Page 24 of Spellbound
When I went back inside, Asher was glaring at me, those gorgeous green eyes flashing and his hair falling over onto hisforehead. The look he gave me was daring me to do something, say something. I was preventing him from speaking, so it was all managed with a lot of attitude, his furious face and flashing eyes—but it was still pretty impressive, for all that.
The change in his demeanor was getting worse, and it was beginning to bother me a little. Up until I mentioned his mother, he had been his normal self—or what I thought was normal for him anyway. I decided it was time to get started, but first I needed to see about getting rid of that curse. On that dark road, it had appeared to me almost like an evil entity, moving and darting underneath his skin. It peered out at me from his eyes before ducking quickly away again, and it had been much older than he was.
I waited another few seconds, took a deep breath and began again.
“We’ll table the discussion about your mother for a moment since it seems to be so hard for you and work up to it. Instead, I’m going to do a test to see if you’re under some spell or curse. Would that be all right?”
“No! Leave me the fuck alone. I’m not going to drink any stupid potion you give me.”
He’d drink it if I had to pour it down his throat. A potion would help me see if he was being oppressed or cursed. That would tell me if he was guilty and I needed to redo the binding spell to strengthen it, or if he was innocent and wrongly accused. It might buy some time to take him and get the hell out of here if he turned out to be a warlock. Because I wouldn’t see him hurt or killed.
I put a hand on his head and one on his heart and chanted a shortened version of the binding spell I’d used on that warlock I’d had to deal with not all that long ago. It put him to sleep and would shore up the original spell but wasn’t designed to harm him. I needed to think about all that he’d said. I needed to figureout what it could mean. Until I knew more, there was no way I could set him or his powers free.
He was breathing much more easily when I was done, so I waved my hand over him, sealing the spell and he sighed. I bent over him to kiss his forehead. I couldn’t seem to help myself. I didn’t like hurting him in any way, and I knew I hadn’t, but it felt a little like I was betraying him after making love to him the night before. I still needed time to think. I needed him to settle down and not be afraid of me, but that was a tall order. The spell I’d just said over him was making him totally relax to the point that he was in a kind of stupor.
I went out onto the front porch to give him some privacy and quiet and to let him rest. There was a danger in using too much magic at a time on someone, and he’d already been through a lot. The last half hour had been intense for both of us, so I had to give him a break.
We’d never even brought in all his things from the car yet, so I went out to bring in his computer bag. Putting it down on the kitchen table, as he slept, sitting up on the couch, I sat down at the table to go through his bag. I pulled out his laptop and plugged it in, since it needed charging. While I was waiting, I rifled through some papers he had stuffed down in one of the pockets.
It was research he’d done, like he’d told me, and it seemed to be focused on the Home Guard of the Confederate states, like he’d mentioned before. From skimming over what he’d copied, it looked like something that many people had already researched, so the problem was going to be coming up with a fresh angle to the thing, like he’d said—and he’d written those very words in the margins and notes too. He seemed to be looking for something that hadn’t already been explored again and again and done to death. Nothing I saw in his notes convinced me he’d found anything like that.
He didn’t have a password, which was odd, so I could see his file on the screen, labeledHome Guard.He’d told me he had about twenty thousand words. I clicked on the file to open it to get a better idea of what his plan for the paper might be. But instead of anything about the Home Guard or the Civil War, I found only this line written again and again on page after page. Some twenty something pages of the same line.
“Something wicked this way comes.”
Was that supposed to be some kind of fucking joke or had he truly lost his mind? It had to be a spell. I tried to picture him sitting in his room, typing that line over and over, thinking he was making progress on his paper. He would be happy about how far he’d gotten, and I just hated how cruel it was. This was a curse, all right. A wicked one. When I found out who was responsible, I’d take them apart, no matter who it was.
How was I going to tell him about this? He’d said he hadn’t gotten too far, but he’d made a start. To realize that all that time he’d been writing complete nonsense would be devastating to him, and I wished I could protect him from it in some way.
First, I was going to take away this fucking, evil-minded curse. I went into the kitchen to get the jug of rainwater that Rosalyn kept at the back of the refrigerator. I poured two cups of it in a pan and started heating it to a boil. Meanwhile I pricked my finger and let a few drops of my blood drop into it. I added some crushed coriander seed and some water hemlock and while it began to all boil together, I chanted a spell to remove all the poison.
I took it off the heat and let it cool on one of the other unlit burners and went back to set my candles around him. I would use candles as a focus, and something symbolic to concentrate on to help me access the etheric flow. I didn’t do much spell work as a rule, and I was a little out of practice. As with any spell, the ability to produce the desired or intended result dependedon the practitioner’s intent and his skill, as well as his ability to access and use the etheric flow. That term referred to the field that surrounded and penetrated the physical body of all the beings on earth.
It was like an energy field or a blueprint of that energy, where the physical body is formed and maintained. It was essential to life and drawn from the environment and distributed through energy channels. Witches were able to tap into it, with varying degrees of success, depending on how much power they had.
All the rest—the words, the wands, the candles, and the other trappings of Craft were just window dressing, really, and used to put a person in the right frame of mind. The power came from within. Folk witches like Rosalyn could usually produce a somewhat good result because of good intent. Words always mattered in spells, but intent mattered more. Practice and experience didn’t hurt either, but folk witches weren’t able to access the etheric flow the way I could. It was a dynamic, vital force, but it only truly responded to more powerful practitioner.
Using all white candles, I would let the flames burn down to ash to release whatever negative energy was in the air. That would disperse it into the ether. That was the plan, anyway. The use of candles wasn’t high magic, but I thought they wouldn’t hurt, and I needed the focus. Besides, burning through it had a nice symbolism to it.
I wasn’t sure how long this would take, but I locked the front door, just in case anyone decided to drop by. I needed Asher lying flat on his back for this, though I hoped I wouldn’t have to manhandle him again to get him there. He sure as hell wasnotin a mood earlier to cooperate with me in any kind of way, though he seemed quieter now.
I had to do something soon, because of the threat to him. And I could sense now that he was awake. He had been sleepingwhen I left him. He looked curiously at me as I walked back in with my supplies and started looking alarmed again, easily breaking through the spell I had on him, so I made another quick motion with my hand to calm him. I had a feeling he was almost as strong as I was, though not any stronger, thankfully.
The moment he realized I was trying to get him to lie down, it was like I was trying to wrestle a wildcat. In fact, if he’d been some kind of cat, he'd have been spitting and hissing at me now.
I just needed to get this over with as quickly as I could. I decided the easiest thing to do would be to make him go to sleep again while I got everything ready. I didn’t know the words to the little spells Rosalyn used, so I kept it simple. I put a hand on his head and said,“Vanistay.”
His eyes started blinking furiously as he fought sleep off as long as he could, but within ten seconds or less, his head dropped to his chest. I pushed him down on his back, grabbed a pillow for his head and stretched out his legs, trying to make him comfortable.
I may have practiced high magic, but I knew all about candle spells. It would have been hard to practically grow up in Rosalyn’s house and not gain some knowledge of them. She’d once been a magistrate, so she used to have a lot of power, but like I said, it had waned a bit with age, and then the radiation burned out most of the rest. She still had a lot of supplies for spell casting, though.
She had a Book of Shadows at home, as we called them, or a personal grimoire containing her handwritten spells and rituals. I had no access to that and wouldn’t look at it because it was intensely private. She also had candles, crystals, a chalice, herbs, spices, and all kinds of ingredients for her spells, and even a cauldron and a wand. She kept it all in a locked closet in her house, and she even had a small altar inside there. She had theonly key. The things in the closet here in this guest cottage was just the overflow and they were all I needed.
I didn’t have any of that stuff, except for my own Book of Shadows, which I had begun compiling when I was a young teenager and first coming into my power. It was a carefully collected book of spells, both original and ones I had found useful, as well as helpful notes that I had taken from various practitioners over the years. A great deal of my father’s advice was in those notes. I also had a crooked, old wand made of rowan wood that had been passed down to my father and then on to me. Rowan made good wands that were supposed to be protective of their owners. But then again, my great-grandfather had died with it in his hand, fighting elemental spirits, so that idea might be a bit debatable. I never used the wand anyway but kept it as a reminder of him. I didn’t feel I needed it, to be honest. Maybe one day, if my power started to wane, I would, but I was young and just coming into the highest point of my magic.
It didn’t take too long to prepare the candles, placing them beside the couch at the four cardinal points of the compass around it—north, south, east, and west. Then came four more at the ordinal directions, northeast, southeast, southwest and northwest. I put them in the little glass holders I found in the kitchen closet, so they wouldn’t drip on the refinished floors.
I noticed Asher’s eyes were half-open again by the time I got it all set up, and they were full of curiosity, and a bit of apprehension, though he was drooping against the pillows and he still looked groggy. It was impressive that he had fought off sleep so quickly again, and I thought that was probably because he was scared of what was happening to him. He was probably afraid to relax completely, and I didn’t blame him for that. I wasn’t sure what would happen either, though I’d keep him safe from any harm, and I’d stop this if anything started to go wrong.
