Chapter 5 #2
My hands shook as I lifted a note with a drawing of a tiger eating a banana and the words, I love you, Tigger. Her nickname for me still made me smile.
I’d been a hyper, bouncy child once upon a time.
Memories assailed me of happier times as I thumbed through the photographs, pausing at one—a faded picture of a handsome man wearing a small, secretive smile and intense eyes dancing with humor.
Mom said he was watching her when she snapped the picture, and right after that he’d taken her for a spin on the dance floor.
And the smile she had as she remembered…
A tear slipped down my face. Whoever my father had been, Mom had loved him so much. I could only hope he’d loved her as much as I did.
And I could also only hope he loved me, too, because despite everything, I couldn’t help but love him. He was my father, after all. Maybe he was like Mom, not actually dead. Maybe both of them were somewhere out there, trying their hardest to find their way back to me.
With a final look at the photographs, I carefully arranged the notes in the order I always kept them in and placed them back into the box. When the wooden catch was secured once more, I squeezed my eyes shut, willed the memories away, and pushed the box back underneath the bed.
The basement had started out as a creepy, drafty place, but after spending a horrifying chunk of my savings and some sweat equity, I had built the lab of my dreams. Calling it a lab was a stretch, mostly because it looked like something out of a magical academy fanfic, but it served me well.
Much like my living room, I’d decorated the basement in the same dark academia vibe, but with a heavy emphasis on a floral aesthetic too.
Stunning botanical wallpaper etched with gold leaf lent the back wall a witchy vibe, and I’d painted the ceiling a deep maroon, the same color as the wallpaper roses.
Two massive mahogany bookshelves rose from the floor, high enough to require a ladder to reach the top, crammed with books on all subjects.
I had volumes on botany, poisons, gardening, alchemy, bath and body products, a few magical texts Mom had given me, and some other strange texts I’d picked up secondhand over the years.
But most importantly, one of the shelves held my Book of Shadows, a tome I’d created when I came of age.
This one held all my notes and practices from over the years, all the spells I’d created myself, and notes on what worked and what did not.
I thought I’d lost it when I moved in with my aunt after Mom disappeared, but a few weeks after I arrived, the book had shown up in the mail, not a single thing missing or out of place, almost like someone knew exactly what would happen and what I might need to help see me through it.
No forwarding address, no note. Just the book, carefully wrapped in a nondescript box.
I didn’t keep all my recipes in the book, only the innocuous ones.
If someone ever broke in and stole it, I wouldn’t worry too much.
The majority of the notes had been penned by a struggling teenager trying to find her place in a world she didn’t understand.
Even so, its importance could not be understated.
I had diagrams and other valuable instructions recorded inside, including the cord-cutting ritual I needed for tonight.
I performed the ritual once a year, usually, unless something happened to require another session.
Like a vampire getting his creepy energy all over me.
Once complete, my aura would be cleansed, my energy refreshed.
All physical traces of Beckett’s energy would be wiped away, left to exist only in my memory.
I flipped through the book, smiling at the herb-scented pages and comforting feel of old parchment, until I found the page I needed. The ritual required me to call in the help of an Archangel, a powerful being who would assist, provided you gave them the proper homage.
In my case, I’d gathered a handmade, masculine scented oil I’d created several months ago just for this purpose.
The oil was a bitch to make and required expensive, hard-to-source ingredients.
Then it had to sit in a cool, dark room for months while it brewed—a seemingly simple but actually surprisingly complex offering, and one created entirely by me under very specific conditions.
I took the page and sat down in the middle of the etched ritual circle I’d made over a period of months.
Most witches liked to create fresh circles every time they performed a ritual.
I was from this century and preferred efficiency over ceremony wherever possible.
Plus, I had quite the knack for precision with symbol and rune drawing, something most witches never mastered.
A circle didn’t have to be perfect; it only needed to be complete—no gaps, no holes, no spaces where negative entities might slide in and cause chaos.
But runes and symbols? Screw those up at your peril.
I favored perfection in both. Perfect circles and perfect symbols made sense in the storm of chaos that was my life.
Circles were merely a barrier between our physical world and the metaphysical world where feats of magic were possible, but they also served to keep negative and dark energies and entities outside the space so a witch’s spellwork stayed pure.
So I took the extra time to hand draw the circle and carefully carved my flooring to make it last forever.
Some witches could cast a perfect circle in their head and expend the mental energy to bring it into existence with a thought.
Not all magic required a circle, but for some types, like the kind I was about to attempt, one was mandatory.
Having an already drawn, permanent circle made the process much easier.
Since I had the mental capacity of a racoon on cocaine sometimes, especially after a long day at the shop, having a physical circle simplified my entire process since I wasn’t the kind of witch who could bring one up with a simple thought.
This way, I stepped in, pushed a little magical energy into the carving, then bing, bang, boom.
No monkeys drumming inside my brain making constant commentary about my less than stellar mental circle-making skills.
I winced when the cool concrete touched my skin through the thin silk and pulled over the wool blanket I kept slung on a chair close to the edge of the circle.
Once I was situated, I double-checked all the “corners”, ensuring I had all the elements I needed.
While a circle in math did not have corners, a circle in witchcraft did.
Sort of. North, East, South, and West were the directional corners of circle casting.
Each corner hosted a presence once the circle was cast, and every presence required an offering.
Without even one of these, the ritual or spell would fail before it even began.
North, Earth’s offering, was a small river stone I’d found in a stream during a rare visit to the Pacific Northwest, gray and flecked with quartz.
Facing East, my offering to the element of air was a feather.
South, representing the element of fire, held a small briquette of charcoal and some lavender and sage incense.
I reached over to light the brick and waited until it popped and sparked, sending a heavenly scent curling around the room.
To the West lay the element of water, so my offering was a small bowl of spring water I’d sourced from a pristine overseas lake.
I readjusted, pulling the blanket over my lap, and settled my breathing. Cord-cutting took a while, but I needed all the vestiges of Beckett’s evil energy to be washed away, leaving me able to concentrate on my apothecary work without worrying I’d contaminate anyone’s order.
“I call upon the element of earth, children of soil and greenery, rocks and crystals. I ask for your wisdom and fortification. Hail and welcome.” A faint green glow shimmered around the stone.
I turned clockwise to the next direction. “I call upon the element of air, of gentle winds and calm tides. I ask for your soothing breeze and protection this night. Hail and welcome.” A light breeze moved the feather clockwise.
I moved to the South. “I call upon the element of fire, creature of transformation and courage. I ask for your protection this night. Hail and welcome.” A plume of blue fire rose from the incense.
West was the final physical element. “I call upon the element of water, spirit of intuition and knowing, and ask for your wisdom this evening. Hail and welcome.” The water in the bowl shivered.
And finally, I touched my forehead. “I call upon the fifth element, that of spirit, connection, and transcendence, those who complete the ritual circle and interconnect our bodies and minds. Hail and welcome.”
Magic hummed through my body, a feeling I would never truly get used to.
Waking up every day knowing I could do things many people could only dream of kept me from ever taking magic for granted.
Hedgewitches and green witches didn’t use high magic, but the buzz of this type of magic appealed to me.
Maybe it was knowing I was doing something others considered forbidden or impossible.
I didn’t know, but high magic, no matter how difficult, always felt a little like I’d stepped into a warm and comfortable cardigan.
Mom was the one to discover my magic wasn’t exactly normal when the usual methods a witch used to clear energetic influences didn’t work as well as they should.
She helped me experiment a little until she helped me try the ritual I used now.
But once she realized what I could do, a strange expression had crossed her face—the same one she wore when caught off guard, and not in a good way.