by Berinn Rae
“Both Elementals and Sensitives enhance their magic by calling on earth energy. You know the lore, I’m sure. How witches use the elements of life: air, water, earth, fire. Some Elementals can draw power from more specific ores, like iron, magnesium, silver. You’re aware of this, Lily, having drawn from your geode. Hence the natural use of stones and powders in many spells. A Conjurer, for example, can use particular elements to weave say, a flower or a hat or even a cookie.
“A working coven of witches needs both Elementals and Sensitives to perform a truly balanced magic. Sensitives rarely master the use of earth elements, though they can learn to manipulate them. The elements, after all, are pure energy and life is teeming with the stuff.”
“Then you and Nila are Elementals?” Lily asked.
“Oh, yes,” Madame Bagasha answered, “with a little Sensitive on the side, a not uncommon thing. Many witches have attributes of both. You do or you wouldn’t be able to link with Daniel. I imagine that’s partly why your magic’s mixed so … intimately with each other.”
Both Daniel and Lily blushed.
“This tea I’m brewing will dampen your powers.”
When both looked apprehensive, she tutted. “Don’t worry, the effects are short term. I want you both to drink the tea. Then I will test you. If my theory is correct, your control problem can’t be solved with a simple tincture, sadly enough. Or perhaps, not so sadly.” She gave them a wink and headed out of the kitchen, leaving them alone.
“So?” Daniel drew her close for a kiss. “Are you okay with doing this?”
Lily spoke in a shaky voice. “Shapeshifters? Conjurers? Gods’ sakes, what’s a person to do with this information?”
“Afraid you might have a bit of Shapeshifter in you?” Daniel teased and when she went pale he pulled her onto his lap. “It’ll be all right, Lil, I promise.”
But Lily wasn’t reassured. Did painted portraits coming to life constitute shapeshifting? She’d never told him Rodney was more metaphysical than asshole. And now it was too late … Gods, how she hated secrets. The longer you kept them the less they wanted to be told.
“This power between us, Lily,” Daniel said, sensing her fear as if they were still linked, “we’ll get a handle on it. Or we won’t. So what if it’s all consuming? I don’t mind if you don’t.”
She drew back to see excitement and acceptance in his eyes. He shrugged, “We are who we are. And we’re together. Nothing else matters. Hey, is this tea making you sleepy, because I — ”
“We’d best get cracking.” Madame bustled in. Lily slid off Daniel’s lap. “Okay, Daniel, I want you to open the link between you and Lily. Can you?”
“Yes,” both said simultaneously.
“Close it back down. Lily, can you link to Daniel? Without touching him?”
Lily turned to look at him, saw his eyes darken and go soft. She felt the tug of his lips on hers as if he’d kissed her. He grinned shamelessly.
“That’s cheating.” Lily slugged him and looking away, opened her heart to find the rhythm of his. And there he was singing in her blood, his heart beating alongside hers, his happiness bursting inside her head.
She glanced at Madame, who rolled her eyes. “Like I can’t tell by your face, child. So you’re linked together, mind to mind, heart to heart. Now Daniel, try to break the link. Lily, you keep him from breaking it.”
It was a battle of more than wills. Within minutes the room throbbed with a turgid, explosive force.
Madame took an unconscious step back. This magic tasted of mountain storms and ozone, felt unwieldy and more than a little dangerous. “Try harder, Daniel,” she commanded.
But try as he did, Daniel could not severe the link as long as Lily wanted it open.
“Enough,” Madame finally said.
It was clear they’d frightened Madame, which caused Lily’s own fear to increase.
The little Romany’s face seemed less ruddy. “You both no longer have the same magic you had before you joined to do the healing.”
Daniel nodded. Lily bowed her head as if ashamed. Her panic raced through the link into him like a bolt of lightning. All three could sense her feral magic prowling the room, unbound and waiting.
“You’d better explain what it is I’m tasting in the air. And I mean now.” Madame Bagasha demanded in a strained voice.
“It’s not Lily’s fault,” Daniel said quickly. “In fact, I think Gran may have triggered it when she cast the shackling spell. Lily’s core magic, the … well, the cataclysmic magic you’re tasting, it must have lain dormant until last night. It’s Rogue, of course, and probably more elemental than any category Elemental magic. What Gran refused to understand or see clearly was that Lily’s source magic is intuitive and highly creative.”
“You’re saying it is … ?” Madame couldn’t bring herself to speak the word.
“Evolving. Yes.”
Lily held her breath. The power in the workroom spiked, lifted the frizz on Madame’s head.
“I need your geode, Lily, to trap whatever is in this room.”
“I told you, the geode’s gone. It disappeared,” Lily said. “Teach me how to call this power back and I will.”
So Madame Bagasha did. And Lily raised her hands, spoke the singsong words to entice and bind. For a moment, both Madame Bagasha and Daniel watched jagged flashes fly about the room before the light thinned, became a nimbus of gold around Lily’s body, and sank under her skin.
Madame sat down abruptly on the bench, hands shaking. “After drinking that tea you shouldn’t have been able to work magic, either of you. What just happened, what we all saw … it isn’t possible!”
Hearing a strangled cry behind them, the three spun around to see Nila standing against the door jam, her face a rigid white mask, her fingernails digging deep into the wood. And in the dim shadows behind her stood Rodney and a man the spitting image of Daniel.
“What the bloody hell are you, Lily?” the young witch cried.
Chapter Twenty-three
In one swift move, Daniel leaped to his feet, thrust Lily behind him, and had Nila safely across the room away from the two strange men. To Lily, the kitchen suddenly seemed a box she’d locked herself inside during a forgetful moment. Oh, why hadn’t she told him about the apparitions back when it would have been humorous, back when they could have laughed? Standing behind him, she reached trembling arms around his waist, pressed her face between his shoulders and whispered, “Forgive me, Daniel.”
Then she stepped out to face Rodney and her Look-Alike man. Both apparitions hovered between the bright kitchen and the dark interior of the store. They looked almost human in the shadows. But when Lily beckoned them forward and they drifted eerily into the warm light, it became obvious the two were anything but flesh and blood. Their faces, hair, skin, clothes were the color of gray mud, not transparent but not quite solid either. Nila, one hand clutched in Madame’s, had the other raised to cast whatever spell might prove necessary against them.
Lily half turned to the two witches before forcing her gaze to meet Daniel’s. “It’s all right. I don’t think they’re dangerous or anything. This one is Rodney, the other I call Look-Alike because, well … ” She gestured at Daniel.
The apparitions didn’t react to Lily’s words, in fact seemed not to hear at all. They simply stared at her with a pleading hunger in their eyes.
• • •
The look frightened Daniel. At the same time he felt a deep jealousy whip up his spine. With no thought to protocol or protection, he extended his psychic senses to Read them.
Color drained from his face as he swept both arms out to protect Lily. “Gods and Saints! They’re empty! There’s nothing to them but — ”
Lily nodded sorrowfully. “Oil paint and magic. I know.”
Madame’s voice cut in. “You told Nila about the one. You said he melted and disappeared. Now I see two. Explain yourself, Lily.”
“Can’t you make them go away first?” Nila begged
. “They’re really creepy.”
Lily barked a sarcastic laugh. “What, like this?” She made shooing motions with her hands. “I can’t make them do anything, Nila.”
“But the way they look at you … ” The girl shuddered.
Lily turned to Daniel with a disturbingly similar look in her eyes. “Please don’t be mad, Daniel. At me or Nila. Neither of us knew.”
Daniel stood ready to launch himself at the two apparitions, jaw clamped tight, his blood seething with anger. He wasn’t surprised to feel the drift of Madame’s calming spell in the air.
“It’s just, I was so lonely.” Lily reached for him. He stepped away, an unforgiving scowl on his face.
“Start at the beginning,” Madame commanded.
“That is the beginning.” Nila tossed a scurrilous look at Daniel before drawing Lily, now standing isolated and alone, to sit with her on the bench. “Lily had an appointment, you see, at the dating service next door. But she couldn’t bring herself to go in. That’s when she found the Magicke Shoppe. And me. I’d seen her coming in the crystals and knew … well, knew how little credit she gave herself. And how much she truly deserved. So I made her a love potion.” She glared at Daniel. “If I’d known you were her perfect guy, pud-head, I’d have tried to talk her out of it.”
Daniel tried to calm himself while Lily told the rest of the story in rapid-fire sentences like punches from a fist. She avoided everyone’s gaze. “I know how pathetic and desperate I sound. I am so sorry, truly.” She darted an unhappy look at Daniel.
“Well, you’re right about one thing, Lily. They don’t seem dangerous.” Madame spoke in an almost dismissive tone. Going to the counter, she began putting together a pot of coffee.
Daniel backed away from the two ghostly incarnates to straddle the bench where he could watch them and still keep an eye on the women. “Why does one of them look like me?”
Lily’s face flushed a deep red. “I painted him first. The night I drank the potion.”
Daniel slid towards her. Very gently, he took her face in his hands, forcing her to look at him. “But I was right next door, Lily. Aching for you, damn it.”
“I didn’t know, Daniel, not then. And he wasn’t meant to be you.”
“Not consciously, anyway,” Nila muttered while rustling for muffins from a cupboard. Madame elbowed her with a hiss.
“He was just a portrait I worked up from sketches,” Lily explained miserably. “Then he was suddenly alive, and I … I was terrified. He got aggressive and while trying to get away from him, I accidentally bumped the table. Paint thinner splashed on the canvas. And then,” she half sobbed, “he just melted into puddles of dripping paint! I thought he was gone forever.”
Daniel nodded. “I remember. I asked if something happened in your apartment. I touched the drop cloth and — ”
“How could I tell you, Daniel? What could I tell you, for pity’s sake? I was scared silly.”
“Then why Rodney?” Daniel asked, now hurt more than jealous.
Lily buried her face in her hands. With a rueful twist of his mouth, he pulled her into his arms. “You wanted someone else, Lil? Even after … ”
“No! I just wondered if it could happen again and … Daniel, you were my best friend! I never wanted us to change. I told you that and still you — ”
His face broke into a grin. “I knew it! I knew you were in love with me before I kissed you!”
Nila snorted. “Of course she was, idiot boy. But that didn’t mean it made her happy. Confused, overwhelmed, frightened, yeah. But hey, aren’t we all overlooking the more pressing matter? Like how these two walking personas non grata happened in the first place?”
They all looked at Lily who stared at them, dumbstruck. “You think I know? Two weeks ago magic didn’t exist in my world! Am I responsible for hurting Daniel? Yes. Did my paintings leap to life? Yes. Do I have power even you experts are scared of … yes? I’m out of control, I get that. But I’m also terrified. These guy-things scare the crap out of me. You can’t imagine how I felt when they melted. I’d … I’d killed them! So believe me when I tell you that being haunted by them is not the worst part of this nightmare.”
“Which is why, Lily,” Madame turned suddenly brisk, “you, Nila, and I are going to spend the rest of the afternoon learning about magic.” Madame serenely set out cups and saucers. She poured coffee as if nothing else in the world was more important. She added a plate of scones, and asked if anyone wanted bacon and eggs. Daniel, cradling Lily between his thighs, shook his head. No one but Nila seemed to have an appetite. Madame sat down, sipped her coffee. Daniel nipped Lily’s ear, felt her relax against him and the tension in the room disappeared.
“By working together,” Madame continued, “we’ll take some of the mystery out of Lily’s magic and help her gain some control. We’ll teach her the basic spells, words of power, how to focus. By the time we’re done I, for one, will feel … well, a bit less uncertain about the mystical world I thought I knew so well.”
Daniel opened his mouth to declare he was staying, too, but Madame cut him off. “You, dear boy, must go to your grandmother. She’s half-sick over what she’s done.”
Daniel snarled his doubt.
“And needs reassurance that you are healing and Lily is unharmed. She’ll Read you and understand what you and Lily are to each other. She’ll know the power you share. Talk to her, Daniel. You have become strangers over the years. But despite her sharp-edged stubbornness, your gran is a woman of wisdom who can forgive. And more importantly, admit when she’s wrong. Give her that chance. Please.”
He finally agreed, reluctantly. Every instinct told him not to leave Lily alone with these two witch women. But he could find no rational argument not to let her stay. Madame and Nila had proved themselves allies.
And he owed Madame for allowing Lily to come to him the night before. Madame Bagasha was, without question, the only Elemental he trusted to teach Lily what she needed to know … and by doing so would probably save them all. Daniel knew better than anyone the nearly limitless power Lily possessed. And though it no longer frightened him, he understood the dangers of a magic so creative in the hands of one uninitiated.
• • •
Lily walked with him through the unlit shop to the purple door with the sign still turned to Closed. She held his hand in a death grip. The thought of existing without him after the hours they’d spent so physically and magically bound seemed more than she could bear. At the door, he gathered her close, buried his face in her hair to breathe her in. Her arms circled his neck, her little body pressed tight to his. He kissed her hard, with an almost desperate uneasiness.
Lily realized that like herself, he feared being separated would create a self-consciousness between them that would erode the closeness they’d created together. The very idea left her devastated. She’d learned her magic through his, learned not to fear the unpredictable energy that was her power … as long as Daniel was near. She certainly wasn’t ready to share that energy with anyone else. Not this soon. All her original fears and uncertainties rose again. She knew an afternoon Working with Nila and Madame Bagasha would change her as deeply and irrevocably as the night she’d spent with Daniel.
“I will see you tonight?” She clutched him close as he pressed a last, deep kiss on her lips.
“Thirteen mad witches couldn’t keep me away,” he promised. With a brush of his fingers across her mouth, he left the shop.
Lily stayed with her hand pressed to the closed door until the last tinkle of the overhead bell died. Already her sense of him through the link was fading … like everything, too good to last. In the darkened room at her back, she sensed the objects of magic cluttering the shelves; globes and jars and crystals, withered roots and knotted sachets and intricate charms, all teasing her as if they were living, animate sprites.
They waited neutral, uncommitted, and she wondered if they might become, in time, tools as comfortably fitted to her needs as a sable paint
brush or a rich vermilion red. Gods afire, she wished she’d never discovered magic existed! Then she recalled the playful warmth of Daniel’s power moving inside her and changed her mind. Stomach in knots, Lily drew a deep breath, screwed her courage to the sticking post, and walked back through the shop to the lighted room where Madame and Nila waited.
Rodney and Look-Alike shadowed her, never closer than five feet, never further than twenty. To Lily’s eye, they appeared more substantial than before, less gray and filmy. She wondered if the magic inherent in the shop somehow infused them with more solid form … and shivered at the thought. What if they became real enough to haunt her the rest of her life?
Very soon Lily was too busy to worry about anything, literally, beyond the magic of the moment. She learned first that Madame’s power glowed a lovely warm lavender and felt comfortable working with it simply because she liked the color. When Nila’s turn came to play with Lily, her magic felt as whimsical and spontaneous as orange Jell-O. Lily had a hard time co-coordinating her magic to Nila’s and the girl kept apologizing as if she was the rank beginner, not Lily.
Madame worked with Lily on techniques of control, patiently teaching her how to draw magic out in measures as deliberate and aesthetic as musical notes. And as soaring, Lily discovered, once again sensing magic as harmonics and full bodied chords. At one point Nila jumped off the bench unable to keep from dancing to the sinuous rhythms throbbing in the room. Barefoot, faded jeans loose on her willowy hips, she looked like a Bacchanalian wood nymph, laughing in wild abandon, long braid flopping at her waist.
In one of their more maddening revelations, the three found Lily’s magic was not compatible to basic spell weaving.
“How you and Daniel managed to work a healing, I can’t imagine,” Madame exclaimed in exasperation.
“I can,” Nila murmured and Lily’s cheeks bloomed a dazzling red.