'Deal,' I said cheerfully. I had already finished the short essays. Now all I had to do was make Bob my familiar and I'd be set. Piece of cake. I looked at Bob and cringed.
'I'll make them sloppy so she thinks you did them,' he said.
I gave him a raised eyebrow look. 'Thanks a lot,' I amended dryly, and he grinned. Done with the brew, I jabbed my finger and massaged out three drops of blood. The scent of redwood blossomed as they plunked into the pot and the spell quickened. So far, so good.
'Earth witches don't use pentagrams,' Nick said as he sharpened the chalk by rubbing it against a piece of scrap paper. 'How come you know them?'
Careful to keep my bloodied finger clear, I polished my scrying mirror with a velveteen scarf borrowed from Ivy. A shudder sifted through me at the cold feel of it. I hated scrying. It gave me the willies. 'From those pentagram jelly glasses,' I said. Nick looked up, the lost look on his face making me feel good for some reason. 'You know. Those jelly jars you can use for juice glasses when they're empty? These had pentagrams on the bottom and their uses written on the side. I lived on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that year.' My mood went soft at the memory of my dad quizzing me over toast.
Nick rolled his sleeves up and started sketching. 'And I thought I was bad for digging to the bottom of my cereal box for the toy.'
I was done with the prep work and ready to do some serious spelling. Time to set my circle. 'In or out,' I asked, and Nick looked up from my homework, blinking. Seeing his confusion, I added, 'I'm ready to set my circle. Do you want to be in or out of it?'
He hesitated. 'You want me to move?'
'Only if you want to be out of it.'
His look turned incredulous. 'You're going to enclose the entire island?'
'Is that a problem?'
'No-o-o-o.' Nick scooted his bar stool closer. 'Witches must be able to hold more ley line power than humans. I can't make a circle much bigger than three feet across.'
I smiled. 'I don't know. I'd ask Dr. Anders if she wouldn't make me feel like an idiot. I think it depends. My mom can't hold a circle bigger than three feet, either. So…in or out?'
'In?'
My breath slipped from me in relief. 'Good. I was hoping you'd say that.' Leaning over the counter, I plunked my spell book down beside him. 'I need your help translating this.'
'You want me to do your homework and help you bind your familiar, too?' he protested.
I winced. 'The only spell I could find in my books was in Latin.'
Nick looked at me in disbelief. 'Rachel. I sleep at night.'
I glanced at the clock above the sink. 'It's only one-thirty.'
Sighing, he slid the book to him. I knew he wouldn't be able to resist once he started, and sure enough, his mild annoyance shifted to hot interest before he had read more than a paragraph. 'Hey, this is old Latin.'
I leaned across the counter until my shadow covered the print. 'I can read the plant names, and I'm sure I made the transfer medium right, as it's standard, but the incantation is iffy.'
He wasn't listening anymore, his brow furrowed as he ran a long finger under the text. 'Your circle needs to be modified to resolve and gather power.'
'Thanks,' I said, glad he was going to help. I didn't mind muddling through most things, but spelling was an exact science. And just the idea that I needed a familiar made me uncomfortable. Most witches had them, but ley line witches needed them as a matter of safety. Dividing one's aura helped prevent a demon from pulling you into the ever-after. Poor Bob.
Nick went back to sketching pentagrams for me, glancing up as I pulled my twenty pound bag of salt from under the counter and set it thumping on top. Acutely aware of his eyes on me, I scraped a handful from the clumping mass. At Ivy's insistence, I had blown off the security deposit and etched a shallow circle in the linoleum. Ivy had helped. Actually, Ivy had done all of it, using a string and chalk contraption to be sure the circle was perfect. I'd sat on the counter and let her have at it, knowing it would tick her off if I got in her way. The result was an absolutely perfect circle. She had even taken a compass and marked true north with black nail polish to show me where to start my circle.
Now, peering down to find the black dot, I carefully sifted salt, moving clockwise around the island until I found my starting point. I added the doodads for protection and divination, put the green candles at the appropriate places, then lit them from the flame that I'd used to make the transfer medium.
Nick watched with half his attention. I liked that he accepted me as a witch. When we had met, I'd worried that since he was one of the few humans who practiced the black arts, I would eventually have to smack him up and turn him in, but Nick had taken demonology to improve his Latin and get through a language development class, not to summon demons. And the novelty of a human who accepted magic with such ease was a definite turn- on.
'Last chance to leave,' I said as I turned the gas burner off and moved the media to the center island.
Nick made a noise deep in his throat, setting his perfect pentagram aside and starting on the next. Envious of his smooth, straight lines, I pushed my paraphernalia aside to make a clear spot on the counter across from him.
The memory of being punished for having unknowingly tapped into a ley line and flinging the camp bully into a tree flashed through me. I thought it stupid that my dislike of ley lines might stem from the childhood incident, but I knew it was more than that. I didn't trust ley line magic. It was too easy to lose sight of which side one's magic was on.
With earth witchcraft, it was easy. If you have to slaughter goats, it's probably a good bet it's black magic. Ley line magic required a death payment, too, but it is a more nebulous death taken from your soul, much harder to quantify and easier to dismiss—until it's too late.
The cost for white ley line witchcraft was negligible, tantamount to me pulling weeds and using them in my spelling. But the unfiltered power available through ley lines was seductive. It took a strong will to stick to self- imposed limits and remain a white ley line witch. The boundaries that looked so reasonable and prudent when set, often seemed foolish or timid when the strength of a line coursed through you. I'd seen too many friends go from the 'pulling weeds' analogy to 'slaughtering goats' without even realizing they'd made the jump to the black arts. And they never listened, saying I was jealous or a fool. Eventually I'd find myself hauling their asses down to the I.S. lockup when they put a black charm on the cop who pulled them over for going fifty in a thirty-five zone. Maybe that was why I couldn't keep my friends.
Those were the ones that bothered me, basically good people who had been tempted by a power greater than their will. They were pitiable, their souls slowly eaten away to pay for the black magic they played with. But it was the professional black witches who scared me, those strong enough to foster the soul-death onto someone else to pay for their magic. Eventually, though, the soul-death found its way home, probably dragging a demon along with it. All I knew was, there was screaming, and blood, and great big booms that shook the city.
And then I didn't have to worry about that particular witch anymore.
I wasn't that strong of will. I knew it, accepted it, and avoided the problem by shunning ley lines whenever I could. I hoped that taking a fish as my familiar wasn't the start of a new path but just a speed bump in my current road. Glancing at Bob, I vowed that's all it would be. All witches had familiars. And there was nothing in that binding spell that would hurt anyone.
Taking a slow breath, I closed my eyes to prepare myself for the coming disorientation of connecting to a ley line. Slowly I willed my second sight into focus. The stench of burnt amber tickled my nose. An unseen wind shifted my hair though the kitchen window was closed. It was always windy in the ever-after. I imagined the walls that surrounded me becoming transparent, and in my mind's eye they did.
My second sight strengthened, and the sensation of being outside grew until the mental scenery beyond the walls of the church became as real as the counter, unseen under my fingers. Eyes closed to block my mundane vision, I glanced over the nonexistent kitchen with my mind's eye. Nick didn't show up at all, and the memory of the church's walls had vanished to faint, silvery chalk lines. Through them, I could see the surrounding landscape.
It was parklike, with a glowing red haze reflecting off the bottom of clouds where Cincinnati would be, hiding behind the stunted trees. It was common knowledge that the demons had their own city, built on the same ley lines
