Unruly Magic (3 page)

“Who from?” I couldn’t help but ask, but maybe, given the knowledge I’d received in the past few months, I should have been asking
what
rather than who.

“The council, of course,” said Chyler, her face returning to glum. “They want to kill me and you’re the only one who can stop them.”

Two

I pushed a cup of coffee across the kitchen table to Chyler and watched her scowl at it as she blew the steam away with pursed, glossy pink lips.

“You’re going to have to tell me more about this book,” I said at last.

“It’s, like, magic and my family have had it, like, forever!”

“Do you think you could not say ‘like’ so much?” I asked. Chyler threw a look at me as if to say,
you’re so old
, when she couldn’t be more than a few years younger than me. But then, anyone was old to a teenager I reminded myself, I’d probably been just as petulant. Even so, I scowled back at her. It was my house, after all and she had just come in unbidden. I wanted an explanation. Now.

“So, the book has been in my family for years and years and every generation adds their spells to it and we use it for our magic.”

I nodded. There were spell casters, a different breed of magic from me, but a valid strain nevertheless. It explained why the read I was getting from her wasn’t quite the same as the smooth vibration I felt when a witch with blood magic was nearby. Spell casters gave off more of a fuzzy feeling.

Chyler continued. “I’m next in line for the book after my mom. My aunts had a lot to say about that! They want the book and they’ll do anything to get it. It’s got a lot of power.” She stroked the book and I watched in amusement as the cover seemed to hiccup and the pages ruffled within. If I didn’t know better I would have said the book was being affectionate.

“How come you’ve got the book then, if it’s your mom’s?”

Chyler looked confused. “I ... don’t know.”

I changed tactic. “Why do your aunts want the book if it’s yours?”

“Duh, do you not get the magic news? The council are splitting up and everyone wants as much power as they can get their hands on. My mom’s sister wants it because she thinks it should go to her. My dad’s sisters want it too, because they want to get away from what’s left of the council.” Chyler looked dejected, like she had already heard a dozen arguments against her possessing the book. “And it’s not just them. The council want it too. It’s so old and powerful and they’d do anything for that.”

“Include killing a teenager?”

“I knew you’d help me.” Chyler grinned, her face brightening.

I held up my hands and her face fell slightly. “Wait. I never said that. I don’t know why the book thinks I can help you against the council, or why it thinks I would.” Though, when I said it, I couldn’t think why it wouldn’t think that. Hadn’t the last leader of the council tried to kill me? And hadn’t I been hiding from them for the past six months? I was definitely
not
in their fan club. Also: thinking about a book
thinking
was just plain weird.

“I’ll show you what it said.” Chyler thumbed open the book, flipping the edges of the thick paper until it heaved open to the page she had shown me before, the page with my pen and ink portrait. She ran her forefinger under the neat black print underneath, reading aloud, “It says: Stella Mayweather is who you seek. Trouble from you she will keep. She’s a powerful witch whose magic goes without a hitch. Go to her and ask for haven, she will help you from the horrid ... coven. Say her name three times, and you’ll find yourself in her humble climes. See? Also, I know, the book likes rhyming but sometimes it isn’t very good at it. It’s old school like that.”

“So I see. When did you find that?”

“This morning. Right after the council tried to kill me. I raced to my room and the book just appeared, open to that page.”

“And you’re sure it was the council?”

Chyler nodded enthusiastically but her glazed eyes told me she wasn’t telling the whole truth.

“Saying my name isn’t much of a spell.”

“It is if the book says it is.”

“You’ve got a lot of faith in that book.”

“It’s all I’ve got. Please help me, Stella”

I sat back in my chair, my hands warming around my mug as I thought. I’d tried to keep out of the magic business. I might have been saved because of it but it had caused me nothing but heartache and pain ultimately. It had turned me into a killer, albeit in self defence.

I might have been done with the witches’ councill but it seemed like they weren’t done with me. My heart sank.

I couldn’t decide whether it was disturbing or not that the council was fracturing like Chyler had said. I wondered if it was down to the lack of a strong leader now Robert Bartholomew was dead or whether it was because of the uneasy division between blood magic witches and spell casters and those who straddled the middle. But I knew one thing: I couldn’t in all good conscience turn Chyler away and leave her to face her apparent enemies alone.

“I’ll help you,” I said, right before it occurred to me in a jolt of understanding that someone from my past probably wasn’t far away. That had been the signature I detected a faint trace of earlier. Would they be friend or foe? It stood to reason that if the council really had it in for Chyler that they would be tracking her. No, I realised, I’d detected it earlier, before Chyler had arrived. Whoever it was was here for me.

“Cool.” She seemed remarkably cheerful for someone who was on the run.

“Where are you staying?” I asked.

“I can’t go home so I don’t know. Can I stay here?”

“I don’t think it would be wise,” I said cautiously.

Chyler barely blinked at my rebuttal. “What should we do? Should we attack first?”

“We won’t be doing anything yet and you should lay low until we know exactly what is going on.”

“But the book says you’re really powerful. Can’t you defeat them all and then I can just get on with my life?” Chyler asked, rather too optimistically in my opinion.

“Your book’s mistaken. I’m not really powerful.” Damn it, I was barely even trained and as far as magic went, it was like asking an amateur to try out for the Olympics. I’d help Chyler because my conscience told me it was the right thing to do. My mind told me I should get her real help.

“But you’re going to look after me, right? How are you going to keep the witches away from me?”

I thought for a moment, trying to resist the urge to drum my fingers on the table as I went through the few options I did have. “We’ll have to disguise you,” I said, finally.

“There is no way I’m dying my hair. My mom paid two hundred dollars at...” Chyler trailed off and heaved a breath as if something had suddenly hit her hard in the stomach. She gasped for a moment then steadied herself. I reached over and squeezed her hand and as I did so I felt a familiar surge of power ricochet through me.

“I’ve got a better way.” I stood and moved round the table until I could put both my hands on her shoulders. I willed her to be hidden and felt the magic flow through me, entirely under my control, seeping around her. At the same time I felt something flow back at me and it was like seeing a blurred scene on the backs of my eyes. An attic, Chyler ... a knife falling to the floor as someone whimpered. I stepped back quickly, raising my hands from her shoulders to break the connection.

“What did you do?” Chyler whispered. She was shaking slightly when she held a hand up in front of her as if wondering if she would still be able to see it.

“I’ve masked your magic. I think.” Like I said, I was no master of magic. I’d just envisioned what I wanted to happen. I wanted to disguise Chyler’s magic, not her physical appearance, though I thought I could probably do that too. Right now, the strange vision was at the fore front of my mind. I wasn’t sure what I’d seen but I knew what I felt. I felt horribly cold and anxious. Could I have just glimpsed the attack? Even more frighteningly, had I just pulled the vision directly out of Chyler’s head?

“How long for?” Chyler was asking me, pulling me back to the present.

“For as long as you need.”

“Why didn’t you say a spell?”

I shrugged. “I’m not that kind of magic.” Though that wasn’t strictly true; I could use spells to give my magic a boost and vice versa. I didn’t think Chyler needed a lecture from someone who barely understood it herself. Chyler had clearly grown up around magic. It had been in my life, fully, recognisably, for only a year and I was still getting to grips with the basics of what I could do.

“I’ve got somewhere I can stay. I can go there but I don’t know for how long.”

“I thought you didn’t have anywhere?” I frowned.

“Back up plan.” Chyler shrugged. “Can I come back here?”

“Of course. I said I’d help.”

“How are you going to help?” Chyler pressed and, well, she had me there. I hadn’t the faintest idea. I couldn’t call in reinforcements – not without attracting attention to myself – and I didn’t exactly have vast resources.

“Can your book help you? It brought you here.” I eyed up the thick old tome and wondered how many secrets and spells it contained. I wondered if my parents had a spell book, and if so, what had happened to it.

Chyler stroked the cover. “I don’t know. Book, can you help us?” She pushed it to the centre of the table and sat back, arms folded, and waited. Seconds ticked by then the book slowly began to ruffle its pages, flipping through them until the gaps became further in between as the cover rose higher. After a few more seconds, it heaved open to a page. We both leaned forward to get a look.

The book was writing as we watched, the ink looping across the pages. It read:
hidden in plain sight, something is far from right. Protect yourself witch, beware of the scary bitch.
The ink began to fade until it disappeared altogether, leaving the page blank again.

“Oh, for goodness sake,” said Chyler, suddenly sounding twenty years older. She tipped the book shut. “I told you it does stupid rhymes.”

“Any chance it gets specific? Like names, times, places?” I raised my eyebrows hopefully but Chyler just shook her head.

“Mumbo jumbo like this mostly. Hey, can I stay here?”

“Um, no. Anyway, you said you had somewhere safe to go. So, you go there now and I’ll try and work out what to do.”

“But it would be so cool if I stayed here. We could be like roommates.”

“Chyler, you can’t stay here.”

“Why not?” She looked affronted and there was the tiniest flicker of a sneer rising on her lip then it was gone.

“I’ve known you less than an hour and I don’t actually know you,” I said gently. “Plus if you’re here, someone might have followed you and we’re not prepared. So please go to your safe place while I work out what to do.”

“Fine. Whatever.” Chyler scooped up the book and stood up. I saw her mouth move as if she was saying words inside her head, but some of it couldn’t help but leak out. In the split second before she winked out of existence, her eyes widened, her pupils dilating. “Stella, help me,” she pleaded, her voice nothing more than a whisper.

I sat there for a while, staring at the space she had occupied wondering what the hell I should do. I wasn’t stupid enough to think I was a one woman army who could take on who knew how many witches. I knew I wasn’t strong enough to take them all; I couldn’t really rely on being able to take one and that was if I was looking after myself, not as well as protecting a teen witch who had asked for my protection. Crap. It didn’t matter which way I was looking at it, things were not looking good.

I made myself a cheese sandwich and a packet of crisps – I still couldn’t get my head around calling them chips – and munched them down while sat at the table, deep in thought. I couldn’t help the feeling that there was something horribly wrong with the whole situation. More wrong than Chyler had even said, thanks to the unnerving feeling I got from the strange vision.

I quickly cleaned up after myself, brushing crumbs into the bin and rinsing my plate before I went into the living room and settled in front of another film about some kind of group of dysfunctional friends searching for love. I must have snoozed for a while because when I woke up, my head against a blue cushion, the movie had gone off and the digital clock on the DVD player was flashing a quarter after six. I’d have to get a shuffle on to get myself ready for my night of forced socialisation which would be better than staring at a wall willing my brain to come up with a great plan.

I forced myself off the sofa and into my bedroom where I pulled out a clean pair of jeans and a white shirt with a little button down detail. I finished the look with tooled leather cowboy- style boots with a low chunky heel that I’d picked up in a sale when out shopping with Annalise. They were starting to look appropriately worn in, just like everyone else’s did around here. Perhaps footwear was the first step of small town assimilation, I thought with a smile as I sat in front of my dresser. I added the lightest dash of eye shadow and some mascara to make my green eyes pop and ran my hair through my fingers, pleased that it looked sleek and glossy brown.

Earlier I had put a bottle of wine to chill in the fridge, and I grabbed it by the neck before letting myself out the front door. As my house was side on to the street, I didn’t immediately see my neighbour’s home but when I stepped off the porch I could see they had a good number of visitors already. Two trucks were parked on the wide driveway next to Annalise’s car and Gage’s motorbike. Several more cars of varying sizes and ages – nothing ostentatious or showy – were parked along the side of the road as there were no restrictions here. I could hear music and laughter drift over and I let it wash over me, trying to make it sink in. I could have fun. I would have fun. I repeated that to myself two or three times, hoping it would actually stick.