To Spell & Back Page 3

  “How could you possibly have known? It looked like what it looked like and knowing wouldn’t have changed the outcome. At least now I know what happened to Clara, and I might even have a shot at restoring her.”

  I dropped that bomb on them and turned to follow Kin up to my bedroom with only one thought in my head—that the potentially awkward conversation had gone better than expected.

  Okay, maybe there was one more thought as I watched Kin’s backside amble up the stairs.

  Chapter Three

  DUCKING DOWN THE WIDE alley between French Street and Hinge Avenue triggered a mild case of déjà vu I deftly brushed aside. The last time—technically the first time—I'd passed through the portal to the Fringe, I was following my mother down a primrose path, never knowing she was the snake hiding under the petals.

  This time, I was alone, and my rose-colored glasses lay in shards on the ground. If I’d been raised to hate, Sylvana would have made a convenient target given the extent of her betrayal. My heart had been more trusting that day, and now I could kick myself for missing all the signs. And the lies flitting from betwixt her lips like butterflies on a hot summer day.

  I’d definitely pulled losing tickets in the family lottery. A treacherous mother, an absentee father who dropped a load of responsibility on my shoulders before walking away, a grandmother I might never get a chance to know, and a half-brother named Jett Striker who hated my guts. Plus, there are who knows how many half-siblings out there, considering my father was known for heating up the sheets at every opportunity. I’ll pass on attending the family reunion, thanks.

  A line of debris marked the spot where a single step would take me to a different world, and I wished I could leave my family drama behind as easily.

  I only hoped the portal was open, and there wasn't some magical access code or password required for entry.

  The Fringe, according to my research, occupied the space where many worlds met. Like a train station or a hospital waiting room, most people were just passing through. Still, a train needs a conductor and a hospital needs nurses.

  Probably not the best analogy for the people who lived there full-time, but I imagined those types had a great need for refuge, and perhaps the Fringe was the safest place for them.

  Squeezing my eyes shut tight (as if that would help me at all), I stepped toward the solid brick wall in front of me, took a deep breath, and walked forward. Wind—redolent with the smell of cotton candy—gusting around me, the heat of the sun on my face, and the sounds of the carnival warned me I’d made it through before I even opened my eyes.

  A midway, teeming with people from all sorts of worlds, stretched out in front of me, beckoning me to throw a dart at a balloon. Or, in a twist from the expected version of the game, try my luck guessing the weight or age of various volunteers—none human. Growing up with faeries who never seemed to age made that game a losing prospect. When fifty and fifteen hundred look the same, the chances of guessing wrong skyrocket. Plus, the price for playing was way beyond my means.

  Instead, I took a deep breath, kept my eyes to myself, and vowed to explore later. I knew the path at the opposite end of the Ferris wheel would lead me to Mag's house—the Mudwitch, Sylvana had called her, and I still had no idea what that title meant. Last time I’d come here, I'd downed an invisibility potion, been charmed with the ability to walk through walls, and poked my head inside Mag's hut while searching for my father's Bow of Destiny.

  Mag had not been happy with me.

  I hoped politely knocking on the door might garner me a bit more cooperation, especially since Mag was the one who had given me the time travel ring in the first place. I had an apology ready, but I was wearing a pair of running shoes, just in case.

  I trudged across a short field and had to use a pair of nail clippers (that I'd tossed into the bottom of the gym bag-cum-witch hunting kit slung across my back) to wrest what appeared to be an entire skein of yarn from where it stretched back and forth between two thin birch trees and blocked the path toward Mag's place.

  Ahead, a line of smoke coiling skyward, glimpsed from between two gnarled branches put a spring in my step. Mag was home, and that meant I had a shot at getting the answers I needed. Ducking into the trees, I shivered as their shade eclipsed the sun and the warm embrace of its rays. The deeper I went, the darker it got; and the darker it got, the louder my footsteps thundered across the forest floor.

  My imagination supplied a giant case of the creepies and made my shoulders twitch.

  If the carnival was full of supernaturals of indeterminate origins, I could only imagine what creatures might be waiting for me in the woods. I quickened my steps and let the magic flow across my fingertips, ready to strike at a moment's notice if the need arose. Cooperation between species was expected in the Fringe—Sylvana had warned me of that—but it never hurt to be prepared.

  When the trees finally began to thin again, I could see the break I knew would open onto a small clearing surrounding a tiny wattle-and-daub cottage that looked both quaint and creepy enough to satisfy Snow White and the Gingerbread Hag simultaneously.

  Except it wasn't, anymore. There, I mean. At least not all of it. Half the thatch roof still smoldered, which explained the smoke I'd seen earlier and was the only recognizable piece left of the hovel Mag once inhabited. It looked as if a meteor had landed in the middle of the kitchen, pulverizing most everything in a 5-foot radius. My heart sank.

  The gossiping chickadees a few branches above my head were of no help to me, nor were the lazy, blarping bullfrogs croaking away on the base of a nearby tree.

  Had Mag been in there when the place was blown up? What could that tiny old lady ever have done to deserve such violence? A little voice inside my head reminded me that when I'd met her, Mag had rendered me incapable of using my magic or controlling my own body. I'd been trapped, quite helpless, and would probably still be inside scrubbing her floors if Sylvana hadn't intervened.

  Sylvana. Could she be responsible for this? It was clear she hadn’t cared for Mag, but that’s a long way from homicidal. Then again, I hadn't thought she was going to let my boyfriend plummet to his death or use me to find it so she could steal the Bow of Destiny the first chance she got, either. And all of those things happened. Not to mention, I'd seen firsthand what she’d been willing to do to her own mother.

  As much as I didn’t want to, I sifted through the ashes looking for bits of fried witch. What I would have done if I found any, I can’t say for sure, but I suspect I would have ended up needing fresh pants.

  Thankfully, since I hadn’t packed a change of clothes, I found no evidence Mag had been inside when the blast hit her house. The only thing to have survived was one of the fancy plates I remembered seeing propped up on a shelf. I blew the ash off it as best I could, stuffed it in my pack, and turned back the way I had come. Maybe someone at the carnival knew where Mag was, or what happened to her. I can't even describe how happy I was when the sun once again shined on my face, and the joyful sounds of music and laughter filled my ears.

  The midway was clogged with foot traffic. I passed a pair of nymphs—wearing clothing for once—buzzing around the honey stall, raised an eyebrow at a group of dwarf children who appeared to be on a school-sanctioned field trip, and almost tripped over a fat golden lab puppy who looked up at me and said, “Excuse you!” when my shoe grazed his hind paw. A snappy retort caught in my throat as I noticed the sign floating in the air beside the door of a tent across the way.

  When my mother first approached me after her escape from the same nexus where Vaeta had been trapped (Sylvana still didn’t know I was responsible for her escape, and I intended to keep it that way)—she’d disguised herself as the proprietress of a magic shop near my office. By some twist of fate, I now stood in front of a tent made from at least six different pieces of patterned canvas carrying the same name: Athena’s Attic.

  My heart caught in my throat when I wondered if Sylvana joined the ranks of those poor, refug
e-seeking souls I’d speculated about on my way in here.

  Only one way to find out. Suck it up, Lexi, I said to myself, and pulled open the door flap like I was expecting a rabid hell beast to jump out and bite off my face. Instead, I stepped into an emporium of magical supplies housed in a lavishly decorated space I wouldn’t dream of referring to as merely a “tent.”

  The interior defied all logic as well as the laws of spatial dimension by being many times larger than the exterior.

  Gleaming mahogany shelves spiraled from floor to ceiling in a circular space at least fifty feet in diameter and three stories high. A complicated series of ladders suspended on rails allowed for access to thousands of books on the third floor. Foot after shining foot of brass hardware sparkled as though freshly polished, and the whole system made the one in my sanctum at home look like a box of generic shredded wheat.

  I thought I’d be stocked with spellcasting supplies for the rest of my life the first time I walked into the cavern behind the fireplace in my parlor, but as it turns out, eye of newt is a necessary ingredient for an awful lot of potions and my supply was running low.

  Athena’s Attic’s second floor offered a full line of amphibian parts along with every other ingredient I’d ever heard of or read about. I itched to start rifling through the shelves for hard-to-find herbs—after I resolved the worry that my mother might be skulking around.

  It was a good plan, except I hadn’t counted on getting distracted by the magnitude of items for sale on the first floor. Ritual tools, crystal balls, wands, cauldrons, and potion bottles—all the typical supplies a witch could want—occupied only a small portion of the store.

  The rest was taken up by more unusual wares: full skeletons hung like clothes on a rack, and not all of them were human; premixed potions guaranteed to grant your heart’s desire glittered along half of one wall. Precious gems tumbled out of elaborately crafted boxes, and even those were for sale. A locked glass box case a single scrap of parchment that rested on a padded display made from purple velvet, and when I got close enough, I could see that the precious artifact was an autograph. Merlin. The Merlin. That’s something you don’t see every day.

  But I wasn't about to pay my left arm for it.

  A whole area near the back of the room was curtained off like the dirty movie section at the video store. I wondered what the owner of this place thought was so taboo it couldn’t be shelved near a narwhal’s skeleton and walked hesitantly closer. Big mistake. There must have been some kind of ward on the material because I could not get within five feet of the place. Every time I tried, I found myself some distance to the side and facing away.

  Three times I made an effort before giving up. I must not have a dark enough soul to pass the barrier. There was some small comfort in knowing that.

  There were so many things to see; I had a hard time focusing on any one of them as I made my way toward the gilt-trimmed counter in the center of the room. Before I could stop myself, I plucked a pair of glasses from a cardboard—I’m not sure why I found this odd—display that was labeled Clear Vision and tried them on. There was barely time to tell if anything looked different when an elven woman stood up from arranging something on one of the lower shelves, and I exhaled the breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding.

  “I’m Athena. Can I help you find anything?” she asked in a thick accent. Decidedly not Sylvana and I didn’t even need the glasses to tell me that. The energy Athena emitted matched that of an elf who used to babysit me when I was six or seven. One of Terra’s friends, she would carry me through the treetops on her shoulders, so far up in the air, I grew breathless but never frightened, secure in the trust only a child can so easily extend. Even in glamour, Sylvana could never convey authentic Elven energy.

  “I’m trying to reverse a spell. Any suggestions?” Until I heard the words come out of my mouth, I’d had no intention of asking for help, but I got caught up in my memories, and it slipped out. Or maybe I was sick of everything happening to me and was willing to swallow my pride if I could take control of at least one aspect of my life.

  My grandmother had been cursed while trying to protect me, and all I’d done since I could learn to talk—and was allowed to cross the street—was rant at her stoned form and condemn her for a crime she’d never committed.

  Now it was my responsibility—no, my privilege—to figure out how to bring her back. And if there was something in this shop that might assist, I certainly wasn’t going to find it on my own. Talk about a needle in a haystack. More like a needle in a needle stack.

  “It depends on what type of spell needs reversing.”

  I wasn’t sure how much I was comfortable revealing, but if I was going to get answers, I’d have to spill the details. “I’m not really sure. All I know is that two spells collided—one witch got banished to a nexus, and the other turned to stone. I’m trying to bring the stoned one back to life.”

  You’d have thought I’d answered yes to do you want fries with that burger the way she didn’t bat an eyelash at my response. I’d expected more of a reaction; a gasp, perhaps, or at least a pinch of concern, but this Athena remained completely neutral.

  “There are two ways to go about lifting any curse or reversing any spell: you either need to know the material components used to create it in the first place, or the specific intentions of the caster.”

  Of course, it would boil down to intention. Salem was always harping on me to clear my mind before working any magic. I could replay his diatribe in my head verbatim; you must focus your intention, Lexi. Your spells will never work the way you want them to if your intention is unclear, Lexi. Blah, blah, blah.

  Except it wasn’t nonsense—I just insisted on tuning out and using inexperience and my late blooming as a crutch. Excuses, Salem would say, and he’d be right. Not that I’d tell him that to his face.

  I couldn’t begin to imagine what Sylvana’s motive might have been for cursing her mother. I doubted it was spur of the moment; it seemed far more likely that years of resentment had built until it boiled over in the most malicious act Sylvana had ever committed. At least, I hoped she didn’t have dirtier skeletons residing in her closet. Regardless, I'd seen what she lobbed toward Clara, and I had Salem and the Book of Shadows on my side. Surely we could figure out exactly what type of spell it was and brew an effective counter.

  “I don’t think the intention method is going to work for this.” Mainly because I couldn't fathom the level of intent to harm it must have taken. I shook my head at Elf Athena’s expectant smile, “but I might be able to figure out what elements were used to create it. I’d have to do some research. In the meantime, I’ll just browse if that’s all right.”

  “Of course, as you wish.” Athena waved in the direction of the upper floors, “I’ll be in the stacks if you need any help.”

  An hour or more passed while I filled a basket with must-have items. Prices were marked in at least a dozen different currencies, some of which shocked me. Depending on the degree of purity in your Fae heritage, you could use strands of hair, nail clippings, or eyelashes to purchase items from some of the shelves. It was probably not a good idea to say, I’d give my left nut to have that because at Athena’s it just might be the price. The one currency she did not accept was plastic.

  My wallet weighed considerably less, and my pack weighed double by the time I paid what I owed.

  “One more thing.” Curiosity was burning a hole in my brain. “Do I look familiar to you?” Sylvana had chosen to name her shop Athena’s Attic, and I wondered if there was a connection.

  “You look like your mother, Lexi Balefire.” And while I processed her knowing my name, Athena disappeared behind the curtain I could not pass.

  Chapter Four

  EXITING ATHENA’S, I mentally cataloged the items I hadn’t been able to buy and vowed to come back with more cash next time. Distracted, it took a minute before furtive movements pulled my focus toward my mortal enemy, Serena Snodgrass, skulking
around the rear flap of a sketchy-looking black tent.

  Color me shocked. I didn't think she enough magic in her to handle the trip through the portal.

  Normally, I wouldn’t care two cents what Serena was up to, but I hadn’t laid eyes on her since Jett’s unfortunate disappearance (i.e. his banishment to the Faerie dimension courtesy of my best friend, Flix). And since my brother had the poor taste to date my mortal enemy, I was pretty sure she had some type of revenge planned for me. I’d been wondering just what that might be, and now I was being handed the perfect opportunity to find out, right in front of me on a silver platter.

  Not my first time stalking someone—I’m a matchmaker and sometimes that requires me to scope out potential matches in their natural habitat. But for some reason, sneaking around after Serena made me feel dirty. Or maybe that was just the stench of her rotten heart. Once upon a time, Serena had been my best friend. Back then, she’d been a chubby beauty with a perpetual smile on her face.

  Serena was the only other witch I had known who wasn’t already a grownup. Inseparable in our early years, I couldn’t remember what caused us to drift apart, but I knew she'd turned on me.

  Maybe it wasn’t any single thing, but by the time our fourteenth birthdays rolled around, and Serena achieved her Awakening to witchhood while I watched in jealous fascination the split was a done deal.

  Turns out, those who were once the best of friends make the strongest enemies. The pretty little girl I remembered had become a stick-thin, white blond, Goth witch who hated me enough to have her family spread nasty stories about me to the rest of the magical community—turning my Beltane duties into a rather awkward night each year.

  We Balefire witches have the enviable job of tending a magic fire—the Balefire, hence my last name.

  Once a year, on Beltane, witches flock to my home to light their own twigs and branches from the flame in my hearth. Then, like the Olympic torch, the witches pass the flame on until it spreads across the land. Yeah, I know it has that Santa Claus flair to it, but this is my life. I am Keeper of the Flame.