The Accidental Witch (22 page)

“Your spells were made later. Solomon is the beginning.”

“My pantheon is far more powerful and helpful than your one true God ever was. If he is so interesting, why do you have to summon spirits from the Netherworld to do his bidding? Why doesn’t he just give you the power?”

“Because he believes in free will and power like that takes away free will,” Fred argued.

“Oh, shut up,” I said. “Don’t we have more important things to worry about? We can have theological debates later.”

“You’re right, of course.” Nineveh turned to Fred with a smile.

“Where will we work?” Fred asked.

“Follow me,” Nineveh said.

We all followed Nineveh out of the house and down a grassy slope that overlooked the city. The view was breathtaking. The lights filled the valley below us like stars. We walked across a short trail that lead to a small, stone house on the edge of a sharp drop off. I imagined the house had once been some kind of servants’ quarters as the building clearly post-dated slavery.

Nineveh opened the door and we all walked in. Nineveh’s sanctuary was much more established than mine. There were tall bookshelves on all the walls filled with candles, herbs, crystals, and odd things in jars that I didn’t want to identify. Her altar was made of stone and stained glass. She went immediately to work and began grinding up ingredients with a mortar and pestle. She worked quickly and produced a brightly colored liquid. She then took out a long knife and cleaned the blade with alcohol. She put several candles on the altar and lit them

“Odin,” she cried out. “We entreat you. Please grant this woman your strength. By the power of the Yggdril tree, we beg you. Grant this woman your power tonight.”

Fred’s eyes were closed and so were Diane’s, but Nineveh’s eyes were open. We both looked around. The candles sparked and grew and an old man stepped out of the shadow. Nineveh drew a deep, stunned breath. The old man had a long beard and one eye. He looked around the room and then he looked at me with his one eye.

“I gladly give you my strength,” he said in a deep voice.

“Thank you,” I said. Odin took the knife from Nineveh and cut into my skin. I wanted to scream in agony, but the terrible one-eyed god in front of me helped me suppress my desire. He cut me over and over again until my blood pooled at my feet and then he took the ink Nineveh made and ground it into my open wounds. I gasped in pain. Odin put his hand over my wounds, so I couldn’t see them.

“Be careful,” Odin said. “Abaddon is dangerous. He will not fight fair, but he must be sent back into the pit he came from. His work will hurt more than just your town. I give you two spells. The first will give you lightning and the second will give you fire. All you have to do is call my name and touch the spells and they will be cast. Know that I give you this power not just for your battle with the demon, but for a battle yet to come. I give it to you so you can erase powers that were stolen from me against my will. I give it to you to set scores right and settle injustices. I don’t like having my power taken from me.”

Odin looked at Nineveh with his one eye. He was angry. His anger burned a hole in Nineveh who stepped back from the old god. I looked up at him, entranced by him. He was so different. He was human in form, but not flesh. Odin looked down at me again and smiled. The pain in my arm was gone. Odin vanished in a ring of smoke and I looked down at my arm. There were two rings around my arm. Each ring was covered in runes.

“Does it always happen like that?” I asked.

“No,” all three observers said in unison.

“How does it happen usually?” I asked staring at my arm.

“Usually, the old ones send a sign that they have agreed and the witch or her companion does the work,” Fred said. “The old ones don’t usually make appearances.”

“So what does that mean?” I asked. “Why did he show up for me?”

“I got the impression that someone really pissed him off and he wanted you to fight them,” Fred said. “He came as a warning and a threat.” Fred looked at Nineveh.

“Fred,” I asked. “If the old ones aren’t gods, what are they? They clearly aren’t demons.”

“They are the first race of beings created by God to help him.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Nineveh said. “We need to go.”

Nineveh pinched out the candles and stormed out of the little house. Fred followed her and they continued to bicker as they walked. Diane and I stayed a few steps behind watching them yell at each other.

“Jesus,” Diane said. “You’d think they were married the way they fight.”

“They like each other more than Johnny Boy and I did,” I said as I watched them.

Diane laughed.

It took a good deal of time for Nineveh to get all her things together. She might as well have been packing for a three-week cruise. She packed several suitcases full of clothes and another one filled with various magical items, books, and garbage that I’m sure had some significance. We all chatted in the pretty parlor while she packed. Fred looked seriously pissed off. He really couldn’t stand Nineveh. Diane couldn’t stand her either, but she seemed more able to put her hate aside for whatever reason.

“So why do you hate Nineveh so much?” Diane asked while we waited.

“She and I have always represented opposite sides of the political spectrum,” Fred said. “She and I have been enemies for a very long time now.”

Nineveh came down the stairs with several suitcases and yelled out, “That and he tried to burn me.”

“You hold a grudge forever. I apologized for that, didn’t I?”

“You and your little group of sexless, joyless minions tied me to a stake and lit the wood beneath my feet. Those are the kind of grudges that last.”

“To be fair, you cursed an entire town and gave them all the black plague. It’s not like you were one of the multitude of innocents that were accused of witchcraft. You killed fifty people …”

“All assholes,” Nineveh said.

“You killed fifty people and when we tied you to the stake and lit the logs, you bent the fire and killed six of us with the flames and three innocent bystanders.”

“Oh, please, anyone who comes to watch a burning gets what they deserve,” Nineveh said.

“One of them was a pregnant girl of no more that sixteen,” he said.

“She shouldn’t have been there,” Nineveh said.

“Really,” Fred said with enough venom to kill an elephant. “What about the babies? I suppose the babies you cooked and ate were somehow corrupted, too?”

“That is an ugly rumor,” Nineveh yelled. “I never ate babies.”

“I can smell them on you still,” Fred’s voice was getting louder. “I know how you gained your immortality.”

“You were still a babe yourself when I became immortal,” Nineveh screamed. “I should have eaten you!”

“Okay,” I said, putting a hand on each of their shoulders. “Do you think that arguing about this is going to help anything?”

“No,” they both said at the same time.

“Then why don’t you both just agree to disagree? You will have plenty of time to kill each other after we send the giant toad demon back to Hell. What do you think? Does that sound like a good idea?”

Fred smiled and Nineveh scowled.

“That sounds like a wonderful plan,” Fred said with a half smile.

“We aren’t children,” Nineveh scolded. “I am your mother and he is certainly your elder. You can’t talk to me like that, little girl. I believe you owe us more respect than that.”

“I tell you what,” I said “You show me that you deserve respect and I will give it to you, until then, I don’t owe you a thing. In fact, as a mother who hasn’t done a thing for her daughter, ever, I think you owe me this. You owe me help in defeating the demon I summoned using the stupid spell book you sent me without any warning as to how dangerous it was.”

“If you were anyone else,” Nineveh said with hardness that was almost scary. “I would silence you forever.”

“Are we going?” I said.

Everyone headed towards the car. We all helped Nineveh carry her bags. I hoped that she wasn’t planning on moving in, because it certainly felt like she was. I wasn’t sure if I liked my mother very much. I hadn’t ever liked any of my family. I don’t know why I expected to feel more warmly for my mother. I still held out hope, however, that Fred just brought out the worst in her and that maybe the baby eating thing was a rumor. Still, she cursed entire towns and threatened to silence me forever. Those weren’t exactly endearing qualities. Neither was killing a pregnant woman. But her life had been on the line and times were different then. Life was cheap and witches were burned, but mostly I just felt confused as I threw my mother’s suitcase in the car.

I sat in the front next to Fred, not because I wanted the best seat in the car, but because I believed Fred and Nineveh might turn each other into toads if I put them too close to each other.

The drive back was twice as long as the drive there. We all looked out the window. We knew that whatever lay ahead of us was terrifying and we didn’t really trust each other, at least we didn’t trust Nineveh. I didn’t trust her and she was my mother.

C
HAPTER
8

S
UMMONING
THE
D
EMON

We made it back to The Black Magnolia by sunrise. I was so tired, I had trouble seeing straight. The bright light of day was diminished by the clouds that were gathering in the sky above us. It was quiet. The normal birdsong that filled the morning was silenced. A fog drifted in from the mountains and lay in patches over the valley. Kudzu stretched out over roadways, strangling them. The Black Magnolia remained bright and unharmed by the demon’s dark spell, however.

The house looked lovely and inviting. A ray of sunlight broke through the growing cloud cover and shone down on the old house. I stepped out of the car and up the stairs to the white patio and I felt like a great weight had been lifted from my chest. My strength returned and my fatigue diminished. My mother grabbed two suitcases from the car and stepped in the dirt in front of my great brick house. Diane walked inside without hesitation and Fred stood beside me on the front porch. Fred looked down at me.

“You look tired,” he said.

“Aren’t you?” I asked.

“Things are different for me,” he answered. “I will make you some tea.”

I stood on the porch waiting for my mother. She seemed hesitant, but she finally dragged her suitcases up the stairs and onto the front porch.

“You aren’t what I thought you’d be,” my mother said as she looked at the house.

“What did you think I’d be?” I asked.

“You weren’t a mistake,” Nineveh said. “You were the result of years of planning and searching. You were meant to be my legacy.”

“What does that mean?”

“I found your father in this shit hole and I carried him away to Paris. I taught him things most people only dream of. Together we made you. It took years to find your father. He was born at the right time and he was so strong. He was perfect. I knew if we had a child, that child would be like a god. I conceived with him and you were born and you were perfect, but he was sneaky. Cunning. He stole you away while I slept. He drugged my tea. He cast a spell on me. He used my own spell on me. He made the spell strong, so I could never approach you or him again, unless I was invited, and here I am. I am invited.”

Her voice was a hiss and a chill went down my spine. I looked over at her pretty face and her eyes. They were green, like a serpent. As I looked at her, I knew why my father hated me. He hated me because I looked like her. I was a piece of her and he’d loathed her just like Diane loathed her and Fred loathed her.

“I designed you,” she said. “I designed you to be like me, but you aren’t.”

“Why do you say that?” I asked politely.

“This house is on a green
potestas
. Your aura is different from mine. You draw your magic from a different source than I do.”

“What is a potestas?” I asked.

“It is a place of power.”

“So what color potestas is your house on?”

“Red,” she said. She looked at me with a slight scowl. I knew that look all too well. It was a look of disappointment. From that moment onwards, I knew I would hate Nineveh.

Nineveh walked into the house and left me standing on the porch. I followed her in and collapsed on the sofa. Even my house, my potestas, gave me no solace, no strength. I wanted to weep, but my eyes were dry. I was alone. I was deeply and utterly alone. I had no family. My mother was even worse than my father and she probably did eat those babies. She might as well live in a gingerbread house.

Fred sat down beside me and handed me a cup of tea. I took it and drank. I didn’t need to know what was in it. I knew whatever he gave me would make me feel better, and it did. I leaned on Fred’s shoulder and he put his arm around me. He stroked my hair and kissed my head and I closed my eyes. Peace came with the tea. It was sweet and calming. The anxiety and sorrow melted away into puddles at my feet.

“Diane is already asleep,” he whispered. “You should rest for a while now. You’ll need your strength.”

“Stay with me for a while,” I said. “I don’t want to be alone.”

Fred reached down and took my chin in his hand and pulled my face towards him. I looked up at him. His glasses were off and I could look at his lovely black eyes. They were filled with a genuine concern. He was worried. He stroked my cheek with his hand and the tears came. They dripped down my cheek and he kissed them. He kissed my cheeks and my forehead and finally he kissed my lips. It wasn’t a harsh kiss like most men gave, full of lust and hunger. It was sweet and gentle. It lingered, making my heart race. He put his arms around me and I felt what I had spent a lifetime looking for. Solace.

I heard movement from the door and looked away from Fred. Nineveh was standing in the hall watching us with a scathing glare. The look in her eyes could have melted rock. Nineveh said something to Fred in what sounded like Latin and he answered her. The two glared at each other from across the room.