Trial by Fire (Covencraft Book 1)

by Margarita Gakis

  “No,” his voice was assured, even. Everything she wanted to hear.

  “Maybe I’ll just live in this room. You guys can bring me food.” Jade moved toward the bed and crawled on top, stretching out on her stomach. Even with all her aches and pains it felt wonderful. “And the internet,” she added.

  “For the rest of your life?” he asked. Through the corner of her eye she noticed him leaning in the doorframe, bulky mirror tucked awkwardly under his arm.

  She pressed her face into the pillow, mashing it back and forth a bit, trying to find an angle that didn’t aggravate the bruises on her neck or the bandage on her head. “I said food and the internet. What else do I really need?”

  She could hear how slurred her words were. She really should push herself up, take his sweater off and get under the covers. And she would.

  In five minutes.

  “Do you need anything for tonight?”

  Jade was going to say that no, she was fine, but if he had a spare t-shirt lying around, she wouldn't say no to using it for pajamas and if he had a spare toothbrush, she’d take that too.

  What came out of her mouth was a single syllable kind of grunt.

  She had a vague notion of him stepping closer and then pulling part of the quilt over her, folding her in the soft white fabric like a croissant roll. The room went dark and she heard him pull the door shut quietly before she fell asleep.

  Chapter 12

  Paris heard Jade wake up, her feet hitting the floor above him as he sat at the table, working on his laptop and sipping coffee. It was late, but she needed the rest so he’d let her sleep, deciding to do some work from home. Paris had eaten earlier in the morning but as it was almost noon now, he could stand to eat again.

  Five minutes after he heard her feet on the ceiling above, she was poking her head around the corner, like a groundhog popping out of its hole in February. She looked horrible. She’d already had bruises around her neck and now more blossomed out from around her head bandage. She looked pale and stark, still wearing the sweater he had loaned her.

  She sniffed the air cautiously, taking a few awkward steps into the kitchen. It was obvious from the way she moved that she was stiff and sore.

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m making an omelet,” he replied easily. “There’s coffee as well. And some ibuprofen in the drawer by the fridge.”

  She made a beeline for the coffee pot, and hesitated slightly, turning to him and raising an eyebrow to ask for a mug. Paris jerked his chin toward the cupboard to her left. She deftly managed to pour herself a cup and then puttered over to the fridge to get the cream, using both hands despite one being in a cast. She found the ibuprofen and knocked back a few, washing them down with coffee as she headed for the table.

  “You got enough eggs for two?”

  He didn't miss how she turned his laptop toward her and looked over his screen, completely oblivious or indifferent to any privacy.

  “There is enough for two.” He gestured at the computer. “You should be able to check your webmail if you like.”

  She pulled the computer toward her and she was awkward with her broken wrist, unable to get her hand at the right angle to type. She hunted and pecked for the letters she wanted, studying the screen.

  She pursed her lips. “Is there toast?”

  He smirked at her nonchalant tone. “Since you don’t smell any toast, you know the answer is no.”

  “Could there be toast?”

  “There could be. Would you like toast, Jade?” Paris turned to meet her gaze as she peeked over the top of the laptop.

  “I like to put the eggs on the toast,” she said defensively.

  “Well, I suppose it can be arranged,” he was trying not to laugh at her expression, like she had to harass him into adding toast to her breakfast, or justify it. He plated the eggs and reached for the bread.“But you have to turn the computer off.”

  She made a pish sound. “I usually just work and eat at the same time.”

  “Eating while working is vulgar.”

  “Who told you that?” her face had twisted itself up.

  “My mother,” he replied as he set her slices of bread into the toaster. The handle was sticky and he tried three times without success to get it to stay down. He pulled the slices back out, put them on the plate and waved his hand over them. They toasted instantly.

  She was interested, her posture perking up as soon as she saw magic. “I didn’t know you could toast like that.”

  “You’ve just arrived at the Coven. I’ve been doing magic since I was two.”

  She slouched dejectedly. “I’m never going to catch up.”

  He wouldn’t set the plate down in front of her until she pushed the laptop off to the side. She rolled her eyes but complied nonetheless.

  “Your mom big on manners?” she asked as she took a large bite of eggs.

  “I had to follow proper etiquette at the table or I wouldn’t get served.” He scooted his chair slightly closer to the table.

  “God, that explains a lot,” she muttered around her mouthful of food. She washed it back with some coffee. “Uh, thanks for letting me stay here last night. And for the sleep-in this morning.”

  “You’re welcome. If you feel up to it, I’d like to go back to your place and have a look around again and then back to the restaurant, see if there’s any lingering magic.” He paused, watching her push her food around on the plate.

  “What’re you hoping to find?” She stared down at her food, not looking up.

  He shrugged. “Something that will lead us to our unknown witch. Something familiar to me, or perhaps some left over ingredients for any magic they may have performed in those locations.”

  “You guys found me easily enough, why not this person?”

  “You were performing unsanctioned magic. Magic outside a coven and without any spells or incantations. It’s quite distinct and sets off a sort of energy. We didn’t track you, we tracked that. You were essentially bleeding out power and there were a few of us that could feel it. It’s calmed down since you’ve started practicing magic. It’s almost like you couldn’t hold it all in and your magic was sending up a beacon for all witches to see.”

  She seemed to mull that over while she nibbled on the corner of her toast. “This unknown witch,” Paris said, continuing, “is working within the system. We’re all kind of desensitized to regulated magic, even if the spells aren’t performed often, or are rare. It has its own kind of aura and it mixes and blends in well with other magic. Unless I can figure out something about it that’s different, that sets it apart. Then we can track that.”

  “And the anti-demon magic? You said you had something last night.”

  He nodded, tossing back the rest of his coffee. “Yes, Hannah was able to procure me some wards and I used them last night to protect the house.” He grimaced slightly. “Unfortunately, no one has firsthand knowledge of their effectiveness.”

  “So you can’t tell if I’m safe or if I’m just not under attack right now.”

  He didn’t want to say it straight out that way, but she had it in a nutshell. She ate most of her eggs and all of the toast, taking her plate to the sink on her way to get another cup of coffee.

  “While we’re at your place, you can pick up a few things and bring them back here. Some clothes, your electronics. I know you’re fond of them.”

  She tried to smile at him from where she leaned against the counter. “Callie and Henri?” she asked.

  He nodded. “Already back at the library researching. I think Callie is scanning some pages she wants you to look at. They have descriptions of demons and she was wondering if you could pick out the first demon from them.”

  “You mean Bob,” Jade answered. “Bob’s demon number one. Doug’s number two.”

  “Yes. Bob.”

  She appeared uncertain and perhaps slightly scared, but she squared her shoulders. “Can do.” She rubbed her eyes, careful to steer clear of the b
andage over her stitches. “If we go back to the other place first, it should be safe to shower, right? I smell like hospital.”

  “I can set the wards there too. I’ll stay with you.” She gave him a sharp, incredulous look. “Not in the shower,” he added quickly. “Obviously.”

  She started to give a full body stretch and then winced as soon as her arms were about to be extended. She curled back in on herself.

  “Okay, I’m ready when you are.”

  *

  Jade slept hard the night before, barely moving throughout the night, waking up hot, sweaty and feeling groggy and heavy. She had strange dreams that she couldn’t really remember, only managing to get impressions of being chased, running and being afraid.

  No big mystery there.

  It was quiet as Paris drove to the small cottage which contained her stuff. Everyone kept referring to it as ‘her place’ but it wasn’t. It was just the place where she was temporarily hanging her hat. Although, it was tempting to refer to it as ‘hers.’ It was cute, small, cozy.

  She wasn’t sure how she felt about staying at the Coven. Being under attack, feeling scared and paranoid was awful, but it could get resolved. Jade wasn’t exactly an optimist, and would punch anyone who said she was in the throat, but she did think that most problems were solvable. Would she always like the solution or would it be easy? No, but there would be a solution. She just had to make it happen. She was practical.

  So there had to be a solution to this mess, an endgame. After that, she’d have to decide what she wanted to do with her life.

  Presuming, of course, that the solution to this problem included her making it out alive. If not, then the decision on staying at the Coven or not was pretty much made. The dead didn't move anywhere.

  So, if Jade assumed that there was a way out of this, then she was going to have to decide what to do. Would they find someone to break her magic? If they did, would she want them to? Magic was pretty fucking cool, she admitted. She liked it. She liked it a lot, actually, and wanted to learn more. But it looked like being part of the Coven came with attachments to people.

  She’d been studiously avoiding attachments for years.

  But it had been nice that morning to have Paris make her breakfast, having someone there to talk to. She enjoyed Callie and Henri’s company, and envied the easy way they had with one another. She hadn’t felt like that around anyone else since…

  Not going to think about that right now.

  She turned her face to the window and rubbed her fingertips over her eyebrows, smoothing along with the short, tiny hairs, the gesture soothing the pain that was flaring up - a dull ache that she awoke with and would probably feel for a few days.

  Once at the cottage, Paris took a quick look around upstairs, casting his wards, which he swore to teach her later, and declared the place ‘safe.’ She gathered some stuff from her luggage and then headed to the bathroom, pausing where he stood in front of the door.

  “Would you hold out your cast?” he asked carefully.

  She hesitated and then held it up in front of him. He passed his hand over it, reciting an incantation as he did and resting his fingertips lightly on the fiberglass mesh. She felt a strange tingling pass through her hand. Not painful, not unpleasant, but strange and slightly cool. He raised his hand and said the incantation again, touching the bandage on her forehead lightly, like a benediction.

  “Now they’re waterproof,” he said, his voice quiet and low. “And I’ve warded the mirror in the bathroom both with the anti-demon wards and also an anti-hex ward that I’m confident in. My mother used it to keep items from… Becoming something they aren’t. It keeps magic from touching them.”

  “Uh, thanks.” She hurried into the bathroom and shut the door behind her, locking it with a flick of her wrist.

  The mirror still gave her the willies and she avoided looking in it, both because she didn’t want to take stock in how she looked but also because she was afraid that once she looked at it, she’d be too scared to look away and then she’d end up trapped in a bathroom, staring at herself in the mirror like a crazy person.

  God her brain got the better of her sometimes. She sighed. Most times.

  The water was hot on her skin and muscles and she washed every inch of herself, including the little stubbly patch where her hair had been shaved. It was amazing to watch the water divert its course, dodging her cast. She presumed the same thing was going on over her bandage and when she touched her fingertips to it, it was warm but dry. She spent a solid five minutes moving her cast around under the spray just to watch the water dance away, like a magnet being pushed by another magnet.

  Totally one point on the ‘stay with magical coven because they can do awesome stuff’ list she was making in her head.

  She remained in the shower a bit too long, her skin turning pink and the bathroom completely fogged up by the time she reluctantly shut the water off, dried and got dressed. She tossed some stuff in her smaller carry-on bag, leaving her suitcase in the bedroom. If she did end up staying at the Coven, she’d have to go back to her apartment, shut it all down and clear out.

  Move everything.

  For now, she was content to take a change of clothes, her toiletries and her little shoebox that she kept with her wherever she went. She felt foolish for always lugging it around when she left for holidays or business trips, but she’d tried to leave it behind and always ended up feeling sick about it. She’d had it since she was little. It was beaten up around the edges, covered in old magazine pictures, glued on, taped over, glittered from her teen-fueled glitter-glue phase. It was hideous but she kept it safe always. She put it in her bag, wrapping it in a t-shirt first.

  After gathering her meager necessities, she headed downstairs again and had to call out to find Paris. Hearing him in the kitchen, she unenthusiastically made her way over. He’d said the place was safe, and he had it warded but he also said he wasn’t one hundred percent sure.

  He was hunched over the kitchen table when she went in, some things spread out in front of him. There was a piece of fabric, some small bits of debris, some powder, some glass. As she approached, she caught a whiff of something vile.

  “Holy god, what is that?” Jade asked, covering her nose with her hand.

  Paris was poking at the items on the table with a chopstick he must have liberated from the kitchen drawers.

  “Hex bag. The kitchen was the source of the portal and our first demon, Bob, had to have had something that drew him here, to this precise location. Your magic would have been a beacon for him, but if it were only your magic, the portal should be in your bedroom - where you spend the most of your time, albeit asleep. After searching, I found it in a cupboard, against the wall that’s shared between the cabinetry and the pantry. It must have been placed here by our unknown witch.”

  “What’s it do?”

  “I’m not sure. I believe it’s some kind of a chaos spell. Likely to keep you confused or conflicted in general. Keep you off balance. It’s a low level spell, but the intent behind it is negative. The negative intent would’ve assisted Bob in breaking through.”

  “Ugh, how did I miss it?” She gagged a little bit and then pulled her shirt up over her nose, breathing in the scent of her shower gel and deodorant instead. Paris’ wrinkled his nose slightly but wasn’t as dramatic.

  She didn’t care. Blergh. It was revolting.

  Paris hovered over the hex bag like a medical examiner over a body in the morgue - intense focus and no indication that what he was doing was a little distasteful and creepy. “It didn’t have a smell until I took it apart to figure out the ingredients. When you break a hex bag up, the magic dissipates. It will take on the smell of the ingredients but also partly, from the intent of the magic.”

  “It’s filthy mcnasty,” she said, her voice muffled from the cotton of her shirt. She was acting like a six-year-old and she didn’t care. “That smell is going to linger, you know. I’ll have to bleach everything.”


  She heard herself making commitments like she was planning on staying at the Coven.

  Huh. Maybe she would.

  “It should get better after the magic finishes decomposing.”

  “Yeah but I’ll know it was there. It’s going to need a full decontamination scrub down. How would I ever eat in here knowing that smell touched stuff?”

  He looked up from the hex bag. “Smell doesn’t touch things.”

  She knew she must look ridiculous, rolling her eyes when that was all he could see of her face. “Yes it does. Smell is in the air and air touches everything. Ergo, smell touches things and makes them gross.”

  He looked back at the ingredients, poking a small crystal with the chopstick. “I’ll take your word on that.”

  “You do that, English.” She craned her neck trying to see better without getting closer. “You got anything?”

  He tilted his head and shrugged one of his shoulders. “Possibly. Some of these crystals are rarer than others. We can check the supply shops around town. I think our better bet though is to use the fabric from the bag and see if we can scry for the person that touched it last, other than me.”

  “We can do that?”

  His eyes met her and she realized she’d used the term ‘we’ the same way he had, like they were a sort of team, or partnership. “Yes. We can.” He found a plastic sandwich bag and using another chopstick, managed to fold the fabric up and slide it inside without touching it.

  “First we need to do a little shopping.”

  *

  They stopped off at a dollar store to purchase a mirror.

  A dollar store.

  “Don’t you have some kind of witch-crafty store you can go to for stuff like this?” Jade asked, staring at the little drink umbrellas that were ten for a dollar by the front till. She picked up a packet of happy face stickers and then put them down wiping her hands a bit on her jeans.