Magic was energy, math, matter, and intent. A witch or coven could create new workings from scratch, using math, but it was tricky. Most witches spent hours, sometimes weeks, generating the exact maths for a new working.
But a witch didn’t have to create a new working to do magic. Most witches used older workings with known mathematics. Using pre-made, confirmed workings and their own stored power, they infused amulets with the workings. Amulets were like charms, or like bombs, targeted with specific effects that changed reality when activated. Old maths, deliberately altered, had given her green hair. She tugged on her heavy, puke green mane. If Angie had been better at math andless desirous of making a VIP friend, she could have prevented the attack on her hair. Even now, shecouldturn her hair back, and she really,reallywanted to. But couldn’t because of the stupid secrets.
Only a very,veryfew witches, like Angie, could use raw magic. That was her most important secret, and if that got out, people who wanted to exploit her magic would come looking to recruit her, and they might not take no for an answer. So Angie never did magic, real magic, as she thought of it, around other witches. Like other witches, she used mathematics, but in her case, it was to hide her power, not guide it.
Taking the risk of using raw magic, Angie could get back at Carm for turning her hair green, or she could help her new friend and never get caught. Mud wasn’t a witch. Mud would never know how Angie figured out who had poisoned the garden and killed Sir Thamnos.
Through the crack in the Earth Magic Shed door, Angie saw Mud digging Sir Thamnos’ grave, using her own spade, which she kept in a loop in her overalls. She was planning to bury the snake at the edge of the woods.
As Mud dug, she cast her gaze back and forth between the shed and the path to the garden. Mud’s job was to keep away everyone who might be capable of aseeingworking—a working that let witches see the energies of magic being used—away from the shed.
Turning her gaze from Mud, Angie pulled the string and stick from her pocket, just in case someone came in, and carefully brought up a witch light to illuminate the shed. The Earth Magic Shed was more of a warehouse, backing up to the barn and tack room. It smelled of horse, hay, leather, strong drying herbs like camphor laurel, mint, and rosemary, and also like chemicals.
The floor was swept only now and again, and was littered with clumps of mud from boots, spilled seeds, a balled-up kerchief that looked as if it had been used to wipe down a sweaty horse, loose hay, straw, and pine needles, each kept in different areas of the shed, but all carried through the same door for use. Horse halters, bridles, and reins hung from hooks. Dusty saddles rested on racks high on the wall. The seeds were kept in a locked metal cabinet beneath the horse stuff, which made no sense at all, but Angie wasn’t sure logic had ever played a part in the Earth Magic Shed. It contained a confusing mixture of garden and horse stuff.
The gallon-sized herbicide sprayers were in a pile in the far corner with the backpack harnesses worn by staff when they needed to sweep a large weedy area. There was only one reason a place with so many earth witches on staff would need herbicide, and that was kudzu. Kudzu was the devil’s sidekick, according to her mama. Even death magic (another thing Angie had to keep secret) couldn’t kill its roots.
The spades, clippers, hoes, and other gardening hand tools were hanging from sturdy hooks on the front pegboard wall. Angie started there, using anilluminationworking to spot a tool carrying a smear of blood.
The premade working landed on a hoe blade. It was themeansof snake murder.She already had motive—the girls in Cabin A were full of it. Now, she just needed to knowwho. Angie backed carefully away, not touching the hoe.
She scuffed a clean spot on the wood plank floor and sat, still holding the threads that were attached to the bunks in Cabin A. She also had the worthless stick, so she might as well use it. She tied the strands to it, using the stick as an anchor. She reached out to the handles of the gallon-sized poison containers.
One by one, she touched the handles of each poison spray container, waiting for the residual magic tied to a bunkto recognize itself on a handle. There were ten girls in Cabin A, and Angie hit it lucky on her sixth try, the strand tied to one particular bunk in the cabin. The strand of residual energy tingled and quivered in her hand.
She didn’t stop there, however, and, on strand eight, she got another hit on a different bunk. Strands nine and ten were duds. Two of the ten girls in the mean girls’ cabin, were guilty of plant murder. Using the same method, she touched the strands to the handle of the bloody hoe hanging on the wall. Not surprisingly, one of the same two girls had killed Mud’s pet snake.
Now, all she had to do was figure out which bunks went with which witch. She released the eight strands that were no longer of interest to her. Her magic disconnected from theirs and dissipated. She sent a tiny mental vibration along the snake-killer’s magic to turn it faintly more red, leaving the other yellow, so she could tell them apart. She pulled the two strands tight, backing up in the shed, shuffling her feet toward the seed locker.
When they were tight as wires, Angie sent a buzz of heat along the two strands. The heat of raw magic. Where her magic touched a bunk, the trace of themarkingmagic changed.
Themarkingslid into the wood of each bunk, into the grooves and the grain, penetrating the cut ends of the boards. Angie drew on her inner power, feeding the energies, altering them on the fly. When she was done, the residual magic in each bunk had transformed.
Residual energy was faint, what her mom called subtle. No one would see it, even with aseeingworking, unless they were specifically looking for amarkingworking that had been twisted into a different kind of working, one close to aclaimingworking, but not quite. It wasn’t a working that had actually existed until now. That was Angie’s gift—altering raw power into a purpose.
Using raw magic, without a working, meant Angie had broken the family rules.
Altering magic was one of the many things Angie was not allowed to do.
She had combined two workings without knowing the outcome. Except, she did know. She always knew.
Now, the two bunks were marked with her own residual magical energies, with her own power. By morning, the girls who slept in them would carry Angie’s magic around. After they slept in the bunks, the snake killer’s residual magic would be red, the other girl’s would be orange.
Angie had a hunch—not exactly aknowing, not like precog or anything—just a hunch, that one of the residual-marked magic strands would be tagging along attached to Carm come morning. Carmelina, the mean witch who had given Angie bad mathematics, causing Angie herself to turn her hair puke green.
All she had to do was watch and see who carried her energies at breakfast in the morning and she would know which girl was the plant poisoner and which girl was both poisoner and snake killer. After that, she’d figure out the next steps.
But . . . Angie curled a puke green strand of hair around her finger. This strand had a few Pepto-Bismol pink hairs woven in. Gross hair she could fix when she got home. Puke hair was nothing. Mud was grieving. Mud was Angie’s friend. Maybe her only friend in all the world who liked her for herself. And someone had hurt Mud. Therefore . . . Therefore Angie was hurt. This was a strange feeling, to hurt for someone who wasn’t family, but she did.
Angie still held faint traces of residual magic in her hand. Studying the threads, she twirled them in her fingers, thinking.
If Carm was one of the witches who had hurt Mud, a dangerous part of Angie wanted to cast adarkworking—knownas acurse—to get the girl back. Her parents had told her that revenge often metamorphosed into dangerous magic, not simply against the intended recipient but against the caster of the curse. Curses tended to backfire, and when they did, the backfire bounced back and delivered more curse damage to the caster of the curse than the intended recipient.
Angie shoved the thought of a curse away and tied off the last of her residual magic, before anger and desire became intent, but . . . it was a little too late. A tiny bit of her longing for vengeance blended into her shadow, as if it were alive. She had to remove the intent and the darkness.Now!Angie popped the last of the threads attached to Cabin A off and sent them spinning back to the cabin and reached to her left foot. She began to unweave the dark intent.
Before she could completely remove the desire to do harm and separate it from her shadow, Mud said hi to someone, speaking loudly enough for Angie to hear. Holding the intent, Angie gathered up her stick and string, carrying them out of the shed and into the daylight. Two girls from Cabin B, a cabin where mostly second year students lived, entered the shed, ignoring her as if she wasn’t alive.
Angie was a kid so, to the older witches, maybe she wasn’t alive. “You’re dead to me,” was a real thing for some people. Mud said her family called it shunning.
