The Good, The Bad, And The Undead th-2

by Ким Харрисон

  "Both."

  "Internal power has acorns and oak leaves in the midpoints, and summoning an entity uses a Celtic chain binding the points." Smug at his obvious surprise, I adjusted the flame under the pot and dug in my silverware drawer for a finger stick.

  "Okay. I'm impressed." The book slipped down and he grabbed a handful of chips.

  "You'll copy them for me?" I asked, delighted.

  "Promise you'll do them yourself later?"

  "Deal," I said cheerfully. I had already finished the short essays. Now all I had to do was make Bob my familiar and I'd be set. Piece of cake. I looked at Bob and cringed. Yeah. Piece of cake. "Thanks," I said softly as Nick straightened my black drawing paper by tapping the ends on the counter.

  "I'll make them sloppy so she thinks you did them," he said.

  I gave him a raised eyebrow look. "Thanks a lot," I amended dryly, and he grinned. Done with the brew, I jabbed my finger and massaged out three drops of blood. The scent of redwood blossomed as they plunked into the pot and the spell quickened. So far, so good.

  "Earth witches don't use pentagrams," Nick said as he sharpened the chalk by rubbing it against a piece of scrap paper. "How come you know them?"

  Careful to keep my bloodied finger clear, I polished my scrying mirror with a velveteen scarf borrowed from Ivy. A shudder sifted through me at the cold feel of it. I hated scrying. It gave me the willies. "From those pentagram jelly glasses," I said. Nick looked up, the lost look on his face making me feel good for some reason. "You know. Those jelly jars you can use for juice glasses when they're empty? These had pentagrams on the bottom and their uses written on the side. I lived on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that year." My mood went soft at the memory of my dad quizzing me over toast.

  Nick rolled his sleeves up and started sketching. "And I thought I was bad for digging to the bottom of my cereal box for the toy."

  I was done with the prep work and ready to do some serious spelling. Time to set my circle. "In or out," I asked, and Nick looked up from my homework, blinking. Seeing his confusion, I added, "I'm ready to set my circle. Do you want to be in or out of it?"

  He hesitated. "You want me to move?"

  "Only if you want to be out of it."

  His look turned incredulous. "You're going to enclose the entire island?"

  "Is that a problem?"

  "No-o-o-o." Nick scooted his bar stool closer. "Witches must be able to hold more ley line power than humans. I can't make a circle much bigger than three feet across."

  I smiled. "I don't know. I'd ask Dr. Anders if she wouldn't make me feel like an idiot. I think it depends. My mom can't hold a circle bigger than three feet, either. So…in or out?"

  "In?"

  My breath slipped from me in relief. "Good. I was hoping you'd say that." Leaning over the counter, I plunked my spell book down beside him. "I need your help translating this."

  "You want me to do your homework and help you bind your familiar, too?" he protested.

  I winced. "The only spell I could find in my books was in Latin."

  Nick looked at me in disbelief. "Rachel. I sleep at night."

  I glanced at the clock above the sink. "It's only one-thirty."

  Sighing, he slid the book to him. I knew he wouldn't be able to resist once he started, and sure enough, his mild annoyance shifted to hot interest before he had read more than a paragraph. "Hey, this is old Latin."

  I leaned across the counter until my shadow covered the print. "I can read the plant names, and I'm sure I made the transfer medium right, as it's standard, but the incantation is iffy."

  He wasn't listening anymore, his brow furrowed as he ran a long finger under the text. "Your circle needs to be modified to resolve and gather power."

  "Thanks," I said, glad he was going to help. I didn't mind muddling through most things, but spelling was an exact science. And just the idea that I needed a familiar made me uncomfortable. Most witches had them, but ley line witches needed them as a matter of safety. Dividing one's aura helped prevent a demon from pulling you into the ever-after. Poor Bob.

  Nick went back to sketching pentagrams for me, glancing up as I pulled my twenty pound bag of salt from under the counter and set it thumping on top. Acutely aware of his eyes on me, I scraped a handful from the clumping mass. At Ivy's insistence, I had blown off the security deposit and etched a shallow circle in the linoleum. Ivy had helped. Actually, Ivy had done all of it, using a string and chalk contraption to be sure the circle was perfect. I'd sat on the counter and let her have at it, knowing it would tick her off if I got in her way. The result was an absolutely perfect circle. She had even taken a compass and marked true north with black nail polish to show me where to start my circle.

  Now, peering down to find the black dot, I carefully sifted salt, moving clockwise around the island until I found my starting point. I added the doodads for protection and divination, put the green candles at the appropriate places, then lit them from the flame that I'd used to make the transfer medium.

  Nick watched with half his attention. I liked that he accepted me as a witch. When we had met, I'd worried that since he was one of the few humans who practiced the black arts, I would eventually have to smack him up and turn him in, but Nick had taken demonology to improve his Latin and get through a language development class, not to summon demons. And the novelty of a human who accepted magic with such ease was a definite turn-on.

  "Last chance to leave," I said as I turned the gas burner off and moved the media to the center island.

  Nick made a noise deep in his throat, setting his perfect pentagram aside and starting on the next. Envious of his smooth, straight lines, I pushed my paraphernalia aside to make a clear spot on the counter across from him.

  The memory of being punished for having unknowingly tapped into a ley line and flinging the camp bully into a tree flashed through me. I thought it stupid that my dislike of ley lines might stem from the childhood incident, but I knew it was more than that. I didn't trust ley line magic. It was too easy to lose sight of which side one's magic was on.

  With earth witchcraft, it was easy. If you have to slaughter goats, it's probably a good bet it's black magic. Ley line magic required a death payment, too, but it is a more nebulous death taken from your soul, much harder to quantify and easier to dismiss—until it's too late.

  The cost for white ley line witchcraft was negligible, tantamount to me pulling weeds and using them in my spelling. But the unfiltered power available through ley lines was seductive. It took a strong will to stick to self-imposed limits and remain a white ley line witch. The boundaries that looked so reasonable and prudent when set, often seemed foolish or timid when the strength of a line coursed through you. I'd seen too many friends go from the "pulling weeds" analogy to "slaughtering goats" without even realizing they'd made the jump to the black arts. And they never listened, saying I was jealous or a fool. Eventually I'd find myself hauling their asses down to the I.S. lockup when they put a black charm on the cop who pulled them over for going fifty in a thirty-five zone. Maybe that was why I couldn't keep my friends.

  Those were the ones that bothered me, basically good people who had been tempted by a power greater than their will. They were pitiable, their souls slowly eaten away to pay for the black magic they played with. But it was the professional black witches who scared me, those strong enough to foster the soul-death onto someone else to pay for their magic. Eventually, though, the soul-death found its way home, probably dragging a demon along with it. All I knew was, there was screaming, and blood, and great big booms that shook the city.

  And then I didn't have to worry about that particular witch anymore.

  I wasn't that strong of will. I knew it, accepted it, and avoided the problem by shunning ley lines whenever I could. I hoped that taking a fish as my familiar wasn't the start of a new path but just a speed bump in my current road. Glancing at Bob, I vowed that's all it would be. All witches had familiars. And there was no
thing in that binding spell that would hurt anyone.

  Taking a slow breath, I closed my eyes to prepare myself for the coming disorientation of connecting to a ley line. Slowly I willed my second sight into focus. The stench of burnt amber tickled my nose. An unseen wind shifted my hair though the kitchen window was closed. It was always windy in the ever-after. I imagined the walls that surrounded me becoming transparent, and in my mind's eye they did.

  My second sight strengthened, and the sensation of being outside grew until the mental scenery beyond the walls of the church became as real as the counter, unseen under my fingers. Eyes closed to block my mundane vision, I glanced over the nonexistent kitchen with my mind's eye. Nick didn't show up at all, and the memory of the church's walls had vanished to faint, silvery chalk lines. Through them, I could see the surrounding landscape.

  It was parklike, with a glowing red haze reflecting off the bottom of clouds where Cincinnati would be, hiding behind the stunted trees. It was common knowledge that the demons had their own city, built on the same ley lines as Cincinnati. The trees and plants carried a similar reddish glow, and though no wind whispered through the linden tree outside the kitchen, the branches of the stunted ever-after trees tossed in the wind that lifted my hair. There were people who got off on the discrepancies between reality and the ever-after, but I thought it freaking uncomfortable. Someday, I'd go up Carew Tower and look at the broken, glowing demon city with my second sight. My stomach tightened. Yeah, sure I would.

  My gaze was drawn to the graveyard by the stark, almost glowing white tombstones. They and the moon were the only things that seemed to exist without that red glow, unchanged in both worlds, and I stifled a shudder. The ley line made a solid-looking red smear running due north at head height above the tombstones. It was small—not even twenty yards, I guessed—but so underused that it seemed stronger than the enormous ley line the university straddled.

  Conscious that Nick was probably watching with his own second sight, I stretched out my will and touched the ribbon of power. I staggered, forcing my eyes to remain shut as my grip tightened on the counter. My pulse leapt and my breath quickened. "Swell," I whispered, thinking the force surging into me seemed stronger than the last time.

  I stood and did nothing as the influx continued, trying to equalize our strengths. My fingertips tingled and my toes ached as it backwashed at my theoretical extremities, which mirrored my real ones. Finally it began to balance, and a trace of energy left me to rejoin the line. It was as if I was part of a circuit, and the line's passage left a growing residue that made me feel slimy.

  The link with the ley line was heady, and no longer able to keep my eyelids closed, they flew open. My cluttered kitchen replaced the silver outlines. Queasy with disorientation, I tried to reconcile my mind's eye with my more mundane vision, using them simultaneously. Though I couldn't see Nick with my second sight, it would cast shadows upon him through my usual vision. Sometimes there was no difference, but I was willing to bet Nick wouldn't be one of those people. Our eyes met, and I felt my face go slack.

  His aura was rimmed in black. It wasn't necessarily bad, but it pointed to an uncomfortable direction. His narrow build looked gaunt, and where his bookish mien gave him a scholarly air before, now it had undertones of danger. But what shocked me was the black circular shadow upon his left temple. It was where the demon he had saved me from had put its mark, an IOU that Nick would someday have to repay. Immediately I looked at my wrist.

  My skin showed only the usual upraised scar tissue in the shape of a circle with a line running through it. That didn't mean that was all Nick could see, though. Holding my arm up, I asked him, "Is it glowing black?"

  He nodded solemnly, his usual appearance starting to overshadow his threatening look as my mind's eye began to falter under the strength of my mundane sight.

  "It's the demon mark, isn't it?" I said as I ran my fingers over my wrist. I didn't see any hint of black, but I couldn't see my aura, either.

  "Yes," he said softly. "Did, uh, anyone tell you that you look really different while channeling a ley line?"

  I nodded, my balance wavering as the two realities clashed. "Different" was better than "scary as all hell," which is what Ivy had called me once. "Do you want out of the circle? I haven't closed it yet."

  "No."

  Immediately I felt better. A properly closed circle couldn't be broken except by its maker. He didn't mind being trapped inside with me, and his show of trust was gratifying.

  "All right, then. Here goes." Taking a steadying breath, I mentally moved the narrow rill of salt from this dimension to the ever-after. My circle made the jump with the sharpness of a snapping rubber band against my skin. I started as the salt winked out of existence, replaced with an equal ring of ever-after. The spine-tingling jolt was expected, but it got me every time.

  "I hate it when it does that," I said as I glanced at Nick, but he was staring at my circle.

  "Whoa," he breathed in awe. "Look at that. Did you know they were going to do that?"

  I followed his gaze to the candles, and my jaw dropped. They had gone transparent. The flames still flickered, but the green wax glowed with an utterly unreal look.

  Nick slid from his stool, edging carefully around the counter to avoid hitting the circle. He crouched by one of the candles, and I almost panicked when he extended a finger to touch it.

  "No!" I shouted, and he jerked his hand back. "Um, I think they shifted to the ever-after with the salt. I don't know what touching them will do. Just… don't. Okay?"

  He nodded as he stood. Looking properly cowed, he went back to his stool. He didn't pick up the chalk, though. He was going to watch. I smiled weakly at him, not liking that I was at such a disadvantage with ley line magic. But if I followed the recipe, I'd be fine.

  All but the barest remnant of power I had drawn from the ley line was now running through my circle. I could feel it pressing against my skin. The molecule-thin slice of the ever-after was a red smear between me and the rest of the world, making a dome arching just over my head. Nothing could get through the bands of alternating realities. The oblong sphere was mirrored below me as well, and if it had run into any pipes or electrical lines, the circle would not have been perfect, but vulnerable to breakage at that point.

  Though most of the ley line force had gone into sealing the circle, there was already a secondary buildup beginning in me. It was slower, almost insidiously so. It would continue until I broke the circle and disconnected from the ley line. Ley line witches knew how to properly store power, but I didn't, and if I remained connected to the line too long, it would drive me insane. The bare hour I'd need would come nowhere near too long.

  Satisfied the circle was secure, I let my second sight die completely. The vision of Nick's aura was lost to me. "Ready for step two?" he asked, and I nodded.

  Setting his pentagrams completely aside, he pulled the old book closer. His brow furrowed as he ran a finger under the text to leave a chalk mark as he read. "Next, you remove all charms and spells from yourself." He looked up. "Maybe you should have taken a salt bath."

  "No. The only charms I have are amulets." I pulled the spell I had gotten from my mom off, the cord tugging at my hair. I felt my neck, giving Nick a lopsided grin at his attention on it. After a moment's hesitation, I worked my pinkie ring off and set it aside.

  "I knew it!" Nick exclaimed. "I knew you had freckles. It was the ring, wasn't it?"

  He was reaching out, and I handed it to him across the clutter between us. "My dad gave it to me for my thirteenth birthday," I said. "See the wood inlay? I have to renew it every year."

  Nick glanced at me from under his bangs. "I like your freckles."

  Embarrassed, I took my ring back and set it aside. "What do I do now?"

  He glanced down. "Um… prepare the transfer medium."

  "Done," I said, giving the spell pot a sharp tap to hear it ring. This wasn't so bad.

  "Okay…" He was silent, and the
ticking clock seemed to grow loud. Still reading, he said, "Now you have to stand on your scrying mirror and push your aura down into your reflection." His brown eyes pinched in worry as they met mine. "You can do that?"

  "In theory. That's why I was so picky about the circle. Until I get my aura back, I'll be vulnerable to all sorts of things." He nodded, his gaze distant in thought. "Will you watch and tell me if it works? I can't see my own aura."

  "Sure. It isn't going to hurt, is it?"

  I shook my head as I took up the scrying mirror and set it on the floor. Looking down at its black surface, I was reminded of why I had worked so hard to avoid ley line magic. Its perfect blackness seemed to soak up the light, but at the same time was still shiny. I couldn't see myself in it, and it pegged my creepy meter.

  "Barefoot," Nick added, and I kicked off my slippers. Taking a deep breath, I stepped onto the mirror. It was as cold as it was black, and I stifled a shiver, feeling I might fall through it as if it were a pothole.

  "Euwie," I said, making a face at the pulling sensation from under my feet.

  Nick stared, standing up and looking over the counter at my feet. "It's working," he said, his face suddenly pale.

  Swallowing, I took my hands and ran them down my head as if pushing off water. An ache set my head to throb.

  "Oh, yeah," Nick said, sounding sick. "That pulls it off much faster."

  "It feels awful," I muttered as I continued to push my aura down to my feet. I knew it was going by the soft ache its absence left behind. There was a taste of metal on my tongue, and I glanced at the black surface, my mouth dropping as I saw my reflection in it for the first time. My red hair hung about my face, looking just as I would have expected, but my features were lost behind a smear of amber. "Is my aura brown?" I asked.

  "It's bright gold," Nick answered as he dragged his stool around to my side of the counter. "Mostly. I think you got it all. Can we …move on?"

  Hearing the unease in his voice, I met his eyes. "Please."