Page 55 of Bright Dark Curses

The most common of mages, along with air ones. Most had little to no magic and simply an affinity to the element. “Then how…?”

“I, ah, bought a spell online in the dark market,” he confessed guiltily.

“From a seller you knew?” I asked like it didn’t matter that he had a usual dark magic supplier.

“No!” he exclaimed, scandalized. “It was the first time I bought anything there. I found the shop, and it looked good. Great reviews.”

Shane snorted. “Dude, don’t try to act the victim.”

“I’m not. I know what I did was bad, but it was just a small spell. I didn’t think things would get so bad.”

“What was the spell supposed to do?” I asked.

“First, I messed with the script notes so he’d get blamed because he was supposed to check them. But he blamed someone else.” Ethan hung his head. “That’s when I used the spell. It was supposed to make others get a bad feeling around him, but it didn’t work. Like at all.”

“What did you do, then?”

“I told the witch their spell didn’t work, so they sent me another.”

My eyebrows rose. “You spent more money on a shop that sent you a wonky spell?”

“Oh, no,” he said, relieved. “They sent a replacement for free.”

This time, it was Dru who snorted. “Sure.”

“I swear,” Ethan insisted.

“And you didn’t think it was weird?” Shane asked dryly.

“Why would it be weird? It was their fault the spell was bad.”

Clearly, Ethan was telling the truth about never having bought things in the dark market before. “Let’s just say the dark marketplace isn’t known for giving away things for free. What happened next?”

“Well, I used the new potion on Parker’s mug. Daniel was supposed to get zapped when he was about to give it to him so he’d splash it all over Parker and get yelled at. But he made Gina hold it and she got some burns on her hand.” He ran a hand over his face. “She dropped the mug before she got seriously harmed, thankfully.”

I was almost scared to ask. “Did you, um, ask for a third potion?”

Ethan shrunk into himself.

“Dude!” Shane exclaimed.

“The witch sounded very sorry! I believed them.”

“So you used another potion?” This must be the one that made the lighting equipment go wonky. On principle, magic didn’t affect electronics quite that way, but there might be ways of going around it.

“I did, but then I had second thoughts, so I cleaned it away.” He looked at us beseechingly.

“The lights still acted up,” Key said.

Ethan took another big gulp of his iced tea.

“Well?” I prodded.

“The potion I used was on Daniel’s earbuds,” he said, sounding thoroughly lost. “It was supposed to make him hear voices.”

A spell wouldn’t interfere with the actual sound, but dark magic potions could induce hallucinations when they touched skin.

“We didn’t hear about that,” Shane said.

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