The Accidental Witch

by Jessica Penot

  I laughed. “I guess that’s why you didn’t want to kill my mother.”

  “There’s nothing stopping me now,” he growled.

  “We’re going to kill her?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “I’ve never killed anyone,” I said.

  “Just help me bind her and I’ll take care of the rest.”

  CHAPTER 9

  A VOODOO DOLL

  The voodoo doll is the most primitive and basic form of magic. It said so in the book, so it must be true. Then again, the book was put together for me by a homicidal immortal witch who fed off her children to sustain her power and immortality, so maybe it must be false. I looked over at Fred. He had his own book. Maybe I would try to get a copy of his book. At least he claimed his book came from God. In the introduction, my mother’s book claimed it came from the many great gods of the world. I should probably stick with the book that said it came from God rather than some horned fellow named Cernonnos who didn’t look like he had anyone’s best interest at heart.

  I scooted closer to Fred and read over his shoulder. His book was prettier than mine. It looked older. Instead of handwritten notes and terrible sketches, his book was an illuminated manuscript that looked like it had been made sometime during the Dark Ages. It was written in Latin, of course, so I had no idea what it said. Fred was obviously getting a lot out of it, however, because he was engrossed. I guess horned god it was.

  I looked back at the voodoo doll spell. The notes around the spell said that voodoo was a derivation of an African religion and the power of the spell came from the power of the African god. The god’s origin was Ghana. It also said to be cautious because the African god was particularly cranky. I needed another cranky spirit outside my house like I needed a lobotomy, but I knew that if done properly, the magic would strip the god of his power and leave him where he was.

  “I think we should use this spell,” I said to Fred.

  Fred shook his head.

  “What?” I asked.

  “We should use the Book of Solomon,” he answered.

  “How much time do we have before your guarding spell wears off?” I asked.

  “Twenty minutes,” he said.

  “This will work,” I said. “I know it will work.”

  “Why?’ he asked.

  “She is a primitive witch. Primitive magic will work against her. She isn’t as powerful as she seems. She’s all smoke and mirrors. She’s convinced everyone she’s the Phoenix, but really the only way she’s sustained her strength is feeding off the strength of others. She feeds off her children to maintain herself. She’s weak now. She hasn’t eaten in a long time. How have you sustained your strength?”

  “The magic feeds me,” he said.

  “It doesn’t feed her,” I said. “She’s weak. This spell will bind her.”

  “What about Abaddon?” Fred asked.

  “You work on a spell for him,” I said. “I will bind her.”

  I knew I would have to work quickly. I found two sticks and bound them into a cross shape using hemp cord. I then wrapped the two sticks in Spanish moss and surrounded the moss in cloth. This wasn’t as easy as it sounded. I had to shape the cloth and sew. I’m not an expert seamstress. Finally, I finished the sewing. The doll looked terrible. It definitely needed some work. I left some of the moss sticking out for the doll’s hair. I found some beads and made the doll a little face. Then I cut the hem off of my dress. It was still saturated with Nineveh’s blood. I made a dress for the doll out of the bloody gown. I braided the hair I’d ripped from Nineveh’s head into the doll’s hair.

  I took a deep breath. Five minutes left. The doll almost looked like Nineveh, wrapped in the purple silk with shining green beads for eyes. I had stitched a red line for her mouth. She looked sad. I stuck a pin into the doll’s hand and I said the words carefully.

  “Nineveh, with this pin I bind you from using magic.” I stuck another pin into the doll’s other hand. “Nineveh, with this pin I bind you from using magic.” I stuck the final pin in-between the doll’s eyes. “Nineveh, with this pin I bind you from using magic.” One last pin over the dolls mouth. One last pin. “Nineveh, with this pin I bind you from doing harm.”

  Somewhere outside I heard a wail and I smiled. It had worked. The wailing continued. The spell must have really hurt. I stood up and looked out the window in the direction the bellowing was coming from. I could almost see her by the candlelight. She was lying just outside the line Fred had made. She was on the grass, face down, clutching her face and screaming. Her bellowing became unbearable.

  I panicked. Part of me wanted to run out to her and wrap my arms around her and beg her forgiveness. She was my mother. She had given me life. She had given me magic. What had I done? I ran back to the counter to pull the pins out of the doll. Fred grabbed me.

  “No,” he said.

  “I can’t,” I whispered. “Listen to her.”

  “She’s done worse to others. I’ve seen her do worse to others. The demon is coming. Leave her. We have to go,” Fred said.

  I looked outside. I could sense it, too. The line Fred had drawn was dissipating. Abaddon would be on top of us soon. Fred opened his book and showed me a page.

  “I can’t read Latin,” I said.

  “It says the only way to dispel Abaddon is with a sacrifice. It can’t be any sacrifice. It must be a sacrifice of a witch. Nineveh was going to offer Diane. We must give the demon Nineveh. You must give the demon Nineveh.”

  “Why me?” I asked.

  “The oracle said it had to be you and a sacrifice of blood must be made to the demon. You must sacrifice one of your own kin to the demon. It is the only way.”

  “What? Diane wasn’t my mother’s blood!”

  “I think I know what Nineveh was planning now. She summoned the demon. The summoning spell for Abaddon is very complicated and also required a blood sacrifice. She’s probably already murdered people just to get to this point. There’s no other way to release a demon of Abaddon’s power. You didn’t release him. None of this was ever your fault. She summoned him and tricked you into going to her for help. She didn’t expect me. I think she assumed you’d go straight to her for help when the demon came. She was planning on sacrificing her oracle to the demon and giving him your blood before she ate you. That would have met both conditions for dispelling the demon.”

  I punched Fred in the arm. He flinched and gave me a harsh look. “If your damn book had instructions on how to get rid of the demon, why didn’t you tell me? Why did we go to that bitch in the first place?”

  “I wouldn’t murder anyone. I don’t believe in blood sacrifice. I don’t do that.”

  “But now it’s okay?”

  “She brought this on herself.”

  “She’s my mother!”

  “She wants to eat you! Would you rather go with the demon? When he breaks through, he will take you.”

  “I’ll summon Murmur again,” I said.

  “Murmur will want you, too. The more power you give Murmur, the hungrier he’ll become and then you’ll have to go with him. Many witches have taken demons as lovers to increase their power, including your mother. You didn’t strike me as that kind of witch.”

  I really did hate difficult decisions. I closed my eyes and tried to think. I tried to shut out Nineveh’s incessant screaming and the rumbling of my own conscience. There was no right answer. There was no good answer. Nineveh’s screams became louder. I couldn’t think.

  Suddenly, the doors burst open as if a strong wind had blown them wide. A foul smell filled the house. It was like the main sewer line had exploded and flooded the house. Fred grabbed his book and shoved it in his bag. I grabbed the voodoo doll and the board it was nailed to and my book. I stuffed it in his bag next to the book with everything else useful I could find.

  “Where do we go?” I asked.

  Fred took my hand and I followed him out the back door. The demon was there. He was still pretty, but he w
as there. Fred and I stood facing the monster and the monster smiled. No one dared to move. We stood rooted to the ground. It was too late for the ritual. There was no time to lay out charms or cast long spells. We only had the things that were at our disposal. We had fire and lightning. I touched the band around my arm and fire exploded from my hand again. The demon vanished in a mist before the fire hit him.

  I looked around. Fred kneeled down and started drawing a circle of salt around us, but the salt was torn from his hand before he could complete the circle. He fished something out of his bag and began again, but something knocked him to the ground. Fred fell on his knee and touched one of his tattoos and said something in Latin and a circle of flame exploded around us. He pulled me to him just before the flame singed my hair. The wall of flame was blinding. I shielded my eyes. Fred poured more salt around us in a tight circle as the wall began to fade. Sweat dripped from my brow as Fred said something else in Latin. Damn Latin. If the language of magic were Spanish, I would have been set. I took Spanish in college and high school. Latin had always seemed so useless.

  The wall of fire died out and there was only darkness. The demon must have taken the power out somehow. Fred and I stood in the middle of our pitiful circle of salt clutching each other. The demon laughed.

  “If you come with me now,” it said, “I will spare the warlock and the oracle.”

  “Fuck yourself,” I yelled.

  Again the demon laughed and my confidence faded. I clung to Fred. I didn’t want to step out of the circle. And then it became unbearably cold. The cold grew and deepened until I could see my breath in front of me. I looked around. The flowers in my back garden wilted and a heavy frost dragged them down to the earth. The branches on the trees froze and I clung to Fred for warmth.

  Fred touched another tattoo and called the name of some god or demon or spirit. It emerged from the darkness, in a cloud of green smoke. The demon was an ugly little puckish creature with an impish grin on its face. It looked like a cross between a bunny and a gargoyle.

  “What the hell is that?” I asked.

  “He’s a pooka,” Fred said.

  “Guide us out of this mess,” Fred ordered the pooka.

  “Nothing can guide you out of this mess,” replied the pooka with a laugh.

  Fred stopped and thought. He closed his eyes. I could almost hear the clockwork whirring in his brain.

  “Is there a way for us to leave this circle safely?” Fred asked.

  “Yes,” the pooka said with a devious grin. A vicious wind swirled around the pooka and it laughed again and vanished. A few moments later it reappeared as a tiny little cat at our feet.

  “How can we leave this circle safely?” Fred asked the diminutive cat.

  “Odin gave the girl the gift. She has only to use it,” the pooka answered.

  The wind outside the circle grew. The branches began to snap and crack and fall from the trees. The cold deepened and I began to think I could no longer take it. I couldn’t feel my feet. I couldn’t even move my fingers.

  “What gift did Odin give her?” Fred asked.

  “The witch thinks in circles. Circles within circles so dark and so old they entombed Merlin. She tried to trick Odin, but Odin tricked her.”

  “How did Odin trick her?”

  Fred was holding me up. I could hardly stand. It was too cold.

  “He gave Phaedra three circles with three spells to harness his power. Two big circles with little powers and one little circle with big power. Two big circles the witch could take and one little circle for the witch to break.”

  “Nineveh is the witch?”

  I fell to the ground. There was snow on the ground. Shit. When did it start to snow?

  “She is the wicked witch,” the pooka said. The pooka smiled and crawled in my lap. It purred. My tears froze on my cheek. Fred sat in the snow beside me and looked at my arm. Odin had placed two bands on my arm. Fred lifted my arm and looked under it. There was something there. It was so small, I could barely see it. It was a tiny circle with a rune in it.

  “Odin hates the wicked witch.” The pooka laughed. “He wants her dead.”

  “Use the circle,” Fred said to me. I touched it and said Odin’s name.

  * * *

  It was daylight and it was warm. I felt warm all over. I could even feel my toes. I moved my toes. There was sand in-between them. I could hear the sound of the ocean in the distance. I opened my eyes. The sky was blue and the sun was high in the sky. I sat up. We were on a beach. Fred was sitting next to me staring out at the crashing waves. The pooka was there, too. I don’t really know how I knew he was a pooka. He looked like a pig. He looked like a happy, pink pig. I squinted and stared out over the beautiful, topaz-blue water.

  “Where the hell are we?” I asked.

  “Who knows?” Fred answered. “The pooka probably knows, but he hasn’t made any sense tonight.”

  I stood up and looked up and down the beach. We were someplace tropical and pretty. Wherever we were, there was no one else there. There was just the sound of the ocean and the birds above us. It was stunning. I sat back down.

  “So,” I said. “I’m assuming this is the little spell Odin gave me?”

  “Yes,” Fred said.

  “I guess this is good, but we have to go back and stop Abaddon. I guess I’ll try to get us home,” I said as I touched the little circle and called Odin’s name again. The last thing I heard was Fred yelling wait while the pooka giggled in delight.

  * * *

  At least I didn’t black out this time. I stood in what was clearly a very crowded market someplace in Asia. Everyone was staring at us. And why wouldn’t they? I was in a tattered purple dress, smeared with blood, dirt, and sand. I was bruised and bleeding and my hair was a large frizzy bush. Fred was still shirtless and also dirty and bleeding. It didn’t help that the pooka had turned into a giant bunny man and that we had just materialized from thin air.

  “Bad call,” I said and cast the spell again.

  We were on a mountain-top. It was windy. There were a few trees, but there wasn’t much else around us but rock. In fact, we were quite precariously placed. I slipped a little and almost fell. Fred grabbed me before I slid down the scree to my death. I touched the circle again.

  We were in the middle of the ocean. I slipped beneath the water. The water was warm and I quickly gained my bearings and pushed myself back up to the top. We weren’t alone. A small fisherman in a boat looked down at us like we were Santa Claus on a cracker. I reached out to touch the circle again, but Fred grabbed my hand.

  “Dear God,” Fred said. “Stop. We could do this for the rest of our lives and never end up where we want to be. You have to learn to focus.”

  “What? You know this spell?” I asked angrily.

  “No,” Fred answered. “But I know magic. You have to focus. Focus on your goal. Close your eyes. Take a deep breath. Imagine where you want to be.”

  “Where do I want to be?” I said. I knew I needed to go back home, but honestly I preferred the beach or even the market.

  “Let’s go back to the beach,” he said. “We can talk there. We can make a plan. This place is giving me a headache.”

  I closed my eyes and visualized the beach. I imagined the waves crashing against the shore. I imagined the texture of the sand in-between my toes and the color of the blue sky. I saw the trees bending with the breeze. I felt the bright sun on my back and the warmth all over my filthy body. I tried to see myself there. I took a deep breath and touched the tattoo. I said the words and opened my eyes.

  We were there.

  “This is amazing,” I said. “Really, this is amazing. Can other spellcasters do this?”

  Fred shook his head. “No.”

  “Holy shit!” I said. “This is amazing. Should we try it again? Where should I take us?”

  “Calm down,” Fred said. “You need to focus. We need to stop Abaddon.”

  I sat down in the sand and drew a deep breath. Fr
ed was right. I knew we had to stop that monster, but if I were being honest with myself, I was afraid. I was afraid of Abaddon. He was completely and utterly terrifying. I certainly didn’t want to end up dragged into eternity with him. I was equally afraid of killing Nineveh. I put my head in my hands. All the courage I had earlier had vanished with the cold and the screaming and the reality of what I was facing.

  “I’m sorry,” I said softly. “I saw death there in the cold and I didn’t like what I saw. Tell me what I need to do and I’ll do it.”

  Fred took my hand. “We need to dispel the demon. We need to kill Nineveh. We don’t have much time.”

  The damn pooka giggled. It was now some kind of fishy creature.

  I nodded and took a deep breath.

  I closed my eyes. I tried to focus. I imagined The Black Magnolia. I imagined the red brick and the white porch. I imagined the darkness. I imagined Nineveh lying in the dirt, screaming. I focused on her body writhing in the dirt. I focused on the grass beneath my feet and then I touched my arm and said the words and when I opened my eyes, we were there.

  We were back in front of the house and it was cold as an arctic winter. Fred was beside me and he immediately put another circle of protection around us. The sun was rising behind him and I could smell Abaddon coming. He was still drawing energy from the town and he was stronger than ever.

  CHAPTER 10

  DISPELLING THE DEMON

  Fred was fast and efficient. He had a large circle around us as quickly as I could get my mind around where we were. After that, he worked within the circle. He created another circle out of wax and then a triangle in front of the larger circle. He lit four black candles and put them around the wax circle and four black candles within the circle. He placed three white candles around the triangle.

  He looked at the configuration with a worried brow. The pooka was a cat again and it sat inside the circle with a look of utter contentment on its face. Nineveh still looked unhappy, but she had stopped screaming. She didn’t seem to be in pain anymore. She just seemed disoriented. Fred began writing symbols I didn’t recognize.