She finished selecting her stuff and laid her groceries on the counter, spreading them out slightly so that Kim could get a clear look at each as he rang them up. He nodded and peered at the items with a rapid scan, then raised a hand to punch them into the register.
His face contorted momentarily in pain as he flexed his fingers. “Arthritis again,” the old man grumbled. “For the last two days, I thought it was flaring down again—like you said, eh? Usually it leaves me alone for a week between times when it gets bad, but this time, not so lucky. Makes me worry that it’s getting worse. I suppose I should expect that. I’m not getting any younger.”
Kera frowned in concern as Mr. Kim punched keys and rang up her total. He didn’t seem as strained today, but he was suffering.
She paid and pulled the food items back together to start bagging them so as to spare Mr. Kim the pain of having to grasp them. He reached out with his right hand while waving cantankerously with his left, indicating that he didn’t feel it was necessary for her to do that. As his hand brushed hers, she thought of something.
“Hey,” she said lightly. “Could I, uh, try something?” She pointed at his hand.
He turned his hand over as if looking for dirt, then chuckled wryly. “If you are thinking of cutting off my hand, I have already considered it.”
She smiled at him. “No, not that. Uh, reiki.” Yeah, that was a good cover. “You’ve heard of that, right? I’ve been learning it in my spare time. It might help your arthritis.”
“Reiki? I work in Little Tokyo.” He gave her a wry smile. “Many people have been trying to sell me their services. I think it is mostly up here.” He tapped at the side of his head. “But if you think it will help, I will let you try.”
“I do,” Kera said. “The worst thing that can happen is nothing, right? No charge, by the way.”
“Hah!” Kim laughed. “If it does work, I might have to start giving you a discount.”
She inhaled, cleared her mind, and mumbled the incantation for the healing spell under her breath, cupping her right hand over Mr. Kim’s knuckles while holding his palm gently with her left. As she’d done with herself over the last couple of days, she channeled the beneficent forces at work in the universe—what the book called “miraculous forces”— into a person afflicted with pain, seeking to counteract it.
As she had before, she perceived a faint, warm light. Not anywhere she could really see it, but somewhere nearby, hiding and yet all around them.
This time the rest of the effects were different. She didn’t feel the pleasant, comforting tingle because she was not the recipient. Instead, she felt as though someone had tapped a vein in her arm and was draining something out of her.
Her vision clouded and her head swam. Kera released Mr. Kim’s hand and stumbled against the counter, grasping fiercely at the surface to keep from falling to the floor. Dazed weakness nearly overwhelmed her.
“Kera! What’s the matter?” Kim leaned across the counter urgently to grasp her hand.
“Urgh.” She pushed herself upright, blinking and shaking her head. “I-I’m not sure...what happened.” The dizziness was starting to clear, but she still felt badly enervated. Her hands and feet trembled.
Mr. Kim continued to watch her closely as she gathered up the two plastic bags’ worth of supplies, and the bell rang as a young couple came in.
Kera waved a hand, trying to come up with a fib on the spot. “I guess I should have eaten lunch. I think I’m okay now, though.”
Mr. Kim sat back, looking at her worriedly, and with a great deal more assessment than she wanted to see.
“I’m all right,” she told him. “Sorry to worry you. I hope you feel better.” She left the counter, working hard not to let herself tremble. Her hands felt weak, making it difficult to carry the bags.
As she pushed out through the doors, though, in the reflection of the glass, she saw him look at his hands, flexing them and staring in wonder.
Outside, she allowed herself to process what had happened. Healing others was clearly more difficult than healing oneself, something she would have to keep in mind. Further, she guessed that Mr. Kim’s arthritis had been very bad; much worse than she’d thought and worse than the relatively minor burns she’d dealt with previously.
Healing him had required her to donate a large amount of her vital essence and channel more power than she’d realized. She hadn’t thought to place a limit on how much the spell could take from her and give to him, so it had simply taken as much as the job required.
Could she limit the amount of power a spell took? She’d have to find out.
Let this be a lesson, Kera, she told herself and winced since she imagined the admonition in her mother’s voice. Read all the fine print of a spell before you use it, especially on someone else.
Walking home was a struggle. The two grocery bags felt like they weighed forty pounds each, and the half-mile or so that separated her home from Kim’s store might as well have been a marathon.
Still, if she weren’t so tired, Kera would have laughed out loud, and if she weren’t carrying grocery bags and completely exhausted, she would have punched the sky in victory. Some good had come of what she’d done. She had used her power not just to set things on fire or wipe her memory but to help someone.
On the other hand, she was shaking so hard that it took her three tries to get her key into the lock. When she blundered through the door, she dropped one of the bags and had to pick up some of the food. Now that her body and mind knew she was safe, she was edging toward collapse.
Kera set the bags on the floor beside her refrigerator and hastily stuffed the cold or spoilable items in. She barely got the milk into its usual place on the fridge’s door shelf before she half-collapsed to her knees.
“Screw this,” she muttered. The dry stuff could wait until tomorrow.
She pulled herself back to her feet and stepped toward her bed, intending to undress normally, but once she reached the edge, she collapsed onto the mattress and passed out in her clothes, no longer caring.
Chapter Eighteen
Kera was almost positive she’d been having a dream that her phone was ringing. It might have been that once her actual phone went off, the dream added it in as an extra touch.
Whatever the case, she woke up to beeping.
“Shit!” she blurted, and she jerked herself awake, feeling groggy, confused, and incredibly hungry. She snapped her head toward her bed table. The phone’s screen was lit and the ringtone seemed to echo in her brain, suggesting she’d barely missed being able to answer it. She rubbed the sleep crusts from her eyes, pushed her hair back from her face, and waited to see if the caller would leave a message.
A minute or two later, the phone beeped again. An icon appeared over her voicemail, and she recognized the number—Cevin’s.
“Well,” Kera murmured, “this is either the good news I was hoping for or really bad news. Eh, Zee?” She glanced at Zee’s empty spot and winced. She couldn’t get used to not having Zee around, and given that this call might be to tell her that Zee was beyond repair, the reminder of his absence was particularly unwelcome.
She contemplated having some breakfast and a shower before listening to the message but decided she wouldn’t be able to enjoy either with the possibility of bad news hanging over her. She tapped the screen and chewed her lip as the message queued up.
Cevin’s tone was surprisingly chipper. “Hey, Kera. Cevin here. I’ve got good news.”
“Oh, thank God,” Kera muttered.
“You can come on in whenever you’re ready to get your bike picked up. Everything is fixed, and as I mentioned, the cost was covered. You won’t have to pay a dime. The one catch is that I can’t pick you up anytime today. I need to be at the Mermaid, so you’ll have to catch a bus or something. Or wait till tomorrow. Let me know when you make up your mind. Or just show up, in which case I guess I’ll see you when I see you.”
The phone beeped and returned to the autom
ated voice that informed Kera she had zero unread messages remaining.
She leaned back, closed her eyes, and smiled. “Finally.” She sighed. The haze of sleep was clearing from her head, and aside from the gnawing hunger, she was surprised by how good she felt. Sixteen or so hours of sleep could do that to a person.
The girl rolled off the bed and onto her feet, resolving to get active as quickly as possible. The gnawing hunger seemed to be a constant now, but she didn’t want to take the time for a big meal. The sooner she had Zee back, the better, and she could always grab something to eat once she had transportation again.
She got dressed quickly, ducked into the bathroom to comb her hair, and then on a whim, added some dark eyeshadow. Something about the way her new hair framed her face suggested that it would look good.
When she was done, she blinked at herself in the mirror. It did look good. Really good, in fact.
Not to mention, the look was appropriate for a witch.
There was a bus stop a block away, and from what she recalled of the schedules, one of the shuttles ought to come by within the next fifteen or twenty minutes. She grabbed her backpack, put her motorcycle helmet in it, and headed out.
The day was sunny again and warmer. As usual, she turned heads, but nobody accosted her. There was only one other person—an elderly Latino gentleman, not likely to try his hand at flirting—at the bus stop. Kera let him have the bench while she leaned against a signpost.
As she waited, she pulled out her tablet and opened How to Be a Badass Witch. She wanted not only to review the details of the healing spell but also to check for any notes she might have added at an earlier time and forgotten about.
The memory spell was proving to be a real liability.
Sure enough, the chapter entitled “How to Heal Minor Injuries and Ease Chronic Conditions” included a disclaimer about overdoing it.
Kera bit her lip and narrowed her eyes as she read. She was irritated with herself for having overlooked the book’s warnings. Granted, when she’d read it earlier, she had been in a hurry to get relief from her burns, so the fine print and provisos had eluded her attention.
The book’s authors clearly mentioned that the spell was only to be used for relatively low-level and non-life-threatening wounds. For long-term diseases or chronic pain, it was important to employ it within certain cautious limits.
Here, past-Kera had added a note. It read, See last page of the Intro. AND DON’T TRY TO CURE CANCER!
She snorted. I should have written, “Don’t try to cure arthritis.” If curing that is dangerous, cancer pretty much goes without saying.
Scrolling back to the end of the book’s introductory chapter, Kera soon found the passage her note referred to. Here, the authors included a disclaimer under the word IMPORTANT, bolded and in caps.
A higher-level spell, it explained, or in some cases, a low-level spell stretched too thin or made to do too much, could severely overtax the thaumaturgist, and in extreme cases, lead to injury, mental health problems, and death. Such miraculous works required tremendous expenditures of energy, and the caster would be responsible for all of it.
This, they elaborated, was why the book did not go into detail on highly powerful spells and why open-ended ones like the spell of healing came with admonitions to self-impose careful and sensible limits on how much would be used before beginning the incantations.
Kera nodded, rankled at the idea that the unpleasantness in Mr. Kim’s shop could have been avoided. “I’ll keep that in mind for the future,” she murmured to herself, quietly enough that the man on the bench would not hear her.
The bus pulled up. The girl slipped her tablet into her pack, stood up, and boarded. She was relieved to see that the vehicle was only running at about two-thirds capacity for the time being. Crowded buses were never fun.
Once settled in and confident that no other passengers were going to try to bother her or strike up a conversation, Kera slipped her tablet back out. She’d only read perhaps a third of the spellbook thus far and was curious what other mischief the volume might contain.
A few stops later, when they were halfway to the Mermaid’s corner of Little Tokyo, the bus had rapidly filled nearly to capacity. It nonetheless paused in its route to pick up an old lady, who slowly hobbled in.
Kera, seated near the front and on the left, saw that the most likely candidate for getting up and standing was a young man in a seat one row ahead of her and across the aisle to the right. The elderly woman hesitated in front of him, giving him a moment to consider donating his place while she adjusted her glasses and feigned confusion.
To her annoyance, Kera saw that the guy was clearly pretending to ignore the woman and waiting for her to pass, assuming that her plight couldn’t possibly be his problem.
The driver was looking over his shoulder in irritation at the delay. The other passengers exuded restlessness.
She could get up and give the woman her seat, of course, but Kera had a better idea, one that wouldn’t let the young man think he could get away with this stuff.
She leaned slightly to the side and pantomimed a stretch of her right arm while her hand wove in and out of the motions for a minor spell. One designed as a “poke” or minor stunning blow to be used against a hostile person, it caused a slight but painful muscular convulsion in a tight, concentrated part of the body.
Of course, it included a stern warning not to use it on someone’s throat, eyeball, diaphragm, testicles, or anything else delicate, but Kera had another target in mind.
She felt the gluteal muscle was more appropriate anyway.
She gave the final flick of her index finger, and the young man reflexively jumped to his feet, hand going back to massage his ass.
“Oh,” the old woman said, “thank you, sir.” She put a hand on his shoulder to steady herself and also to push him away as she sank into his seat.
A round of applause rose from the other passengers in the front half of the bus for the guy’s goodwill and decency, and the driver moved them onward.
The young man looked around in confusion. “Uh, yeah,” he stated, “no problem. It’s the right thing to do.” He nodded at some of his newfound admirers.
Kera, meanwhile, turned her eyes back to her book.
She got off at the stop at Alameda and 3rd Street, which was barely a block from work. Though she was feeling spry enough that she could have walked farther, she’d been separated from Zee for long enough. Quicker was best.
Since she was not scheduled to work today, Kera pushed through the front door rather than bother with the rear entrance. “Careful” wasn’t her usual modus operandi, but she would go with it for now since she didn’t know what variety of new security measures Cevin might have implemented. She’d have to ask him about that after she got Zee back.
Within, the place was nearly dead. They’d opened less than an hour ago, and there was still sunlight to spare.
One of the male waiters, a guy named TJ, noticed Kera at once but did not appear to recognize her.
“Hello,” he said over his shoulder. “Please seat yourself, and I’ll be right with you. Or there’s space at the bar.”
Kera grinned. “Thanks.”
TJ was busy clearing a table of glasses and plates, so she strode past him to the bar proper, where Cevin was getting things ready for the evening. He shot a quick glance at the new arrival.
“Good afternoon, ma’am,” he greeted her. “Have a seat. What’ll you have?”
Kera decided she could delay the reunion with her baby by an extra minute for the sake of playing along. “Hmm. How about a motorcycle?”
Cevin squinted and looked up again, now staring her full into the face, his mouth slack with befuddlement. She tried not to burst out laughing as the gears in his mind turned. He was apparently struggling to discern if she meant a Blue Motorcycle cocktail as he attempted to figure out if he knew the person in front of him.
“Kera?” he asked finally.
She cracked up. “Yes, it’s me. I didn’t think I looked that different.”
He shook his head, blushing. “I suppose you do. You could have warned me. You’ve...changed. Not in a bad way, but not what I was expecting.” His eyes moved over her, and she considered the possibility that black hair somehow drew more attention to her figure.
“Meh,” Kera responded. “It’s only the hair and a little makeup.”
Cevin came out from behind the bar. “Well, your hair looks a lot different. Did you also cut it? And I’m guessing more than a ‘little’ makeup. Don’t get me wrong, you look great. Just…different from your normal look.”
She shrugged. “Thanks.”
He gestured at the side hall, and they walked toward his office. “Is this because of that jackass? Are you, like, trying to make sure he won’t recognize you if he shows up again?”
“Nah,” the girl replied. “If I bump into him in a dark alley or empty parking lot again, he’s going to be the one who ought to worry. I burned some of my hair off while cooking, so I figured I might as well blacken all of it. That was why I applied for the bar instead of the kitchen.”
Cevin chortled. He didn’t laugh often, and she had to admit it was nice to hear him in a better mood for once. “It happens to the best of us, I suppose.”
“Anyway,” Kera continued, “who knows? I might keep it dark so I don’t get the constant dumb-blonde jokes. Those got old somewhere around, say, ninth grade.”
Her boss opened the office door, and she immediately fixated on a full set of black leathers laid out on the spare chair. Protective biking gear.
She gestured. “Are those for me?”
“Well,” Cevin observed, “they’d be a little tight on me.”
She smiled. “You didn’t have to do that, you know. Not that I’m complaining. Thanks, Cevin. For everything.”
He nodded. “You’re welcome, Kera. I feel responsible. You should never have been involved in that incident. Speaking of everything, let’s go have a look at Zee.”
Something swelled in her chest. She wanted to jump up and down like a kid but forced herself not to. Cevin had called her “ma’am,” after all. It would have been unbecoming for her new image.
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