To Spell & Back Read online

“That’s different. And your affinity for elemental magic gives you an edge. But honestly, Lexi, if you’re looking for a quick fix why not just ask the godmothers for some warning system or a resting shield charm—it would buy him some time in a full-on attack.”

  “No, I can’t have them risking any more for me. I know they say they’re content to stay out of the Faelands, but they’ll want to go back at some point, and I’m not going to be the reason they can’t.”

  “Lexi, you know they’d do it in a hot second.” Salem said.

  “Yes, and that’s exactly why I can’t ask.”

  “What about Flix, then? He’s already got “tainted blood”,” Salem made a disgusted face at the offensive moniker, “and I know for a fact he hates going to Faerie. Plus, he’s not a guardian, so I’m not even sure that rule would apply to him anyway.”

  Salem had a point, and it wasn’t as though I didn’t have enough on my plate. I’d spent twenty-five years as a helpless null, and now I never wanted to feel that way again. But Kin’s safety was more important. “I still want to learn. That’s a given. But I’ll enlist Flix for now, just to make sure.”

  “I have an important question to ask you.” The way Kin’s strong fingers were kneading my sore shoulder muscles into submission, he could have asked me almost anything, and I’d have said yes. A combination of friction and the natural warmth of his skin teased heady scents from the muscle rub my grandmother had blended and left on a shelf in the Sanctum.

  Notes of chamomile, lavender, clary sage, eucalyptus, and peppermint relaxed both body and soul as the pain ebbed away.

  “Umm. Okay. But you’re going to have to wash your hands first. That peppermint oil was not made for use on the tender bits.”

  “No, Lexi. I'm serious here. I want a drawer.”

  When I didn’t immediately fill the silence with an answer, Kin said, “I want to keep some things here. Is that so much to ask? You have half a wardrobe at my place, and I think I deserve the same consideration.”

  How had he gone to the defensive place so quickly? A split second is barely enough time to devise an answer to a question you’re expecting and this one hadn’t qualified as one of those.

  “Of course you can have a drawer—two if you want them. I was just surprised that you were so serious about it is all. You didn’t even have to ask, just pick the one you want and toss my things on the chair or in the closet.”

  There. That was settled. Or was it?

  “There’s something else, isn’t there?” The look on his face simply shouted there was.

  “I was wondering if you could put a...” Kin’s voice dropped to a whisper, “spell on it to keep anyone from doing anything weird with my things.” This was all my fault. With Twinkleberry wine loosening my tongue, I’d told him a few faerie godmother stories after our bout of fun in the hot tub the other night. Enchanting his boxers with invisible itching powder was not out of the realm of possibility, so I understood his concern.

  “Consider it done.”

  “It’s not too weird? My asking you to do magic for me?” I let the perfect opening to tell him about the Flix’s protection go by.

  “I’ll clean out some space for you first thing in the morning. But for now, wash your hands, Mister. I want them on me.” He did, and I made good use of them before falling asleep in his arms.

  I fell into the dream like it was a cliff and I was wearing a parachute.

  Fire. Balefire. White. The same color used to forge living gold. Singing. I heard singing. No, not singing. A chant. I couldn’t hear the words, only the rhythm. Hands. Not mine. Hers. Holding something pink. A blur that slowly faded to clear. A baby. A pink baby with tufts of dark hair and eyes of green. A bow shaped mouth the delicate texture and color of a rose petal. Fire. Behind the baby. White fire.

  The chanting swelled. The hands moved closer to the flame.

  No! Don’t put the baby in the fire!

  Too late. I closed my eyes and waited for the screaming to start.

  A giggle.

  They put the baby in the fire, and she laughed while she played with the flames.

  Fire to keep the keeper

  Flame to heal the healer

  I woke up with part of the chant echoing through my head.

  Some dreams feel different from the kind that are nothing more than an end-of-the-day info dump. They, like this one, take on a weight of importance that pulls at your psyche until you pay attention to the message.

  What did it mean? Could immersing a baby in the Balefire provide some protection or increase her affinity for becoming a Keeper? Had I been subjected to the same ritual?

  Flame to heal the healer. Something about that line made me think of my grandmother in her Clara-shaped tomb.

  Slipping out of bed without waking Kin, I made my way downstairs, pulled the handle, and entered the Sanctum where I sank into a cross-legged position on the wide hearth and studied the flame. Nothing I tried would make it turn white, so I turned my attention toward the healing part of the chant.

  Heal. If the Balefire could heal, maybe it could also break the spell and free my grandmother. Only one way to find out. I squirmed closer and tried to shove my injured shin into the fire. I doubt you’ll ever have occasion to try and stick your leg into a fireplace, but if you do, let me give you a tip. Don’t bother. It’s damn near impossible. I ended up on all fours with my butt facing the flames and my neck craned around hard so I could see. Eventually, I managed, but it wasn’t pretty.

  The long scrape I’d brought back from my brush with a tripping hazard in the past made contact with the flame. I left it in there as long as I could hold the position—which was not very long, let me tell you. My planking skills are sadly lacking.

  When I collapsed onto my stomach, panting from the effort, I didn’t even need to look to know it had worked. The tingling itch of healing flesh told its own story, and I found another use for the Balefire. You learn something new every day, right?

  Chapter Ten

  KIN WAS ALREADY UP and gone when Salem’s scratchy cat tongue woke me at a much earlier hour than I usually cared to see. In fact, I’d have guessed it wasn’t even light out yet, but when I opened the heavy drapes covering the big bay window across from my bed lo and behold, there was the sun.

  “What could you possibly be thinking?” I scowled at him, pointing toward the night shirt I was wearing, the words If you love me, let me sleep emblazoned across the front.

  “The godmothers have prepared breakfast, and are requesting your presence, Miss Lexi.” Salem mocked over his shoulder after whooshing into his human form and skipping out the door.

  “There had better be some premium coffee down there,” I muttered under my breath.

  Premium coffee was a given; an eclectic brunch menu was not. The after-effects of my odd dream had kept me up until the wee hours, and I’d rather sleep than test out a new party menu even if the kitchen smelled amazing.

  “Why do you all hate me?” Heavy cream and double sugar went into my coffee. This was a morning for sweet and light, and the extra sugar helped kick the caffeine into high gear.

  “Just drink your coffee and stop being grumpy. I added a little something extra to the brew.” My hand halted with the cup halfway to my mouth, and I took a cautious sniff. Terra’s definition of something extra ranged from the sublime to the disgusting. Sure, Dragolian frog snot has ten times the potency of espresso, but it tastes like...well, regular frog snot. Yuck.

  “What’s in it?”

  “I’ve been working on an infusion using some of the ingredients in Twinkleberry wine, but with fewer side effects for humans and just enough euphoria to promote happiness.” Terra explained.

  “You know you can’t serve this at parties, right?” Visions of a horde of naked partygoers taking to the streets flitted through my mind.

  “Why not? Happy customers make for repeat customers. That’s business 101.”

  Buying time to frame my comments constructively,
I pulled a stool up to the counter and rested my elbows on the granite. “Twinkleberry wine ought to be considered a controlled substance, and you can’t drug people against their wills, it’s not polite.” Most of the Fae I’d met set great store by maintaining at least a facade of civilized society. Don’t get me wrong; they engaged in plenty of treachery behind closed doors all while presenting the customs of politeness in public. Offering someone a mood-lifting beverage took two giant steps over the line, then turned and spat on it.

  Before I had time to form words, Terra dropped a verbal bomb, “Kin seemed relaxed and happy when he left for work this morning.”

  “Kin drank this? Did you tell him what was in it?” Then again, Kin had wanted to try a sip of Twinkleberry wine for weeks now; he’d probably jumped at the chance for a drink of laced coffee.

  Terra sighed in that way that told me she was getting annoyed and the no-fight rule only applied to her sisters. Not only was I fair game, but she’d been denied the outlet of a good bout of magic-flinging fury for so long, a fight sounded like fun. When a tiny, localized earthquake rattled the stool under me, I took the hint and drank the coffee.

  For the next ten minutes, I felt like the newest exhibition at the zoo.

  “Quit staring at me. Is this what you dragged me out of bed for?” Admittedly, my post-breakfast mood probably was the best test. If her concoction could turn me into a morning person, it was too strong to be unleashed upon the world.

  “No,” Terra muttered and then amended to, “maybe. We’re trying out some new recipes besides the coffee.” She nodded to Soleil, who filled a plate from the warming oven and set it in front of me.

  “There’s nothing hinky in there,” Soleil assured me after I sniffed the food suspiciously. Silver dollar waffles, perfect in their miniature size, formed the outsides of sandwiches, some filled with sweet ingredients and some with savory—all of which looked delicious and smelled incredible. I picked out the scent of fresh berries, sausage, and even chocolate. Candied flowers dotted the plate. “Speed dating brunch. It’s the new big thing,” the fire-haired faerie answered my unspoken question.

  “You’ll be a hit. This is so good it’s almost an aphrodisiac. How did you get the waffles so perfectly small and thin?”

  Stupid question, I knew it the second it left my lips. Shrinking spell.

  “I wish I could send half my client list along; odds are some of them would find matches and take the weight off my shoulders. It would have been easier if Jett had concentrated on matched couples; once his influence was gone, they’d have naturally drifted back together. But no, that would have made things too easy for me.” The coffee was definitely not working.

  “Instead, my pain in the ass half-brother had to work some aversion magic on every unattached person he could find. You can thank him for all those speed dating parties. The jerk.”

  “So why don’t you do that?” Vaeta’s question came out of left field.

  “What? Speed dating?” My voice rose. “I know you’re new, but you’ve been here long enough to know that’s not how I roll.”

  “Better check the mix on that coffee of yours,” Vaeta warned Terra. “I don’t think it’s working properly.” I heard a snort from the corner where Evian was doing something I couldn’t see clearly. “Seems like it makes Lexi cranky.”

  “There might be another reason,” Evian offered. Her connection to the tides made her sensitive to the monthly ebbs and flows of a woman’s body.

  “Hush up, over there. After all these years, you know I’m not a morning person.”

  “Well, I think it’s a perfectly perfect idea.” Vaeta defended herself. “What is the term? One stop shopping.”

  “If you could find a way to invite the matches for your current client list, you could clear the backlog of first meetings all at once. Maybe not with your normal flair, but still...”

  When they wanted to get a rise out of Vaeta, elemental faerie of air, they called her Airy Fairy, or Airhead—this was one of the times when they were off by a country mile. The idea not only had merit but if I could work out the one major detail, it was flat-out genius.

  Without thinking, I poured another cup of the doctored coffee and slugged it down black.

  “The only snag is finding an efficient way to contact all the matches. It’s not like names pop out of my...” Terra narrowed her eyes at what she thought I was about to say. “...hat.” I hastily amended the end of the sentence. “I call it my LPS—Love Positioning System—because it works a lot like a GPS. Once it locks on, I can follow it to my client’s perfect match. I’m not sure how I could parlay that into a method for inviting people to a lonely hearts party.”

  “There has to be a way.” Evian got up and came over to take the chair next to mine, and the four of us began to throw around ideas.

  Charming stamps or envelopes was the current favorite when I came up with a simpler solution.

  “Enchanted ink. Flix is always bugging me to get a computer and a printer. I think I can make ink that will only be visible to my client’s matches. We’ll print fliers and post them all over town. You’ll handle the party, right?”

  “If it fits into our schedule.” Even Terra couldn’t keep a straight face for that one.

  There’s no recipe for enchanted printer ink, so I was in new spell-writing territory and worse, I’d need to test the stuff once I finished.

  I dumped out the shopping bag full of ink cartridges printed with the numbers Flix specified in his text message. It’s mind-blowing how three colors and black can be combined to create every hue and shade needed in an image, and I think it’s a total scam that each brand has its own type of cartridge.

  “Okay, here we go. It’s got to be a charm. Flix says I can’t introduce any potion ingredients into the ink because that will clog the...” I couldn’t remember the phrase he’d used. “...ink spewing whatsit.”

  “Is that an industry standard term?” I stuck my tongue out at Salem who added, “Intention plus invocation. Concentrate, and this will be easy.”

  Ten minutes to come up with a proper incantation and another five to prepare myself and speak it was all I needed, and then I tooled off to work on Pinky, my backpack stuffed full of supplies.

  Flix was already at my desk with a weird expression on his face. Half smug and half kid in a candy store.

  “Where is it?” A folder about the size of a notebook lay on my desk instead of a laptop or worse, a huge monstrosity of a desktop computer. “I thought you’d have it all set up by now.”

  “It is all set up.” He gestured to a new piece of furniture I hadn’t noticed. A console table with a shallow, built-in cabinet fit with the rest of the furniture in the room. “The router is in here and so is the printer, see? All the convenience of an updated office and none of the clutter.”

  He knew me so well.

  “Where’s the computer, though?”

  “Right there,” he pointed to my desk and the notebook I’d dismissed earlier. “Check it out.” Flipping the cover open, he switched on the notepad computer. “It does everything you’ll ever need, works a lot like your phone so it won’t be difficult to learn, and is small enough to satisfy your utter contempt for clunky electronics.”

  Fingers running over the screen, he pulled up the various apps he’d already installed and showed me how, with a few flicks, I could do everything I currently did on paper.

  “Everything syncs to your phone, too.” Great, I could become one of those zombie people always staring at their phones. Still, I wasn’t about to rain on his parade and tell him I had no intention of giving up my planner anytime soon.

  “Thank you; this is way better than anything I could have imagined.” And it was. My office looked nearly the same as always, and now he would stop bugging me. Maybe. I hoped.

  “Did you do the ink?” His hair was platinum today, his eyes a clear powder blue, and his smile wider than I’d seen it in a while.

  “Yep, got it right here. Now wha
t?” I looked skeptically at all the buttons and settings and lights I’d probably somehow scramble and turn a blinking, angry red. It’s not like I don’t know how to use a printer, it’s just that I have a tendency to screw them up beyond repair.

  “Leave this part to me.” Flix pulled open a door I would have needed a map and a flashlight to find and replaced the ink cartridges with the enchanted ones from the bag. “There, they’re all loaded up, and we’re good to go.”

  “Now, where’s the program to design the fliers?” Several little icons covered the screen, and I had no idea what half of them were—not even the ones Flix had shown me earlier.

  Leaning over my shoulder, Flix tapped a blue box. “This is the desktop publishing software. I already set up a sheet with some dummy text. If you don’t like what I’ve done, all you need to do is change it to say what you want.”

  Easy enough. I couldn’t see a thing I wanted to change.

  “This is such a genius plan, if I do say so myself.” With the godmothers’ lonely hearts party idea serving as divine inspiration, my matchmaking gears were greased and working at top speed. “Once we decided to host the thing, the big dilemma was how to invite the right guests. If this works, it will be perfect. To anyone already in a happy relationship, the fliers will advertise a church potluck dinner from last month; only those meant for someone on my client list will be able to discern the time and location of the actual party.”

  That was the idea, anyway. Mixing technology with magic—what can I say, I’m a millennial witch, might as well take advantage of it.

  “You’re right, Lex, it’s genius.” Flix automatically stroked my ego. “Let’s just make sure we put up enough of them. What do you think?” The printer had silently spit out a piece of electric pink card stock covered with black, shimmering ink. FootSwept’s broom and stars logo sparkled across the top of the page, and Flix had picked a delicate script that was both romantic and easy to read.

  “Hey, you two,” the cheerful voice of Mona Katz startled me nearly out of my skin. A former client turned friend—100% unique in that description, Mona had wiggled her way into my heart. Smart, independent, and driven, her personality reminded me of the Energizer bunny; she just kept going, no matter what.