Winchester Stone
Thoughts of Grace filled my mind. Were they bitter or just circular? For they came back to the same thing. The way she’d hesitated before she’d grasped up Bram’s hand. What did it mean? Something? Everything? Nothing?
I couldn’t pay attention to my spell, though I dearly needed to.
I could only think of one thing. If there really was a dead witch out there, then perhaps she was the one who’d moved the old maid’s body in Arlene Lambert’s house. It made sense. For the person who had done that understood dead energies. They had not accounted for the movements of Ley lines – but why would they if they were a simplistic witch?
“Focus,” I suddenly told myself, angry at the fact that my mind jumped around like a monkey from branch to branch. Any wizard – any good wizard – knows that to be effective, you must be in control of your mind at all times. But instincts can drive us to greater truths if we let them.
Quite of their own accord, my eyes suddenly opened with a twitch. My brow flattened. My lips parted. My palate tingled, and my tongue became dry. My eyes sliced to the side before I knew what I was doing. For this spell to be most effective, they needed to stay closed, but as they opened, I saw one thing.
I cleaned this room – I’d told you that multiple times. One could not have mess when they practiced magic. But I had always kept one cobweb directly above the practitioner circle, all for one purpose. To detect changes in air currents. While magic, of course, whipped air around quickly, one could tell the difference between natural changes in flow and force. And as the cobweb bent toward me, fluttering like a lady’s gossamer handkerchief on the wind, my whole body stiffened.
Something had found my room.
There were two ways into my practitioner room.
I never used the other way. It was intended as an exit.
Someone had discovered it.
I fought the urge to run. What if it was my brother? But if it was my brother, he would’ve moved already.
My instincts told me to push, so I pushed. I shot to my feet. I had never moved faster. Though a certain memory snapped into my head inappropriately. I suppose I had last night. When my hand had snapped out to cradle that silly witch’s head before she could do her skull damage, I’d moved like this. I should’ve taken more of that association.
I threw myself across the room so quickly, no one would be able to account for it. Nor the magic that I called on. I settled it in my palm, and it jumped up high as I grasped forward through the dark doorway. I grabbed a hand. Petite, dainty even, it wasn’t what I was expecting.
But we can never get ahead of destiny, can we?
Someone spluttered. They fell against my chest, and in a moment when time slowed down and my senses sharpened as if they had just cut through every distraction in reality, I saw her.
The witch from last night.
Surprise bloomed in her eyes at my sudden attack, her hair scattering around her face and only framing her expression more.
I caught the scent of cleaning products but of something much earthier, too, and below it, a glimpse of connected magic.
Some magic soars high above the earth. It tries to touch the sky, tries to play in the very clouds. Wizards seek such force, and it is what we practice all our lives to attain. This witch was entirely the opposite. Grounded, rooted in a way that suggested, no matter how hard you pushed her, she would never fall over, she did at least tumble now. Right against my chest. My arm twitched out wide, and I locked it over her stomach as I tried but quickly failed to understand what was happening.
She helped remind me.
With a quick and effective move, she elbowed my stomach.
Up until then, perhaps I could’ve imagined this was some accident. Maybe she’d found that set of stairs by chance alone. And maybe she’d discovered me by the same chance.
Not now. For the elbow was well-placed, drove itself into my sternum, and would’ve cracked something if I hadn’t protected myself with magic.
It loosened my grip, though.
She skidded to the side. With wide-open eyes, she stared back toward the doorway. “Idiot,” she snapped.
That was the last strand to break my decency. If I’d ever had any around this woman.
“We’ll see who’s the idiot. You should not have spied on me,” I growled.
I shot toward her, not knowing exactly how this would end. Would I knock her out and drag her to the constabulary? How? I couldn’t reveal where she had been.
But I also couldn’t stop. Something drove me toward her. I went to grab her arm. I got the impression that she let me. She spun with me, and her wide eyes once more locked on the doorway.
I should’ve paid more attention to the fact it was darker than usual, suggesting something had happened to the stairs beyond. “Don’t make too much noise,” she tried. “It’ll find us.”
I ignored her.
Ignored her for the charge of instinct that claimed my stomach.
I was usually so very aware when I came into my ritual room. I scanned and rescanned my security spells. Something had dulled my mind today, and you shouldn’t be surprised to find out it possessed the name Grace.
As I spun with this woman, once more trying to get the better of her, my gaze naturally darted up and locked on that cobweb above. It bent in the other direction, suggesting more air had been injected into this room from above. In other words, someone had found the secret staircase I always used.
My heart catapulted up to my teeth then back down into my sternum. I had one chance.
I’d always possessed an escape plan. A part of me had always known that this ritual room couldn’t last forever.
Portal spells are extraordinarily expensive things. One must either be a practitioner of incredible power, or they must have access to things of equal power. I had the latter. There were 10 soul stones underneath the floor. With one well-placed stamp, I could activate them.
It was a significant number of soul stones, and I did not want to waste them, but I had no choice.
I briefly thought of leaving the woman here. She would remember my name, however. Most in this kingdom knew my face, and I had foolishly not worn a proper disguise cloak.
“You’ll pay for this,” I grunted. I hauled her close and kept her against my middle with a strong grip as I slammed my foot down. I cursed internally as I did.
This ritual room was one of the most important assets I had. Without it, how would I find more soul stones?
I should’ve kept my mind on the fight.
It didn’t take long for the portal to pick up around our legs and surge over our bodies. It was a unique experience to travel this way, and if you had never done it before, you would crumble. You would scream and wail as if eternity were here to claim your head. But as the transport portal surged around us and took us straight back to my house, the woman didn’t even scream once. She did splutter slightly, but she didn’t waste her breath, and I should’ve taken something of that fact.
We arrived down in the main foyer of my house. She was still in my grip until she elbowed me once more. It should take an untrained mind a few minutes to regain their senses after traveling by portal. But not this woman.
She got the upper hand immediately. She rolled forward, skidded away from me, placed one hand on the ground, then looked up at me, real defiance burning in her gaze.
I grabbed my rib, tilted my head forward, and made eye contact with her for half a second. “You’ve done it now,” I warned.
“You should be kinder to me, considering I saved your life,” she tried.
“You saved no one. You condemned yourself. Now come here.”
I expected this to be an easy fight. She’d gotten lucky until now. But luck, when practiced by the strong, is a tricky thing to control. I opened a hand and sent a fireball shooting toward her back. Not enough to burn her to a crisp. But certainly enough to sweep her off her feet and back into my firm grip.
But she ducked to the side, showing deft agility indeed.
She rolled, punched up close to my staircase, and hurled herself up it.
I spluttered. “Come back here,” I roared as I threw another fireball her way. She kept low but kept on the move. Quite a hard thing to do when ascending a set of stairs.
She had a remarkably fast body and a very flexible one. She flattened herself, twisted to the side, dodged the fireball, judged where I was, then ran.
She judged correctly, because I couldn’t fire off another fireball fast enough to stop her.
“Get back here,” I roared.
She did not heed my words. Before I knew it, she reached the second floor of my house.
I blinked then hurtled up the stairs.
By the time I reached the landing, she was already out of sight. And what room had she picked? Why, my bedroom.
A witch like her – somebody stupid and awfully willful – could do a lot of damage in my bedroom, for I kept my greatest spells there in case I was ever discovered while asleep.
I didn’t bother to waste the breath to scream at her to get back here. I ran. I skidded in through the open door just as she discovered my bedside table.
She must have very good senses indeed. For that was where I kept all of my spells.
Her fingers grasped it, and she stared at me out of the corner of her eye, but then she tried to break the lock. She almost did. I heard it cracking. But I finally reached her. With a grunt, I hurtled into her side and pushed her onto the bed.
We rolled, torso to torso, head to head. Her hair offered a cushion for my face, and for whatever reason, it felt softer than the actual pillow beneath me.
This close, I couldn’t ignore two things. That earthy, grounding scent and the look in her eyes.
It could’ve stilled me to the spot, could’ve activated something within—
She lifted her head back, and she struck me. She headbutted my nose with enough force that I was thrown back. She rolled over me to get to the other side of the bed. I gripped her hand.
She threw my grip off. Who was this incredible woman?
I had another stockpile of potions in my room. They were in my desk. She was now only 30 centimeters in front of it. She lurched toward it, once more instinctively knowing what was there.
She almost grabbed it. I hurtled off the bed. I grabbed her instead.
“Let me go, you brute.”
“I never will, you criminal,” I spat back.
I tried to lock my hands together and create a cage spell. A tricky thing to do quickly. I’d need only a second to initiate it, but would she give me one of those? Oh no. I imagined this woman gave nothing for free.
Again she elbowed me, but I was ready for the move. I was not, however, ready for the fact that she knew quite well how to fight. When my grip didn’t break, she locked a foot on the desk and shoved backward into me. We teetered over. Even a tree couldn’t have held itself still. I slammed onto my back with her still in my arms. Her hair fanned out over my face. She wriggled against me, though that was a tame verb that did not convey how very effective her move was.
She soon found the weakness in my grip and shoved against it. Then she rolled as I tried to buck into her.
She placed one hand on the patterned carpet beneath me, her eyes once more aligning with mine.
I had another moment where I stared at her, where something inside me almost offered a chance to realize something, then she went to headbutt me again.
My hands shot up to either side of her face, and I grabbed her in what could be classed as an intimate move – in other circumstances.
I had never even grasped Grace’s face like this and held her quite as close. But she had never tried to headbutt me this viciously.
“You’re a brute,” the woman spat again.
I at least prevented her from headbutting me.
I had to push her to the side to do that, and that meant she hurtled to her feet again.
She clearly realized she needed time to access my potions and that I would not provide her with it. So she flung herself from the room.
She paused on the landing – though the word paused suggested she did so for an appreciable amount of time. It was nothing more than the smallest fraction of a second. I did not know who this woman was, but the skills she displayed now could not be acquired by chance alone. She had obviously spent a lot of her time running from something.
But she’d never run from someone like me.
She tore off down the landing. She made her decision and leapt down the stairs. At one point, she even rolled off the banister, deciding to go against gravity rather than me, and she dropped down two meters. She did not unfortunately break her ankles. She rolled competently and disappeared out of sight. And I just grunted. It was time to end this.
I strode right back into my room, opened my bedside table, and picked out my most fiendish sleeping potion. It was big enough and strong enough to knock out an army.
I clutched it in one steady grip as I grunted again, kicked open the swaying door, and strode onto the landing.
In a replay of her move – though a far more impressive one – I leapt straight off the railing and landed down in the atrium below, magic protecting me.
She ran toward the door. She’d never reach it.
I threw the potion.
And in my head, this mess was finally over. But I still couldn’t tell you what would happen next. I still hadn’t figured that out.
Perhaps because reality hadn’t figured it out, either.
She spun.
She’d either instinctively known I would throw that potion, or she had such fine, quick skills, she could make up her mind on the fly.
When you deploy a potion, you must be very careful to deploy it against your enemy and not against yourself.
You must throw it far enough, you must throw it with enough strength, and critically, you must never let it fall back in your face.
This irritating little witch hadn’t practiced much magic. She did now. She thrust a hand forward, calling on a single charge of power. Then she leapt toward me.
I suppose I would never forget this moment. If you read until the end of my story, you would figure out why. But even now, deep in the thick of it, my heart shuddered to tell me this would be the turning point of my existence and not just my horrendous day.
She forced the spell back onto the both of us as she tumbled against me. But as I had already told you, the spell was large enough and powerful enough to take on an entire army. There was nothing I could do to stop it, and nothing she could do to stop it, either.
She tumbled against my chest, and I locked one weak arm over her middle. It secured her against me, as for the third time, we fell atop one another.
We both fought to keep our eyes open, but at the same time, our eyes closed. There was no fighting it. There’d never been any fighting it. For not even the gods can fight fate. And I, Winchester Stone, had just fallen for mine.