“Not necessarily,” Plenty said.
“Eh, I’m not so sure about my skills with this type of spell.” I waved like I wanted to switch topics, and took another sip of my wine, staring into space, waiting.
“You could do it,” she pressed.
I shook my head again, offering her a resigned look. “I don’t trust myself. I’ll just stick with the status quo.”
“But I did it.”
“You did what?”
“I did some kind of spell. A glamour.”
That’s what I thought, I crowed to myself, while warning myself to show limited interest. “What? From this book?” I held up the tome in question.
She nodded, her eyes glittering with accomplishment. And Meritage, no doubt.
“No way! Really? Which spell did you try?”
“I didn’t try any particular spell. I read several and kind of tried mashing a few of them together.”
“And it’s working?”
“Yes. Well, sort of.”
“What do you mean?”
“I, um, tried bewitching a couple objects. One didn’t work, but the second one did. It’s not perfect, but it’s, um, promising.”
Promising, my ass, I thought to myself.
“Just from improvising? That’s pretty impressive.” Actually, to be honest, it was kind of impressive. It was also kind of stupid, but sometimes they can go hand in hand.
Plenty preened under the compliment. “Do you really think so?”
“If you’re getting the result you want, yes, that is impressive, especially with such intricate magic.”
She smiled, but then her expression darkened. “It is working, but not quite as well as I’d like.”
“Well, it’s your first time doing this sort of magic, right?”
“Yes.”
“Then to get a result that quick, that’s pretty damn good. And you don’t remember what you did?”
“Not exactly.”
“Hmmm. Too bad. It might be fun to try and replicate it, and maybe make a tweak or two to see if the outcome could be improved.”
I took another sip of wine and topped us off again.
“Unfortunately I was a bit tipsy when I tried the spell, so I don’t really know what I did. I only remember bits and pieces.”
I opened my mouth to lecture her, and saw my father’s ghost return.
“Don’t argue with her,” he hissed. “Flatter her. Get her to open up!” He vanished again.
“That’s too bad,” I said. No wonder we were dealing with some seriously botched magic. It was never a good idea to try enchantments – in particular new or ambitious magic – while under the influence. “You really don’t remember?” I pressed. “Not even part of it?”
“Well …” Ah, here was the rub. “I’m not really sure.”
“Tell me what you do remember.”
Plenty took a hearty swig of her wine and set the glass down. “I remember seeing something about the color yellow being for prosperity, beauty and self-esteem, and I know you’ve done things with color magic, so I thought that would be a good way to go.”
I nodded, intrigued.
She continued. “One spell suggested a mirror, and another suggested yellow roses. I was impatient, so I went outside and found some old dandelions by the road.” She looked at me, waiting to see if I lectured or protested.
“Go on,” I pressed.
“Another spell mentioned reciting something in front of a mirror and using oils and flower essences to anoint the mirror with my intended purpose.”
“That sounds interesting,” I said.
She warmed to the compliment. “I also read that cinnamon oil was good for something. I can’t remember what, though –”
“Luck, possibly,” I said.
“Yes, luck! I went downstairs into Aunt Fiona’s kitchen and there was no cinnamon oil, but she had cinnamon powder, so I used that. Do you think that was okay?”
“Possibly. It’s a workaround, but not necessarily a bad one.”
“So I used some of that along with some orange extract and clove spice for romance, and then something else for love.”
“Do you remember what?”
She shook her head. “I’d had a couple more glasses of wine and it’s a bit fuzzy. And now that I think of it, I think the orange extract might have been artificial, but I thought it still smelled and tasted like orange, so that was probably okay. Do you think it was okay?”
“I’m not sure, but it’s interesting. I’m amused where you got the ingredients. Talk about being a kitchen witch,” I laughed.
She smiled. “I mixed the powder and extract together with the dandelion, and tried to make some kind of magical potion by cooking it under a pink candle.”
“Pink is good,” I nodded. “Lots of positive vibes there. Tell me, did you use any oil to make a base, to infuse the essences?”
“Should I have?”
“I wouldn’t say you should have, but oil has its own power when used with other ingredients. It’s kind of like providing a solid base. But you said you ‘cooked’ the flower and the spices under the heat of the candle?”
She nodded. “I added a splash of red wine to the mixture so the effect would be one of intoxication.”
Oh, boy. Booze and artificial flavoring. That might be troublesome, I thought to myself.
“What happened next?”
“Well, I held the compact mirror over the candle to allow the magic to seep into the surface, because somewhere in this book it said that was a way to infuse magic into a chosen object.”
Hmmm. This was proving to be interesting spellwork. As annoying as Plenty could be, she had a flair for improvisation.
“What happened next?”
“I chanted a rhyme about what I wanted the spell to accomplish as the mixture began to cook and then smoke. At first the smoke was white, then pink –”
“That’s a good sign,” I said. “Very good.”
“Then it turned black.”
“Not so good.”
“Black isn’t always bad, is it?”
“No, not always, because it can be a way to cut negative energy, but if the smoke went from white to pink to black, that is a bit, shall we say, of concern.”
“Why do you think it did that?”
“I don’t know. Do you recall what that missing ingredient was?”
She shook her head. I believed her, too.
“What about the words you recited? Do you recall those?”
“Not really.” She looked away. Something told me she may not have remembered exactly what she said, but she remembered the intent.
I couldn’t be sure, but I suspected her inebriated state had mixed up the spellcasting, and using dandelion – which has its uses, but very likely not the intent she planned on – didn’t help matters. Neither did using an artificial flavoring. Who knows what that dredged up.
“Okay, so tell me what you wanted to get out of this spell,” I said. “Maybe we can, um, finesse, it from there.”
“Well, I already tried tweaking it some.”
“And?”
“It changed the result – a tiny bit – but not enough.”
“Let’s go back to what you wanted from the magic,” I pressed.
“You’ll think I’m silly.”
“What? You wanted someone to notice you? You wanted someone to see something different about you?”
“Kind of.”
I leaned back and sipped more wine, and she did the same, her eyes traveling around my kitchen.
“I wanted the spell to make men see me as desirable. Really desirable.”
“That makes sense. I understand that. I also think there’s a ‘but’ coming?”
She nodded. “It seems to be working, but it doesn’t seem to last, and I don’t think they’re seeing me.”
“What are they seeing?”
“I’m not sure. Guys seem to go crazy for me, for a while, but they don’t seem to know who I
am, if that makes sense?”
“Sort of. Do you have an example?”
“You’ve seen it in action, like the other night at the Towne.”
“I guess I have, but to me it just looked like all these guys were fighting for time with you. That sounds like what you wanted.”
“I thought so, too, but when I went home with Tony the other night, he was really crazy about me, talking about how we were soul mates. At first I thought, well, he’s not exactly my type, but he was kind of sweet. But the next morning when he woke up to get ready for work, he didn’t know he’d brought me to his place. He was asking where ‘she’ went.”
“She?”
“He seemed to think he’d brought someone else home. And he didn’t remember talking to me. At least not until I told him I’d met him when I’d gone out with you. Then he remembered a tall blonde and her redheaded cousin, but little else.”
I chewed on my nail as I pondered what she’d told me. “It kind of fits with glamouring.”
“How so?”
“With glamouring, you can’t change how you look, but how people see you. You technically did accomplish glamour magic.”
“But I’m not getting the result I want! How do I get men to see me as the one they want, and not just see me as someone else?”
“Well, maybe in Tony’s case, perhaps he was drinking too much?” I tried.
“Maybe,” she shrugged.
“I’m sorry I lost track of you there when the fight broke out,” I said. I didn’t want to bring it up that I was mad and left with Trish to get breakfast. That sounded too cold. Even I had to admit that. To myself, at least, if not to Plenty.
“It’s okay. It was a confusing night.”
“So, it sounds like the spell is working, but it needs tweaking. It’s too bad you don’t quite remember what you did there. What about the object you enchanted?”
She gave me a cautious look. “What about it?”
“Maybe that would offer a clue as to how to finesse it. It’s the compact, so I’d like to see it.”
I could see her hackles had raised. Her trust was evaporating.
“I’d like to see it, to feel for any magical vibes. I’m not as good as my mom is at sensing an object’s energy, but I’ve got a bit of the touch.”
She thought for a moment, then relaxed somewhat. “I guess I could show it to you. I wanted you to see something anyways, to get your two cents on it.”
She reached into her handbag and pulled out the compact, stood up and moved closer to sit next to me. I knew she wanted to easily be able to snatch it back if I tried to keep or damage it.
She slid it in my direction.
“So this is it, huh?”
Plenty nodded.
I picked it up and weighed it in my hand. It felt normal, like any other compact, really, except it was slightly heavier due to being made of some kind of metal. It felt cool and substantial in my hands. I closed my eyes for a few seconds. It had some kind of vibrating energy to it. As I focused I noticed it didn’t quite feel like clean magic. It was tainted somehow.
“Do you notice anything?” Plenty pressed.
I opened my eyes and nodded. “There’s some potent magic there.”
She smiled.
I clicked it open and peered inside. She tensed slightly as I looked at my reflection in the mirror. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, but I saw nothing that was truly noteworthy. I looked mostly like myself, albeit maybe a touch brighter.
“Do you see anything unusual?” she asked.
I shook my head. “Not really. It’s a nice mirror. My skin looks a bit nicer in it.” I raised my eyes to the overhead light and glanced back at my reflection. “I’m thinking it has to be the mirror. The lighting in here isn’t awful, but it isn’t great either. Can I take it and look at myself in the bedroom? The light is more flattering in there.”
She paused for a moment, then nodded.
I picked up the compact and made my way upstairs, Plenty tailing me. When I went into my bedroom I flicked on the lamps flanking the vanity and sat in front of the mirror. I looked okay there, I thought. No cover of Vogue was in my future, but I had a bit of color in my cheeks and a bit of brightness in my eyes, presumably from the wine. I opened the compact again and stared at my reflection. Again, like downstairs, I looked a bit better in this mirror. Just a bit brighter, like I was well rested.
My father winked into view once more, standing next to me and bending to peer at the compact. He waved his hand over the metal. “Curious,” was all he said.
“Do you see anything?” Plenty asked, standing over my shoulder.
“Maybe? I think it produces a slightly flattering reflection. Not anything huge, but I’d rather look like how I look in this mirror than in this vanity,” I said, gesturing toward the huge mirror in front of me. “So, how does this work? Can I get myself to look like that in front of everyone with the spell?”
“You look better?” Plenty asked, her voice raising an octave. She bent down to look over my shoulder, bumping into the side of my head as she tried to view herself in the compact.
I caught a flash of her reflection, and where I looked a bit fresher, she looked drained. Her skin looked drier, more sallow, and her eyes looked tired, more dull. “What the hell?” Plenty and I both exclaimed in unison.
“Oh, that’s not good,” my father muttered.
“What is happening here?” I asked. The compact grew hot for a second, and I dropped it in surprise.
“And that’s even worse,” he said, shaking his head.
Plenty snatched it up and jammed it into the pocket of her blue jeans. “What did you see?”
“What was that?” I asked, turning to look her over. She did not match what I saw in the compact. I wheeled back and eyed her reflection in my vanity. There, she looked like her young, healthy self. No sallow skin, no tired eyes. “Seriously, Plenty. What was that? What did you do?”
“I’m not sure what you’re talking about.” She refused to make eye contact with me as I stared at her.
“That’s the damnedest thing. You somehow enchanted that so people see you as more desirable, but I think it’s gone haywire and something is trading off.”
“Trading off? How do you mean?”
“I think the spell is exacting some kind of toll. In exchange for making you seem more appealing in person, it’s making your reflection in the compact look, um, tired.”
“That’s not the spell I did,” she insisted.
“No, but I think it’s the spell you got. You said, after all, that you improvised.”
“But I look okay here in front of you, right?”
“Yes,” I nodded, “and in this mirror,” I said as I pointed to the vanity, “but I think you’re potentially stepping into some kind of magical hornet’s nest.”
“How do you mean?”
“What I said just a minute ago. The compact mirror, it’s reflecting that what you’re doing is wrong somehow.”
“There you go, being negative, Poppy.” Plenty rolled her eyes and stared up at the ceiling.
“I’m not being negative, Plenty,” I stressed. “Okay, normally I would be, but in this case I am trying to warn you. You did something powerful, amazing, even, but you’re putting yourself at risk. Your glamour could derail and cause some kind of real, permanent damage.”
My father bobbed his head in agreement. “She most definitely could.”
“What do you mean, permanent damage?” Plenty asked.
“I’m not sure, exactly, but the more you persist with this, the greater the odds are that it could fail big time. What’s really scary to me is how fast your reflection is showing some kind of transformation.”
“It’s just a mirror.”
“But think of it like a blemish forming, for example,” I said. “Sure, your face looks fine now, but there’s something welling up inside and it’s going to erupt and leave a mark on your face.”
“Again, it’s just a m
irror.”
“Not any longer,” I cautioned.
“So what do you suggest I do with it?”
“I’m not sure. For now, put it away and don’t use it anymore You don’t need it to make others find you more attractive. Later it might be a good idea to destroy it, but in a safe manner, but right now it could rebound on you and leave a real-world scar.”
“Seriously?” She patted at her face and looked at her reflection in my vanity mirror. “I don’t see any kind of scar.”
“Not now, but if it gets broken or if you tinker with the spell some more, you could risk that.”
“I don’t believe you. I managed to make some magic. I’m sure I can fix it and make it work how it’s supposed to work.”
I had my doubts. There was spellwork that was natural and harmonized with the flow of the universe, but she was making an unnatural demand. That always came at a cost. I wondered if I should tell her about my father and his warning about dark magic.
“You don’t have to set it aside or destroy it, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.” I gave her a serious look. “Are you sure you don’t want me to take the mirror? I can see if I can somehow try and neutralize the spell.”
She shook her head.
I extended my hand. “Come on, how about we try sticking it in a bucket of salt overnight and seeing if the spell shifts? Salt is purifying but it’s also healing. That might be worth a shot. It’s a simple test.”
She jerked away from me, clearly worried I would try and rob her of her talisman. “I can try and fix it myself. I can improve the spell so the mirror works better.”
“You might not be able to,” I warned. “The universe might think you have enough gifts, and for you to ask for more with so little work put in – well, I am warning you, it could backfire.”
“If I keep it safe, I’ll look fine. I can live with that. And I can adjust the spell and make it better. I’m sure of it. Like you said, this is complicated magic, and if I did that on a first or second try, imagine what I can do with more practice.”
“Fine. Just remember, I warned you.”
“Yeah, yeah. You said that already.”
Plenty of Trouble Page 24