Alpha Divided

It was like the Metaphysics supply room on steroids. The bottles were older. Some of the glass bottles had that old-timey warped look to them. The handwritten labels had yellowed with age and were marked with beautiful, scrawling scripts. A beaten wooden worktable took up the center of the room, and stacks of books were piled underneath—I made a mental note to keep an eye out for any brown books with a teal pattern. A small iron cauldron, some measuring stuff, and a few other odds and ends cluttered the working surface.

Now this was what came to mind when I thought of witches. “What’s all this stuff?”

“For spells. Each family has a fully stocked room. We try and make sure that we have anything we might need in case of emergencies.”

“Do you have a lot of emergencies?”

He laughed. “No. But you never know. That’s why they’re called emergencies.”

I grinned. Maybe Daniel wasn’t so bad after all. Not everyone could be judged by their parents. “Right.”

“So, I figured there were plenty of things we could start out with—lighting a fire, levitating an object, becoming invisible—”

The proverbial light bulb went off. “That’s how Luciana snuck into the full moon ceremony.”

“Exactly. But I thought it’d be more useful to you to learn a basic protection spell.”

I did my best to not look disappointed. “Okay.”

“You’re in a place where you don’t trust anyone. I thought it’d be better in light of that, but hey, if you want to start with lighting candles, we can do that, too.”

I waved a hand through the air. “No. You’re right. I’m being dumb. Protection will be much more useful. It’d be good to not get spelled again—like what your mom did—”

Daniel winced. “Sorry about that.”

“Did you do the spelling?”

“No.”

“Then why are you apologizing?”

“Because she’s my mother. Look, I know that maybe things would’ve worked out differently between us had you not gotten bitten, and I was a little—okay, probably a lot—disappointed about it, but fate is what it is. It wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t meant to be.”

Daniel was shorter than Dastien by inches, but still taller than me. He was fit, but not like the werewolves. Not ugly by any means, but I felt zero attraction to him. Not that attraction hinged entirely on looks, but the chemistry was missing. That zing. With Dastien, it was so strong that I sometimes couldn’t feel anything else when we were together.

Whatever Luciana had planned, marriage to her son was never going to be in the cards.

“So, the good thing about protection spells is that they have more to do with the motion and will than with saying the right thing—which can get tricky for spells in Latin.”

I shrugged. “Makes sense.”

He dug around in one of the cabinets. “Claudia?” He called.

She appeared at the door with a box of glasses. The generic kind that came in sets from Target—eight tall and eight short. “Sorry. Forgot you wanted these.” She set them on the worktable. “Want me to stick around?” she asked me.

“Nah. We’ve got it covered,” Daniel answered.

Claudia kept her eyes on me. I shook my head. “Thanks.” I’d be fine. If I couldn’t handle this guy, how was I going to be able to handle his mother?

“We’re going to make them shatterproof,” he said as Claudia left. “Once you get that down, then you can extend it to any object or person. You can even cast spells so that anyone who wishes you harm can’t enter your room or house.”

“Like a supernatural security system?”

“Exactly!” He grinned.

That would totally come in handy. “Cool.”

He dug around under the stack of books until he found what he was looking for. He opened to a page, and it looked like a book of Celtic knots. The pages were worn and a little wrinkled, but the colored knots still stood out brightly on the faded paper.

He flipped a few pages. “The spell knots are color coded. Some knots—” he flipped to the back of the book—“require using two kinds of intent. So, if a knot is drawn in more than one color, you know when to switch intent.” He went back to the beginning of the book. “But that’s getting ahead of ourselves. This is a basic knot that can make an object or material stronger. If we perform the spell correctly, it’ll make the glass unbreakable for as long as a week, depending how successful we are.”