“Yes, her magic was strong, but it wouldn’t be indefinite. I had no idea she’d set anything out there.”
“She was very kind after everything that happened,” Josef said, his voice soft and a little faraway. “She really tried to help my family and stopped by often. But…well, you know how it all went.”
Paris knew enough to know that there really wasn’t anything to say to make the passing of loved ones easier, not even years after the fact. “I hope she was able to offer some comfort.”
“She tried,” Josef said amicably, and Paris recognized it for what it was - an acknowledgement of the act, but a statement that during grief, not much can help.
“I know you have some of her spell books in Counter-Magic. Perhaps if you sort through those, I’ll go through her other grimoires and we can try to find the wards she used. If they held up for this long, perhaps all we’ll need to do is reset them.”
“Sure,” Josef agreed. “I’ll look through the indices for them. Although,” his voice turned fond. “I must say, with all of our magic resonating at Jade’s frequency, it might not work.”
“You don’t sound too upset about that,” Paris said.
“Well, she’s a firecracker for sure. And I admit, this new frequency makes me feel a little bouncy and young. My magic hasn’t felt like this since I was a teenager.”
Paris found himself smiling at Josef’s tone. “No problems with your own magic then?”
“Oh, a little tweaking here and there, but I’ve not had any major problems. Certainly nothing like the rest of the Coven. I’m really enjoying it actually. It’s like a puzzle.”
This time Paris laughed. “Well, that’s why you’re the right man for Counter-Magic, I suppose. All right, I’ll plan a trip out to the Preserve and look through the spell books of my mother’s that I have. I’ll check in with you if I learn anything.”
They exchanged a few more casual pleasantries, rounding out the conversation. Despite the light note it ended on, Paris felt uneasy when he hung up the phone. Everything seemed to circle back to Jade. And his mother.
It wasn’t like Paris to avoid problems and yet that’s exactly what he’d been doing. He’d avoided thinking about what he’d seen after Jade stopped Dex. Jade stopped Dex from re-casting a spell on the entire Coven by using a large amount of her power and siphoning some of his. Immediately after, she’d had fallen to the ground, dazed and confused. When she’d looked at Paris, he had the notion that she didn’t know who he was. Her eyes, normally a clear, distinct grey color, had been a bright, vibrant green. Paris had no idea what it meant.
Of course, a witch changing her eye-color was a knock-off spell - something young witches did for fun, the same as putting on new clothes or trying out eyeliner. But when it had happened, Jade had been in no condition to be tossing out frivolous spells. She’d just managed a rather significant demon hex against Dex, attempting to bind his magic. There was no reason for her eyes to have changed color, no matter how quickly they shifted back.
There was one other thing that kept him lying awake nights, worrying. When Dex had been fighting with Jade, Dex had tried a blood spell on her, a named blood spell, and it hadn’t worked. When Paris had found them, Dex had been yelling at Jade, enraged. He shouted it should have worked because Dex used Jade’s real name, Lily.
Jade answered that ‘Lily’ had never been her name. Which meant she lied to Paris. Jade told him ‘Lily’ had been her name and she changed it when she was twenty-one. She’d been somewhat defensive at the time, claiming Paris could look up the paperwork if he liked. Paris never told Jade that he had investigated her claim and he’d seen the legal paperwork that officially changed her name. Either Jade lied to Paris, or she lied to Dex. But why?
It was also the way Jade had answered Dex. ‘It was never my name,’ she’d said, with the slightest emphasis on the word ‘my.’ Paris wondered if he’d made the emphasis up and had even gone so far as to use a memory spell to bring the moment back, so that he could observe it as a third party. He saw Jade, on the ground, inside a magic circle of flames. Dex off to one side, spitting out a blood curse and then turning ugly and deranged as it didn’t work.
“That’s your name, your real name. I read your file. Your name used to be Lily.”
“It was never my name.”
At the crux of his avoidance was that Paris wasn’t sure what to do about it. He needed to know if there was something about her that would affect the Coven as a whole, but his instinct was that if he pushed Jade, she’d back herself right out of the Coven altogether. In his mind, when he thought of her inclusion in the Coven, he sometimes saw her as a lean, hungry coyote, circling a warm fire where there might be food. Wary and timid, but fierce - ready to attack if threatened. Paris couldn’t afford to have Jade leave the Coven. The Supernatural Council, made up of all types of magical and supernatural creatures, demanded witches be tied to a Coven. Witches could leave the Coven proper and live further away, but they could still only perform sanctioned magic and usually had familial or other ties to the Coven. A sort of long-distance Coven relationship. If Jade left, Paris had no doubt she’d sever ties to the Coven. She had no real ties as of yet. The problem was, Jade wouldn’t be able to keep from practicing magic. She had too much power to simply turn it off. Even if she tried, it would start bleeding out from her - which was how they’d found her in the first place - hemorrhaging magic out because it had no where else to go.
He knew he needed to talk to Jade about all this, but first he wanted to gather more information. He just wasn’t sure how to go about it. As of yet, he hadn’t mentioned any of this to Hannah to seek her guidance or advice. He felt as though this was something more personal and sensitive. He didn’t want anyone else to know and he also couldn’t keep running to Hannah when there was a problem with the Coven. While she’d provided invaluable guidance when he first became Coven Leader, it was at the point where he needed to pull away and be the Coven Leader his mother had always groomed him to be.
His mother was another point of contention. Paris didn’t like that he kept learning new things about her. To be sure, no child ever really knew everything about their parents. Children often think they are the only things in their parents’ worlds but that’s never the case. They have lives and responsibilities outside of their children, to which children are not privy. However, Paris had thought that he was more in tune with his mother because of her role as Coven Leader and how she included him in what she did in order to pass the role to him.
As a child, his mother always had a sort of frankness with him. He was sure other parents and adults may have thought her cruel at times with her honesty, but he remembered being relieved and reassured by her bluntness and truth. One of the things she was famous for saying was that nothing could surprise her more than the fact Paris wasn’t born a woman. Coven Leaders tended to be female and, unless something unusual happened, it was a hereditary position passed down from mother to daughter. When Paris had been born, the Coven assumed this was one of those unusual happenstances and the position of Coven Leader would finally leave Sakkara’s family and be passed along to someone else. However, Paris’ first and only tarot card reading, at seven, indicated he would be Coven Leader. After that, Paris began accompanying his mother on Coven business, and would often do his homework in the very office that was now his at the Covenstead. Thinking back of all the time he was with his mother, he’d thought, naively he supposed, that he knew all there was to know about her.
Then Jade found the demon grimoires in his house. Spell books hidden there for years that he’d never known about, with a letter inside from his mother.
‘I’m sure you’ll think less of me knowing I practiced demon magic. All I can say is, I did what needed to be done. My intentions were always the best, even if my methods were not.’
Now, finding out his mother had set wards at the lake was a little thing, a minor thing, but it bothered Paris that he hadn’t known. He’d been to the lake a
rea including just recently with Jade. He’d never gotten any sense of his mother’s magic while out there. He’d thought himself rather attuned to her magic, his own being similar to hers. He didn’t like that he’d been unaware of her wards. It made him wonder what other magic she’d done of which he wasn’t aware.
His first order of business should be to head out to the Preserve and see if he could determine if her wards were failing and if not, then perhaps gain some knowledge about the ‘bad’ feeling witches were getting from the area.
But before that, Paris wanted to see Jade.
#
Jade configured her demon locks to let Paris in, but it didn’t mean he was completely immune to or ignorant of their presence. He paused at the foot of the stone pathway that led up to her cottage, feeling the press of them. As he stepped forward, they shifted and shirred, letting him by. They felt slower than he was used to, sluggish. He didn’t have long to consider it before the front door opened and Jade stood there, waiting for him. She was in casual clothes, although to be honest, he’d only once seen her in something other than jeans and a shirt and that had been at the Coven Ball where formal attire was required. He remembered that she’d seemed somewhat awkward and stilted in her shiny, silver dress, absently tugging on the thigh-length hem as if she could make it longer if only she gave it enough tugs. He hadn’t thought it was too short, but he did wonder how she managed to walk in her sky-high heels. Tonight she was barefoot as she stood in the doorway, her bright pink toenails and the faint scent of nail polish broadcasting what she’d been up to.
“I felt the locks announce you,” she said by way of greeting, her toes wiggled slightly as she spoke.
“They feel different,” he replied, coming up the final steps and standing in front of her, pausing in the doorway.
She frowned. “I thought it was just me. You feel it too? It’s like they’re… unsure?”
“I don’t get that much of a sense of them. More like slow.”
“Hmm.” Her toes curled under bit. “I’m not sure what that means. They’ve felt off lately and I don’t know if…”
“What?” he prompted when she trailed off.
Jade shook her head. “Nothing. Come on in.”
The scent of her magic was thick in the house and he’d no doubt that while catching her at the end of her pedicure, he’d also caught her in the middle of some spell work. Jade’s magic had a scent of cloves and some kind of flower he couldn’t identify. Not lavender, nor roses - those he would recognize. This was something else - floral but sweet. Not cloying, only just… there.
“Casting spells?” he asked as he doffed his shoes and hung his coat up on her coat rack.
She looked a little sheepish and he wondered what exactly she’d been practicing. “Uh, yeah. But I don’t know if it will work.”
“Would you like me to take a look at it?”
Her fingertips twitched at her side and she glanced toward the coffee table where he could see some spell books laid out. “Maybe.”
A set of thumping footsteps drew Paris’ attention to the stairs and Bruce came barreling down, his long body almost forcing him tail over head as he ran enthusiastically down the treads. He knocked into Paris’ legs, sending Paris stumbling back a few steps.
“Bruce! Company!” Jade chastised, seeming embarrassed at his display.
“That’s all right, I don’t mind,” Paris answered. He bent over and pet Bruce a few times on the head. “Hello, Bruce. It’s good to see you as well.”
Bruce’s tongue flicked out, hitting Paris quickly on the hand, leaving a small, damp spot. Paris managed to wait until Bruce turned his face to look up at Jade before discretely wiping his hand on his pant leg. Though he was fond of the creature, he didn’t like the wet feeling Bruce’s tongue left behind.
“So, what kind of spell are you working on?” Paris tried to keep his tone light, casual. Jade was prone to trying demon magic and although she was quite good at it, demon magic still gave him a wrong-bad feeling. He’d had years of hearing his mother caution against it - paradoxical given what turned out to be her propensity for and skill with it. He casually sniffed the air again but didn’t scent anything demon-like. He could smell only cloves, peppermint and something spicy. He sent his magic out, like feelers in the air, circling.
Jade turned around at him sharply before she sat down on the sofa. “It’s not demon magic.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Please. I can feel your magic checking the area out.” She motioned in the air with her hands. From the coffee table, she grabbed the spell book she’d been using, holding it up for him to see the cover. “It’s from this book.”
Paris glanced at the cover quickly, happy to see it was a primary level spell book from the library. She handed it over to him, flipping it open to the spell in question - a spell to calm dreams. He could see why the smell of cloves was so strong. Not only was it the scent of Jade’s magic, but the spell called for five whole ones. He also noted cardamom, peppermint oil, salt and some candles. He glanced down at the table and saw she had large quantities of everything, far more than the spell called for.
“Planning on casting it for the entire Coven?” he asked, eyeing what she had out.
Jade looked bashful. “No, but… more is more, right?”
“Not always.”
“But if less is more, just think how much more ‘more’ will be,” Jade said, a faint joking tone in her voice - forced and slightly hollow.
“Are you having problems sleeping?”
Her shoulders slumped. “Sort of. I just… I thought… I hoped that I could cast some magic to help me just sleep more peacefully.”
“Are you restless or are you having nightmares?”
She stilled at his question and he immediately worried. He’d only been asking casually due to the nature of the spell, but her body went tense and she leaned slightly away from him.
“Maybe a little of both.”
Paris nodded. “I see. And have you tried this spell before?”
“No. I didn’t really think about trying something till this morning. But I don’t know. Maybe it’s a bad idea.”
Jade moved forward like she was going to start cleaning up the supplies.
“No, no,” he said, holding a hand out to stop her. “If you’re feeling… troubled at night, let’s try this spell together and see if it helps.”
She sagged a bit. “I tried it twice already, but it just… doesn’t feel like it’s working?” She fiddled with the salamander charm, running it back and forth along the chain like a nervous tick. “I mean, I normally get some kind of… ping?” Her eyes looked at him for confirmation and he nodded. He knew what she meant. When a spell worked, it aligned with a witch’s personal magic, and it felt like it ‘set’ in place. Jade continued. “But I haven’t got that. Or maybe it’s more like there’s a ping, but it’s not the right one.”
Paris nodded again. “Okay, give it a go with me here and I’ll see if I can figure out what’s wrong.”
It was Jade’s turn to nod and she took a deep breath, dropping her talisman back against her neck. It was slightly foolish of him, but he felt a little prideful that he always saw her wearing her talisman. He’d spent careful consideration on what he should chose for a charm for her, finally settling on a salamander. Not only was a salamander traditionally associated with fire, which Jade wielded well, it was also a symbol of courage and loyalty. Both were qualities he’d come to identify with Jade. He’d worried after he’d given it to her that she’d think it some strange trinket and put it in a drawer somewhere, never to be seen again. He’d yet to see her without it.
Jade picked up a white candle from her coffee table and lit it, placing it in a large candleholder that was adorned with a generous saucer to catch the wax drippings and hold the other ingredients. She took the mint oil and added a few drops to the saucer, then some salt, then a few of the cloves and then finally she crushed a cardamom pod and scoope
d the seeds out with her fingernail, flicking her fingertips three times to land them in the saucer. There were words for the spell, but she didn’t need to glance at the book Paris was holding. With her near perfect recall for printed matter, she’d only had to read the words once to have them well memorized.
Paris felt her magic coil about her, like an eager puppy waiting for its master to throw a ball. Despite what she’d said about it not working, when Jade finished the words and sent her magic out to the ingredients, Paris fully expected the spell to take hold. She’d done everything well; all her ingredients were of good quality and her magic was focused and even.
However, it was as though her magic glanced off the ingredients and shot off on an angle. There was a sort of resonance, as she’d indicated, but nothing like the spell should have given off.
Jade turned hopeful and expectant eyes on him. “Well?”
“I don’t know,” Paris admitted. “I thought it would work.”
“Ugh,” she moped. “This is such a bust.”
Paris looked down at the spell book again, reading over the ingredients and the words. He picked up each of her ingredients, checking the manufacturing dates and giving them all a little sniff to see if there was anything amiss. Jade had completed everything correctly, and it was a beginner level spell. She wasn’t reaching beyond her knowledge. Given her proficiency with everything else, this should have been a simple task for her.
Setting all the ingredients back down, he took one more deep inhale, trying to get the overall scent of the spell. As he did, he caught the scent of something else. Vanilla. He looked down at her table and found none.
“Do you have any other candles or that wick-less wax? The scented kind?”
“No, should I? I thought those were bad and they messed up spell work. I only buy the kind you suggested - the plain, natural ones. I think this one’s even organic.” Jade pointed at the candle in front of her.
“What about your perfume?”
Double-Sided Witch (Covencraft Book 3) Page 4