Chapter 27 Witchy Fun with Friends
twenty-seven
Witchy Fun with Friends
Idon’t know how long I sleep for, but when I wake, Rhaz is gone and I feel like I had a full night’s rest. I’m only a little sad he’s gone. I know he has things he needs to take care of, and he has to be in the bar. He stayed until I fell asleep, at least.
The clock on my phone shows it’s after two and I scramble out of bed. I was supposed to rest for thirty minutes and it’s been three hours! I slap on another layer of deodorant and run downstairs.
The café is already looking better, even though one of the windows is covered in cling film. We can’t get someone to replace the window for another few days, but that’s fine. Our plan is still a few days out from being executable.
Nai Nai, Deelia, Ace, and Lacey are on the far side of the bar.
Grandma’s drawn some symbols on the wall and has the three of them diligently practicing with a paintbrush.
These are the combination runes that will capture Lei.
I’ll have to activate them with a spoken incantation, but the phrase is short enough that I know it’ll work.
Capturing him, and whatever goons he brings with, is just step one. The next steps are trickier. We have to bind them from doing harm against us, our family, and our friends. Blood will be needed for this part, but surprisingly, Lacey and Deelia didn’t even blink when we mentioned it.
Deelia in particular has had a smile on her face the entire day, and I see it hasn’t waned.
I pick up a brush and practice the runes with them.
“You know,” Deelia peeps, then spews a string of words so quickly I barely understand her. “I used to do something just like this every Wednesday here.”
“Yes, I know,” Nai Nai says. “I read about it in the paper. I knew you would understand.”
Huh, so she’s the séance lady. That makes sense. I remember seeing her picture in the paper that covered the windows when we first got here; she was just younger.
“How long have you been doing that kind of work?” I ask.
“Oh, all my life. I’ve spoken to the other side,” she says, her glasses gleaming as she grins at me.
“I believe it. I have too,” I say.
“The veil between realms has always been weaker here. I’m not sure why. I’ll be sad to see it firmed up,” she says as she swishes the last arm on a protection symbol.
“Not too firm,” Nai Nai says with a smile for me. “We have friends on the other side.”
“Oh, my! You made friends with them?” Deelia asks.
“Jade has a boooyfrieeend,” Ace says with a teasing tone.
I reach across the table and jab him with my paintbrush, blotting a black mark on his cheek.
“Hey! It’s true,” he complains, swiping at me with his brush.
Lacey giggles. “He may be a demon, but he’s nice.”
“Interesting.” Deelia hums. “And he’s not here…helping?”
I rub the back of my neck. “I wouldn’t want him to get in trouble with the magic police. I’m guessing we’re breaking a few laws, but if we don’t know them, it’s not our fault, right?”
“Magic police?” Ace asks, his voice cracking.
“Yeah, they’re called the Interdimensional Bureau of Magical Affairs. I guess they’re police for every plane, but small stuff, like what we’re doing, seems to fly under their radar.”
At least, I hope it’ll fly under the radar.
“Honestly, that makes me feel much better about things,” Lacey says.
“Why’s that?” I ask.
She makes a noncommittal noise as she shrugs. “Just comforting to know that there’s a system out there working to keep things like giant cockroaches that can split dimensional barriers in check.”
“Truth.” I chuckle darkly. “You don’t want to meet one of those.”
“Students,” Nai Nai declares loudly with a clap. “Focus. We have runes to master if we’re going to capture our enemies.”
“Yes, elder Feng!” I say as I turn my attention back to the pages before me.
After another few minutes of swishing our brushes around, Nai Nai brings out our real canvases: paper lanterns. We flip them inside out and paint the symbols along the fold seams to hide them.
The lanterns have to be burned to activate their runes, and while I don’t completely disagree with the plan to have Lacey and Ace help when Lei shows up, the other half of me doesn’t want either of them anywhere near the conflict.
I have the power of a demon inside me. I can handle Lei.
When we have four good lanterns, we fold them up and do the first test run.
On Ace.
He doesn’t agree to it, which makes it work even better.
I hold him still while Nai Nai puts a torch to two, and Deelia gets the others.
The paper burns fast, and hot chains of fire lash out from their centers, wrapping around us.
The fire is just like Rhazan’s, the edge of uncomfortable, but to me, there’s an undercurrent of comfort. It’s like he’s hugging me.
“All right, it works! Let me go!” Ace yells.
Ah, yes, step four of the process—releasing them after we’ve coerced them into a magical contract to leave us alone—requires me. I try to get my arms out so I can perform the essential hand gestures, but I’m firmly stuck to Ace.
“A little help?” I ask as we flop to the side.
Nai Nai eats one of the cookies from earlier today, and I watch as orange magic swells in her chest. She chants the incantation and moves her arms in the gestures to release the bindings.
The meager power that one cookie afforded her ekes out through her mouth and slips from the tips of her fingers.
It floats on the air like moths, and when it collides with the burning chains, they all collapse into embers.
We fall apart but go still at the sound of slow clapping from behind the bar.
My heart soars when I see him. I realize it’s a little silly since he was just here a few hours ago, but something about him revealing himself—his real self—to everyone just for me makes me melt.
“Rhaz.” I jump up and run to him.
He wraps an arm around me, then looks at Nai Nai. “It’s time for me to steal her.”
“What? Why?” I ask.
“You got your panties so twisted about anyone helping you,” Nai Nai says with a sniff. “Rhazan and I decided you should be able to light the lanterns on your own.”
“You decided that when?” I ask, looking up at him.
“While you were sleeping.” He smirks. “You snore.”
My cheeks heat. “I do not.”
Deelia makes a little mumbling peep. “It’s you.”
He looks at her and cocks his head. “You?”
Some little part of me is jealous that they have history, but she used to do seances here, so I don’t doubt she would’ve seen something. It also tells me just how long he’s been trapped in the bar.
Over twenty years.
That fact makes me sad more than anything. It’s such a long time to be stuck in one place.
Deelia points a quivering finger at him. “You owe me ten dollars. They paid for a show, and you never came. They wanted a refund.”
“I’m not a mongrel to be trained,” Rhaz says flatly. “And I owe you nothing.”
Deelia crosses her arms with a huff and a scowl.
I barely contain my laugh. She was running a racket. She knew that she wasn’t contacting people’s loved ones, but Rhazan and whatever other demon might be wandering around the bar.
Deelia is definitely my kind of woman.
“We will return,” Rhaz says.
The air around us clouds with smoke, and suddenly I’m buffeted with hot wind. The smoke collapses against our skin, then explodes off into the dark, obsidian arena behind the bar. I suck down a gasp as I cling to him.
“That astonished look on your face is a radiance I didn’t know I needed,” he says.
His gaze is gentle and amused. I’m half tempted to do something cute—or bratty—to keep all his attention on me in just the way I’m craving it.
But also…
I grin up at him. “Fireballs?”