To my sister, Laurel, my spellwork never looked right. Even if I copied her exactly, doing all the lines identically, down to the millimeter, she’d still make minor corrections and when I began putting magic into the spell her face scrunched up and I could see her jaw held so tight I was surprised she still had molars.
Nine times out of ten—well eight times out of ten if I was being honest—everything worked fine. It was just to her master eye, something looked off. But it was like handing a really pretty gemstone to a jeweler. If the jeweler saw a flaw that was invisible to the naked eye, did it really matter?
When I finished the spellwork, I glanced at King. He was busy on his third sheet of paper, drawing complicated alchemy circles, and I left him to it. Instead, I listened for whatever had attacked his partner.
Placing my hands on the floor, I checked to make sure it was wood.
Actual wood was something that I could work with; vinyl, laminate, tile, or anything else that had more than one element in it was too much for me. Normally, I would be up for any challenge, but I still had that feeling inside of me like I wanted to tear down MacCallum’s house brick by brick until all that was left was a tattered foundation.
I wasn’t the big bad wolf coming to blow down the house. I was a tornado.
My magic boiled red again, and it felt like lava cooking my intestines. I took a slow breath, but it stuttered in the middle, so I took another one. Then, when my breath was smooth and long and the ocean had cooled the lava, I reached out.
My magic doesn’t rely on symbols and iconography, or even a special language, like witchcraft and alchemy do. Instead, I rely on what’s around me. The spirits that inhabit almost everything we touch.
In my impaired state, I only trusted myself to talk to staid spirits who were unlikely to react to the emotions I could feel burning under my skin. I’d have to settle for wood. Trees are one of the spirits I’m most familiar with. Some of my favorite friends are trees.
But, since I wasn’t in a forest, I would have to make do with the wood that once been a tree.
It woke slowly under my fingers. I didn’t need it alert enough to grow back into the tree it had been, but I did need it conscious enough to answer some questions.
“Who else is here with us?”
King glanced at me as he sent to circles floating into the air, spinning around each other until they built a shell of protection around his partner. I waved him off and mouthed the words‘witchcraft stuff.’
There was a ripple along the floor, as though each board was blinking, but then the flooring responded in slow, measured tones. There was no one in the house with us. We were the only heavy footfalls it could feel.
“What about light footfalls?”
The image the floor responded with sent me to my feet and then right next to King.
“Ferro?” He looked me up and down, as though doing a quick field triage. “What happened?”
“I sent out a tracking spell.”
King scanned the two spells I had drawn and squinted, as though trying to read them. He must know about as much about witchcraft as I knew about alchemy, because he looked right back at me, eyes unclouded by suspicion.
“We need to leave now,” I said.
“You’re welcome to go,” King said. “I can’t leave my partner stuck like that.”
“There is something in this house with us that—” I hesitated. I couldn’t describe what the wood had shown me. The image was of something that walked on delicate feet, something massive and dangerous. All I knew for certain was that whatever the creature was, it had friends.
The floor did not like its friends. They crawled into cracks between boards, anywhere that they could fit. I hadn’t even met them, and I didn’t like the idea of something crawling into every crack and opening in my body.
“There’s something big and dangerous in this house with us. And neither of us are going to like the creepy crawlies that come with it,” I said.
“Listen, Ferro,” King said. “I can take care of myself; just get outside. We radioed that we were coming in after you, so there should already be backup on the way. You just need to call again and let them know they need to send more people.”
Frustrated, I exhaled a sharp breath. I took two steps away, half thinking that if I ran fast enough, I could beat whatever had attacked Smith. Clearly King didn’t know what he was fighting, but I did.
The smart move would be to look after my own interests. My interests were definitely not to get mummified and stuck to the ceiling so that Derek McCallum would have convenient targetpractice when he got back. My interests were my own health and safety, and leaving the stupid cop behind so that whatever got his partner would be distracted by him and ignore me.
Still, I hesitated. Although he was being a bit too brave for his own good, he was still someone I wasn’t sure I wanted to see mummified. He had given me a chance to clean up my mess before Paranormal Crimes caught me out last time, and he’d taken off the cuffs this time.
It wasn’t like I’d made any smart decisions since the moment that Derek McCallum had offered me a year’s salary to track down his artifact. At least this dumb decision came with a cop hot enough to raise the room’s temperature a few degrees.
Something touched my ankle. I shifted, jerking my leg and shaking it. Nothing came out from under the cuff of my jeans and I slapped at them, feeling something wet squish against my calf.
