Page 74 of The Fantastic Fluke

Fluke hopped up and preceded me into the bathroom. My familiar did love a nice warm shower, and I didn’t blame him one bit.

We showered, and then I dug out some clean clothes. It was just sweats and socks, the most comfortable things I owned, so that discomfort wouldn’t distract from the magic.

The best space in the house for ritual magic was the living room, so I shoved the coffee table out of the way and piled my father’s books back onto it haphazardly.

I didn’t have a proper ritual magic kit like my mother had, no bundles of sage or consecrated candles or whatever, but I also didn’t have money and time for all that.

What I had was my dirty old athame, which I washed off, of course. A pair of scented candles from a home store. Mmm, bay breeze, whatever that was. Wait, wasn’t it a fruity drink? Whatever. I hunted down one of the boxes of my mother’s carnival glass collection in the garage, searching in particular for a wide blue bowl, then filling it with tap water. What? I wasn’t an Evian guy any more than Fluke.

I considered the box of Dad on the mantel for a minute, but figured if it worked, Gideon wouldn’t want the old man to have any part in it, so I grabbed a bowl of salt from the kitchen. Both ashes and salt were effective representations of the earth. Any mineral would probably work, it just needed to be as close to its pure state as possible, so the salt might be a better choice anyway. I wasn’t sure if iodized table salt was bad, but hell, I was using scented candles. It would be hard to get sillier unless I had grabbed the seasoned salt.

Though... that was mostly plain old salt with, like, garlic and paprika, all of which were grown from or even in the earth, so maybe not the silliest thing ever.

Still, it was best to take things seriously.

I arranged them to the cardinal points. I’d have thought it convenient that the room’s cardinal points were at each wall, but it was probably deliberate. Maybe witches only made up ten percent of the population, but that meant one in ten potential house buyers would care about that feature.

I sat in front of my arrangement of tools and stared. That, of course, was when my old friend anxiety reared his head. What if I couldn’t do it? What if I was too rusty, my ritual magic skills too rudimentary to do the job right? Fluke cuddled into my side, his warmth somehow leaking into my soul and calming the imminent panic.

“Okay buddy,” I whispered. “We can totally do this. Right?”

Fluke barked, then settled in next to me, front legs stretched out in front of us, chin held high, he exuded an air of calm competence, like the freaking sphinx. I didn’t know how the hell my derpy fox had done that, but hell, I could use a little of that confidence.

Okay then. It was time. I could do it. I could do anything with my extra magical magic. Hell, Gideon was the one who’d said I was powerful. I was just taking that confidence he had in me, and pushing it to the next level.

I lit the candles, then let my eyes fall shut, trying not to let the scent of pineapple and sea salt distract me. There was a reason a good mage kept plain old white taper candles around the house.

Mentally, I invoked the cardinal directions, and their associated elements and symbols.

The north, earth, and salt.

West, water, and well, water.

South, fire, and bay breeze candles. Oops.

East, air, and the athame.

An involuntary shiver went through me at the thought of the thing, and I dismissed it. I didn’t have time to be unsettled by a knife. There were so many things in the world more important than that; too much was at stake.

I opened my mind to the convergence, and it came easily, filtering into my awareness gently, slowly, as I allowed it in.

I fixed Gideon firmly in my mind. First a mental snapshot of him: his gorgeous face, wavy hair, warm eyes, and strong jaw. Then I thought about his touch, light but never timid. His voice, deep and resonant like the bass line of a familiar beloved song. I didn’t have a proper scent or taste anchor, since I couldn’t believe the phantom smell and taste of him on our single night together had been anything other than my imagination, but I refused to dwell on that. I had the essence of Gideon, and it was enough.

The only way I could have more of him was if I had his actual remains, which would have been a little creepy.

I pressed my image of Gideon into the convergence and felt a swell of giddy emotion that I didn’t think was mine, a strange sort of child-like glee, bubbly and warm in my chest.

The power surged inside me.Yes, Gideon!

Had that been real? Had there been a voice in the ley line?

Gideon ours.

I frowned at that. I wasn’t a huge fan of someone, something, other than me claiming him.Yours?

Ours, it stressed, and I had the impression that the voice was including me, not referring to itself—themself?—in the plural tense.Our Gideon. Keep?

I’m going to keep him, yes.

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