my bag and flipped to the dog-eared page for the fireball spell. There it was, under the title: elemental, fire, class 3.

  Oh, God, could that be it? My hands trembled as I flipped to another spell I'd mastered in that grimoire, a wind-summoning spell. Beneath the title: elemental, wind, class 1. I racked my brain for the names of the two dozen spells I'd learned in the forbidden manuals. What was that one ... Yes, that was it! A spell for extinguishing fire. A silly little spell that summoned a mere puff of wind, barely enough to blow out a candle. I'd tried it a few times, got it to work, then moved on. Grabbing another grimoire from the shelf, I flipped through until I found it. "Minor Wind-Summoning Spell: elemental, wind, class 1."

  These were the secondary grimoires. I knew now why I'd mastered four tertiary spells, because I'd learned the secondary spells from these books. Eve had been unable to cast any tertiary spells because she'd probably taken one look in the secondary spell books and decided they were too useless to risk stealing.

  The doorbell rang. Margaret jumped like a spooked cat.

  "It's Savannah," I said.

  I scooped all four grimoires from the shelf, shoved them into my bag with the other two, and headed for the stairs.

  "You can't take those," Margaret called after me.

  I bounded down the stairs and opened the back door.

  "Lucas says we have to go," Savannah said. "It's getting late."

  "I'm done. Just let me grab my shoes." I remembered our other purpose and turned to Margaret. "Could I borrow your car? Just for tonight. Please?"

  "I don't think--"

  "I'll be careful. I'll fill it up, wash it, whatever. Please, Margaret."

  "Savannah?" She noticed her niece for the first time and turned to me. "Did you leave her outside alone? What are you thinking, Paige?"

  "I didn't leave her alone. Now, I really need to borrow your car."

  "Who--" She stopped, peering outside, her eyes picking out Cortez's form in the yard. She slammed the door. "That's--you--you left my niece with a sorcerer?"

  "Oddly enough, I'm having trouble finding baby-sitters."

  "Lucas is fine, Aunt Margaret," Savannah said. "Can we borrow your car? I need the stuff for my first menses--"

  "Savannah just got her period," I cut in. "I'm out of supplies for menstrual tea, and she's having very bad cramps."

  Savannah pulled a face of sheer agony. Margaret looked at her and blinked.

  "Oh, yes. I see." Her voice softened. "This is your first time, isn't it, dear?"

  Savannah nodded, lifting wounded-puppy eyes to her great-aunt. "It really hurts."

  "Yes, well ... I suppose, if you need to use my car ..."

  "Please," I said.

  Margaret retrieved the keys and handed them to me. "Be careful in parking lots. I had someone dent the door just last week."

  I thanked Margaret and prodded Savannah toward the door before Margaret could change her mind.

  Next stop: Salem, Massachusetts, world-renowned epicenter of the American witch-hunt craze.

  One can argue about the causes of the witch craze that visited Salem in 1692. Theories abound. I even read something recently that attributed the madness to some kind of blight on the rye crops, a mold or something that drives people crazy. What we do know, without question, is that life wasn't a whole lotta fun for teenage girls in Puritan America. In the harsh New England winters, it was even worse. At least the boys could go out hunting and trapping. Girls were confined to their homes and household tasks, forbidden by Puritan law to dance, sing, play cards, or engage in basically any form of entertainment.

  As we drove into Salem, I imagined Savannah plunked into that world. Regimented, repressed, and restricted. Bored as hell. Is it any wonder they'd be eager for diversion? Maybe a little mischief? In the winter of 1692 the girls of Salem found exactly that, in the form of an old woman, a slave named Tituba.

  Tituba belonged to Reverend Samuel Parris and was nursemaid to his daughter, Betty, whom, by all accounts, she doted on. To amuse herself during those long winter months, Tituba showed Betty and her friends some magic tricks, probably mere sleight-of-hand learned in Barbados. As the winter passed, word of this new entertainment swept through the community of teenage girls and, one by one, they found reasons to visit the parsonage.

  In January, Betty, the youngest of the group, fell ill, her Puritan conscience perhaps made uneasy by all this talk of magic and sorcery. Soon other girls caught the "fever." Reverend Parris and others insisted that the girls name their tormentors. Betty named Tituba, and at the end of February the old slave was arrested on a charge of witchcraft.

  And so it started. The girls soon grew addicted to the attention. No longer relegated to house and hearth, they became celebrities. The only way to prolong their fifteen minutes of fame was to up the ante, to act wilder, more possessed. To name more witches. So they did. Soon any woman that the girls might have had reason to dislike fell victim.

  Four Coven witches died. Why? The witch-hunts often targeted social or gender deviants, particularly women who didn't comply with accepted female roles. This described many Coven witches. Outspoken and independent, they often lived without a husband--though the fact that they weren't necessarily celibate was a lifestyle choice that wouldn't have been too popular in Puritan New England. That lifestyle, in my opinion, is what put those witches on the gallows.

  I tried telling that to the Coven once. How did they react? They agreed with me completely and declared that if those women had had the sense to keep their heads down and conform, they wouldn't have died. I could have beaten my head against the wall.

  Today the Salem witch-hunts are a tourist attraction. Makes my skin crawl, but the upside is that there are plenty of practicing Wiccans in the area, and several New Age shops in Salem that sold ingredients I'd have had a hard time finding elsewhere.

  Most of "tourist" Salem had shut down around dinner hour, but the shop we wanted was open until nine. The streets were quiet and we found parking easily, then headed to the tourism core, several tree-lined streets restricted to pedestrian traffic. It took less than tw
enty minutes to gather what I needed, then we were back in Margaret's car and heading for the highway.

  "We have two hours to kill," I said as I turned back onto 1A. "Any ideas? We can't collect the juniper until after midnight."

  "What do we need juniper for?" Savannah asked.

  "It'll protect us against interference by evil spirits."

  "Oh, right. So when are we getting the grave dirt? That needs to be gathered right at midnight."

  "Perhaps we can find a juniper tree at the cemetery," Cortez said.

  "What cemetery?" I said. "There's nothing about grave dirt in the ceremony, Savannah. We have everything we need except the juniper."

  " Uh-uh. We need grave dirt."

  "Savannah, I know the ceremony. I went through it myself and I double-checked my mother's notes last night."

  "Yeah? Well, my mother told me everything about the ceremony and I know I need grave dirt."

  "You need earth. Regular dirt collected anytime, anywhere."

  "No, I need--"

  "May I make a suggestion?" Cortez cut in. "In the interest of avoiding later trouble, I would advise that you clarify your respective understandings of the ceremony."

  "Huh?" Savannah said.

  "Compare notes," he said. "There's a sign for a park ahead. Pull off, Paige. As you've said, we have time."

  "That's not part of the ceremony," I said, pacing between two trees as I listened to Savannah. "Absolutely not. It couldn't be."

  "Why? Because the Coven says so? This is what my mother told me to do, Paige."

  "But it's not the right ceremony."

  Cortez cleared his throat. "Another suggestion? Perhaps we should consider the possibility that this is a variation on the Coven ceremony."

  "It's not," I said. "It can't be. Listen to the words. They say--no, never mind."

  "My Latin is perfectly serviceable, Paige. I understand the additional passage."

  "You might understand the words, but you don't understand the meaning."

  "Yes, I do. I have some knowledge of witch mythology. The additional passage is an invocation to Hecate, the Greek goddess of witchcraft, a deity the Coven and most modern witches no longer recognize. The invocation asks Hecate to grant the witch the power to wreak vengeance on her enemies and to free her from all restrictions on her powers. Now, as to the ability of Hecate to grant such a wish, I admit I place little credence in the existence of such deities."

  "Same here. So, you're saying that the passage doesn't do anything, so there's no harm in including it?"

  He paused, giving the question full consideration. "No. While I doubt the existence of Hecate per se, we must both admit that there is some force that gives us our power. Hecate is simply an archaic reference to that force." He glanced at Savannah, who was sitting on a picnic table. "Could you excuse us, Savannah? I'd like to speak to Paige."

  Savannah nodded and, without protest, headed off to the empty swing across the park. I really had to learn how he did that.

  "I told you about the Cabal's variation on your ceremony," Cortez said when she was gone. "Isn't it possible that other permutations exist?"

  "I guess so. But this ... this is ..." I shook my head. "Maybe the extra passage doesn't mean anything, maybe it doesn't make any difference, but I can't take that chance. I'd be asking that Savannah be granted something I don't think any witch should have."

  "You'd be asking to grant Savannah her full powers, without restriction. An ability you don't think any witch should have."

  "Don't twist my words around. I went through my mother's ceremony and I'm fine."

  "Yes, you are. I'm not saying--"

  "And I'm not asking for reassurances. Savannah's already a stronger spell-caster than I am. Can you imagine how dangerous she could be with more power?"

  "I can't argue this for you. You're the witch. You're the only one who can perform the ceremony for her." He stepped closer, putting his fingertips on my arm. "Go talk to her, Paige. We have to settle this before midnight."

  CHAPTER 34

  A GRAVE DILEMMA

  "I won't!" Savannah shouted, her voice echoing across the vacant park. "I won't do your stupid Coven ceremony! I'd rather have no ceremony at all than be a useless Coven witch."

  "Like me."

  "I didn't mean that, Paige. You aren't like them. I don't know why you waste your time with them. You can do so much better."

  "I don't want to do better. I want to make things better. For all of us."

  She shook her head. "I won't do your ceremony, Paige. I won't. It's mine or nothing. Don't you understand? This is what my mother told me to do. It's what she wanted for me."

  When I didn't respond fast enough, Savannah's face contorted with rage.

  "That's it, isn't it? You won't do it because it comes from my mother. Because you don't trust her."

  "It's not that I don't trust--"

  "No, you're right, it isn't. It's because you hate her. You think she was some kind of monster."

  I stepped toward Savannah, but she flung me off with such force that I tripped and fell against the picnic table.

  "My mother looked after me. She wouldn't have let Leah come near me again."

  I flinched. "Savannah, I--"

  "No, shut up. I'm sick of listening to you. You think my mother was evil because she practiced dark magic? That didn't make her evil. It made her smart. At least she had the guts to get out of the Coven, not hang around, learning stupid little baby spells and thinking she's queen of the witches."

  I stepped back, bumping the table again and falling hard onto the bench. Cortez hurried from the woods, where he'd been burying the Hand of Glory. I shook my head to warn him off, but Savannah stepped into my line of vision and towered over me.

  "You know what?" she said. "I know why you won't do that ceremony for me. Because you're jealous. Because your mother made you go through that useless Coven ceremony and now it's too late. You're stuck. You can't go back and do it over again. You can't get more powerful. So you're going to hold me back because your mother didn't--"

  "Enough," Cortez said, pushing Savannah away from me. "That is enough, Savannah."

  "Back off, sorcerer," she said, turning on him.

  "You back off, Savannah," he said. "Now."

  Savannah's face fell, as if all that anger suddenly gave way.

  "Go back to the swings and cool down, Savannah," he said.

  She obeyed, giving only a tiny nod.

  "Let her go," Cortez whispered when I made a motion to stand. "She'll be fine. You have a decision to make."

  With that, he sat beside me and didn't say another word while I made that decision.

  Would I force Savannah to settle for less than her full potential? Once the choice was made, there was no reversing it. A witch had exactly one night to turn the tide of her destiny. Melodramatic, but true.

  Was I jealous of Savannah for still having the opportunity to become a more powerful witch? No. The thought hadn't occurred to me until she mentioned it. Now that she had, though, it did give me something to think about. The chance had passed for me. If, as Eve claimed, this other ceremony would make a witch stronger, then yes, it stung to think I'd missed out. Given the choice, I'd have picked the stronger ceremony without question. Even without knowing whether it worked, even without knowing how much more power it could give me, I would have taken the chance.

  Did I trust Savannah with this power? Give me the ability to kill and you'd never need to worry about me suffocating some jerk who cut me off on the freeway. Knowing I possessed the power would be enough. But Savannah was different. She already used her power at the slightest provocation. Yesterday, when we found that investigator in our house, Savannah had thrown him into the wall. Would she have settled for that if she could have killed him? Yet I couldn't wait around to see whether she'd outgrow her recklessness. Either I performed that ceremony tomorrow or I never did it at all. With that came another responsibility. If I gave Savannah those powers, I would
need to teach her to control them. Could I do that?

  Savannah's mother may have passed along some attitudes with which I strongly disagreed, but Eve had loved her daughter and had wanted the best for her. She'd believed that the "best" was this ceremony. Did I dare dispute that?

  How could I make a decision like this so quickly? I needed days, maybe weeks. I had only minutes.

  I walked up behind Savannah as she swung, her sneakers scuffing the dirt into clouds.

  "I'll do the ceremony," I said. "Your ceremony."

  "Really?" She twisted to look up. Then, seeing my expression, her grin collapsed. "I didn't mean it, Paige. What I said."

  "What's said is said."

  I turned and walked back to the car.

  I drove in silence, answering only questions directed at me.

  "Can I see the grimoires, Paige?" Savannah asked, bobbing from the backseat.

  I nodded.

  "Maybe I can help you learn these. Or we can learn them together."

  I had to say something. I'm no good at holding grudges. It feels too much like sulking.

  "Sure," I said. "That ... sounds good."

  Cortez glanced back at the grimoire in Savannah's hands, then looked at me. He didn't say anything, but his look oozed curiosity.

  "Later," I mouthed.

  He nodded, and silence prevailed until we reached the outskirts of East Falls.

  "Okay," I said as we drove into town. "We've got a decision to make. We need this grave dirt, but I'm not going near the East Falls cemetery. The last thing I need is for someone to look down from the hospital and see me darting among tombstones. So, we have two choices. One, we can go to the county cemetery. Two, we can go to the one here in town and you can get the dirt, Cortez."

  He sighed.

  "Okay, I guess that answers my question. We head to the county cemetery."

  "It wasn't the proposition to which I was registering my objection," he said.

  "So what's wrong?"

  "Nothing."

  Savannah leaned over the seat. "He's pissed because you're still calling--"

  Cortez cut her off. "I'm not 'pissed' about anything. The town cemetery is closer. I'll get the dirt."

  "You don't mind?"

  "Not at all. I should be able to retrieve dirt through the fence without having to enter the cemetery proper and therefore without risk of being seen."