Chapter Three #2
She walked closer, reaching her hand for the center book. She brushed a finger along the edge of its leather binding, taking a moment to appreciate the zing it sent through her. And then, finally, she touched the page.
It awoke beneath her touch, glowing softly as lines and symbols of various colors ran quickly across the paper.
Spells, bound to runes and locked within the pages of the book.
Katherine pressed her full palm on the page and concentrated on the spell she wanted—a Class 1 that let her instantly boil water, which she had been very annoyed to find herself out of when she was trying to make coffee a few mornings earlier.
(Katherine generally avoided overusing magic for everyday things, but the less time spent between getting out of bed and drinking her first cup of instant espresso, the better.) The runes stopped spinning and settled on the spell’s gray symbol, which then floated off the page and absorbed into her skin.
Every Noctis-sanctioned coven was given spellbooks filled with runes for common spells.
Witches who absorbed a rune from the book got a certain number of uses of that spell out of it—more for easier, lower-Class spells; fewer for the harder, higher-Class ones.
The boiling water spell would last Katherine a hundred or so uses before she needed to re-up.
The spell she’d used to freeze Joe was a one-and-done—hence her desire to get here quickly.
Her ability to sleep at night relied on having those powerful protection spells locked and loaded.
Before the invention of magical runes a century and a half ago, spells were done through a messy combination of blood, words, will, ingredients, time, gestures, flawless dance moves, and god knew what else, all of which you had to get perfectly right otherwise the magic would backfire.
Most witches avoided doing magic entirely, preferring to let their power rot rather than risk severe injury or death because their sage had been grown in soil with a slightly too-high pH.
Without runes, witchcraft was a culture rather than a practice, a family story that kids were told but rarely actually believed.
With runes, magic came back into the forefront, power that could actually be used—and, as with any power, a system grew to guard exactly who could access it.
Katherine focused on a few more spells, savoring the zap of energy she got as each flowed into her.
Most witches in the coven needed authorization to take spells, but Sylvia gave Katherine free rein, an honor she didn’t take lightly.
Spellbooks were incredibly valuable, each representing a massive sacrifice—they were made from the entirety of a young witch’s power, yielded to make a vessel strong enough to hold the magic of the runes that had been developed through painstaking, dangerous experimentation by Noctis’ team of researchers.
Katherine didn’t know the witches who had made Aestas’ books.
They were faceless volunteers, paid handsomely by Noctis in exchange for giving up the core of their very soul and then fucking off for the rest of their lives.
Noctis locked them in with iron-clad NDAs and the threatened revocation of monthly payments to force them to stay quiet, freeing the rest of the witch community from ever having to think about just where their magic came from.
There was a part of Katherine that could understand taking the money and running—the part that remembered the price magic had taken from her, that got sick of the politics and games power brought out in people.
But that was drowned out by the memory of all the love she’d forged here. Fiona. Sylvia. Her found family.
Nothing was worth giving that up.
She kept going, until she felt the magic pinch at her chest—a sign that she had absorbed as many spells as her body could handle.
She pulled her hand back, frustrated. Increasing her spell capacity was the first step toward being able to do more complicated magic, like maintaining the wards that protected Sunspot.
The types of things she should be able to take off Sylvia’s plate, if she could only figure out how to manage them.
She’d been meditating like it was her full-time job—she’d hoped she would be able to hold at least a couple more runes this time around.
“Please cease with the stink face,” Fiona said. “You can still hold like, twice as many spells as I can.”
“Yeah, but you don’t spend every second of free time working on it.”
“Ah, yes. I do enjoy having a life.”
Katherine chuckled as she walked back into the hall. “How’s that going for you? Have you asked her out yet?”
“As the de facto HR of this coven, you should be encouraging me not to ask out a coworker.”
“You know, you can just talk to Tess. Like a normal person.”
Fiona blushed. “But she’s not a normal person! She’s smart and funny and I want to climb her like a tree and also ask if she’s ever considered starting a podcast because she seriously has the voice of a goddamn angel.”
“This is LA,” Katherine deadpanned. “You can definitely ask her if she’s considered starting a podcast.”
“My point is,” Fiona said, throwing her hands up in frustration, “dating sucks and I hate it and I plan to never, ever do it again.”
“You can’t deprive the world of your presence in the dating pool, Fi. That’s just cruel.”
“What about you? I don’t see you diving into the dating deep end.”
Katherine couldn’t argue with that. She had the occasional friends with benefits, one ill-advised drunken tryst with her too-hot-to-be-a-landlord landlord (she’d spent the remainder of her lease forcing herself not to resort to an invisibility spell every time she walked outside), and of course the countless guys who asked her out on the street or slid into her DMs or did whatever inappropriate men did to women who made the mistake of being in their general vicinity.
But there was never anyone she actually wanted to start a relationship with.
Relationships required communication and emotional honesty, neither of which was her strong suit.
If the angry words her last situationship slurred at her as he stormed out of her apartment after she broke it off with him were to be believed, she might not be capable of love at all.
“I, as we are both well aware, am destined to remain single forever and die at my desk with only a stapler for company,” she said. “You are not.”
“Ugh,” Fiona said as they climbed the stairs. “Why can’t she already know everything about me? Then we could skip from the awkward get-to-know-you part and go right to the cuddle-on-the-couch-while-we-watch-Buffy part.”
“You’ll make it to Buffy binges eventually,” Katherine said, stepping onto the wards at the top of the stairs and waiting as the door reappeared in front of them. “But before that, you have to talk. Say words to each other. Bond. Etcetera.”
“Fine, fine, she of infinite wisdom. I will talk to her. Like an adult.”
“There you go.” Katherine pulled the door open, clapping Fiona on the back as they headed back into the lobby.
“Hey.” Tess stood behind the bar, drying off glasses, while Fiona waited stock still in front of her, despite the brief moment of bravado in the stairwell. Tess raised an eyebrow in question, then turned to Katherine. “How’d it go down there?”
“Fine,” Katherine said. “He didn’t wake up, which was good. I’ve had enough of listening to him talk for the day.”
“I’ve met Joe like, twice, and I’ve heard enough of him talking for a lifetime.” Tess did an exaggerated shudder. “He’s way more into cryptocurrency than a witch should be.”
Katherine laughed, then heard a high-pitched sound halfway between a giggle and a scream come out of Fiona. Katherine held in a grin.
“Hey, Tess,” Katherine said. “Were you reading a book on old magic last week?”
“Oh, yeah,” Tess replied, her eyes lighting up. “I’m fascinated by it. I mean, I know it’s outdated and a lot of people think it’s useless since we have runes now, but that doesn’t mean it’s a worthless field. People don’t like magic that takes actual work.”
“Fiona is an expert on old magic,” Katherine said. “She’s been studying it since she was a kid. She even works on her own spells.”
“No shit, really?”
Fiona flushed red as Tess’ attention focused on her.
“Well, not an expert. Or I guess, kind of an expert. Comparatively. The progeny of experts. My parents are all in on old magic, even with the risks. They’re kind of free thinkers, so they have all these thoughts on rune magic and how we should try to practice magical veganism… ”
Katherine smiled as she listened to the two of them talk, their conversation free-flowing and easy. She leaned on the bar, relaxing for a few more moments until she felt the light tap of a summoning spell on her shoulder. She took a moment to steel herself, then excused herself and ducked out.
Sylvia was waiting for her.