Holly and Sweets joined Jax on the bed while I paced back and forth on the carpet.
Alba sat up straight and pointed at the page. “It says here you can do one of two things if the person isn’t around. You can either bind their house – with them in it, of course – or you can bind a doll that represents that person.”
I sighed. I knew the process was going to be complicated, but I had no idea how complicated it was going to be. “Alright, obviously we can’t bind the hospital. We’re going to have to bewitch a couple of dolls. Anyone here know how to make a doll?”
Four heads swiveled towards Sweets.
“Why are you all looking at me?” she asked with surprise.
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I assumed since you knew how to cook, you probably knew how to sew too.”
“I’m not Martha-frickin’-Stewart – geesh. I know how to bake. My mother is a baker. She taught me how to bake. She didn’t teach me how to sew!”
I chuckled. “Ok, relax, calm down Sweets. There are some snacks over there if you’re blood sugar is getting low.”
She readjusted herself on the bed and tried to look offended. “I can’t say frickin’ without being offered a snack?”
I held my hands up in front of me apologetically. “I’m sorry. Maybe your blood sugar is just fine.”
Sweets softened a bit. “Thank you.”
I turned my attention back to the girls. “So. Who knows how to sew?”
“I don’t really know how to sew,” Jax began hesitantly. “But how hard can it be? I’m sure it doesn’t have to be like pretty or anything.”
“No, I suppose not,” I agreed. “We need some material.”
Holly stood up. “I cleaned out my drawers last weekend. I have a bag of old t-shirts that I was going to throw away. Will that work?”
Alba nodded. “We can make it work.”
“How do we bewitch dolls to represent them?” I asked Alba.
“We need something that belongs to each of them to put inside the doll before we sew it up. Obviously, something small so that it will fit.”
Jax stood up next. “I can run over to my uncle’s living quarters. I’ll sneak in and grab something. Can it be anything?”
“A few strands of his hair would probably be best.”
Jax stopped moving. “I’m supposed to get hair – from his head? You don’t think he will notice me yanking them out? I might need an invisibility spell or something.”
Alba palmed her forehead. “Check the bathroom. I bet there is some hair on his brush or comb.”
Jax bounced a hand off of the side of her head. “Ah. Got it. I’ll be back in a jiffy.”
“Meet us down in the potions lab. Since we’re not going to actually bind Linda, we might as well be doing all of this down there.”
Jax nodded and took off out the door.
“What about your mom?” Alba asked me pointedly.
I sighed. “Does it have to be her hair?”
Alba shook her head. “I wouldn’t think so. Anything would work that belonged to your mother.”
“Jewelry?”
“Yeah. Jewelry is fine.”
“Good.” I rocked forward and went to my closet. Hidden all the way in the back was a small black velvet satchel. I brought it out and poured out the contents. A couple of gold rings, a pocket watch, and a bracelet tumbled out.
“What are you? A pirate?” Alba said, chuckling.
“Very funny,” I said and picked through the simple items to pick up a tiny gold ring that had once been worn by my mother.
“Whose watch is this?” Sweets asked me, picking up the old timepiece carefully.
“My father’s. He gave it to my mother to give to me someday.”
“How come you never talk about your father?” Sweets asked me innocently.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Alba shoot Sweets a look.
“Because I don’t know my father. I’ve never met him. This is his ring too. And this is my mother’s bracelet – she gave me the rings when I turned 18 and the bracelet when I turned 16. She gave me the watch before I left for college.”
“Oh,” Sweets said.
The tension in the room mounted until finally, I let out the deep breath I’d been holding. “What should we use for thread?” I asked as Holly reentered the room with the small sack of old t-shirts.
“Maybe there will be thread in the potions lab,” Sweets suggested.
“Good point. What else are we going to need, Alba?”
“Twine. Black candle. Binding oil. Witch hazel. Mugwort. Agrimony,” she said, rattling off all of the items in the ingredients list.
“That should all be in the potions lab. Alright, let’s go.”
With the materials in hand, we carefully crept down the back staircase to the basement, cautious not to let anyone see us. The door was ajar when we got there and when we pushed it open and turned on the lights, we were shocked by what we saw.
The entire potions lab was in disarray. Someone had done a spell and not put anything away. There were even still remnants of a spell in the wide open casting area just off of the lab.
“Wow, if we weren’t going to get in trouble for doing this spell, I’d totally report the condition of this lab,” Alba grumbled.
“Should we clean it up?” Sweets asked trepidatiously.
“We’ll empty out the circle, but that’s it.” She dumped the small bag of supplies on the counter. “Cosmo, you cut out the outline of a man out of this material. Sweets, you cut out the outline of a woman out from this material. Red, you clear out the circle. I’ll get the ingredients ready for the spell.”
Holly and Sweets exchanged annoyed looks. “Since when are you the cruise ship director?” Holly asked, looking Alba up and down.
Alba shoved the hardcover book in front of Holly’s face. “Since I have the book.”
“How about you cut out the man and I’ll get the ingredients from the book ready,” Holly said, taking the book from Alba’s hands.
“I got the hair!” Jax called from the doorway of the potions lab.
“You can’t do the spell, you’ll flub it up,” Alba insisted.
“No I won’t. I’m just as capable of doing a spell as you are.” Holly’s face was red with anger.
“Really? Like the other day in potions class when you exploded the solution and they had to clear out the room?”
Holly gasped. “That wasn’t all my fault. My lab partner added ginger root and didn’t tell me!”
Alba took the book back out of Holly’s hands. “You’re clueless Cosmo. Stick to doing hair and makeup.”
Holly glared angrily at Alba until I plucked the book out of Alba’s hands and handed it to Sweets. “Sorry Alba, sorry Holly, Sweets is doing the spell. She’s a matchmaker. I feel like she’s the logical one to cast the spell since this involves the love lives of two people. Not to mention the fact that she has experience doing love spells.”
“That’s not fair!” Alba whined, shooting Sweets an angry look.
Sweets shrank under her glare, then looked at me nervously.
I patted Sweets’ back. “The spell will work better if you do it, don’t worry. You’ll do fine. Alba will cut out the girl. Holly will cut out the boy.”
“Hello? Did anyone hear me? I’ve got the hair!” Jax asserted again.
“I heard you, Jax,” I told her. “Give it to Holly. She’s making the Merrick doll.”
“Oh so now I’m making the doll? I thought I was just cutting out the pieces!”
“Fine, cut out the pieces and I’ll make the doll,” I told her, exhausted. My body was nearly drained of all the energy it had. It had been such a crazy whirlwind couple of weeks that I wasn’t sure that I had caught up on my sleep since I’d left Dubbsburg in September. The constant bickering between Alba and just about everyone was beginning to wear on my nerves. “Jax, hang on to the hair until the girls have the doll shapes cut out.”
Quietly Sweets prepared the s
pell ingredients while Holly and Alba cut out the figures. I quickly tidied up the casting circle so we had a clean place to work.
“Are you done yet?” Jax asked Alba and Holly impatiently.
Alba nodded. “Does this look like a girl?” She held up an almost round blob of a thing with two little stick like feet and a knob for a head.
“Not really,” Jax said as kindly as she could. “Can I help you?”
Alba handed Jax the material and the scissors. “It’s all yours!”
Jax folded her material in half and began cutting. She snipped this way and that until finally, she held up two copies of the most perfect looking female outline. “How’s this?”
Sweets clapped her hands excitedly. “Perfect! You’re so crafty, Jax!”
Jax smiled happily. “Want me to help you with yours, Holl?”
Holly nodded and handed Jax a new piece of material. “I messed mine up, royally. Here ya go.”
Jax took the material, doubled it and made an identical figure, but this one clearly had pants on instead of a skirt.
“Wow, Jaxie, you should go into the voodoo doll making business. You’re pretty incredible.”
Jax beamed and grabbed a marker from the desk, giving the dolls faces. “What are we going to use for stuffing?”
Holly held up one finger. “I brought a bag of cotton balls,” she said and grabbed them off the counter.
“I found thread, but no needle,” Sweets told the group.
“We can use this,” I said and held up a stapler.
Alba looked at me with a straight face. “Really Red?”
I shrugged. “Why not?” I put the two girls on top of each other and lining up the edges carefully I stapled around her, stopping early so that I could shove in the cotton balls and Mom’s ring. “Here we go,” I said and gave the ring a kiss before inserting it into the doll.
“I’ll make Uncle’s,” Jax said and followed my lead, quickly creating a doll with Merrick’s hair stapled inside.
When we were done, we had two little makeshift bewitched dolls – a Merrick and a Linda. “They aren’t the cutest things ever made, but hopefully they will work for this spell!” I said happily. “Now what Sweets?”
“Umm, the book says we have to bind them now. Once they are bound, then we can do the unbinding spell.”
“Got it. How do we bind them?”
“Well, we need an enchanted binding,” Sweets said, reading through the spell book.
“Way ahead of you,” Alba said, pulling out a handful of colored twine. “Here, we’ve got to braid this.” She handed me three strands of colored twine. “Tie the three strands together with three knots at the top. Each time you pull the knot through say ‘By the line unbroken, Protect this token’.”
My fingers worked as nimbly as they could, I mumbled the phrase, ‘by the line unbroken, protect this token’, as I tied each knot and repeated it three times. Then I looked at Alba and Sweets.
“Now what?”
“Braid them. As you’re braiding, chant the following,
Bind it once, bind it twice
With this twine, I bind it thrice
Blessed binding twine bind so tight
Let this cord bind with all its might.”
I followed Sweets’ directions carefully, chanting until I got to the end of the twine.
“Now, three more knots at the end to tie off the binding cord and three more phrases: ‘by the line unbroken, protect this token’,” she instructed, paying careful attention to the spell book.
When I held up the finished cord, Alba nodded intently. “There, now that we have enchanted binding twine the next parts should be simple since they are already bound. Just wrap the two dolls together with the binding cord.”
“Do I have to chant over them?”
Sweets shook her head and flipped a page in the book, skimming the words quickly. “No, I really don’t think so. They’ve already been bound and we enchanted the binding cord. The hard part is going to be separating them from the binding.”
I wrapped the binding around the two dolls and then followed Sweets to the large open area in the lab where a circle and a star had been painted on the floor for spells to be done in. “Alright, now we sit at each point of the star. I’ve got everything ready.”
Sweets had positioned a black candle in the center of the circle. She had coated the candle with the binding oil and sprinkled the rest of the ingredients around the candle; she had even included a small round crystal dish filled with water to the small table in the center of the circle.
Alba snapped her fingers and blew and the black candle magically flickered to life.
Sweets read ahead in the book and then her eyes widened. “Wow. The rest of this looks like it’s going to be hard. We have to break the binding with our powers.”
Holly nibbled on her fingernails nervously. “How do we do that?”
Sweets’ head teetered on her shoulders. “Well, just like any magical spell, we have to focus our energies. Like Stone taught us, we have to start with our circular breathing. Sweets slid to the ground, then pulled her legs into her and dropped her hands to her knees. Quietly, she demonstrated a technique we’d been practicing in casting class. “In through the nose, out through the mouth. In through the nose, out through the mouth.”
I sat down cross-legged on the floor directly across the circle from Sweets and began my breathing and in seconds, Alba, Holly, and Jax followed suit, each of them taking a spot on the tip of a point of the star.
Alba opened one eye and peered at Jax across the circle. “Jax, you’re not a witch. You can’t be in the circle.”
Jax hung her head. Quietly she peered up at Alba. “But don’t you need five people for the spell?”
Alba nodded somberly. “I hadn’t thought of that, a fifth witch will make the spell more powerful, we’ll have to find a fifth witch.”
Holly and Sweets groaned. Immediately Jax’s eyes welled up with tears, causing something to pull at a place in my heart I didn’t even know I had. “Please Alba, I can be helpful!” Jax begged.
Alba closed her eye. “No,” she uttered without thought.
“There are a lot of non-witches who practice witchcraft,” I said to Alba.
Alba thought about it for a second and then retorted, “The spell may not be as powerful without the fifth witch.”
“We don’t know that. And besides, Jax has witch blood running through her body. I don’t know why she couldn’t be in the circle.”
Alba opened both eyes and glared at me angrily. “It’s your spell, Red. If you want to take the chance that it doesn’t work the way you want it to, then that’s your call. I don’t want anyone here to blame it on me if it doesn’t work right.”
I glanced up at Sweets. Wishing that she would chime in, but she didn’t. She was too busy reading, trying to absorb the words of the spell.
While I wasn’t sure that I wanted to take that chance, I also knew that it would be heartbreaking for Jax not to get to participate. Plus, I didn’t know where we’d find a fifth witch that would want to help. Libby and Cinder might help, but then I’d have to pick between the twins, and I wasn’t sure that was such a great idea either. I let out a deep sigh. “Jax can do it with us. I really don’t think it’s going to affect the outcome.”
Alba closed her eyes again. “Fine. Let’s get this show on the road. Clear your minds. Holly, that should be easy for you.”
Holly’s eyes flew open, as did the rest of our eyes, except Alba, who continued to breathe as if she hadn’t just insulted Holly.
“Alba!” Sweets gasped.
“Shhh,” Alba hissed back. “It’s quiet time now. Keep your mouths shut and focus on your breathing.”
Wordlessly, I took hold of Holly’s and Jax’s hands. Holly took Sweets’ hands and grudgingly Sweets and Jax took hold of Alba’s hands and then shut their eyes. Then it began. We started as five individuals, concentrating on our breathing, inhaling in through the nose, ex
haling out through the mouth. Worries, thoughts, and emotions began to become a distant memory as the seconds chugged into minutes and then the minutes flew by like seconds. With open hearts, we were able to regulate our breathing so that finally, we were all on the same even rhythm of inhaling and exhaling.
I could already feel the energy flowing through our connected circle and radiating off of us. I could even hear the tiny shards of electricity sizzling around us. It gave me shivers to think of the power that we were creating and planning to unleash. Finally, Sweets sent a squeeze pulsing around the circle. When it finally made its way back around to her, we all opened our eyes and Sweets began to chant.
“Sacred circle we call to you,
Sacred spirits we speak to you,
Through Earth, through fire,
Through wind and water
We invoke the power of thee.
Blessed be the sacred binding put open
Linda Habernackle and Merrick Stone
Let the binding forever be banished.
With all the power that we possess, we call to you
To break the binding and restore things to their
Righteous way.
Let the spell be reversed, lift away the dark curse.”
Sweets sent around another squeeze pulsing through our hands. When it returned to her, the five of us chanted together.
“Let the spell be reversed, lift away the dark curse.”
I could feel the energy inside of me unleashing as I spoke the words. The magic pulsing through our connected hands was electrifying. And as we spoke the final words of the spell, an enormous amount of light shot forth from each of us and connected with the flame from the black candle burning in the center and one solid beam of light radiated upwards where it was contained by the insulated ceiling. And then, just like that, a tremendous explosion filled the room. The blast shot my body backwards, out of my cross-legged position and tossed me hard against the stone wall behind me and in the blink of an eye, I saw the bodies of the rest of the girls being strewn around the room like rag dolls. The minute the disengagement of our hands happened and the circle was broken, the lights immediately dissipated and before I knew it, everything faded to black.
Witch Degrees of Separation: A Witch Squad Cozy Mystery #3 Page 10