Page 55 of Sigils & Spells

“I am,” I smiled and bit the inside of my cheek to keep from correcting her. It was doctor, not professor. But that didn’t really matter. He wasn’t here demanding that I defend his title.

The woman with the hand sewing stood and placed her fabric bits down. “Which fiber caught your eye? Let’s start there and see what it would work up with best. Are you very coordinated or a bit fumbley?”

I blinked at the odd question. “Fumbley? Why?”

“Well, crochet requires one hook, knitting two needles. Sometimes crochet is easier for the coordinationally challenged.

“Peggy Jones, that’s a fallacy, and you know it.” Nan quipped. “This young lady rides a motorcycle all over town, I think she could handle knitting.”

The rest of the group chittered with laughter.

“Oh, is that you?”

“That’s me. It’s hardly a motorcycle, just a scooter.”

With some fussing and talking me out of the expensive wool Claudette claimed I said was pretty, I had a ball of yarn called a skein, and a crochet hook. Peggy Jones plopped me in the middle of their sewing circle between Nan and a woman named Maureen.

“You might know my son, Chris. He’s a reference librarian at Weiss,” Maureen said before she began showing me how to loop the hook around the yarn. “You hold the yarn still, and let the hook do all the work.”

Claudette had a project in her lap, and in no time the conversation veered away from teaching me a basic stitch, and a plethora of questions why we weren’t at work— we had told Dr. Bronson we were striking in solidarity of the cold, and would be back tomorrow as we took the rest of the day off. It wasn’t like there was anything pressing, and I had Claudette curious about the chicken situation as well.

* * *

Merle

Ramsey was losing it. In the time that I had known him, he had gone from a man on the verge of insanity back to someone who had hope. Something happened in the past month that had him slipping.

I sat in my favorite chair and sipped at a cup of hot tea.

The tea I had made for Ramsey sat on the coffee table, cooling as he paced back and forth. He hadn’t even taken his coat off. It desperately needed to be cleaned. At one point it had been a basic tan trench. Now the color was sweat stain and dark splatters of dried blood and gore.

“Sit down, when was the last time you took your coat off? Hell man, when was the last time you bathed or changed clothes?”

My personal feelings aside, he was now the physical embodiment of the slimy little toad I had always thought him to be. I didn’t like him. I never had. But he paid well, and no one, no matter how repulsive, deserved to have a demon curse riding them like a trick pony into battle.

He paused and pulled the front of his shirt away from his chest and sniffed. He shrugged. “It’s been a couple of days.”

“Smells like a couple of weeks. Have you started doing your morning ritual again?”

He dropped onto the couch opposite the table from me. His hands were in constant motion, as if he was rubbing lotion into them.

“Every morning. I still don’t think it’s working. You’ve got to do something.”

I groaned. I didn’t want to get out of my chair. It was my favorite for a reason. It was warm and comfortable and conformed to my back side the way only an old leather chair could. Setting my tea down, I pushed to my feet.

I stepped into the dining room area of my apartment. It’s where I did a lot of my small work. It looked more like a hoarder collection of random dried herbs and ceramics in a kitchen without a sink than it did a scientist’s lab, or even a wizard’s lab. I didn’t have a book stand with a large grimoire open, I didn’t have a pointy hat perched jauntily on a skull— I had thought about it for decorative purposes, but didn’t have the shelf space.

I pulled out a mortar and began tossing a few items into it. Mostly herbs and salts, but I added sprinkles of a few specialized ingredients taken from small stoppered vials.

I wasn’t a potions specialist, but I needed to give Ramsey a boost.

“What are you doing?” He asked.

“Something,” I retorted. “Look, we are close, and I think the demon realizes it. It’s fighting against the bonds, undermining your confidence in what we’re doing here. You have to keep it together. You are in charge of your body and mind, assert dominance.” As I spoke, I added and crushed ingredients together. “Start by taking a shower and burning that coat. Or throw it in the wash. Now, shut up for a second, I’m almost done here.”

I pulled a trinket from a box I kept for situations exactly like this. Without looking at it, I tossed it into the stone mortar with a clink. I covered the stone bowl with my hand and infused my power into the contents. I pulled magic to me, tapping into the flow of the ley lines that surged with the elder power of the mountains we were in. Power thundered through my body, leaving me shaking. It was done.

I took a few moments to catch my breath and regain my composure. I wiped at the clammy sweat on my brow. This form of magic always took a lot with it as it traveled through me.

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