Risky Magic: A Trash Witch Novel

by Tori Centanni

  “Hi, Mrs. Prescott,” I said cheerfully, finishing my climb up the porch steps.

  Stephen Claremont glowered but made his way down, got in the BMW, slammed the door for effect, and peeled off.

  “He’s in a good mood,” I said, words dripping with sarcasm.

  Samantha sighed. “Come on in, darling.” She eyed the pie in its pastry box. “Is that for me?”

  “Yes, ma’am. It’s chocolate cream.” Some of the whipped topping had gotten squished against one side of the pastry box but otherwise, it looked delectable.

  Samantha smiled. It didn’t quite reach her eyes, which were a little bloodshot and dry looking, as if she’d been crying a lot. She had deep circles under her eyes and her normally flawless hair was a little greasy and tied up into a messy bun to keep it out of the way. She wore sweat pants and a plain pink t-shirt. The house was warm and cozy, with gently-used furniture artfully arranged around a baby swing, high chair, and bassinet. There was no sign of the kid, other than blankets and toys strewn around.

  “Bobby is napping,” she said, as if reading my thoughts. “Come, have a seat.”

  The table had a gorgeous runner printed with blue lilies with blue candles arranged in the center of it. I set the pie on the lip of the counter and sat at the table.

  “Would you like coffee?” she asked. “I just made some for Stephen.”

  “That’d be great,” I said, as I hadn’t slept a whole lot and caffeine was always my friend.

  A few minutes later, I had a mug of coffee, a container of sugar, and a container of cream in front of me, along with a slice of pie. Samantha sat across from me with a slice of her own.

  “This is delicious,” she said, after a few bites. “I haven’t had breakfast yet.”

  It was almost three in the afternoon but she’d probably only woken up when Stephen Claremont had arrived. Most witches kept a fairly nocturnal schedule, though I didn’t know how a new baby might affect that.

  “What was Claremont so mad about?” I asked.

  Samantha winced.

  “Sorry. It’s none of my business,” I said hurriedly, shoving a big bite of pie crust into my mouth.

  “It’s fine.” She set down her fork. “It’s just that he thinks Felix ran off by himself. There’s absolutely no way he’d do that. He loves Bobby. That baby is his world. And he loves me.” Tears moistened her eyes. “He would never just leave without warning. And if he were called away for some reason, he would have contacted me by now.”

  “For what it’s worth, I don’t think he ran off,” I said.

  Samantha nodded. She pulled a tissue from her pocket and dabbed tears from her eyes. “Thank you. That means a lot. Anyway, Claremont came to tell me that the council considers the matter closed and won’t do anything to find him. I got mad and threatened to call the mortal cops. Then he got mad and told me I was allowed to do that but he would consider it a black mark against me. We fought. He was storming out when you arrived.”

  “What a jerk!” I took a sip of the coffee. It was bold and rich, and the aroma alone made me feel more alert.

  “But he’s right.” She sounded dejected. “It’s dangerous to get the mortal cops involved, and depending on what happened, they might not be any help anyhow.” She took a shuddering breath that shook her shoulders. “But I can’t just sit around and do nothing when Felix could be in trouble.”

  The sound of a baby fussing emanated from a monitor sitting on the counter. Samantha jumped up. “Be right back,” she said, grabbing the monitor and heading upstairs.

  I finished my pie, which was pretty delicious for a grocery store bakery, with just the right amount of chocolate and a slightly salty cookie crust. When Samantha returned, she set the monitor on the table. “He fell back to sleep. But he’ll probably wake up soon and want breakfast. He’s always hungry.”

  “I won’t stay long.” I hesitated, unsure exactly how much to tell her. “Have you done a tracking spell?”

  Samantha nodded. “When he didn’t come home, I tried one. It led to the Lodge but the trail stopped there.”

  The Lodge was more like an abandoned warehouse in Pioneer Square. It was where the council met and where most local coven meetings were held.

  “Do you mind if I try?” I asked. I held my breath while she studied me, no doubt curious and uncertain as to why I’d bother.

  After a moment’s hesitation, she said, “I don’t see the harm. Let me grab you his comb.”

  Once again, she bounded up the stairs and returned with a plain, black plastic comb that had a few brunette hairs caught in it. She put it in a plastic baggie and handed it over. I shoved it in my purse.

  “Thank you for coming,” she said. “It means a lot to know someone believes Felix wouldn’t just abandon me and Bobby.” She laughed but it was high and hollow.

  “Of course. I know how it feels.”

  Samantha bristled and then shook her head. “Oh my gosh, I totally didn’t make the connection, but it is similar to when Meredith disappeared, isn’t it? My goodness, it’s been so long. I can’t believe she’s never been found.”

  It was my turn to have tears prick my eyes. I willed them back. “Felix will turn up,” I said. Because I was going to find him and make sure of it.

  Chapter 6

  I biked a few blocks until I found the corner of a street where I could do a spell without being seen by the neighbors.

  Magic sometimes flashes and pops but it’s rarely so big and bold that it can be identified as actual magic. Still, the rule was to be cautious. The last thing anyone needed was a YouTube video of a witch doing magic to go viral, again. It’s happened, and historically people rush to debunk the footage so they can prove it’s only lighting tricks, special effects, and edited audio. Almost no one really believes. And yet, I didn’t want to be subject to that kind of scrutiny in the mortal world or get in trouble with the council for being careless.

  I carefully removed a single hair from the comb and put it back in the baggie. Then I lay the hair over my hand and spit on it. A little gross, I know. The spell called for fresh spring water, but saliva would have to do instead. I closed my fist and infused magic into the hair, willing it to lock on Felix. A small red flash and a burst of heat exploded in my hand. I hissed and shook my hand. The hair and spit landed somewhere in the dirt, but that didn’t matter. I didn’t need it anymore. The spell was in my palm.

  A red line of light, faint and hard to see in the gray daylight, protruded from my hand. It only extended a few yards but as I followed it, the line grew, always keeping a few yards ahead of me so I could follow it. I headed down the hill to the bus stop but ended up walking down Eastlake Avenue back toward Queen Anne. Once there, the line lead me to First Avenue, and I followed that all the way to Pioneer Square.

  My heart sank as I crossed Yesler Avenue. Even before I reached the warehouse, I knew exactly where the spell was leading me. Like Samantha’s tracking spell the night Felix vanished, it led straight to the Lodge. I kept walking anyhow, following the trail just in case it veered off in an unexpected direction. It did not.

  When I reached the Lodge, I sighed heavily, defeated. The line led to the small parking lot behind the Lodge. It was fenced in with chain-link and locked when the Lodge wasn’t in use, to prevent other people from parking there. The Lodge itself was a square gray industrial building that had been built just after the Great Fire and originally used as a warehouse of some kind. The Witches’ Council bought it in the early 19th Century and it’d been used as the Lodge ever since.

  From what I could see through the fence, there was nothing of interest in the parking lot. Felix was gone and his magical trail went cold in the empty, paved space.

  Tracking spells without a drop of the person’s blood were notoriously unreliable. That was for many reasons, including the fact that finding someone was a lot harder than finding the places they had exerted the most energy. Magic was tied to energy.

  The reason the magical trail led
to the Lodge was that Felix had spent a lot of time here, and expended a lot of his own magic in this place. He’d worn a trail in the ether from his house to here and that was what the magic followed. It didn’t mean he wasn’t five states away or off in Mexico, just that the magic was unable to find a trail strong enough to cling to. Magic, like everything else, took the path of least resistance. Which was part of why I knew that spells could be done with substitutions and still work just fine.

  I stared at the parking lot. I tried to picture the scene: Felix getting in his car, waving to fellow council members, driving away. But then what? Where had he gone? Why hadn’t he made it home?

  And then suddenly the same image replayed in my head but instead of Felix, the driver was my mother. They’d both vanished after a council meeting. Of course, she’d disappeared fifteen years ago. It had to be a coincidence. Two people last seen at meetings they attended regularly for different reasons, at different times.

  My mother was long gone. Whatever trail she’d left had gone cold and I’d been too young at the time to follow it then.

  But Felix had only disappeared six days ago. He could still be found.

  I sat down on the sidewalk and pulled out a small spell kit I kept in my purse. It was the size of a makeup bag—I actually kept it in a makeup bag I’d bought at Target—and it held all of the essentials: tiny cups for mixing, little containers full of spices and powders, small vials of liquids, and an envelope of wooden stir sticks, the kind one might use to mix cream into coffee.

  I set the small cup down and considered my options. I didn’t have Felix’s blood, just his hair, but I’d have to make it work. The tracking spell led me here. I just had to find a way to follow his trail beyond this point.

  A lightbulb went off over my head and I jumped up, leaving my stuff on the sidewalk. If I managed to combine a lost object spell with a tracking spell, maybe I could get it to lead me to Felix’s car.

  I’d never parked in the Lodge’s lot, since I just brought my bike inside, but I’d gotten rides to meetings before. I strained to remember the code on the gate. I tried four numbers. The light flashed red. Then I tried another set of numbers. It flashed green and relief washed over me as the gate rolled open.

  I ran inside and found a small oil spot. It probably wasn’t from Felix’s car—I didn’t even know where he had parked—but that wasn’t the point. I needed to tell the spell I wanted it to follow the man connected to the hair and his car, not just the man.

  So I dipped my stir stick in the oil and returned to my makeshift work station. A woman jogged by, giving me a strange look as she passed. Who knew what she thought I was doing?

  I took out another of Felix’s hairs and rubbed the oil along it before dropping it into the cup. Then I poured my tiny vial of sparkling water into the cup, pushing magic into the liquid. I added a dash of orange zest and a pinch of allspice. Finally, I dropped in a tiny magnet about the size of a bead. I put my hand over the cup and felt the heat of magic run down my arm. It exploded out from my palm and flowed into the cup. The heat finally forced me to move my hand and a burst of light exploded from the cup. When I looked down, the liquid had turned a strangely pleasant shade of blue. It began to sizzle and steam. And then with a small bang and a flash, the liquid was gone and a thick blue smoke rose into the air.

  I scrambled to gather my stuff and jumped on my bike to follow the smoke as it began floating down the street. Hopefully in the direction Felix’s car had gone.

  The tendril of smoke whipped through the air like a leaf being tossed around on the wind. Even pedaling my fastest, it was hard to keep up with it, especially since I had to dodge traffic.

  I followed it down to the International District, past Uwajimaya, the Japanese market, and then under an overpass and past the stadiums. I was starting to get out of breath when the smoke took an abrupt turn and I almost missed it, turning so sharply on my bike that my leg almost scraped against the ground.

  As I panted and my legs started to ache, I wondered if the smoke was even leading me where I wanted to go. If my spell hadn’t worked, it might be leading me literally anywhere, and on a bicycle I could only travel so far. Living in the city, there were few things I needed a car for, but magical goose chases was one of them.

  I hit a stoplight but the smoke kept going, so I wheeled onto the sidewalk and, the moment traffic was clear, raced through the intersection. An oncoming car sped up as it approached and honked at me. I resisted the urge to flip him off, mostly because I was focused on not losing the trail, and also because he wasn’t entirely in the wrong.

  Finally, at least three miles and all of my will to live later, the smoke jerked to a halt over a parking lot. I slammed on my brakes and examined it while I caught my breath.

  The lot sat on the edge of a commercial area, just past a strip mall with a grocery store and a dry cleaner, next to an office park. The lot edged up to a wall and on the other side apartments and town homes loomed. The lot was maybe half full of cars and a sign at the front advertised rates for day use as well as monthly rates. The pay station was electronic and accepted both cash and cards.

  The smoke hovered above a royal blue Toyota Camry, exactly like the one Felix drove, according to Samantha.

  Heart pounding, I got off my bike. My legs felt like Jell-O but I managed to steady myself and walk over to the car. I didn’t know his license plate number. I hadn’t even thought to ask. But it certainly looked like his car.

  I did a little dance (mostly in my head, since my legs were refusing to do anything but prop me up at the moment). My off-the-cuff car tracking spell had worked! The others could mock my magic all they wanted but they’d have given up when the standard tracking spell had failed. Well, okay, Samantha had, and in her defense, she had a lot on her plate. I didn’t know if the council had even bothered to try.

  I made my way around the sedan, looking inside the windows. There was no one inside the car as far as I could see. I eyed the trunk suspiciously and seriously hoped it, too, was devoid of passengers.

  The interior was pretty clean, with the exception of a few fast food bags cramped behind the front seat and an open water bottle in the driver’s side cup holder.

  There was also a parking pass from the pay station on the windshield. It had been paid for at 11:56 pm Sunday, the night Felix had gone missing. Council meetings usually went until eleven, and it wouldn’t have taken almost an hour to drive here. Even biking, it had only taken about thirty minutes. The ticket was also paid up for the entire month. That was strange.

  Maybe I did have the wrong car. Felix certainly wouldn’t have needed a month’s worth of parking out here, in South Seattle.

  Unless someone else had parked it here and hoped it wouldn’t be noticed until they could move it somewhere further away.

  I swallowed uneasily. My mom’s car had never been found and every time I saw a red Nissan Sentra, I slowed down to see if maybe, by some miracle, it was her at the wheel. It never was.

  But at least I’d found Felix’s car. It was something. I went back to the strip mall, where there was a coffee shop and called Jaden to tell him the good news.

  Chapter 7

  “You look a mess,” Jaden said, as he approached my table outside the coffee shop. I had an iced latte in front of me and wore my sunglasses because the sun had finally broken through the clouds. My copper mane flew around my face, wild and untamed thanks to my epic bike ride but otherwise, I thought I looked pretty great.

  “You look like an ass,” I countered, even though he actually looked quite handsome in his jeans and plain black coat, a much less stuffy ensemble than his usual council uniform.

  Jaden blinked, surprised by my brazen reply. His hand came toward me and for a hot second I thought he was going to slap me. But instead, he tugged at my hair and when his hand pulled back, he was holding a big, brown leaf. “I didn’t mean it as an insult, merely an observation.”

  I scowled. Sure he didn’t.

  “
Do you want to see the car or not?” I asked, standing. When he wasn’t looking, I surreptitiously smoothed my hands over my hair to check for additional debris.

  “Of course. Lead the way.” He gestured for me to go ahead of him. I grabbed my latte and purse and marched down the sidewalk.

  When we reached the car, he sucked in a breath.

  “It’s his, isn’t it?” I asked.

  He stared at the bright blue sedan, slowly pressing his palm against the trunk as if touching it would make it real. Then he looked up at me, his eyes wide. “How did you find it?”

  “Magic,” I said, with a wink.

  He studied me thoughtfully and then turned his attention back to the car. He ducked down to peer inside the back window. “But really, what did you do? You didn’t go to the mortal cops.” It wasn’t a question. It was an accusation.

  “No,” I said quickly. It was easy to forget, with his casual attire and the sun shining on his silky black hair, that Jaden was a member of the council and could easily arrest me on a whim. All he had to do was tell them I’d been poking around trying to find Felix after the council had decided it was a waste of time, and I’d get a good slap on the wrist, possibly a few weeks in jail. “I told you. I did a spell.”

  “What kind of spell?”

  “I blended elements of a lost object spell and a tracking spell.” I swept my hand over the car, gesturing like a game show model at a prize. “Voila.”

  “That worked?” He quirked an eyebrow up but at least he seemed to be considering the possibility.

  “You tell me,” I said, irritated that everyone was so quick to doubt my magic. Just because they refused to deviate from spells written centuries ago didn’t mean it wasn’t possible to create new ones or use magic in new ways.

  “It certainly appears so,” he said and he flashed me a smile. A real, genuine smile.