Nick slammed one of his finished spells into the air in front of the car. It lit a brilliant green, creating a shield. The reindeer pulled up short at the sudden explosion of color and reared back, its hooves pawing at the air.
What would Laurel do?
For me, practicing witchcraft was like trying to drive a car Flinstones style. Sure, I could manage it for a short period of time, but I definitely missed a car that didn’t tear up my feet. Digging in my bag, I found a couple of pieces of chalk I kept just for this purpose.
The flamingo, half buried in concrete, was still struggling and snapped at me as I began drawing a circle around it. The woman’s magic linked her to the bird. She hadn’t let it go. This was going to be good.
Drawing a triangle around the flamingo, I was careful not to let it touch me, aware of its razor-sharp beak and the strength no plastic lawn ornament should have. Nick threw down a couple more circles and pointed to where the gnomes had organized themselves into a long line and were attacking his shield with their pointed hats.
“They might get through. The points of their hats focus the force they’re using like a nail puncturing a tire,” Nick said, but he sounded calm, the immediate surprise having faded. This woman was good, but she wasn’t us.
I finished my circle and drew out a container of salt. I used it in my fae magic for a hundred different purposes, but I couldalso use it in witchcraft. Salt cleansed in kitchen witchcraft, and since I needed to send a bolt of my magic through the flamingo and back to the woman, I hoped it would confuse the witch about the actual source of my magic.
Sending magic back through her link to the flamingo would act like an extra powerful shock, something to get her off her game so we could physically restrain her before she animated anything else on the street. I had no desire to have a streetlamp reach down and attack me.
Touching the circle, I powered it up and poured a thin line of salt around it. Hopefully the purification would confuse the witch enough that she wouldn’t recognize my fae magic for what it was. With his eyebrows furrowed, Nick watched the assault on his shield. They wouldn’t get through, Nick was too powerful, but he seemed to be trying to figure out how her magic was giving life to so many lawn ornaments at once.
When everything looked good on my end, I took a deep breath and drew from the magic inside my chest. I didn’t take too much; there was no sense in overwhelming the woman. Instead, I drew it out like a magician pulling a long line of scarves out of a pocket.
I fed the line of magic into the spell, which, if I’d done it right, was used to find a caster. As far as I knew, no one had ever used it the way I was planning to, but that was how most things went when I did witchcraft. If a kitchen witch was MacGyver, then I was the guy at home who saw MacGuyver turn a straw into a BB gun and tried it out himself.
Across the street, the woman shrieked, and in front of Nick’s shield, the line of aggressive garden gnomes fell over.
Three
Istood up and sprinted toward Nick’s shield. Luckily, he was quick on his feet and dropped it before I could smash myself against it like a bug on a windshield. Then I was across the street and pressing every ounce of magic I had into a spell Laurel had taught me when we were kids.
It had some archaic name, but Laurel and I both called it was theI’m Not Touching Youspell. It had the effect of pressing the witch flat against the ground as though I’d dropped a large mattress on her and then had a football team lie down on it.
Nick was behind me, releasing some remaining circles that bound any twitching lawn ornaments in what looked like green bubbles. I continued my chant as I stood over the witch.
The woman moaned, her face scrunched as she tried to push herself up. She was older than I’d thought. Maybe my bias was showing, but I expected someone my age or even younger, someone who looked like my little sister.
Instead, she was middle-aged. Gray hair was pulled out of her face in a bun that had gone askew from either her fall or the spell I was still performing. Laugh lines framed her eyes, although right then she was glaring at both me and Nick.
“Let me guess,” I said. “You’re Damon’s mother.”
“You can go to whatever hell you believe in,” she said. “Coming tomyhouse, threateningme.You better believe I’m going to fight you.”
“Whoa,” I said. “Listen, this is a lot of hostility. We weren’t threatening you.”
“You’re hanging out in front of my house,” she said. “You going to try to convince me you were selling Girl Scout cookies?”
“No,” I said. “We were looking for Damon Griffith, and I assume you’re not him. We don’t want to hurt you, and we won’t hurt him. He took something, and we just need to find it.”
“Like I believe you,” she said, but her struggles slowed. I took a chance and let her up.
She pushed onto her hands and knees, and then sat up. Sneering at me, she said, “Kitchen witch.”
“I still beat you,” I said.
It was good to see that although she’d tasted my magic, she hadn’t recognized it as anything abnormal. Being a kitchen witch gave me a sort of invisibility because everyone knew kitchen witches fought dirty.
“You don’t want to hurt him? Why should I believe you?” she said.
“Because he’s an alchemist,” I said, jerking my thumb toward Nick. “And my name is Parker Ferro. You can call around and ask about me. You can even call the Kitchen Witches of East San Amaro. The head priestess will vouch for me.”
“Those kitchen b—” she broke off the swear word, seeming to realize who she was talking to. “You said Laurel will vouch for you?”
