by Andrew Peed
“I just didn’t feel right living in his room,” Waylon said.
“Then you didn’t inherit the house,” Erwin said with a sigh.
“So how exactly do I ask the thing permission?” Waylon asked. He turned the chair to the side and stood up in an exaggerated fashion, slapping his knees with his hands.
“Maybe you should try talking to it,” Erwin said as he scoffed like it was the most obvious solution. “At the heart of the house.”
“Right, and where is the heart of the house?” Waylon added.
“I don’t know. I’m just a book,” Erwin said with a coy smile all over his pages.
“Yeah, a book that can talk and fly,” Waylon said smugly.
“Could you straighten that book up next to my spot so that I can move there?” Erwin asked, ignoring his statement.
Waylon shook his head but reached up and stood the book next to Erwin’s spot up straight. Erwin floated up off the desk and slid into his spot. He was quiet after that. Waylon took the Household Demons and Entities book and left the office.
He figured since Kaylie knew about the house thing that he would see if she had any idea where the heart of the house could be. His grandfather’s room was on the same level as Kaylie’s and his own. After his short conversation with Erwin, he had started to reconsider if he should move into his grandfather’s room or not. It would definitely bring him closer to the large collection of books, and he really needed to start studying them.
Kaylie’s door wasn’t shut all the way when he approached it. Waylon didn’t know how someone could not shut their door all the way. Ever since he was young, he could remember an urge that drove him to never leave a door open.
Lifting his hand to knock on the door frame, he noticed that she was staring at the ceiling, kind of disconnected. He decided that after everything, it could wait until morning, and he didn’t want to disturb her.
He shoved his hands into his pockets and turned, leaving her room behind. Coffee crossed his mind. He decided that he would get a nice fresh brewed cup of coffee and go down to the art room. After everything that he had seen over the last few hours, he had a lot of stuff to work on. Maybe he would start a drawing on the woman that he had seen in the corner.
Ten minutes later, coffee steamed on the shelf in front of him. He looked down at the paper pinned to the drawing table. Waylon held a pencil in his hand, his favorite, spinning it between his fingers. His original idea had been to draw the beautiful woman that he had seen, but Kaylie and the Yorkie hellhound wouldn’t move out of the way.
He started to sketch out the outlines. He made sure to try and convey the hellhound shadow of the pup. The scene ended up with Kaylie directing the hound toward the orc they had confronted. He chuckled to himself, thinking about the events of the evening. It was all completely bonkers, and he was one hundred percent all right with that.
Chapter 12: Craft a Clear Mind
Kaylie couldn’t remember the last time that she had such a piss-poor night. She lay on her back, staring up at the ceiling in her new room, fuming over the way that she had been treated by the authorities. Maybe she had been a little bit of a hell raiser in the past, and yes, there were some black marks that she wished she could correct, but she was actively trying to do better.
Every time she was forced to think about what happened to her daughter and husband, it tore her up inside. Allowing a few tears to fall, Kaylie held her hand out and thought of a special orb hidden away in her bag. The top of the bag opened on its own, and the orb zoomed across the room in a flash. It landed softly in her outstretched palm.
Holding the orb into the light, she cleared her mind of everything except for her daughter, Lillian. As light passed through the glasslike orb, an image began to materialize in the space at the end of her bed. Her daughter lay on her side in what looked like a prison cell. It ripped her apart to see her, and there was nothing she could do about it. It wasn’t a prison cell, though; it was the magical equivalent of a mental institution for people who had several different magically centered ailments. Lillian was curled up on the bed, lonely in the sterilized, cold, empty room.
Kaylie blamed herself, and that was for good cause. What had happened to her was all her fault. She had decided to tamper with the laws of nature using extremely high-powered magic, and it blew up in her face. It destroyed the two most important people in her life in a matter of seconds.
She watched Lillian for a long while. More than anything, she wanted to switch places with her. She would give anything in the world to just see her, touch her, hold her, but it was not possible. This was the closest that anyone could get to her until they found a way to help her, but Kaylie didn’t know if there was anyone who was even looking for an answer. One of the reasons she had decided to become a reaper was to gain access to a new powerful type of magic. For all the work that she had done, it had done her no good.
Kaylie wiped the tears off her face and returned the orb to her bag with a wave of her hand. She pulled her legs into her chest. There was something else that she wanted to do, but she didn’t know if she could handle it. She moved her hand again. This time a book flew out from her bag. It was a journal of hers. Every warlock had them.
She opened the book to the back page where there was a picture tucked in. It was the picture of her wedding day. She’d gotten married very young. Just after her eighteenth birthday. It was taken almost nine months to the day that her baby girl was born. The picture was the kiss that her and her husband shared after they both had said their “I dos.”
It was with a significant amount of force that she kept the tears at bay. It was all her fault. She would never allow anyone to convince her otherwise, and there had been very few people who had tried to do so.
She returned the picture to its resting place and closed the book. After she closed the book and held it to her chest for a moment, she set it down on the table next to her bed. For ten long years, she had held that picture every night and checked in on her daughter.
To try and clear her mind, she focused on other pressing issues. There was unpacking to be done, but she wasn’t sure if she should even bother. If Waylon didn’t get permission from the house for her to be there, then it wouldn’t matter because she would just have to pack it all back up again. The house appeared to be a trickster, and she didn’t know if she had it in her to try and fight something like that every day and every night.
The house, or Dalton Place, felt like somewhere she could call home. It felt warm, like magic could be open and happy within the walls. She lay back and thought about her situation. Even though she knew it would be pushy, she decided that she was going to try and urge Waylon to get the permission.
Kaylie wanted to do something nice for Waylon. The last time she had been around someone who was coming into their powers was when she was a young girl. She had never been around someone who was so old when they started to use their abilities. From the stories that she had heard, it could go very bad or very well. She wanted to be there for him since the only other warlock influence he had was Mr. Wong.
With one last long sniffle, she wiped her face and sat up on the bed, clearing her throat. It was important that she didn’t focus too much on the past but instead looked forward to the future and the now. The best way that she knew how to do all that was to make something, and she was itching to pull out her crafting kits.
Kaylie’s two crafting specialties were Tonraca, making of potions, and Asenture, or magical crafting. That was one of her favorite things to do to clear her mind and occupy her so that she didn’t focus on negative things. She got out of bed, snatching up her bag as she walked out of the room. Though her room was spacious, she was going to need a little more room if she was going to be able to use her crafting supplies. She also didn’t want an incident to destroy her bedroom. They didn’t happen often, but they did happen.
Kaylie walked downstairs. When she passed by the door leading downstairs, she could hear music coming from
Waylon’s art room, and she could hear him working. She wasn’t in the mood to speak with anyone, so she kept on walking and slipped out the front door of the house outside into the night air. It was blistering cold, but she was covered up so only her face had to suffer at the moment.
The yard out front of the house had a beautiful layer of snow that crunched under her feet as she moved around toward the back. A wide grin crossed her face when she remembered the old building where she had cornered and was ultimately outsmarted by the spirit that had led her to her new home. She remembered that it was an old workshop from when the property had been a plantation, and it had plenty of space for her to set up her work.
There was a small door inset into the larger garage doors. She went inside to the dark musty old building and took a look around with a smile on her face. It would do nicely. The clouds in the sky blocked all the light from the moon and the stars so it was a little hard to see, but she would take care of that problem. She pushed the front door shut, and with a wave of her hand, she quietly closed all of the windows around the room. There were only two, but she fought against her magic wanting to slam them shut. With a second flick of her wrist, all of the old gas lanterns burst to life, despite not having any gas to burn. She used her magical energy to keep them lit.
Kaylie spent the next few minutes pushing everything out of the center of the room. She had to struggle a bit with some of the larger boxes, but she got everything moved. The workspace had to have the right flow or it would mess everything up as she worked. Once she had finished, she rested her hands on her hips and took a good look at her empty workspace as she caught her breath. The floor was made of wood, but there was so much piled-up dirt and hay that it would be difficult to tell that the wood was there at all.
Letting her bag fall from her shoulder, Kaylie caught the strap with her hand and gently placed it on the floor. She reached inside searching for a moment before pulling out a box that was roughly the size of a shoebox. Stowing her bag in the corner of the room, out of the way, Kaylie put the wooden box in the middle of the room and looked down at it for a moment.
The wooden box had all kinds of dials and sliders covering its top. She turned the largest dial, which a little off center, until the indicated pointer was set to a symbol that looked like a hammer. She slid a slider on either side of the box’s top. The last thing she did before she stood up and took a few steps back was to tap the top with her pointer finger and thumb.
Ancient words spilled from her lips, words that she had memorized over years of practice. She waved her hand and lifted it, palm up, from waist level to be level with her eyes.
The small box did nothing at first, but it sprang to life quickly. Slivers of wood and panels began to pop out and change shape, moving around in a flurry of blurs. The components expanded against the air around the box. In less than a minute, the box had become large enough so that the end was a set of two doors.
Kaylie slid her fingers into the little slot on the side and released the latch for the doors. They swung open, and inside there was a small lab. Her crafting area. The backs of the doors were covered from floor to ceiling with hanging pouches that were filled with all kinds of materials that she could use for her Asenture. There was a stool that she could pull out and a table where she could work. A little bookshelf held four volumes that she used to record things that she had been taught about Asenture.
Pulling the stool out from its resting place, Kaylie swung her legs over and sat down. She wanted to craft something, but there was a big piece of the puzzle missing. She didn’t know what to craft or where she wanted to start.
She didn’t know a whole lot about Waylon. Whatever she ended up making, she wanted to it to help him as he grew as a warlock. He was new to magic, and he had a lot to learn. After what she had seen in the hospital, she was sure that he wouldn’t have any problem learning the magic. The spell that he had cast was extremely advanced and was reserved for masters warlocks and up.
There was something that could make his learning process easier. It was also something that she had always wanted to attempt crafting. She rotated on the stool to look at the bags of supplies hanging on the back of the doors behind where she sat.
Picking through the bags, she found pumpkin seeds, dark chocolate, coffee, two perfect glass orbs, a spool of yarn, two wooden circles, and a needle. She neatly laid out the crafting ingredients on the table so that she could check the quality of everything.
Asenture was a mixture of hard work and letting magic do the work for you. Kaylie could have done everything in separate steps, but she liked to challenge herself to see what she could do all at the same time.
She collected the seeds, chocolate, and the coffee. The coffee was beans—that was important for quality. Store-bought ground coffee would work, but it was nowhere near as good as fresh beans. She put the pumpkin seeds in a mortar. The one that she used was porcelain, and she hated it. She got it when she was broke, after she’d caused a small explosion. Replacing it with a good stone one was high on the list once she got more comfortable with her finances. Once she had seen a set made of ruby that was enchanted so that it was stronger than stone, but it was beyond expensive.
She picked up the pestle and began grinding the seeds in a circular motion. With a simple spell in her mind, she ignited a burner and began to pass chocolate to the beaker over the fire. While it melted, she added a little water. Water conjuring spells she could do in her sleep, which caused drops of water to appear over the beaker like rain.
The wooden ring hovered over the table. She added the coffee beans to the mortar and began grinding in the other direction. Yarn began to unspool and wrap itself around the wooden circle. It then turned in and started to weave a pattern like an octagon in the center of the circle.
Someone who could see magic in its purest form would see Kaylie with many extra arms. She had seen it once when her mentor had shown her through a lens as he was crafting. They looked ghostly and spectral, but they were there. Arms holding the wooden circle, arms stirring the chocolate-water mixture, arms weaving the yarn. An arm picked up the first of the small glass orbs and held it in place in the center of the octagon.
The beaker hovered off the heated element and landed in front of her. The mixture of crushed seeds and beans was ready. She poured the contents of the mortar into the beaker. A quick stir, then she pricked the end of her finger with the needle. She made sure to focus on the knowledge that pertained specifically to her existence as a warlock. The glass beaker slid across the table until it sat directly under the floating orb.
She held her hand over the orb and pushed out a droplet of blood. The droplet fell from her finger and made contact with the orb, and there was a whoosh of sound. The candles around the room all flickered out. In wasn’t dark, however, the orb was glowing with a soft blue light.
The contents of the beaker were sucked upward in a vortex, absorbed by the orb, and for a moment it turned a dim gray color. The orb grew brighter and brighter. There was a pop like a cap gun, and the light died out completely. With a wave of her hand, Kaylie brought all of the candles back.
The orb, a memory, hovered over the table, glowing slightly. She reached out and grabbed it. Everything else was on the table. The wood and yarn were blackened and singed. The glass beaker was cracked and broken. The wooden table now sported a brown char mark that lined up perfectly with where the wooden circle had been hovering.
Kaylie squeezed the memory. She thought of her first days of being a warlock, before she had become a reaper. A memory played in her head as clear as a movie on the television.
She ran in the woods with a boy named Charles. They had been childhood best friends. They were doing magic. Calling up small storms. Teleporting from one point to another, playing the most intense game of tag that Kaylie was sure had ever happened.
She closed her eyes and let the memory wash over her. She smiled, leaving behind the sorrow that the day had dredged out of her. She tried to be
a happy person. The things that had happened in her past were things that she would regret for the rest of her life, but she fought to be a good, happy person in spite of those things.
Kaylie grabbed the other orb off the table, intending to make a copy of the original. She held the first one in her right hand and the blank one in her left hand. There were things that she had to omit from the orb. Things she did not want Waylon to know about her. At least not yet.
She used her body as a conduit, transferring energy from the first orb into the second. As the memories attempted to pass through her, she decided whether she wanted to share them. She couldn’t keep them from going into the new orb, but she could block them from being viewed.
Her hair lifted in the wind blowing around the room as she did the transfer. She could feel her experiences flowing through her body. So many things that she had forgotten about. She gripped the two orbs as tightly as she could and was lifted off the chair, hovering in the air slightly.
Then it was done. She fell back to the chair. The wind died. The light was gone. The memories had passed. She held in one hand an unabridged version of her memory and one that was edited for a select audience. She put the personal memory in her pocket.
The memory she made for Waylon, she wrapped in a piece of silk cloth that she grabbed out of one of the material bags. She stood up from the chair and cleared the spent materials into a bin that she kept stored under the table and returned everything else to its proper resting spot.
She pushed the chair back into place and stepped back out of the crafting room. She closed the doors and turned the dial on the door. The whole room shrank back down to the size it had been before. Kneeling down, she picked up the shoebox-sized wooden box and returned it to her bag.
Nothing could truly make her feel better about some portions of her life, but Kaylie was truly excited about getting the opportunity to help a new warlock.
