Picking up the smaller bottle of fixative, I sighed, feeling my knees shake. Maybe I should just accept the Brimstone Ivy kept pushing on me and let it go. I was tired from simply walking around. Ivy wouldn’t tell me how much blood she’d taken, and Jenks was no help, seeing as he thought a bleeding hangnail was reason for panic.
Shades of gray, I thought, knowing I was slipping into places I had vowed I’d never go. Damn it, I used to be able to see black and white, but things got fuzzy right about the time I found my last I.S. paycheck cursed.
My gaze drifted to the window, black with night and acting like a mirror. Seeing my reflection, I adjusted the collar of my little red jacket. It went great with the black STAFF shirt from Takata’s last concert. Thanks to my last pain amulet, nothing hurt, but looking at my slumped stance, I decided I didn’t look tired, I looked sick. My gut clenched when I realized I looked like a vampire’s shadow, well-dressed, thin, sophisticated—and ill.
Pulse hammering, I turned away. No more Brimstone, I thought. Ever. There is black. There is white. Gray is a cowardly excuse to mix our wants with our needs. But I wasn’t sure I could believe it anymore as I stood in a charm shop buying materials to twist a black curse. Just this once, I thought. Just this once, and never again.
Phone still tucked to my ear, I set the fixative down. I would have hung up and called her back later, but I was enjoying hearing the sounds of normalcy, soft and distant, five hundred miles away. It seemed farther. Relaxing, I reached for an elaborately inlaid wooden box. It was beautiful, and curiosity and a love for fine workmanship prompted me to open it to find it held magnetic chalk. It was ungodly expensive, and its presence solidified that there was a population of practicing ley line witches nearby.
I abruptly realized the proprietor was watching me over her coffee mug, and I intentionally kept fiddling with the chalk, inspecting the seals as if I was considering buying it. I hated it when they watched me as though I might steal something. Like the illegal hex above the door that would give you zits wasn’t enough of a deterrent?
Technically a black spell, I mused. So why didn’t I turn her in?
“Magnetic chalk?” Ivy said from my elbow, and I jumped, almost dropping the phone between my ear and my shoulder.
“I don’t need it,” I said, trying to cover my surprise. “Especially in a box like that. Salt works just as well, and you only have to vacuum when you’re done.”
Reluctantly I let my fingers slip from the beautifully crafted container. It was dovetailed, the only metal on it the hinges, latch, and reinforced corners of black gold. Once the chalk was gone, it would make an excellent place to store anything that needed extra precautions. It was the nicest thing in the shop, in my opinion.
My eyebrows rose at the package of herbs in the basket that I hadn’t put there. “Is that catnip?” I asked, seeing the cellophane printed with little black footprints.
“I thought Rex might leave Jax alone if she had something else to do.” Brown eyes showing embarrassment, she dropped a step away. “You okay? Do you want to sit down?”
It was the third time she’d asked since leaving the motel, and I stiffened. “I’m fine,” I said. Liar, I thought. I was tired, weary in heart and body.
The soft clatter of the phone being picked up rustled in my ear. “Ceri,” I said, before she could say anything. “Just how much fixative do I need for the transference curse?”
The sound of the pixies shrieking diminished, and I guessed Ceri had moved into the living room. “A thumb drop,” she said, and I gratefully took up the smaller bottle.
“My thumb?” I complained. “What is that, about a teaspoon? Why can’t they use normal measurements?”
“It’s a very old curse,” Ceri snapped. “They didn’t have teaspoons back then.”
“Sorry,” I apologized, my eyes meeting Ivy’s as I placed the fixative into the basket. Ceri was one of the nicest, most giving people I knew, but she had a temper.
“Do you have a pencil?” the elf in hiding said politely, but I could hear her annoyance at my impertinence. “I want you to write this down. I know you have the inertia dampening curse in one of the books with you, but I don’t want you to translate the Latin wrong.”
I glanced at the proprietor—who was starting to eye Ivy skulking about—and turned my back on her. “Maybe you could give me just the ingredients right now.” The clutter in my basket was odd enough already. If the proprietor was worth her salt, she’d be able to tell I was making a disguise charm. The only difference between my legal disguise charms and the illegal doppelganger spells was a point of law, a few extra steps, and a cellular sample of the person to copy. I didn’t think she’d be able to tell I was also going to twist a demon curse to move the power from the statue to something else. What she would make of the ingredients for the inertia damping demon curse was anyone’s guess. Ceri said it was a joke curse, but it would work.
Joke curse, I thought sourly. It was still black. If I was caught, I’d be labeled a black witch and magically castrated. I wasn’t fooling myself that this was anything other than wrong. No “saving the world” crap. It was wrong.
Just this once, echoed in my thoughts, and I frowned, thinking of Nick. Telling Al about me had probably started with just one harmless piece of information.
Ceri sighed. “All you need for the joke curse is dust from inside a clock and black candles made from the fat of the unborn. The rest is incantation and ritual.”“The unborn?” I said in a horrified, hushed whisper. “Ceri, you said it wasn’t that bad.”
“The fat of an unborn pig,” she reiterated, sounding angry. “Honestly, Rachel.”
My brow furrowed. Okay, it was a fetal pig, the same thing biology students dissect, but it sounded close to the slaughtering-goats-in-your-basement kind of magic. The transference curse looked harmless apart from the black it would put on my soul, and the disguise charm was white—illegal, but white. The inertia-dampening curse was the worst of the lot—and it was the one that would keep Jenks alive—a joke curse. Just this once.
I was so stupid.
Stomach roiling, my thoughts flicked to Trent and his illegal labs, which saved people so he could blackmail them into seeing things his way. He, at least, didn’t pretend to be anything other than what he was. Things had been a lot easier when I didn’t have to think. But what was I supposed to do? Walk away and let the world fall apart? Telling the I.S. would make matters worse, and giving the statue to the FIB was a joke.
Angry and sick inside, I sidestepped Ivy to get to the candles. I’d already been there to pick out my colored candles for the transference curse. Behind the carved castles and colorful “dragon eggs” were the real goods, arranged by color and size, branded at the bottom with either what the fat had been rendered from or where they had first been lit. The woman’s selection was surprisingly good, but why they were hidden behind such crap was beyond me.
“Taper or barrel?” I asked Ceri, crouching to reach one with PIG scratched on it. You can’t light a candle in a pig, so it was a good bet that’s where the fat had come from. I’d never been in a ley line charm shop other than the university’s, and that didn’t count since they only carried what the classes needed. Maybe there was a spell that used “dragon eggs,” but I thought they looked lame.
“Doesn’t matter,” Ceri answered, and with the smallest taper in hand, I turned and rose, almost running into Ivy. She winced and backed up.
“I’m fine,” I muttered, setting the candle in the basket. “Did you see any packaged dust?”
Ivy shook her head, the tips of her black hair shifting about the bottom of her ears. There was a rack of “pixy dust” by the register that was just glitter. Jenks would laugh his ass off. Maybe the real stuff was behind it, like the candles.
“You sound tired, Rachel,” Ceri said, question high in her voice as I moved to the rack.
“I’m fine.” Ceri said nothing, and I added, “It’s stress.” Just this once.
“I want you to talk to Kisten,” she said firmly, as if she was doing me a favor.
Oh God. Kisten. What would he say if he knew Ivy had bitten me? “I told you so,” or maybe “My turn”? “Ceri,” I protested, but it was too late, and as Ivy fingered a display of amber bottles that were good to store oil-based potions in, Kisten’s masculine voice came to me.
“Rachel…How’s my girl?”
I blinked rapidly, the threatened tears shocking me. Where had they come from? “Ah, I’m fine,” I said, missing him terribly. Bad things had happened, and I’d been carrying the pain since. I needed to talk to him, but not standing in a charm shop with Ivy listening.
Ivy had stiffened at the sudden emotion in my voice, and I turned my back on her, wondering if I should tell her that the glass container shaped like a full moon in her grip was generally used to store aphrodisiac potions.
“Good,” he said, his voice going right through me. “Can I talk to Ivy?”
Surprised, I turned to her, but she had heard him and shook her head. “Uh…”I stammered, wondering if she was afraid of what he’d say to her if he knew what had happened. We were both chickenshit, but we would be chickenshit together.