Magical Influence Book One (9 page)

“Get inside,” he said. And surprisingly,
his tone was soft. The rumble and baritone was still there, but the
sharp edge was gone.

By the time we made it to the
front door, my grandmother was standing there, two towels in her
hand
. “Get
inside before you all catch colds,” she squeaked.

And then she stopped. She dropped the
act. The scatty, mad, crazy woman act.

The woman with authority, the witch of
old, took hold.

With a quick glance, she saw the
broken oak tree, her lips parted, she ushered us in, and she
slammed the door.

Her countenance had changed in an
instant.

“Perhaps it’s time to leave us, Jacob
Fairweather; it seems we’ve got a little bit of the situation here,
I wouldn't want to hold you up,” she suggested.

Her tone was different, her choice of
words was different, her entire manner was completely at odds with
what she had shown before. She seemed competent, clever, smart, and
in control.

I caught Jacob staring at her
askance as he dabbed at his face and hair with the
towel
.
“Sorry?”

“Thank you very much for your assistance,
Agent, but we simply can't take up any more of your time,” she said
again, a note of insistence rippling through her voice.

I had lived with my grandmother
long enough to know what she was doing here. Though she seemed to
enjoy spending most of her time as the town's craziest woman, she
was still powerful underneath all of that bizarre
behavior. And the
powerful witch understood what had just occurred.

Slowly I began to catch up with the
situation too.

One of our oak trees was down. That
wasn't just an inconvenience, it was perhaps one of the greatest
portents of doom you could get.

The two old trees that stood either
side of the house were a little bit more than decoration. They were
guards, sentinels. They stood at either side, blocking the house
from attack.

Now one of them was down.

No, it had been split in half, it had
burst, it had broken in a spectacular display of power.

It wasn't just the weather, it wasn't
an artefact of the storm; it was a sign.

The safety and security this house had
once given us, was now gone.

I backed off a little, swallowing
uncomfortably, holding onto my towel until my knuckles turned
white.

Losing my job was one thing, losing my
car equally as disturbing, but it was nowhere near as bad as
this.

“Thank you again,” my grandmother said as
she ushered Jacob to the door, one hand firmly pushing against his
back.

He seemed flustered, and rightly so.
One minute my grandmother was acting like a total loon, the next
she was perfectly in control.

He shot a look my way. All he would've
seen was my pale face, my bedraggled form, and the no doubt
distinct look of dismay on my crumpled expression.

He opened his mouth, eyes still locked
on me, the once stern look gone as it gave way to a far more
compassionate one. I knew he was about to ask if I was okay; he
didn't get the opportunity though.

My gran practically shoved him
out the door
. “Keep the towel, thanks again, goodbye.”

With that she closed the
door.

She locked it.

She turned around and she stared at
me.

A lot was exchanged in that simple
look.

“Go upstairs, go to your room, lock the
door. Get out your sacred books, put them by each window, make sure
they are locked,” my grandmother marched past me, heading towards
the kitchen.

I knew what she was about to do. She
really was far more powerful than I was, perhaps more powerful than
I ever would be. And now she was momentarily disengaging from her
crazy side, she was a force to be reckoned with.

I didn't need to ask her why the
sudden change in temperance.

We were under attack.

Or at least we would be.

First the storm,
then
... who
knew? But as we looked at each other as she headed to the kitchen,
one thing could not be doubted; this day was only going to lead to
a far worse night.

Danger was in the air.

“Lock your windows,” my grandmother
repeated one last time as she entered the kitchen and disappeared
from view.

I raced up the stairs.

Chapter 8

As I entered my room, diligently
closing the door and locking it behind me, my hands were actually
shaking.

Sometimes I forgot about this side of
magic. Ever since I’d moved in with my grandmother, I'd been lulled
into a false sense of security. I'd almost forgotten why it was
that I had come to live with her in the first place.

Suddenly all those threats,
those letters, the shadows of people following me down the
street
...
they all flooded back into my mind.

Magic was a dangerous business to be
involved in. Help the wrong person, gain the wrong
enemy.

I ran over to the window closest to my
bed, unlocked it, then locked it again firmly. I glanced out at the
yard as I did.

It was dark.

Impossibly, stupidly, unreasonably
dark. It was only 5 o'clock in the afternoon. We should have at
least two more hours of sunlight, and yet as I stared out, I could
hardly see anything more than the dark shapes of the remaining
trees swaying in the gale.

Taking several steps backwards, I
rushed over to the other window, unlocked it, then locked it again.
Then I scampered to the chest by the side of my bed, grabbed at my
sacred books, and stacked them at every point of entry or
exit.

When I was done, I backed off,
eventually sitting on the edge of my bed, bringing my hands down
and locking them over my knees. The sound of the wind outside felt
like it was hammering its way into my heart, one vicious blow at a
time. Bringing a hand up, I unbuttoned my blouse and shifted my
fingers past the fabric until I rubbed the skin
underneath.

Calm down
, I tried to tell myself. It
didn't work.

After an uncomfortable 10 minutes, I
heard a soft knock on my door. I wasn't so far gone to think it was
an angry wizard here to settle debts or some creature from the
underworld taking the opportunity to feast upon a frightened
witch.

“It's just me,” my grandmother assured me.
Before I could go over to the door, unlock it, and shift the books,
she walked through.

Yes, she walked. Right through the
solid wood door.

I had only seen her display magic of
that kind of forcefulness on one or two occasions before. We were
both influence witches, after all, and our skills didn’t lie in
those areas. Yet my grandmother, when pressed, seemed to be capable
of the most incredible feats.

Shifting back, my eyes started to fill
with tears. For her to display such power reinforced one fact; the
situation was perilously dangerous. Something that had started off
as a pest of a day had grown into a beast, a wild and frantic one
baying for my blood.

“What's going on?” I kept on rubbing at my
skin, trying to warm it up, but no matter how hard I tried, it was
frigid to my touch.

My grandmother didn't answer at
once; she looked outside through the window by my bed, her eyes
darting around keenly, no hint of the demented old bat I usually
had to deal with
. “We have lost one of our guards, our house is no longer
safe,” she concluded as she tapped her hand on the windowsill,
running her fingers over the badly painted wood.

I took a shuddering, loud,
alarmed breath. She turned to me quickly
. “Keep hold of yourself. In times of
chaos, call upon the calm within and the calm without will
manifest,” she chided me.

I nodded my head and then
sniffed loudly. Reaching for a tissue, I clutched it into a ball,
forcing one of my fingernails against my teeth as I'd chewed it
nervously
.
“You don't think anyone is after us, right? I mean... it's just the
storm, isn't it?”

They were very stupid and naive
questions, but for some reason I had to ask them.

My grandmother shook her
head
. “You
understand magic,” she said simply.

I did. It was often confusing, but
sometimes it was clear as crystal.

“This storm has weakened us, it has
weakened you,” she nodded her head my way. “And far more
importantly, you have weakened you. You have spent the past several
months, almost a year in fact, complaining of your existence. Every
single detail, from my behavior to your job, to your persistent
lack of romance. You have undermined everything you have, making it
far easier for others to take what is left.”

I didn't reply, just kept on chewing
my fingernails, swapping over to the next one when the jagged mess
I had left was too short for my teeth to gain any
purchase.

She was right, wasn't she? Dammit, she
was right.

What had I done to myself?

While it's easy to understand the
negative consequences of complaining after the fact, it is far
harder to stop it when you are in full swing.

“You have opened yourself up for
attack.”

I nodded again, the move deadened,
slow, cold. I suddenly reached behind me, grabbed at my doona, and
pulled it around my shoulders, huddling inside, even drawing it
over my head like a hood.

“You are right to hide,” she assured me as
she sat down on my bed, ferreted her hand underneath the covers,
and placed it tenderly over my own. “However, I do not think anyone
is after us... yet.”

I blinked my previously tightly
closed eyes open
. “But you said?” I began.

She shook her
head
.
“People will be after you. The storm, and your own behavior, have
opened you up for attack. When something is open for attack, an
attack is a logical response. You are like a goat chained and tied
down in a savannah full of lions and hyenas. You are easy,
inviting, and obvious prey.”

Though she still had her hand over
mine, she was no longer offering any comfort. The picture she was
painting was vivid and frankly terrifying.

“You have made enemies in your time, and
they no doubt now sense your weakness,” she continued.

I had made enemies. I'd never
denied that fact. But could it be
... as bad as she was trying to make me
believe? Okay, I understood the portent of one of our oak trees
splitting in two, and I could see objectively that my life was
certainly falling apart, making me more vulnerable than I'd ever
been. Yet was I exactly like an animal chained up for the
slaughter?

I knew that darkness existed in
this magical world of ours. I knew that there were enemies out
there that could pluck my flesh from my bones in an instant. The
kind of bad guys I'd met along the way were
... well, small time. Petty
criminals, witches and wizards that I had rubbed up the wrong way,
magicians that worked for the dark side of the law. Nobody as epic
as my grandmother was trying to suggest.

Maybe she understood what I was
thinking, because she bent her head down until she stared into my
eyes, even pulling the cover back to get a clearer look at my
face
. “You
are my granddaughter. You are my son's child. You are correct, in
your short life so far you have not made too many enemies, and the
ones you have made cannot be classed as anything more than small.
I, however, have made my fair share.”

I shuddered.

“They would think nothing of going through
you to get to me,” she clutched my hand harder.

I shuddered back, suddenly feeling
freezing, as if someone had dumped ice-cold water over my
head.

“I have made enemies, I have
lived a long time, but I have learnt much. I have helped many. But
in helping one, my witch, you always disadvantage another. Such is
the balance of life. My enemies are numerous as they are
powerful.
They will think nothing of going through you to get to
me
,” she
repeated.

Tears started to streak down my
face.

I understood what my grandmother was
saying; I'd heard her arguments before. In fact, she had been the
one that had been instrumental in getting me to move back into the
house with her. For a while there I’d been happy and willing to
ignore the threats and try to make my way in life as an independent
witch.

But she’d sat me down, with a cup of
tea in her hand, and she’d casually told me of the people she had
angered in her life. From mob bosses to wizards in control of
cartels. At some point it had seemed that my grandmother had picked
a fight with every evil force she could find.

Over the past five years I had kind of
forgotten that though. Living with my grandmother, watching her go
slowly insane, had reinforced that I wasn't here because she was
protecting me, but that I was simply sharing her house, looking
after her, and benefiting from the natural protection of having two
witches under the same roof.