A Witch's Halloween, page 9
Rodriguez shook his head. “I hadn’t gotten that far before you arrived. Actually, I’m not sure where everyone is. They could be trapped in their homes, or they could’ve fled.”
“Perfect. Mystery magic. My favorite.”
“I was working on finding the core of the spells when you ripped it apart.”
I winced. “And?”
He flapped his hand in the direction of the majority of the magic. “Over there. Somewhere.”
Great. I’d made it worse and disrupted his progress, no matter how little it was. “Right. If you could free the guy from the webbing, I’ll find the core and disable it.”
“Deal.” He hesitated. “No random ripping.”
It would be awhile before I lived down this mistake. “Agreed.”
Rodriguez dodged a skeleton on his way over to the man. The skeleton pixilated, frozen in space until it it came back into focus, and then continues shambling down the sidewalk.
Closing my eyes, I adjusted my vision so I could see magic dimly. As expected, the street was awash with spells. Bright spots flared where two spells interacted. Nothing stood out as the core, but that was due to the volume of magic. Ideally, I could pick apart the spells until I could see what was left. In practice, that wouldn’t work.
The spells seemed to pulse across the network from random locations. A skeleton appeared next to a mailbox. It shuffled fifteen feet before it vanished, collapsing into the network again. The spell zoomed down the road before materializing, with the skeleton racing toward a webbed truck.
The network was functioning as a decentralized grid. The magic was technically possible, but it would take several witches or a single witch weeks of planning to accomplish. Since most witches lived in a clan complex and knew better than to magic an entire street without permits, it had to be something else.
That something was a central spell node with all the components to power these spells. But where? Magical hot spots were appearing and disappearing all over the neighborhood.
My eyes went to the giant coffin. It had been the first part of the spell to come back.
I probed it but didn’t find any more magic than expected.
From the look, it wasn’t drawing power from the network. It wasn’t sending out magic either. It just sat there. If I hadn’t known better, I would’ve assumed it was a huge coffin dropped off by a truck.
It wasn’t. The way it had vanished and then reappeared proved that.
Maybe the coffin had shielding built in, masking the spells.
With my wand up, I edged closer to the coffin.
The lid swung open, and a dark elf sat up. “Boo!”
I yelped.
The elf flopped back, and the lid closed.
I sucked in a breath. It didn’t hold the core of the spells. When the coffin opened, it hadn’t shown any additional magic. It was just a creepy Halloween coffin.
To get a better view of the spells and to try to figure out which one was the core, I had to go down the street. “Narzel blast it.”
A dog ran over, tripped, and crashed into my legs. It flinched.
“Easy. You’re okay.” I wanted to reach down and pet the poor thing, but I didn’t.
It looked up at me with wide eyes.
“You’re okay.”
It heaved a sigh, wagged the tip of its tail, and trotted onto the main street.
That was a better place for it, so I let it go and took a wide path around the coffin. I managed to stay far enough away that I didn’t trigger the lid mechanism, which was nice.
My vision went black. I froze and probed the darkness.
It was a spell, one that made both the black and the orange blobs. Since I was in it, I gave it a good look. Had I been paying attention before, I would’ve noticed an odd layer in the spell. It wasn’t growth. It wasn’t regeneration, but something in between. That part of the weave was larger than it had been, because I wouldn’t have missed it the first time if it had been this obvious.
Around the mystery layer was the core magic. A light spell meant to make the sky fill with twinkling orange and black lights. It would’ve sounded nice if I hadn’t encountered this version of the phenomena.
One careful step at a time, I walked out of the spell. The street was the same as it had been before, though the sun seemed brighter.
I still didn’t see a knot of spells that were tight enough to mark the core.
To my right, Rodriguez had resorted to burning the spiderweb away with magical fire. The guy inside had to be thrilled at this turn of events.
A rose bush with a large open blossom darted toward me, the bloom twisting shut. It retreated, the flower opening again. The inside petals were jagged, like teeth.
I moved to the center of the road.
The rose leaned back and then snapped upright. Thorns flew through the air.
“Sowil!”
The thorns bounced off the shield.
Sweet bones of Narzel. The plant was, in fact, a real plant, but the magic had altered it. Maybe under the influence of the initial spell it had livelier, reaching for people and startling them as a harmless prank.
Two rounds of spells later, the plant was nothing like it had been. Truth be told, I wasn’t sure it would go back to normal when I removed the magic.
A black cat spirited past. The rose darted for it. The cat spun around, raking its claws through the flower. Bits of petals fluttered to the ground, and the rose retreated again. The cat didn’t waste any time in making its escape.
Smart cat.
I kept going. A bat swooped down. I expected it to dodge me, but it thudded into my shoulder and fell two feet before flapping off.
Killing demons had been less freaky. I knew exactly what to do and what to expect. Here, it was hard to be sure what was an illusion, an innocent pet, or a rose bush intent on tasting meat for the first time.
At the house ahead of me, a web-covered shape in the driveway rocked from side to side. I probed it. The webs looked and felt real. I couldn’t detect any magic inside the web.
From the location and shape, there was a car under the webbing, not that I could see any of it. Not so much as a square inch of car could be seen between strands.
Channeling magic through my wand to form a blade, I went over to the car and sliced around where I thought a door would be. The webbing dragged at the blade, slowing it down. I put more power into the knife spell. The knife slid through easier.
A layer of webbing flopped open, revealing another layer of webbing.
There was a car under here, but it wasn’t the large vehicle I’d envisioned. I cut through three more layers of webbing before I saw bright red paint. It took another cut to actually uncovered the car and the teenage boy trapped inside.
He blinked a few times and then pushed at the door.
It didn’t budge.
Since it was a sedan and swaddled in nearly two feet of webbing, I hadn’t cut along the door seam but directly in the center of the door.
He banged on the window.
I ignored him and carved into the web on both sides of the initial opening, freeing the door.
The boy pushed it open and flopped on to the driveway. “Thank—thank you.”
The web closed up over the cut, enveloping the open door.
On the bright side, they didn’t have to worry about pests getting in the car.
If I had to guess, the boy was about fifteen, with closely cropped hair and the thin build of someone who hadn’t grown into themselves yet.
He opened his eyes to see a skeleton above him and shrieked.
The skeleton froze, its skull two inches out of alignment with the rest of the bones. It unified, flew forward six inches, and glitched again.
“Quiet,” I snapped. “It’s just an illusion.”
“It’s flying.”
“Apparently.”
“They were on the ground before.”
A skeleton sprinted past.
“Some of them still are.”
I eyed him. Now that the initial shock had worn off, he seemed more nervous than scared. “Any idea how this happened?”
He shook his head.
“You’re sure?” I had to remind myself it was illegal to put a truth spell on someone without their permission.
He was hiding the truth. I needed information to fix this and quickly, or I’d have another problem. “Anything you want to tell me? I just saw a rose bush try to eat a cat.”
He gulped and shook his head again.
“You’re sure? If you’re involved, it would be better to admit it. You won’t feel as bad later.”
“What makes you think I’d feel bad?”
I stared at him.
He paled.
I kept staring. A teen boy who wasn’t old enough to drive wouldn’t be in the family car without a reason. Given the festive environment, only one reason made sense.
He muttered something.
“I can’t hear you.”
He huffed. “We rebuilt a Boxoween.”
I blinked. “You did what?”
“You don’t have to say it like that.”
But I did. I really did.
One of the clans did limited runs of Boxoweens every year. They were always a little different, always really expensive, and guaranteed to give you the best thematic neighborhood. They weren’t something a few human kids could fix. “You missed the ‘RETURN TO BAKKE CLAN’ label?”
“It was in the trash. They weren’t going to miss it.”
I sighed. “And what did you do to it?”
He shrugged. “We fixed it. A couple of charms, a few herbs, and it was good as new.”
“What did you add?” I phrased it like a question, but it wasn’t.
“A battery, liquorice, and kudzu root,” He ticked them off his fingers as he went. “Charms, extra mirrors, the usual stuff.”
Great. An herb for healing, a vine for growth, and an energy source. No wonder this thing was the ever-spreading disaster. “Your name. Your actual name, not a nickname, not a fake name.”
“Gus Waller.”
“Well, Gus. You are going to stay in this area. When I’ve cleaned up this mess, you’ll talk to the nice police officers. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, ma’am.” He stared at his shoes.
“Good.” I’d forgotten to ask one thing. “Where did you put it?”
His head jerked up. “Honest, ma’am, I don’t know. Marvin and Greyson activated it when I was walking out of the house. I tried looking for it at first. It’s about the size of a breadbox, but black metal.”
“Thank you.” To be somewhat fair, he wasn’t the first kid to mess with magic he didn’t understand. “I’ll tell Officer Rodriguez you were helpful. No promises, but as long as you keep being helpful, it won’t be too bad.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Gus nodded about twenty times.
A bat dove toward his head, and he flinched.
I left him to enjoy his handwork and renewed my search with a little more focus. It couldn’t be too far, and the energy signature wouldn’t be entirely magical.
I passed two houses, and there weren’t that many more before the cul-de-sac. It had to be close.
A buzz of both energy and sound drew my attention to the left. Three skeletons and bats flew out of a crate.
That crate had been there before I shredded the spells. Only back then, the skeletons had been climbing out.
To my eyes, the crate had no more spells around it than did any other part of the network. I prodded the crate with a tendril of power.
Magic flashed. I threw a hand up, trying to shield my eyes, but it was too late.
“Stupid,” I muttered. “I know better.”
While I waited for the spots to fade from my vision, I planned my next move. Between the probe and the flash of spells, I’d found the crate was both shielded and covered in an illusion. Stripping off the illusion would give me a better idea of what I was dealing with. I could work around the shielding.
“You okay?” Rodriguez asked.
“I will be.”
He grunted. “I felt the flash. Do you want help with it?”
“Don’t know yet.” I blinked, but big dark spots still obscured my vision. “Gus said he and two friends ‘repaired’ a Boxoween they found.”
“Hey!” Gus yelled. “That’s not what I said.”
“Nope. I interpreted it.” I filled Rodriguez in. By the time I finished, the spots had faded from my eyes.
Rodriguez went over to talk to Gus and get information about his friends.
I adjusted my shields to prevent me from seeing magic and approached the crate. Ignoring the skeletons as they blurred and jerked from one spot to another, I knelt next to the crate and probed it again. The magic reacted, but this time, it didn’t distract me. I found the layer with the illusion and quickly dismantled the spell.
The crate flickered and then vanished. In its place was a box exactly as Gus had described. The black metal was dull, and the sun sank into it rather than reflecting. For all the trouble the Boxoween had caused, it wasn’t very large, only eighteen inches long, a foot wide, and a foot tall. The metal was uniform all the way around, without a seam for the lid or hinges.
“Gus, how does it open?” I called back.
He and Rodriguez exchanged a few words and then Rodriguez said, “It was open when they found it. He thinks the lid was put in place after it was activated.”
“Of course,” I muttered.
I took a gamble and tired the easy way, tapping my wand against the top of the box. “Purisaz.”
The top popped up far enough for me to get my fingers under it and pull it off. The shielding went down when the box opened, and the knot of spells inside shoved against my shields.
A mass of kudzu blocked my view on the inside. A strand crept over the edge of the box.
I nudged it back. “None of that.”
Spells pulsed under the layer of kudzu. From the way they felt and what Gus had said, physical objects were part of the spells, but I couldn’t see them. Part of that was the kudzu. It had spread from the spell it was intended to fix and was interacting with other spells.
The kudzu presented a unique problem. I couldn’t simply tear it out. There was too great of a risk of it establishing itself in the yard.
I could burn it out. A shield around the box would keep any ash from escaping. “Sowil. Dagaz.”
Flames raced across the top of the kudzu. The top leaves quickly burned away, ash drifting down to the bottom of the box.
“Snow?”
My head jerked up. Big fluffy flakes of ash were drifting down. Oh, Narzel. “Real or illusion?”
One flake passed right through my arm.
“Both!” Rodriguez shouted.
A flake landed on my hand. I swore again. The fire was making good progress, but there was still a lot of kudzu to get through. “Give me another minute.”
“We have a bigger problem.” Rodriguez’s voice was grim.
I twisted around to see a fireball bigger than my head smash into the road. Perfect. The only thing worse would be if it was real.
Another fireball landed on the driveway across the street, sending up a shower of sparks. Some of the sparks landed in the grass, and it started to smolder. In the center of its impact zone, a bright orange kudzu vine took shape.
Two more fireballs smashed down, sending out sparks and vines of orange kudzu. A third fireball dented the roof of a car.
This was worse. Much worse.
Chapter Eleven
“Gebo.” Water poured out of my wand, dousing the flames in the box. I rocked back on my heels. At least none of the houses were badly damaged.
Something smashed into my head. I fell to the side, fingers clenched around my wand. My eyes fluttered, feeling heavy and wet.
I wiped away what I hoped wasn’t blood and pushed myself up on my elbow. Water. Everything had been hit with a sheet of water, much like what I’d poured into the box to get rid of the fireballs. Like the fire, it had been real when the box interpreted it.
My head throbbed.
This. This was why it was illegal to mess with magic if you weren’t a licensed practitioner.
“Michelle! Michelle, are you okay?” Water splashed as Rodriguez knelt beside me.
“Other than being stupid, I’m great.” His uniform was dry. “How’d you avoid it?”
He helped me sit up. “We were on the porch. You’re sure you’re alright?”
“My head hurts, but I’ve had worse.” And if I hadn’t panicked when the fireballs had come down, this wouldn’t have happened. There was a lesson in there, but I’d think about it when thinking didn’t hurt so much.
“The kudzu that came with the fireballs, it was an illusion.”
“Great. Let me know if you still see any kudzu in the box.” I hung my head between my knees. It did nothing to stop the throbbing.
“About two inches of vine and root twisted around some liquorice.”
I rubbed my temples. Not that it helped. “At least it sorta worked.”
“There’s also an inch of ash.”
“No plan is perfect.”
Rodriguez rocked back on his heels. “What’s next?”
“Do you see a battery in there?”
He peered into the box. “Yup. It’s connected to a thin sheet of metal with spells etched on it.”
“Is it connected to any other spells?” My head was clearing, but not enough to pick apart spells.
“I don’t think so, but it’s hard to tell. The network connects everything. Its spell is attached to thin wires that run around the box.” He tried to reach it, but his hand bounced off the shield.
“Sorry.” I removed the shield. “I was thinking that removing the battery would get rid of the skeletons. Now I’m less sure. I didn’t think the kudzu was connected to anything. Look where that got us.”
“What’s the other option?”
“Give me another minute, and I’ll try to pick apart the spells.”
He grunted and leaned over the box. “I don’t think that will work. The liquorice is in contact with three other spells.”
Part of me wanted to yank the plants out, which should cure at least some of our issues. However, three epic fails with the box had taught me caution. Reaching in there could result in a giant hand descending out of the sky, crushing a few houses and a car or two. Maybe even killing people.
