I pulled my cell phone from my hoodie pocket and dialed my Gran’s number. Yeah, I was only a big girl to a certain point. Three werewolf murders, a near vampire attack, and my trinkets at the heart of it all? I needed my Gran. I got her voicemail and left a ‘call me ASAP’ message. I wasn’t sure how to articulate everything else before the beep.
As I hung up, Sienna texted a flippant, Busy, will see you later. Nice. So much for familial warmth and the circling of the wagons.
The cute lawyer from yesterday’s bakery shift was walking down the sidewalk toward me. Was I supposed to know his name? If so, I didn’t remember it. I smiled when he waved and tried to catch my attention, but I was already dialing Sienna’s number as I stepped into the bakery. He didn’t follow.
The comforting smells of vanilla, lemon, and strawberries enveloped me. Todd must have samples of Charm in a Cup out. The wards, which were only supposed to hinder the passage of magic, seemed to have blocked the scents from me until I crossed the threshold. This was odd, and something I’d never noticed before.
Sienna wasn’t answering her phone, even though she’d just texted me. I restrained myself from leaving a nasty message. My sister always gave back worse than she got, and I was feeling too vulnerable to start anything with her. I kept the phone to my ear. Yes, it was a rude buffer between my usually chatty customers and me, but I was unsettled and not up for pleasantries. Whatever peace I’d found in yoga and with Hudson was wearing off with my attempts to contact family. I cut around the display case and moved back toward the kitchen.
I needed a nap.
I retrieved the Magical Compendium from the safe in the back office. I’d locked it in there before Todd had come on shift. Leaving witchy things out for humans to stumble across was against the rules of witchery as dictated by Gran. I also noted I still hadn’t dropped yesterday’s deposit at the bank. The bank wasn’t even one block west of here; I’d had to pass it on my way to yoga. I was seriously out of my routine and not the better for it.
I trudged up the back stairs to my apartment, thankful that Todd worked the closing shift on Sundays. I wasn’t even going to make it into the shower. I simply collapsed, book and all, into bed, pleased that my curtains were still pulled from the night before. I wondered for a brief moment what Hudson and the werewolves were doing — if they were tracking down the murderer with my trinkets — and whether or not the vampire preferred to sleep through the day. I tried to not dwell on the trinket connection; there was nothing I could do about it. Fortunately for me, I was successful as I succumbed to blessed sleep.
I woke to Sienna opening and closing the drawer to the dresser right next to my head. Okay, the dresser was across the room, but it felt that loud.
“What are you doing?” I asked without opening my eyes.
“We’re going to do a spell,” Sienna answered.
“We are not doing a spell, nor are there any spell supplies in my underwear drawer.”
“That’s cool. I was looking for this.”
I cracked one of my eyes, noted that the room was dark but not fully so, and watched Sienna pull a silk tunic on over her head. She then loosed her straight, silky brown hair from the back of the neckline, along with what had to be five trinkets looped into necklaces from the front.
“Why are you stealing my clothes?”
“You never wear this.”
“I wore it last week. And the trinkets?”
“I sell them better this way. I sold all three from yesterday already. Hobo chic is a real thing!”
“Oh, God,” I groaned. “Go away.”
“Nope. We’re doing a spell. Rusty is just picking up the last couple of items.”
“No spells. I have a date. And you shouldn’t be randomly selling the trinkets.”
“Excuse me? Did you say a date? With whom?”
“Hudson.” Ah, even saying his name came with that comforting feeling … like snuggling under a wool blanket on a chill —
“Why are you grinning like an idiot? You haven’t even opened your eyes yet. Who’s Hudson?”
I attempted to stand up and managed a sitting position on the edge of the bed. I wasn’t feeling bad at all; just enjoying the waking. “You know, the wolf from the club.”
“You have a date with a wolf.”
“I do.”
“You have a date with a wolf.”
“Same answer.”
“That’s … that’s … you don’t … ever even, and a wolf?”
I waited for Sienna to sort out her mind. Normally, she would encourage any and all dating — or better yet, one-night stands. I reached for my phone — no missed calls. I was starting to fret about Gran.
“Does this have something to do with the vampire?” Sienna finally asked, in a completely different direction than I thought she’d go with the conversation.
“Partly, I guess. Have you heard from Gran?”
“Partly how? Partly like having to do with the murder he mentioned or …”
“Murders. Gran?”
“Haven’t heard from her.”
“That’s odd, isn’t it?” I asked. Sienna was twisting her fingers through the trinkets she’d laced around her neck and staring off into space. Or she was especially enamored with my framed Marilyn Monroe picture … I’d loved that movie last year. “Sienna. It’s odd for Gran to not return phone calls right away.”
“What? Yeah, but she’s on vacation in a fairly remote area. Just let her be, Jade. She can’t be with you every minute of every day.”
Ouch. That little jab was uncalled for. I gained my feet and padded toward the bathroom. “Listen, I’m sorry about the spell, but maybe tomorrow? It’s six thirty already. He’s picking me up at seven.”
Sienna nodded absentmindedly as she flipped through the Compendium she’d rescued from my tangled bed sheets. “Go, go. If he shows up before you’re out of the shower, I’ll let him in.”
“Thanks, sis.” I shut the bathroom door behind me and promptly pushed all thoughts of Sienna’s prickly behavior out of mind. She’d always been that way. I’d be detached too if my family had abandoned me to be raised by Gran at thirteen. Even Scarlett, my carefree mother, had never been Sienna’s biggest fan. Though that probably had something to do with the fact that the two of us got in more scrapes together than apart. Sienna always seemed pretty okay with the arrangement at Gran’s. She had a roof over her head, good food on the table, and me always by her side.
I quickly shucked my yoga clothes and dove into the shower. I’d have to wash and dry my hair, which would take most of the half hour I had to get ready. I was surprised I’d slept so long. I was usually good on a couple of hours in the afternoon.
I was just rinsing out my conditioner when I thought I heard the doorbell. I assumed it was just Rusty when Sienna didn’t come to get me. A glance at my phone on the counter informed me I still had thirteen minutes. I wrung out and towel dried my hair while attempting to cobble together an outfit in my mind. I was having a difficult time figuring out what to wear on a second date with a werewolf. I was pretty sure a skirt and high heels were out. Though I really did hope that running … or being chased … or even jumping on a bus weren’t on tonight’s agenda.
Just as I was diffusing my curls — a regular blow dryer just frizzes my hair — I thought I heard something bang to the floor in the living room. I shut off the dryer but didn’t hear anything further. I opened the bathroom door. Still nothing.
“Sienna?” I called.
“Sorry, Jade,” my sister answered from what sounded like the hall. Her voice was a bit strained. “Just knocked over that damn stool again, and dropped your big ceramic bowl. It’s cracked. I’ve told you multiple times to move those stupid stools.”
Damn it! I liked that bowl. It matched my plates, and wasn’t cheap. I’d been slowly collecting a set from a local potter.
“You okay?” I lamely asked, because it was polite. I wondered if there was a spell to fix the bowl. Gran would have a conniption if I asked though … magic wasn’t meant to be used lightly.
“Yep,” Sienna replied, and I went back to drying my hair. I was now three minutes late.
I wandered out into the living room, fully ready but not rushing since Hudson hadn’t arrived yet. The wards didn’t include the front stairs — technically they were communal property with the empty apartment next door — so the werewolf should have no trouble finding his way to my door. I found Sienna and Rusty poring over some sort of spellbook on the kitchen island. It seemed Sienna liked ‘those stupid stools’ while sitting on them.
“Hey,” I said to Rusty.
“Hey,” he answered without looking up from the book. He looked like death warmed over, but saying so would probably be tacky seeing as how his mom was a necromancer.
“No Hudson?” I asked Sienna, even though it was rather obvious that neither the living room nor the kitchen contained a Hudson. “He might not know I actually live — not just bake — here, now that I think about it. I should check the bakery. I promised him a cupcake.”
“In the fridge,” Sienna said. “I scored a dozen on my way through the kitchen after closing. I knocked the stool over with the fridge door. Like I’ve mentioned too many times now.” I thought about mentioning that juggling a dozen cupcakes and my ceramic bowl, which was sitting — more than just cracked — on the counter by the fridge, was just asking for trouble. I didn’t, though. Gee, maybe I was maturing, learning to keep my mouth shut and all.
“Sweet,” Rusty crowed. “Why didn’t you say so?” He leaped off his stool to cross to the fridge. The traitorous stool fell backward to the floor with a bang. Sienna raised a smug eyebrow at me, but I avoided eye contact.
“Rusty, go see if Hudson is waiting downstairs for Jade. It’ll look better if you go. Less desperate.” Ah, that’s my sweet sister, always looking out for me. “Also keep an eye out for the vampire. If we are waiting on a werewolf, we might as well meet a vampire.”
Rusty made an abrupt turn away from the fridge and a beeline for the front door.
“Wow, on command,” I said with just a little snark.
Sienna took it as a compliment. “Yes, it’s been arduous, but he is training up very well.”
I opted to ignore her and plate the cupcakes instead.
Ten minutes later, I had moved the cupcakes to a smaller green jadeite plate after we’d all eaten two each of the dozen. Yes, my name is Jade and I collect jadeite. I was that stereotypical. The six remaining cupcakes looked terribly pretty on the smaller plate. Hudson still hadn’t shown.
I checked my phone, even though I was pretty sure there was no way he had the number.
I sent Rusty to look for Hudson a second time.
Fifteen minutes later.
“You don’t have his number?” Sienna asked tentatively. Yes, my normally outgoing, brash sister squeaked at me like I was going to rip her head off. I had a super slow simmer but a wicked eruption.
“Like I would call,” I snapped, continuing to pace the tile floor of the kitchen. I would have moved to the living room to achieve a longer, huffier stride, but I didn’t want to wear the wooden flooring.
“You don’t know he’s standing you up … yet.”
I glared at her.
“It’s a bitch to be stood up,” Rusty said, earning himself a withering stare.
“I wouldn’t know.” I stuffed a cupcake into my mouth. If Hudson did show, he certainly didn’t deserve a treat.
Ten more minutes, and I had Rusty go down to look for any werewolf. He complained that he didn’t know them on sight like I did, and I told him to look for green hair.
He came back empty-handed.
At eight, Rusty and Sienna went out to pick up Chinese food. They could have ordered in, but I gathered they wanted to get some space from me. I swapped out my silk top for an old T-shirt and ate two more cupcakes. I would have thrown the rest out just to spite him, except I was utterly aware that would just be spiting myself at this point, seeing as he didn’t give a shit about cupcakes or me. I guess I wasn’t quite as special as he’d led me to believe.
By 9:30 p.m., we were in the basement below the bakery, prepping Sienna’s spell.
I would never accept a date from a werewolf ever again. For all I knew, they were gathered together over pizza and beer, and laughing about the gullibility of witches. For all I knew, like their wild brethren, it was just all about the chase. I guess I was too easy a hunt.
Damn him and his sexy, sexy, beautiful body and charming grin.
Sienna was buzzing about some reveal spell she’d found after the vampire had accosted me in the club bathroom and claimed I wasn’t half-witch, half-human. While I was napping, she and Rusty had spent the afternoon researching and gathering supplies, which was how I found myself made up for a date and instead squatting on a dirt floor.
The building that housed the bakery and my apartment had been built in the sixties, renovated in the eighties, and then recently face-lifted when I took over the lease from Gran. However, my grandmother had always insisted, renovation after renovation, that the basement and foundations could be upgraded if seismically necessary, but not rebuilt.
I didn’t even store things down here — it was that creepy, though at least it had full-height ceilings in this fifteen-by-twenty section. The foundations were brick, not concrete, in places as though they’d been built and patched way before the sixties.
I’d protested the change of location, but Sienna had insisted my living room wasn’t the right spot for an earth-based spell. Countering my suggestion of a park, she laughed and murmured something about needing the protection of the wards.
I hated it when Sienna murmured about magic. A murmur had led to many a close call in our youth. I’d lost my bangs at sixteen because of one of her murmured caveats. It took two months for the skin to regrow on the back of my left hand when I was twenty, also due to a casual warning murmured by Sienna that I didn’t quite catch.
Why I kept following her into these situations was pure stupidity on my part, but it seemed she always caught me at just the right time. This time, I was angry and needing to prove I wasn’t just worthless garbage to be left on the side of the road.
Hence, the grime now coating the ass and legs of my second-favorite pair of jeans. The floor was hard packed, but the dirt still rubbed off.
Sienna had known the location of the door — currently accessed through the bakery’s pantry — which mildly surprised me until I saw the witches’ circle already inscribed on the floor, about five feet from the eastern wall. It was obvious this wasn’t Sienna’s first spell conducted in the basement. I bit my tongue regarding her practicing magic on her own. Sienna really wasn’t powerful enough to do much damage, so it would be a little petty of me to deny her fun.
A few older boxes that predated my occupancy were piled on wooden pallets against the north wall, but I didn’t know what they contained. I hadn’t bothered to look very closely. I sat beneath the glare of the single bare bulb that hung from scary-looking wires. I was at the east side of the circle facing west, fuming about Hudson while Rusty and Sienna set out the candles and other supplies.
“Sienna, where did you get this spell?”
Sienna pulled an ancient-looking spellbook from the satchel she wore strung across her body. I could feel magic sparking off the tome in little pings.
“That’s Gran’s,” I whispered.
Sienna shrugged as she spread the book open on her lap. She sat cross-legged on the opposite side of the circle from me, facing east, by choice.
“Shrugging isn’t an acceptable answer.” Yes, I was channeling Gran a bit, but I was shocked that Sienna had removed a book of power from Gran’s study. I was also surprised that the wards on Gran’s house hadn’t prevented this removal.
“You didn’t ask a question.” Sienna met my gaze across the circle.
Rusty slumped to the south side of the circle, between and beside us. He was exhausted; in fact, he seemed tired all the time now.
I scanned the items placed before me. Unlit candles were set at north, south, east, and west. Each candle represented water, fire, earth, and air respectively, even though this was an earth-based spell. All witch magic was earth-based, except the kind of magic that had ruined the trinket the vampire had shown me on the bridge. That was black magic, and as the Compendium preached, black or blood magic was the ultimate of evils. Within the circle sat what looked suspiciously like the wing of a crow, a broken china cup, and a metal bowl filled with water. Between these items sat a small teepee of incense sticks, which were to be lit to start the spell.
“What’s with the crow wing, Sienna? That isn’t cool,” I said.
“It’s long dead, Jade. From Rusty’s collection.” I looked at Rusty for confirmation.
“My mom’s,” he said. Right, some necromancers liked to collect parts of dead animals. That wasn’t deeply creepy at all.
“I didn’t rip it off some bird. You’re so squeamish for a witch,” Sienna said, the derision in her tone as obvious as it was typical.
I shook my head but didn’t bother to argue further. We had no hope in hell of casting a spell from this powerful a book. None of us, even combined, had access to that kind of focused power. I might as well let Sienna play witch and then go to bed in peace.
“We light the incense, then light our candles. I’ll cover west and north. Then, Jade, you drop a bit of blood into the bowl of water —”
“Excuse me?”
Sienna huffed out a sigh like I’d impolitely interrupted her, and not at all as if she’d just casually suggested I add a drop of blood to an unknown, untested spell.
“Please, Jade. It’s a single drop. You want to be specifically included in the spell parameters, don’t you? It’s not like I’m suggesting you step into the circle with the other items, am I?”
“But blood —”
“Oh, please. We aren’t sacrificing anything. Plus, it’s Gran’s own spell. There’s nothing dark about Gran, is there? You’ve used your blood to fortify your knife, haven’t you? This is a lot less than that.”
I hadn’t actually fortified my knife with my own blood, though it would have been an extra layer of protection for the weapon and myself. I could then spell the knife to never draw my blood again, or just strengthen its physical properties with the magic bound to my blood. If done correctly, I could stop anyone else from wielding the knife altogether. I had done none of these things, though, because blood magic was dangerous and temperamental. Especially if you were still learning the extent of your own power, as I obviously was. I wasn’t completely oblivious to the vampire’s observations about the trinkets or my necklace.
“Let’s wait. Wait for Gran —”
“Fuck, Jade. You are always like this!” Sienna snarled. “Afraid of your own fucking shadow. I can’t believe you actually made a date with a werewolf. Maybe you were mistaken. Are you sure he wasn’t just some nobody who likes yoga? You sure he likes girls at all?”
I clenched my teeth, feeling the anger that had been settling into a heartache I couldn’t rationally justify refocus on Sienna. A ripple of pain ran up my jawline. “You aren’t going to bully me into anything, Sienna.”
“No? I guess I’m the wrong gender … and race. Maybe if I had fangs —”
“Not even remotely relevant, sister,” I sneered.
Sienna lost a little of her fierce indignation. “I can’t do it without you, Jade. I’m not powerful enough, and I’m … I just thought you’d want to know what everybody has obviously been hiding from you.”
I hadn’t thought about it like that. If the vampire was correct and my father wasn’t human, then for sure my mother would know that. Even at sixteen, she had to have known if she was having sex with a normal or not. And Gran — with how powerful she was, how could she not know?
“We can wait,” Sienna continued. “We can ask Gran, but why would she tell you now? She’ll use the presence of the vampire as an excuse to coddle you further, protect you from the big bad magical world. Praise your cupcakes and trinkets, and cash your rent checks.”
Sienna was right. If Gran had been in town, the vampire wouldn’t have gotten near me the second time. Hell, if he’d tried, I probably would have been gifted with a ticket to Las Vegas or wherever my mother was. An impromptu vacation, probably with a companion ticket for Sienna. And I would have gone — blissfully ignorant and utterly stupid. Duped … again.
I reached up and removed my necklace. As Sienna smiled, I tried to ignore the smug edge to it. I pooled the necklace by my right knee, easily within reach if I needed the protection I felt it provided. Before the vampire had admired it, I would have thought it just a useless hodgepodge of magically imbued wedding rings and mixed metals. Now, I wondered if it had blocked or somehow dampened other spells I’d attempted unsuccessfully. Even though I thought it useless, maybe it held just enough magic to interfere.
Sienna didn’t remove the trinkets she wore around her neck. She snapped her fingers and Rusty, who must have been dozing, sat up with a start. He leaned into the circle and lit the incense.
Sienna, her eyes locked to mine, leaned forward and blew lightly into the smoke trailing up from the incense sticks. Then I did the same.
Many witches had opening sermons or blessings they invoked to begin, but Sienna and I always chose to start our spells with a bit of breath as Gran had taught us. No power words or evocations that we had no hope in hell of controlling. Just a little bit of our magic carried on our breath and offered to the circle.
Rusty lit the candle at the edge of his side of the circle. He passed the long taper he’d used to Sienna, who lit her candle and the northern one. Taking the taper, I lit the candle in front of me. I felt the magic stirring, contained within the circle. It was familiar and comforting. I could control this … I owned this, no one could take it from me except by killing me. It tempered my wounded pride and bruised ego.
Sienna bowed her head to the spellbook held open in her lap. She muttered words that spoke to the magic drifting lazily in the incense smoke. I didn’t bother listening to the exact syllables Sienna used. Words only conveyed belief or intention, and this was Sienna’s spell, not mine. Gran could cast a spell without a circle or written words. She called up her magic, focused it, and it did her bidding.
I pressed my hands into the earth on either side of the candle I’d just lit. Gran claimed that our witch magic was earth based and bound, which is why I always sat east where the earth candle was traditionally situated. I’d never felt magic rise and fall from the earth like Gran described, though. I’d never been able to tap into the spirit of the earth, as Gran called it, her voice hushed and reverent. My eyes never shone blue when I exercised my magic like other witches, though I understood that not everyone could see a person’s magic in his or her eyes the way I did. My eyes didn’t shine any color at all. Neither did Sienna’s or Rusty’s.
Sienna turned her palms toward the broken teacup handle that sat before her, just inside the circle. The handle vibrated in the dirt. This I could feel. This I could see, though I knew the same wasn’t true for Sienna and Rusty. They could see the effects of the magic, as the teacup appeared to grow out of the broken handle and resolve itself into a fully-formed yellow-rose china cup. Gran collected this Royal Albert china pattern. I hoped Sienna hadn’t snapped off a handle of one of Gran’s teacups just for this spell.
Rusty laughed. Then he reached toward the crow wing placed in front of him. The magic shimmered and shifted. The teacup reverted to a broken handle — Sienna pouted a little, but allowed the magic to flow toward Rusty — and the feathers on the wing started to ruffle as if touched by a light breeze.
Rusty’s brow furrowed with the effort but nothing else happened. Sienna reached out and wrapped her hand around his left wrist. He grinned at her, but then quickly returned his attention to the bird wing. It flopped in the dirt as if it might be trying to flap. I was surprised that Sienna and Rusty had enough of a connection to share magic. That was something she and I might be able to do, having known each other our entire lives, but I didn’t know she was close enough to him to offer him some of her power.
The magic resolved around the wing and a ghostly image of the crow appeared, but I knew this reveal was too much to ask of our magic abilities. It was one thing to manifest a teacup, or some other inanimate object, but Rusty was trying to reveal an entire crow — a complete being — from its wing. Actual life force of some sort was involved in this manipulation. He did have the touch with dead things, such as my ever-suffering plants, that he’d inherited from his mom, but —
“Jade,” Sienna prompted with a snap.
I sighed, very sure her unarticulated request was useless, but I reached out to wrap my hand around Rusty’s right wrist anyway.
The magic in the circle bloomed, and the image of the crow resolved into a solid figure. I gasped. The crow turned its head toward me.
“Oh my God,” Rusty said.
The crow opened its beak and cried at me. A full-throated scream of a caw. I flinched and dropped Rusty’s wrist. The image — it had to just be an image, right? — flickered and the crow disappeared.
“Did you see that?” Rusty cried. “It looked so damn real!”
I looked down at the bowl of water before me, shaken but emboldened. I drew my knife.
“Jade,” Rusty said, some cautionary but unspoken warning in his tone.
When I looked up at Sienna, she just nodded for me to continue. I pierced the tip of my left forefinger with my knife. The blade was so sharp it didn’t even hurt. I reached into the circle, feeling the magic moving around my arm, inviting but not aggressive.
I squeezed a drop of my blood into the bowl of water. It barely broke the surface tension, instead shimmering across the liquid in a blurred ripple. I leaned forward in anticipation, expecting — hoping, really — that an image would resolve itself out of the drop of diluted blood. It would tell me who I was, somehow negating — or perhaps supporting — the vampire’s claims of my magic and birth.
I waited, forgetting to breathe, as the magic swirled around and around the blood in the water. Then the shimmer brightened into a glow. A small pinpoint of light rose out of the water, hovering about an inch above and then slowly growing until it was the size of a golf ball and hovering at chest height. I peered at the glowing sphere, not knowing if it was made of water, or blood, or magic … I guessed that it must be a combination of all three. It hovered as if patient, pulsing lightly … in time with my heartbeat, I realized with a flicker of fear. This was not what I had expected. A bowl of water was usually used to scry. Not by me, of course — that magic was beyond my ability, but —
“Command it, Jade,” Sienna said, her whisper breaking my focus on the glowing magic ball.
I hesitated, knowing it was important to convey exact intention with my wording.
“It’s in the circle, Jade. We’re warded. Command it,” Sienna repeated.
Something wasn’t quite right with her assessment of the situation, but I was too enamored with the idea of knowing my true self, and I ignored the nagging worry.
“Show me,” I said. “Show me who I am.”
The glow brightened and grew to the size of a tennis ball. It wavered as if observing me. I waited for it to resolve into an image. I waited for the spell to reveal some secret hidden in my blood. The secret the vampire suggested he could discern with a single taste.
Suddenly, the glowing sphere streaked toward me. Fueled by my blood, it slipped through the barrier of the circle without impediment — I’d never known something like this was even possible, but I realized instantly what had happened. I had stood outside the circle, reaching through and offering my blood to the spell.
I shouted as the light hit my chest, though I saw rather than felt this contact. I screamed and instinctively grabbed my necklace, which was still curled on the ground by my right knee. Without thinking much about it, just reacting in fear, I reached my left hand to my chest as if I could actually grab the magic that sat there, glowing on my sternum and pulsing with my heartbeat. Perhaps it was waiting for further instruction. Perhaps it was attempting to answer my command on a level I didn’t understand.
I grasped the magic and pulled it from my chest. It had grown to the size of a baseball. I didn’t stop to wonder at my sudden ability to hold this kind of power in the palm of my hand — not that I had ever tested such a thing. No, scared out of my mind, I simply flung the magic back away from me … behind me.
I was shaking, but the reveal spell hadn’t hurt or harmed me. My heart was beating wildly. I looked up at Sienna and stuttered, “It … it… breached the circle. Could you see it? Sienna?”
Sienna didn’t answer. She wasn’t looking at me at all. She was staring behind me, her eyes wide and her mouth forming a small O. Then she smiled. A smile full of satisfaction, and something else I couldn’t quite figure out through my own adrenaline rush and fading panic.
I turned and looked back. I must have thrown the spell hard enough that it hit the eastern wall of concrete and brick behind me. But instead of dissipating as it should have, though I hadn’t given it specific direction, my ‘get thee behind me’ intention must have been clear. It had spread its glow — a glow that was now slowly fading into an outline that looked to be the height and width of a large door or doorway. A doorway revealed by the spell I had commanded and then haphazardly flung away. I had never manipulated magic in this fashion before.
“Now what do you think is hidden behind that door?” Sienna asked, her voice husky with anticipation as she rolled to her feet.
“If it’s a door,” Rusty answered. He quickly leaned over to snuff out his candle.
“Don’t,” Sienna said, but Rusty had doused the candle and scuffed his edge of the circle before she spoke. The magic within evaporated.
Rusty shrugged apologetically but didn’t actually seem contrite. Sienna narrowed her eyes at him, but then returned to gazing at the outline. Its glow, slightly fainter than before, still held its rectangular shape on the wall.
Sienna skirted the dormant circle and crossed by me toward the outline. Still cross-legged on the dirt floor, I grabbed her hand as she passed. She looked down at me with just the tips of her teeth showing in a smile. The light was behind her head and I couldn’t see her eyes, just two deep shadows carved out of her face.
“ ‘Show me who I am,’ you said, Jade. And look what it has shown you.” Sienna’s voice was heavy with implication.
“No, Sienna. The two things aren’t related.”
“How do you know?”
“I don’t see a handle or anything,” Rusty murmured, making me start badly. I hadn’t realized he’d moved from the edge of the circle.
“It’s a door,” Sienna said as she brushed off my handhold. “And I can’t wait to see what’s behind it.”
Oh, God. That sounded like the opposite of a good idea. Hidden doorways, if that was what it was, were always hidden for a reason … ‘abandon all hope, ye who enter here’ reasons.
“Do you think Gran knows it’s here?” I asked.
“Of course she knows, dummy,” Sienna answered. Then she reached out to touch the brick wall in the very middle of the outlined rectangle.
I waited for something to happen but nothing did. Rusty and Sienna continued to run their hands around the door outline. The glow continued to fade.
They turned to me in unison.
“No,” I answered before they asked. Sienna opened her mouth to cajole me and I said, “That’s enough!”
The glow around the door abruptly disappeared.
“Jade!” Sienna cried as she turned to run her hands over the now blank wall.
I stood and brushed off my jeans. I had no idea if I had shut down the spell or if it just blinked out on its own, but I wasn’t sticking around to be bullied further.
“You know your way out,” I said as I crossed back to the basement stairs.
“Jade!” Sienna cried again, but I didn’t look back.
“If I don’t get in touch with Gran tomorrow, I’m sending the hotel staff, or the police, or someone to look for her. Clean this up. I’m going to bed.”
I left them there, even though I was pretty sure Sienna was about to throw a fit. I was certain they couldn’t replicate the spell without me, and I had no intention of ever going into that basement again. I wasn’t remotely interested in secret doors that led to hell knows where, and was actually pretty freaked that I had one of them two floors below my living room. I’d seen enough horror films to know when to leave such things alone, or to come back with bigger guns. Guns of the type my Gran wielded.