Page 10 of The Spell Caster

It hit me again how far apart our lives had drifted in the past few years. As he advanced in training and I got busy with my schoolwork and preparing to graduate, we hadn’t been able to see each other often. He would text me the names of places I’d never heard of that he was visiting, and I would dream of the day I joined him.

It was part of a guardian’s job to track down angel nests. Teams with spell casters would then move in to exterminate them.

That was supposed to be my life too—burning angel nests to keep humanity safe.

Despite our grand mythology around them, in real life, angels were nothing more than mindless creatures. They infested abandoned buildings and lonely stretches at the edges of habitation, menacing the non-magical who stumbled upon them. There would start to be reports of missing hikers, strange sounds, monster sightings. In the winter, their hunts were lean, and they would creep out to snatch children from lonely farms. They were the nightmarish stuff of rural ghost stories.

Angels would go after a witch if one got near enough. We could sense each other to a certain extent, and witch magic enraged them. But they weren’t sentient. They never went after us like we hunted them down. It had been fifteen years since an attack on a Circle—the one in Greece. It had never happened before or since.

We walked along the roads while the sun rose. At some point, Costi dropped his duffel to remove his more obvious weapons and stow them away. I wondered if we blended in as normal, non-magical humans.

Cars began to roar past, and the trees gave way to parking lots and shop buildings. He led us to a large building called a hotel—a sort of guesthouse that we could stay in.

I tried to look unimpressed as we walked in, but the amused smirk Costi gave me let me know I was failing.

“Good morning.” The woman behind the counter gave us a wary, uncertain look. We didn’t blend in that well after all.

“We need to book a room,” Costi said.

“For tonight? Check-in isn’t until three,” she said suspiciously.

Costi argued with the woman, coming to some agreement so she would let us in now.

I looked around the hotel curiously. We witches brought in a lot of technology and supplies from the outside, but our cultures were far enough apart to make the differences stand out. The aesthetic here was far more minimalist than ours, with beige-colored walls and few decorative touches. It wasn’t well cared for, with scuffs on the floors and worn, mass-produced furniture placed haphazardly. The vibe was simultaneously over sanitized and grungy.

“Don’t we have to pay for everything here?” I asked Costi as we waited for the elevator.

“I did pay for it,” he said, showing me a small metallic black card. “This thing keeps a tab. They send the bill to the Council later.”

“Who’s James Smith?” I asked, reading the name on the card.

“No idea. Some fake name,” he said as another guest exiting the elevator gave us a weird look before hurrying away.

The guest room was a small affair with two identical beds and some sparse furniture, and it smelled strongly of cleaning chemicals. The air conditioning hummed quietly, making it chilly.

It suddenly felt small with just the two of us in here. I clutched my arms around myself. Sharing a room probably wasn’t what Councilor Luna had in mind when she sent me with him.

“Take a shower if you want,” Costi said. “I’ll get some food ordered and see about a car.” He pulled out his phone, plugging it into a charger, and started typing with one thumb.

I swallowed. It dawned on me how useless I was. Fate, I knew nothing about any of this. I didn’t have a payment card. I didn’t know how to order food. I’d never driven a car. Hadn’t I had some vague notion of running away to the outside? I would have been lost if Costi hadn’t come with me.

“Thank you,” I murmured.

He gave me a half smile as if it was nothing, and I retreated into the bathroom. The heavy door and fan cut me off from the rest of the world.

Peeling off my top, I carefully pulled the bandage off my shoulder. It hurt, and my other shoulder was sore from carrying my bag on one side all night, but the jagged, angry-looking cut had scabbed over and wasn’t bleeding, and it didn’t look infected. I began shivering from more than the chilled air.

Only some blessing of fate had allowed us to survive, to somehow pull a spell out of me when I needed it most.

I went over every detail in my mind, but I hadn’t seen my familiar then or any time before or since. There was only the swelling of magic inside me, the spell sigil, and the explosive release.

I showered, making the chemical-scented water as hot as it would go, then busied myself combing through my hair and trying to make myself look alive while considering my next move. What was going on at the Circle?

Costi showered after me, leaving me sitting on the edge of one of the two beds to munch on chips and a mix of foods rolled up in a thin flatbread. It was delicious, with beans and rice and different vegetables in some kind of spicy sauce.

My stomach churned with complicated feelings as I quickly typed out a text to my mother to let her know I had been evacuated.

Costi rejoined me dressed in a more comfortable-looking gray tee shirt and black cargo shorts, the longer strands of his damp dark hair curling a bit. He looked more like my childhood friend now that he’d shaved off his scruff and put away all the weapons and gear. He pushed a fabric-padded chair up so he was facing me and propped one bare foot insolently on my bed.

---