Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
The one-room bedsit—well, one room and a tiny bathroom—smells musty and has the tang of ammonia.
Yep, it stinks of cat pee, a smell I’ve been unable to shake no matter how I clean.
I get used to it when I’m home, and after a while, I become nose blind, but when I return from work, the smell hits me in the face all over again. It’s gross.
I worry it’ll rub off on me, onto my clothing. The cat-pee girl. It’s ridiculous, as this flat has never seen fur. Not in over twenty years. Another cruel thing is that the council disallows us from having pets.
The small place is in darkness. It’s hard to see with the power out and billowing smoke blocking any ambient moonlight from the tiny window. There’s a bed—a small single tucked into the corner, a wardrobe, a cupboard, a mini fridge, and a counter with enough room for a box of tea bags and a kettle.
I get everything I need with touch alone, grabbing a bag quickly enough. I wear mostly black clothes, so it’s no issue to throw in random combinations. I could use my phone, but nothing says someone is sneaking around more than the glow of a torch.
I hurry to the bathroom, close the door, and drop a towel on the floor to block residual light. In the pitch darkness, the backs of my legs brush the toilet as I shuffle sideways to the oversized mirror. Muscle memory helps my fingers reach the hidden catch on the side.
This is why I’m glad I got the creepy, stinky flat.
The hidden room.
I don’t know why the builders sealed it up. Perhaps they ran out of money? I found it when I attempted to replace an old mirror and, in a DIY frenzy, made a massive hole by mistake.
I flick the knobbly switch and the mirror swings open. I quickly figured out the hole led to a sealed-off room, so of course I made the gap wider between the joists and bought a bigger mirror.
What sixteen-year-old doesn’t want a hidden lair to do her illicit spells in?
The tension in my muscles eases as the ward protecting my workshop glows bright. The comforting red light from the magic allows me to see what I’m doing. I stand on the boxed-in pipework, and with a grunt, careful not to knock off the headphones, I throw my leg over the wall and duck into the gap.
Into my workshop.
The wooden stool on the other side of the wall makes things more accessible even if the damn thing wobbles under my weight.
The ward protecting the room licks at me as if welcoming me home.
My magic is a little unusual. I’m not going to say the magical items I create are sentient, but to me they feel like it sometimes.
I know it sounds daft, and I’ll never say it out loud, but they have their own personalities.
Perhaps that’s me putting human emotions onto magical objects—like a weirdo. I really do need a pet.
And it’s not like I have any help or guidance with this magical stuff. Sometimes it feels like if I don’t get the spells out of my mind, I’ll explode. I’m winging it most of the time. It’s magic, it works, and that’s what counts, I guess.
Unlike witches who train for years, what I do isn’t as simple as following a recipe and throwing items into a cauldron.
It’s like I place a tiny part of myself inside every spell.
That’s why I had the idea to reach out and touch them, and now I have a feeling I’ll always know where each of my charms are.
I can only seep power into particular wood, stone, and metal—for example, I can’t push magic into a Coke can—and it takes a while to prep the materials I use. I must handle them. Skin-to-skin contact is best.
Thinking of handling them, I wiggle out of my coat and wrap a string of uncut, rough-shaped obsidian stones tightly around my left arm and a string of wooden pieces around my right.
The metal pieces I loop around my stomach.
It all needs skin contact, but I’m not putting anything around my neck.
With what’s going on outside, I don’t need the extra risk of getting strangled by my supplies.
That’d be a horrible way to go.
Nobody knows I get all the supplies from the outside world. I invented a magic that can open a gap in the town’s ward without setting off any alarms. It was a silly and dangerous thing to do. I was fourteen at the time. Hormones played a significant role.
At first, I made the gap to see if I could, like an air hole, just to breathe easier and dream of leaving, then later, when I got older, to plan our escape and make it a reality, as I’ve always been determined we would leave this forsaken place.
The gap isn’t big enough for a person but plenty big enough for a box of stuff. Besides, I’ve not tried it with living tissue. My magic keeps it open, and I’m not stupid enough to stick my hand in. I need my hands attached.
Once I opened the gap, I got a signal and used my mum’s ancient mobile SIM card to talk to the outside world.
The old thing worked with a bit of magic, and now I have an outside contact—an old friend of Mum’s from her school days—who helps sell my magic and procure the materials I need to make more.
With my jacket back on, I methodically move from left to right, holding the bag open to sweep all my treasures from the shelves.
I feel bad for treating them so rudely. I love these charms, and selling my magical horde has been hard.
To let even one charm go is traumatising.
But I had to for my family’s sake. You can’t make a clean getaway without money.
Once I clear all the shelves, I stuff the bag back through the hole, holding its strap until it lands softly on the bathroom’s tiles. Then clinging to two of the charms—one shaped like an ear and the other like an umbrella—I climb back into the bathroom.
I glance at the ear charm with a smile and rub the lobe. I made the charms for my nan. I have several. When I asked her what she missed the most about losing her hearing, Nan said she missed the susurrus whispering of a page and birds singing.
Beautiful, simple things. I promised myself that when we got out of this town, Nan would be able to hear better than anyone. A shifter, a vampire, will have nothing on my nan. She will be able to listen to a mouse fart if she chooses.
We only tested the charm, as it isn’t safe for her to use even at home. Gosh, I hate her current authorised shitty spell. If she can’t hear the frequency of birds, what’s the point? It’s cruel. But someday… someday might be now. Butterflies flutter in my tummy.
I’m not ready.
I roll my shoulders and smile down at the little ear. “Ello,” I whisper; in response, the ear in my mind makes a delighted sound and warms my hand. The wood I used for this charm is Gabon ebony, which takes my magic well.
With a tweak, the charm will filter the magic from the air, blocking that bloody Pied Piper spell and allowing me to ditch the bulky headphones. If I do my job right, I can listen for baddie sounds.
I rub the ear between my fingers, and with a gentle magic push, we—the ear and I—have a conversation.
I feel it when the new magic sound filter locks into place, and I slip the charm into the inside pocket of my work trousers.
The thin cotton pocket won’t be much of a barrier, and anyway, my magic is strong enough that it doesn’t need skin contact once a charm is activated.
Trusting I’ve done my job, I tremble, take a deep breath and tug the headphones off. Alert, I wait a few seconds, and when nothing bad happens, I relax. My ears are tiny, and headphones never sit well. I vigorously rub my throbbing lobes, which are so sore that they thrum with the beat of my heart.
I then use the umbrella to unravel the ward. The red light dims and darkness takes over as the ward gets sucked back into the charm to be used again. My lips twitch. That’s the magic that freaks my mum out the most.
Witches are powerful, yet they have limits to their magic. They can set the most potent wards; there’s lots of chanting, and the ward will be strong but only be set in an area. If they’re removed, they are gone forever.
That’s what makes my magic so unusual: my charms can be used again and again.
If all the magic is used, they use the residual magic in the air to recharge themselves.
A user who isn’t me just needs a simple chant to invoke them.
I don’t have to chant, and I’ve been working on an intent trigger for customers, but it’s ridiculously complicated.
Five minutes down, and I’m ready to go. I kick the towel out of the way, slip the backpack over my shoulders, and leave my bedsit with the front door wide-open.
Might as well not invite trouble.