The Blue Amber Spell

by Amanda Hartford

  But there is, indeed, a force being tapped here and, whatever it is, it’s not hocus-pocus. Sorry, but there really is no such thing. As Arthur C. Clark’s third law so eloquently puts it: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” (from Hazards of Prophecy: 1973). As a mathematician and scientist, it’s always been difficult for me to believe in forces that don’t mesh up with the laws of physics.

  Which doesn’t mean that there’s not more to learn. I’ve seen things here in the alley shop that would have sent my university colleagues screaming into the night. It’s absolutely true: we don’t know what we don’t know, and that’s the most frightening part.

  Once I get past the theoretical—and by that, I mean a tiger in the basement—I know enough to call an expert. For that, I have Mark.

  Mark Corcoran is a gruff bear of a man, the sort of guy usually wearing flannel and denim, the one you would expect to see bench pressing his weight in cheeseburgers and chugging six-packs. But Mark’s life is about words. What he loves most is to spend a day in an obscure library, ferreting out facts that have not been known in the world for two or three centuries.

  I think if Mark could figure out a way to make a living from just sharing his research without actually having to write novels, he’d be a happy, happy guy. In fact, he tried it after college, publishing an ever-expanding set of 99-cent fact sheets on Amazon. He hoped that undergraduates would latch onto them, but it turns out that students are perfectly happy to base their papers and assignments on the sketchy facts already available online for free.

  Mark’s next thought was to use his research as the basis for literary historical novels. So far, he’s written nine of them: elegant, deeply textured intrigues based upon the lives of real historical figures. He writes them for love—which is good because his monthly income from them would barely buy him a tank of gas.

  He finally got fed up with poverty about ten years ago. We were sitting in a rather dismal Chinese restaurant on Christmas Eve, eating soggy pot stickers and commiserating that each of us was alone and broke. I’d been drifting ever since I left New Orleans, supporting myself with a little adjunct teaching and scattered consulting work, but never really landing anywhere. He was between wives, working nights in a call center and spending his days in the stacks. I had no idea when he slept.

  At that fateful meal, I finally talked myself into opening Pentacle Pawn. He didn’t say much, but the next day he bought himself a T-shirt bearing the word Art in beautiful silver script, but it was crossed out, with the word CASH superimposed in fluorescent green block letters. He never looked back.

  Mark created a second pen name, this time female. She writes a steamy romance series and releases at least six installments a year. Every book in the series so far has hit the bestseller list on its first day of release. Last year, he bought a yacht.

  ◆◆◆

  By the time Mark got to the shop, I was fighting mad at Lissa for accepting something dangerous. “There should never have been anything downstairs that could even generate a tiger,” I hissed.

  Mark quickly cut to the heart of the matter. “That wasn’t negligence. That tiger was put down there to protect something. So who do you suppose wants to keep you out of your own vault?”

  I didn’t even have to think about it. “Simon. But how...”

  “How often do you clean down there?”

  “What’s that got to do with it?”

  “Just work with me here. How often?”

  “The floor gets mopped every week, and Lissa is supposed to dust and sweep every day.”

  Mark nodded. “Lissa again.”

  I shook my head. “Lissa does not have the skill to summon that tiger. Neither does Simon. It would take a bit of work, even for me.”

  “So,” Mark said patiently, walking me through it, “how would you start?”

  First, you need a tiger. More accurately, in this case, you need part of a tiger: a scrap of fur, a tooth, even a chunk of scat. You’d begin with a tiny piece of your tiger, and use that to summon the animal itself.

  I needed to take another look at Lissa’s silver acorn necklace.

  ◆◆◆

  At that moment, as if she had been summoned, the door opened and Lissa swirled inside in a flurry, juggling a couple of designer shopping bags and a takeout box from the barbecue joint.

  She wasn’t wearing her necklace.

  It took every bit of patience that Mark and I had to wait for her to get her treasures settled behind the counter. I took a breath and calmed myself as much as possible before I began.

  “Lissa, where is the necklace that your mother gave you?”

  Lissa was shamefaced. “I lost it. You won’t tell her, will you?”

  I assured her that I wouldn’t, but Lissa looked like she was ready to panic. I needed to diffuse the situation. If Penelope was the source of the spell that conjured that tiger, we could not let her know that we were on to her.

  “It’s not important—I just wondered, that’s all,” I said, keeping my voice light. “It’s such a pretty piece.” I wasn’t about to tell Lissa about the tiger until we understood what was going on.

  Lissa’s fingers had gone to the spot at her throat where the necklace usually hung.

  “We’ll all keep an eye out for it,” I said, trying to soothe the girl. “It’ll turn up.”

  It’ll turn up in the basement, I thought, but I didn’t say it aloud. Instead, I changed the subject. “Your barbecue smells good.”

  Lissa finally smiled a little. “Yeah, my mother called and said she couldn’t make it over here with my dinner tonight, so I treated myself.”

  Another piece of the puzzle: Penelope arranged not to be here when the tiger manifested. I wondered whether she had considered that her daughter could have been the one to discover it. It gave me a chill.

  I gave Lissa of the rest of the night off and canceled my appointments so that Mark and I could work. Just in case, I removed Penelope’s name from the door spell. If she wanted to enter Pentacle Pawn from now on, she’d have to come through me.

  ◆◆◆

  I sat Mark at my desk and asked him to go through his books and mine. We needed that tiger spell. If the acorn necklace was what I suspected, it was more than enough to invoke a tiger. It also was not in my control; it belonged to Lissa.

  I realized I could easily fix that. I wrote out a pawn declaration for the necklace. I signed and dated it, making it official, then put a single dollar bill in the pocket of the sweater that Lissa always kept in the storeroom.

  The necklace was now mine, but there was another problem. To get rid of the tiger I had to find the necklace—but to look for the necklace, I had to get past the tiger.

  Comic-book-worthy ideas flashed through my mind. Shoot it with a tranquilizer gun? Well, I didn’t have a tranquilizer gun, and even if I did, I still had to get down there in the same room with the cat to use it. A suit of armor? I didn’t have one of those, either, and armor didn’t solve the problem that the cat could still bat me up against the wall and play handball with my body. A magical ring to levitate the cat out of the way? Fresh out of those, too.

  I needed some kind of barrier between the tiger and me—something that I could control. What was a tiger afraid of?

  Fire.

  I have to admit, I’m not too comfortable around fire, either. The whole witches and flames thing, not so much. But fire is one of the four cardinal elements, and I had learned to use it as a tool in my craft. I had also taught about its physical properties in my academic days, and I had awesome respect for its ability to both create and destroy.

  I keep a small apothecary section in a locked cabinet in the storeroom.

  Phosphorus is tricky stuff. It has to be kept underwater because it burns at room temperature. I kept mine in a Prometheus jar, made from a special kind of glass and with a securing spell for good measure. Phosphorus is called the devil’s element for good reason.

  It felt less
like a good idea when I was actually sitting in the chair, the Prometheus jar in one hand and a half-filled pitcher in the other. Just before I popped downstairs, Mark put a hand on my shoulder. Whether he was comforting me or just saying goodbye forever, I chose not to dwell on. I mumbled the vault incantation.

  The tiger was scrambling backward when I popped into the downstairs Eames chair. He’d been napping in my recliner when I startled him. The vault reeked of stale tiger urine.

  The tiger was as unhappy to see me as I was to see him. He watched me set the Prometheus jar on the floor.

  This was going to have to happen fast.

  I dumped the water out of the Prometheus jar into the pitcher and set both on the floor. The phosphorus in the jar quickly burned off the last of the moisture inside it and began to emit a cloud of dense white smoke. Phosphorus smoke irritates your lungs and burns your eyes, which is why it’s used in smoke bombs. I was betting that the tiger would want no part of it.

  Then again, neither did I, which is why I also had a small battery-operated personal fan in my pocket. I stayed behind the smoke screen, driving it ahead of me and forcing the tiger to be where I wasn’t. It sounded pretty good in the abstract. I was hoping the tiger would buy into it. I took a few steps in his direction. He scuttled back—so far, so good. We two-stepped around the cages again, the tiger watching me, and me watching the floor for Lissa’s necklace. I found it in the far corner.

  Time to retreat. I’m not very good at dancing, but I let the tiger lead. I backed all the way to the Eames chair. In a single motion, I dumped the water from the pitcher into the Prometheus jar and slammed the lid closed, mumbling the vault incantation as fast as I could. In a second, I was out of there.

  ◆◆◆

  I popped upstairs, reeking of phosphorus smoke but with Lissa’s necklace clutched tightly in my hand.

  “That was quick,” Mark deadpanned.

  “I was motivated.”

  I handed the necklace to Mark.

  He felt the acorn between his thumb and forefinger, then swabbed it with a clear liquid from one of the glass vials in his bag.

  “I think Lissa’s right—it’s water buffalo,” Mark said.

  What a let-down. I thought for sure we had the source of our tiger.

  But Mark wasn’t through. He pulled out a zippered pouch of jeweler’s tools and went to work on the silver fitting of the acorn. He unscrewed a tiny finial and removed the cap.

  “There’s something in here,” Mark said.

  He picked up some long tweezers and reached inside the acorn. He drew out a small butterscotch-colored cone. It was slightly transparent, like Daisy’s tortoiseshell comb. Mark sniffed it, then snapped his head back and wrinkled his nose.

  “It smells like tiger.”

  He examined the object with his jeweler’s loupe. “It’s the tip of a claw, I think,” he said.

  “Is that enough to build an entire tiger from?”

  Mark looked grim. “Absolutely.”

  Great—just great. “Is it enough for you to make it go away?”

  Mark smiled. “Absolutely.”

  ◆◆◆

  We needed a third witch to perform the spell. Daisy was happy to oblige, and Jerry Ubered her over.

  While we waited for her, we prepared the workspace. Mark and I pushed the furniture and display cases against the walls, leaving a large open space in the middle of the room. The alley shop is usually lit by vintage lamps, but I took them to the storeroom and replaced them with large barrel candles at the perimeter.

  I offered Mark my work basket, but he’d brought his own, a kid’s pencil box from the 1950s. Mark opened the box and pulled out his besom, a full-sized broom made from a bundle of birch twigs tied to a hazel pole. He worked his way around the room, sweeping away the negative energy and preparing the space for ritual.

  Daisy arrived soon after, carrying a fabric bag needlepointed with blousy Victorian roses. I recognized that bag; my grandmother, and her mother before her, had used it to carry the supplies for their craft.

  There were no pleasantries, and we all wore our regular street clothes. Each of us has been doing this for a long, long time, and we don’t require theater. We were there to work.

  “The spell will destroy the claw,” Mark said.

  “I’m fine with that,” I said. “It’s illegal to own it, anyway. But we need to get it right the first time. We won’t have a second chance.”

  “I don’t see that we have any other choice,” Daisy said. We nodded in grim agreement.

  Daisy removed a small marble mortar and pestle from her bag. I placed the tiger claw in the bowl. Daisy glanced at both of us. Nobody was happy about it, but we all nodded.

  The musky smell of tiger surrounded us as she ground the claw to a powder.

  To remove the tiger from my vault, we would need a spell that reversed the manifestation. The first part would establish intent; the second part would take action.

  Mark used his staff to sketch a wide circle on the hardwood floor. I purified the space by standing at the center and casting salt onto the circle Mark had just drawn. I’d love to tell you it was some exotic artisan sea salt with connections to magic from ancient Mesopotamia, but it was just plain Morton from my kitchen. You work with what you have.

  Daisy and Mark stepped inside.

  Mark laid a round black-velvet cloth in the center of the circle. There was no magic in it; the fabric was simply a neutral background to mask any possible distractions.

  In the center of the cloth, Daisy placed a polished silver candle base, and on it she set a pure white beeswax pillar candle. Candles—representing the elements of earth, air, water, and fire—are essential to our craft. The solidity of the candle and its base is our earth; as the wax melts and vaporizes, it symbolizes the transmutation of water from ice to vapor. The moon was not yet up, but the silver candle base added the power of its essence.

  Daisy’s candles are among the most popular items for sale at the New Orleans shop, and she also makes them to order. This particular one was infused with mint and eucalyptus oils, known to be particularly good for dealing with manifestation. When Mark lit it, the aroma of the oils, mingled with the beeswax’s own hint of honey, was heavenly. Our focus on the flame brought the fifth element, spirit, to the party.

  Mark took a deep breath and began his incantation. He kept his voice low. We meditated for a few moments, setting our intent to remove the manifestation of the tiger. The rhythm of Mark’s droning incantation was like a mantra. No hocus-pocus was needed. It was all about getting focused.

  This is always the most challenging point for me in any ritual. I have a modern scientific mind and no particular talent for meditation. My mind wanders. But this time, I was motivated, and I managed to stay absolutely in the moment. I set up a constant video loop in my mind of that tiger poofing into a small cloud of cartoon smoke.

  So much for the preliminaries. It was time for action—to choose that the tiger be gone.

  I noticed that Daisy’s hands were trembling as she picked up the marble bowl at her feet. We had to get this right. One lapse in focus, one wrong word in the incantation, and we wouldn’t just remove the tiger from my basement. We would bring it to us.

  On the other hand, the magic was on our side. All major traditions and most religions have a version of the Wiccan Rede: An’ ye harm none, do what ye will, or that Christian crede that begins: Do unto others... Our practice subscribes to no particular belief system, but whoever set that tiger loose in my vault was clearly setting themselves up for some nasty karmic whiplash.

  Daisy took a pinch of the powdered claw and sprinkled it into the flame. As that burned, she added another and another until the bowl was empty.

  I realized I was holding my breath as the brilliant flame consumed the powder. It was partly anticipation. All I can tell you is: the stink was awful.

  We endured it, holding our focus until the candle burned down to a knot tied in the wick about an i
nch down.

  Daisy carefully lifted the pillar candle and set it on the velvet cloth. We continued to focus as she upturned the silver base and used it to snuff the flame.

  There was no flash of lightning, no thunderbolt to mark the end of the ritual. It doesn’t work that way. I tried to visualize the tiger proofing into that cloud of cartoon smoke, but I couldn’t summon up the image.

  Since Mark had opened the ritual, he also recited the benediction. He held his arms wide, then brought his open hands together in front of him. “Go in joy; go in peace.”

  We stood together in silence for a minute before Daisy extinguished her candle.

  “Want to give it a try?” Mark asked, his eyebrow raised.

  I dragged the Eames chair into the center of the room, took a deep breath, and sat down. There was a moment’s hesitation, and then I popped downstairs.

  The tiger was gone.

  Chapter Seven

  It had been an awful day, so I wolfed down a quick salad and headed for bed. John was already snoring. I tried to nap, but I slept fitfully. In my dreams, the tiger wore Lissa’s necklace as he chased me around the vault. I only slept three hours, thrashing entangled in the sheets.

  I’d been hoarding a trashy novel for just such an occasion, and by midnight I’d read six chapters and I was starting to nod off.

  The next thing I knew, I was wide-awake. Somebody had turned on the wide-screen—really loud.

  I didn’t bother with a robe over my leggings and oversize tee, just slid into my bunny slippers and padded down the hall. I should not have been surprised at what I saw when I peered around the corner into the living room.

  The remote hung suspended in midair. I could see that buttons were being depressed, but I couldn’t see the hands that were doing it. They finally found the mute button and the room went silent. As I watched, my earbuds floated up out of the basket on the end table and positioned themselves on either side of an invisible head.