“Let’s not be cynical. They could have tied him up and shoved him in a broom closet.” Jaden narrowed his eyes, unamused. I threw up my hands. “Someone attacked Val and I, stole the car we found, and then stuck a fake ‘I’m outta here!’ note inside it. So who ‘found’ the car?”
“Tara Rodriguez.”
I pictured Tara. She was in her late thirties with chestnut hair and big brown eyes. Like Valerie, she tended to stick to an all-black wardrobe but it was always classy and never leaned toward Goth like Val’s attire often did. She was the mother of two young children, both under seven. Her husband had been a normal vanilla mortal until he’d discovered she was a witch by virtue of one of their toddlers casting a spell. He’d left her when he learned the truth. That was several years ago and Tara had adjusted easily into single motherhood. I’d always liked her and hoped having kids who were half-witches meant she’d advocate for more inclusion in the coven. She struck me as strong and unflappable, but hardly a stone-cold killer.
“She didn’t find it on her own,” Jaden continued. “She said someone sent a crow with a message telling her where the car was. She didn’t recognize the handwriting.”
I pressed my fingers to my temples. “Of course. So that’s another dead end. Unless she’s lying.”
“She has the anonymous note,” Jaden said, as if that proved it.
I was about to argue that the note could have been faked when a scream pierced the air.
Chapter 12
My blood curdled in my veins. I threw the car door open and leapt out, racing toward the sound. Neighbors came out of their houses or pulled back curtains to see what was happening. I blew past them. I recognized the scream. It was Valerie and she was in trouble.
I reached my house less than a minute later, pulse racing. It had taken me mere seconds. But I wasn’t fast enough. The screams faded and then, with the slam of a car door, abruptly stopped.
But what car door? Where was the car? My head swiveled from side to side as I searched for any sign of Val. The cars parked in front of my house sat still, empty, unmoving. I screamed her name. There was no answer.
Jaden called after me. Somewhere, a car peeled out.
I bolted up the steps to the house. The door was unlocked. I knew I’d locked it when I’d left but the knob turned easily in my hand.
I ran inside and straight through the house, to the back door, which had been left wide open. Our small yard was surrounded by a three-foot fence. I could see heavy prints in the plant beds. Half the basil plant had been crushed into the dirt.
“Valerie?” I called.
Our yard backed up to the neighbor’s backyard. I could see a sliver of the next street over between my neighbors’ houses. I heard a car peel out from the next street over and felt my heart leap into my throat.
I ran down the short hall. Val’s bedroom door was open, her bed neatly made. She wasn’t there.
“Val? Seth?” I checked the bathroom. Empty. Panic rose in my throat. Seth came crawling out from under my bed and a minuscule amount of pressure in my chest eased. He was okay and that was a relief.
He looked at me curiously.
“You’re a good boy,” I said, scooping him up. “Good boy to hide from the bad guy. But where did he take her?”
The front door burst open and, still down the hall in my room, I screamed.
“It’s just me!” Jaden called. He sounded out of breath.
I carried Seth into the living room. He clung to me, his claws digging into my shoulder like little knives.
Jaden was sweating and panting, his face flushed. “I raced around the block, toward the screams,” he explained, because I was too dumbstruck to ask. “I saw a van peel out. But I didn’t… I couldn’t…” He shook his head. “It was a rental van. The moving kind.”
I nodded. That was good. We had something. Not a whole lot, but it was better than nothing.
Seth finally loosened his grip and began squirming so I put him down even though I didn’t want to let him go. He went up to Jaden and sniffed his black boots.
“Hey, buddy,” Jaden said to him. Seth rubbed against his leg.
I studied the counter. Valerie had supplies out, including a bucket of smooth stones. She’d been making charms. I picked one of the finished charms up. Luck charms. I felt sick.
“It’s my fault,” I said.
“It’s not,” Jaden said firmly.
But it was.
“I kept looking into Felix’s disappearance. I went to speak to Lani Reed. She must have told the council…” I trailed off. “Whoever it is, they know I’m still looking. That they didn’t scare me off. So they took Val to punish me.”
Jaden was silent for a long moment. I wanted him to keep arguing with me, to tell me it wasn’t my fault even though it so obviously was. “We’ll find her,” is what he said instead.
“Yes. Yes, of course.” I ran into my room and tossed spellbooks onto my bed. I didn’t have Val’s blood. But I had her hair in her brush. I had her tooth brush. No, better, I had her magic. I could make this work.
I found my new tracking spell scrawled in a notebook. It had failed for Felix. I left the notebook on my bed. I’d try something else.
I grabbed Val’s brush from the bathroom and then carried it to her cauldron. A faintly sparkly pink liquid swirled around inside. The luck spell.
Perfect. I needed all the luck I could get.
I pulled out my own spell kit. Then I emptied most of the cauldron’s contents into a Tupperware. It probably wouldn’t hold the magic—magic fades quickly if not stored properly, like in a charm or finished potion—but Val would just have to start over if she got home.
When she got home.
I left a thick layer of the spell liquid coating the bottom of the cauldron. Her magic was infused in it and I needed my spell to use that, instead of her blood, to follow the trail. I added a tuft of her hair from her brush, followed by orange zest, a dash of peppermint, a cup of water, and a few splashes of hot sauce to mimic blood drops. Then I tossed in some allspice and pushed my magic into the mix.
Jaden watched me silently, his expression unreadable.
“Find Valerie,” I told the spell. I felt the magic move through my body, down my arm, and out through my fingers. The pot’s contents began to bubble and boil. With a faint pop!, purple smoke began to rise.
I grabbed one of Valerie’s luck charms—it couldn’t hurt—and stuck it in the pocket of my red leather jacket before I grabbed my purse and followed the smoke out the back door. “Let’s go,” I said. “Be good,” I told Seth. He jumped onto the counter to sniff the luck charms.
I ushered Jaden out into the yard and closed the back door, making sure it was locked this time. The smoke trailed out over the fence and through a small gap between my neighbor’s fences and out onto their street. I stepped over our short fence easily, mentally reminding myself to ask our landlord if he’d be willing to install something more secure, like a wall. Magical wards could offer some measure of protection, but after this, I’d take all I could get.
We popped out onto the street as the smoke made an abrupt turn to the left. I remembered hearing the car peel out and could see a black tire mark on the pavement. I followed the smoke down the street.
“I’m going to get my car,” Jaden said. “Keep following it. I’ll come pick you up.”
I nodded. Valerie had been taken by car. It made sense to follow her trail in one. The faster we caught up to her, the better. I continued to follow the smoke trail as it zipped down the street.
Five minutes later, Jaden’s black sedan rolled to a stop beside me. I hopped in and we followed the smoke as it turned down several residential streets until we reached Broadway, a main drag, and finally turned down Denny, heading for the freeway.
Jaden followed it diligently and I kept an eye on the smoke at all times, while he watched the road. After several miles, we relaxed into the drive, the smoke always slightly in front of us like a beacon.
“Seth? No. He’s my cat. I call him a familiar sometimes, because it annoys Valerie, but he’s really just my best friend.”
I expected Jaden to mock me for having a cat as a best friend and braced myself. Jaden swerved into the right lane so he could follow the smoke down an exit ramp. “That’s good. The familiar ritual is cruel.”
I glanced over at him. Strands of his black hair fell in his pale face. His jawline was sharply cut but there was a softness in his face I’d never really noticed before. “I think so, too.”
“I’ve tried getting the council to outlaw it, but they don’t want to mess with tradition.” He glanced at me for a split second. “But perhaps it’s time we take a hard look at the things we allow for the sake of tradition.”
The smoke led us to a truck stop near a wooded area. As we pulled in, I could see a housing development being built not far behind the small patch of forest but the trees extended a good half mile or so before the construction started, maybe further.
The truck stop’s parking lot was mostly empty, except for one big rig that was parked and turned off, and a red SUV near the restroom under a yellow street lamp. A couple was currently loading their small children into the back of it.
There was no sign of Valerie, the van, or whoever took her, but the smoke curled across the parking lot. The van had had a good ten-minute lead on us, depending on how fast they’d driven.
I jumped out of Jaden’s car and followed it around past the closed snack shack, a couple of vending machines, and a restroom. It led me into the wooded area behind the stop and through some thick overgrowth.
I heard someone moving in the trees and froze. If it was Valerie’s kidnapper, this might be a trap. I hadn’t bothered to grab extra defense spells. All I had on me besides the luck charm was an unused smoke spell that might give me time to slip away if the perpetrator didn’t throw another bomb spell in my direction, and a single shield spell that would only deflect one hit. I pulled it out and kept it in my fist.
I inched forward, heart in my throat. The smoke had stopped a little further into the trees. The canopy overhead was thick, making it darker inside. There was no easy footpath to follow, so my approach was loud, full of crunching leaves and broken branches.
As I rounded the corner, I saw Valerie. She’d been tied to a tree with rope, her mouth covered with duct tape that had been wound around her head and over her hair. She screamed when she heard me coming but the scream was muffled.
“It’s me, it’s Avery,” I said. The muffled screaming turned to muffled shouting orders. At least she was still okay enough to boss me around.
I rushed over and pulled out the pocket knife from my spell kit. (Some spells required cutting bits of string or hair, so it was handy to keep on my person.) I reached for the rope wound around her middle. Through the tape, she yelled “No!”
I stopped, took a step back, and assessed the situation. Once I looked for magic, the spell around her became obvious: a menacing red glow shimmered around the rope. The spell smelled like gasoline and burnt toast.
“Oh, goddess,” I said.
Jaden came stomping through the brush. He sucked in a breath when he saw Val and the fire spell that was holding her captive. If either of us touched the rope, it would ignite.
Jaden swore. “I have salt in my car.”
“We need more than salt for this,” I said. Salt might be able to diffuse simple magic but this spell had been intricately woven with powerful magic. Salt might lessen the explosion but it would also probably make the spell burst into flames. Valerie wouldn’t care if the flames that consumed her had thirty percent less heat.
Jaden considered. After a moment, he closed his eyes and reached out a hand to feel the magic. His eyes opened. “We can open a circle. Do you have ash?”
Valerie squirmed. She didn’t trust me to open circles. She barely trusted herself. Circles were dangerous. When a circle was opened, it cut away most of the barriers between our world and the demon realm, full of demons and brimstone. If one messed up when casting it, it would allow demons to enter the world. There were horror stories of witches who screwed up when opening circles only to be possessed by demons who devoured their souls and then, in the guise of the witch, slaughtered all of the witch’s loved ones. Some advanced spells required an open circle and only practiced witches dared use them.
I’d only done it once and the sheer heat inside the circle, combined with my constant terror of being devoured by a demon, assured I never did it again. When a spell called for it, I found a way around it.
“Will that work?” I asked, ignoring Valerie’s squirming.
“I can use the circle’s energy to pull the spell apart.” Jaden glanced down at the ground around us, covered in brush, sticks, and rocks. “But we need to clear space.”
Valerie shook her head, eyes still wide.
“What other choice do we have?” I asked her.
She stared at me, but didn’t try to speak because she had no response. She knew Jaden was right. A spell this powerful could only be diffused with equally powerful magic, and a circle could give us enough leverage to do it.
“It’ll be fine,” I told her. “Trust me.”
From the look in her eyes, she did not trust me.
An hour later, Jaden and I had the area around Valerie as clear as it was going to get. My hands were scratched and cut from all of the little branches and barbs I’d moved, which in addition to the burn on my right hand put them in pretty sorry shape. I’d gotten sap and grime on my jeans. At least my leather jacket was spelled to resist stains.
“Send for help!” Valerie mumbled through the duct tape. It was easy enough to make out, because she’d said the same thing at least two dozen times as we’d cleared the brush, mushrooms, and sticks from the area surrounding her.
“You don’t trust my magic?” Jaden asked. He was being totally serious. Valerie’s eyes flicked accusingly to me.
“It’s my magic she doesn’t trust,” I said.
“From what I’ve witnessed today, I see nothing to doubt.”
My heart swelled. It was easily the best—maybe only—compliment another witch had ever given me about my magic. But now was not the time to let butterflies loose in my stomach.
“He’s opening the circle,” I said to Valerie, to reassure her. “I promise to stand back and not touch anything.”
That seemed to calm her slightly. Or maybe she was just resigned to her fate.
I stepped backward, into the piles of brush, and let Jaden work. He drew a circle in the dirt with a stick and then sprinkled the circle he’d drawn with ash. He spoke words in Gaelic, words I didn’t know. Every witch used whatever language for magic suited them best. I used plain old English, but some chose another language because it was easier for them to ground their power in words they didn’t speak every day.
He threw out his hands and dropped ash from each fist to the ground. Smoke rose from where it landed and traveled to the edge of the circle, stopping at the invisible barrier, filling the space.
Valerie whimpered slightly. Sweat beaded on her upper lip. Even from where I stood several feet away, the heat and power of the circle was magnetic and hypnotizing, like a raging bonfire.
Jaden uttered a command and then said it again in English, “Undo!” He reached for the rope. Valerie squeezed her eyes shut. I stared, unable to look away. His fingers barely grazed it when the energy in the spell exploded.
Instead of bursting into flames, a red bolt like lightning shot into the ground. Jaden stumbled backward, but managed to stop before he reached the edge of the circle. More lightning bolts shot from the rope into the dirt. Valerie coughed. Jaden pushed his own magic into the rope and it fell away, disintegrating into nothing.
He clapped his hands together and said more words.
A blast of heat hit me in the face as the circle collapsed.
Valerie fell forward. Jaden caught her.
“You’re safe,” he told her.
I nearly collapsed with relief myself.
Chapter 13
Getting the duct tape out of Valerie’s hair was going to be a miserable process and require some sort of Goo-Be-Gone spell, but I clipped the tape away from her mouth so she could at least speak.
“Who took you?” I asked, once she’d confirmed that she was wigged out but otherwise all right.
She shook her head. “They wore a ski mask and bulky clothes. Couldn’t really tell much. Pretty sure it was a man.”
She ambled to the car on shaky legs with Jaden supporting her. He helped her into the back seat.
I felt a little nauseous myself as I climbed into the passenger seat. Now that Valerie was okay, my limbs had gone weak and my body ached.
Jaden got into the car and, without a word, drove back to the freeway and toward home.
“How did you guys find me?” Valerie asked. Her voice was raw and rough. “I thought I would die out there.”
“Avery has a few tricks up her sleeve, it seems,” Jaden said, glancing in the rearview mirror to meet Valerie’s eyes.
“She does?” Val asked, surprised.
“Hey, I just saved your behind,” I said. “Don’t sound so grateful.”
“Of course I’m grateful,” Valerie said. There was an unspoken “…but” at the end of that sentence, but I didn’t dare bring it up. I was pretty sure it was “…but it was your fault I was grabbed in the first place.”
“I did a tracking spell,” I explained instead.
“Without my blood?” I could hear the furrow in her brow and turned. Sure enough, she looked as confused as she would if I told her I’d thrown sticks on the ground to douse her location (which wouldn’t have worked for anyone without the right brand of faerie magic).
“I used the magic from your luck spell instead of blood,” I said. “By the way, I had to dump most of it out.”
Risky Magic: A Trash Witch Novel Page 8