Chapter 2
two
I’m pretty sure it’s a law that twenty-four-year-olds aren’t supposed to spend Friday nights at home, alone, working. That’s gotta be the trifecta of pathetic. Patheticness? Pathet…icity? Whatever, I don’t think anyone would say I’m living a wild, fun life.
What makes it even worse is that I’m not supposed to be working. Godfrey has no idea I brought a stack of the books from today’s shipment home to continue cataloguing, but right before I locked the store, I thought about the long, empty hours ahead and decided a distraction was in order.
So… yeah. My crazy Friday night consists of me, my laptop, books that were around before my great-grandparents were born, my couch, half a bottle of Moscato (because it barely tastes like wine, so I can convince myself I’m not actually drinking alone), and crappy free-to-air TV in the background.
Next time Mrs. Hannigan at the chemist says that young people today only care about partying and Instagram, I’ll know for sure that means I’m not young anymore.
An old man at twenty-four. How depressing. Is this really what my life has come to?
I pause with the glass halfway to my mouth. Maybe I should stop with the wine. I’m getting maudlin.
Setting the glass down, I pick up the next book in the stack—and frown. It’s the spell book I looked at today, which means it shouldn’t be here. I already put it in the pile for Angie from the historical society to look through before we trash them.
“Did I pick up the wrong pile?” I wonder aloud, opening the leatherbound cover and flipping the pages. No, I couldn’t have—I’ve already catalogued four books, and I hadn’t seen any of them before. “I must have mixed you in by mistake.”
Oh hell, I’m talking to a book. Definitely no more wine.
I stop flipping and glance down at the page.
To Summon the Fae.
Blinking, I read the heading again. Heh. Why would anyone in their right mind want to summon the fae? You only need ten minutes of studying mythology to know why that’s a bad idea. Still, I keep reading.
Do not use for summoning armies!
Okay, that’s got my attention.
This spell will call forth a single fae attuned to the caster’s energy. Ideal for personal favours and companionship.
I pull a face, a little less interested. Also, if “personal favours and companionship” is a euphemism, that’s totally gross.
In the dark of the new moon, take one beloved object, an iron blade, and an offering of wealth into the woods.
Facing the north, kneel, lay the object upon the naked earth, and smear three drops of blood upon the blade.
Ex-fucking-scuse me? This spell needs a blood sacrifice? Sure, it’s only three drops, but blood is blood. So much for this being a benign spell book.
You must use your own blood. This ensures the fae summoned will be attuned to you.
Creepy.
Stab the blade into the earth beside your object, scatter the offering of wealth over them both, and beseech, “I call upon the darkest night to bring me one who can fill my need.”
My jaw drops. What the fuck? This has to be a joke—“bring me one who can fill my need”? In a spell to summon a “companion” who’s “attuned” to the summoner? It could easily be the prompt for an erotic fic like the ones I read online when I’m in the mood for imagination porn.
I flip the page to see what happens next, but there’s only a spell for keeping caterpillars away from veggie gardens.
Frowning, I turn back, then check if the pages are stuck together, but it seems that’s the whole spell.
Definitely somebody’s idea of a joke. If summoning the fae was that easy, we’d be overrun by them.
You know, if they actually existed.
Sighing, I put the little book on the coffee table beside my abandoned wine and am reaching for the next one when a familiar Christmas carol draws my attention to the TV. It takes a moment for me to make sense of what I’m seeing, and then deep dread settles into my belly.
Oh no. Not the Myer Christmas commercial.
It’s cheesy. Ridiculous. Clearly a bid by a greedy retail entity to entice people to spend their cash on overpriced goods in a misplaced attempt to show their loved ones that they care.
And yet, somehow, every year Myer manages to make me yearn for the kind of loved one I could spoil with said overpriced goods. Look at those actors, convincing me they’re a happy couple cuddling on Christmas morning. Damn their souls.
Finally, thankfully, it comes to an end, and I blow out a breath of relief.
Only to be blindsided by the Qantas holiday ad.
“Noooooo,” I howl. “Come on! Two in a row?” On the screen, an assortment of people traverse the world to get home to loved ones who embrace them with happy shrieks and tears, and then they all spend Christmas Day together.
Tears begin to track down my cheeks.
It’s not fair.
How come they all get to spend Christmas with people who love them, and I’m going to be alone?
Sniffling, I grab the remote and turn the TV off, but somehow, the silence that follows is worse than the nostalgia-evoking music, because it reminds me yet again that I’m alone.
There’s nobody else here. Just me. On my own.
Is it too much to ask that I have someone to spend Christmas with, at least?
I toss the remote onto the coffee table, and it skids a little, bumping against the leatherbound spell book. Staring at it, I feel years of loneliness surge up to tangle with ad-induced misery and two hefty glasses of wine, forming the nexus where stupid ideas are born.
Fuck it. Maybe a little bit of stupid is what I need.
* * *
The sheer scale of my stupidity begins to sink in ten minutes later, as I stumble across Aunt Maggie’s south pasture to the patch of bush around the dam.
That counts as “woods,” right? Walking across an uneven field in the dark—because fuck, it’s dark.
There’s zero moon tonight—is a bumpy, not-fun experience, and I’m pretty sure it’s only pure luck that’s kept me from breaking an ankle.
I’m not changing my mind, though. Most guys my age have done a million stupid things, often involving alcohol, cars, and public sex. The least I can do is… attempt to summon a faerie to keep me company.
Wow. I’m really living up to my “wild” reputation. At least I have the alcohol part covered—I grabbed the half-full bottle of wine on my way out of the cottage.
Finally I reach the trees, and after wandering between the trunks for a minute, I find a relatively clear spot within sight of the dam.
Right. First thing: check the instructions. I dump the tote bag with all the stuff I need onto the ground, then dig out the spell book and my phone. With the light from the torch, I re-read the spell.
Face north. “How the fuck am I supposed to know which way is north?”
When in doubt, ask Google. I unlock my phone and am about to open the browser when an app catches my eye.
“Duh. My phone has a compass.”
It only takes a second to establish which direction is north, and then to kneel facing that way.
“Check. Next, lay out my beloved object. In the dirt. Which… really? Is this supposed to symbolise the sacrifices I’m willing to make?
Because dirt isn’t good for books,” I grumble as I fish my well-read, dog-eared, spine-creased copy of Tigana out of the bag and carefully set it down.
It was a close call between this and Pride and Prejudice, but I was reading Guy Gavriel Kay in my early teens, whereas I only discovered the glory of Jane Austen when I started working for Godfrey.
“Okay, what’s next? Ugh, the blood. Fine.
” I pick up the knife. The spell called for an “iron blade,” but the best I could do was a stainless steel paring knife with a plastic handle.
I have bigger knives, but I don’t trust myself with them in the dark outdoors when I’ve been drinking.
And anyway, they cost a fucking fortune—who the hell decided decent kitchen knives should be so expensive, anyway?
I set aside the spell book and carefully—squeamishly—prick the tip of my index finger with the pointy end of the knife, then squeeze it until what looks like three drops’ worth comes out.
I rub my fingertip along the side of the blade, holding my hand awkwardly to avoid any chance of slicing it open accidentally.
“Some of us really aren’t cut out for witchy shit,” I mutter, then heave a sigh of relief when I’m done. “Right. Now I have to stab the ground, right?” I consult the spell book again. Stab the ground, scatter my offering of wealth, and say the words. Easy.
I jab the paring knife into the dirt, then shriek when it fucking bounces back. What the hell?
Belatedly, I remember that the ground around here is mostly clay loam, and this close to the dam, it’s more clay than loam.
Aunt Maggie bitches about it every time she needs to do excavation work.
Clay plus the early summer sun equals dirt that’s as hard as fucking rock.
Great. Now what do I do? I’m sure if I stabbed with enough strength, I could probably get the blade into the dirt, but there’s just as good a chance of it breaking and flying up at my face.
After some consideration, I sacrifice a dribble of my wine to wet the dirt and make it a little more pliable, then instead of stabbing the knife in, I set the point of the blade into the wine-dampened ground and wriggle it until most of the blade is underground. Good enough.
Referring back to the spell book, I grab my offering of wealth—what’s left of the packet of saffron I bought last month to make risotto—and dump the contents over the book and knife.
“I call upon the darkest night—though, that would be winter solstice, and we’re like two weeks away from summer solstice, so while it might be a dark night, it’s not the darkest. So I call upon a dark night to bring me one who can fill my holes.
I mean need. Holy fuck, I seriously didn’t mean to say that.
I do not want this to turn out like a romantasy novel, or a monster romance.
No tentacle dicks needed here, please. So…
” Where was I? “Yeah. Um. Can the dark night—ha ha, that’s night, no K.
I don’t need Batman. Can the dark night please bring me someone who can make me less lonely? Okay, thanks.”
I stumble to a stop and wonder if it would have been possible for me to fuck this up any more than I already have.
It’s not like the spell was ever going to work, but part of me thought it might be a way to get my intentions out to the universe.
Like… send out the energy that I was looking for someone to love, and maybe the world would respond to that.
But I’m pretty sure that even if the world was inclined to grant wishes, it would just be laughing at me right now.
Sighing, I fall back from my knees to my arse in the dirt and reach for the wine bottle. This is what I’m reduced to… drinking alone in the bush after a failed spell to force a mythological being to be my friend.
Putting the bottle to my lips, I tilt my head back… and catch sight of the shadowy figure looming out of the trees.