Chapter 2 #3
“Neither did I,” Fiona said. “I got into town only an hour ago.”
“All we have is your word,” Selene said apologetically, always smoothing over what Merlin had done. “We know Fiona, but you, Grace, are a new player on the scene.”
Joan gnawed on her knuckle to avoid letting out a scream. Selene made meaningful eye contact with her.
Joan removed the knuckle from her mouth, a chastised toddler.
She had to quietly get through being in this room.
Despite the fact that she wanted to crawl out of her skin expeditiously.
Time away had lowered her tolerance, she could feel that acutely.
Merely existing in here made her a bit winded.
Her body still knew what her mind had tried to bury—looking at Merlin, she saw every screaming match they’d ever had.
Every school play he’d ever missed, every senseless comment that had hurt her feelings.
Looking at Selene, she saw every time her mother had apologized on her father’s behalf, then proceeded to tell Joan it was easiest to just do what he asked.
Fiona leaned into Grace subtly, a small signal sent.
“I will submit to a truth spell,” Grace said, her voice carefully level. Rehearsed, like she had expected this. Smart. Or maybe completely naive, to expect this and still walk into the room.
“Perfect,” Merlin said, rolling back the sleeves of his dark gray button-down.
“I’ll do the honors.” His eagerness rubbed Joan precisely the wrong way—as did his personality, his dismissal of her, the fact that he had forgotten his own child was coming into town—and she felt she might burst as waves of familiar ire crawled up her chest. She was so, so mentally unstable.
Her previous commitment to silence vanished into thin air.
“No, no,” Joan said, just to be a complete dickhead. “Let me.”
“I see your time away hasn’t cured you of your poor sense of humor,” Merlin replied.
“No, I remain deathly ill in that regard,” Joan said.
A smile flickered across Grace’s lips before she crushed it like an ant.
“Be gentle, Dad,” Molly said with an apologetic smile in Grace’s direction. A smile Grace did not return as she faced Merlin’s magic with her spine ramrod straight.
Joan watched with her arms crossed tightly over her chest as her father’s fingers danced in the air.
He muttered a string of words under his breath as the truth spell took shape.
The most advanced spellcasters could manipulate magic without moving or speaking, but Merlin certainly wasn’t among them.
Not that Joan was in any position to judge.
Magic, latent in the air, thickened into threads and flowed toward him to be caught and manipulated by the bounds of the spell. Unlike most witches, Joan could see it without the help of spelled glasses. Like ghostly hands around Grace’s neck.
“Grace Collins,” Merlin said, “did you write the spell that produced witchhood in a human?”
Grace’s voice came out of her in a burst. “No.”
“Do you know how to craft a spell like that?” he continued.
“Only the basic considerations—you need to first grant them the ability to channel magic, then teach them to shape it. The former is, as far as I know, an impossibility on any sort of permanent basis. Spells fade, eventually, as they use up their magic manipulating the world.”
Words pushed at Joan’s lips. And on a temporary basis? she wanted to ask. Could someone temporarily grant themself the ability to attract magic? But she was not going to help her family with this quest; she was still trying to puzzle out why she cared at all.
Valeria spoke up to tack on a question. “Do you have knowledge of anyone who might be able to create a spell like that?”
“Not specifically,” Grace said. “Any spellmaker could write it, but I can’t think of one who might have possibly solved the problem of how. No one was publishing research on it, at least.”
Merlin did not look particularly strained by the spell, likely because truth spells weren’t so far off from persuasion spells, which were his specialty. Grace, on the other hand, was gripping her handbag so tightly, it was pushing the blood from her fingers.
“Let her go,” Joan cut in.
The room looked at her, as if remembering anew she was even here.
“She can handle it,” Fiona said. She was vaguely familiar to Joan; perhaps they’d met before. If the family wasn’t making her undergo a truth spell, then they must have worked with her rather extensively in the past.
“If you have no more questions,” Joan added. “It’s not good for her, and I can’t imagine you’re winning her favor by forcing her to do this. I thought we wanted her to work for us.”
“She submitted willingly,” Merlin said gruffly.
Valeria waved a hand, and Merlin released Grace after a few moments of deliberate hesitation, just to prove Valeria didn’t control him (even though she did).
Grace sagged, looking for a moment like she might collapse entirely under the strain.
But as Joan prepared to lunge out of her chair and catch the woman, Grace straightened.
Fiona kept her chin high. They were close, Joan could see that, but not close enough for Fiona to look anything less than perfect before the Greenwoods.
“If I learn anything, you will be the first to know,” Grace said to Valeria.
Valeria hummed a pensive note, sitting back in her chair. “I want you to recreate it.”
“Valeria,” Selene said chidingly. “We agreed that wasn’t a path we wanted to go down.”
“That was several hours ago, when we thought our informants might turn something up and we could squash it or buy it off this rogue witch,” Valeria said.
“This is now. Someone’s already cracked it, and I cannot deal with a spell I do not understand.
We’re well past simple containment. Grace, recreate this spell.
You will have whatever resources you need at your disposal.
Fiona claims you will be better positioned to do such a thing than she is, but she’ll help you.
Or not; I don’t care which of you it comes from. ”
Grace’s lips pressed into a line. She slid a glance Fiona’s way. “I don’t feel that sort of magic is to be messed with.”
Merlin clucked his tongue, a patronizing smile on his face. “Leave the repercussions to us, Ms. Collins.”
Grace’s hard gaze settled on Merlin, unflinchingly. Joan was beginning to feel like she wanted to befriend this woman, and quickly.
“She’ll do it,” Fiona replied. “Her abilities allow her to see and predict the movement of magic; it’s one of a kind and makes her spellmaking more advanced than mine.”
“Of course I will,” Grace said in acquiescence, giving Fiona another meaningful look, and the moment Valeria dismissed them, Grace was out the door.
Fiona hesitated a moment longer, gaze tracking to Joan curiously, but Valeria sent her an impatient glance. “We’ll be in touch, Fiona.”
Fiona’s mouth snapped shut. She nodded, once, and left.
Joan had seen enough social climbers to recognize one on the spot.
“She wants an official place in your employ,” Selene said, once the doors had closed behind them. “You know that.”
“If she can solve this spell for me, I’ll give it to her gladly,” Valeria replied. “We are our reputation; we cannot risk this spinning out of our control. Whoever holds that spell could gain unimaginable financial, political, and social power.”
“Hell, if she can solve the spell, I’ll make her rich,” Merlin said, fingers drumming. “If we can control that sort of magic, we control the humans entirely. An endless supply of people grateful to the Greenwoods for giving them power.”
“That is not what we’ll use it for,” Valeria said. “We won’t be growing the witch population recklessly.”
Merlin huffed. “Like how the vampires can turn anyone they want, on top of biological procreation? They outnumber us two to one. Don’t get me started on the fae population. They have a million kids each, all guaranteed to possess abilities and, worse, outlive us.”
“Then it’s a good thing we’re not at war,” Joan said sharply.
Merlin wasn’t the only witch who nervously eyed the vampires’ ability to turn humans, but with the power and money he wielded, he was one of the most dangerous.
It was a small mercy he wasn’t technically in charge here, but there were plenty of people like him across the witch world.
In California, witches trained in offensive magic and operated as a sort of police presence, enforcing witch rules on other magical creatures.
“Don’t be naive, Joan,” Merlin dismissed, not even paying her the courtesy of looking in her direction.
“The vampires keep track of their own population, produce very few biological children, and there are rules about turning humans,” Valeria said.
“Rules we set in place,” Merlin countered. “Rules that they could, at any moment, decide to stop following.”
Joan groaned, loud enough to make a point, and rubbed her face.
“Maybe you want to go upstairs and shower, my love?” Selene said, not unkindly, but still a clear indication that Joan was absolutely not needed here.
Joan kept rubbing her eyes, and eventually her family settled back into their discussion about next steps, but her brain was humming with new information. I don’t feel that sort of magic is to be messed with.
Was that why this news had freaked Joan out? Some feeling that they were messing with cosmic forces whose consequences could be vast? No, that was too abstract.
Her family was in a real, genuine tizzy with this news, the house was full despite the evening hour, and they were calling in spellmakers, both people they’d worked with before and random witches who had no track record of loyalty, to do things like craft forbidden spells.
And it was in such contrast to the HERMES and the buzzy but generally nonchalant way the news had hit all the regular magical creatures in this city. Exciting, but not disastrous.
Joan sat up straighter.
That was it. She didn’t have some personal fear of the repercussions of this power. No, as Joan looked around at her bickering family, she saw why this news unsettled her—because she didn’t know what her family would do.
Because Merlin was already talking about turning his own personal army.
Because Joan wasn’t afraid of what humans might do with the ability to become witches or what another witch might do with this magic—she was afraid, very specifically, of what lengths the Greenwood family would go to in order to protect, to grow, their power.
Shit.