Dead But Not Forgotten (14 page)

His words stung, and rightly so. Living between the Mississippi and the haunted waters of Lake Pontchartrain meant that we were always at risk of a flood or storm, and the scars from Katrina were still all over the city for anyone with eyes to see. This was the last place for someone to be fooling around with weather magic—which was exactly why I planned to start fooling around with weather magic. If we could just find a way to make the storms a little less severe, either by making friends with the local winds or by taming breezes that could interfere when things started to get bad, we might be able to keep things from being quite so bad in the future.

“You know that new girl, Minda? The one who thinks she's better at witching than anyone?”

Bob nodded, looking perplexed.

I stabbed my fork into my pie. “I mentioned I was researching this ritual, and she said . . .” I swallowed. “She said, ‘Too little, too late,' like the storms we've been having were
my
fault somehow. Like I should have been wrestling with the wind years ago. I asked her what she meant by that, and she said I knew what she meant. That if I wanted to sit around like some little old lady, knitting and gossiping while the world fell down, that was my lookout. It got under my skin, Bob. I won't pretend it didn't. I want to be able to do something the next time a storm blows up.”

This time, Bob's nod was slower, and he looked almost understanding. “You didn't answer my questions,” he said. “Start there.”

“I think you call the wind in from elsewhere; at least that's how it tends to work in the old stories,” I said carefully. “Winds that live where you send out the call are more like, I don't know, feral cats. They aren't interested in being tamed. I don't know why foreign winds would be any different, but everything I can find says that they are.”

“This is sounding more and more sketchy,” said Bob. “What does Octavia have to say about this?”

I bristled. “Nothing,” I said. “She's not my sponsor anymore, and I don't
need
her permission to try new things. I'd consult her if I thought I needed her. I don't.”

“And I would still be a cat if not for her, so you'll forgive me for being a little cautious,” said Bob. “Which takes us to my other concern: What happens if this goes wrong? What happens if you attract a nice little wind and it comes with a not-so-nice big hurricane? I don't want you to be the reason this city finally washes away.”

“I'm getting a little annoyed about all the little ‘Amelia can't control her magic' comments tonight, okay? I'll head out to the river before I try anything, and I've modified the stasis spell enough that it should be able to stop anything that I start before it snowballs out of control.” I forked off another bite of pie. “I won't say it's perfectly safe—magic is never
perfectly
safe—but I think it's worth the risk, and I don't think that the chances of it going wrong are high enough that it's not worth doing.” I canted my chin down a bit and looked up at him through my eyelashes before playing my hole card: “I was really hoping you'd be there to check my ritual circle and make sure that I'm not missing any steps.”

Bob sighed, the long, pained sound that meant I'd just won the argument. “Do you
promise
not to flood the state?” he asked.

I grinned.

Weather witchery is difficult for a lot of reasons. There's the whole “weather is a big, complex thing” to be considered, as well as the potential for property damage if it's done wrong, but mostly the problem is in the intricacy of the rituals involved. I normally wouldn't have attempted something like this without at least three witches, preferably four or five. But with most of the practitioners in the city still focusing on cleaning up their own neighborhoods, it was just me and Bob setting up the circle down by the riverbank. Lightning bugs flickered in and out of view, and a soft breeze was blowing out of the west, smelling like fresh flowers and somebody's home-baked muffins. It was making me hungry.

“I'm still not sure this is a good idea,” said Bob.

“Never know until you try it,” I said, and held out a hand. “Can I get the jasmine?” Bob solemnly handed me a Tupperware bowl full of dried flowers, and I commenced to scattering them around the lines of salt, iron ball bearings, and cedar ash that I had already drawn. Something this size required more effort than a slap-and-tickle “runes and salt and prayer” design. This was the kind of ritual where I needed to cast it like I meant it.

“Let's just go over things one more time,” Bob said.

“I know what that means,” I said. “That means ‘Let me explain why this is a bad idea one more time, because I'm sure this is the time you'll mysteriously decide to listen.' Well, I'm not going to listen, and I'm not going to change my mind, so how about we skip that part and move straight to me getting down to business?”

Bob smiled in that slow way that always made me want to tear his clothes off with my teeth. “It's a good thing I like it when you're impulsive,” he said, and took a step back from my circle. “I'm here if you need me.”

“All right.” I sank to the ground, sitting cross-legged to minimize the risk that I'd somehow blur one of the lines I'd spent so much time and care to draw. Resting my hands on my knees, I thought back to the words I'd translated from the books of folklore that first led me down this possibly foolish road. There were so many different variations, and so many possibilities, all of them leading to either success or failure.

I'm not a girl who likes to fail.

What I
am
is a girl who likes to get things right the first time. I'd spent so long staring at the slips of paper with my translations written on them that when I closed my eyes, I could see the strings of cursive unspooling against my eyelids like a map waiting to be followed. The first word came to my tongue like a promise. The second followed like a prayer, and then it was just words upon words, spilling out into the cool night air with all the force of a vow that had been yearning to be heard. Magic is a thing that lends itself to metaphor, because there's nothing in this world or any other that can be said to be exactly like it; magic is what magic is, and all our descriptions have to call upon other things, or make no sense at all.

I could feel Bob standing behind me, his love and support mingling with a healthy dose of wariness and concern. It wasn't like mind reading—I couldn't tell if he was wondering whether he'd left the oven on or admiring my ass—but it was a sort of temporary empathy, his magic resonating back on mine in a form of complicated sonar. I could feel the moths in the air and the frogs in the mud and the gators in the water around me the same way, although they were mostly just presence and not personality. That was all right by me. I've never much felt the need to get up close and personal with any part of an alligator, and that includes its feelings.

The ritual was long enough to be exhausting and short enough to be achievable. I gasped out the last of the words and felt the air around me go suddenly and impossibly still, as if I had—without moving—stepped into the eye of a storm. Bob cleared his throat nervously. I opened my eyes.

Nothing hovered in the still air in front of me; nothing twitched its ephemeral tail back and forth like an anxious puppy, waiting for me to notice it and remark on how clever it was. My eyes went wide. “Bob?” I squeaked. “Do you, uh . . . I guess ‘see' isn't the best word here, is it? Do you perceive what I'm perceiving?”

“Do you mean, ‘Can I tell that there is a breeze of some sort hanging a foot from your face'? Because if that's what you mean, then yes, I can.” Bob sounded rattled. I wasn't sure if that was because he hadn't had faith in my magical abilities, or because this whole situation was more than a little unnerving. I was going with the latter, since
I
was pretty rattled, and I had absolute faith in my own magical abilities. Besides, that way I didn't have to be mad at him, and I was going to want some celebratory sex as soon as we got back to the apartment.

Slowly, I began to grin. “It worked,” I said. “I put together a ritual based on research and logic, and it worked. I am the
man
.”

“Point of order,” said Bob.

“I am the
woman
,” I amended. Cautiously, I reached for the stationary wind. “Hi, little fella. I'm Amelia. I'm the one who called you here. It's nice to meet you. I hope we're going to be friends.”

“Do winds make friends?”

“Shush. Having a moment of deep mystic import here,” I said, and continued reaching my hand toward the nothing I could sense hovering just outside the boundaries of my ritual circle. Something brushed my fingertips, something insubstantial as air that nonetheless tingled like an electrical storm. My eyes widened in wonder and delight—

—and just like that, my little bit of tamed nothing was gone, vanishing back into the night. I jolted backward, feeling as if I'd just been stung by a swarm of hornets.

“What just happened?” I demanded. “Where'd my wind go?”

“Where did
all
the winds go?” Bob sounded more frightened than dismayed. I twisted without getting out of my ritual circle, frowning at him. He frowned right back, gesturing wildly with his hands. “The air is completely still. How often have you been this close to the water and not felt any wind at all? They stopped right before yours showed up. I thought it was part of your spell.”

“I didn't cast anything that should have interfered with the wind outside of the one I was calling,” I protested. I climbed to my feet, the pins and needles in my calves telling me that I should probably have done that a few minutes earlier. “I'm serious, Bob, I know what I did and didn't do, and I didn't do anything as big as that.”

Bob frowned slowly. “Who did you tell that you were going to try this?”

“Not much of anyone, really . . .” I said. His frown deepened. I sighed. “All right, I may have told a few of the other witches. Just to get their perspective on things.”

“Did you share your notes?”

I didn't answer. I didn't have to.

Bob picked up a handful of salt and flower petals from the edge of the ritual circle, holding his hand flat and blowing on the mess as hard as he could. It drifted out as an improbable cloud before falling to the mud, forming a rough arrow that pointed east.

“I love magic,” I said, and grabbed the ritual supplies before taking off at a run.

Without wind, the surface of the river was perfectly still, more like a sheet of glass than an actual body of water. The fireflies had disappeared. They probably didn't know how to fly in air that wasn't moving at all. I ran, and Bob paced me, both of us watching for anything out of the ordinary. I don't know what I was expecting, really; a circle like mine, maybe, or someone holding up a sign that read,
I am the source of all your problems
.

Honestly, the woman standing on the surface of the water about eight feet out from shore was overkill where the “unusual sights” department was concerned.

I slid to a stop, the slick mud beneath my feet making the gesture graceless, although the rapid pinwheeling of my arms did at least keep me from eating riverbank. Bob was wearing slightly more sensible shoes and had an easier time of it than I did, although my pride was reassured by the fact that he had to do some pinwheeling of his own to keep from tipping over.

The woman on the water turned to face us, and smiled. “Hello, Amelia. And Bob, too. It's a surprise to see you out on the river tonight. I genuinely didn't think she'd be able to talk you into this.”

Bob reached up and adjusted his glasses. He didn't say anything. He just scowled.

Sadly, my daddy raised me a little more polite than that, even when I'm talking to someone who's clearly decided that the laws of nature don't apply to her. “Evening, Minda,” I said, folding my hands behind my back in a vain attempt to look nonchalant. “What are you doing out here?”