Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Kaeli’s mind had been aching in a dull sort of way during the last hour of the trip as the bus pulled into the station in downtown Cleveland. The brakes squealed loudly as it shuddered to a stop, as if it were protesting the fact that it had to be there.
She stood and shouldered her purse, checking to make sure she’d left nothing behind in the seat, and then followed the few passengers out.
The sun was going down, and coolness swept through the lot.
She tucked her hands inside her hoodie sleeves and waited for the driver to pull the bags from the cargo hold.
When she saw her dark pink suitcase, she grabbed it by the handle and pulled it behind her as she made her way into the station to use the bathroom.
On the GPS app on her phone, she saw that the Cleveland Mother Earth Store was a mere fifteen minutes away by car. It was the coven’s supply shop and headquarters, and where the Corners were most likely to be the day before the Equinox.
Since it wasn’t that far away, she walked out of the station and waved at a taxi instead of calling a rideshare vehicle, and told the man behind the wheel where she was going.
“Don’t hex me,” he said with a bold laugh as he pulled from the curb.
“I promise I won’t,” she said.
Exhaustion pulled on every facet of her body, but she pushed the feeling away and focused on what she was going to say when she got to the store.
She was a misfit, like the broken toys in that one holiday cartoon, and there was a chance that the Corners would turn her away.
Her own coven—her former coven—wouldn’t have accepted a random witch with out-of-control powers showing up and asking for help, so why had they thought the Cleveland coven would?
The only bonus of her current situation, if there was one, was that she wasn’t destitute.
She had money in the bank, and whoever had packed her suitcase had done a decent job of gathering much of what she’d need to start over—the one photo album from her childhood, her spellbook, some clothes, makeup, and toiletries.
It was a little disheartening to realize her whole life was mostly enclosed in a suitcase, which made her feel like she’d never really settled in the place she’d called home.
Had it ever been home? Or was it simply a house?
Hell, she was forty-one by human standards.
But because she was a supernatural person and had a long life, she had aged to eighteen, and then her body had slowed down, aging only one year for every twelve that passed.
Supernaturals didn’t count age the way humans did—by their measure, she was twenty-plus-one, not forty-one.
She looked like a college kid, but with the number of years she had been on earth, she should have had a lot more going for her.
Like a real home, a mate, and a kid or two.
All she had was a suitcase and an ache in her chest about where she’d end up when all was said and done.
“Here ya go,” the man said when he stopped the big yellow car.
She blinked, not realizing how much time had passed. She opened her wallet, peered at the screen to confirm her fare, and handed him the payment with a generous tip.
“You need me to stick around?” he asked.
“No, thank you. Have a good night.”
“You, too.”
She got out, pulled her suitcase off the seat, let it drop to the pavement, and then she closed the door, straightened her shoulders, and headed inside.
A bell jingled when she opened the door, and a sweetly scented warmth met her immediately, with notes of citrus, sage, and smoke.
The interior was as she’d expected of a witch-run store—dark wood shelves lined the walls and were filled with books and containers of various ingredients, tables were draped with silk fabric and covered with candles, empty spellbooks, and other items witches and those who wanted to be like them might find useful.
Two women behind the counter looked up when Kaeli walked in. The younger-looking of the two smiled brightly. “Hi and welcome in! Can we help you?”
She’d memorized the names of the Corners and knew that asking for the head of the coven was a good place to start. “I’d like to speak with Lorene. I don’t have an appointment, but I need help.”
The older woman tilted her head slightly. “She’s in the back. I can get her for you. Who should I say is here, and what do you need?”
“My name is Kaeli Shaw, and there’s something wrong with my magic.”
“Oh, crap,” the younger one said. “That sucks.”
The older woman elbowed her, and she smiled warmly. “I’ll go speak with her.”
“My name is Lulu,” the younger one said when the other had left the room. “I’m an unnatural witch.”
Unnatural witch. That was a term that Kaeli hadn’t heard in a long time.
There were two kinds of witches—those born with magic were called natural witches—and those who had a propensity toward magic but were generally considered human were called unnatural witches.
Often, unnatural witches had natural witches in their family history, but for one reason or another, the witches had turned away from their magic, and eventually, it would not appear in the next generation.
She didn’t know any unnatural witches because her former coven had only allowed natural witches to be part of it.
“It’s nice to meet you,” Kaeli said. “Do you like working here?”
“Oh yeah, I’ve been here for years. I started stocking shelves when I was in high school. My great-great-great grandma was a natural witch, but she turned from her magic because she wanted to marry a human, and so she kind of screwed things up for the rest of us.”
Before Kaeli could comment, a woman appeared wearing a flowing dark red dress that skimmed the floor and a long, thick braid over her shoulder.
“Hello Kaeli, I’m Lorene. Come with me, child.
I saw in my tea leaves this morning that something new was coming in from the West, and I think that might be you. ”
“I’m from Illinois.”
“That explains it,” she said with a smile.
Kaeli waved at Lulu and the other witch, and joined Lorene, walking down a long hall and into a circular room with a large rug in the center, a big wooden table with chairs, and walls lined with overstuffed bookshelves.
Three other women were in the room, and Lorene introduced them as the other Corners: Bitty the East Corner, Gwen the West Corner, and Maritza the South Corner.
Kaeli shook each woman’s hand, feeling the warmth and pulse of their magic.
“So tell us what brings you to Cleveland,” Lorene said as she gestured to the table, and they all took their seats.
So she did. She told them about the Corners’ request for her to cast a spell that was actually a test, that went terribly wrong, and how they’d had her bag already packed and a bus ticket to Cleveland ready to go.
She left out how she didn’t have anyone to really say goodbye to, because the woman who’d taken her in when she was sixteen, after her mom ran off, had passed away, and Kaeli had never really found true friendship with anyone else in the coven.
What a sad testament to the life she’d left behind.
Maybe that was why she hadn’t really cried about the loss.
The Corners listened quietly, and when Kaeli finally ran out of words, the silence settled over the group like fog on a fall morning.
Then Lorene said, “I don’t think you’re broken, Kaeli.”
“Then why do I feel broken? Why have I never been able to control my magic? I’ve trained constantly, but every spell I cast goes wrong. It’s like my magic is fighting me.”
“We can find out,” Bitty said, stubbing out a clove cigarette.
“How?” Kaeli said.
“With a revelation spell,” Gwen said. “We’ve done them a few times over the years; they’re very good at showing what truth lies hidden. In fact, we just did a revelation spell for a young woman who was a shifter but had been raised to believe she was a psychic.”
“How did she not know she was a shifter?”
“Because her shift was hidden under a suppression spell,” Maritza said. “Eventually, she got her shift because she found her truemate, and their bond destroyed the spell. But that’s another person’s story, and yours is not about a hidden shift; it’s about magic that’s not cooperating.”
“Exactly,” Lorene said. She pushed back from the table and stood. “If you’re up for it, we can do the spell now.”
“I am,” Kaeli said. Hope flared in her chest, small but bright.
It took a few minutes for the Corners to prep for the spell. Kaeli had never seen a revelation spell performed before, but it sounded simple enough.
They asked her to sit cross-legged on the rug and set candles around her. The four Corners stepped up between the candles, which flared to life when Maritza waved her hand toward them.
“The spell won’t hurt,” Bitty said. “You can breathe easy.”
Kaeli forced herself to breathe, not realizing she’d been holding her breath like she was waiting to be hit in the head.
“It might feel strange,” Gwen said, “but our magic will reveal what’s going on with yours. Hopefully.”
Kaeli hoped so, too.
Lorene marked Kaeli’s wrists and cheeks with powder made from ground-up herbs. Then the Corners joined hands and began the spell, the candles flickering.
They spoke the spell in the ancient Wiccan language. The air grew heavy and warm, and the scent of herbs grew stronger. Lorene hovered her hand above Kaeli’s head and said, “Revelare.”
The air shimmered like ripples on a pond and warmed enough to make Kaeli wish she’d taken off her hoodie. Her heart pounded in her chest, and her vision dimmed before going dark entirely.
And that’s when she saw her magic in her mind.
But it wasn’t just one magic, it was two. North and South. Earth and Fire.
The earth magic was warm and strong, and the fire magic was bright and dramatic. The two magics seemed to be trying to come together, but they were pushed apart with flashes of electricity.
“Well, I’ll be a horn-toed behemoth,” Bitty said as the spell disappeared and Kaeli’s vision returned to her. She blinked against the light in the room.
“I have two magics? How is that possible?” Kaeli said.
Gwen helped her to her feet. “What was your mother’s power?”
“Earth.”
“Do you know of your ancestors?” Bitty asked.
“Her mom, my grandma, was earth also. I don’t know about farther back in the family.”
“Well, power can be finicky and different magics can show up in different generations,” Maritza said. “But you have two magics, and that means you’re dually aligned.”
“No wonder your spells go nuts when you try to cast them,” Bitty said. “Both your magics are trying to respond to the spells, and they’re basically fighting each other in the process instead of working together.”
“You’re definitely a rare witch,” Lorene said. “Your magic is unstable because you have no anchor. It’s like you’re walking between two roads, and you need a bridge between them.”
“How do I get a bridge?”
“You need a catalyst,” Lorene said. “Something or someone to align the two parts of your magic. Until then, your magic will always fight against itself, and your spells won’t work.”
“How do I find the catalyst?”
“You don’t,” Gwen said. “It will find you.”
“That’s… not as comforting as you might think,” Kaeli said with a grimace.
Lorene put her hand on Kaeli’s shoulder and gave a gentle squeeze. “Sorry, but it’s true. Your magics are not going to work until they are brought together and bound to work as one. Until you find the catalyst that unites your magics, you are essentially a boat adrift without an anchor.”
Her eyes stung with tears. It sounded so final. How could she figure out what the catalyst was? And why had her own coven never tried to help her figure out what was wrong with her magic? No one had ever suggested a revealing spell or attempted to get to the bottom of her screwy spells.
“When your magics are aligned properly and not fighting each other,” Gwen said, “you will be more powerful than you can imagine. But you’ll have to start training again, because you will essentially have double the power that a normal witch would have.
Fortunately, you’ll have the knowledge of the spells you trained on in your early life; you’ll just have to practice. ”
“But there’s no way to know when the catalyst will show up in my life?”
Gwen shrugged. “Sorry, but no. The fates will bring your magics into alignment when they wish, and not a moment before. All you can do is be ready and willing. And patient.”
“And once you have the dual magics aligned,” Bitty said, “You can visit the wolf pack’s lygisa. Her name is Cinder, and she’s the alpha female, a rare and powerful wolf-witch, with lots of practice having a dual nature.”
Kaeli nodded, feeling numb. She’d see whoever she needed to once her magics were synced up, but in the meantime, all she could do was wonder when the heck that would happen.
Lorene put her arm around Kaeli’s shoulder and led her back to the main room. “You’re safe here in Cleveland, with our coven. Do you have a car?”
“No, I came here by taxi from the bus station, and I haven’t had a chance to think about where I’ll stay tonight.”
“Lulu will drive you to one of the empty homes we have in our coven’s neighborhood.
She can run you by a market to get what you need.
Tomorrow is the Equinox, and you’re welcome to join us as a guest. For obvious reasons, you won’t be able to join in our spell casting, but perhaps as you spend time with us, your catalyst will reveal itself to you, and you can gain the use of your magics as nature intended. ”
“Thank you for being so kind,” Kaeli said.
“It’s what we are called to do as Corners,” Lorene said.
“Rest tonight, and then tomorrow, Lulu can bring you to the store so you can spend the day with us as we prepare for the ceremony. You’re here for a reason, Kaeli, and I believe that your life is going to change immensely now that you’re with us. ”
“I hope so.”
Lulu smiled brightly at Kaeli and shouldered her purse, her keys tinkling with the motion. The word catalyst swirled in Kaeli’s brain like a whirlpool, but she didn’t know what to do about it.
What—or who—was the catalyst that would bring her magics in alignment?