“Says the alchemist,” I said.
“Hey, alchemy is a legitimate form of practicing magic,” King said. “And I’m registered with the police, so they consider any alchemy I do on the job legal.”
“Are you saying that witchcraftisn’ta legitimate form of practicing magic?” I said, amused, curious to see if he was even aware of the bias he’d just shown.
“I never — that’s not what — I understand that there are debates, butIwould never —”
I waved him off with some amusement and pointed to his pad of paper. “Trust me when I say that we can have the witchcraft versus alchemy debate when we aren’t trapped in a mobster’s house with whatever did that.”
Jerking my chin towards the ceiling, my eyes went to King’s partner. Was he even still alive? The foot twitched again, but that might just as well have been neurons firing from a dead brain.
“I’m going to protect him while he’s up there,” King murmured. “Can you —”
The end of that sentence was clearly not coming, so I filled in the blank myself. “Keep us safe? Yeah, I can do that. Kitchen witch, remember?”
Even among witches, kitchen witches have a bit of a reputation. They’re known for being able to improvise in spell work, in ways that are both creative and frightening. My sister, the head priestess of her coven, once used a paperback book, a handful of thumbtacks, and some honey to make a rat trap when she had an infestation at her café.
The end result had been… Well, I’d helped to clean it up, and she still owed me for it, because I saw things that no human should see. But she’d killed every single rat.
Fortunately for my stomach and King’s sanity, although my sister and I had been trained by our foster mother in kitchen witchcraft together, I was no kitchen witch. The magic I used was more dangerous, the sort of thing I couldn’t have Detective King knowing about. He might’ve turned a blind eye to it once, when we were both facing down a dangerous poltergeist, but I couldn’t tempt fate by trying it a second time unless our lives were in imminent danger.
I crouched on the floor, taking out a piece of chalk to draw a couple of spells on the ground. The first was nothing more than an alarm spell, like setting up a row of bells that surroundedme and King. At least this way we could hear if something was approaching us, even if it was invisible.
The next spell I drew had a similar intent to whatever King was doing. It was a protection spell, acting like a bubble that would resist anything trying to get close to us.
I wasn’t particularly good at spellcraft. It always left me feeling off kilter, as though I’d been woken from a nap suddenly. That woozy, uncertain feeling you get when you aren’t sure if you’re awake or asleep. Only with me, the anxiety was whether the spell would work.
To my sister, Laurel, my spellwork never looked right. Even if I copied her exactly, doing all the lines identically, down to the millimeter, she’d still make minor corrections and when I began putting magic into the spell her face scrunched up and I could see her jaw held so tight I was surprised she still had molars.
Nine times out of ten—well eight times out of ten if I was being honest—everything worked fine. It was just to her master eye, something looked off. But it was like handing a really pretty gemstone to a jeweler. If the jeweler saw a flaw that was invisible to the naked eye, did it really matter?
When I finished the spellwork, I glanced at King. He was busy on his third sheet of paper, drawing complicated alchemy circles, and I left him to it. Instead, I listened for whatever had attacked his partner.
Placing my hands on the floor, I checked to make sure it was wood.
Actual wood was something that I could work with; vinyl, laminate, tile, or anything else that had more than one element in it was too much for me. Normally, I would be up for any challenge, but I still had that feeling inside of me like I wanted to tear down MacCallum’s house brick by brick until all that was left was a tattered foundation.
I wasn’t the big bad wolf coming to blow down the house. I was a tornado.
My magic boiled red again, and it felt like lava cooking my intestines. I took a slow breath, but it stuttered in the middle, so I took another one. Then, when my breath was smooth and long and the ocean had cooled the lava, I reached out.
My magic doesn’t rely on symbols and iconography, or even a special language, like witchcraft and alchemy do. Instead, I rely on what’s around me. The spirits that inhabit almost everything we touch.
In my impaired state, I only trusted myself to talk to staid spirits who were unlikely to react to the emotions I could feel burning under my skin. I’d have to settle for wood. Trees are one of the spirits I’m most familiar with. Some of my favorite friends are trees.
But, since I wasn’t in a forest, I would have to make do with the wood that once been a tree.
It woke slowly under my fingers. I didn’t need it alert enough to grow back into the tree it had been, but I did need it conscious enough to answer some questions.
“Who else is here with us?”
King glanced at me as he sent to circles floating into the air, spinning around each other until they built a shell of protection around his partner. I waved him off and mouthed the words‘witchcraft stuff.’
There was a ripple along the floor, as though each board was blinking, but then the flooring responded in slow, measured tones. There was no one in the house with us. We were the only heavy footfalls it could feel.
“What about light footfalls?”
The image the floor responded with sent me to my feet and then right next to King.
