Scottish Rite (Maggie Devereaux Book 1)

by Stephen Penner

  The room was dark except for the light of a single candle.

  A candle which shone brightly on Maggie Devereaux's face.

  As it floated silently in the air before her fully believing eyes.

  32. Calling Dr. Freud

  It had been a long night. Working the levitation spell was difficult. Like balancing warm butter on the edge of a razor-sharp knife. Or, as she had heard someone once say, like grabbing smoke. It was also tiring. Even though she hadn't been doing anything physically, by the time she got the spell down right, Maggie felt like she'd run a marathon. Every muscle ached and her heart and lungs felt spent. She had actually wanted to move on to the divining spell. That was her real goal. Levitating things wasn't going to help her solve the murders. Learning about what had happened those nights might. But by the time she felt confident with the levitation spell, she was so exhausted that even the thought of trying a different spell seemed just too much.

  She had laid down on the bed, 'just to rest her eyes,' she'd told herself. She was asleep almost before her head hit the pillow.

  * * *

  The castle was familiar, although she knew she'd never been there before. The walls of gray stone enclosed a small but adequate courtyard. The courtyard was earthen and the ground held various stains of differing colors. Near the iron gate, wooden gallows stood ominously. Silence filled the courtyard as the prisoner was dragged to the center of the dirt field. There were no voices but she could feel the multitude of eyes focused on the young woman who cowered on the soil beneath them. A guard, his face and body obscured by armor, seized the woman and dragged her toward the gallows. Her face contorted in a scream but no sound could be heard. When they reached the wooden structure, rather than pull her up the steps to the hangman's noose, he quickly chained her arms and legs to the scaffolding. At her feet was a bed of steaming coals. The guard stood to the side of the white hot coals, ignoring their heat, and pulled a red hot blade from their depths. The prisoner continued to scream silently. Without ceremony, the guard plunged the blade into the woman's stomach and slit open her abdomen. Reaching inside, he pulled out a bloody bag of organs, some still connected to her insides, and threw them onto the fire. The organs exploded into a ball of gore and smoke that covered the courtyard with the color and stench of blood.

  Maggie looked down at her hands. They were covered in blood. The blood of this young woman. She raised her left hand slowly to her face to inspect it. She turned the hand over and back, watching the thick red liquid drip from her wrist. Then she pulled her hand to her smiling mouth and slowly licked the blood from her fingertips.

  "Aaaahhhh!" Maggie shot awake. She was sitting bolt upright in bed, covered in sweat and her heart beating a mile a minute. Her breath was short and labored as she recalled the grisly details of her dream.

  She looked down at her hands. No blood. Good.

  She lay down again, still breathing hard, her hair damp with sweat. She was scared. By the dream, to be sure. But she wasn't as scared as she thought she should have been. And that scared her even more.

  33. Divine Right

  Maggie stumbled down the stairs for breakfast. She was showered and dressed, but still shaken by the dream. She had overslept, so both Alex and Lucy were gone, at the store no doubt. She found some oatcakes in the cupboard and sat down at the table with these and a glass of orange juice. Alone with her thoughts, she reflected on her activities of the night before. She was chewing on a bite of oatcake when she finally woke up fully.

  "Oh my God," she said aloud, as if she herself couldn't believe it. "It worked."

  * * *

  "<... raise this thing to the hated sky.>"

  The pen rose from the desk, shaky at first, then relaxing onto a bed of air.

  ""

  The pen was joined by one of her grandmother's books, far heavier than the pen but equally suspended above the floor.

  Maggie stared at the two objects, her hands raised into upturned claws, and a broad smile across her face. She had always loved language and in addition to the pure thrill of using the magic, she had a particular appreciation for the turn of phrase used in the spell. Not 'lift this object' but 'break the bonds with the earth.'

  Gazing at the book, she envisioned bonds rising from the earth and surrounding the book to pull it down. The book faltered slightly in the air. Maggie then envisioned these same bonds breaking and falling aside. The book rose again, higher even than the pen which had preceded it into the air. She then imagined the bonds lurching upward from the floor and grabbing the book back. The book dropped to floor with a loud thud.

  Maggie stared at the book for a long moment. Then she looked at the pen which still floated unmolested before her eyes.

  Interesting, she thought.

  Repeating the process, she imagined the bonds pulling the pen toward the center of the earth. The pen fell quickly back to the floor.

  Cool.

  Maggie picked the pen and the book up off the floor—with her hands—and set them back on the desktop. She grabbed the spell book from the same desktop and plopped herself down on the bed. Turning to the divining spell, still marked by the sketch of Kelly's body, Maggie studied the page. The divining spell was significantly longer than the levitation spell. And more complicated. But she understood it well enough and felt confident that, with some practice, she would be able to master it as she had the levitation spell.

  She recalled the words of the book, ''

  Damn, she thought, this is fun.

  Maggie scanned the room for a suitable object. She found one. A small seashell sitting decoratively atop one of the short bookshelves behind the reading chair. Rising briefly to grab the shell from its perch, she sat down again at the desk, spellbook on her lap and seashell centered on the desktop, a few inches from the pen and book which had just moments earlier dangled across the room on invisible puppet strings. Rereading the spell to make sure she had it, Maggie then turned her attention to the seashell.

  "<...Release the secrets hidden in this object's matter,>" the spell concluded. ""

  She waited for a moment until she was satisfied that nothing had happened. Then she refocused on the shell and went over the spell again in her mind.

  "