Chapter 5
V
Celeste: I’m not normally one to circumvent the food safety rules of our fine village council.
However, we both know that your magic won’t allow any harm to come to people who drink your potions, apart from a little hangover.
So yes, you can move your mead bottles into the bakery storeroom.
Good luck with the rest of your application.
After lunch, Rafe gets the zoomies. I refuse to go for a run with him outside, so instead, he bounces around the room in his cat form, chasing shadows and howling at ghosts, while I pull my mother’s book onto the counter.
Of the two spellbooks, this is the book I’m most familiar with, as she and I spent hours with it open, mixing potions and hex bags and performing the rituals of the seasons.
I’m almost positive that there’s nothing about curse magic inside, but I check each page anyway, in case I’d forgotten something.
I hadn’t. After making notes about a couple of new botanical combinations to try (meadowsweet and pomegranate for enhancing vision, and lemon, basil and mint for prosperity), I flip open the family grimoire.
My grandmother was the east witch of a powerful local coven, but the group split up long before I was born, and now most local witches practice the craft individually.
Her grimoire is filled with different kinds of spells – spells to be worked with a group, spells that invoke power, that do great and terrible things.
Rafe shifts back into his human form and rests his chin on my shoulder to read with me. I try to concentrate on reading my grandmother’s horrific handwriting while ignoring the warm buzzing in my belly at his closeness. He hasn’t put his clothes back on, so this is difficult.
“Stop. That says something about familiars.” Rafe’s hand closes over mine. My hand freezes midair, and I drop the page I was turning. His deep voice rumbles against my earlobe as he reads aloud.
A witch must carefully consider her choice to make a familiar, as she shares some of her magic with the creature.
This means the witch can use her familiar to cast spells when she cannot, but it also means that she weakens herself.
Witches connect telepathically with their familiars, who also gain the ability to communicate with other witches in the coven.
“That’s weird,” I say. “It’s suggesting our telepathic connection is because I’m part of the Widow Hardcastle’s coven, but I’m not.”
“It also doesn’t say anything about cursed familiars. This one has potential.” Rafe points to a picture of a black cat with lightning bolts coming from its eyes as it stands atop a tower of skulls. “If I can’t be a human again, at least I could have lasers coming out of my eyes.”
“Those aren’t lasers…I don’t think?” I peer at the spell, which looks like it has something to do with familiars of Thor, the god of lightning. But the sloping, cursive writing is too difficult to read. I turn the page, blinking hard as the letters swim together.
I’ve already skipped over a whole section that’s in Latin or Orcish or some other strange language. It had pictures of plants I’d never seen before, so I don’t think it had anything to do with curse magic or familiars.
This new page shows a range of objects with notes scrawled around them. Three bees march across the page. They cluster together, circling around one word. I blink at it, whispering each letter under my breath until it resolves itself. Curses.
Thank you, bees.
“Here’s something. Do you want to read it?” I ask, trying to keep my voice casual.
“Sure.” Rafe picks up the book and puts on a posh BBC announcer’s voice.
“Anyone with sufficient rage or indignation can cast curse magic on a living creature or object, but a witch’s curse is particularly potent.
A witch must be careful, for curse magic is extremely corrupting.
Creating a curse can stain a witch’s soul. ”
I wonder why Widow Hardcastle felt that turning Rafe into a cat was worth the corruption of her soul, but then leave her shop to him. And I think again about her horrible death. Who would want to murder her?
“That doesn’t help us.” Rafe slumps onto a paint can, dropping the book on the counter with a dusty clonk. “It doesn’t say anything about cursing a familiar or breaking a curse.”
“Luckily, I know exactly where to go to get answers.”