Book of Dark Magic
by
Sara Bourgeois
Chapter One
“So, there’s just a huge stash of stolen money somewhere in Coventry?” Reggie asked. “And you’re pregnant by the vampire that tried to kill you?”
“I mean, I don’t actually think he was trying to kill me, Reggie. I believe the plan was to save me all along. He set the whole thing up. I mean, not the whole thing. He was taking advantage of what was already going on with Liberty’s murder and all,” I said.
“Are you defending him?”
“Nooooo!” I said. “No.”
“Have you told Thorn yet?”
“I wasn’t going to tell him for a while, but then a few days ago I upchucked for like twenty minutes after he made me grilled cheese and soup for lunch. You should have seen his face. He thought he poisoned me, Reggie. I had to tell him.”
“So, how did that go?”
“He said it was okay, but I haven’t heard from him much the last few days.”
“Oh,” Reggie said softly.
“It’s okay. He’s taken a few days off work, and he’s staying at his family’s hunting cabin nearby. He promised me that he wasn’t bailing on me but that he just needed a few days to think. He still texts me every night to see if I’m okay and let me know if I really need him for anything, he’s not that far away.”
“What you probably need is him here,” Reggie groused.
“It’s okay for him to take a few days to think. He’s not that far, and he’s still communicating with me. I mean, it’s a lot,” I said. “He thought that we’d eventually work things out, and now I’m pregnant with Azriel’s baby.”
“Wasn’t his dad not his bio-dad because his mother had an affair?” Reggie asked.
“Yeah,” I said.
“And he raised him as his own,” Reggie added.
“Yeah.”
“So, there’s precedent in his life for this very situation.”
“I didn’t have an affair,” I protested.
“You know what I mean. I mean that he’s not just abandoning you and the baby because it’s not his biological spawn.”
“I hope that’s true,” I said. “But since when are you team Thorn?”
“I think I read him wrong,” Reggie admitted. “I think the fact that he didn’t dump you the second he found out that you were pregnant with Azriel’s child says a lot. I don’t know many men like that.”
“To be fair, he couldn’t really dump me. We aren’t officially back together,” I said.
“What is this, high school?” Reggie asked. “You don’t have to officially declare that you’re going steady to be in a relationship.”
“You’re right,” I said. “It would be nice, though. It will be nice.”
“For him to declare he’s in a relationship with you?” Reggie asked.
“Yeah, I mean… I think I’ll feel more secure when he says it,” I said with a shrug.
“I can understand that, but I don’t think he’s going to ghost you, Kinsley. Jeremy said that if he hadn’t broken it off yet, he’s not going to. He said there’s no way Thorn would leave you hanging while you’re pregnant. He’s committed to you.”
“You talked to Jeremy about this?” I asked. “While he’s on the other side of the world?”
“Well, you know the line’s secure.” Reggie chuckled. “I wanted his insight on Thorn. Jeremy is one of the reasons I’m so much of a fan of Team Thorn now. I trust Jeremy, and he says we don’t need to worry about the things we were worried about. He said that while it’s hard for Thorn to open up emotionally, he’d never really do anything to hurt you.”
“He almost left me for another woman.”
“First of all, let me remind you that you married another man. Even if it was only for one day,” Reggie said, but there was no malice or judgment in her voice. “And second of all, the keyword here is almost. You hurt him, and he flirted with another woman. He was never really going to leave you.”
“That makes what I did so much worse,” I said.
“No, it doesn’t. You were preyed upon while you were vulnerable. Yeah, the whole thing is kind of a mess, but it’s not entirely anybody’s fault. Except for Azriel. This whole thing is his fault.”
“I just don’t know how Thorn is going to cope with knowing that another man got me pregnant every time he looks at the baby,” I said.
“I honestly don’t think that Thorn’s brain works that way,” Reggie said. “If it did, he wouldn’t be texting you every night to make sure you’re okay. He knows you were taken advantage of, and he’s not going to torture you or himself with that. It’s not what’s best for you or the baby, so he won’t do it.”
“You talked this part over with Jeremy, too, didn’t you?” I asked.
“I wanted a man’s opinion on it,” she said.
“Jeremy seems like a good guy,” I said. “I wish you hadn’t kept your relationship hidden so I could get to know him.”
“He’ll be back. Not soon enough, but he’ll be back. The good news is that my guy is already friends with your guy, so we’re going to be one big happy family,” Reggie said with a huge smile.
“You’re going to be an Auntie,” I said as my hand once again instinctively covered my stomach.
“I’m going to be the best Auntie that ever was,” Reggie said. “Well, maybe not better than Lilith. Nobody could top that woman.”
“She is something special,” I said. “But you can’t ever tell the other Aunties that she’s my favorite.”
“Your secret is safe with me.”
“I need to run to the grocery store,” I said. “I need some cilantro to make this salsa recipe I want to try, and the house doesn’t like it. So, no matter how many times I open the fridge, no cilantro.”
“Sure,” Reggie said. “I want to check and see if the bakery has any cake pops. I love those things, but for two bites it’s never worth it to make them myself.”
“They had those at Starbucks,” I said. “Back when I lived in the city.”
“That will be the day. When Coventry finally gets a Starbucks. I’ve heard they’re talking about building one over in the new section of town.”
“I suppose that won’t really cut into Viv’s business,” I said. “Maybe you should suggest she serve them at her shop. Since I know you’d never set foot in a Starbucks.”
“You’re right. I wouldn’t, but it would be nice if Viv had them.”
“Well, come on. Let’s go see if Mann’s has any for now,” I said. “Meri, do you want to go to the store with us?”
“Tired,” he said, and then darted into his tunnel in the wall.
“I’ll drive,” I said as Reggie and I walked down my front porch steps.
The drive over to the store was uneventful. It was still early, so not many people were out and about yet. Reggie and I would have to go into the shop after we took our groceries back to the house. That meant we didn’t have much time to window-shop at the store.
We went through the automatic doors, and I headed for produce while Reggie went to scout the bakery. While I was looking for the perfect batch of cilantro, I noticed the sound of rattling bottles.
Across from the produce department was Mann’s ample liquor department. The town drunk, Richard Jordan, was riffling through a shelf full of bottles as if he were looking for the perfect one. His pursuit was far louder than my search for the right bunch of cilantro. I was concerned he was going to drop one of the bottles and break it. That or hurt himself. He looked as though he was still on last night’s bender.
As I was about to take my cilantro and speak with him, I noticed a young man watching him from the corner of the cross aisles. He was dressed in
all black with his thick, glossy black hair tied into a neat ponytail. I vaguely recognized the young man as someone I’d probably seen around Coventry before.
It hadn’t occurred to me until that moment that Mann’s probably had loss prevention associates. The young man was watching Richard the way you’d see them watching a potential shoplifter in Target or Walmart. You could always pick them out because they looked like undercover police officers. I had no idea how thieves didn’t figure it out, but it seemed they never did.
Either way, it appeared that the matter was well in hand, so I left it to the young man to handle Mann’s business. I took my cilantro and headed over to the other side of the store to meet up with Reggie.
She’d found herself a box of a dozen cake pops over in the bakery. “They didn’t have a smaller box?” I teased.
“So, what if they did?” she shot back at me. “Maybe I shouldn’t share with you after all.”
“Oh, let’s not take things too far,” I said.
After we checked out, Reggie and I took the cilantro and cake pops back to my house. The cilantro I left behind, but we took the pops with us to work. We took Meri too, and he had a cake pop. I had three. So did Reggie, and then we handed the rest out to the few children that came into the store throughout the day. We didn’t get many kids, but every day there were at least a few.
For the first time in a long time, customers came in that unsettled me. It was two men, and from first glance I thought they were witches. But, as they got closer to me, I could sense that they weren’t.
It wasn’t that there wasn’t any kind of enhanced energy around them, but it wasn’t our flavor of magic. It was much darker. Darker even than the dark magic of the Voodoo curse.
The men were just people too. People who had summoned the dark energy that surrounded them. I was glad that Meri had come into the shop with us that morning because he could confirm that it was demonic energy surrounding those guys.
I’d suspected it, but he confirmed it for me when they were gone. They were both dressed in all black, but that wasn’t unusual for Coventry. A lot of the witches, and even a good chunk of the tourists who were into the ghost and witchy tours, dressed in all black most of the time.
These guys were both wearing smudged black eyeliner and lipstick. The goth look wasn’t that unusual either, but these two looked like they were trying to appear more menacing. Their tattoos were unnerving as well. I didn’t mind tattoos at all. I’d briefly been married to an outlaw biker after all, but these guys had upside-down pentagrams, and one of them had Baphomet on his arm. The others were too disturbing or gory to describe.
They bought a bunch of black candles and poison herbs. It was all the stuff I kept in baskets toward the back of the store for the witches. Tourists and other non-witches never even went back there thanks to a spell I’d placed to keep them away, but those guys did. They walked back there like my protection magic had no effect on them. It was a fairly weak spell, so it wasn’t like they were a danger to me, but still.
I’d wanted to say something to them, but what? I didn’t have a sign up that said “witches only” in that section of the shop or anything. I’d have to let my family know they were around, though, so that way, if they stayed in town, we could keep an eye on them.
Again, not because I thought they were really dangerous, but because they looked like the types to try and get themselves in over their heads. Judging by the energy around them, they already had.
Plus, the one guy with the Baphomet tattoo kept looking at me like he wanted me to challenge him. He was looking for a fight or any kind of negative energy, and I wasn’t going to give it to him.
Given that he’d messed around with demons, he probably had at least an inkling about witches. Knew that section of the store wasn’t for him… He was waiting for me to tell him he couldn’t buy those herbs so he could cause a scene and feed off all of that negative energy. I felt for him because it would corrupt his body, mind, and soul. Not in the way he thought, either. It wouldn’t make him more powerful. It would just make him wither away while the demons took his energy, but I could tell by the malicious twinkle in his eye that my breath would be wasted explaining it to him.
His shoulders slumped a little in defeat when I put his items in a gift bag and said, “Have a great day. Thanks for shopping with us.”
“You know what that stuff is, right?” He went in for one last challenge. Probably hoping that I was just some chick working behind the counter who had no idea the power of some of the things the shop sold.
“Yep,” I said, without breaking my smile. “I own this shop and get all of my herbs from friends. In fact, I’m thinking of starting my own garden and drying herbs myself too. I’ve got plenty of space in my yard. Enjoy your purchases.”
At that point, I wasn’t sure if he just gave up, or he knew that I knew what he was doing. Either way, the two of them left the store.
“Were those guys… weird?” Reggie asked as she emerged from behind one of the shelves. Apparently, they’d scared her enough that she was unconsciously hiding from them. “Like weirder than even regular Coventry weird.”
“They were,” I said, and that’s when Meri came out and confirmed that the men were surrounded by demonic energy.
The rest of the day was somewhat dull. Lots of tourists and a few witches. Most of the witches who came in that day weren’t family. Still, I trusted a couple of them enough to ask that they watch out for the weirdos that had come in the shop earlier anyway. The Skeenbauers who came in I told for sure and asked them to pass the word around to the Coven.
When we closed for the evening, I invited Reggie over. She seemed lonely a lot without Jeremy around, and Thorn was still at his hunting cabin. I figured we could have another girls’ night. We’d been having a lot of them.
“I can’t,” she said. “Jeremy’s going to call tonight. I’m sorry. Is that okay?”
“Of course, it’s okay. You don’t have to ask me,” I said with a chuckle.
“It’s just that they’re currently in a place where he’ll be able to call me. It’s for at least a couple of days. I’m sorry. I know you said I don’t need to ask, but you need me too. Maybe I should just talk to him for a bit and then come over?”
“I’m okay, Reggie. Really. I can always call my mom or Lilith. I could even call Viv. I know she goes into work super early, but I’m sure she’d still come over.”
“Okay, if you’re sure,” Reggie said.
“I am. Go. Tell Jeremy I said hi.”
“I will,” she said and practically skipped to her car.
When I got home, I pulled into my driveway and got out of the car. I was halfway up to the porch before I saw the book lying there on my porch.
“Someone left a book on the porch,” I said to Meri.
For some reason, I’d stopped in my tracks. It was just a book, but my intuition had picked up right away that it wasn’t just a book.
“Stay back for a second,” Meri said. It was apparent he’d picked up on it too, or maybe he just sensed my apprehension.
I watched as he went over and sniffed the book. He used a paw to open the cover and look through a few pages.
“Well?” I said after he closed it again.
“It’s a strange book, but I don’t know that I’m picking up on anything truly harmful,” he said.
“Strange?”
“You’ll see. We can look at it inside,” Meri answered.
“Alright,” I said.
I picked up the book and took it into the house. After I put my purse on the hook by the door, Meri and I sat on the couch to look through the book.
“It is strange,” I said after looking at the first few pages. “Do you recognize this language?”
“I don’t,” Meri said.
“It kind of looks like a witch language, but not one I’ve ever encountered. I think this is an ancient book,” I said. “The pictures are weird too.”
The pictures in the
book were the cherry on top of the weird sundae my day had been. They seemed macabre, but they also seemed to shift if you focused on them too hard. I knew I was looking at something, but I couldn’t tell exactly what. I had an idea that it might not be good, but I couldn’t say for sure.
“Yeah, they’re something,” Meri said.
“Okay,” I said and stood up. “The book is old and strange, but I’m hungry. There’s no note on the book, so I’ll ask around about it tomorrow. Let’s get some dinner.”
“Sounds good to me,” Meri said.
I put the book on the fireplace mantel, and Meri and I went into the kitchen. I pretty much forgot about it as we went about our evening.
By the time Thorn texted me to say goodnight, it had all but slipped my mind.
I love you, was Thorn’s final text to me that evening.
He hadn’t said it in a while. How could I think about anything else after that?
I woke up, and at first I had no idea where I was. My feet were soggy from the grass, and my pajamas were wet from sweat. I found myself standing in front of the Skeenbauer Family Crypt in the big Coventry Cemetery.
“How did I get here?” I asked no one. Meri wasn’t even there. “Am I dreaming?”
But I wasn’t.
My standing there in bare feet and pajamas in the Coventry Cemetery was as real as anything. I’d gone to sleep in my bed and woken up there.
Noises began to rattle around inside of the crypt, and a low moan came from somewhere inside. These events would have had a chilling effect on an average person unfortunate enough to find themselves near the crypt at night. Still, I knew it was just my ancestors being rambunctious.
The crypt was the final resting place and a prison for the worst of the family. It contained witches who had done things so egregious that they could never be redeemed or forgiven. A few others, non-witches and witches from other covens alike, had been tossed in there to be lost to history. Their bones littered the marble floors long after their deaths, and their souls spent eternity searching for a way out.
They would never find one. Once you went in, you never came out.
Book of Dark Magic Page 1