Chapter 10 #2
“Oddly enough, it does.” Felix’s brow quirked.
Way to get the poor guy’s feet wet. Chase wasn’t a warlock, but he was half-sidhe, and the ability to use magic an inborn talent.
“Where do you want me?” he asked, dropping his parka on top of the pile of everyone else’s coats by the log they’d hauled up here for Yule.
Mr. Fynbender, the eldest warlock in the coven, had chosen an impressive one to say the least.
June Hill, the coven’s secretary, consulted her ever-present notebook, riffling through the pages. Felix eyed her pink velvet tracksuit, wishing he’d opted to leave the house in something cozier than chinos this morning.
“Okay, Felix,” she said, her smile marred by a smear of lipstick across her teeth.
“You need to be at the Eastern point of the pentagram for new beginnings and setting intentions. Jena, you and Chase take the South for passion and action. Matilda, I have you in the West for endings and completion, and Aggie has the North for grounding and wisdom. Otis will stand at the fifth pillar for Spirit to assure there’s no shenanigans with any entities that might try to answer our call. ”
Felix wiped a bead of sweat from his upper lip. Entities. Great. Had enough of those, thanks.
“Wisdom? You sure that’s right?” Jena asked, raising her brow at Aggie as she and the rest of them stepped to their assigned positions.
“It’s not like anyone else here knows their ass from their elbow,” the older witch sniffed, tugging the collar of her robe. It looked like something Father Christmas would’ve worn on a postcard from the 1800s.
“Oh, yes,” June said, the soccer mom oblivious to the byplay.
“The grimoire I consulted was very specific, and out of all of us, you six fit the brief best. The rest of us will filter in between you and focus on raising enough karma to power the spell. Felix, you need to clear your mind and picture your ideal candidate. Otis will begin the invocation by calling corners and setting our sacred space.” She motioned to the tall, white-haired warlock, and he solemnly nodded back.
“The rest of you know what to do. Felix, let us know when you’re ready. ”
Okay. He took a deep breath and ran through the list of qualities in his head, repeating them like a mantra. “Got it,” he said after a long moment.
Mr. Fynbender began chanting, and the flames beneath the cauldron flared blue. Magic tripped across Felix’s skin, goosebumps rising in its wake. A shimmer of opalescence wavered between them and the rest of the world, and below their feet, an answering hum rose from the node.
The cadence of Mr. Fynbender’s deep baritone changed, and one by one, the coven joined him, adding their voices to his along with their power. Their harmony twined, high and low, Matilda’s sharp soprano and Rick Kleppet’s flat tenor merging and adding complexity to the weave of their spell.
Felix focused on his mantra, his intent filling the holes between the notes. The air thickened. The node’s power lapped at his ankles, and a thick violet mist swirled in eddies, churned by an ethereal wind.
The ghostly blue flames beneath the cauldron danced and surged.
Each of the coven members at the pentagram’s vertices began to glow with power.
Hands outstretched and beseeching, eyes alight, sparking karma, their shadows writhed and separated from their bodies, cavorting behind the coven in a sinuous dance spiraling deosil around the circle of stones.
Mr. Fynbender’s baritone increased in pitch and the magic thickened.
Other voices not of this world joined the song, the node’s melody far wilder.
The air around Jena and Chase pulsed, the glow about them brighter than the rest. Her eyes shone with emerald fire, and behind her, Chase’s had become neon sapphire.
Karma raised the small hairs all over Felix’s body as he repeated his mantra, focusing on the qualities they’d need to fill the town’s attorney position.
A misty figure began to build in his mind’s eye.
His consciousness expanded, riding the wave of magic up and out.
A satellite view of the continent shimmered before him, bright spots scattered across it, flaring and winking out, as his ideal candidate slowly resolved.
Distances folded, and the ethereal wind grew stronger, whipping through the sacred space. He trembled, gritting his teeth as he shaped and funneled the coven’s power and that of the node, willing it to manifest what they needed.
At the far edge of the continent, a speck burned bright, fierce and determined. Felix latched onto it, and the magic surged, encapsulating his chosen candidate.
Mr. Fynbender’s chant rose to a fevered pitch, his shout a crescendo over all the other voices.
All at once, a massive burst of power flared, and a monumental wrenching sensation threw them back against the stone pillars.
Felix’s teeth clashed together, and he grunted, putting a hand to his head.
The flames beneath the cauldron gutted. Above them, the bubble of power wavered, but held, significantly weaker than it had been.
It cast them all in a weird purple twilight, everything silent—
“What in the actual fuck?” a woman spat.
Felix blinked as a shadow rose before him, chains clanking. Wait. Who the hell was that?
A flashlight clicked on, and the gaunt figure spun toward it, throwing its arms over its face and hissed.
They’d manifested—physically manifested—a vampire.
“Well, shit,” Aggie said. “I didn’t see that coming.”
Felix choked back a manic laugh. No. None of them had. Was that supposed to happen? He’d expected an email, maybe a phone call, not the magical equivalent of DōrDash. He laughed again. Welp, guess Greg Plinkin’s portents about doing this after sunset made sense.
“The fuck are you laughing at?” The vampire swore, the dangling lengths of rusted chain from her manacled wrists swinging. “Get that damn light out of my eyes!”
Um, rude, but Felix suspected he couldn’t blame her.
Along with the manacles, her ankles were fettered, and a wide, iron collar encircled her slender throat.
He frowned at the scant rags covering her filthy body.
She was so dirty Felix couldn’t even harbor a guess as to the length or color of her hair, and her tribal tattoos were completely indistinguishable.
She’d also very obviously been beaten recently and starved for a lot longer than that.
The sharp outline of bones was grotesque beneath her battered, too pale skin.
“Oh, sorry,” Chase mumbled, angling the beam away from her.
She huffed, dropping her arms. Her chrysanthemum pink eyes went wide at the dangling chains, then darted around the circle. Felix could practically hear the gears turning in her head. She quickly swallowed her surprise and struck a pose. His stomach churned. Jesus, she looked like a cabaret corpse.
“No need to apologize, handsome. How about I let you make it up to me?” Her grin was ghastly. She licked a wickedly sharp incisor, and Felix shuddered.
“The hell you will,” Jena growled. Karma sparked purple at her fingertips, and her green irises crackled. Chase’s arms slipped around her waist, and he murmured something. She scowled in response, dropping power.
The vampire put a hand to her pale breast, her eyes wide with manufactured awe. “Well, look at you, Lady Lightning being tamed by her thunder.” She snorted and waved the performance away. “Please. No disrespect intended, but a girl’s gotta eat, and I am fucking starving.”
“And what, pray tell, might be the reason for that?” Sweets asked, her eyebrow raised.
“Sorry. Prayers are off the table unless they’re for the big guy down below, and you don’t seem the type.” The vampire blew her a kiss and winked.
“That was what you were envisioning?” Matilda snapped at Felix. “Wrong type of bloodsucker, idiot.”
He smoothed his sweater and flicked a curl from his eyes. “I’ll admit that when I think of lawyers, that phrase does come to mind, but it was most certainly not what I specified.”
“Are you sure?” Ms. Pao asked. The little librarian adjusted her cloudy glasses. “Magic doesn’t always nuance well. What did you ask for?”
“First and foremost, a civil litigation attorney.”
The vampire picked at the dirt beneath her ragged nails.
“Well, are you one?” Matilda snapped.
“I dunno.” The vampire gave the sour little witch a sly side-eye. “What’s it worth to you, cupcake?”
Matilda’s face contorted into something far from sweet, and the vampire grinned, gnashing her teeth at her.
Aggie rolled her eyes. “Better question is, what’s it worth to you? I’ve no problem dropping your ass right back into whatever hole we pulled you from.”
Several other coven members murmured their agreement, and panic flitted across the vampire’s face before quickly being replaced by contempt. “Well, aren’t you just a stone cold bitch.”
Aggie waved the insult away. “Thanks, it’s a gift. Now cut the shit and answer the question. I’m already due to miss the first five minutes of Matlock, and if I don’t get my Andy Griffith fix, I’m gonna be pissed. Are you a lawyer or not?”
The vampire narrowed her eyes. “I am.”
“What was the second qualification, Felix?” Ms. Pao asked.
“To be desperate enough to take the job pro bono.”
Matilda snorted, her white-blonde pipe curls bobbing around her frown. “If that’s not desperate, I don’t know what is.”
“No, I don’t think that you do,” a rusty voice answered, “but I’m quite certain that Ophelia does.”
Matilda jumped as the shadows unfolded behind her, and a tall, stooped figure stepped through them, just outside of the circle of stones. Holy shit. Mr. Brock? What was the town’s archivist doing here?
Felix’s throat bobbed, pretty sure it had to do with him also being the town’s only resident vampire. They were insanely territorial. Crap. Had manifesting this one triggered some kind of bitey-sense?