by A. J. Aalto
The witches stood at the end of the drive, some of them half-turned to watch what was unraveling on the porch, while trying to keep an eye on Lavinia and her glaistyn. Blanche began crawling in their direction, head low.
I raised my voice so they could all hear me. “The grimoire has been tainting me since I took it. You made me think I could be free of it, that you were here to help me reclaim my place on the right hand path. You lied. The only path you’re leading me down ends at my grave.”
The only one of the coven to look taken aback was Wymon, who craned around at his cohorts; his disappointment hit me on a strong rush of psi, a sinking feeling that he’d been fooled.
Wymon took one step in my direction. It was a subtle shift, but its meaning was obvious. He’d been with the coven when it came to keeping the game fair, blocking Lavinia from stomping in and taking the grimoire like a bully swiping everyone’s candy. He was not down with them changing life-and-death rules in the middle of things. Probably Wymon was the type of person who only appreciated mischief if he was the one making it.
“I will never be free of Ruby,” I said. “Not in this lifetime. So I guess there’s only one thing left to do.”
Wes whispered, “Shapeshift!”
“Do you mind?” I snarled at him out of the corner of my mouth, not taking my eyes off the tricky witches. “I’m trying to have one of those kickass soliloquy moments like in the movies.”
“Okay,” he allowed, “but then turn into a big fat werewyrm!”
“I’m not turning into a werewyrm, weirdo,” I whispered back. I’d barely recovered from the last time, I wasn’t eager to try shapeshifting again. Also, I was not sacrificing my comfiest jeans unless I absolutely had to.
“You beat evil last time by parking your wyrmy ass on it,” he reminded me. “Your big wyrmy ass.”
“Stop calling my ass wyrmy,” I said. “Or big. Or anything! Just stop talking about my ass entirely, please.”
A beat of silence and then Wes whispered, “Should I load the sporks?”
I felt my lips tighten. “Oh, fine! Load your damn sporks. Just let me have my serious moment.” I felt like it was going to be awesome if I could just find the words. The witches were hesitating, caught between fighting each other and wondering what my next move was going to be. They had caught hint of one revenant inside the hall with me, but knew he couldn’t come outside in full sunlight to get them.
“Fetch me the grimoires,” I tossed over my shoulder at him as he was fiddling. The clatter of falling plastic sporks hitting tile preceded his thumping feet running into the office. “All of them.”
“How do you think this is going to end?” Lavinia shouted, and I saw she had made up her mind. She didn’t trust the coven to get things done, and her glaistyn held sway. Lavinia was coming for the grimoire herself; she would destroy me, collect the book, and destroy it and anyone who stood in her way.
“You sent them to do your dirty work,” I told her and saw my words hit home in the tilt of her head. “If you want it done right, a witch needs to get her hands dirty. I’m right here, Lavinia. Come on, get your hands dirty.”
“We will not let that filthy little glaistyn destroy all of Ruby’s fine work. This was not the deal,” Felix barked, his temper rising. He withdrew a crooked rod from a pocket inside his robe and Gus flinched away from its end like it was a hot poker.
“Au contraire, Porno Boy!” I shouted back. “The deal that was extended to me was: I pick someone to inherit Ruby Valli’s grimoire, and in exchange, I get your grimoires. We shook on that, remember? Well, I’ve chosen someone.” They stared at me as though I were going to name one of them, which was almost as funny as it was sad. Blanche stopped crawling to look at me hopefully. I made a guttural noise. “I pick me, you morons. I would have thought that was fuckin’ obvious from this furious look on my face.” I pointed helpfully at my rage-face and circled it vehemently.
“And so you should,” Wymon raised his voice to match my anger. I Felt that most of it was genuine, though he definitely had ulterior motives brewing. “I didn’t come here to murder someone, Lavinia. Nor did I come to watch Ruby Valli’s work be destroyed. I agreed to none of this.” He finally noticed Blanche crawling past him and spat on the back of her head. “You reach too far this time.”
“Oh, suck it up, Wymon,” Eunice groaned, emptying her pockets furtively alongside her body as though I couldn’t see her doing it. “You fuckin’ whiner. Grow a pair and grab that grimoire!”
Lavinia was tracing patterns in the air with her fingertips down low by her crotch, painting a wordless spell; I got the feeling it was meant to blast Gus, who was busy calculating the distance between Felix and Eunice with an unhappy frown. The coven was starting to turn on one another before my eyes, loyalties shot, trust disintegrating, promises on the verge of breaking. That would work in my favor.
Wes handed me the stack of spell books and I handed him my gun. “Keep this trained on those tricky witches,” I told him loudly enough for them to hear. “If one of them so much as farts in this direction, shoot them.”
“Yeah, don’t fart,” Wesley warned them, pointing the gun aggressively at each of them in turn. “Preternatural hearing, bitches, I’ll hear you.”
“I didn’t mean literally shoot farters,” I muttered, shooting him a duh look. “Anxiety makes some people gassy.”
“I was backing you up,” he said. “On that subject, the cannon is loaded.”
“Oh, goody,” I said, dripping sarcasm.
“Hey!” Wes cried out, waving the gun. “The twin with the funny-looking rod sidled.”
“Freeze, Felix! Just you wait until you read what I write about my new character, Trixie,” I warned, glaring at the old men and started flipping through their books. I suppose I should have done so long before this. There were a ton of meaningless doodles meant to take up space, recipes for various casseroles, random thoughts, but definitely no spells; not only had they stalled all morning, hoping I’d be left alone and vulnerable, but they’d tried to cheat me with fake spell books. All but one.
One of them was genuine.
One of them had believed the ruse as strongly as I had. “Wymon,” I said, “Come here.”
I motioned for Wesley to let him come. Wymon removed his top hat and approached cautiously. When I jerked my bald head to indicate he should move to the side of the porch, he did so.
“Do you support my claim?” I asked. When he nodded, I threw all the fake grimoires out of the cabin and to the driveway, saving Ruby’s and Wymon’s. “You won’t stand in my way?”
“You have my word.”
It was enough.
“Very well,” I yelled at the rest of them. “You want it? Come and get it!”
I set my bare hand atop Ruby’s grimoire and reached deep into it, pressing my left palm to the yellowed leather, which squirmed like living flesh beneath my touch. Pushing further, I used Vestalia to start sucking at all the spell-work like I was slurping lemonade through a straw, pulling Wymon’s magic through Ruby’s work and into my hand. Stands of pure heat shot through my muscles, wrapping my palms in warmth and power. I felt Wes move deeper into the cabin, away from the door, as sunlight shifted to light more of the hallway, and when he hit the threshold of the kitchen he kicked the handle of the spork cannon, sending it flying in my direction. It hit my ankles, and with a flink and a poot, sporks began flying from the chute, flipping through the air in a blizzard of plastic.
Eunice surged forward and two things happened at once: Gus tackled her and Wesley fired from behind me. I shrank in place, praying for his good aim. The shot went wide and the bullet hit my fence with an impressive thwack and a shower of dry wood splinters. Lavinia shouted, throwing her hands forward; the force of her spell hit the wall of tumbling, airborne sporks and blasted them back at me. They bounced off ineffectually. Felix aimed his rod at Lavinia, and bright pink light shot out into her eyes, momentarily stunning her.
The glaistyn popped ou
t of her pocket and darted toward the cabin. It launched itself at my kneecap and I felt its tiny teeth sink through the denim and into my skin. I clenched my teeth and ignored him, pulling every ounce of power from the two books that I could; death magic and something wilder responded to my call. Between the black witch brouhaha on my lawn, my brother shooting into the air like the rootinest-tootinest gunslinger this side of the Mason Dixon, and the glaistyn going to town on my right leg, I had about a four seconds to pull up some spell or potion from my recent memory to channel the grimoires’ power into, something I knew would neutralize any threat. When had I seen a threat effectively kneecapped by magic? Visions danced rapidly past me: flying around a cauldron, a smug little clurichaun, my favorite Irish dhampir, his grave diagnosis, and me, in the grips of a spell, helplessly swishing past a bemused yeti.
Wymon had time to cry, “Not that” and dive off the porch to the side yard, where he huddled. I never figured out how he expected it, because I didn’t even know what I was about to do until I’d done it. The grimoires dropped and I lifted my hands, palms facing the chaotic scene in my yard. Coven-mates brawled and pulled hair, kicked and lashed out, at me, at each other, at the never-ending assault of plastic cutlery. I saw the clurichaun’s spell and named it aloud. “The Witch Ever Dances!”
As soon as the words dropped from my lips, the witches’ legs started flailing against their will. It would be temporary, of course; I hadn’t the Irish potion necessary or the original spell , nor had I fully gained control over the Vestalia spell yet. All I had was the will to cause chaos and a bucket of stolen oomph to shove it forward. But they would prance, as I had, unwillingly and ridiculously, until it wore off or I released them.
I had no intention of releasing them. Dance for me, bitches.
Wesley crept forward, cautious of the sun, and whispered, “The cannon is running out of ammo.”
That’s not usually something you want to hear when you’re at war, but I was okay with it. The spork-flinging contraption was whirring noisily and rolling across the tile under the vibration of empty firing, going poot-poot-poot. I switched it off. “Gun.”
He slapped it in my hand. “It’s almost out of ammo.”
“Maybe because you shot up my fence for no reason.”
“One of them dude witches came at you.”
I smirked. “Yeah, dude witches are the worst.” I looked down at the glaistyn gnawing through my pant leg, and it craned up at me. Or, more accurately, at the barrel of my Beretta, which I held about three inches from its face. “You’ve got two seconds to bugger off before I turn you into a fine, goblin-scented mist,” I told him. Wisely, he believed me. Instead of running back to his unsteady mistress, he made for the forest, a wee hairy grey flash across the lawn.
Rubbing my knee and inspecting for puncture marks, I bent to pick up Ruby’s now-silent grimoire and turned to offer Wymon’s back to him.
Wymon was gone.
I watched Eunice try to regain her footing, only to be flung down by her own traitorous jig. Lavinia had made it to both feet and was now prancing a fleet-footed retreat, looking like she was making a quick getaway on a pretend horse; if only she'd had two halves of coconut to bang together. Gus and Felix were trying to support one another in their quest to retreat, but Felix’s temper and Gus’s spittle-thickened swearing hampered their efforts. Blanche had regained her feet and pranced in the direction of Shaw’s Fist Road. The spriggans had seen the witches dancing and poured forth from their honeysuckle home to join in. Their wee shoes were a blur as they kicked up driveway dust with their merry flailing. Wes snort-laughed behind me.
“What did you do to Professor Pfaffenzeller and the crew?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Spriggans just love any excuse to dance.”
We exchanged smiles, and Wes said, “Welp, time for me to nap. You got this?”
I hugged the grimoires to my chest and said, “Like it or not, yeah, I got this.” When he strolled off to see if he could finally fall to VK-Delta, I settled into the porch swing to flip idly through the pages of Wymon’s abandoned book. Lavinia and Blanche were gone. Eunice had managed to crawl as far as her rental car at the edge of the driveway.
Both twins were log-rolling in my direction, robes twisting about their bodies, legs still kicking. Without looking up, I murmured, “Don’t make me force you to start singing while you dance, kids. I can do that, too.” I licked my forefinger and used it to slowly turn another page, then wiggled that forefinger meaningfully at the pair of them.
They thought better of their last ditch plan and began log-rolling in the opposite direction, clumsily kicking one another in their muddled path through the morning sun. Eunice had pulled herself into the driver’s seat. Felix cried out for her to wait. She didn’t. The rental car left the twins in the dust. It would be a long prance – or roll – back to the Ten Springs Motor Inn, I estimated. Hours of prancing. Hopefully, the Witch Ever Dances spell would wear off before they got too exhausted.
Ruby’s grimoire whispered at me, a paper-soft sound that sounded enough like laughter to make my skin crawl. It was just where it wanted to remain, just where it belonged, and safe from Lavinia, the glaistyn, and destruction. I wondered if Lavinia had lied about Ruby’s magic tainting all of mine, or if that had just been an additional threat to scare me into ridding myself of the damn thing.
“You won’t do a damn thing to me,” I told it sternly, tracing a sigil with a fingertip. “Not a damn thing.” I would figure out how to remove the witherward spell, and prevent the grimoire from bonding to me too tightly. I didn’t need any black witches to save me. I’d save myself.
******
That evening, sitting by the fire, packing done, I allowed myself the leisure of browsing spells in the newest addition to my magical library. The woodstove popped and crackled, and though it was far too warm in the room for me, my Cold Company was nestled under his electric blanket, sipping a goblet of warmed O-negative to see him through to a midnight feeding.
“What has caught your attention, my dulcet dove?” Harry asked.
“This is Wymon’s book of shadows,” I said, flipping through the messy handwriting. “Turns out he’s not a black witch. Not really.”
“Hmmm,” was Harry’s non-committal assessment.
“He’s a chaos caster,” I said without looking up, flipping through the very early work.
“Is that different than what I do?” Wesley asked.
Harry’s barked laugh was his only comment on that.
I said, “Yes. You’re chaotic, but you’re learning white magic. Wymon casts from all different paths, blending methods. Look at this.” I scanned pages. “Neoshamanism, Eastern influences, chemognostic experimentation, sex magic, demonology, scrying, Voudoun, fairy consultation, and this looks like it might be the URL for one of those Magic 8-Ball web sites. He draws from all spiritual backgrounds, stewing it with contemporary fusion magic like an all-nation, cross-cultural buffet. Or maybe a mall food court.”
“Fascinating,” Harry murmured, though something in his voice told me he knew more than he was letting on. “What does this mean, now that he’s left his work in your hands?”
“There’s no witherward spell on it, so it won’t influence me directly,” I said. “It’s an invaluable research tome, though. There are two decades worth of trial and error fusion spells, here. “
“So,” Wes said, puffing up his chest and throwing back his shoulders. “When are you gonna thank me, eh? Let me have it.”
I arched a brow at him. “Must I?”
“Dude-witch needs to hear it.”
“To be fair, ducky,” Harry said, “the lad was of some assistance, was he not? One should think that Our Wes has earned it.”
I let my breath out loudly in a slow, steady stream.
“Bro’s gotta hear it!” Wesley sang proudly.
“Okay, all right,” I said. I gathered my dignity and admitted, “Wesley for the win.”
“Wasp,” W
esley corrected.
I smiled tightly. “Wasp for the win.”
“And my inventions?”
“Accidentally invaluable, much to everyone’s surprise,” I offered sourly. “The very next time I need to cause a stupefying plastic kerfuffle, I’ll think of you.”
“And my dude-witchery?”
“Imaginary at best,” I said with a snort.
Wesley’s jaw dropped and he began swatting me repeatedly with Wymon’s top hat. Our sibling battle turned into a giggling slap fight with nobody landing blows, which is a good thing, because with his immortal wallop, Wes could have slammed me through a wall if he wanted to.
Harry went to lock Ruby’s grimoire in the herb cabinet and said crisply, “If you children are quite finished, we have a flight to catch. Mr. Merritt will be expecting us.”
“But first,” Wesley said, raising one finger in the air, “a victory pizza for the road!”
“You can’t eat pizza,” I reminded him.
“But you can,” he said, “and I can smell it.”
“I don’t want your nose tracks near my pizza,” I objected. “Go make yourself useful, dude-witch, and fetch the luggage.”
“Oh! Oh!” Wes followed me following Harry into the kitchen, bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet. “Order extra pepperoni.”
“Wes—“
“Boy, I could really go for a sniff of extra pepperoni,” he pleaded. “We can pick it up on our way to the airport.”
I opened my mouth to tell him off when his nose went in the air, sniffing happily. “Oh, hey, who needs you?” He hurried to the front door before our visitor could knock.
Harry turned to beam at me, and by the sparkle in his eye, I knew Gary Chapel must be at the door, coming to get final instructions for watching Bob the Cat, the spriggans, and now Second Bob, the brownie. By Wesley’s happy noises, I knew that Chapel must have brought a pizza. When he entered the kitchen with a drooling revenant on his heels, carrying with him the heady scent of marinara and melted cheese, he was also holding a bigger item under the greasy red and white pizza box.