Trial by Fire (Covencraft Book 1)

by Margarita Gakis

  They scared her. Bright yellow smiley faces. Creepy.

  “It’s not a magical item until we make it one. Until then, it’s just a mirror.” Paris declined a bag for the mirror, taking it as is.

  “And an ugly one at that,” she said. But for a buck-ninety-nine, she guessed it would do.

  They headed back to Paris’ place while he explained a bit about making a scrying mirror. Unlike a portal, which truly was a gateway to another dimension, a scrying mirror allowed a witch to see things on this side - lost things, missing things, unknown things. The idea of other dimensions wasn’t as freaky as she would have thought and she felt a little vindicated in thinking about all the sci-fi she watched as a kid, believing in other worlds and far-off places.

  Back at Paris’ house, Jade watched with keen eyes and even pulled out a little notebook to record what she saw as Paris worked. Her hand was awkward and stiff around the pen, trying to work with her cast. She ended up with scratchy, uneven scribbles across the page, the point of the pen digging in hard and sharp, creasing the paper.

  Paris explained what he was doing as he worked. He meticulously polished the entire surface with a pure cotton cloth, wiping away any touch of another person and then dabbed the whole thing down again with newspaper to take off any stray traces of lint. He brought out a tiny tool kit that held all sorts of implements - a small screwdriver, a wishbone, some pliers, a spool of copper wire, a drafting pencil and a few slivers of soap. He used one of the pieces of soap to trace runes over the edge of the mirror, cleaning up his lines with the polishing cloth when necessary. When he was satisfied with the placement and shape, Paris took a small etching pen and traced over his soap marks.

  It was pristine, perfect work. He was silent as he traced the runes, brow furrowed in concentration, and she didn’t interrupt with any questions. When he finished, he started polishing the soap off the mirror, leaving only the etching behind. He explained that while he worked, he tried to remain as focused as possible on what he was doing, imbuing the mirror with his magic. From his closet, he pulled out several cloth bags, checking the size until he selected one that looked like it would fit the mirror.

  He glanced down at her tattered notebook and her scribbles.

  “I’ll have to get you a proper grimoire,” he said, wiping his hands off and then sliding the mirror into the bag. He carefully opened the plastic bag that had the piece of cloth from the hex bag and slid it inside as well. “Every witch has at least one. A place to capture their studies, their thoughts, write new spells or copy down favorites.”

  She thought about it for a moment. “Could I use a tablet?” she asked.

  He considered her words. “I don’t actually know. Everyone I know uses a book. If you wanted, we could try. Although part of the process is letting the books be saturated with your magic. They travel with you, get handled by you, are surrounded by magic. It might not be the same if you kept replacing your tablet with the newest upgrade.”

  “Old school witches,” Jade mused. “Maybe I’ll figure out a way to get you into the technology age yet.”

  They headed back to the car, Paris grabbing a shovel and handed it to her on the way out. He drove for a few miles, leaving the population behind and entering some kind of park area with clay-red pathways and large trees that hovered dense and heavy overtop. It appeared to be a nature preserve with a few signs pointing out hiking trails and sites of interest. It was neat, but not manufactured. There wasn’t any trash or clutter, but there were large, overgrown bushes pushing their way into the paths. Heavy foliage draped alongside the walkways, waiting for the chance to crawl across them and take over. The air cooled once they were a little deeper in the forest and Jade wished she brought a spare jacket or kept the sweater Paris had loaned her the other night. It was a little darker too, the sunlight choked off by the leaves up above their heads, only barely peeking through.

  He stopped when they reached a crossroads of sorts - two pathways meeting at nearly right angles and then heading off again. He motioned her off to one side, giving her the mirror to hold onto while he took the shovel. He stood in the center of the crossroads and turned three times and then struck the shovel down hard into the packed dirt. It barely went in and he ended up putting his foot on it and leveraging most of his weight to start digging. He dug about a foot down and then motioned Jade forward with the mirror and directed her to put it in the ground.

  “It’s okay if I do it?” she asked, suddenly a bit nervous. She looked up at him with wide eyes even as she crouched near the ground. Though she disliked asking for his permission or his assurance, she wanted even less to mess it up.

  “Your magic is quite powerful. It would be a great addition to the mirror,” he said simply.

  Jade laid it carefully in the small hole and then straightened up. He flicked out a Swiss army knife from his pocket and she smirked.

  “You’re a real boy scout, aren’t you?”

  He leveraged one of the blades open and nicked the fleshy part of his palm underneath his thumb, letting three drops of blood fall onto the cloth bag before stepping back and pulling a small handkerchief out of his pocket and pressing it against the wound quickly and hard until it stopped bleeding.

  He covered the mirror with dirt, smoothing out the top layer of earth and then crouched to etch one more rune into the soil with a fingertip.

  “How long does this take?” Jade asked, kicking herself for not asking before.

  Paris seemed a little indecisive. “Well, that’s a choice we have to make. For best results, three sunsets.”

  “What?” she said incredulously. “I’m a child of the internet and microwave ovens and fast food. I can’t wait three days. How do we make it faster?”

  “We can dig it up faster, but the less time we leave it, the less powerful it is,” Paris answered. “It has to at least be one sunset but there’s no way of knowing if it would be strong enough to work.”

  She looked at the soft mound in front of her and back at Paris. Three days seemed like a long time. In the grand scheme of things, she knew it wasn’t, but she felt like everything had been happening so quickly that it had a kind of momentum to it, like a train going down a track. If she had three days to wait, that was three days to start thinking really hard about things. She generally did a lot better when she just reacted and didn’t give herself too much time to let her brain fuck her over.

  But she didn’t want to screw it all up by not waiting the first time and then having to do it all over again and then wait three days. That would be even longer. Assuming it could be done again. She didn’t know if it was a onetime only deal or not.

  Three days. Ugh.

  She groaned. “Fine. Three days. Oh my god, I’m totally going to figure out a way to make these things faster.”

  She looked over at Paris to see him smiling a little at her. Not a smirk or a snicker, just a pleased smile.

  “What?”

  He cleared his throat a bit. “That sounds like you’re thinking about staying. In fact, you’ve said a few things that possibly imply you’re staying with us.”

  She rolled her eyes to hide the slight embarrassment she felt. “Yeah, well, I gotta live through the week first and then we’ll see.” She shuffled her feet a bit. “Speaking of, is the offer of crashing at your very nicely anti-demon warded place still open?”

  “Of course.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I do think you’ll be happy at the Coven, Jade. Despite what you might think, you are a witch. You belong with a coven.”

  Jade worried at the inside of her lip with her teeth. She’d never really belonged anywhere but it would sound plaintive and small to say that out loud. “I’m thinking about it. I guess it depends on how this situation shakes out. And you guys really fucked up the welcome wagon. I might’ve listened if you’d told me the truth from the start, about not being able to keep my power if I didn’t stay.”

  “I realize that. I should have told you the trut
h from the beginning.”

  Jade was surprised at his solemn and serious tone, the intensity of his gaze, the truthfulness she heard in his words.

  “I can’t change the past.”

  “No? Not one of your powers?” she said, a smile curling her lips.

  “Not hardly.” He looked up at the canopy of trees above them, the sun moving lazily across the cool sky. She glanced up, the light of the sun making her head hurt and her eyes squint even with the shade of the trees. She touched the bandage on her head lightly, still feeling the tight, hot pull of the stitches in her skin and the sharp prickle of stubble.

  She caught Paris looking at her carefully. “We should head in. You look tired,” he said.

  “I’m fine.”

  He didn’t argue with her but she could see he didn’t believe her. She didn’t know why she said it when she was obviously tired and beat-up from the day prior.

  “We should head in anyway. We’ll come back in three days. All right?”

  She nodded. “Three days.”

  Chapter 13

  Jade was drained when she went to bed that night, but she wasn’t as physically or emotionally exhausted as she had been the night before when she didn’t so much ‘go to sleep’ as ‘fall unconscious.’ She lay in bed, staring up at the dark ceiling, listening to the unfamiliar sounds of the house. The furnace came on at regular intervals but had a soft click-click-click sound as it ran. It took her a while to get familiar with the rhythm and then, once identified, discount it. She heard Paris make a few phone calls and she caught snatches of words to do with what she assumed was coven business. She didn’t hear her name, nor any mention of demons, so she managed to push that to the back of her mind as more white noise.

  She could very faintly make out the sound of the train as it hoofed along the tracks about an hour after she turned out the lights. Its whistle sounded lonesome and far away. She heard the creak of the stairs as Paris came up to bed, heard him pause at the door to the room she was in, but he didn’t knock or enter. She imagined him on the other side, listening to hear if she was asleep and, not hearing anything, assuming she was.

  Like most people, Jade endured infrequent insomnia, but she didn’t get worked up about it. She would just lie in bed, figuring either sleep would come or it wouldn’t, attempting to focus her mind on easy topics like something she’d seen on the science and nature network or a book she was reading. Sometimes, even work. Her job was mundane enough to not cause a lot of stress, but challenging enough at times that it kept her mind occupied.

  She studiously avoided thinking about the past.

  That night, she was not only trying to avoid thinking about the past, she was also deigning not to think too much about the future. A few times she felt herself drifting to sleep only to jerk awake, feeling slightly nervous and vulnerable. Paris had said she was safe and although she was inclined to believe him, she couldn’t quite make the leap of faith to just fall asleep.

  Her wrist ached and felt tender and sore, even when she didn’t move it. Her head still hurt and when she rolled onto her side, if she wasn’t careful, she’d hit it against the pillow. Even the plush softness made her wince slightly. Her neck was still all bruised up and it too was tender. She tried not to move too much but found herself getting achy and fidgety in general.

  Jade looked over at the closet, sizing it up. It was a good size. And there was nothing in it. She’d fit no problem.

  But she was too old to be sleeping in closets.

  Then again, if she couldn’t sleep in a closet when she felt like it as an adult, then what was the point in being able to make all her own decisions? Besides, no one had to know that she was sleeping in the closet.

  Mind made up, she grabbed two pillows by their cases in her unbroken hand and managed to snag the comforter with the fingers of her casted one, dragging it toward the closet. As soon as she opened the doors, she felt a bone-deep relief settle in. She tossed the pillows in and then followed, curling up on the side that didn’t have stitches on her head. She dragged the soft comforter over her and managed to curl her fingers under the lip of the doors, pulling them shut.

  She snuggled down into her little nest and blinked drowsily. It must be Pavlovian, she decided, as she felt sleep starting to tug at her immediately. Being in the closet made her relax in a way that was familiar and safe. She’d never been hurt any time she slept in one. It was like her own little cocoon.

  Sighing a bit, she fell asleep.

  She woke up with an aching shoulder and hip. Apparently, being an adult not only meant she could chose to sleep in a closet, but that she must also suffer consequences of doing so. Jade wasn’t eight years old anymore and sleeping curled up on the floor had left her stiff and sore in addition to her bumps and bruises. She opened the doors a crack and peeked out, seeing the clock read five in the morning. A little too early for her but she could tell by the way her brain was already going that she wasn’t getting any more sleep. She dragged all the bedclothes out and dumped them in a heap on the bed and figured she’d head downstairs and get some coffee.

  She had to root around a bit in the kitchen to find filters and the coffee grounds but managed to get it all sorted out and brewing in ten minutes. Unfortunately, Paris didn’t have one of those pots that you could take out half way through brewing and pour a cup, a fact she found out the hard way after hot coffee spilled across the counter. She hastily mopped it up with a dishtowel and resolved to ask Paris if there was some kind of spell to keep the coffee from flowing while she grabbed a cup. It was just water, there had to be magic for it.

  And yes, Jade decided she would totally abuse magical powers if it meant she could make her everyday life easier. No question. No hesitation.

  Mug in hand, she wandered around Paris’ house. She saw his laptop set up in a small office and she ran her fingers over it and on a whim, tried out the username and password she’d been given at the library. It let her into the system and she poked around on the internet for a bit, checking her webmail and reading some of her favorite blogs. Paris’ office was definitely the most ‘witchy’ with magical texts lining the bookshelves. She tilted her head to the side and read the titles along the spines. Many didn’t have titles and she wondered if he just knew what they were; if he’d had them so long he recognized them by sight alone. On a whim, she reached out and touched one and was surprised by the tingle of magic that ran through her fingers and up her arm. She touched another and got a different tingle of magic. After touching about thirty books with each tingle being slightly different, she reasoned that was probably how he told them apart - running his hands along the shelf until he found what he wanted.

  There was a photo tucked into a small corner of one of the shelves and Jade picked it up, staring at it for a moment. It was a young boy of about ten or twelve and a naturally beautiful woman with the same intense blue eyes and dark hair. Even as a boy, she recognized Paris’ facial structure and figured it must be him and his mom. They had teeth-baring grins, smiling so big both sets of eyes crinkled at the corners. His mom had an arm around him tightly and he was pressed up against her, oblivious to any personal space either one of them might want.

  They looked really happy.

  She put the photo back hastily. It was the only thing she felt bad about touching so far.

  Jade continued her perimeter walk of the room, looking out the window that gave a view of a large backyard with a tall mountain ash tree starting to go yellow and red with the fall. The backyard wasn’t really manicured, but it looked somewhat tended to. The grass was long but there were no weeds, no obnoxious dandelions bursting forth. There were some annual plants around the edges - peonies with no blossoms, some rose bushes with the last stragglers trying to bloom.

  Jade took another step and paused when she felt the same kind of tingle shoot up her bare foot as she had felt in her fingers from the books on the shelf. She looked down at the wood-paneled floor and rocked forward on her foot, feeling the ti
ngle, and then back, feeling it dissipate. She crouched down, setting her mug on the ground and pressed against the floor boards with her fingers and found it loose.

  It only took a little fiddling to get it to pop open and reveal a little cubbyhole. Inside were three dark covered books - similar to the ones on the shelf. She picked them up and wrinkled her nose. They felt slightly greasy, dirty, and she wanted to immediately rub her hands off on her pants but she resisted the urge.

  She placed them down in front of her and picked up just one, opening it to the middle.

  Magic spells and incantations were scrawled on the inside in a messy, but completely legible script. Also included were snippets of other books - pages torn out and fastened in with tape or paper clips.

  Pictures of demons, demon spells, demon knowledge. Her heart twisted in her chest as she flipped through the book, not really understanding what she was reading. She flipped the book over, studying the outside cover again, looking for some identifying marks. She opened the cover and on the inside was a single word.

  Sakkara.

  “What’ve you got there?”

  Her head snapped up to see Paris standing in the doorway of his office, holding a cup of coffee and gazing in her direction inquisitively.

  Jade pushed herself to her feet, ignoring her body’s protest. “You said you didn’t know any demon magic. You said no one practiced it anymore.” She jerked the book at him, shaking it a bit.

  He frowned. “I don’t. Except for what I learned in school when I was younger.”

  “Then what the hell is this?” She stomped over to him and thrust one of the volumes in his face. He immediately recoiled, a look of distaste on his face, like the book offended him.

  “What is that? Where did you get it?”

  “From right there,” she said pointing to the hole in the floor. “You’re shit at hiding books, they gave off some ‘woo-woo’ just like the books on your shelf. I didn’t even have to look for them, I just found them.”