“Because I about tossed up my lunch,” Lady said.
I stroked her head to calm her. “Because all the gravel will ding up the paint on this thing.”
“Oh, that.” Malene waved away my concern. “That’s what a good protection spell is for. Don’t you worry about this here car. She’s a tank.”
If you considered a tank akin to a tuna fish can, then I would agree. Otherwise I would not.
“Tell me when you see some spells,” she said.
“Slow down.”
I scanned the copse of trees in front of us hard. Within a few seconds, spells flared to life in the distance.
“We’re in the right place. You can kill the engine.”
“Thank goodness,” Lady said, panting. “I thought we’d never stop.”
“How about I only go sixty on the way back?” Malene suggested as she nearly stripped the gears putting the car into park. “Will that help?”
“How about Clem drives?” Lady said.
Malene ignored her. “All right, Clem. Lead me to the spells.”
Lady bounced around as we made our way through tall, yellowing grass to the trees.
“Does this bring back memories?” I asked her.
“It does. Those were the days, the glorious days when I would spell hunt. Of course when I was in my prime, that was before me and your mother had our problems, before you were even born.”
Her words radiated with pain. I wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “I’m so sorry. I wish…I wish that I’d known you all these years, and for what it’s worth, I’m not angry that you didn’t tell me when we first met. Yes, I think you could have told me sooner, but I understand why you waited.”
She exhaled with relief. “Chicken, you don’t know how good that makes me feel. It scared me to even tell you. But I’m glad I did. You needed to know your family. We all need family in this life. Even if they aren’t blood, if you consider them family, that’s good enough.”
“You’re right, though I have to admit, I did like your disguise. I thought it fit you. But now that I see you’re so sleek”—Malene flipped up the collar of her leather jacket—“I like it even better.”
We reached the edge of the forest. “Now, I want to see what kind of spell hunter you are. I’m hoping that since you’re here, I’ll be able to see spells. You could use your magic to help with that, you know.”
“I can? How?”
She gripped my shoulders. “Concentrate. Just concentrate on letting me see the spells, and it should work. There’s a lot of power in you, Clementine Cooke. It’s past time you started using it.”
The magical orbs flitted in the forest, all different colors. In order for me to read a spell, I had to touch it.
“Amplify the power,” Malene said. “You can do it. Concentrate.”
I stared at the orbs and saw them, really saw them. The colors deepened. The reds became crimson. The green became the color of the trees surrounding us. As I stared, the orbs themselves started to chatter in a whisper-like way. I started to read them, to really see them.
“Keep doing it,” Malene whispered. “Keep going.”
And then as the hues deepened and the chatter strengthened, I saw the spells and with one glance knew what they were.
Spells for love, for mimicry, for life floated around us. Spells that would make someone laugh or cry, or purge an illness flitted about.
“That’s the way,” Malene whispered. “It’s working.”
The colors intensified, and the whispering heightened. It was a strange sensation and hard to describe. The spells didn’t have words written on them revealing what each of them did, but it was as if they did. I couldn’t see letters straight-up, but if I looked closely, it was as if the spells themselves were telling me what they could do.
And then the surface spells themselves, the simple ones, shifted and deepened to words likereversal, time shift, multiply, conjure,and so on. The orbs were layered. On the outside a spell could simply be used to construct an easy potion or work one-layered magic, but if you looked deeper and peeled back the spell like an onion, a deeper spell existed.
