by Les Goodrich
“Thanks Mims,” Jordan called through the door as it closed and she was headed back to the store carrying the coffees.
Jordan stopped at a courtyard on the other side of the street from Coastal Coffee and she just hung out unseen behind some potted trees until she saw Datura leave. She watched a customer go into the coffee shop immediately upon Datura’s exit and when that customer came out with a coffee in his hand Jordan felt Mims must be okay so she headed back to Avalon Spellshop. Jordan wasn’t going to let herself get all worked up about seeing a witch from The Poison Apple the way Brit had, but she still had no love nor trust for Datura and the feeling was mutual. She wondered if Datura had seen her touch her wand. Probably not. Jordan wasn’t afraid of Datura in the least, but she was in no hurry to duel it out in the coffee shop with her either.
“Best to let snakes slither away,” Jordan said to herself and she was striding back down Saint George Street once again.
The door to the shop opened in a slow curve and Brit looked expecting to see Jordan with the coffee but she did not. Instead she saw one of the shop’s favorite customers, Dan, step inside with one long dramatic step then spin to close the door. Dan was a natural mystic, an ethnobotanist, and a person who moved with reggae smoothness everywhere he went. No one was sure exactly what he did beyond grow rare plants in his little backyard nursery, but he exuded a genuine positive vibe and he was completely himself and people just liked the guy. No one could help it. He was not exactly a witch but he was down with the natural way and so he judged not and few judged him, such was his disarming smile and generous nature. Jordan had dated him in some distant past and now they just surfed together when there were waves.
“What’s up Buttercup?” Dan sung to Brit as he moved into the store.
“Dan the Man,” said Brit, “what’s shakin’?”
“The rain’s gone and the air is cool so I decided to stroll on down to my favorite little witch shop and see what’s up around here the week before the full moon.”
“Aaaa-O000hhh,” sounded Tanner’s best wolf howl from behind the counter where he finished gearing up to leave as soon as Jordan returned.
“Tanner, what’s up brother?” asked Dan.
“You see it. Any plans for Halloween?”
“Yeah. They’re having a party at Duncan’s Bistro. On the deck. Wanna go? It’s gonna be, well, you know, Saint Augustine on Halloween. Duncan’s. Craziness man. Full on craziness.”
“I might swing by if you’ll be there. A few other places I wanna hit.”
“Such as?” asked Dan and he moved to look at books in the middle of the shop.
“Dude, you know this place on Halloween. On Samhain,” and Tanner smiled at Brit who smiled back. “The entire town’s a Halloween party. I’m just gonna play it by ear. I’ll text you.”
“Cool, man. I’m gonna dress up as a full blown samurai. Wait till you see the get-up I have. My buddy let me borrow a full set of Endo Period samurai armor.”
Tanner nodded. Not much would surprise him about what Dan had or could get. “I haven’t thought about what I’m gonna be yet,” Tanner said.
“A Druid wizard,” Brit said, suddenly back by the books, “again.”
“And you’ll be a faerie,” Tanner shot back at her.
“Every year,” Brit smiled and went back to the front with her wrists bent up by her turning shoulders and her hands flapping like wings as she walked.
“What’s new with you Tanner? What are you into these days?” Dan was always sincere. The two sat in the chairs under the book shelf and Dan listened and pulled a book down to look it over.
“Working here. Publishing The Last Dragon. Writing articles for it. It comes out every Sabatt, so eight times a year. The Imbolc edition will be our first anniversary.”
“Congratulations. That’s your newspaper, right?”
“We call it a magazine, but yeah. So far it’s more of a newsletter. I’ve sold ads to five places though. It pays for itself now. The printing and paper at least. Plus we have it online.”
“Who bought ads?”
“Carol has one for the shop of course. One for Monster Coffee. One is for Thrift Me.”
“The girls at the vintage store?”
“Yeah,”
“Cool. Love that place. Thrift Me.”
“The other two are the Ice Cream shop on the corner and the guy who sells the old maps.”
“Sweet man. Keep it up. You write the whole thing?”
“Mostly. I use my name and two pen names. Jordan wrote an article about finding the pagan path. And Brit has written quite a few. One really good one about the challenges of being a kid with witch parents these days.”
Dan nodded and paged through the book. Tanner wondered if he was paying attention.
“I’d like to read Jordan's article sometime if it’s around still.”
“I’ll find the issue for you,” Tanner said.
“Dude, I’ll write an article for you.”
“On what?”
“I don’t know. Maybe the history of ethnobotanicals among witches. Or pagans. You tell me.”
“That could fill twenty books. How about the traditional uses of one ethnobotanical? Something cool. Lesser known. You pick it.”
“How long?”
“Five hundred words.”
“What does it pay?” Dan asked with a grin.
“I’ll buy you a few beers on Halloween night,” Tanner said.
“Deal,” Dan said and the two stood and shook hands. Dan held up the book he had been looking through.
“This book looks cool. It’s all about hedge witchcraft. I’m no witch but this is all about magical plants. Seems right up my alley.”
“You should buy it. It’s the last copy.”
“Right on, I will,” and with that Dan swerved through the store to buy the book just as Jordan came in the door.
“Jordan!” Dan said and the two exchanged genuine and bright smiles.
Jordan put the coffees down on the side counter. “Dan!” she said and she gave him a high-five.
“Waves tomorrow morning if the storm moves offshore. What do you say? Wanna surf the lighthouse tomorrow morning?” Dan asked, then added, “Low tide,” as if it were some icing on a nice wave cake. Jordan shook her head but kept fun eyes.
“Come on. Dawn patrol? I’ll buy you coffee,” Dan said.
“Dan the Man. I’m not going into that freezing water. Waves or not.”
“Okay fine,” Dan conceded and Brit rang up the book.
“Sixteen-o-four,” Brit said and Dan pulled out his card to pay.
Brit swiped the card and Dan turned back to Jordan.
“I’m going surfing tomorrow anyway,” he chided. “But my neighbor has two stand-up paddle boards for his kids. They hardly use them. He said I could use them anytime. So how about this: we go paddle board the bay sometime soon. Nice and calm. We’ll hardly get wet.”
Jordan nodded. “That sounds fun. Make sure you can get the boards and we’ll go any morning I don’t open.”
“I’ll text you,” Dan said and he turned to Brit as Jordan moved behind the counter and Tanner left.
“Bye guys,” Tanner said out the door and everyone in the shop said, “Bye.”
Brit swiped Dan’s card for the second time. She looked up.
“I’m really not sure because they don’t give us any information, but, do you have another way to pay?”
“What does it say?” asked Dan.
“It says declined.”
“No way.”
“It does. I did it twice.”
“No problemo, man,” Dan said and he pulled out a twenty dollar bill and slid it to Brit.
Jordan looked to each of them in turn. “Wait a minute,” she said. “Didn’t this happen to a guy right before I left?”
“Yeah,” said Brit.
“Let me see something,” Jordan huffed and she pulled down a twelve dollar amethyst bead bracelet from a display hung with
dozens of bracelets of various stones. She rang it up, and swiped her own debit card, which she knew to be as good as gold.
Declined.
“Is something wrong? Are you guys all right?” asked Dan.
“We’re fine, Dan, thank you and awesome to see you as always. Text me about the paddle boards and rock on brother,” Jordan said and Dan took his book and change from Brit.
“Later witches,” Dan said and split. The door closed behind him and Brit and Jordan were alone in the shop.
“Brittany. Who was the last person whose credit card went through?”
Brit had to think but not for long then she said, “The writer guy! He bought the booklet and the cards.”
“Son of a bitch!” Jordan said. “And then he marched right over to The Poison Apple and he probably swiped it there to buy a freaking vampire vest or some bullshit and that’s who’s doing this. I knew it.”
“Knew what?” Brit asked. Jordan went on.
“I just saw Datura at Coastal Coffee.”
“You saw Datura at Coastal Coffee?” Brit practically yelled.
“Yes. And she asked me, How are sales? How are sales, my ass. Those bitches hexed our credit card machine by running some trace spell on the guy’s card and jinxing the last shop he bought something from.”
“But how would they know he had been here?” Brit wondered out loud.
“Think about it Brit. The other day those two creepy Darkspell girls followed you all around. They were probably capturing some inflection. The way your wrist moves. Something you might also do with a customer and then they’d know. I don’t know. It could be anything. Or maybe not. Who knows. Maybe those little demons spied on the store when the guy came and left.”
“I hate those little creeps,” Brit said. “So what are we gonna do?”
“What time is it?” Jordan asked.
“Four o’clock.”
“Not enough time today. All right look. You and I open tomorrow, right?”
“I open. You come in at ten.”
“I’ll come in with you, but I just won’t clock in until ten. I don’t care. We just have to make do until then. I’ll get it all ready tonight. This is gonna be fun.”
“But don’t you think we should tell Carol? She always says to tell her if we have an issue with that store.”
“There is no issue.”
“But she’ll be in by ten tomorrow,” Brit insisted.
“Don’t worry academic witch. Witchcraft student. Whatever you call yourself. Leave this to the out-of-the-broom-closet witches. By ten tomorrow this’ll all be over. We’re gonna kick their asses.”
Chapter 5
Mirror Magick
That night Jordan cooked an old Hungarian recipe that had been her great grandmother’s and she remembered it most as something her grandmother and mother had made growing up and everyone in her family made it every now and then. Aunts and uncles. Cousins on that side. She browned and drained ground beef and garlic, added salt, pepper, and paprika, stirred in tomato paste, tomato sauce, kidney beans, and cooked pasta shells, then mixed it all together, and left it to simmer.
With dinner basically done she relaxed on her back landing as the night grew and the stars began to ignite. Jordan drank lemongrass and mint tea she had made from her balcony herbs. The wind abated and in the stillness the temperature dropped to the forties. Jordan looked to the waxing moon that some time later did rise and its cool face stood to light the Earth but with light to which the moon itself bared silent witness. As if the moon had simply borne a message of light from the Sun, and leaned to watch its pale florescence with the same curiosity and wonder as those it bathed. Those it shone upon.
Jordan thought about the moon waxing and she knew it wasn’t the ideal time for a banishing spell, but she decided sometimes you have to do what you can with what you have. The main house across the courtyard had lights on inside and the windows cast yellow paneled light in an angled mosaic across spots of grass and the stones where the fountain dripped. She saw her cat Luna walk through one of those lit spots and she called to her and Luna looked up then vanished into the shadows. In minutes Luna meowed as she stepped onto the porch from the stairs and Jordan called her by her nickname and Luna trotted up to her and spun around her feet and legs and under the chair and was petted.
“Come to the roof and do some magick with me tonight,” Jordan whispered to the cat and the two went inside and Jordan said thank you to the plants and animals who had given their lives so that she may eat. She said this in the full understanding that she too, one day, would pass to nourish the world in some way, then she ate and it was delicious as it had always been since she was a kid.
Doing magick had become a more efficient exercise for Jordan over the years. She now kept everything in one bin with a handle in the center of the type people often used to store and carry cleaning supplies. She got the bin from her closet, grabbed her broom from beside the fireplace, and slipped out to her balcony to go to the roof.
She saw her tea cup from before had tipped from the wide flat wooden chair arm where she had left it and the last of it had wet the chair cushion. Jordan put the empty cup back on the chair arm, and flipped the outdoor chair cushion over to dry. She wondered how the tea had spilled, then she thought she might have a pretty good idea, and she looked around the immediate area but saw nothing. She continued up the spiral staircase, bin in one hand, broom in the other.
The rooftop glowed in moonlight and moonlight sparkled on the bay to the east and the wind at that height was still gentle. Jordan put the bin down, lit the fire in her little outdoor fireplace on the south edge of the circle, and began to use the broom to sweep the circle clean of a few leaves. She assembled her altar on the coffee shop table just north of center. The table was positioned so that the witch could be at the center while standing at it and Jordan set items in their places and was quiet.
She placed her small copper cauldron to the west of the table and she poured bottled water into it. She placed a small bowl of crusted over sea salt to the north, and a black quartz crystal point the size of a coffee mug beside it. To the east on the round table top she put a black ceramic bowl of rice ash, lighter than talc. Next to it a small round wafer of charcoal and a plastic container with a lid screwed tight. To the south she placed matches, a candle, and her book of shadows, which was simply a spiral notebook with the edges of post notes sticking out from all sides. All colors. She gently placed the charcoal chip on top of the ash, lit it, then sprinkled resin incense from the lidded jar onto it until smoke began to curl and rise. She watched the air currents revealed by the smoke.
Jordan looked at the table and considered how each item aligned in its place so that the elements were each represented. Air, our thoughts, to the east, the incense. Fire, the candle, to the south, our passions, what we love. Water, in her cauldron on the west side of the table, our emotions, feelings. Salt and the crystal on the north edge, the spot of the Earth, our bodies, our homes, our sacred places.
She struck a match and lit the candle to work by. She pulled from the bin her wand and another tool that was a bundle of sticks tied with copper wire on one end for a handle, the wound wires hot-glued over. She moved the empty bin off to one side beyond the circle edge, then returned to the table. She stood for some time and felt the soft wind. The cold temperature. The moonlight. She breathed deeply and relaxed her mind and allowed all thoughts to fade. She basked in the feeling of a moment without comparison, without hope, without fear. Pure. “All is so well,” she said. Then she said, “Thank you.”
She said that the same feeling of wellness deserved to live in Avalon Spellshop everyday. She said that she knew her patron Goddess, the Morrighan, to be the Goddess of necessary change. She held her blackthorn wand and she said that blackthorn related to Morrighan in that it was complex, strong, and took many forms. Jordan breathed deeply, clapped her hands once, and said, “This ritual has begun.”
She moved with her wand to the e
ast side of her circle to begin because all things originate in thought, and she walked the entire circumference in the deosil direction and as she walked she cast her wand to the circle’s edge and repeated, “I consecrate this circle to God and Goddess. Here may they manifest and bless their child.” She repeated the words at a rate of two per step and she walked smoothly at that speed and each step was two words of the phrase, “I consecrate this circle to God and Goddess. Here may they manifest and bless their child,” until she finished where she had begun in the east and returned to the altar. She placed the wand on the east table edge and she added three pinches of the sea salt into the water-filled cauldron. As she added the salt she said in turn, “May this water be blessed by the salt of the Earth and Her Sea, one to purify it, two to energize it for protection, and three to activate its power so it may serve to define, protect, and focus the energies of our circle for the good of all.”
Long ago Jordan would fumble with her book in the candle light and read as she walked with her wand to cast a circle. She thought of that and smiled as she moved smoothly and easily through the process now and spoke the lines from memory like a song that she just knew. She took the cauldron by its metal loop handle (the entire contrivance about the size of a lunchbox) and also took the little hedge twig whisk. Once again she began at the eastern edge of her circle, near the wind chime that sung delicate notes high above the darkened neighborhood streets below. She cast the circle by dipping the whisk into the water and sprinkling the line of the circle. As she did this she chanted as before.
“Within this circle is a time beyond time, in a place beyond place, on a day beyond days. Here I stand between worlds physical and mystical. May the Universe protect me.” She repeated these words in pace until she had completed the circle.
Next she cast the circle with Air, by trailing incense around the circle edge from east to east and saying as she glided along, “Round and round the power is bound. This circle tonight. In otherworld light. No evil may enter, and no destructive energy may be projected from here. Only balance, love and joy may enter, and only balance, love and joy may be projected from here, for the benefit of all. Round and round the power is bound. This circle tonight. In otherworld light. No evil may enter, and no destructive energy may be projected from here. Only balance, love and joy may enter, and only balance, love and joy may be projected from here, for the benefit of all. Round and round the power is bound.”