Witch's Brew - Spellspinners 1 (Spellspinners of Melas County)

by Heidi R. Kling

  Lately, Logan wondered more and more who his biological parents were. And whenever he hinted as much to Jacob, he was reminded how ill-equipped they must have been to raise him if they had to abandon him on a stranger’s doorstep. And as a warlock, Logan was likewise poorly equipped to face the human world alone.

  Humans are fragile. Nothing protects them. But here, son, you have me. You have your brothers fighting for you. Protecting you. Forget about the humans. You are beyond that now.

  “So my parents were humans?” he’d asked.

  “I know nothing about them. Only that they didn’t want you and left you here with me.”

  He stopped asking questions about his past; it was just too painful to be reminded over and over that he was unwanted by anyone other than his warlock Master. But he never stopped wondering.

  And now this. A witch wearing an amulet identical in color to his own. What could it mean?

  He had to see her again.

  Last week he would have been willing to bring her down in battle, and now? The thought of her with even one bruise on her ivory skin enraged him. Had she put some sort of spell on him, or was it their mixed energies? Whatever it was, he had to get a grip.

  Logan’s childhood bed was too small; his legs hung off the edge. The red painted walls were bare, save for one framed poster—of his childhood hero Bruce Lee, with his fists raised to strike. He was never allowed to watch any TV or movies except for traditional martial arts films, so in a way, he’d grown up with him.

  Logan clearly remembered standing in front of his black edged mirror practicing that Bruce Lee scowl when he was a little boy, excited to begin official sword training. Not only had Logan proven to possess Spellspinner blood, Father had called him a natural at sparring with magic. Jacob had even introduced him to the technique younger than the other boys, when he was only ten.

  And for years Logan had believed Jacob’s compliments. He saw how the others looked at him when Father chose him to sit beside at meals, how he singled him out during sparring practice to be the leader. Able to concentrate even under extreme duress, Logan possessed extraordinary out-of-body magic, which was truly rare for a young kid. So they said.

  He always worried that the other boys resented him for falling into Father’s favor, and concealed some of his more unique talents for that reason. Though naturally somewhat of a loner, Logan worked hard at being a good friend, a faithful ally—and hoped they accepted him as their brother.

  But as Logan grew older, he caught Jacob examining him for flaws instead of looking at him with pride like he used to. Logan assumed this was Jacob’s way of toughening him up, preparing him for adulthood.

  And now this thing with Lily.

  Lily with her feather-soft hair, her glittering sea eyes. A witch and a warlock? It could never happen. Not in this world.

  Logan grabbed a pair of dark jeans and slipped into them. He pulled on a clean black T-shirt from the antique locker he used as a dresser, instead of his typical school uniform of a crisp button-down, tie and jacket. The first Monday of every month was a free day: no practicing. No lessons. No drills and no sparring.

  Tucking Lily’s amulet into his pocket, he closed his eyes and created a spell, blocking it from his brothers’ sight, and for now, he hoped, against Father’s, too.

  Lily

  “So how did you do that?” Orchid was driving her hybrid pickup like she did everything—fast and furious—along the main drag toward Melas High.

  “What?”

  “The out-of-control fire ball, dude! Also, what did Camellia say to you after?”

  Like Orchid, Camellia had wanted to know how I’d caused the avalanche. I suspected my huge surplus in power was a result of sniffing the euca leaves, but there was no way I was going to confess that: Oh, yeah, Camellia. Not only was I trying to cheat by getting my hands on some euca leaves to fix my magic before the Gleaning, but I was also hanging out with a warlock, whom I can’t stop thinking about. That’s all cool, right?

  Thank the universe, Orchid couldn’t quite get the mind-reading skill down yet, so I just shrugged. Still, I could tell the not knowing was eating at her.

  “Who the hell was that?” she demanded suddenly.

  “Who? What?” I sucked in a breath. Could she somehow See Logan’s image in my mind? Was her magic rebounding like crazy too?

  “That hot guy we just drove by. I think he’s the lead singer of that emo band John Proctor. His ink is all kinds of sizzle.”

  Phew. I checked out the tattooed guy speeding by us on a motorcycle.

  Nothing compared to Logan. Then again, no human boy could compare.

  “He’s okay,” I said.

  “Okay? More like hotness personified. We should go see them play this weekend downtown.”

  “I can’t. Finals.” I sighed. “I’m so glad this is the last week of school.”

  “Don’t you ever want to just do something fun just because?”

  “That’s the same thing you said about my spontaneity. And may I remind you I did agree to ditch class and go surfing with you?”

  “You did.”

  “Besides, studying is fun,” I said, messing with Orchid.

  “Gah! I don’t think I can stand school for another second. Being shoved in those desks for hours upon hours is pure torture. I don’t know how you convinced me to join you at Brain-dead High. I was perfectly happy being homeschooled by Auntie Tulip…”

  “She was teaching you spells…you caught the garage on fire.”

  “So?” Orchid shrugged. “I will USE spells. Will I use pre-calculus? I don’t think so.”

  “For more complicated spells you may need advanced math. Besides, in order to help aid the human cause we have to know how humans think, why they make the choices they do. Observing them in the wild is the very best way.”

  “What is with you and Camellia and the safari themes? By the way, Ivy’s organizing a last day of school bonfire, probably sweet-punch lame, but I’ll bring something to spike it. Maybe I’ll invite Mr. Proctor.”

  “Go for it, Abigail.”

  “I shall, Mary.”

  “Most excellent Crucible catch,” Orchid said.

  “Occupational hazard?” I winked, before an ominous quiet filled the wind-whipped cab.

  “Crossing guard! Crosswalk! Orchid, slow down!”

  Orchid swerved. Frantic moms yanked their kids to safety. Without turning around, I knew the orange-vested guard was writing down Orchid’s license plate number.

  “That was a close one.” Orchid giggled wickedly. “Lame mortals never have a clue what’s happening in their world. They should be the ones paying attention.”

  “That doesn’t mean it’s okay for us to add to their worries! We’re supposed to be helping humans, not harming them.”

  “Stop.” Orchid silenced my lecture. “I’ll fix it.” Lifting her finger off the steering wheel, it twitched slightly. Her eyes flashed white sunrays, visible only to me. Electricity coursed through the car. “Done,” Orchid said.

  “What’d you do? Change your license number?”

  “No, turn around.”

  The scene on the sidewalk was a concentrated hurricane. The wind blew so hard mini backpacks bumped on little backs and paper spun out of the crossing guard’s hand.

  I closed my eyes and focused on the steering wheel. The truck pulled onto the shoulder and slowed to a stop. Then, I faced the chaos and pictured things calm. Smiling kids walking to school. Happy mothers saying goodbye. I returned everything to its original peaceful state. They wouldn’t remember what had just happened.

  Orchid tapped her foot. “You didn’t have to do that.”

  I leaned back, exhausted from the spell. “Yes I did.”

  “A simple gust of wind, precious Lily. These things happen near the coast.”

  I realized how hypocritical I sounded. I nearly burned down the forest last week. And I caused a beach avalanche this morning.

  I was the one fraternizing wit
h the enemy.

  But still.

  “Come on. No one was hurt. That guard might have reported me to the DMV. I don’t want my insurance rates to go up.”

  “And I can report you to Camellia,” I warned.

  Orchid’s fierce eyes challenged. “But you won’t.”

  “Those were just little kids. What if you had hit one of them? What’s wrong with you?”

  Orchid raised her star-pierced eyebrow. “So one less mortal then? Come on, Lil. They’re only humans. It’s not like they’re an endangered species.”

  “What do you mean endangered species?”

  “I’m joking. Forget it. You know I would never harm a human child. Or any human intentionally. I’m just trying to emphasize that our magic is the most important thing. The only thing we have. As our leader you think you’d be the one reminding me of that instead of the other way around.”

  Logan

  Logan’s brothers, his Cerulean class, were sitting at their assigned seats around the long glass table when Logan entered the ornate, high-ceilinged dining room. His eleven classmates, all seventeen years old, sat upright, stiff, at attention. The enormous room housed twelve other glass tables, each seating its respective class of twelve boys.

  The youngest residents were five years old—the traditional age when especially gifted Sons of Darkness were either brought to Jacob by their parents for consideration, or were recruited by the Academy. Though swordplay didn’t officially begin until their formal initiation at age twelve, the boys started training in simple spells and martial arts from the time they arrived. The young ones ate up the magic training, but it was apparent they missed their families back home. It pained Logan to see the little boys sitting so politely, napkins in laps, hands crossed, waiting to be served. He knew Jacob was hard on them. His father had high standards and ensured they were met. Discipline. Honor. Order.

  The boys needed to be strong while they were still able to cling onto their youth. He wasn’t sure why, but warlocks aged prematurely. This had its drawbacks, naturally, but also some benefits. For instance, a five-year-old boy possessed the poise to go to a boarding school away from home; a twelve-year-old could draw energy from the moon that only someone of Crimson ranking could have channeled before the curse.

  Logan guessed it was also why a teenager like himself could breathe underwater, a skill no other warlock in modern times possessed.

  Father expected so much of them, because in warlock society, youth was power. Youth was strength.

  Being a child here at the Academy wasn’t about being coddled, or playing in the sand with buckets the way he’d seen human children interacting with their parents. Being a child was revered.

  For that reason, the house was always tension-filled, never at ease. Once a month, the one woman in the household—who was replaced every few months when she got sick of working for Father (or, more likely, he ran out of patience with her)—presented the boys with a traditional “good old-fashioned American breakfast.”

  Father kept a woman on staff to serve as a maternal figure for the homesick boys, and to create a sense of familiarity for later in life, when they chose to marry a human woman. (Logan resented Father’s insistence they refer to this hired stranger as “Mother,” but when Jacob was around, it wasn’t optional.)

  This latest Mother, a human woman with a heart and body as soft as pie dough, scooped a large helping of flapjacks and bacon onto his plate. Compared to his usual bland breakfast of oatmeal, wheatgrass shots and egg whites, the buttermilk pancakes and crisp bacon smelled divine.

  “Good morning, Logan,” she said.

  “Good morning, Mother.”

  “Call me Maggie,” she whispered.

  “Ah, right. No Jacob. Good morning, Maggie. So where is he anyway?”

  “He took the jet to New York this morning.”

  Unbeknownst to the witches in the Congression, Father secretly owned one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the United States, Hemlox, Inc. He wasn’t transparent about the product, but Logan got the feeling it had something to do with Father’s rapid aging. Lately he’d become more vocal, ranting about the witches and the unfair advantage they had over the warlocks. When he returned from a business trip, the boys avoided him even more than usual.

  “When will he get back?” Logan asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Maggie said. “But I doubt it will be today.”

  Cool relief flooded Logan’s body. So he really did have a day off. He couldn’t wait to finish breakfast and sneak up into Father’s library. To research Lily’s amulet, maybe figure out a way to see her again…

  “How is training going?” Maggie asked. “The Gleaning is coming up so soon.”

  “Pretty well.”

  “I’m worried for you,” she said, quietly, resting her hand on his shoulder. “Sounds like this group of young witches is especially talented.”

  If Father were here, Maggie never would’ve had the nerve to talk about the witches, not even under her breath.

  “Where’d you hear that?” Logan asked.

  “I hear things. And sometimes Jacob forgets to clear my memory of them.”

  Maggie was especially cunning for a human. If Jacob knew she was paying so much attention, she’d be out of here. Or worse. Maybe he could use her as a spy. Logan quickly dismissed the paranoid thought.

  “What did you hear specifically?” he pressed.

  “I can just tell he’s fretting over it. And his brush has been full of hair.”

  Logan’s stomach turned at this intimate observation. As far as he knew, the “Mothers” had separate bedrooms, but the whole situation was bizarre. He remembered far too clearly a young “Mother,” maybe twenty-five, whom Jacob had had a special fondness for. One night Logan heard him screaming at her, accusing her of being a succubus, a female demon infiltrating his home to destroy him.

  After that, the Congression ruled that the Academy’s housemothers must be at least middle-aged, and that Jacob refrain from having any sort of “special” relationship with any of them.

  Despite her kindness, Logan felt relieved when Maggie shuffled off to the next table.

  “Hey, where’d you take off to last night?” his best friend Chance asked, wiping his mouth with a napkin. “I looked for you in the barn after dinner. You weren’t there.” He eyed Logan intently, waiting for his answer.

  Chance had arrived at the Academy after Hurricane Katrina wrecked his home coven. He was an especially talented young Voudoun priest—more popularly known by its vernacular Voodoo—and was widely known throughout the Spellspinner community as a warlock to watch, as he had a rather unique relationship with loa, the god-spirits.

  Father had recruited him hard, tempting him with everything Melas and the Academy had to offer: first class gym, access to medieval weaponry, and one of the best ancient libraries in the world. And—to top them all—the magic ring of Solstice Stones themselves, the most powerful conduit to otherworldly powers in the Western Hemisphere.

  Since he’d started later in life than the rest of the boys, Chance wasn’t as habituated to Father’s rules, or as threatened by him. In fact, he didn’t seem that impressed at all. He found the Academy’s food “tasteless” and missed his Voudoun family.

  For those reasons, at first, Logan was drawn to him: Chance offered a fresh perspective Logan hadn’t understood before.

  Logan never lied to Chance. “I’ll tell you later,” he said.

  Chance nodded. “So glad You-Know-Who isn’t around today.”

  “Yeah, no kidding.”

  “Want to hit the waves after breakfast?”

  “Sure. I need to check on something first, but I’ll meet you in an hour or so?”

  “You got it.”

  “Wonder if there’s any credence to what Maggie just said—a specially talented group of witches?”

  “I don’t know. I assume they are all talented.” Chance’s comment was met with strange looks from the other boys at the ta
ble. “I mean, they are training to fight us. They have to be somewhat capable, right?”

  In reply, Jude, an English guy whose crisp accent added a false air of civility to his voice, made a crude crack about the witches, which caused Logan’s hackles to rise. Often mistaken for someone with manners, Jude sucked up to Father and the Congression whenever he could.

  Jude wore his uniforms perfectly pressed, and his face always beamed with confidence. But for all his outward gentility—for instance, even on dress down day, Jude came to breakfast clad in Burberry London, from his sculpted hair right down to his shiny loafers—Logan knew Jude was one of the most dangerous warlocks around.

  “What do you know about witches?” Logan asked sarcastically.

  “Some.” Jude rested his chin on his palm. “Lean in, brothers. Last week I happened to be passing by the exterior door of the Master’s office. He was going on about a witch to watch out for. A huge threat apparently—he was quite worked up about it, really.”

  “Did he mention a name at all?”

  Jude shrugged, sipping his orange juice and tapping the corners of his mouth with his folded linen napkin. “No. Not that I could decipher. But when he returns, I’m planning to find out more. And you gentlemen might consider keeping your ears open, too.”

  Logan stayed at breakfast for what seemed like hours, before he was finally able to excuse himself without suspicion. He dashed up three flights of stairs to his bedroom, where he opened and shut his door loudly, then crossed the hall to the extra set of stairs that led to Father’s private library.

  Like the rest of the house, the room was dimly lit with dark painted walls. Large, thick-cushioned couches formed a rectangle on the black wood floor, and a skylight above them provided some much-needed illumination. A Parisian rug hung from the curtain rod between two of the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves.

  With umpteen rows of books on witches.

  He sighed, running his fingers through his hair. Searching them all would take days. He opened the first one.