by Laura Bickle
In the center of the circle lay a motionless man. He lay on his side, dressed in a white shirt and black pants, the shirt speckled with rusty red stains. A bruise covered the side of his face, and blood leaked from the corner of his mouth down into his dark hair. I saw his good eye open and his fingers twitch. His eye was hazel, the color of faded moss.
Run, I wanted to shout at him. I didn’t know what magic brewed here, but I knew it was cold and evil. But I was a silent observer, looking down on this scene, unable to scream except in my own head.
With sudden violence, he lurched upright and ran. He plowed through the edge of the circle, breaking free. He fled into the darkness of what I took to be an abandoned industrial building; machines I couldn’t identify stood silent, while the night sky loomed through broken windowpanes. The whole place smelled like rust and standing water, with a faint hint of blood.
He rushed up against a scarred metal door, shoving through it with his hands, plunging into an empty city street. From here, I could not see any stars, just leaden clouds overhead. I heard bits of distant music, laughter.
Footfalls followed this man, though. The men had torn off their robes and were chasing him in street clothes.
The man wound his way through narrow streets. As streetlights flashed over him, I got a better look: he was a handsome man, broad shoulders, square jaw, a hazel gaze that seemed to devour everything it touched. If I had met him in any other context, I would have found him attractive. Now, I was just afraid for him.
He skidded down an alleyway with pursuers behind him. He slammed up against a fence at the end of the alley, a dead end. Without looking back, he began to climb the fence. The top was ribboned with barbed wire, but he reached into it to gain a handhold. Blood flowed down his wrist as he clawed his way up. My heart lifted, thinking that he was going to escape.
But a four-legged shadow lunged at him. I gasped, seeing the attacker was a maned wolf. The maned wolf grabbed his pant leg and pulled. Off balance, the man lost his grip on the fence and fell to the pavement with a sickening crunch.
The wolf snarled and launched itself at him. The man lifted his hands, but the maned wolf ripped into his throat. Blood splashed onto the pavement. The pursuing men circled them and watched, murmuring a low chant.
I heard the voice of one of the men, his voice sharp and clear above the others: “You have seen things you were never meant to see, Renan. You have seen, and you will not ever escape.”
CHAPTER 6
“You know how to use this, right?”
I stared blearily over my coffee mug at Celeste in the kitchen. She’d arrayed a strange collection of objects on the kitchen table: old coins, jars, herbs that smelled like dust, and glittering crystals. The cats wound their way through the obstacle course of magical items, batting at the stones. Celeste was muttering over a noxious-smelling concoction on the stove and thrust a half-full jar of nails and suspicious liquid under my nose.
I wrinkled my nose. “Ugh. Did you—did you pee in that?”
“Once the curse jars are finished, they need to be buried at the edges of the property to keep interlopers away,” she hissed, turning back to the stove. “And the wards will need to be hung.” She flung her hand at a dozen corn dollies lined up on the countertop like an army of children’s playthings.
I picked up one of the wards and lifted its skirt. Celeste had inscribed sigils on the insides of their skirts with blood. I made a face.
“What if we just clued Dalton in on this?” Some part of me wanted to be honest with him.
“He won’t believe you,” Celeste said sadly.
I had to agree, but I didn’t want to say that out loud.
I stared at Celeste’s bottles. I’d tried to make a curse jar when I was a teenager and a girl had stolen my boyfriend. Not having the maturity to curse the boyfriend instead, I made a curse jar of pizza grease and pepperoni. Spitting into it, I wished her a year of acne. It backfired on me and gave me painful blemishes for a year instead.
“How is it that you’re able to avoid the Law of Three on that?” I muttered at her, still smarting from my teenage ineptitude.
Celeste glared at me. “You let me worry about that, hmm? I’ve made more sorcery than you’ve stitched sutures.”
I lifted my hands and backed off. I wanted to help the magical defense effort. I needed to be doing something, but I wasn’t sure exactly what.
I headed into the basement, into that place of warmth and churning light. It was easier to think here, cocooned in this ancient warmth. Taking a deep breath, I stood before the bookcases of spells. There had to be something here that would help. I ran my fingers along spines, awaiting some sign or magical tingle that would bring me to a powerful spell to raise magic swords from lakes or some such. I didn’t feel anything. Which I guess shouldn’t have surprised me.
But I was determined. I closed my eyes and reached out. I pulled a dusty volume from the 1950s, from my great-grandmother, Belinda. This one had always been a puzzle to me; there were recipes for dinners in gelatin molds, tips for dusting with used pantyhose, and charms to keep high heels from leaving blisters on the backs of one’s heels. Belinda, from what I’d gathered, had been the perfect 1950s housewife, able to create an endless variety of casseroles from what she grew in her kitchen garden. Many of the mason jars that Celeste was working with were Belinda’s, and she wrote down her instructions to preserve everything from tomatoes to hamburger in this book. I had skimmed over it when I was younger, but found little there that I wanted to reproduce. Maybe I would feel differently now.
I picked a spot in the book at random and opened it. The pages fell open to Belinda’s precise scrawl:
“Message in a Bottle
“To summon magical help to clean your house, collect three small bottles. I use lipstick tubes. Write your desire on a small scrap of paper, then roll it up and place it in the tube. Seal it with wax, and leave the bottles outside on your windowsill. They will be picked up by birds, and help will be on your doorstep before the next full moon.”
I frowned. That seemed simple enough. I closed the book and tucked it under my arm. As I climbed the steps to the kitchen, I could already smell something acrid in the air. As I passed through the kitchen, I grimaced at the boiling vinegar Celeste was pouring from a saucepan into the jars lined up on the kitchen table.
I headed up to my room and cast about for something small enough to use as a bottle. I didn’t have any lipstick tubes to use.
What are you looking for? Orion asked, yawning from my bed.
“A container small and light enough to be carried off by a bird. Actually, I need three of them,” I muttered, digging through my jewelry box. I paused, finding a cheap heart-shaped locket. Time had turned the cheap brass green. I had won it at a school fair when I was ten, but I had told the girls at school that it was a gift from my boyfriend. The locket was empty, and nobody ever believed that I had a boyfriend, but it was fun to pretend that I had a long-distance relationship with Prince Charming.
I set it aside. That would do. But I needed two more vessels for the spell.
Theo nudged the closet door open and yawned. He batted something across the floor. Would this work?
I knelt to pick the object off the floor. It was a plastic bubble from a gumball machine, the kind that trinkets were housed in. This one held a sticker of the moon, and I dimly remembered that a sticky-fingered child had given it to me to thank me for putting their dog’s broken leg in a cast. It must have fallen out of a pocket.
I patted Theo on the head. “This is perfect, Theo, thank you.”
He purred and wound around my legs.
I found nothing else in my room that would work. I rifled through the bathroom drawers, and came up with nothing. I found myself staring at Starr’s bedroom door.
I took a deep breath and opened it. Though the drapes were closed, sun still shone dimly in this dusty place. Telling myself that Starr would have taken anything that truly mattered to her
, I opened the drawer of her vanity. My fingers trailed through paintbrushes, dried-out watercolor pans, crumbling eyeshadow, and bits of string. My fingers finally closed around a tiny plastic vial that my nose confirmed once held perfume. It had long since evaporated, but it was the perfect size for what I needed.
I returned to my bedroom. I tore a piece of paper into one-inch squares and wrote on each one: “I call help to defend Summerwood House against evil.” Defending against evil was close enough to cleaning house, right? I stuffed those papers into the vessels.
I lit a jar candle I kept on my nightstand and waited impatiently for yellow wax to pool. When it did, I dripped the wax to seal my vessels, only burning my fingers twice.
When I was through, I opened my window and placed the locket, the gumball bubble, and the perfume vial out on the windowsill. I closed the window and stood back, wondering if birds would ever find them.
Theo leaped up on the windowsill. I will watch for birds and report back, he announced.
I kissed him on the top of his striped head. My cats had my back. No wonder they were witches’ familiars over the centuries.
I went out to the kennel room to check on my charges, pausing in the kitchen to grab another cup of coffee while sidestepping whatever Celeste was doing with sulfur powder. After grimacing at her, I decided to fill a Thermos to take with me.
Last night had been rough with dreams. I’d awoken at three a.m. and hadn’t been able to get back to sleep. I had never been particularly given to vivid dreams—they weren’t part of my witchy toolkit. Most witches had one or two special abilities, and my conversational ability with animals had come in early. Celeste told me stories of how I was raised with an orange tomcat who slept in my crib. My first word was meow.
I could go through the motions of folk magic and get decent results, most of the time. I didn’t discount my dreams, but I wasn’t sure where they fit in with this. But I was certain the maned wolf had things to say.
The guinea pigs were asleep in a furry heap in the back of their cage. I passed them, checking to see that their water bottle was full, before pausing before the maned wolf’s cage.
I expected that he would be sleeping. But he was awake, watching me.
“How are you doing?” I asked. “Let’s see your leg.”
I pulled on gloves and unlatched the cage to check his wounds. He turned over on his side and showed me his leg.
My brows drew together. His leg was in much better shape than yesterday...much better than I would expect to see it weeks from now. Fur was already growing back, and the stitches I’d set in had already dissolved.
“You heal fast,” I whispered.
He whined and put his head down on his paws.
“Can you walk?”
I knew that this was a risky thing with a wild animal, but I felt as if I could trust him. I opened the door and scooted back a bit.
The canine climbed to his feet, stretched, and put some weight on his leg. He moved a tentative two steps out of the cage, limping. I gingerly reached for the leg, and he let me touch him. I could feel that the bones were knitting together correctly.
“You’re magic, aren’t you?” I said.
He stared at me with solemn eyes.
“You are healing too fast for any animal, even an exotic one. And I suspect that you have something to do with the Casimir.”
He stared at me. His lips peeled back on his teeth, and he growled, a deep rumbling that rolled from deep in his chest and lifted the hair on his back. I was wary of him, remembering the maned wolf that attacked the man in my dreams. But this maned wolf didn’t look exactly like the one in my dreams. That one had been larger, with a darker coat. This one was a little smaller, redder. At least, I didn’t think they were the same creature. This one seemed very docile, and not at all like a creature who would tear a man’s throat out. Still, I knew that wild animals were unpredictable, and I couldn’t be truly sure.
I decided to lay it all out there. I couldn’t be honest with Dalton, but I could be honest with the maned wolf.
I sucked in my breath. “Look. It’s a long story. I’m a witch. I talk to animals. My family are witches, and I’ve been told they had a battle with the Casimir a long time ago. But it seems like the Casimir are back in town, and my Aunt Celeste is freaking out in the kitchen now, baking curse cookies. I’m not sure what’s going on, but I wish you would talk to me.”
He looked me full in the face, a soulful expression.
“Are you one of them?”
He crawled back in his cage, curling up in a ball, with his tail covering his nose.
I sat back on my heels. I wanted him to trust me, but I couldn’t push it. I’d have to give him time. I had other animals who needed me, too.
I fed and watered everyone in the barn, and turned the horses and goats loose in the paddock closest to the barn and the chickens in a closed run. I didn’t want anybody too far out of sight. I warned them to stick close and let me know if they saw anything out of the ordinary.
Celeste sent me out to the mailbox with a corn dolly to tie to it. I trudged down the gravel driveway to do as I was told, tying the ward to the mailbox post with a handful of ribbons that had been dipped in rosemary oil. It looked like a pretty decoration, but it should keep anyone who had ill intent from entering our property. Last time Celeste had done that was when we were getting unwanted solicitations from the local church. A corn dolly had solved the problem with missionaries, and I hoped that it would work against magicians.
I scanned the sky, hoping to catch a glimpse of that massive bird I’d seen yesterday. I peered up at the trees on the opposite side of the gravel road. I didn’t see any improbably large nests or signs of predation.
I turned to return to the house when I felt eyes on me. I paused, looking back.
Dark eyes stared at me from a pine tree. I frowned and looked at it, expecting to see a buzzard.
But it wasn’t a buzzard. A massive bird with a thick ruff of grey feathers and a black beak stared at me through the branches, its neck craning forward. Its legs were white, and talons as large as my hand clung to the bark.
“Hello?” I said tentatively.
The bird’s plumage lifted, its beak opened, and it hissed.
I blinked and took a step back.
The bird flapped its wings and took off, disappearing into the forest.
My skin crawled. That bird, whatever it was, was an ill omen. I was certain of it.
CHAPTER 7
I told Celeste about the bird. She frowned and set about smoke cleansing the house, burning so much rosemary that I coughed. I was relieved to retreat to the clinic, which smelled a lot less like a culinary disaster.
A steady stream of veterinary clients came in during walk-in hours. I gave sets of vaccinations, cleaned ears, and diplomatically suggested that the owner of an overweight basset hound switch him to diet dog food. The basset hound understood every word that I said and howled balefully at talk of putting him on a diet.
A familiar dog arrived with his owner about fifteen minutes before my office hours were up. I recognized him as the yellow Labrador retriever I’d seen in the feed store yesterday.
“Hi,” I said. “Can I help you?”
“I sure hope so,” the owner, a young man in his twenties, said. “Bristol hasn’t been eating, and he’s been throwing up. Well, he’s been trying to throw up. Nothing’s coming up, and I’m worried about him.”
I knelt before Bristol. “Let’s see what’s going on with the big guy.”
I led them back to the exam room and picked Bristol up. When I got him on the table, I stroked his head and checked for dehydration. He was pretty dehydrated, and the owner gave me the okay to give him fluids.
“What do you think is wrong with him?”
I felt Bristol’s abdomen. The dog winced and his belly was hard. “I suspect that he might have eaten a foreign body. Is Bristol the sort of dog who puts things in his mouth that he shouldn’t?”
I looked down at Bristol. “Given his history, I want to X-ray him and see if there’s anything down there that he can’t pass on his own.”
His owner nodded, rubbing Bristol’s ears. “Anything he needs, Doc.”
I sent the owner out to the waiting area while I prepared to X-ray Bristol. Bristol was very quiet, lying still, his doggy eyebrows moving up and down.
“So...did you eat something?” I asked him.
Bristol sighed. I eat a lot of things. Don’t tell Aaron. I really like pine needles.
“Those will make you sick.” I donned my lead apron.
Bristol groaned. Yeah, but they’re soooo good. I also steal some of Aaron’s chocolate when he’s not looking.
“Bristol. That’s poisonous. Did you eat chocolate?” I positioned him on the table for the X-ray machine.
No. Not this time. I found some really interesting smells in the woods. I followed them to a campground. It smelled...fantastic. Like blood and feathers and dead things. Oooh, it was marvelous. He grinned.
I cranked up the X-ray machine and took some films. I called them up on my laptop and frowned. “Bristol. What did you eat?”
Welllllll. I might have eaten a rock.
“You ate a rock.”
But it wasn’t really a rock. It was cold like a rock, but it tasted like spoiled hamburger. It was splendid. It gave me the tingles.
I sighed, staring at the X-ray image. Indeed, there was a solid foreign body showing up in Bristol’s small intestine. I couldn’t tell exactly what it was, but it was roundish. I thought it looked like a nut at first, but I couldn’t be sure. All I could tell was that it was opaque and it was obstructing the heck out of him.