Page 60 of Cursed Beasts

Belladonna

Lowell

Betrayal

Love

Moon

“Blood magic is forbidden.” Katarina looked worried. “This doesn’t make any sense.”

She picked up the parchment paper, inspecting it further as she walked back and forth. Nothing looked familiar except Zev’s last name. Katarina talked to herself for a moment before she looked at me.

“Is Lowell a name?” she asked, still pacing.

“Zev’s last name,” I said, looking at the list again.

“Usually when we do this spell, the first word is usually the basis of the spell. The second is the caster and the rest could be pieces of a spell, but if Lowell is a person, that might mean that there were two people casting the spell.”

She kept up her explanation, but I tuned her out when I tried to figure out what all of this meant.

“That isn’t possible. Why would Zev cast this spell on us?”

“It doesn’t mean he did it, it means it has a Lowell magical signature on it.” she stated. “It could be a cousin, aunt or parent. I’m sure Zev had a big family.”

“Is this spell a hundred percent correct?”

“No, but it’s supposed to give a direction we can go in. I’ve never had such inconclusive results, though.” She bit her bottom lip, looking down at the paper again. “My father and I use this spell every time we are called out to a job.”

“What else can I do?” I asked, hating that I was just standing here.

“I think we need to research blood magic,” she said, walking towards me. “I’ve never seen it performed and I don’t know if it’s even possible to counteract it. My father and I have never been called out for a spell that had blood magic in it. We probably would have had to report it.”

She walked back to the table to lay the parchment down before grabbing something out of her bag. She handed me a small rectangular item wrapped in something red and white. I noticed she put it in her mouth, moaning softly.

“What is this?” I asked, inspecting it.

“It’s a Kit Kat,” she said before she reached over, opening it for me, showing me a brown thing.

She brought it up to my lips like she was feeding me, and my wolf absolutely went crazy for it. It seemed she didn’t know wolf customs, but feeding someone of the opposite sex meant they were interested in courting or as a sign of possessiveness.

Her violet eyes looked at me expectantly before I opened my mouth and she put the piece of food in my mouth. A burst of sweetness filled my mouth, and I realized it was chocolate.

Biting into the Kit Kat, the center was crunchy and complimented the rest of the sweetness.

“What was that?” I said, when I had finished the piece she gave me. “That was delicious.”

“That was candy.” She grabbed another one, unwrapping it for me, before she gave me another one. I hesitated a moment, looking into her eyes before I leaned forward to take this piece from her hand, letting my lips linger on her fingers. It was a very intimate act in our culture. To her, this was just her doing this to be nice, and my wolf needed to understand that.

“I forget you aren’t familiar with what we have in the present day.” She smiled. “Maybe I’ll bring more variety down next time. That way you can try different kinds of candy.”

“That was delicious, and I’d like to try more.” I said, licking the corner of my mouth, tasting a little more chocolate.

“Ok,” she said, glancing at my tongue.

“Ok, so let’s research blood magic. I think I know where we might find some books.” I turned around before I did something stupid like trying to kiss her, seeing if she tasted good with the chocolate lingering in her mouth.

Most of our big magic books were on the second floor in a corner that we used to have under a spell to keep the kids out of the section. Now that it was just the three of us, we left it open, but we rarely ever used these books.

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