I brought my foot up and planted it in his chest, firmly kicking him away from me hard enough that he went tumbling backward.
He leapt to his feet—hissing and spitting in fury—but I drew my scepter back over my shoulder in a clear threat of what would happen if he tried to touch me again.
“I saidno.Shemhazai. You’re going to need to learn how to take no for a fucking answer.”
His gaze flicked to my scepter in disbelief, as if he couldn’t truly process the fact that I had just threatened to use it against him.
Betrayal and anger warred across his features, and his mouth opened and closed twice as we stood there. The air around us was so tight with tension, one morepull and it would snap.
“So… it’s like that?” He gaped, glancing away from the scepter to meet my gaze.
“Yeah, Shemhazai. It’s like that.”
“You’repathetic,”he hissed, and I rolled my eyes, brushing past him and making my way to the stairs for the final time that night.
“Goodnight,Shemhazai. I’m sleeping in the spare room. In case it wasn’t clear, you’re not welcome to join me. Go wash that whore’s stench off of you. You reek.”
And for the second time that night, I left him.
And this time, he let me.
Awitch’s home was a sacred place. We didn’t have a formal church because our homes were a place of practice.
So, when I returned to my broken home, I could feel the house’s wounds as if they were my own.
Luna slept over after the night at the club, and the next morning, she helped me heal the damage that had been done to my home.
Mortal witches couldn’t perform magic the same way gods and demons could. Their magic was more subtle.
It was derived from manifestation, and it was slow and gentle but still powerful in its own right. My magic was more immediate, and I used it to repair what was broken, much to Luna’s delight.
She loved watching me stitch back together the broken mermaid lamp and heal the wounds carved into my couches and walls.
Once the house was repaired, we blessed the home with protection spells.
Luna and I sat cross-legged on the floor of my living room, and when everything was said and done, we created a spell jar together.
“This will protect you on the off chance that I’m not there to keep you safe,” I informed her.
She rubbed her palms together, opening the chakras in her hands, and I handed her a sprig of rosemary. She held it in her receiving hand, and we stacked our giving hands over the sprig, allowing the energy of the powerful protection herb to mingle with our own personal energies.
We closed our eyes, and together, we impregnated the sprig with our intentions.
The gentle ebb and flow of our combined energies grew softly around us, creating a warm, safe cocoon of friendship and love.
The magic pulsed around us, and the golden thread that connected us shimmered between us as we repeated this exercise with each of the other objects I had produced to put in her spell jar.
Salt to ward away evil.
An iron nail to protect from the magic of beings that might harm.
A small piece of paper with the sign of Capricorn and Luna’s birth date so the spell would know that she was the object of its mission.
A chunk of obsidian to magnify the protective properties of the rosemary.
Dried chilies to increase the intensity, and finally, we sealed the jar with the black wax of a charged candle so that all the goodness of our spell would remain contained in the charm.
The jar was small, and I wrapped a string of leather twine around it so that Luna could wear it around her neck.
