Natural Witch

He pushed his hands out and up, and the ball of magic he’d been knitting into existence drifted into a lumpy, sloppy plane before disappearing from sight.

“How come I can’t see it anymore?” I asked, taking a step forward.

He lifted his hands again, and more streams of magic rose from around him, an entirely different set than before. “The power is spread too thin. Wards aren’t spells. They are called into reality the same way, but they exist in nature differently. I’ll teach you more later. Now, let’s get back to your slumber party with a group of zombies. I’m not quite done with my line of questioning.”

I bit my lip to keep a smile away. The situation had been dark and horrible, so much more serious than what he was portraying. I felt bad for laughing.

“This coven had a leader?” he asked.

“I don’t really know, but she was taking charge.”

“Until you, an untrained mage who’d never worked a potion before, relieved her of her duty?”

“Yes.”

“Mhm. And how did you come to be at this…retreat, did you say? Magical retreat?”

I told him about the whole sorry situation, which spilled into a story of the potion, and how I’d hidden from the zombies in the closet. By the end, he was laughing helplessly and his magical work was completely stalled. He shook his head when he was through and layered the new spell onto the ward.

“You are something, Penny Bristol. Of all the decisions a person could make in their lifetime, you make the oddest ones, and put them together even more strangely.”

“Yeah. Well.” I didn’t really know what else to say to that. It was true, after all.

“And the other night. Why did you run over those bodies?”

I choked on my spit as he turned and strode back toward me. He stopped in front of me and looked down onto my face. Confusion seeped into his expression.

“No reason,” I said, about-facing and marching into the house. “Will we be protected?”

“Your mother will, yes. Hopefully you won’t be here.”

“She won’t let me go if she thinks I’ll come to harm.”

“I gathered that, yes. So let’s hope she convinces herself. I think that is the missing ingredient. I hope that is the missing ingredient. I don’t have any other ideas.”

“For a so-called powerful natural mage, you certainly don’t have all the answers,” I teased.

“I never claimed to have all the answers. Or a well-thought-out strategy, as your mother has so kindly pointed out.”

My humor dried up as I caught sight of my mother, sitting stone-faced at the dining room table, worry in her eyes. Emery’s confidence and know-how made it so easy for me to forget the danger I was in. But if he and my mother were to be believed, soon things wouldn’t be this quiet. Soon the guild, whoever they were, wouldn’t be watching—they’d be attacking.

“Sit,” my mother barked.

Both Emery and I took chairs dutifully, and I saw that his humor had dried up as well. He was deadly, knowledgeable, and powerful, but that didn’t mean squat when it came to taking orders from my mother.

Her gaze fell on Emery. “I assume you know how tarot works? That you will need to focus?”

He was looking at her worn and beat-up deck, one of her very first, which she only brought out for heavy decision-making. I had seen that deck a few times, including just after my father had died. Unlike when I “read” for paying customers, she did not take these readings lightly.

“I know how it works, and I know what the cards mean,” he said in a heavy voice.

“The cards don’t always mean what you might imagine,” she replied, her attention shifting to her deck.

Her fingers worked in practiced movements, shuffling so fast that I was amazed a card didn’t break free from the pack and fly across the room. Her eyes lost focus, staring into nothingness. I’d always thought this was when the real magic started. But now, as I experienced it with new eyes, I knew this was when the real magic started.

Energy rose and moved through the room, hovering around us. An electrical current ran along my arms and stood small hairs on end. My stomach dropped, like the first plunge from a high rollercoaster.

A large, rough hand covered mine, and I started with the contact. Emery was staring at me, his eyes slightly rounded and his gaze deep.

“What?” I mouthed, careful not to interrupt my mother.

His little head tilt made it seem like he was asking, “What do you mean, what?” But whatever he saw on my face or in my eyes changed his expression to incredulous confusion, and he pulled his hand away from mine.

“The question has been asked,” my mother said in a haunting, faraway voice.

She must’ve asked it internally, which she sometimes did. Just because she said she was going to read for you, didn’t mean she planned to do a reading of you. I’d learned that the hard way a few times over.

She reached the card deck across the table to Emery before setting it down. Her gaze focused on him. “Cut.”

He took half and placed it to the side of the deck. She took the untouched group of cards and placed it on the group Emery had set down. She was about to lay them in a pattern on the table when she paused. Her brow furrowed.

She looked at me for a moment before shifting the deck over to me. “Cut.”

I stared at her for a moment. That wasn’t right. One person cut.

My mother’s glower kept my argument trapped within the cage of my teeth.

I followed Emery’s example.

She slapped the cards down in front of her, the configuration not one you’d see in any books, just like the description of what she was looking for wasn’t in any how-to blogs. If Emery was taken aback by that, it didn’t show.

Silence descended, thick and syrupy. Her eyes darted from one card to the other. Back again. In zigzags and patterns that she probably couldn’t have explained if she’d tried. When she was done, she leaned back in her chair, sagging heavily.

The pressure in the room popped, and with it, my ears. Expectation rose.

“You must go, Penelope,” she said into the silence. “He was right. To stay would be disastrous. If you go, you at least have a slice of a chance. Any way I read it, that’s the result. I would never have believed it. Had I read the cards after he’d left, it would’ve been too late.” Her troubled, sorrowful gaze came up and hit Emery. “If you go, you must use your friends. You will know which ones when the time comes. You won’t want to, but you must. It will be the difference between loss and a life fully lived. For both you and my daughter.”

He stared at her for a moment, something passing between them. He nodded solemnly. “I won’t let you down.”

She wiped her face and gathered up her cards. “You need to put a ward on her friend Veronica’s house. Mine won’t hold up.”

“Of course.” He shifted, watching the cards go back into their deck. “The ward is still a warning, but I layered it with a spell that will make the eyes slippery. They should glide right past your house. I didn’t have time to figure out how to limit that to just a magical person. I’m not even sure it can be done. But you’ll have a little more protection, at any rate.”

“That’s not important,” she said, worry etching her face and fear ringing in her tone. She didn’t look at me. “My little girl is about to head into battle with no preparation or training. The last thing in the world I care about right now is myself.”

Chapter Eighteen

“Hey!”

I startled out of my light sleep. A shaggy head leaned over me, attached to a hulking body.

Terror flooded me. I flung my hands up to ward off the shape.

“No, no, no, no.”

I knew that deep, gravelly voice, but it was too late.

A stream of white exploded from my palms. His large hands spread and blackness enveloped the white. The two turned and turned together, the solid colors creating a murky sort of smoke. Magic pulled at my middle and electricity sizzled through my bones.

“It’s me, Penny. It’s Emery. Pull it back. Imagine sucking in that white. Close your eyes and imagine it.”

The tremors from my abrupt awakening faded and I did as he said, feeling that string on my ribs and then consciously reeling it back in.

“That’s right. Good,” he said, his voice strained.

I opened my eyes with his sigh. The two whirling colors were gone, but electricity still charged the air between our bodies.

“Was that me?” I asked, lowering my hands slowly. “Did I do that?”

“Yes. I’ll explain later. Hurry. We’re out of time.” He reached out a hand to help me up.

I took it without thinking. The electricity pulsing between us soaked into the touch. A blast of fire raced up my arm and boiled through my middle. It traveled the length of my body until it bled out, into the floor. My legs and arms stung in the aftermath and our quickened breaths replaced the silence.

I could just make out his wince in the failing light of the living room. “What makes that happen?” he muttered, sounding mystified.

A charge of electricity using our bodies to find grounding seemed logical to me, whereas a white stream of light shooting out of my palms did not, but since he was supposed to be the expert, I didn’t bother answering.