Witch's Bell Book One (33 page)

“
I'm not being rewritten,” Ebony
said out loud, “I'm just—”

“
While I sit on the Coven, I
only follow their rules. I do not lead the Coven. Nor did I vote
against you,” she admitted, “others did. Regardless, I cannot
change their ways. Nor do I decide what direction they travel in. I
lend my power to their will. The Coven is beyond the individual's
story, and stands for the collective force, direction, and energy,
of all witches, past and future.”

Ebony tried to hide a little shiver.
So her mother hadn't voted against her and wasn't directly
responsible for the punishment Ebony now weathered. Even so, her
mother was hardly on Ebony's side. She was hardly rushing to her
aid here.

Ebony wanted to stay angry, she really
did. But she also wanted this conversation to stop now. Somehow all
the fight had left her, and in its place all she found was a
shivering, icy cold. She wanted to go home, have a shower, have a
hot cup of chocolate, and crawl into bed.

She didn't want to hear this; she
didn't want to be here.

“
That you came to us, for the
supposed crime that you committed, and were punished in the way
that you were – is a part of your own story, child. That it does
not make sense, that it does not seem right – these are all forces
you have allowed to enter your life. You have invited chaos and
injustice into your life, and now they sit at either side –
confusing, containing, and maiming you. You look outside for the
blame and cause, but you fail to see the origin.”

Ebony fought against the urge to just
turn around and walk away. To leave everyone and everything behind,
and just run back home. Her mother couldn't be right, she told
herself, Ebony would never have allowed such forces into her life.
She was boisterous, yes, and sometimes foolish. But Ebony Bell
still understood enough about the true power of a witch to control
her own destiny.

Why, she had everything she wanted,
didn't she?

Yes, she hadn't thought about
her Month of Rites yet, and yes, she hadn't written in her Journal
of Life for some time. But that didn't mean anything. Ebony still
knew what she wanted
... she still knew what kind of story she wanted
to write for herself ... she just couldn't remember what that was
right now.

“
You languish in life, in work,
and in spirit. Your story has no power, no direction, no will. You
do not know what you want, so you cannot find it.”

“
Now hang on,” Nate said from
behind, voice just brimming with defiance. He was probably about to
call her out about this entire business, knowing him. But Avery
Bell just flicked her hand, and suddenly he was silent as a still
night.

“
Life isn't that easy,” he
continued.

Avery Bell's eyes suddenly
opened wide, and she flicked her gaze over to Nate.
“How are you
speaking?”

“
With my voice,” he answered
plainly. “But that doesn't matter right now – though I'll tell you
what does. I don't care if both of you are witches, if you've got
magical rites, and your own magical ways of doing things. It
doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is that Ebony was
attacked, and that we don't know why or by whom. You can talk all
day about stories, and choices, and knowing what you want – but the
more you talk, the less you act. Now we've got a crime scene that's
getting colder by every minute. Shouldn't we do something about
that?”

Avery Bell's eyes were now
narrowed, her irises a sheer blue.
“You curious little man. You think you can
tell a witch that the way she sees the world doesn't matter? We
have magic and power – both things that depend on our perspective,
rites, and rituals. And yet you maintain that this is of no
consequence? By the history, law, and way of the witches, Ebony has
kept herself open for an attack. Letting her story flounder until a
greater, more powerful purpose came to rewrite her. And yet you
maintain that this does not matter. Tell me, little chevalier, why
such hubris?”

Ebony looked behind her to see
Nate with his arms crossed in front of him. If the thought had
crossed his mind that he was baiting an incredibly powerful witch,
he didn't show it. He looked stony, determined, and very, very
Nate.
“Hubris? You think I'm being arrogant here? You sure it's
just me? Here you are, telling us all how to explain the world –
with your stories, and magic, and your universal forces. Well, I'll
tell you what, there are a whole lot of people out there that
aren't magical, a whole lot of people that don't share your little
outlook. So, who's right? You or me? And who has the hubris
now?”

Avery smiled, but it wasn't entirely
nice. She was slightly amused, Ebony could tell, but just as
confused by the plucky, determined detective.

In a strange moment of detachedness,
Ebony realized just how different Nate was. He wasn't bothered, she
realized, by anything magical. It didn't surprise him, didn't sway
him, didn't move him. To magical creatures, the ways of magic's
power were of a higher order than all those mundane forces that
made up the rest of reality. Magic could be used to explain
everything and to trump any other explanation by a mile. A magical
explanation was one that was brimming with power, with sacred
understanding, and with unity. Magic integrated all of the forces
of reality into a shining, shimmering, crackling whole. While the
mundane could only hope to understand their little slice of
space-time, the magical could comprehend and sense it
all.

But there was Nate, not buying
into it. He'd seen magic, and unlike everyone else Ebony had ever
met, had simply been unimpressed by it. It was like some kind of
added-extra you could buy to slot into your reality
– like an
application, or an accessory – to make things sparkle and add more
lightning bolts to everything. It wasn't, for Nate, an amazing
feature of the world. It was a sideline to be noted and
ignored.

To ignore magic was unthinkable. So
how was he doing it? What did he have instead, that the amazing
possibilities of magical power didn't move him?

What exactly did Detective
Nathan Wall have up his crinkled sleeve?
”

“
You don't understand,” Avery
said, her eyes turning red.

“
Don't I?” Nate countered, arms
still crossed.

“
She doesn't know what she
wants, my poor little witch, so how is she to find it? Magic,
little chevalier, is possibility turned on its head. The ability to
make the unlikely likely, and the likely impossible. But in order
to use it right, you must use it with conscience. Unless you use it
with a purpose in mind – unless you know precisely what you want
from it – then magic becomes random. It becomes chaotic, unruly,
and dangerous. Destroying what little purpose you have in your
life, until you become an easy target to be rewritten by other
forces. And my poor little child, for years she's done just this.
Muddled along, no distinct idea of what she truly desires. Using
magic for immediate purposes, but for no long-term goal. And with
no length of time in mind, with no grand purpose in sight, magic
has now left her. What force she's had has now been taken by a
greater purpose. She is now caught up in someone else's greater,
more powerful story. A pawn in the game of another.”

Nate just shook his
head.
“And?
You think that's it? You think it's over now? You're talking like
you've given up hope. Like no amount of magic in the world could
change what you think is already going to happen. You talk of magic
like it allows you to get the unlikely – to make the impossible
real. Well, pardon me if I'm wrong,” he said forcefully, “but that
doesn't make any sense. If magic can make the impossible possible,
then that thing wasn't impossible to begin with.”

Avery waved a hand at him,
though her face remained a picture of controlled but edgy
politeness.
“You do not understand magic, mortal.”

“
No? Then maybe I don't want to.
In fact, there are only two things I want to understand right now,
and one of them is why someone mugged Ebony.”

Whatever the second thing was, Nate
didn't say.

Avery threw up her
hands.
“It
doesn't matter. My little Ebony needs to understand herself before
she can try to understand the world.”

“
You think she should take a
nice long walk in the woods and do a bit of self-reflection, while
an unknown, unquantified power is out to get her? That's
madness—”

“
Your mundane human beliefs
cannot match the reality of the magical—” her mother
began.

“
Enough,” Ebony finally
intervened with a heavy breath, “that's enough.”

She felt like she was being
strung up between two pillars, ready to be crucified to either a
magic or a mundane future
– but in either case, one that was out to get her.
Her mother was insisting that Ebony had laid open the doors of
uncertainty herself, by losing track of what she really wanted. And
while that might be true, Nate had his own point. None of that
really mattered right now because Ebony was stuck in the middle.
Okay, so she might not know what she wanted, and maybe that had
something to do with this whole mess, but concentrating on that
fact hardly seemed like it would help when danger was at
hand.

She had to do something, had to make
some kind of move. Even if it wasn't a perfectly choreographed
strategy coming from a perfectly formulated future-plan.

She had no idea what she wanted, and
no idea what the situation would bring. So what should she do now?
Withdraw and try to find out what she really wanted, or plunge
herself head first into the situation to find out what it was all
about?

To act, or to know?

The silence seemed to trickle through
the room like a gentle drizzle. No one spoke, and no one moved.
They all seemed to be waiting for Ebony.

But who was Ebony waiting
for?

Was she waiting for her mother to say
sorry, to explain the truth behind Ebony's punishment? Was she
waiting for the universe to reveal its strange little plan for
Ebony, and to get it all over with so she could just go back to
living her life?

Was she waiting for Nate to
finally reveal himself
– to stop hiding behind unreadable “rights,” and
aggravating determination?

What did he want? She wondered with a
soft blink of her eyes.

Everything seemed to be swirling
around Ebony in a kaleidoscope of colors. Distracting, aggravating,
and overcoming her.

Not for the first time, she just
wished it would all go away. Let the situation fold in on itself,
and pack away into a corner, where it could gather dust until Ebony
was finally ready to take a proper look at it. Or it could just
stay there forever; fade into the dark past never to be seen
again.

But none of this was getting anything
solved, she realized, her head starting to thump with a growing
headache. None of this was helping Ebony to really understand what
was going on, let alone what she really wanted.

Ebony let out a desperate sigh, almost
ready to just melt down onto the stairs and sit there with her head
in her arms. But suddenly the staircase gave a rattle, and a book
tumbled down from above, finally coming to a rest at her feet with
a thump.

She knelt down and picked it up,
hardly aware of the people around her any more.

It was a book on adventure; some kind
of novel or something. The cover was bright, colorful, and
exciting.

“
This store is a danger,” Nate
said from behind her.

“
Harry,” her father admonished,
“you trying to get us all killed?”

“
This store has always been
irreverent, uncontrolled, and mischievous,” Avery noted, staring
around at the shop.

Ebony ignored them all. She
picked up the book and turned to the first chapter. It was
titled,
“To
Boldly Go.” She ran a hand over the words, the paper old but still
smooth.

“
What are we going to do,
Ebony?” Nate asked from behind her. “Time's ticking. We really need
to find out what's going on.”

“
You need to withdraw,” her
mother's voice was keen, but the edge of anger was lost. “You need
to find out what you really want, before you try to face the rest
of this.”

“
Eb,” her father's voice was
gruff, “is that a cut on your arm? You should really get that
looked at.”

Ebony turned to a random page in the
book. She glanced down the contents. The heroine of the story was
in some kind of trouble, she read. There was action, movement, and
energy. Ebony flicked to another page later on, eyes scanning it
quickly. Now the heroine was undergoing some great trial, some epic
task that required strength, determination, and guts.

Ebony kept flicking on.

“
Hey, Ebony, are you listening
to me?” Nate said from behind.

“
Stop being distracted, child,”
her mother admonished. “You must concentrate, this is critically
important.”

Now the heroine was up against
the greatest imaginable force
– perilous, and unimaginably dangerous.