Into the Woods: Tales from the Hollows and Beyond(10)
Author: Kim Harrison

My throat was tight, and I let go of the pestle, only now realizing my fingers had cramped up on it. I had worked so hard to get my freaking black belt so the I.S. couldn’t wash me out on the physical test. Sure, it had taken me almost twice as long as everyone else, and yeah, I still spent ten minutes at the back of the gym flat on my back recovering after every class, but I did everything everyone else did, and with more power and skill than most.

Wiping an angry tear away, I used the stirring rod to scrape every last bit off the pestle. Damn it. I hated it when Robbie made me cry. He was good at it. ‘Course, he was good at making me laugh, too. But my shoulders were aching beyond belief, and a slow lethargy was taking hold of my knees once more. I had to sit down again. Disgusted with myself, I sank into a chair, elbow on the table, my hair making a curtain between me and the rest of the world. I wasn’t that much stronger now than when they kicked me out of the Make-A-Wish camp. I was just getting better at feeling it coming on and covering it up. And I wanted to be a runner?

Miserable, I held my arm against the ache, both inside and out. But the spell was done apart from the three drops of witch blood, and those wouldn’t be added until we were at the square. Mom and Robbie had lowered their voices, the cadence telling me they were arguing. Pulling a second dusty box to me, I rummaged for a stoppered bottle to put the potion in.

The purple one didn’t feel right, and I finally settled on the black one with the ground glass stopper. I wiped the dust from it with a dishtowel, and dumped the wine mix in, surprised when I found that the holly and the ivy bits went smoothly without leaving any behind. The lemon half was next, and my fingers were actually on the copper pot before I remembered I hadn’t mixed in the identifying agent.

"Stupid witch," I muttered, thinking I must want to go to the West Coast and bang my head against the scholarly walls. The spell wouldn’t work without something to identify the spirit you were summoning. It was the only ingredient not named. It was up to the person stirring it to decide. The suggested items were cremation dust, hair . . . hell, even fingernails would do, as gross as that was. I hadn’t had the chance this afternoon to get into the attic where Dad’s stuff was boxed up, so the only thing I’d been able to find of his was his old pocket watch on my mom’s dresser.

I glanced at the archway to the hall and listened to the soft talk between Mom and Robbie. Talking about me, probably, and probably nothing I wanted to hear. Nervous, I slipped the antique silver watch out of my pocket. I looked at the hall again, and wincing, I used my mom’s scissors to scrape a bit of grime-coated silver from the back. It left a shiny patch, and I rubbed my finger over it to try to dull the new brightness.

God, she’d kill me if she knew what I was doing. But I really wanted to talk to my dad, even if it was just a jumbled mess of my memories given temporary life.

My mother laughed, and in a sudden rush, I dumped the shavings in. The soft curlings sank to the bottom, where they sat and did nothing. Maybe it was the thought that counted.

I gave the potion another quick stir, tapped the glass rod off, and poured the mess into the glass-stoppered bottle with the wine. It was done.

Excited, I jammed the bottle and a finger stick into my pocket. The book said if I did it right, it would spontaneously boil when I invoked it in the red and gray stone bowl I’d found in the bottom of a box. The spirit would form from the smoke. This had to work. It had to.

My stomach quivered as I looked over the electric-lit kitchen. Most of the mess was from me rummaging through mom’s boxes of spelling supplies. The dirty mortar, graduated cylinder, plant snips, and bits of discarded plants looked good strewn around-right somehow. This was how the kitchen used to look; my mom stirring spells and dinner on the same stove, having fits when Robbie would pretend to eat out of what was clearly a spell pot. Mom had some great earth magic stuff. It was a shame she didn’t use it anymore apart from helping me with my Halloween costume, her tools banished to sit beside Dad’s ley line stuff in the attic.

I dunked the few dishes I had used in the small vat of salt water to purge any remnants of my spell, setting them in the sink to wash later. This had to work. I was not going to the coast. I was going to join the I.S. and get a real job. All I had to do was this one lousy spell. Dad would tell me I could go. I knew it.

THREE

The temporary lights of Fountain Square turned the falling snow a stark, pretty white. I watched it swirl as I sat on the rim of the huge planter and thumped my heels while I waited for Robbie to return with hot chocolate. It was noisy with several thousand people, witches mostly, and a few humans who were good with ley lines or just curious. They spilled into the closed-off streets where vendors sold warmth charms, trinkets, and food. The scent of chili and funnel cakes made my stomach pinch. I didn’t like the pressing crowd, but with the fridge-sized rock that the planter sported at my back, I found a measure of calm.

It was only fifteen minutes till midnight, and I was antsy. That was when the lucky seven witches chosen by lot would join hands and close the circle etched out before the fountain. The longer they held it, the more prosperous the following year was forecast to be. My name was in the hat, along with Robbie’s, and I didn’t know what would happen if one of us was drawn. It would have looked suspicious if we hadn’t added our names when we passed through the spell checker to get into the square.

I had known about the spell checker, of course. But I’d never tried to sneak a charm in before and had forgotten about it. Apparently a lot of people tried to take advantage of the organized yet unfocused energy that was generated by having so many witches together. My charm was uninvoked, undetectable unless they searched my pockets. Not like the ley line witch ahead of me who I had watched in horror while security wrestled him to the ground. It was harder to smuggle in all the paraphernalia a ley line spell needed. All I had was a small stoppered bottle and a palm-sized stone with a hollowed-out indentation.

My heels thumped faster, and in a surge of tension, I wedged my legs under me and stood above the crowd. Toes cold despite my boots, I brushed the snow from the ivy that grew in the small space between the rock and the edge of the planter. I searched the crowd for Robbie, my foot tapping to Marilyn Manson’s "White Christmas." He had set up on the far stage. The crowd over there was kind of scary.

Fidgeting, my gaze drifted to the only calm spot in the mess: the circle right in front of the fountain. Some guy with CITY EVENT blazoned on his orange vest darted across the cordoned-off area, but most of the security simply stood to form a living barrier. One caught my eye, and I sat back down. You weren’t supposed to be on the planters.