“She means that she knows she can create a spell that Bella can make work,” corrected the dragon-cat. Then added grudgingly, “She is very talented, for one who is so young.”
“Hmph,” the tree said, and murmured to itself some more. A different knot, smaller and higher up, said in an alto voice, “How fare the Riders? We have heard little of them since the incident.”
“The incident,” Jazz said in a flat tone. “You mean when a deranged former Baba Yaga tortured and tormented them for days on end and stole their immortality away? That incident?”
Koshka shook his head, showing her his teeth suggestively.
“Right. Sorry.” She sometimes forgot that few people had seen the Riders right after their rescue, as she had. Jazz hadn’t had an easy life, and she had definitely seen some things that no one her age should have, but nothing had prepared her for the sight of the battered and beaten Riders, their clothing in rags, their bodies covered from head to toe with shallow, bloody cuts and purple-green bruises. The looks in their eyes still haunted her. She barely knew them, and still, after seeing them that day, she would have done anything to have been able to erase the pain that seared them all to their very souls.
“Mikhail, the White Rider, is doing pretty well, although he had a horrible time for a while,” she said more politely. “He got married not too long ago to a really nice woman named Jenna. They’re raising her baby together.”
“And the others? The Red Rider and the Black?”
“Um, not so good,” she said. “Mikhail spent a little time with Gregori here in the Otherworld, and I heard him tell Bella that Gregori was really struggling. Gregori was lost, Mikhail said, and broken. And no one has heard from Alexei at all, except for a couple of postcards. He won’t even talk to his brothers.” She looked at the ground, blinking to clear away the sudden moisture in her eyes. “Bella is really worried about them. All the Baba Yagas are. But they say there is nothing anyone can do.”
“You disagree,” the tree said.
“I think we have to at least try,” Jazz said fiercely, clenching her hands into fists. “They’re family. You don’t give up on family.” She hadn’t had one since her mother had died when she was five and she’d been tossed into the foster care system, but she knew in her heart that was what family was supposed to mean. Now that Bella and Sam were her family, it meant the other Baba Yagas were too. And if the Riders were their family, they were her family too. You just didn’t give up on family. Period. End of story. Maybe if she proved she’d never give up on them, they’d never give up on her either.
“You know how being one tree in amongst many makes you part of a forest, and therefore stronger? That’s kind of how it is with people and families. The Riders make the Baba Yagas stronger. And the other way around, I’d guess. We need each other.”
“So you have come to us because you believe one of our leaves could help to make the Riders themselves again?”
“Yes,” said Jazz. “Please.” She didn’t have anything to add. Either what she’d said already had been enough, or she had failed. She held her hands out to the tree.
There was that faint murmuring sound again and then something touched her lightly, brushing against her head. She looked up, and a single green leaf floated down into her open hands. A tear dropped down to glisten on its smooth surface.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“Take it with our blessing,” the tree said. “But beware of the power of wishes. They are not to be made lightly or incautiously. Good luck to you, little Baba. We suspect you will need it.”
Chapter Six
Jazz looked at all the various esoteric ingredients she had gathered, arranged now on the top of her battered wooden desk, and the spells she had copied out of Bella’s book, scattered on the bed. She was so close to being ready. She could taste success almost as strongly as the pepperoni pizza she’d just had for dinner.
This was the perfect time to hone her final combination of spell components and figure out which ingredients she’d really need and which could be left out. Bella and Koshka had driven off in the caravan that morning on a quick Baba Yaga Call. Jazz had been left behind with Sam because, as Bella had said, “This is just routine stuff. You’ll learn more from keeping up with your studies than you will tagging along on every little mission I have to deal with.”
Bella was very conscientious about making sure Jazz had at least some semblance of a regular life, something no other Baba Yaga had ever grown up with. Of course, no other Baba had ever started as a teen either. It was a whole new world.
Bella had estimated the job would take two or three days, although it wasn’t very far away, so she might be home sooner if things went well. Jazz figured she’d better make the most of her time alone, without the threat of interruptions from Bella or having that dragon-cat sticking his furry nose into her business. Not that she didn’t appreciate all the help they both gave her, but she wanted to prove she could do things on her own. To make them proud of her. Koshka would forgive her when she succeeded.
Sam, thankfully, tended to give her space unless she actually sought out his company. He was used to being solitary too. He and Bella were madly, disgustingly in love, but Jazz had the sneaking suspicion that Sam appreciated the occasional break from his passionate and volatile wife.
Jazz gathered up the spells and sat down in front of her desk, peering over each item in turn. It was pretty clear she’d want to use all three of the über-magical things she’d brought back from the Otherworld. The centaur tears would symbolize the physical permanence of the transformation, since the horse-men stayed in their combined forms forever. The phoenix egg shards retained the actual energy of the transformation, and the Kalpataru leaf would boost and intensify the power of her wish for the Riders to become immortal again.
But she definitely didn’t need to use all the items listed in the Longevity spell. Whichever witch had dreamed that one up clearly liked to make her magical work as elaborate as possible. Bella had taught Jazz that that kind of thing tended to vary from Baba Yaga to Baba Yaga, based both on their individual levels of power and on general personal preferences. Barbara, for instance, never used three items if she could do a spell with just one. Beka was still a little insecure about her abilities, being the youngest of the Babas and having had her confidence purposely undermined by her mentor, Brenna. So she was more likely to hedge her bets and use multiple components. Bella, so she’d told Jazz, fell somewhere in the middle.
Bella had also told Jazz that she would figure out, with time and practice, what worked best for her own magical endeavors. So far, Jazz kind of agreed with Barbara’s “less is more” approach—after all, she was used to making do with very little, both during her years in foster homes and then later, after she’d run away and was living mostly on her wits and what she could scrounge. But this was a really important spell and would need every ounce of ability she had, so she thought just this once she’d err on the side of caution (wouldn’t Koshka be surprised by that!) and use a few more things than usual.
After all, spell ingredients were there to help focus the spell caster’s intent and send it out into the universe. Jazz figured she could use all the focus she could get if she was going to succeed at something everyone else thought was impossible.
So she picked up the ginseng she’d gotten at the health food store, a huge chunk of rutilated quartz she’d found at a tiny hole-in-the-wall New Age shop, and a small, squat glass jar filled nearly to the brim with Siberian Rhodiola rosea, which she’d swiped, er, borrowed from Bella’s magical supply cupboard on the caravan. Hopefully Bella wouldn’t need such an obscure herb for whatever mission she was on at the moment and discover it missing before Jazz had a chance to use what she needed and put the rest back.
Those things got moved to the “yes” side of the desk, and the few other items she’d gathered from the list were shoved to the side t
o be discarded. She never had been able to find a source for that He Shou Wu stuff, but she thought she had enough from that spell without it.
From the Return of What Was Lost spell, she only kept the white candle and the rosemary. She didn’t need to look in a scrying bowl to search out what the Riders had lost; she only had to picture their stricken faces in the moment when the Queen had confirmed that their immortality was gone.
That left one big problem though. Normally, the best way to do a huge magical working on behalf of someone else was to have them present in the ritual circle as the spell was performed. Obviously, in this case, that was going to be impossible. Nobody even knew where Gregori and Alexei were. So she’d thought about trying to get something that belonged to them—a lock of hair, an item of clothing. Something to tie them to the spell, and tie the spell to them.
But when she’d casually suggested to Bella that it might be nice to go visit Mikhail and Jenna (in the hopes that Mikhail might have some tokens from his brothers and that she could swipe something small of his), Bella had shaken her head and said, “Maybe some other time, Jazz.” Mikhail and Jenna were still adjusting to their new lives together and to raising a baby. She thought it would be better to wait until things had settled down a bit more.
So Jazz had had to make do with a picture of the three men, clearly taken in happier times, since they all stood together in front of Mikhail’s white Yamaha, Gregori’s red Ducati, and Alexei’s huge black Harley, their arms slung around one another’s shoulders, grinning at the camera as if they didn’t have a care in the world. Back then, perhaps they hadn’t.
She hoped that not only would the picture connect the spell to their energy, sending its magic out to them no matter where they were, but also that the essence of those earlier, better days would become a part of the spell itself, adding to the intention of returning them to their previous state of being. Jazz wasn’t completely sure magic could even work that way, but she didn’t have any other options.
Now came the really tough part: writing the spell itself. So far in her practice, she’d mostly used spells that were already written by others. Bella said that some witches rarely wrote their own incantations, although she’d had Jazz work at creating a few. Apparently it didn’t really matter if they rhymed or not, just that they said what you wanted them to say clearly and with no room for accidental misinterpretation. Sure. Easy-peasy.
It took her over three hours, writing down lines and scratching them out again and again, but she eventually had what she thought was a pretty decent final version. Unfortunately, by then it was late and she was tired, and she’d been taught that a tired witch was a careless witch. So she went downstairs and gave Sam a good-night hug, put on the sweats and tee shirt she slept in, and fell into bed. Tomorrow was Saturday—a good day to change the universe.
* * *
Sam was already gone when she got up—off to a bird-rehabilitation seminar. Perfect. Jazz grabbed a quick breakfast of almond butter on a bagel and an apple, then gathered together everything she needed. The best place to do magic was in the caravan, but of course, it was off with Bella. The second-best choice was the permanent ritual circle Bella had created in the forest behind the house when they’d moved in. Unfortunately, that was covered with snow, and it was way too cold outside for Jazz to want to work out there anyway. Wyoming in the winter . . . brrrr. She was really glad she wasn’t still living rough in the woods.
Her room was great; she loved the privacy and the way Bella and Sam had let her decorate it any way she wanted to. But it was kind of small. And not very neat, with clothes spread over half the surfaces and books on the other half. (Hey, she might be in training to be a powerful superwitch, but she was still a teenager. There was, like, a code to live up to. Or down to. Whatever.)
In the end, she decided to use the living room. Sam was going to be out until late afternoon, and she and Bella had spent plenty of time practicing in there. The smooth oak planks on the floor made it easy to draw the circle and any symbols you needed in chalk, and you could just wipe it away when you were done. There were cream-colored raw silk curtains to draw across the windows, and the fire in the fireplace lent the room a warm and calming atmosphere.
Jazz pushed the couch and chairs against the whitewashed walls and dragged a small round table into the center of the room to act as a temporary altar, which she covered with the supplies she’d carried down from her room and the final, polished copy of her spell.
Now that she was all set up, Jazz was suddenly beset with second thoughts. The entire time she was in foster care, people had told her she was worthless, a burden, unwanted. What if everyone was right and there was no way to give the Riders back their immortality? What if nothing happened at all, and she proved that she was just some dumb teenager who was, as Bella often suggested, trying to do too much too soon?
What if she screwed it up and made things worse? Her fingers trembled as she moved the Kalpataru leaf to the front of the altar, making it shiver as if a cold wind had blown through the room. What if she wasn’t as powerful as they all said? What if Bella decided she’d been wrong about Jazz after all and changed her mind about training Jazz to be a Baba Yaga?
She hunched her shoulders and, just for a moment, considered giving up the idea altogether. Or doing what Koshka had demanded and handing everything over to Bella with an explanation and, no doubt, a lot of apologizing for going behind her back.
Hell no. I’m not that girl anymore. Bella had chosen her, wanted her, believed in her. And Jazz was going to prove it hadn’t all been for nothing.
Straightening up, she lit the first candle with a snap of her fingers, the way she’d been taught, and got down to it.
* * *
The circle was cast, and she had called in the elements and asked them to lend her magical work their power and assistance. Now all that was left to do was speak the spell out loud and send her energy along with it out into the universe.
Years of living, well deserved
Return to those who earned them
Witches’ honor they have served
And witch’s wish shall free them
Transformation happen now
To stay forever onward
Many years I do bestow
From this day moving forward
I call the power of the leaf
The power of rock and tree
Send the years to mend the grief
As I will SO MOTE IT BE
Jazz put all her energy into the spell, repeating it three times and practically yelling the final line. She felt the power within the circle shimmer and shift . . . and then . . . nothing.
No! She’d worked so hard. She knew she felt something happening. Why wasn’t it working?
She picked up the Kalpataru leaf and held it close to her heart. Please work. Please.
Again the air quivered with potential, but she could tell the spell hadn’t done what she’d wanted. Maybe it hadn’t done anything at all. If only she were ten years older. If only she’d had those extra years to practice and learn, she knew she could have pulled it off. If only she were older and wiser and more experienced—she just knew the spell would have worked.
A tear dripped down her cheek and onto the leaf, which buzzed and hummed against her chest. Baffled, she lifted her chin, only to feel the sensation spreading down her arms and legs and up into her head, which was suddenly spinning. No, the whole room was spinning, revolving around her as if she stood in the eye of a hurricane. The floor rocked beneath her, forcing her to her knees. Then the first spasm hit and somehow she was lying on the floor, her body caught up in a maelstrom of agony. She could hear a voice screaming in the distance, coming from somewhere and everywhere.
“BELLA! BELLA! HELP ME! BELLA!”
She only realized it was her own voice when her throat grew too hoarse to form the words, and then she screamed the
m inside her mind. And prayed that somehow Bella would hear, and come.
Chapter Seven
Jazz lost all sense of time and it seemed like the pain went on forever, but suddenly Bella was there, a frantic Koshka at her heels. Through a red haze, Jazz caught fractured glimpses of Bella waving the circle open and bringing the energy crashing down. Then her mentor was kneeling in front of her, brushing the hair off Jazz’s sweat-covered face.
“Oh, Jazz,” Bella said. “What have you done?” Then she took a closer look and said in a different tone, “Goddess, Jazz, what have you done?” Bella pressed her lips together and shook her head, muttering something under her breath as she helped Jazz up and onto the couch.
“I’m sorry, Bella,” Jazz rasped. “I was trying to help the Riders. I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you. I screwed up.”
“I’ll say,” Bella said, but there was no anger in her words. She went over to the table and examined everything on it, her expression getting grimmer by the moment. She reached out one slim finger and touched first the parchment on which the spell was written out, and then the three nonstandard items, picking the leaf off the floor gingerly and placing it with the others.
“Would you like to tell me how you managed to get a phoenix eggshell and a Kalpataru leaf and whatever that liquid is in the silver vial?” Bella asked as she settled herself on the couch next to Jazz. Her voice was surprisingly gentle. Jazz kept expecting her to yell and couldn’t figure out why she didn’t. Bella’s temper was her only real weakness.
“Centaur tears,” Jazz whispered, not looking at Bella. “The Transformation spell in your book called for them.”
“My book,” Bella said flatly. “The Baba Yaga book you’re not supposed to use without me. That book?”
Jazz nodded, feeling more miserable than she ever had in her short, difficult life. Not just because her whole body ached either. Bella was the one person who had ever given her a real chance, who’d believed in her, and Jazz had betrayed her trust. She didn’t know how she could have been so stupid.
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