A Fistfull of Charms(18)

Grimacing, I pushed myself from the counter. “Can I make you some tea?” I asked Ceri, not wanting to look like I was watching but not wanting to leave either. What if he had a reaction or something?
With a barely perceivable motion, Ceri regained her upright posture, my offer seeming to turn on an entirely new set of behaviors. “Yes, thank you,” she said carefully.
I returned to the sink and filled the kettle, wincing at Jenks’s tiny belch and groan. The sound of running water seemed to revive Ceri, and she rose, moving about the kitchen to put things away. “I can do that,” I protested, and she watched my eyes go to the clock above the sink. Crap, it was getting late.
“So can I,” she said. “You have a long way to drive, and all I have to do is—” She looked sourly about the kitchen. “I don’t have anything to do but sleep. I should be thanking you. It was exhilarating to craft such a complex curse. It’s one of my best efforts.”
Her pride was obvious, and after the burner ignited under the kettle, I stood against the counter and watched Jenks belch and recite his ABCs at the same time. Would the man’s talents never end? Curiosity finally prompted me to ask, “What was it like, being his familiar?”
Ceri seemed to grow drowsy as she stood in the sun at the sink and washed her teacup. “He is domineering and cruel,” she said softly, head down as she watched her thin hands, “but my origins made me unique. He enjoyed showing me off and so kept me well. Once I became pliant, he often gave me favors and courtesies that most remained ignorant of.”
My thoughts returned to her embarrassment when speaking of Al’s favorite appearance of a British nobleman. They had been together for a thousand years, and there were countless cases of captives becoming enamored of their captors. And that nickname… I tried to meet her eyes, but she avoided it.
“I’ll be back,” Jenks said, patting his stomach. “This stuff makes you pee like a toad.”
I cringed as he took to the air and flew heavily past Ceri and out the pixy hole in the screen. A glance at the spell pot brought my eyebrows up. It was half gone. Damn, the man could slam it faster than a frat boy.
“I made anywhere from thirty to fifty curses a day,” Ceri said, taking a rag from the sink and wiping the island counter free of salt, “apart from warming his bed and putting food on his table. Every seventh day he would work in the lab with me, expanding my knowledge. This charm…” Eyes distant, she touched the counter beside the remaining brew. “This one we would have spent all day with, going slow so he could explain the complexities of mixing curses. Those days…I almost felt good about myself.”Clasping my hands about my middle, I felt cold at the hint of wistfulness to her voice. She nearly seemed to regret she wasn’t working in a demon sweatshop anymore. Eyes distant, she took the boiling water from the stove and poured it into a small teapot.
Jenks returned without comment, settling before the brew with his little cup. The hair on the back of my neck pricked, and Ivy came in with a soft scuffing, hands busy tucking her shirt behind her jeans. Not meeting anyone’s eyes, she shuffled to the coffeemaker and poured two mugs even as the last drips spilled onto the hot plate to sizzle. I looked up in surprise when she hesitantly set one beside me.
Kisten’s words echoed through my thoughts as I watched her sit at her computer, reading the tension in her shoulders when she jabbed the on button and hit the shortcut to her mail. What he’d said about her leaning on me more than him because I didn’t know her past tightened my gut. I looked at her as she sat at the far end of the kitchen, distant but a part of the group. Her perfect face was quiet and still, not a glimmer of her savage past showing. A chill went through me at what might lie beneath it, what might come out if I left her. Just how bad had it been?
Ivy looked from her monitor, her eyes fastening on me from under her short bangs. My gaze dropped. Good Lord. It was only for a few days.
“Thanks for the coffee,” I said, uncurling my fingers and lacing them about the warm ceramic while I steeled my emotions. I had to go. Nick and Jax needed help. I’d be back.
She said nothing, her face showing no emotion. A screen of new e-mails came in one after the other, and she began winnowing through them.
Nervous, I turned to Ceri. “I really appreciate this,” I said, thinking of the long drive ahead. “If it wasn’t for your help, I wouldn’t even try it. I’m just glad it’s not a black charm,” I added. White or not, using demon magic was not what I wanted to be known for.
In her spot in the sun, Ceri stiffened. “Um, Rachel?” she said, and my heart seemed to skip a beat. My head slowly lifted and my mouth went dry. Jenks stopped with his cup halfway to his mouth. He met my eyes, his wings going absolutely still.
“It’s a black charm?” I said, my voice squeaky at the end.
“Well, it’s demon magic….” she said, sounding apologetic. “They’re all black.” She looked between Jenks and me, mystified. “I thought you knew that.”
Seven
I took a shaky breath and reached for the counter. It was black? I had taken a black charm? This just keeps getting better and better. Why in hell hadn’t she told me?
“Hell no!” Jenks rose in a flurry of copper-colored sparkles. “Just forget it. Ivy, forget it! I’m not doing this!” 
While Ivy snarled at Jenks that he would or she’d jam him through a keyhole backward, I wobbled to the table and slumped into my chair. Ceri was so odd, seemingly as innocent as Joan of Arc but as accepting of black magic as if she sat at Lucifer’s feet and did his nails every other Wednesday. They were all black, and she didn’t see anything wrong with them? Come to think of it, Joan of Arc had heard voices in her head telling her to kill people.
“Rachel…”
Ceri’s hand on my shoulder pulled my head up and I stared. “I, uh,” I muttered. “I kinda expected they were black, but you didn’t seem to be having any problem making them, so…” I looked at the remainder of Jenks’s potion, wondering if he quit now whether he’d be okay.
“He needs this curse.” Ceri gracefully sat so I couldn’t see Jenks and Ivy arguing at the far end of the table. “And the smut from one or two is trifling.”
Matalina zipped in through the pixy hole in the screen at one of Jenks’s sharp squeaks, bringing the smell of the spring noon with her. Her yellow dress swirled prettily about her ankles when she came to a short stop, her expression inquisitive as she tried to figure out what was going on. I couldn’t seem to get enough air. Trifling? Didn’t she get it?
“What if I only use them for good?” I tried. “Will they still stain my soul if I only do good with them?”
Matalina’s wings stopped and she dropped three inches to the table, losing her balance and falling, to bend a wing backward. Ceri exhaled in obvious exasperation. “You’re severely breaking the laws of nature with these curses,” she lectured, her green eyes narrow, “far more than with earth or line magic on their own. It doesn’t matter if they’re used for good or bad, the smut on your soul is the same. If you mess with nature’s books, you pay a price.”
My eyes flicked past her to Matalina and Jenks. The small pixy woman had found her feet, and she had a hand on Jenks’s shoulder as he hunched over his knees. He was hyperventilating by the look of it, pixy dust shading to red sifting from him to pool and spill onto the floor. It swirled in the draft from the window, and it would have been pretty if I hadn’t known that it meant he was severely stressed.
Ivy’s lips were a thin line. I didn’t understand why she was arguing with him. I didn’t expect him to go through with it if it was a black curse. Damn it, Ceri had been calling them curses all along, and I hadn’t been listening.
“But I don’t want my soul to go black,” I almost whined. “I just got rid of Al’s aura.”
Ceri’s delicate features went annoyed, and she stood. “Then get rid of it.”
Jenks’s head came up, his eyes looking frightened. “Rachel is not a black witch!” he shouted, and I wondered at his hot loyalty. “She’s not going to foster it off on an innocent!”
“I never said she should,” Ceri said, bristling.
“Ceri,” I said hesitantly, listening to Matalina try to soothe her husband. “Isn’t there another way to get rid of the reality imbalance than to pass it to someone else?”
Clearly aware of Jenks ready to fly at her, Ceri calmly went to her brewed tea. “No. Once you make it, the only way to get rid of it is to pass it to someone else. But I’m not suggesting you give it to an innocent. People will accept it voluntarily if you sweeten the deal.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. “Why would someone voluntarily take my blackness onto their soul?” I said, and the elf sighed, visibly biting back her annoyance. Tact wasn’t in her repertoire, despite her kindness and overflowing goodwill.“You attach it to something they want, Rachel,” she said. “A spell or task. Information.”
My eyes widened as I figured it out. “Like a demon,” I said, and she nodded.