I sucked air. “The spells—there’s more to them.”
“See why it’s important to be a spell hunter?” Malene said triumphantly. “It’s not the little love spells that are important. It’s what’s beneath the love spell—passion, desire, seduction. Those are the real spells, the ones you want to break open and use. That’s where the real magic is.”
“Why didn’t you ever tell me this before?”
She sniffed. “Because some things you have to see for yourself.”
Malene had a point. If she had told me about this, I would have understood the concept but not the depth of what I was seeing. This was something that had to be witnessed and absorbed.
No wonder Rufus wanted to take me spell hunting. He knew about this, I was certain of it, and hadn’t told me, probably for the same reason that Malene hadn’t.
“Okay,” I said, stepping into the rising field of orbs, “you’re looking for a spell that will strike fear into your enemies. Am I right?”
“You got it, chicken.”
“Why do you keep calling me chicken?”
“Because I like to. You got a problem with that?”
Having a problem with it would more than likely be worse for my relationship with Malene than not, so I let it go. “Nope, no problem at all.”
“All right,” Malene said. “Let’s get to work.”
We spent the next hour and a half talking about my mom and our family. Malene peppered me with stories of Mama from her youth, about how one time she toilet-papered her ex-boyfriend’s house because he’d broken up with her the day after prom.
I laughed. “That sounds like Mama.”
It wasn’t anything that I would’ve done, but my mom had possessed a fiery temper. Don’t get me wrong, she loved me something fierce, but she wasn’t someone you wanted to mess with. She simply didn’t have the patience for rude, nasty or inconsiderate people.
We laughed while searching through spells. Finally, I spied an orb that registered as fear, but also as attraction. I told Malene.
“That’s sometimes how spells are constructed—like two sides of the same coin. Both sides are the opposite. You can use either spell and must be careful about the ways in which you do it; otherwise, you’ll end up with the wrong spell altogether.”
I plucked it from the sky and handed it to Malene. “So you have to be respectful of the spell.”
“You must always be respectful,” she murmured, taking the burnt-sienna colored orb from me.
Remember when burnt sienna was like this strange name for a color, but yet such a well-known name for a color? Like, I don’t think Crayola’s red-violet ever hit the level of popularity that burnt sienna did as a moniker.
Not that that’s important—just an observation.
Malene opened a small, cup-sized mason jar that she’d stowed away in her purse and dropped the orb inside. “Okay, chicken. I’ve got what I came for. Let’s get out of here.”
I called Lady to me, and we walked toward the car. “So. What are you going to do? Keep the spell handy—like on your nightstand or something?”
Malene looked at me as if I had two heads. “Of course I’m not going to do that. I’m going to put it outside and set up a booby trap.”
I nodded because of course that’s what Malene would do. Why would she bother to be reasonable and leave it by her bed when she could construct a minefield in her front yard?
I slid into the car and buckled my seat belt. “Okay, so you’re going to slow down this time, right?”
Malene grinned devilishly. “Only if you say please.”
“Please,” I said weakly. But before the last sound was even out of my mouth, we were already zooming down the road at fifty miles an hour.
Chapter 18
Idebated asking Malene about Leola Vass and what Wylie had told us about her, but ultimately decided against it. Malene was in such a good mood after getting her spell that I hated to ruin things by bringing up a woman who clearly seemed to be her enemy—one among many, I know.
