Natural Witch

A translucent weave of colors, textures, and patterns drifted up from the cauldron. Tendrils twisted and bent, spilling over the sides. Whatever it was didn’t dampen the lip of the pot. No sheen spoke of wetness. It slid down the black metal like slow-moving water. Above the cauldron, more of it drifted into the air, unfurling like smoke.

Beatrice, as strangely still as a statue, held that spoon out to me.

The potion’s colorful textures, a fascinating blend of the ingredients that had gone into the pot, became solider and licked at the edge of the spoon before climbing up the handle like vines. Tendrils latched on to Beatrice’s arm, sliding up toward her face.

“You should shake that off, probably,” I said in a wispy voice with a heaviness in the pit of my stomach. Whatever spell I’d spoken to life was not the peaceful, fun-loving kind. Its intent was darker. More violent.

I sure wished I’d felt that before I’d taken part in all of this.

“No one better ever tell my mother about this. Her I told you sos are the absolute worst,” I muttered, willing my foot to step backward. To bring me out of the circle.

“You are bound to us,” the group said as one, their voices deep and coarse.

Fear flashed through my gut. I heard a tinkling of metal.

The door on the side of the room opened a crack and a face appeared, expression wary. His gaze slid over the group as I struggled to move backward.

“Help,” I said through clenched teeth, terror springing up. I could lift my foot, but it would only go forward. It would only carry me toward the potion that I had helped create. “Help,” I said again, louder this time.

His bushy eyebrows lowered over his eyes. “Ain’t no help for you now. About time, too. The fireworks are supposed to kick off any minute.”

“You are bound to us,” the group said together, their grating voices sending a shiver through my body.

The man at the door yanked his head back and shut the door.

He knew what this potion was supposed to do. And he was afraid of it.

“This is bad,” I said as a trickle of sweat dribbled down my cheek. Darkness throbbed in my middle. Blackness surrounded us, different than the Cloud of Doom outside the church, but no less potent.

I’d unknowingly added to the problem. And my time was running out.

The women blinked again, the motion even creepier because it was timed so perfectly, and my mouth dropped open. Their eyes were all white. Not rolling-into-the-back-of-their head white, either. Inhumanly white.

The potion was changing them, all right. Morphing them into something evil.

I had to get out of there.

Shouts erupted from the room next door. A loud, clear voice made it through to me. “Feel that, boys? Here she comes!”

I didn’t know who she was, and I wasn’t about to hang around and find out.

“You are bound to—”

“I heard you, I heard you.” I folded the paper quickly and stuffed it into my jeans pocket with my phone.

My phone!

The hope was dashed almost immediately. Who would I call and what would I say? I’m stuck in an invisible circle at a witchcraft retreat gone wrong, and a magical battle of some sort is about to kick off, so please put on your jetpack and hurry out here since any form of security is miles away?

Fat chance. They’d tell me to lay off the drugs.

“What do I do, what do I do, what do I do?” I asked as the fear started to rise.

A sizzling sound filtered in from somewhere outside of the church, like an egg frying on hot asphalt. More shouts from the other room. My ears popped with a pressure change. The energy buzzing within the room was supercharged.

A new force had sprung up. Outside somewhere, but aimed at the church. It occurred to me then that the intent of the potion was the opposite of the coven’s intent in brewing it.

“I’m cracking up,” I muttered, unsure of how I knew these things, or if they were even true.

One thing I did know: if I didn’t do something quickly, I’d lose myself to the magic that was taking possession of the others in the circle.

Chapter Three

“The intent is the opposite of what it should be,” I murmured to myself, my survival mode kicking in and my brain churning furiously. I was a problem solver. A data head. If I just let my brain toil on the problem for a moment, surely something would come up.

Something had better come up!

I eyed the colorful spectacle creeping across the floor toward my leg. The ladies at large insisted—yet again—that I was bound to them, but I ignored their voices and simultaneously blinking eyes. Instead, I thought over the details. The order in which the ingredients had gone into the cauldron and the group power that had melded them.

That power was still charging the air. Added to that was whatever was happening outside.

More shouts interrupted my thoughts from the main room. The women in the circle twitched. One jolted, her back bending at an odd angle. It didn’t break, but it looked like it would hurt someone up there in years. Yet her face was as placid as ever as she straightened up in a jerky sort of way.

No doubt about it—the potion was changing them from the inside out.

The colorful tendrils reached for me. Would they wrap around my legs and drag me toward the cauldron? How long before the coven shook off their paralysis and force-fed me?

That’s not helping.

“Think, Penny!” I berated myself while rubbing my temples.

The sizzle from outside grew louder, competing with the murmurs and shouts of males in the main room. I yanked at my foot, lifting it. I pushed back with everything I had. Tried to step backward. An invisible wall kept me put. I shoved it out sideways—or I tried, anyway. Another wall kept me in my spot, only allowing me to move forward.

“What is this?” I yelled at the room, losing any semblance of calm. My terror amping up the closer that colorful arm of death got to my feet. “Let me out!”

Shivers slid over my skin and out through my fingers. A tearing feeling ripped through me, blistering. The air crackled and popped. Something burst within the cauldron, firing liquid out. It sprayed Beatrice in the face, but she didn’t even flinch. Her arm was still extended toward me, spoon waiting, perfectly still despite how long it had been in the air.

A thought curled through my memory. The intent is the opposite of what it should be.

The words seared my brain. A desperate plea from my subconscious, still active, though fear covered me like a stifling blanket.

Undo the spell.

Use the energy in the room to undo the spell. To reverse it.

I ripped out the sheet of paper. My gaze flew over the instructions.

“Buggity flapjack, give a dog a bone,” I muttered, falling into my habit of using nonsense and nursery rhymes to keep from swearing. My mother’s influence loomed, even now.

Though for the first time ever, I would not be embarrassed or angry should she barge in and break up the party. For once, her interference to keep me safe would be entirely welcomed. Entirely welcomed.

I dashed forward, feeling the invisible barriers directing me toward the potion. Trying to channel a ninja, I leapt over the reaching tendrils on the ground and ducked under others waving in the sky. I snatched the spoon from Beatrice and shoved her away. Strangely stiff, like rigor mortis had set in, she timbered backward. At the last moment, she staggered, catching herself, and crashed into the invisible barrier of the circle. At least I wasn’t the only one who was stuck.

I skipped past the “drink” instruction and read the previous one, only to realize I needn’t have bothered. It was already stored in my brain, crystal clear. I didn’t have a photographic memory, or even an excellent one, but as I started to reverse what I’d had the ladies do earlier, I realized that from start to finish, and backward to boot, this spell was perfectly preserved in my noggin.

“I’ll marvel at that later,” I muttered, switching sides of the cauldron and stirring. “But how in frick-frack Nickleback am I going to get the ingredients out?”

Tears of frustration pricked my eyes. The colorful tendrils curled out of the sky, drifting toward me.

I squeezed my eyes shut and concentrated on the herbs floating in the gurgling, rolling water. Pulled on my knowledge of their properties. I completed the reversed next step, feeling something dark and evil glance off my hair. A loud thunk echoed from the outer chamber.

Ignoring it all, I kept going. Kept working. A blast sounded from beyond the room that startled me out of my fugue. I snapped open my eyes. A wall of colorful texture had manifested in front of my face. Had dropped over my arms. I didn’t feel its touch, but there was no denying the throbbing blackness it had set off in my middle.

Reversing the spell wasn’t working.

“You have no power over me,” I yelled, stealing a line from my favorite children’s movie Labyrinth. I threw the spoon in defiance. Willing something to happen. Willing my attempt to make a difference, if only a small one.

Another woman jolted. Followed by another. Their shoulders jerked and their heads twisted to the side.

I spun around to face my former position in the circle, gritted my teeth, and prepared for a last-ditch effort. I didn’t know how to fight, but I did know how to crash through walls. My life’s clumsiness had provided good training, and an invisible wall couldn’t be too much different from a visible one.