This was ley line energy. This was sorcery.
Nana had taught me that sorcery was to be undertaken only as a “last resort,” something to be used when immediacy demanded it. Right now, I could agree that Johnny’s need was urgent.
But.
The power of the ley, the power of sorcery, was, as Nana would say, “like a bull in a china shop.” It was eager, mobile, and brutish. It required strength of will to hold it, contain and control it.
I’d touched ley magic. I’d felt its sting at the first burning bite of contact. It was meant to protect, to keep the weak from tapping the line. I used a drop of that energy to power my house wards. That “drop” could numb my whole arm instantaneously. If more than a drop was being used—like it was here before us—the sensation faded too quickly into a euphoria that could render an unprepared or unlearned sorceress unconscious, either releasing that power unchecked, or leaving her helpless as it consumed her.
My mother’s intoxication gave me great concern. I knew that the heated “almost-pain” was dulling into a nice buzz. She looked like a junkie who’d just taken a hit.
I checked Johnny for a sign that this was causing him any discomfort, but he lay still, calm and unaffected.
Eris clapped her hands over her head, fingers lacing together. She was breathing fast, but slowing with each inhalation. When she had control, she quit the pose and retrieved a long narrow tray and a yellow candle from under the table. She lit the candle, positioned the tray on the floor at the head of the table, and placed the candle.
“I invoke the will of the dazzling sun, with golden rays of warmth and light.” She took up a Baggie and sprinkled the cinnamon and rosemary mixture on Johnny’s arms. With a piece of amber dipped in Dragon’s Blood oil, she traced the markings on his right arm, murmuring of Belenus, a Welsh sun god, and invoking the element of fire. When she switched to trace the marking on his right arm, her chant invoked Lugh, the god of the sun in Irish traditions.
Dragon’s Blood, incidentally, was not a good thing to put directly on the skin, but I was confident that Johnny’s wære healing ability would adjust for it.
I was feeling pretty good about this so far, at least until she climbed atop the table and straddled my boyfriend. Beside me Nana crossed her arms in a huff, drawing my attention to the belligerence she was expressing.
Eris grasped Johnny’s wrists and lifted them until his arms were vertical.
“Guardians and loyal hounds
Healers drawn and duty bound
Rest now, you steadfast beasts
Your vigilant watch now may cease.”
The flames of each candle sputtered and threw up smoke that swirled without dissipating. Taking the form of the lean hounds from the art, these smoke hounds loped happily around the circle three times before lying down and fading.
Eris climbed down from the table.
Johnny lifted his head to meet my gaze. I wasn’t sure what he was trying to convey. If I’d been able to touch him, perhaps I could have heard him tell me in my mind.
Eris lit a blue candle, placed it beside the yellow one and moved the tray back enough to allow her to stand at the head of that table without jeopardizing the candles. She took up another Baggie. “Shut your eyes and keep them shut until I say you can open them,” she said to Johnny. “I invoke the emotion of the shimmering moon, ruler of the tides, whose silver beams brighten the night.”
She sprinkled ground eucalyptus and myrrh across his eyes, then lifted a piece of moonstone. Instead of dipping the stone in the oil this time—Dragon’s Blood would be bad stuff to get in the eyes—she tapped the gemstone’s edge against the oil-filled bottle three times. Murmuring invocations to the element of water, and calling on Thoth, the Egyptian god of the moon and knowledge and wisdom, and also on Amun, the king of the gods who was associated with hidden power, she traced the Wedjats.
Placing the moonstone between his brows she put her palms over him, chanting,
“This man’s desire is revealed.
Let him see it.
This man’s truth is revealed.
Let him be it.
This man’s power is revealed.
Let him free it.
This man’s destiny is revealed.
Let him believe it.”
As she spoke, Johnny’s exhaled breath became steam that flew like ibis and falcons, up and up, fading as they reached the ceiling.
She repeated the lines twice, lifted her hands, and shouted the chant a third time with upraised arms.
When she lowered her arms, however, she teetered to the left.
“Eris!” Nana called.
At the last, she caught herself with a grip on the table. “I’m okay,” she said.
That may have been true, but simply being in a circle and saying the words wasn’t enough to conduct magic, let alone sorcery. This was taxing her heavily and there were five tattoos remaining. She sat on the floor beside the table, dug a cloth from the box, and pushed it to Johnny’s fingers. “Wipe the herbs from your face with this, then you can open your pretty blues.”
He sat up to comply. When done, he blinked and peered around him, noticing where she was sitting. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah. Just need to ground and center again.” She straightened her spine and imitated a yoga pose.
Johnny looked at me. I nodded. Silently questioning back, I tipped my head toward him and lifted my brows. He shook his head minutely and lay back down.
He doesn’t feel any different. Since the ley power was crawling over my skin and I’d seen the hounds and birds in the circle, I knew it was working. Perhaps Johnny’s immunity to magic was hampering his ability to detect the effects of it.
Eris broke her pose and stood with a dreamy sigh. She’d called the energy, it had answered again to refuel her. “The star on your navel is next.” She glanced at me. “A fairy star, to be broken without fey magic.”
She lit a silver candle, placed it with the rest. She gathered her supplies and, with her thumbs and forefingers, created a circle around the seven-pointed star on Johnny’s abdomen. “I summon the speed of the planet Mercury, with quicksilver and light.” She sprinkled lavender and mint on his stomach, then followed the lines of the star with a piece of aventurine, mumbling of Mercury, the Roman messenger of the gods and god of travelers, and invoking the element of earth.
“Fate’s path was once reborn
With magic, ink, and art entwined,
Sealed with seven points, seven thorns.
But I command you now to unbind!”
Hands hovering inches above the star on his skin she chanted,
“The way is clear.
Barriers frayed.
The way is clear.
Obstructions fade.
The way is clear.
The path is remade.
The way is clear.
The way is clear.
The way is clear.”
My eyes detected a dark cloud. Analyzing what I was seeing, I realized that granules of the ground-up lavender and mint were sliding across his skin, floating into the air between his flesh and her palms, and forming the same lines as the fairy star.
The symbol floated there, first wobbling as each point dipped down in succession, tilting the whole.
“Clear the way,” she said, and repeated it twice more.
On the third time, the spinning herbs massed together into a thick cloud, then exploded in a poof! that left a dusting of lavender and mint across Johnny’s skin.
Eris leaned on the table, shoulders sagging.
“Stir,” she murmured, twirling her finger clockwise in the air.
The air around them swirled hard enough to lift her hair and wipe the lavender and mint dust from Johnny. The sparks crackled around her again, but this time the sparks were red.
“You’re going to need to remove your jeans for the next part.”
Johnny rose from the table, on the far side, and removed his boots and socks, then
dropped his jeans. With Nana sitting beside me I tried not to admire him too much and just be grateful that he’d worn underwear. Bet he is, too.
Eris grabbed his discarded things and shoved them into an empty space under the table. “And by the way,” she told him, “this part is going to hurt.”
She lit a red candle as he resumed his place on the table and placed it next to the yellow and blue candles on the tray. “I invoke the action of the planet Mars, of dynamic assertiveness and fearless heroics.” From the third Baggie, she sprinkled basil and allspice onto his thighs. With an oblong piece of red jasper she’d dipped into the Dragon’s Blood oil, she traced the image on his right thigh first, chanting odd Aztec names, and invoking the element of air.
These tattoos were the ones I had not studied much, because when Johnny’s pants were off, admiring the art on his legs was not my priority. However, I knew these images were blocky Aztec figures made with thick lines and curves, colored in with dark shades of red.
When she had completed the drawing on that side, she sat the stone on the top of his thigh and said,
“Xolotl! Dog of the Underworld,
Bringer of fire, at night the sun is in your keep.
Cipatli! Dragon primordial,
Your slain body became our earth, so deep.
Dragon and dog together,
Earth and fire forever!”
She moved around the table and drew the image on the left with a second jasper dipped in oil, then placed it atop his left thigh and said,
“Quetzelcoatl! Feathered serpent,
And ruler of the rains that cleanse,
You are lightning and you are thunder
Nahuatl! The lord of the Nine Winds.
Serpent and human together,
Air and water forever!”
She reached across the table to grip both thighs so the tattoos were under her palms, and her thumbs were on the stones.
“Elements four,
in Aztec gods once paired!
This seal is broken!
Separations are now repaired!”
She sucked down a trembling breath and enunciated the chant succinctly. “I take it back, I take it back, I take it back.”
Johnny cried out sharply. He rose up and instinctively swung his fist at her, but halted the strike at the last second. To my far left, Lance was on his feet. Both Johnny and Eris were in pain. She ground her teeth, the scream in her throat building, building until she couldn’t keep it down any longer. At once, both of them opened their mouths and anguish filled the room.
She jerked away, red jaspers tumbling to the floor as the room fell silent except for the mystical music on the stereo. Gasping, Eris clenched and unclenched her fists and shook them as if she couldn’t feel them anymore. She took a step back and stared down into the palms of her now badly shaking hands.
Johnny was inspecting his thighs. “What the—” He struggled for the words, and blurted, “The color’s gone!”
“No it’s not.” Eris showed us her palms. The palms of her hands were entirely red.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
How—?” Johnny demanded.
Her breath caught. “I took it back.” She stumbled.
Johnny leaped from the table. He couldn’t catch her before her knees buckled, but his grip on her arm kept her from tumbling out of the circle.
The rest of us rushed to that side of the table, careful not to cross the ring of salt.
Eris stared at her hands in dismay. “What I did to you was so wrong and I knew it.” She showed him her hands again. “Air. Air was the final element. Air powers the mechanism that injected the ink into your skin. And now it’s in mine, as if the universe has caught me red-handed.” She laughed. The maniacal edge to it made the rest of us toss looks around like a hot potato.
“You have to stop this,” Lance said.
“No!” Eris shouted. She twisted and struggled to get to her feet, obviously weak. Johnny helped her stand. “We can’t stop!” When her knees threatened to give way again, he made her sit on the table.
Johnny retrieved his jeans from under the table and stepped into them. As he tugged the zipper up he said, “I’m not convinced you’re able to finish this.”
“You can’t leave the circle partially free.”
“What? You took days to lock me up. You even said we could do this one at a time over the course of a week.”
The guilt in her expression was heart-wrenching. “Locking it down piece by piece was like building a pyramid with blocks. It was systematic and each built on the other. I’ve just removed your foundation. If you did this over a series of days, we could keep you shielded from any other magic. But if you left now and randomly encountered any other magic, any surge of energy, it would be bad.”
“But I’m—”
“Resistant. I know. This is different. You’d be walking around with magic in progress attached to you.” Before he could protest, she added, “If you were trying to pick locks to get in a place without damaging the door or letting others know you had gained that access, you wouldn’t pick half of the locks then let your impatience and temper get the best of you. If you ripped it off the hinges you’d defeat your own purpose and destroy the door.”
He released a breath and put his hands on his hips. “I’m the door.”
“Exactly.” She reached up to his shoulder. “Right now, you’re as fragile as an eggshell, tough guy.”
He shied away from her touch. “What do you need to finish this?”
She examined her palms again. “I need … to accept what the deities intend for me to pay.”
My thoughts ran to the Three-Fold Law. What you do comes back to you, three-fold. It was a karma-in-this-life notion meant to keep witches’ actions pure, good, and positive. Getting that goodness back in triplicate would be wonderful. Winning the trifecta of troubles, however, not so wonderful.
She flipped her hands over, hiding the reddened palms from her sight and pushed them out before her.
The hair on the nape of my neck prickled as she called to that ley energy and a pulse answered her. And the junkie takes another hit.
Eris eased from the table, onto now steady legs. “Unlocking that one hurt?” she asked Johnny.
“Hell yes. I nearly decked you before I realized what I was doing.”
“This one will hurt more.”
He rolled his shoulders as if preparing for it. “Why?”
“I told you before, each of the first four tattoos were locked to an element and set to a purpose. The fifth bound them all together. They weren’t exactly happy about that.” She showed him her palms again. “I need them free in order to unlock this one, which has your memories bound in it.”
“Why did you take my memories?”
“These last three tattoos are all spiritual. They each required an offering.”
“My memories were offered up?”
“Your past was relinquished. The man who paid me to do this requested that offering specifically. He said you had an unhappy childhood and wouldn’t miss it anyway.” Her tone had gone bitter and she was intently studying the floor. “That sounds stupidly weak now.”
“Just undo it.” Johnny sat on the table and stretched out.
This time a purple candle was added to the tray. “I call upon the expansion of the planet Jupiter, with golden rays of warmth and light.” The mixture of nutmeg and clove was strewn across his chest. A heavy padlock was placed upon his sternum, right onto the pentacle, and a golden key was laid between the upraised wings on un-inked skin. Using an amethyst point, she traced the elaborate feathered details, then lifted the lock and drew the pentacle and circle beneath. She whispered, “Jupiter, planet named for the Great Roman god of thunder and lightning. Be generous. Hear me.”
Slipping the amethyst through the loop of the lock and touching only the ends of the stone, she used it to hold the lock three inches above the pentacle tattooed upon Johnny’s chest.
“Elements four, h
ere combine.
Elements meet, pentacle sign.
Elements four, given wings.
Elements meet, here a king.
Earth: What was hidden now is found.
Air: What was unknown is now explored.
Fire: What was shackled is now unbound.
Water: What was taken is now restored.”
The golden key began to twitch. Air lifted salt from the bowl and threw it around the circle while the water in the glass bottle bubbled and the flame of the round red candle stretched high and danced.
“Jupiter! Be generous, I beseech you!”
The key flipped into the air and glided into the lock.
“Open!”
The key did not turn.
“Open!” she commanded.
The key remained still.
Eris reached for the key, hesitated … and gently put thumb and forefinger to the golden surface.
As if the god Jupiter himself stood in the circle and had denied her, lightning exploded from the lock. It sent her backpedaling, stumbling and falling even as the lock thudded to the floor, breaking the head of the key as it struck.
Johnny yelled and clutched at his chest, rising up on his elbow.
That was when I heard gunfire outside.
It was followed by the clanging of feet on the metal stairs. Someone tried the doorknob. Zhan put a round through the door and the stairs thudded as if someone heavy had gone down hard. There were shouts from outside, a few screams, and the peel of cars burning rubber to flee the area.
Zhan dropped into a crouch, keeping her aim true. “Get down,” she shouted to the rest of us. We obeyed; the shots continued outside.
Johnny’s yell dwindled to a groan, then he collapsed against the table, his arms flopping over the edge. Though he was breathing, he didn’t move.
I crawled forward.
Nana grabbed my arm firmly, holding me back. “Don’t break the circle.”
Amid the shots and shouts that were continuing outside, one rattled the door and the knob flopped. Then the door burst open, ripping from its hinges and crashing into the chair Zhan had been sitting in. The chair flipped forward. One of the legs cracked on her forehead. Zhan went limp.
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