Trial by Fire (Covencraft Book 1) (2 page)

It had to be someone that had left or been ostracized from a coven, although he hadn’t heard of anyone being exiled lately. He had enough on his plate running his own rather large coven and greasing his allies without keeping tabs on all of the smaller covens in and around the area.

The amount of magic being used was negligible but it was strangely disorganized and haphazard. If he didn’t know better, he would think it was a child mucking about with their powers, but surely a missing witch-child would have made news across covens.

When his phone finally rang, he felt his shoulders loosen slightly at Hannah’s name on the caller display.

“Yes?” he answered.

Hannah’s calm, even tone came clearly over the phone. “You have the authority of the Council to pursue our rogue witch.”

He ground his jaw slightly. “I would say you could extend my thanks to the Council but I presume you’ve already done that.”

He heard a smile in Hannah’s tone. “Don’t get your British up,” she teased, and even he could hear how his voice was more clipped when he was annoyed. “I imagine my thanks to them was a bit more gracious than yours might have been.” She paused. “However-”

“Ah yes, the stipulations,” he interrupted.

“We have only one month to find her and bring her into the coven-fold.”

“Or?”

“Or the Council will take over the search and, once located, strip her of power.”

He winced. Stripping a witch’s power was painful, messy work and there weren’t many witches strong enough to do it or at least do it well enough not to permanently damage the witch being stripped.

“That’s rather… Harsh.”

“The Council has been hypersensitive lately.” Again Hannah paused and Paris could see her in his mind’s eye, delicately poised as she tried to formulate what she wanted to say. He’d known her for years, since childhood, and had never known her to speak in anger or choose words without care. “There’s more than magic afoot here. I’m not sure what it is but it’s not just spell-casting gone awry,” she said.

“Does the Council know that as well?”

“Some of them. Perhaps. The Fae most likely. The Vampires and Shifters? No, I don’t think so. They aren’t always as sensitive to the world as we are.”

He made a noncommittal sound. “A month isn’t a lot of time, Hannah.”

“No. It isn’t, but it’s all we’ve got. When we find our truant witch, we’ll have to do our best to convince her to join our Coven.”

“I’m sure it will all make a very convincing argument.
Join my Coven or be stripped painfully of your powers by an amateur
.”

When Hannah didn’t reply back he felt the skin on the back of his neck prickle. “Please tell me you didn’t volunteer me to do it,” he said tiredly.

“There are precious few witches who are sufficiently qualified to practice that kind of magic and you’re one of them. Also, you’re not cruel or malicious about it. People have died because it was done improperly and, though I know you hate it, I’d rather have you do it and hate it than see someone else do it poorly.”

Paris sighed and leaned back in his chair. He knew she was right, just as he knew if it came to that - even if Hannah hadn’t volunteered him - he would have likely stepped up to do it. He just didn’t like having to dwell on it beforehand. Anyone who envied Paris’ power was either foolish or idiotic. Or both.

“No, you’re right. Of course you’re right. If it becomes necessary, I’ll do it. Better me than some hack.”

“You know I would do it myself but my magic doesn’t work that way.”

“I know,” he said crisply.

He’d known even as a child that there was something different about Hannah’s magic. Though she was incredibly powerful, her magic was more like a strong undertow than the sharp, cresting wave needed to break a witch. She’d gotten stronger as she aged, her magic settling even deeper now that she had passed her centennial, but it still wasn’t the whip-crack that witch-stripping required.

Not like Paris’ magic, which, if left unchecked or unmanaged could be violent, relentless and raging. He preferred other means, but he would use his power if necessary.

“So,” Hannah said briskly, interrupting his thoughts, “you’ve one month.”

“I’ve already got Callie working on some locator spells to help us narrow down the area. I’m hopeful we can find whoever is doing this within the week and then have three weeks to convince them to join our Coven. Or another coven I suppose.”

“No. It needs to be ours.”

He was slightly taken aback by the surety in her tone. “May I ask why?”

“I had an uneasy feeling so I did a card reading last night. Before you say anything, I didn't do a card reading on you or for you - I did it on our unknown witch.”

“All right,” he said trying not to let his distaste of the Tarot cards color his voice. He had an extreme dislike of them and Hannah knew it far too well. For her to bring those up, it must be important.

“The cards were quite clear. The unknown witch belongs with us. In our Coven.”

“Well, obviously I’ll do my best, but if he or she doesn’t want to join I can’t force them.”

“No, but you could try using some of that boyish charm I remember you having.”

A ghost of a smile traced his lips. “That was a long time ago.”

“Oh, did I miss the day you surpassed me in years, Paris?” she said sarcastically. “You sound like you’re ancient when I know for a fact you’re only in your thirties.”

“There’s more to age than years.”

“Yes, there is,” she agreed. “And once you’ve reached one hundred you can start lecturing me on age. But until then, you would do well to listen to your elders, young boy.”

He wanted to laugh. Only Hannah could still call him a young boy and make it sound loving and chiding at the same time.

“Very well, Hannah.”

“Go find us our lost witch, Paris. Bring her home.”

Chapter 2

Paris examined the locator spells researched by Callie and he pulled out the bits and pieces he liked, crafting them into a new spell of his own.

“Ugh, how do you do that?” Callie bemoaned, watching him as he jotted down the few lines he wanted from each spell.

His lips quirked, “Magic.”

“Har-dee-har,” she deadpanned, leaning over the table slightly, her long, fine blond hair slipping over her shoulder and swinging out in front of her. She tossed it back with an absent flick. “Seriously, I’d have to try each one, see how I could ply them, if they worked, and then spend the next four days trying to cobble something together that still wouldn't be half as effective.”

“I think you’re a very fine spell-crafter,” he murmured, not looking up at her as he perused his notes. He absently made a move to stick the tip of his pen in his mouth but Callie deftly snatched it out of his hands.

“That’s a gross habit and it’s been gross since we were six.”

He plucked his pen back from her hands. “It’s
my
pen.”

She appeared to consider something, perhaps a rude gesture, but she simply jerked her chin slightly at the spell he was tweaking. “How accurate do you think it will be?”

Paris looked over his words and ingredients and weighed them in his mind. He’d always had excellent instincts when it came to magic. He knew some people thought that his mother, as Coven Leader before him, had perhaps given him some extra books or knowledge that she had - things the rest of the coven didn’t have access to.

He supposed in some way they were right. He’d had his mother to watch as she crafted spells. He couldn’t think of anything else that would have taught him as well as watching her. She’d had a deft touch, a fine control. Looking through some of her spell-books and grimoires now, he was amazed at what she could do. There were spells in her books he didn’t think any other witch on earth could understand, let alone cast, including himself.

He pushed those thoughts of his mother from his mind before he became too distracted. Knowing the spell-casting part of his kitchen nearly as well as hers, Callie helped him gather the ingredients he needed, setting them down on the counter next to his notes and then stepping back out of his space while he worked. She crossed over to his kitchen table and unfolded the oversized paper map she’d picked up from the travel agent, smoothing it down and weighting it with four paperweights Paris picked from his spell-chest. She placed one at each of the directional points then quietly took a place just outside the kitchen, off to the side, not wanting her energy to interfere with his.

He rolled up his shirt sleeves and only glanced once more at his notes before setting to work. He didn’t so much measure the ingredients as intuit the amounts he wanted, allowing the scents to overlap as he breathed them in deep. The aroma of each spell was always unique but somehow still always smelled familiar and recognizable to him. When Paris was younger, he thought that it was his mother’s perfume. As a child, he would sit on the floor next to her feet, or if he was very quiet, she’d pop him up on the counter while she worked. It wasn’t until he started his spell-craft classes in middle school that he recognized his mother’s “perfume” as the ingredients she often worked with - sage, vanilla, mint. She had, in fact, worn no perfume at all.

Paris felt his magic stir inside him, even before he called on it, almost like it was sitting up and paying attention as soon as he began mixing ingredients. He finished adding what he wanted to the mortar and then started grinding with the pestle - short, firm, counterclockwise movements until he got the fine powder he wanted. He thought about the unknown witch as he did, thought about how Hannah always referred to a ‘she’ or a ‘her’ and how Hannah was not very often wrong. He also considered the magic they could sense being used - distorted, disorganized, sharp and quick. Powerful but immature. Then, he thought about finding her, their lost unknown witch, and offering her a place in their Coven.

When he was satisfied with the powder, Paris stepped over to the map on the table, cradling the mortar in his hands. Looking down at the map, he scooped up the fine dust in his fist and then, putting his intent - his magic - behind it, blew it into the air above the map.

It hung, suspended in the air, a delicate cloud of dark grey each particle seemingly stopped for a moment in time.

Then, it began to move.

The cloud pulsed, undulated and swirled slowly like a long, powerful snake. It curled and coiled a meter above the map, becoming dense and then spreading out again. He could feel the magic in his head, feeding the motion - powering it, fueling it - a small, slight tug at the front of his brain. Then, like a string being plucked, it vibrated sharply and froze for another moment before collapsing in on itself, pulling together into a tight, dense knot and then funneling down to the map. He smelled a twinge of burning paper and a fine tendril of smoke lazily curled up from a corner of the map where a small, pinprick hole burned black.

“There you are,” he breathed.

Callie returned to the kitchen behind him and he glanced over, his eyes meeting hers.

“I don’t even know why I bother sitting around wondering if your magic is going to work. It always works.”

He knocked on the table three times in automatic reflex. “You’ll jinx it.”

“You don’t even believe in jinxes,” she replied, bending over and holding her hair back so she could study the map.

Callie was right, Paris didn’t believe in jinxes, but he’d had those reflexes drilled into him just the same, like people who toss salt over their shoulder after spilling it without knowing why.

“Hmm, not too far away. We could be there by tomorrow.”

“We?” he asked, grabbing a dishcloth from the counter and wiping his hands.

She grinned. “I love the smell of a road trip.”

Chapter 3

Jade felt like she should have one of those signs they hang in construction sites or industrial plants.

Days Without Incident: 5.

A full five days without any exploding bulbs, leaping flames, scorched cabinets or singed countertops.

It was like sitting around waiting for your next hiccup. The body knows something’s amiss and produces a strange, sick feeling in the gut, but it’s still impossible to predict exactly when it might all go wrong. You just knew that it would.

Jade was too pragmatic to be optimistic. Despite the fact that yesterday night she had almost convinced herself she was having a nervous breakdown and not really suddenly setting things on fire with her mind, there was still a small voice inside her that whispered,
you know exactly what you’re doing
.

Even if she didn’t know how she was doing it.

But still, she had made it an entire five days without anything happening and that made her more nervous instead of less.

She decided to make a half pot of coffee to settle her nerves. It didn’t matter that it was early evening. Contrary to most people, caffeine didn’t rile Jade up and she instead found the ritual soothing. Toss old grounds, rinse permanent filter, dump old coffee, rinse pot. Fill with water, grind beans, pour into filter.