“Don’t,” Ballard gritted out. “You’ll need to sleep with one eye open at night if he hears your insults.”
“I can’t call it a bird?”
Ballard shook his head. “Never. And the same goes for any familiar you might meet, no matter the form. They are exceptionally powerful creatures who make some of our magic look tame. He could burn the flesh from your bones with a single look.”
Jasper turned to me in question, a disbelieving look on his face, but I shrugged. “I have heard stories of a similar nature, although I thought them to be nothing more than conduits to the other side.”
“They are, though it is but a drop of their power,” Ballard said, busying himself by pulling vials and jars from his bag and placing them atop the table. “But a familiar is much more thanthat. They act as guides for witchlings who are discovering their power for the first time—a friend of sorts. It’s strange to think about, particularly from an outsider’s point of view, but familiars are fiercely loyal to their bond. Nothing in this world could cause it to be broken.”
“Which is why that thing would kill me without a second glance?”
“Precisely,” Ballard said, dusting off his hands. “Now, someone go grab my niece. We have a ritual to begin!”
“I don’t likehow it’s looking at me,” Jasper whispered, narrowing his eyes on the enormous bird perched atop Sloane’s chair. The thing, whose name turned out to be Poe, had studied Jasper and I with careful consideration everywhere we went.
To no one’s surprise, it hummed in Rowena’s presence—positively preening every time she stroked a gentle finger along its puffed-up chest and cooed sweet nothings its way.
Sloane smirked as she stood, stepping back to admire the ritual circle she and Ballard had worked on for the past hour. “Are you scared of Poe, Jasper?”
He scoffed. “Absolutely not.”
Poe spread his wings. “Liar,” he hissed. “I can smell your fear from here.”
Jasper, wisely, said nothing in return.
“How does this work?” I asked, stepping up beside Ballard to examine the area.
A large circle nearly covered the entire floor, laden with dried herbs, various crystals, and shallow dishes of salt, which Sloane said would help keep the spell focused on finding Leonora’swhereabouts. Apparently, magic was easily led astray if not carefully honed, which could lead to us chasing irrelevant, errant energies rather than my mother.
Sloane stepped inside, careful not to disturb any lines, and she placed a large, detailed map of Kallistos and the immediate surrounding area in the center of the circle. The paper was thick and worn, yet the ink was fresh, as though it had just been printed.
“We’ll need two things from you to begin—a few drops of your blood and an item belonging to your mother.” Sloane tapped a smaller circle to the right of the map. “That will go here.”
“What kind of item do you need?” I asked, pulling Calia’s now faded pink hair tie from my wrist and slipping it into my pocket. Try as I might, I still had not been able to remove the blood stains from the band. My constant washing had turned the color from a vibrant, neon color to an odd, splotchy tie-die. Her scent was gone, and my heart ached for it, but I refused to part with it either way. “I have no idea what she may have left behind?—”
“Here,” Rowena interrupted, grabbing an object from the bag beside her. “Sloane mentioned we would need something of Mother’s, and I noticed this when we looked through her rooms the other day.”
Ballard gently took the brush from Rowena and examined it. “Are you sure this belonged to her?” Strands of long, blonde hair were wound sparsely through the bristles. “If it isn’t, the spell may target someone else instead.”
“It’s hers,” Rowena and I said simultaneously.
“It’s her scent,” my sister explained. “It’s faint, but it’s there.”
Ballard nodded, adding the item to the circle before returning to us. “Sloane or I will slice your palm,” he said, holding my wrist and drawing a line across my hand. “You will hold it above the map as we begin, allowing your blood to flowfreely from the source in conjunction with our magic.” His own hand hovered an inch above the map. “Sometimes the spell will allow for an exact location, the magic winding its way along the roads until it reaches its destination, while other times it will simply amass around a general area.”
I studied the map, scouring every inch of the land I knew and loved so much. We could not afford for this to fail. “Is there a way to ensure it does one over the other?”
Sloane shook her head. “No. At best, we should hope for the latter. Given how tricky your mother is, I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s secured magical protection of her own.”
“And if that’s the case? Will the spell even work?” Jasper asked.
Sloane shrugged her shoulders, the stiff movement exposing her uncertainty. “It’ll be a case of our magic against whatever she has at her disposal. We won’t know until we try.”
It was a risk—a risk that it would not work, a risk that it would expose us, and a risk that it would bring her straight to our door when we were not prepared to tackle that kind of threat.
But such was the hand we had been dealt. No matter what we did, or consequently did not do, we posed a threat to Leonora we could not negate. It was better to be on the side of proactivity rather than sit idle.
“Alright,” I said, rolling my shoulders back. “Let us begin.”
