The Best Paranormal Crime Stories Ever Told (26 page)

Damned spell! Could it kill my witchness? I never thought anything could. In trying to save Gareth, was I dooming myself to being normal?

Before my darkness left me entirely, I murmured power words and picked more carefully through the roses, looking for help. The thorns sprouted and pricked my hands again. Weakness spread through me. Both my arms were bland.

Near the base of one of the vines, I found an aphid like a small hard bump, then another. I rested fingertips on their backs. “Small things, strengthen; change the balance. Shift the spell, let loose the sight. Sip the sap and wreck the roses; give me back my stolen might,” I murmured, putting the remnants of my power into it. The aphids listened and grew strong, sucked the lifeblood out of the rose spell until it withered and fell away. They nestled in my palms, gleaming soft, fuzzy green, the size of kiwi fruits, full of the power they’d sucked from the spell.

Gareth groaned. “Stop it, Terry! Whatever you did, make it stop!”

I exchanged a glance with the eyes. They blinked again, then the lids closed, slowly, and all the extra color faded from the room.

“All right,” Mom said, “what was that, Terry? Did you break a rule?”

“I just did what I said. We saw what Gareth would see if he used his witch senses.”

“What, all that?” he said. “That was crazy.”

“You have to get used to it.” I sat in a chair at the table and rubbed one of the aphids against my cheek. So soft. It made a small, vibrating sound like a purr. I was exhausted, and a little worried: the rose had poisoned my power. My defenses were weak, now; if anything with power came at me, I could be badly hurt, though not destroyed, because of my secret protection. I needed to find a spell to restore me.

Chances were the rose spell had also poisoned Gareth’s powers somehow, maybe paralyzed them. Now that it was gone, maybe he could get some joy out of his power. Maybe he’d be grateful. I hoped so. I wanted to use him in many different ways. “That’s where you begin with your powers,” I said. “See what you can see. Then decide how you want it to change, and work toward that.”

“What does this have to do with those spells you sell?”

“I decide what the spells will do. I infuse them with power and direction. Once I craft the spells, other people can use them.”

“You hypnotized me,” Gareth said.

I sighed and rested my hands on the table, palms up, with the aphids in them. I wasn’t sure what to do with my new friends. They solved the problem for me, sank into my palms. A flush of unfamiliar power flowed through my veins, mixed with the power the roses had sucked out of me, now come home.

I leaned back and closed my eyes, felt this foreign power move through me. It was a slivery power, like bamboo under fingernails, a power with hate in it, and strength, edged with elegance and beauty. “Tell me who you belonged to,” I whispered, and learned about Gareth’s mother, forced by her mother and grandmother to use her power when all she had wanted was to be normal. They had put a geas on her to pass her power to her daughters, but none of her daughters had been born gifted. A boy with gifts was an abomination. When she discovered Gareth’s gifts, she locked them in a hedge of roses and put them to sleep. This was a power she had to renew constantly, as his witch eyes struggled to open.

And in the meantime, with that geas on her, continually unsatisfied, she twisted up in some truly unpleasant directions.

I accepted the foreign power as part of my arsenal. Strange to meet power darker than my own. Everyone I knew in the witch community thought I was the bad guy, the unnatural one who forced people into things against their will. I was as capable as Gareth’s mother of mistreating other people.

I would take joy in foiling her.

Gareth shook my shoulder. “Terry?” he said. “Terry—it’s happening again.”

“What is?” I asked.

“The world looks screwy!”

I straightened and rubbed my palms together as a final thankyou to the aphids. I felt not only restored after the rose’s poison but augmented.

I glanced around. The room seemed normal. I studied Gareth, and realized his aura had awareness in it now. He looked all around, panicked.

“Your witch eyes are open now, Gareth. You can close them if you don’t like it, but you can also open them whenever you want. What you see, you can change.”

“Can I change you? You look like the Grim Reaper.”

“Really? Skull and all?”

He stared at my face. “Mostly it’s the dark cloak. I guess I can see your face. Are you smiling at me?”

“I am, Gareth.”

“How come your mom has a moon on her head?”

“I don’t understand that myself. It’s not there when I look at her. Have you figured out how to close your eyes yet?”

He glanced around, looking haunted again. Mom got to her feet, shaky, and went to the coffeemaker for a refill. She had some experience with weird witch effects—most of them from my sister, who was allowed to witch around the house, since she didn’t hurt anyone. Mom hadn’t had enough exposure to be relaxed about it, though.

“I can’t—oh,” said Gareth. “Oh, it’s all gone again. Okay, good.”

“Terry. Explanations?” asked Mom. She dumped extra sugar in her coffee and drank.

“Gareth’s mom put a spell on him to close up his powers. Did you see the roses?”

“I did. Thanks, by the way, for making me part of the equation.”

I couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic, but, even though I hadn’t planned for her to see everything, I was glad she had. It meant she knew more about Gareth’s problem. “She planted those to keep his powers asleep. She tends them constantly to make sure he’s crippled. My spell messed hers up. Now his powers are awake, but he doesn’t know how to use them. Can Gareth live with us, Mom? If he goes home, his mother might shut him down again.”

Mom’s frown was ferocious, but I knew she’d cave. She had the softest heart of anybody I knew.

“I have rules,” Mom said, the start of her consent.

Gareth moved into the guest room. We went back to his house the next morning, when his mother was at work and his sisters had gone to school, to retrieve his belongings.

The house had no witch vibes. It looked like a TV sit-com house, not distinctive, not identical.

His room was a sad excuse for a boy’s room. There were red roses winding in the wallpaper, and no pictures of cars, airplanes, metal bands, or things blowing up. His clothes were all neatly folded or hung on hangers—no dirty laundry on the floor or draped over the desk chair. I was more of a boy than Gareth was.

I’d brought a duffle bag for him. He put everything in it very neatly, then stuffed his backpack with a bunch of books.

On our way to the front door, I said, “So where’s the room your mom uses for her rituals?”

Gareth looked over his shoulder toward a doorway I hadn’t noticed before—and that disturbed me, because now that I know where to look, the witch vibes coming from it were incredibly strong. “We’re not allowed to even open the door,” he said, as I grabbed the doorknob. A stinging jolt shot through my hand, the same poison Gareth’s roses had carried. I jerked back, shaking my hand. Weight in my other hand made me look: I saw one of the aphids, shrunk to the size of a marble, rising from my palm. As soon as it separated from my skin, I held it near the doorknob; it leaped the gap, fastened to the protect spell, and fed.

“What is that?” Gareth whispered.

“This is what freed you yesterday.” I hadn’t realized they could manifest again, but I was thrilled. Spellsuckers! A staggering number of household applications occurred to me. “I found them feeding on your mother’s power-suppression spell, and helped them eat faster. They broke the spell for you. I wonder if they’re yours?” The aphid on the doorknob was as big as a cantaloupe. My right hand, still tingling from the spell jolt, unhosted the second aphid, and I set it to join the first.

When they were both the size of fuzzy, pale-green watermelons, the tiny scritching sound of their feeding stopped and they dropped from the doorknob. I caught one, and Gareth caught the other. “Do you want the power?” I asked.

“What?”

I cradled my aphid in both hands, and it deflated, feeding me spell power again, exquisite hate and strength, a hot syrup both burning and sweet. “Put it down if you don’t want the power.” My voice was hoarse as my body adjusted to this influx. I was lucky to have had a taste the day before, otherwise I could see this killing me, as poisonous as it was—or it could have killed me if I hadn’t had my special protection. What if someone random touched the doorknob?

I directed the power flow into a fireproof box in my mind. I could store this power and dilute it for personal use later.

The aphid vanished into my palm again.

“It’s stuck! Ouch! It burns!” Gareth tried to shake the aphid off his hand, but it clung, a gelatinous mass, and shrank. He keened, a high, mindless wail.

He didn’t have the defenses to handle this. I grabbed his hands as the aphid vanished under his skin and followed floods of power along dried riverbeds inside him, places where his witch power ought to flow. I couldn’t stop the rush of hot new power, but I could soften it by adding power of my own, cold power I rarely tapped. He gasped over and over, and I saw that his mother’s power didn’t poison him either. He had been living with the restriction spell inside him long enough to acclimate to it.

The power rushed through all his channels and reached the river’s source, burst through a wall, and uncapped the spring inside. I had to let go of him then, he burned so hot.

He screamed. I covered my ears with my hands and waited it out.

Finally he collapsed, twitching, on the floor.

I went to the kitchen to get a glass of water. I wasn’t sure that was the right prescription, but I figured it couldn’t hurt.

When I rejoined Gareth, he sat up and took the glass from me, and my shoulders, tight as corsets, loosened. I hadn’t been sure there was anything left of his mind.

“I feel sick,” he whispered.

“I know.” He could talk! I relaxed even more. “Do you need anything I can get you?”

“An explanation?”

I laughed, relieved he could ask. I rose and grasped the doorknob. It didn’t bite this time. I turned it and pushed on the door, but the door rattled: it was locked. Mechanical protection in addition to magical. I knew a lot of unlock spells, though, and the first one I tried worked. “Let’s see what we earned.” I hauled Gareth to his feet. He staggered, straightened, wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand.

I let go of the doorknob and stepped back, giving him the choice. He studied me, then gripped the knob and turned it.

First thing out of the room was a smell, cold and rotten, like a cave where corpses were stored. The door opened inward. Gareth pushed it and let it swing. The floor inside was painted a lightsucking, tarry black.

“God,” he said. “I’m glad I never saw this before. I couldn’t sleep in the same house with this again.”

His mother’s altar took up the whole far wall, a black freize with niches in it where tentacled god-statues lurked, some veiled with dark lace, others staring, visible and revolting. On the flat stone bench below, a large brass bowl held ashy remains of burnt things and a scattering of small charred bones. A red glass goblet was half-full of dark liquid. A scorched dagger lay between the goblet and the bowl. A carved ebony box stood on the bench, too.

One of the god-statues waved three tentacles at me. I’d had dealings with him before. For a dark god, he had a great sense of humor. I wiggle-waved back.

“Let’s go,” Gareth said.

“Wait. Look in there with your witch eyes. See if there’s anything you need to take.”

“What?”

“Look.”

Along the side walls of the room—any windows had been covered over—there were shelves full of magical aids and ingredients, and a small library of hide-bound books. Gareth stepped over the threshold into the room. A shudder went through him as he stood in the heart of his mother’s power. “What am I looking for?” he asked.

“Something that belongs to you.”

“I’ve never seen any of this stuff before.”

I shrugged. He examined the shelves without touching anything. I wouldn’t have touched, either. Everything looked dusty or dirty, even the ingredients I recognized.