Page 3 of Kick the Candle (Knight Games 2)
She giggled. "He was an impulse buy that grew on me."
I sighed and plopped back into my chair. "I don't know, Michelle, do we have time for this? I really wanted to get more done today."
Tipping her head to the side, my friend folded her arms across her chest. "Really? The pages aren't numbered but this thing has to be five thousand long. We've been at it all month and have barely made a dent."
With attitude, I combed my fingers through my hair and rolled my eyes. "All the more reason to buckle down and get to work."
She jabbed her open hands toward the mammoth book. "Hello? It's going to take us a year to enter all of these spells. It's not like we don't both have full-time jobs. This is like moving a bucket of water with an eyedropper."
"Now you're exaggerating."
She folded her arms across her chest. "What's the rush anyway?"
Crossing the attic, I leaned against the window frame and watched the naked branches of the oak tree in my front yard twist in the late November wind. Less than six weeks until Christmas. I was sure Michelle had better things to do with her day off than enter spells into my database. My chest sank thinking about the burden I'd been to her the last several months. I was the reason she'd been possessed by a vampire, after all.
But I was in a hurry. Besides the danger of Julius's growing coven, and the fact that he probably wanted me dead, Julius said that Rick had lied to me, that I didn't need a Caretaker to regain my power. Julius was a vampire and almost certainly deceiving me. I had no reason to trust him. But ever since he'd said the words, I'd questioned my connection to Rick and the boundaries of my power. In my gut, I had the tiniest needling that Rick was keeping something from me. I'd tried time and time again to put the feeling aside, but it wouldn't leave me alone.
My past incarnation had the wherewithal to name a guardian of my magical attic, Prudence. She'd helped me learn about what I was. Unfortunately, when I accepted my role, Prudence moved on to her eternal reward. With her gone, if I couldn't trust Rick, the only source of power, protection, and information I had was the Book of Light. I was sure all of the answers I needed were within its pages.
I didn't want to trouble Michelle with all the details. She'd done enough to support me already. This was my boat to row. Besides, I was willing to bet obsessing about it was exactly what Julius wanted me to do.
"It could save my life, Michelle. The book weighs hundreds of pounds. This is the only way I can take it with me while I'm learning. I may need one of these spells in an emergency."
"Really?" She leaned across the book. "An eavesdropping bee is going to protect you against a vampire attack on the fly?"
"You've got a point," I mumbled. "But it's still my best hope."
Michelle rubbed her palms together. "I'm not saying the database isn't important, but it isn't everything. It's going to take time. No matter what you do, you're going to have to learn how to use this magic. There are no shortcuts."
I sighed. "You're right. This is just the workaholic in me coming out."
"Exactly. It will all get done eventually. A little a day and by the time you're thirty, you'll be done." With one arm, she hugged my shoulders playfully.
I suddenly felt compelled to entertain her. She'd earned it. "You wanna watch me summon a familiar, or what?"
"That's the spirit."
We jogged downstairs to look for something to offer the familiar's spirit. Unlike when Logan lived here, the house was a mess and there was nothing in my pantry but coffee grounds. I opened the refrigerator to check if food had mysteriously appeared there while I was in the attic. It hadn't. The contents consisted of a box of baking soda, a half empty bottle of ketchup, and the remains of Valentine's take-out from two weeks ago with dodgy looking fuzz growing under the lid. I tossed the take-out but grabbed the coffee grounds. Michelle appeared in front of me with a bottle of wine from the cellar.
"This should work," she said.
"Wine? Is that necessary?" I asked, not thrilled about wasting a bottle.
"The book said you needed an offering. The connotation is that you sacrifice something important to you. You don't want to use blood and there's nothing more important to you in this house than wine and coffee, except maybe me, and I'm not sitting in that bowl."
"Wine and coffee it is."
We returned to the attic, and I pulled out the wooden trunk containing my magical paraphernalia. On top was my blade, Nightshade. Made from the femur of the patron saint of cemetery workers, Nightshade could only be wielded by me. I set her aside to dig beneath her space in the trunk. Under her was a silver bowl, salt, candles, a few shrouds, and a bell. My predecessor had left the witchy toolkit, and I was becoming more comfortable with it day by day. I selected the bowl.
Cross-legged on the floor next to the wine and coffee, I closed my eyes and tried to clear my mind. I flexed my shoulders toward my ears, inhaled, then released the breath, slumping forward. I tried to relax as much as possible, concentrating on the flow of breath at the back of my throat. When a thought threatened at the corner of my consciousness, I pushed it aside.
They say when you enter deep meditation that you visualize a light of some sort moving toward you. I did. A green light that seemed flat at first until I reached it and then expanded into a tunnel. The light branched out and formed leaves. And then, in my clear mind, I was in a garden. Even though I logically knew my body was sitting in my attic meditating, I was physically there, nestled in blades of cool dewy grass with my bowl and offering beside me. The sun was warm upon my face, and the leaves of the plants rustled in the sweet-smelling breeze.
From a grove of trees, a naked woman stepped toward me. Large dark eyes and silky black hair contrasted sharply against the light that shone behind her head. She stopped just short of my bowl.
"Hecate," she said. "Welcome to my garden. Make your offering."
I wanted to know more about this woman and this place, but my intuition warned this was not the time to ask. Maybe it was the way her skin glowed like it was radioactive and the light broke around her torso. Reflexively I reached for the wine and poured half of it into the bowl. I sprinkled coffee over the top.
