Chapter 12 #2
“You do whatever Wren says?” Joan said, maybe a little meanly, but only because telling someone they needed to shower outright was a bit rude, even when it was totally true.
“Yes,” Astoria replied. “She’s way cleverer than me. I’m just a big guy with a sword.”
“I don’t see a sword,” Joan sniped back.
Astoria put out her hand and cast without words or movements. A silver sword materialized in it. Gorgeous and sharp. “Better, Greenwood? I don’t issue empty threats.”
A warm shiver danced its way down Joan’s spine. A big woman with a sword. Kill me now. “I’ve yet to hear a decent threat out of you, sweetheart.”
Wren put her head on Astoria’s shoulder briefly, laughing as Astoria’s face flickered with outrage at Joan’s taunt. “Go on, Joan, we promise we won’t run away.”
“And if we do, you’ll just say we dastardly, devious Californians overpowered you and fled,” Astoria said. “You can then go about your day as normal.”
This felt like a win-win for Joan, so with a last suspicious glare in their direction—and a deliberate effort not to think too hard about what it would feel like for Astoria to overpower her, grab her bodily, wrap her big hands around Joan’s wrists—she went upstairs to raid Molly’s closet.
After a shower, which Joan wasn’t too proud to admit did cure her depression, she thundered back downstairs in a borrowed blouse and jeans.
Joan would never choose a blouse for herself, especially one with all these little bows at the cuffs and collar, but Molly’s options were limited.
This was, without a doubt, the most casual ensemble Molly owned.
The entire affair had unfortunately taken Joan a full thirty minutes, because she was forced to hand-wash her underwear and then throw it in the dryer for as long a cycle as she could spare. The glamorous life of Joan Greenwood.
Downstairs, Wren and Astoria were, surprisingly, still in the house. They sat at the dining table with a large piece of paper between them covered in scribbles.
Joan paused in the doorway, watching them, a portrait of long-standing intimacy.
We’ve known each other since we were three, Wren had said, and Joan could see it in the easy way they occupied space together.
Wren’s finger traced something on the paper, and Astoria watched her intently, like the whole world revolved around whatever it was Wren was saying.
Astoria replied, and Wren nodded along animatedly, their heads bent toward each other.
Just friends, Wren claimed, but Joan thought Astoria looked at Wren like they were something more.
Unrequited love, that was a knife to the heart. Joan felt an unexpected burst of sympathy for Astoria Wardwell. She shoved it down quickly; that was like feeling sorry for a snake that was actively strangling you.
“You’re not as stealthy as you think,” Astoria said without turning around. Her sword had disappeared. Joan kind of missed it, in a twisted way. None of her friends carried swords.
Joan stuck her tongue out at the back of Astoria’s head. Wren, who’d been sitting opposite Astoria, stifled a laugh at the action.
“I’m not trying to be stealthy; it’s my sister’s house,” Joan said, walking over and plopping into a chair on the other side of Wren.
Astoria gave her an appraising glance. “Those clothes don’t suit you.”
Wren smacked her arm. “Astoria!”
“What clothes would suit me, Wardwell, since you’re apparently a fashion expert?” Joan shot back. “Something made of knives? A giant pointed dunce hat? I can’t wait for your next scintillating insult.”
“Something with fewer ruffles” was Astoria’s serene reply. “Can we start?”
Wren shuffled the papers together and stacked them neatly, revealing a printed map of New York at the top. “Ready when you are. Joan, we’ll explain after so it’s harder for you to mess us up.”
“You underestimate what a rascal I can be,” Joan muttered.
The paper was clearly important; she could snatch it away and scamper off.
Knock Wren’s chair out from under her. In a rare turn of events, the wishes of her family were aligning with her own—the Californians could not be allowed to make progress in tracking down the spell that had turned Mik.
Astoria’s answering flick of her eyes was accompanied by an amused twist of the mouth. “I’d never underestimate your ability to annoy and pester.”
Wren heaved a put-upon sigh, but she was smiling too, wider and more genuine. Not like Astoria’s bare twitches of emotions. This close, Joan could see the faint jewel-tone shine, the too-large irises of Wren’s dark eyes, more hints to her half-fae heritage.
“You’re in a rare funny mood, Astoria,” Wren said. “Joan, I should invite you around more often, soften her up.”
“I’m always funny,” Astoria protested.
“Hard pass,” Joan replied. “Unless you can bring the sword back.”
Astoria smirked. “Women only want one thing and it’s disgusting.”
“Shut up, Wardwell, oh my gods,” Joan said, and she hated that a laugh broke free from behind the iron bars of her will. “Get on with your thingy so I can figure out how to ruin your lives.”
Astoria looked all too smug as she lifted her hands to cast.
Wren’s movements mirrored hers as magic began to swirl up around them, like a sandstorm kicked up in the desert.
They moved beautifully together, and Joan squinted a little to clarify her vision.
Magic shifted as it was drawn toward Astoria, taking on a silver hue.
The longer Joan watched, the more she noticed that they weren’t casting the same spell in tandem—they had broken apart one spell.
Astoria was the one drawing in the vast majority of the magic, and Wren was there as a support, helping shape the actual spell to hold it.
Perhaps Wren was not a particularly powerful witch?
She didn’t seem to be attracting substantial levels of magic to herself, but her movements were highly refined.
She was an adept spellcaster, and she’d scaled the magnitude of the spell to match the quantity of magic Astoria was pulling in.
Her casting ability seemed to far outstrip her channeling.
Joan had never, not once, seen someone split magic like this.
It hadn’t even occurred to her that it was possible.
Joan blinked, and the patterns of magic coalesced above the paper, making a shimmering map in roughly the shape of New York City and its five boroughs.
Astoria’s and Wren’s hands stopped, and they leaned in, peering at it closely.
“You made a map?” Joan said, also trying to get a better look. “That glows?”
Wren scooted her chair to the side to make more room.
“Ink magic’s my specialty, though I admit I normally do temporary tattoos with status-boosting effects to help us in fights, not magic maps.
In LA—well, all over California—we have a series of magicked maps that track the way magic flows across the state.
When something causes a blip, like a huge upsurge caused by magical creatures gathering, an attack of some kind, and so on, it shows up on the maps.
Then the witches on call get deployed to investigate. ”
“This is a simple version of that,” Astoria continued. “We don’t have the time or resources to make something that can pick up on or parse the nuances like we do in LA, but this, broadly, shows us the way magic flows in New York City.”
Oh no.
“Before we left, we consulted with some of our own spellmakers,” Wren said, watching Joan’s face closely. “They surmised that a spell large enough to turn a human into a witch might be a constant drain on the magic in the area.”
Joan made her numb lips move. “You’re trying to find a magic vacuum.” Don’t give yourself away. Channel every ounce of Greenwood in you into lying.
“Exactly,” Wren said. The magic signature of New York swirled, folding in on itself. Tiny rifts formed and were smoothed over. Bright spots flared and then darkened.
“Where’s this?” Astoria asked, pointing her finger at a spot in Brooklyn where the magic had gone dark. And stayed dark.
Wren furrowed her brow and wiggled her fingers slightly, and the map on the paper shifted, the ink rearranging to reveal Brooklyn in greater detail. The words hadn’t yet formed labels, but Joan knew the area like the back of her hand.
Bay Ridge.
The entire borough on one piece of printer paper wasn’t making for enough specificity to pull anything like a street number, but Wren seemed more than capable of making the map home in.
Joan had no idea how to undo this spell—she was as much a failure at casting counterspells as she was at producing the initial magic—but she had to disrupt the map, and fast.
“Isn’t this area where the Night Market is?” Wren mused. “Poppy said it was in Brooklyn, most likely in a park. Its nullification wards might trigger a dead spot.”
“Greenwood? Is that correct?” Astoria asked.
Joan’s tongue tangled in her mouth, which was suddenly completely dry. She pried it open and took a breath. She couldn’t allow them to narrow down to the Night Market or Grace’s apartment—both trails led to Mik, and the former might add fuel to the whole invade the market idea.
“The market is in Staten Island,” Joan said smoothly.
Astoria gave her a calculating look. “I doubt my mother’s intel is wrong.”
“Your mother isn’t a New Yorker,” Joan replied.
This was a small delay, no more. Everyone in New York knew the Night Market was in Brooklyn.
Almost everyone knew it was in Owl’s Head.
They only had to ask one magical creature outside the Greenwoods and the other richest families and someone would tell them the truth.
“It’s probably a good place for them to hide,” Wren muttered to herself. “In the market itself, the wards would cover the magic vacuum they were producing.”
“Can you make the map clearer?” Astoria asked.
Whoever was behind the spell on Mik, Joan already knew they had been in that market, and now that Wren mentioned it, it was probably for precisely those reasons—to hide the effect of funneling so much magic in.
And while the Owl’s Head rift was much bigger, Joan knew what she was looking for and could see that there were two rifts on the map: one indeed over Owl’s Head, and another one over Grace’s apartment. If they zoomed in, they would see both.
Magic vacuums.
What if Joan could produce another one, then, one large enough to skew the entire map?
She couldn’t counterspell, that was a fact. But one thing she’d always been able to do was draw in enormous amounts of magic.
If she formed it into a spell, the two witches next to her would know instantly, and it would likely go awry, as always. And if she held it in her, she’d get sick.
But if she just funneled it, funneled it and released it back into the room simultaneously, maybe she could create enough movement over the whole map that she could distract them, at least long enough to lunge around Wren and burn that paper.
She’d never done it before, and if she gambled wrong, she was about to risk projectile vomiting all over both of them. Which would be embarrassing, but at minimum would likely distract them from their spell.
For Mik.
Joan drew a breath in as Wren’s hands hovered over the paper again, working to zoom in.
Magic responded to her like air.
She drew it in, in, in. Not too fast but not too slow, letting it fill her insides, watching it shift in the room itself.
And just as it seemed like it might fill her, Joan exhaled, expending magic back out in one stream, asking nothing of it, trying only to be a vessel through which it might flow seamlessly.
Like Grace said it tended to.
Like Billy said happened to ghosts.
Magic shifted, pulled toward her siren song, releasing back into the room only to be pulled back in again, and the map flickered.
Astoria sat up straighter. “Something’s happening, zoom back out.”
Wren did so quickly, scaling back to the borough, then the city, to see magic across New York heading subtly in the direction of Manhattan. It made waves that crested over the whole city, sloshing over the rifts in Brooklyn.
A cold sweat broke out on Joan’s lower back as she concentrated, Astoria and Wren’s puzzled and rapid exchange of words fading out.
She was doing it.
It was like she was channeling the city itself.
Deep in the back of Joan’s mind, something opened its eyes.
It was ancient, eternal. Joan felt its attention on her like a patter of rain across her face. It nuzzled closer, intrigued, and the more magic Joan drew in, the more solid it became in her mind. A formless, vast thing made of magic itself, so much so that it had gained some level of sentience.
Green Witch, it breathed.
Welcome home.