Page 22 of Big Little Spells

I look down at the table instead of at him. I know how to water scry. I’m not worried about the results, exactly. Or rather, I’m not worried that I won’t get any results, because I know I will. I’m more worried about what those results might mean.

His eyes are so blue it should hurt. “You’ll need to rid yourself of your hinderances.”

“No, I won’t.” He calls them hinderances, and I once believed that age-old witch adage myself. But when the ruling coven throws you out on your ass and you’re a messy, self-taught Diviner who’s been given absolutely no help, you learn to control what you have in all the human ways there are.

Meditation. Breath. Crystals.

Marring my flesh to dull the things that would otherwise overwhelm me, with piercings everywhere. The flashy septum piercing is for show, I grant you, but I keep the extra hoop helixes high on my ears to fend off stray spells, the daiths on both sides to center me, the bar on the top of my left ear to divert negative energy. I keep the metal circles in my nose and bellybutton, the stud in my eyebrow, the bar in one nipple, all to keep me solid and safe.

And I keep my most favorite one just for me.

If you know, you know.

I also plan to keep the tattoos that have taught me the control I need. The control that is the only reason I’ve survived long enough to come back here—after spectacularly losing control the night I left.

If I fail yet another test in this town, what do I care? The only test that matters is my own. I’ve been passing that one daily for a decade.

Pity that all this sentimental self-actualization will be interrupted when the Joywood strike you down and kill you, interrupts that immortal voice in my head.

I take a deep breath and work on blocking him again. The Joywood aren’t here. This is between me and an obnoxious old witch who has no real power over me. What’s a curse or a hex or a little toad-turning when I’ve survived exile?

I can do this. I do it all the time without trying. It happens to me whether I like it or not. In my sleep. In the grocery store. Seeing the future is never a problem—it’s the stopping all those futures coming at me like a faucet of fate that I struggle with.

Sadly, he knows that too. He knows way too much.

But that’s neither here nor there right now. This is a test, and no doubt something the Joywood will ask of me too.

I breathe, I center myself...this time, with all the forbidden witch words I grew up with. I let that hot ball of power within pulse in all the ways I’ve tried to avoid for a decade.

Much like outside holding Emerson’s hand to drop the glamour, it’s peace. It’s homecoming. It’s me.

I reach out and take the wand. It’s been cleansed. Whoever it really belongs to, Nicholas or someone else, there’s no hint of them or their magic. Even for a Diviner. It’s light and feels just right.

I look at the bowl of water. Water from the confluence.

Ask the river for its wisdom, Nicholas orders me.

I can do that.

On a long, slow exhale, I touch the crystal tip of the wand—a precious opal, I realize, for amplification and hope—to the water in the bowl. I focus on the ripples. I focus on the water. I let the heat inside of me expand as the water moves and dances.

“Wisdom of the water, show me your light,” I say, infusing the simple words with everything I feel inside me.

The power sings up my arm, all good—but it’s hot.

Scalding.

Instead of me reaching out to ask for the power, it reaches inside of me and burns. There are flashes of images I can’t make out. Blurry and fuzzy. Just like last night when I tried to see what the future held for Emerson. But this time with pain.

A lot of pain.

A sharp, burning, terrible pain that I can’t control. It’s racing through me, like it’s the blood in my veins, and this isn’t how it’s supposed to be. This isn’t right. Something else lances into my hand, so hot and painful I can’t keep my grip on the wand and it falls to the marble floor with a clatter.

I like to think I don’t make a noise, don’t yelp at the pain—but Emerson is immediately at my side, so maybe I do.

“I’m all right,” I assure her, inspecting my hand. It feels like it’s burned, charred in fact, but it looks normal. I try to shake it off, even though that makes it hurt worse. “Things have just been a little wonky since last night. It isn’t in me. It’s something without.”

“Wonky,” Nicholas repeats in his cultured voice, as though the word is foreign. And absurd. But he studies me in a way that is more...considering than it was before.

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