"Stay here? What if they come for me too?" she asked.
"Meri will stay with you," I said.
"No, I won't," he groused.
"Yes, you will. I'll be fine. I'll call Thorn and have him meet me. You stay here and protect Reggie. That's an order."
"Fine."
On my way out to the car, I called Thorn and told him where to meet me. He started to protest, but I informed him that if he didn't go, I'd handle it myself.
"I'll be there in a few minutes," he relented.
"Thanks!" I said, but in truth, I knew I could handle it without him.
By the time I reached Jemma's house and climbed the fence into her backyard, there was a new statue in the middle of the altar. It was a tiny Viv dressed in a blue and white pinafore dress wearing a little blue hat.
Only, it wasn't a statue. Much to my horror, I knew it was the actual Viv. She'd been shrunk down into a garden gnome.
They were all people that Jemma had turned into garden gnomes. If I hadn't seen the tiny version of Viv, it never would have snapped into place for me.
That was why Astra had been left on my porch posed weird with a drink in her hand. Jemma had been trying to turn her into a gnome too, but it didn't work. She hadn't been able to turn her because Astra was a witch, but Jemma's Fae magic killed her in the process.
I didn't recognize the plants or the poison she'd used because it was Fae magic and trickery.
What I did know was that I had to turn Viv back quickly, and then I had to figure out how to turn all the rest of the gnomes back into people. The longer they stayed that way, the harder it would be to reverse the spell.
I ran across the flowerbeds, hopping over the circular rows of gnomes, as carefully as I could so as not to kick them, so I could get to Viv. The purple plants actually reached out and used their thorns to try to hold onto my pant legs, but I shook them off. Some of them I wilted with a withering stare. At least the darkness and chaos inside of me could be used for some good.
When I grabbed Viv's statue, I used what little chaos magic I knew to reverse the Fae magic. My darkness could override the trickery used to turn her, and I could definitely overpower any nature magic with it.
Suddenly, Viv was back. She stood in front of me with eyes as wide as saucers.
"What just happened?"
"I'll tell you soon, I promise. Right now, we have to find the woman who did this to you. We can't let her get away."
"All of these people..." Viv said despondently. "How is this possible?"
She was going into emotional shock. "Viv, it's going to be okay. My family and I can change them all back, I promise. We have to catch Jemma, though. She'll do this to more people."
"You're a witch. Like for real! That's so cool!"
"It's pretty cool," I said and patted her shoulder. "Did you see where she went?"
"She's right there. Inside," Viv said and pointed to the back door.
I turned and could see Jemma picking up gnomes and shoving them into a duffle bag. She didn't want to leave her gnomes behind.
"Stay out here," I said to Viv. "I only know a little about Fae magic, and I don't want her to turn you into a tree or something. You've been through enough."
Viv nodded, and I ran for the back door. It was locked, but that wasn't enough to stop me. A little magic and the doorknob turned.
"Stop right now!" I yelled at Jemma. "It's over!"
She picked up a pitcher of bright green liquid from the buffet in front of her and tried to fling its contents at me. "You were supposed to go down for her murder. It was too perfect!"
I dodged most of the liquid, though a little landed on my arm. My arm hairs began to turn into tiny vines, but I was able to counteract the magic.
"Ugh, I really hate witches!" Jemma spat.
"Nothing you do is going to work on me," I said. "You might as well stop while you're ahead."
Jemma's face turned bright red. She started shrieking and tearing at her own hair. Realizing that she might hurt herself, I envisioned ghostly green vines coming out of the floor and wrapping around her.
Why did I use vines? It served two purposes. The first was that it held her in place so she couldn't rip out her hair or scratch her face. The other was that she found the soft glowing vines soothing and stopped her ear-splitting shrieking.
Just about the time I got her quieted down, Thorn showed up. "You should have stayed outside," he said sternly.
"I had to get her. She'd turned Viv into a garden gnome. Thorn, all of these gnomes are people, and I believe Astra figured that out somehow. Jemma tried to turn Astra into a gnome too, but she's a witch. She couldn't do it. That didn't stop her from giving Astra more and more of the poison until she died," I said. "Why she was on my porch, I'm still trying to wrap my head around."
"Because everybody in town heard you were fighting," Jemma said. She was suddenly icy cool and calm. It was unnerving. "It's as simple as me trying to frame you. Why do you witches always have to be searching for meaning in things? It's one of your more annoying traits."
"This isn't going to go well," Thorn said.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, although she's mostly admitted she poisoned Astra, there's no evidence of that," he said. "The state police lab didn't find anything, and they won't. I think they're practically ready to rule Astra's death a heart attack or something. The official story being that she was waiting on your porch and died of natural causes or something like that."
"You're kidding me," I said.
"I wish I was."
I took a deep breath and stifled a sigh. "Then let them," I said. "If the death isn't ruled a murder, then no one will look into it further."
"Should I leave?" Thorn asked.
"Yeah," I said. "I'm going to call my family. I'm going to need them to help set these people free, and I'm sure Amelda and Lilith will have some interesting ideas on how to deal with Jemma."
Epilogue
Midnight Magic Festival
Viv was so excited about the Midnight Magic Festival really being magic that I had to keep reminding her she couldn't tell anyone. I didn't get mad at her, though. She'd been through so much, and for her, finding out that magic was real was like waking up on Christmas morning every single day. After all, she hadn't opened a witch-themed coffee shop for no reason.
The day of the festival, Reggie and I set up tables outside of the shop. We lined them with the swag bags, and Reggie watched to make sure people only took one. I worked inside the store for a few hours.
Eventually, as afternoon began to turn into night, we closed the shop and joined the festivities. A band set up in the middle of the square, and several local restaurants had food tents. There was a large cash bar as well that served regular drinks to the regular folks and magic elixirs to the witches.
Thorn was working that evening because the sheriff's office had to provide security, but he kept stealing away to dance with me and give me kisses. We'd twirl around in circles to the music until we were both dizzy and gasping for breath, and then he'd go on patrol again.
My entire family was there, and they welcomed Reggie and Viv into the fold with open arms. They could never be witches, but they were now our sisters. Meri stuffed himself so full with bacon that he slinked off to sleep near one of the columns on the front steps of the courthouse.
I was dancing with Reggie to the beat of some zydeco song while we laughed and drank fizzy pink drinks when I saw Azriel. None of his MC had shown up at the festival. Word around town was that they'd gotten on their motorcycles and rolled out of town, so he was the last person I expected to see.
But he was there watching me. His gaze was so heavy that I could almost feel it like weight. "I'll be back," I said to Reggie.
"Will you be okay?" she asked when Azriel fell into her line of sight.
"I'll be fine. It's him you need to worry about," I said.
"I can only imagine," she said. "Don't get yourself arrested without me."
I chuckled and then walked in Azriel's direction. When he saw me coming toward him, he disappeared around the corner. I wasn't sure if he'd fled when he saw me coming or just wanted more privacy.
It turned out he was still there. "What do you want?" he asked me harshly.
"What do you mean, what do I want? You're the one hanging out in the shadows watching me," I said.
"If I was truly in the shadows, you never would have seen me," he said.
"Whatever, Azriel. Why are you watching me?" I asked.
"I don't know," he said, and he sounded so dejected that it almost seemed real. "I should go."
"Before you do, could you at least have the decency to tell me why you helped Astra destroy my shop and steal my stuff?" I said.
"I never said that I did."
"Well, just then, you didn't deny it. So, I'm pretty sure that's as close as I'm ever going to get to a confession. I just hope you didn't hurt Tangerine to lure me to your place. You will wish for death if I ever find out you hurt that dog," I hissed.
"Now, there's the Kinsley I admire," he said with a wistful smile. "I love your dark side, beautiful girl. No, I would never hurt Geri. That was real. It didn't set things in motion. It just changed the course of things a little."
"But why, Azriel? Why?"
"Because she had money and I wanted you within my grasp again. It was a mutually beneficial business relationship."
As I walked away from him, his words I love your dark side, beautiful girl, cut me like a knife. As I lay there in bed that night, I couldn't sleep. Those words just kept ringing in my head.
I eventually got up and went downstairs. After making a cup of hot chocolate, I settled in on the sofa to wait for the sun to come up.
Astra's notebook still sat on my coffee table. I opened it up and began studying the drawings as I sipped my cocoa. They made a great deal more sense once I knew what had happened.
My Aunties had extracted the truth from Jemma before they turned her into a little pink and purple fairy and put her in a jar, a curiosity to sit on Lilith's mantle until she passed on and the jar passed down to me.
Astra had come to Coventry to find Jemma. That gnome she'd stolen, it was her fiancé. Her human fiancé. He'd decided to stay in Coventry.
A great many of the people we freed did, but some left. They went home awakened from what they believed was some sort of fugue state. The official working hypothesis according to the nightly news is that some sort of virus caused thousands of people to go into an amnesiac state. As soon as they recovered, they returned to their friends and families with no memory of what happened. Scientists are still working to find the actual virus. They can't, and the new theory is that it's a prion disease, like mad cow, instead. It will be forgotten within two news cycles. Life will go on.
There was good in everyone. That was a lesson Astra taught me. She tried to ruin my business, but she loved her fiancé fiercely. She also donated money to homeless familiars. Kats.
Apparently, she was a dark witch from birth, but she tried to be good, and when she did, it gave her a form of dyslexia. Imagine that. Being so bad that your brain literally short-circuits when you do something good.
But she did try. There was love in her heart. But I couldn't think about that. I had to push those thoughts aside.
Because if there was good in her... if there was love in her heart... then she couldn't be the only one.
I love your dark side, beautiful girl.
Thank you for reading!
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Sympathetic Magic
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© Sara Bourgeois 2020
This story is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons alive or dead is a coincidence.
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