Fiction River: Hex in the City

by Fiction River

  Heat from the symbols and the Calefaction spell warmed Brant’s face. He looked panicked now, as if he were reliving their casting and Willa couldn’t help but feel badly for him.

  “Once we get the spells captured, I’ll compare them to the familiars spell.” She smiled at him. “Don’t worry, Brant. We can fix this.”

  “Hope ... you’re right.”

  It took several long, painful minutes before the sphere finished and went dark. Only then did Willa approach it.

  “Locate all spells dealing with familiars,” she said to the sphere.

  Images and symbols flashed over the sphere’s misty surface, whispers hissing as the runic signs glowed in the air. Willa walked among them, studying the information. Brant joined her, his shoulder touching hers now. He smelled of spring rain and a clean, woodsy scent that clouded her brain for a moment as she leaned closer to him.

  Willa pointed at a cluster of pulsating runes.

  “Do you remember this part of your spell, Brant?” She smiled. “It’s beautifully crafted. Such a nice balance of Camber and Compulsion that builds with power into the Calefaction summons at the end.”

  “Yes,” he replied, his face flushed. “It was-was tough ... to cr-cr-craft.”

  Willa lifted a grouping of blue runes from the sphere. They floated in the air to her left, four double-spaced lines. She recited another spell as she reached into the sphere, teasing out a group of gold symbols. Four rows of double-spaced, gold runes hung at her right shoulder. She glanced left to right, reading each symbol, comparing one against the other.

  “There it is,” she said in a quiet voice.

  Brant moved toward the symbols, studying them in silence.

  “The blue symbols are part of the original Trenerry spell you spoke tonight,” she said and motioned to her right. “The gold symbols are the spell you crafted.”

  Brant reached out and gathered the gold symbols in his palm. He dragged them over to the blue symbols and dropped them on top. Together, they compared the overlap of every symbol, the curve and brilliance of each one, blue against gold.

  “Look for missteps,” she said in a soft voice.

  Brant nodded. “Right, anything that might have changed the spell’s outcome or ruined the incantation somehow.”

  Brant’s voice filled the room as Willa’s spell called back the echo of his cast spell. The words floated through the world forever and she could call them back like a little capsule of time. She watched Brant wince at the sound of his own voice.

  “My parents always w-worried about m-me,” said Brant, bowing his head. “Guess they—they always knew I’d amount t-t-to n-nothing. That I’d n-n-never capture the energies of H-House Trenerry.”

  Willa’s heart broke at his despair. She slid her arm around his shoulders. “Don’t you talk like that, Brant! They believe in you and so do I. You will become a full wizard tonight. I just know it!”

  At last, his face brightened. “Hope you’re r-right, Willa.” He paused a moment. “I s-stuttered as a kid, but now, only b-beautiful women make me s-s-stutter.”

  She couldn’t hold back her grin as she watched him concentrate on the symbols again, studying the agreements in the magic. Looking for the green tint wherever the blue and gold symbols matched.

  They stood in silence for a long time, studying the symbols, but finally, Brant cried out and pointed at three, tiny symbols that didn’t match.

  “Here—they are! Three symbols that broke the familiars’ bonds,” he said, pointing. “I used an old h-homonym from my grimoire.” He sighed. “It strictly meant a wizard’s talisman once.”

  Willa nodded. “Yes, you’re right! That symbol’s become slang for familiars. Any wizard might have used that symbol to mean staff, Brant.”

  “That damned cat’s gonna gloat for weeks over my mistake.”

  Willa captured the three symbols, scattering the rest into a shower of sparks that dissolved in a puff of smoke.

  “Show counter signs to this magical break,” she said into the sphere. “Then show us the spell to re-forge our familiars’ bonds.”

  “And focus only on the staff,” Brant added.

  Vivid purple letters appeared beside three gold symbols. Brant read through the line of purple symbols and then studied the three gold signs.

  “That’s the fix then,” he said, his hands shaking. “I’ll uh—recast with those symbols. But without my familiar, it won’t work.” He sighed in exasperation and kicked the leather couch.

  Willa grabbed his arm as she turned toward the sphere. He didn’t understand that he controlled the power he was summoning, not his familiar. Familiars were there for focus and tempering, nothing more.

  She laid a crisp piece of blank parchment onto the table. With both hands, she lifted the symbols out of the air and pressed them against the parchment, a spell of Calefaction on her lips.

  Her words were precise, the diction flawless as thin blades of fire carved Brant’s eleven symbols into the parchment. She blew on the paper until it cooled and all the blackened edges had hardened. Then she rolled up the scroll and handed it to Brant. She loved the feel of his warm, strong fingers against her palm, wanting to entwine her fingers in his.

  “There,” she said. “You won’t have to rely on memory.”

  With a loud thud, the library doors slammed open as dozens of wizards poured inside, demanding assistance. They brushed past Willa and Brant, making their way down the long hallway toward the library’s main service desk. A big, round walnut desk stood in the center of the vaulted foyer. Four librarians cowered behind it as the herd descended on them.

  A huge chandelier hung over the service desk, dripping with hundreds of multifaceted, teardrop crystals. Swirls of light danced across the cold marble floor as the growing crowd clacked across it, heaping themselves around the desk in tangles of three and four people deep. The roar of their voices echoed through the chamber. On either side of the round, ornate desk were two sets of wrought-iron staircases winding gracefully upstairs to special collections and more reading rooms. The two staircases met at the top in an elegant balcony overlooking the marble foyer. Brant eyed the balcony and Willa worried that he might jump from it.

  “My familiar’s just disappeared,” someone shouted. “Now, I can’t cast any spells! You’ve got to help me!”

  “Please, my familiar’s missing!” shouted another wizard. “I need that hawk to strengthen my Compulsion spells!”

  Librarians huddled behind the desk, calling up tomes that flew off reading room shelves to the hands of Willa’s colleagues who were desperate to help.

  Brant tugged on her sleeve. “There’s only one way to f-fix this. Will you. Help—me?”

  Willa nodded. She was afraid he wouldn’t ask. “Of course!”

  Brant retrieved his staff and then folded her arm in his. He fought his way through the growing crowd of wizards, pulling her along until they reached Seattle’s rain-swept streets.

  ***

  Brant signed his way through a series of Camber spells that shifted and refracted space, allowing him to twist magical forces into a portal that brought them back to Kerry Park. He tugged her up the red brick stairs to the strange, steel geometric sculpture.

  Through the steel’s round cutouts, he gazed at Elliot Bay through a haze of blackness and rain-smeared city lights framing the Space Needle and Seattle’s unforgettable skyline. The storm had passed to the east, clouds faded to wispy trails allowing stars to burn through the swath of midnight sky.

  Brant lifted the staff toward the sky. He unfurled Willa’s parchment that burned with the new incantation. Eleven symbols that would re-bond the familiars and make him Seattle’s newest full wizard.

  “Ready?” Willa called above the rush of wind.

  She stood beside him, so encouraging, so inspiring. Maybe she’d see him as more than a stuttering fool?

  Nodding, he gripped the parchment and the myrtlewood staff, staring at the fiery symbols. He whispered them, practi
cing each one.

  Fear gripped him as he clenched the staff and cast the corrected spell. Only eleven symbols stood between him and his birthright. This time, he would get it right.

  Brant cleared his throat and held the parchment out to Willa.

  “Will you hold this while I cast?”

  She nodded, taking the stiff parchment and holding it in front of him.

  One last time, he ran through the spell in his head, pausing to insert the eleven corrected signs.

  Then, concentrating on each symbol, Brant spoke the crafted spell with precision, working through each section with confidence. He felt the uneven flow of energy through him, untempered and unfocused without his familiar. He continued the spell, pausing for the final eleven symbols to correct the incantation. Fix what he’d broken. Summon his birthright at last.

  The myrtlewood staff gleamed brilliant red, the surface warm against his fingers. A fiery glow pulsed, rushing down the length of the staff and then rolling back again, turning deep orange, then gold, then white. And finally blue.

  His hands shook as he took a deep breath, focusing all his concentration, and chanted the last symbols. Without a stutter or bobble.

  Energy crackled, the sound like a gunshot. With tremendous force, the entire flow of magical energy contained in House Trenerry slammed into the myrtlewood staff and then Brant’s body. The impact threw him across the brick stairs and onto the cold, wet ground.

  Dazed, Brant laid there listening to the staff sizzle as rain misted the air and grass.

  The sudden flutter of wings startled him, a deep, thrumming purr resonating across his cheek. Something brushed against his leg, beating past his stomach to hover at his shoulder.

  Zip! The winged tortoiseshell cat arched her back, wings thumping the cool air as she lifted a fat, cream-colored paw to her mouth and licked it with her tiny, pink tongue.

  You fixed the spell, little wizard, she said with a throaty purr between licks. Well done.

  Brant reached out to pet the winged furball, but she slid just out of his reach.

  “You did it,” said Willa, kneeling beside him. “Great job, Brant! It took courage to recast that spell.”

  He smiled as she helped him up from the cold grass.

  “I couldn’t have done it without your help,” he said. “And the library. How can I thank you?”

  A gleam touched her deep green eyes. “Actually, you might be of some help at the library.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “How so?”

  Willa sighed. “A testimonial on having your family grimoire digitized might go a long way with your fellow wizards.”

  Brant laughed. “You mean showing them it was painless and I still have the intact book?”

  She nodded. “Exactly.”

  “Anything to help,” he said. “It’s the least I can do.”

  Reaching out, he stroked Zip who licked his hand then nipped it. He sighed. Cats.

  He stepped closer to Willa, staring into her eyes as he held her hand.

  “As Seattle’s newest full wizard, I could give a talk reminding wizards to always um—update their spells.”

  Willa smiled when her white dove landed on her shoulder. Laughing, she squeezed his hand and moved closer to him.

  “I’d love to discuss it over tea.”

  “Love to,” said Brant, squeezing her hand.

  Tea and magic with a beautiful wizard? Best birthday ever.

  Introduction to “Thy Neighbor”

  Nancy Holder is a friend of mine and deserves the title, Queen of the Dark YA. I’m never disappointed in the stories she conjures for me. “Thy Neighbor,” is essentially why I became interested in witchcraft in the first place: Knowledge really is power.

  Nancy is the New York Times bestselling author of over eighty novels and two hundred short stories, essays, and articles. She has received five Bram Stoker awards, a Scribe award, and a Genre Pioneer Award (Young Adult). She is well known for her tie-in work for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, MTV Teen Wolf, Hulk, Hellboy, Zorro, Sherlock Holmes, and other “universes.” She edits comic books and pulp fiction for Moonstone Books. She also teaches for the Stonecoast MFA in Creative Writing Program offered through the University of Southern Maine.

  “My wonderful editor Kerrie Hughes suggested a YA witch,” Nancy writes, “and my wonderful daughter Belle brainstormed with me to come up with something creepy. We talked about curses that come in threes. I originally planned to have my protagonist throw three random objects over the fence, including a tennis ball. Then I realized that tennis balls come in cans of three. The ending came to me as I worked on it, and I started laughing. Which is kind of mean, I think.”

  Thy Neighbor

  Nancy Holder

  Brianna pulled her Yaris into the Goodes’ driveway and made a sour face as Kelsey got ready to get out.

  “I hate this place. It’s so creepy,” Brianna said.

  Kelsey saw a fairly standard two-story stucco house with a tall arched doorway and a brick wishing well in the grassy front yard.

  “It’s a normal house in Normal Heights,” Kelsey replied. “Nicer than most. You don’t see a lot of wishing wells.”

  Briana huffed. “They probably chose this neighborhood for the irony. These people are not normal.”

  “They’re totally normal. They’re just workaholics.” Kelsey fwopped down the sun visor and checked her eye makeup. She was a freckle-faced blue-eyed blond. Brianna was the one who always got all the looks when they went to the mall together, dark and mysterious, wafting sexy perfumes with names Kelsey had never heard of.

  “They’re freaky,” Brianna insisted.

  “See, I don’t get that. They don’t seem freaky at all to me.”

  “Weird. Well, fingers crossed that Three-Three-Three takes a nap. Then call me and we’ll avoid the flunkation of calculus.”

  Kelsey shrugged, raised the sun visor back into position, and gave her friend a little smile. “You know that’s not too likely. He never naps.”

  “Because he’s evil.”

  “Lonely,” Kelsey countered. “His parents are never home.”

  “Because they’re out worshipping Satan.” Brianna pointed through the windshield. “What the hell is that?”

  Kelsey followed Brianna’s pointed finger. In the center of the brick walk to the arched doorway sat a sort of triangular bundle of sticks. They looked as though they had been tied together by leaves or twine.

  “It’s a bundle of sticks,” she said patiently.

  “It’s some witchy thing.” Brianna shook her head. “I wish you’d quit working for them. No one needs money this badly, not even you. There’s a bazillion childcare gigs in the job bank in Mrs. Meyerson’s office. San Diego is full of jobs. Go look.”

  “No one pays as much as these guys,” Kelsey said. “College is going to be expensive. And their fridge is a fairyland of food.”

  “They’re paying you well because they’re prepping you for sacrifice. They’re fattening you up for the slaughter. If you had any sense at all you’d give it up to Troy. They can only use virgins.”

  Kelsey mocked-pouted as she opened the car door. “You make me sound so blonde and naive. I’m not. I’m totally in the know.” She wrinkled her nose as she got out. “And seriously, Troy? No one is that desperate, not even me.”

  “Troy’s unit could save your life,” Brianna replied. She lowered her voice and affected a British accent. “Or your immortal soul.” She made the sign of the cross.

  “He could give me a disease,” she replied and gave Brianna a wave. “I’ll walk home,” she reminded her. “It’s not that far.”

  “No wonder my mother loves you,” Brianna said. “Text me every thirty seconds.”

  “Drive carefully, Bree,” she said. “I mean it.”

  Brianna nodded and Kelsey waved as Brianna backed out. She hadn’t even reached the front door when Three-Three-Three, AKA Jonah, pushed it open, shrieking with joy. They called him Three-Three-Three becaus
e he was too little to be Six-Six-Six.

  He threw his arms around Kelsey’s legs as his mother appeared behind him, looking so young Kelsey wondered how on earth she could be his mother.

  “Hi, Kelse,” Ms. Goode said. She was wearing a business suit and she was probably off to a meeting. Kelsey knew the Goodes had other sitters, practically around the clock. Both of Three-Three-Three’s parents were always coming and going and in the six weeks Kelsey had worked for them; their schedules had never been the same for two days running.

  “Listen, I finally saw Mr. Bright and I asked him to give back Magic’s rawhide bone and he won’t.” She scowled as she fluffed up her hair. “He says that anything that lands in his yard is his.”

  “Nice,” Kelsey said. Mr. Bright was their reclusive next-door neighbor. Ms. Goode had told her that she’d only seen him a handful of times since they’d moved in five years ago.

  Ms. Goode grinned. “I hope I can hold him to it. I caught Jonah lobbing the puppy’s turds over the fence this morning.”

  Kelsey cracked up. “That’s one way to clean up the yard.”

  She sighed. “I suppose I should also tell you that my little angel stopped up the guest room toilet with his Legos.”

  That’s why we call him Three-Three-Three, Kelsey thought.

  “Let’s go see the puppy!” Jonah shrieked, yanking on Kelsey’s hand.

  “Anyway, so use our bathroom and be careful with anything going over the fence. Because that’s the last you’ll ever see of it.”

  “Got it,” Kelsey said.

  Ms. Goode bent to kiss Jonah, but Jonah grabbed Kelsey’s hand and bellowed, “Magic! Magic! Magic!”

  Kelsey waved goodbye to Ms. Goode and she and Jonah zoomed into the back yard, where the little black Doberman was bounding around with a tennis ball in his mouth. He saw Jonah and yipped, dropping the ball. It bounced and rolled to Kelsey, and she picked it up. The dog sprang up and down like crazy, and she tossed it toward Jonah.