Risky Magic: A Trash Witch Novel

by Tori Centanni

  She groaned but it was half-hearted.

  “Is that what you did?” Jaden asked, his expression serious. A moment ago, he’d been beaming at his ability to free Valerie from the whole bomb-spelled rope situation, but now his jaw tensed.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Magic is more malleable than most witches think. Plus, everyone’s magic is as unique and personal as their blood. It’s a good substitute if you can get it.”

  Jaden was silent for a long moment. An awkward tension started to fill the car like a fog. I glanced back at Valerie, who looked exhausted, tape still stuck in her hair, wrists rope burned from where they’d been bound. She stared out the window, as if too tired to continue having a conversation.

  “What?” I asked, as the silence became oppressive. No one answered. “Guys, what? Don’t tell me you’re so impressed by my awesome magic skills that you’re at a loss for words.” I laughed nervously. No one joined in.

  “It’s simply that witch magic is not that malleable,” Jaden said. “Or at least, it should not be.”

  Valerie continued to stare out the window and say nothing. Jaden stole glances at me as he drove, his face a mixture of curiosity and concern.

  I gave up and tried not to let the silence during the rest of the drive suffocate me.

  Jaden followed us into the house. Valerie was desperate to get the tape untangled from her hair and take a long shower so she went into her room to gather supplies.

  Jaden leaned against the back of the sofa as I pulled Seth off the counter. The witch’s green eyes tracked my movements across the kitchen. He was still looking at me like he’d never seen me before, which set off a weird mixture of warmth and trepidation in me. I opened my mouth to ask a question, though what, I hadn’t quite decided.

  But then Valerie came down the hall with a storage box full of spell supplies and hefted it onto the island. She glanced up at Jaden and looked surprised to see he was still there.

  “We don’t need a bodyguard or whatever,” Valerie said to him.

  This was the woman who’d turned on every light she could find before she’d been grabbed and taken. No doubt as soon as she cleaned up, she’d be casting powerful protection wards around the property.

  “You do, though I do not intend to fulfill that role. I’m merely here to help,” Jaden said. “Why did the kidnapper simply tie you to a tree and not…” He stopped short of asking why the attacker hadn’t murdered Valerie.

  She shook her head as she pulled things out of her box. “They went to get something. Or maybe someone. I’m not sure. I guess they thought the spell would hold me until they could return. If you hadn’t found me…” She swallowed and got back to work.

  “Can I help?” I asked.

  “No,” she and Jaden said at the same time.

  I blinked. “Okay, seriously, what is going on with you two?” I turned toward Jaden and folded my arms over my chest. “Valerie has a good reason to be touchy but you’re staring at me like I suddenly grew a second head.”

  “Witch magic isn’t as malleable as you’d like to believe,” Jaden said.

  “I think I’ve proven—” I started.

  He held up a hand. Silver rings glittered on his fingers and there was something regal and authoritative in the motion. Even out of the uniform, Jaden Blackmore was old witch stock.

  “Witch magic does not work the way you’ve used it,” he said firmly.

  Valerie cleared her throat. “Jaden, maybe you can help me with this spell,” she said.

  I turned to stare at my roommate. She never wanted help with things, unless she needed someone to hold a container while she scooped out the contents or someone to wash her dishes. And it seemed even stranger for her to request the help of a council member when she was so desperate to impress him.

  Jaden’s gaze didn’t waver. His eyes bore into me.

  “What?” I demanded. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “He’s just babbling,” Valerie said. “Shouldn’t you be redoing wards on the house, Avery?”

  A chasm opened inside me. Something was wrong. Tension filled the air again, the way it had in the car. Valerie glared at Jaden, willing him to… something. Jaden stared at me like I was a puzzle he was trying to solve. My skin erupted in goosebumps and I wanted to go hide under a blanket.

  “Jaden,” I pressed, taking a step toward him.

  He flinched.

  My heart shattered into a thousand pieces. Jaden Blackmore flinched at my approach. I didn’t understand. The world seemed to shift under me. He recovered and stood, taking a step toward me as if to apologize for flinching away but it was too late. I knew now how he saw me: as a reckless freak, same as all the rest. The coven joke.

  It didn’t matter that I could do things with magic none of them were even willing to try. It didn’t matter that I had already done more to find Felix and his kidnapper than the council had. I did things my own way and therefore, my magic was freakish and weird.

  I swallowed past the lump that had formed in my throat. Tears pricked at my eyes, stinging and hot, but I refused to cry in front of a council member.

  Valerie was watching us like we might burst into flames. Jaden’s gaze finally flicked toward her. His brow furrowed. Valerie stared him down. It was a silent exchange I couldn’t interpret.

  After an agonizingly long moment, he turned back to me. His jaw was set, his muscles tense.

  “Seriously, what the heck is going on?” I pleaded. I was so tired of being ostracized.

  “Your magic is strange for a witch,” Jaden said. “But it’s quite in line with a warlock.”

  I froze. The chasm inside me widened as I tried to make sense of his words. “You’re saying I cast spells like a half-demon?” I asked.

  Jaden’s face was hard and impassive. I turned to Valerie, who was always quick to shut down idiotic ideas. Valerie, who never let stupid things I said slide. Her face had gone blank and dark. But she didn’t argue.

  “I’m not a warlock,” I said. “My mother was a witch. She was on the council…”

  Neither of them said anything. Neither of them agreed.

  The ground fell out from under me.

  Chapter 14

  “I’m not a warlock,” I said, my voice shaky. It was the fourth or fifth time I’d said it. I wouldn’t have kept repeating myself except that neither Valerie nor Jaden were saying anything. Valerie kept her head down and worked on her anti-goo spell for the tape in her hair, pausing periodically to shoot hateful looks Jaden’s way. Jaden stared openly at me, as if his weird theory that I was part demon somehow turned me into a new person.

  “It can’t be true,” I said.

  Seth jumped up onto the back of the sofa. Jaden reached to pet him and I grabbed my cat, protective and not wanting my accuser to touch him. Seth let me hold him for exactly sixty seconds before wiggling out of my grip and retreating to his cat tree in the corner of the room, where he kept watch and licked his paws.

  “Who’s your father?” Jaden asked.

  A frog wiggled into my throat, blocking the rising bile from getting out. I shook my head. I didn’t know. I’d never known. My mother hadn’t spoken about him and then she was gone when I was so young, before I’d really had a chance to ask. I mean, sure, as a little kid, I’d asked why I didn’t have a dad. But my mom had always brushed it off without answering. And despite my pleading, my aunt Cecily had always denied any knowledge of my father, swearing that my mother never told her.

  Jaden, taking my silence for the admission of ignorance it was, let out a heavy breath. “Then you have to admit it’s possible.”

  “It’s not,” I said. “I mean, if I were half-demon, I’d know.”

  Wouldn’t I?

  “My mom did the same sort of magic,” I said. “She played with spells and they worked.”

  “As much as you do?” he asked.

  No.

  “Probably!”

  Valerie finished her spell and the aroma of honey and bas
il filled the kitchen and living room. She retreated with her cauldron to take a shower and use the spell goo to wash the tape out of her hair.

  “She knows,” Jaden said softly, as soon as the sound of the shower filled the house.

  “She knows what?” I asked, thrown. My mind was reeling and nothing made sense.

  “That you’re a warlock.”

  I took a shuddering breath and stared down the hall as if I had X-ray vision and could see Valerie, gage her expression, figure her out. “That’s not possible. Because it’s not true.”

  “She knew and she didn’t want me to tell you,” he said. But his tone was soft, gentle. He wasn’t trying to hurt me. He really believed I was a freaking half-demon and yet he was still showing me kindness.

  The nausea began to overwhelm me. The sickly sweet aroma of Valerie’s spell plus the way the room seemed to close in on me combined to make me unsteady. I needed fresh air. I needed to get out of there.

  I locked the backdoor and did a quick ward on the door itself. Then I grabbed my wallet, shoved it into the pocket of my trusty red leather jacket, and headed out the front door. Jaden followed. I warded the front door quickly as well. It wasn’t as good as warding the whole house, a process that took over an hour, but it would at least give Valerie fair warning if someone else tried to break in.

  I didn’t want her taken again and whoever took her obviously knew where we lived. But I also couldn’t stay there, not right now.

  Jaden tried to follow me down the street. I whirled on him. “Stop. I need to be alone.”

  He clenched his jaw.

  “Go stay with Val. She needs protection.” I clenched my fists. “I need time.”

  “It’s not safe,” he said, his voice low. “Someone is after us. They nearly murdered your roommate. You don’t think you’re next on their list?”

  I shivered. I probably was. But at the moment, I needed to get the heck away from him, and Val, and that house. I needed to talk to someone who knew the truth, to reassure myself that I wasn’t part demon. That I wasn’t the freak the coven believed.

  “I can take care of myself,” I said, and walked briskly away, without looking back.

  Aunt Cecily lived in a trailer park called Garden Heights. The park was surrounded by tall emerald green bushes that rose like pillars to keep visibility from the street to a minimum. Most of her neighbors were permanent residents, just like Cecily herself. Small gardens grew in front of most of the trailers, surrounded by short six-inch fences. Cecily’s trailer was at the very back and her garden was the largest of all, going around the side and back of her trailer. Witches needed a lot of herbs and specialty plants, so we all gardened to some extent, but Cecily had an especially verdant green thumb.

  Cecily and I had lived in a small house in North Seattle until I turned eighteen and moved out. She’d put the house on the market, bought her trailer, and moved to a quieter neighborhood.

  I knocked on the door and she answered. I was greeted by the smell of rosemary and lemon, which might have been roast chicken, or a batch of focus potion, one of her specialties. It had sold like hotcakes in my high school, where I surreptitiously peddled the stuff to my human classmates before midterms and finals, claiming it was an herbal brain enhancer.

  “Avery!” she greeted me warmly.

  Cecily was in her fifties with graying brown hair and bright brown eyes behind purple cat eye glasses. She wore yoga pants and a floral blouse and ushered me inside. Her living room was home to a worn gray sofa, a terrarium full of toads on a wooden television stand, and a shelf of spellbooks.

  “Hi, Aunt Cecily,” I said.

  “You look like death, girl,” she said. She was never one to pull punches. “Come on in, let’s get you some tea.”

  I did my best to tame my hair as I took a seat at her small dining table that was wedged between the galley kitchen and the living room. I let her make me tea as my mind worried over the conversation with Val and Jaden over the past couple of hours. As the water boiled, she chatted about her new plants, a tiff with a neighbor over the boundaries of her garden, and how she’d just tried a great pulled pork recipe in her Crock Pot.

  “You’re not listening,” she said, setting down a cup of tea in front of me along with a plate of cranberry oatmeal cookies, my favorite.

  “I am! Brent is a jerk and you really like pork tacos,” I said.

  She leveled her gaze at me. “What do you need, Avery?”

  I studied the bits of tea leaves floating around my mug. “Who was my father?”

  Cecily tilted her head. “I don’t know, dear. Your mother never wanted to talk about it, as I’ve told you.”

  “Come on, you must have some idea,” I said. “Who was she dating?”

  “Meredith didn’t date much. She was too busy experimenting with magic. That was her true passion. When I found out she was pregnant, I was bowled over. And she seemed as surprised as I was, to be honest.” She shrugged and looked at the untouched plate of cookies. “But I’ve told you all this before. Why are you really here?”

  I forced myself to meet my Aunt’s eyes. “Was my father a demon?”

  Cecily looked so genuinely shocked that I let myself have a moment of relief. If it were true, it would be devastating enough. If she’d hidden the truth from me all these years, I’d never be able to forgive her. Instead, she was totally stunned by the mere idea and struggled to find words.

  “Where on earth did you get that idea?” she finally asked.

  “My magic is weird,” I said. “I thought I was pushing the boundaries of what witches can do, but someone suggested it might be something else.”

  “Like warlock magic,” she supplied.

  I nodded solemnly. Demons were strange, cruel creatures from the Underworld. I couldn’t imagine my mother ever being close to one, though some witches were. Familiars were animals with souls bound to you through demons and some witches summoned demons in closed circles, forcing them to help with spells they couldn’t do on their own. Copulating with a demon wasn’t common but it wasn’t totally unheard of, or warlocks wouldn’t exist.

  For years, members of my coven had whispered that perhaps I did used a demon to do my bidding and make my strange magic worse. It was a vicious rumor that circulated when I was a teenager.

  Cecily stared at her tea, her brow crinkled. “I’d never considered that possibility before. Who suggested such a thing?”

  I started to say Jaden, but he hadn’t suggested it so much as worked it out as a possible explanation of my abilities. Valerie, though… Jaden had insisted she believed it to be true and that she was hiding it from me. Which was silly. If I were a warlock, no witch worth her spell salt would be my roommate.

  Still.

  “Valerie Lopez,” I said.

  Cecil frowned deeper. “Well, you know, her mother was quite the gossip. And you know how the gossip vines are. It’s just talk, Av.”

  “What if it’s not?” My pulse raced. I’d mentally gone over every strange spell I’d made work, every time Valerie had looked at me like I might accidentally cast a spell that would suck the world into a black hole. I’d always thought she was secretly a little jealous that I could so effortlessly work magic with anything on hand, and maybe slightly scared of a possible explosion. But what if she’d just been terrified of demon magic this whole time?

  Cecily considered. That was what I loved about her. She didn’t immediately discount things just because she didn’t want to believe them. “That would explain why your mom was so tight-lipped about it.”

  I exhaled and my chest shuddered. I couldn’t be a warlock. It wasn’t possible. I would know. And my mother… she would never do that.

  Cecily reached across the table and took my hand, squeezing it gently. “Does it really matter? Who cares who—or what—your father was? You’re still you. And your skill with magic is really something. As the kids say, let the haters be jealous. Screw ‘em.”

  I smiled faintly. Leave it to Aun
t Cecily to play the “Who cares if you’re a half-demon card?” I finally reached out and took a cookie, taking small bites as I swallowed past the ever-present lump in my throat.

  Chapter 15

  I left Garden Heights just as the sky broke open and rain began to fall. Like most Seattleites, I didn’t carry an umbrella. Seattle rain vacillated between a fine mist and a heavy downpour that the wind often blew sideways, making umbrellas impractical on most days. Besides, even when I bought one during a particularly bad storm, I’d usually lose it in no time flat.

  Instead, I moved quickly out to the street and jogged toward the bus stop, which at least had a covered shelter that would keep me dry until the next bus came along.

  Headlights came around the corner behind me, so I moved to the shoulder to keep out of the way. The engine behind me revved, picking up speed. I turned to see a van barreling right at me. For a second, I froze in terror. Then I shook myself and ran, the van still bearing down on me like that boulder in Indiana Jones, only feet behind and ready to crush me beneath it.

  My mind reeled, blood thrumming my ears. I was out of protection charms and hadn’t grabbed more at the house—so stupid!—so I ran until I reached a break in the trees and was able to slip through. The van screeched to a stop, its headlights shining through the trees.

  I found myself in someone’s front yard. I bolted for their fence, hopping over it and landing in their backyard.

  Out on the street, a car door opened and shut. A small explosion smacked into the lawn where I’d been only seconds before. Another firebomb spell.

  Someone inside the house screamed. Someone else shouted.

  I was torn between wanting to see who it was and getting the heck out of there. After a second’s hesitation, common sense prevailed over curiosity. I jumped the fence into the neighbor’s yard and then crossed into the yard behind that, moving out onto the next street.

  Once my shoes hit pavement, I ran as fast as I could, pausing only briefly to check my purse for any useful spells. I found only a pen and a few mints from restaurants. I palmed a mint and kept running.