Spellbent Read online

  “I’d say so,” my familiar agreed.

  “Please follow me over to my desk,” Philip said, gesturing toward the first banker’s cube.

  I got up and carried my jar and Pal to the chair on the other side of his desk. Philip was staring squarely at the blotter in the middle of his desk, as if he was afraid he might accidentally start staring at my face or arm.

  “So, is… is that some kind of raccoon?” Philip asked.

  “No, he’s a ferret. Weasel family.”

  “Oh. He’s got that little bandit mask, and, uh… well.” He cleared his throat helplessly. “What size box do you want to rent?”

  “Big enough to hold this.” I set the jar on his desk. “Plus some smaller stuff like a change purse and a set of keys.”

  “Oh.” He eyed the jar as if it might be a bomb. “What’s that?”

  “Personal effects.” I shrugged. “Nothing explosive, poisonous, illegal, or contagious.”

  “Oh. Well, we have a five-by-five-by-twenty-four box that should hold that. It’s forty dollars per year, payable in full in advance. We only take cash if you don’t have an account with us. And I’ll need to see your ID.”

  “That’s fine.” I dug out my change purse, and he got out the paperwork for me to fill out and sign. I paused at the home address and telephone number blanks, then proceeded to write in Mother Karen’s information.

  After I paid the rental fee, the young man went into the vault and returned shortly with a long, narrow box. It had keys in two locks in the top.

  “Here you go,” he said. “It takes both keys to unlock this. We keep one key here, and I’ll give the other to you. If you lose your key, we have to drill out the lock, and that’s pretty expensive. I think it’s like a hundred dollars.”

  “Gotcha.” I finished the form, signed it, and pushed it across the table to him. He undid both locks on top of the box, opened the lid, and passed the second key to me. I put the jar, my car keys, and my cell phone in the box, then pulled all the credit, ID, and bank cards out of my change purse and laid everything but my driver’s license alongside the jar. I shut the lid; it locked automatically with a hollow click.

  “Is there anything else I can do for you before I take this to the vault?” Philip asked.

  “Do you have a blank envelope and a regular stamp I could buy from you? And maybe a blank piece of notepaper?”

  “Uh, sure.” Philip opened his desk drawer and found an envelope and stamp, then pulled a piece of paper out of the feed tray of his printer. He glanced at my bandaged arm and bit his lip. “Don’t worry about paying me; it’s just a stump—I mean stamp! Stamp.”

  He looked utterly mortified as he carefully set the items down on the desk in front of me.

  “Thanks.” I licked the stamp and stuck it on the envelope, shook his trembling hand, and took the envelope and paper over to the stand that held the deposit slips. After I addressed the envelope to Mother Karen, I began to write a note:

  Karen,

  I realize you can’t do anything on my behalf until this is over with, but hopefully you can hang on to the key and ID until I can see you again. If I die or get put in prison or disappear for more than half a year, please go to the Ohioana on High to get the contents of my safe-deposit box. What’s in there will need some expanding, but there are some movies and books your kids might enjoy. One of the teens might like the TV and stereo. If not, have a garage sale!

  Otherwise, I will see you soon to get this back from you.

  Thanks and all my best, Jessie

  P.S. If you go get my stuff, make sure you look like me!

  I folded the key and my driver’s license inside the letter and sealed it all inside the envelope.

  “Do you think that’s safe?” Pal asked.

  Not a hundred percent, no. But if something happens she has to have some way of getting to this stuff, right?

  “But your driver’s license—”

  —is kinda useless at this point. It’s a pain for me to drive one-armed right now, and it’s not like I can write a check or use my credit card again until this is over. All the license is gonna do is tell the local cops who Jam. I’d rather just be able to smile sweetly, tell them I’m Jane Smith and I lost my cards in whatever horrible accident mangled me.

  I stuck the envelope in my back pocket and went outside. I stood on the sidewalk, feeling—and probably looking—a bit lost.

  “What’s the matter?” Pal asked.

  I guess it’s time for me to disappear, I replied. And I’m wondering where I can find a blood sample from a nasty woman.

  “Well, your other option besides finding an unpleasant person who deserves a bit of bad luck is to find someone so well off that a bit of bad luck won’t matter to them,” Pal said. “And this looks like a well-to-do neighborhood.”

  It is, I agreed. Old Worthington residents mostly aren’t hurting for money.

  “Well, surely the library over there has public restrooms, doesn’t it? You might as well take a look inside. And really, you should do this as soon as you can. No doubt Jordan’s agents know your current location because you used your cards at the ATM.”

  All right… I suppose I’m bound to find something with blood on it one way or the other in the women’s room. I guess if the Fates don’t hand me a bitch, I’ll just have to look for the fanciest napkin in the bin and hope I’ve chosen correctly.

  I looked skyward and said a brief prayer to whichever friendly spirits might be nearby: Okay, I don’t want to have to poop all over a decent person’s day. And after the shitty few days I’ve had, is it too much to ask for a break here? I hope not. Amen.

  I paused. P.S. It’d be swell if I didn’t have to handle a stranger’s tampon. Thanks much.

  I crossed the bank’s parking lot to the library’s lot, which was full of Volvos and SUVs of one sort or another. I fell in behind a group of middle school students and went into the building. The restrooms were past some short stairs to my left by the classrooms.

  I was up the stairs and nearly to the door when I heard a little girl start throwing a tantrum inside.

  “No! I want SpongeBob!” the little girl shrieked. I heard the hollow rap of small shoes kicking the counter.

  I pushed open the restroom door and cautiously stepped inside. A well-dressed woman was trying to tend to a three-year-old girl in denim shortalls with a nasty scrape on her knee who was sitting by one of the sinks. A damp paper towel, pink with the little girl’s blood, lay on the counter nearby. The woman held a tan fabric first-aid strip; the girl was pushing the woman’s arm away indignantly.

  “I want SpongeBob!” the child demanded.

  “Honey, I don’t have any SpongeBob Band-Aids— come on, I need to put this, on your knee to keep the germs out. Stop being silly!”

  What are the odds we could conjure up a SpongeBob SquarePants Band-Aid for the kid? I wondered to Pal.

  “SpongeBob isn’t in my repertoire,” Pal replied darkly. “And Fates willing, he never will be.”

  The woman finally wrestled the bandage onto the little girl’s knee and carried her out of the restroom past me, the child shrieking at the indignity of it all.

  The bloody paper towel lay forgotten and forlorn on the counter. I approached it, holding my ear.

  “Can I use kid blood instead of adult blood?” I asked.

  “I don’t see why not,” Pal replied.

  “Well, then looks like somebody out there still likes me,” I replied. “At least enough to save me from the creeping horror of used feminine hygiene products. What now?”

  “Pick up that paper towel and take it with you into a stall,” he said.

  I did as he asked, awkwardly latching the door behind me with the towel still in my hand. “Should I sit or stand?”

  “Whichever best helps you concentrate. And you will need to concentrate very hard to get this to work,” he replied.

  I sat down on the toilet. Pal hopped off my shoulder onto the top of the paper dispe
nser.

  “All right,” said Pal. “I need you to focus on the child’s blood. Concentrate. Tease out the spiritual essence lingering in the dying cells. Can you feel it?”

  “Yes.” I could feel the child in her mother’s arms, still wailing and kicking as her mother carried her back to the family SUV, SpongeBob utterly forgotten, but the girl’s fury still in full foam because she couldn’t have ice cream.

  “Keep focusing on the child’s essence. Think of it as a cloak you could wear to hide yourself, and focus on your own essence cloaking the child. Keep that image in your mind, keep focusing, and repeat after me: Vestri animus Ut mei, meus animus ut vestri, os meus phasmatis, os meus vomica..

  I stared unblinking at the bloody paper towel as I quietly repeated the chant, over and over. The towel began to darken, harden, the edges beginning to glow and smoke.

  “… Os meus vomica—”

  The paper towel exploded in a shower of purple sparks. Startled, I ducked and slipped sideways off the toilet, shaking my hand to put out the flames I was sure had engulfed my flesh. Then I realized my hand didn’t hurt, and I stared at my pink, unburned palm. The paper towel hadn’t even left ashes behind.

  “Did—did it work?” I asked.

  Pal had only narrowly avoided getting knocked off his perch. He looked me up and down. “Yes. I believe that worked nicely. You’ll have to do that again this time tomorrow, maybe sooner if you perform a lot of other spells in the meantime. That sort of thing can make this counter-charm wear off. And to make best use of this, we should hie ourselves to wherever you plan to go.”

  I got up and Pal jumped back onto my shoulder. When I pushed out of the stall, I saw that a teenage girl in a Worthington Cardinals T-shirt had come into the restroom. The girl was standing with her back to the door, staring at me like I’d just beamed down from Mars.

  Bet she heard me chanting, right? Or the explosion? Or me talking to you just now? I thought to Pal.

  “Any or all of those are likely,” Pal replied. “To be safe you should do a memory-wipe charm.”

  Cooper, for all his delighting to push the limits when it came to public displays of magic, had long ago made sure I learned a reliable, simple charm for erasing the last two minutes of a mundane’s memory. It was, literally, a snap.

  Trouble was, I had lost my desire to play by the governing circle’s rules.

  I noticed a pink plastic watchband on the girl’s right wrist. “Hello there! Do you have the time?”

  “Uh. Yeah.” The girl nervously looked down at her watch. “It’s four thirty.”

  “Jimmy crickets! We have time to catch the bus!” I replied, putting on a maniacal smile. “And we just looove the bus, don’t we, Mister Weezypants?”

  The girl backed out of the restroom and ran like hell.

  “‘Mister Weezypants’?” Pal said as the door swung shut. “You shouldn’t provoke people like that. And you should have erased her memory.”

  “Foo, she didn’t see that much,” I replied. “And if I can’t mess with people in my condition, what good is it being armless and half blind and homeless and nearly broke, anyway?”

  chapter eleven

  Bus, Bar, and Box Store

  Despite my cavalier words, I left the library as quickly and quietly as I could. Pal and I crossed Granville Road and walked down High Street to the post office, where I dropped my letter to Karen into one of the big mailboxes out front, abandoning it to the whims of fate and the postal carriers.

  We walked a bit farther down High to the bus stop. The bench under the Plexiglas shelter was already crowded with summer-quarter Ohio State students heading back to campus, so I leaned against the signpost to wait for the southbound #2 to arrive.

  “Out of curiosity, where are we going?” asked Pal.

  Well, I replied, I think the first thing I need to do is talk to the Warlock, if he hasn’t blown town entirely. And if he’s split, I need to see if I can track him down. If anyone has any ideas about what’s happened to Cooper—and why—it’s his own brother.

  I heard the bus rumbling down the Street and dug in my pocket for six quarters. Unless they’ve changed the schedule, this should eventually drop me just a couple of blocks from his bar in Victorian Village.

  “I don’t think this is a very good idea,” replied Pal. “Jordan’s men have surely pressured and monitored the Warlock as much or even more than they’ve done to you. The anathema counter-charm won’t hold if they’ve set up specific detection spells near the bar.”

  Well, it won’t hurt to take a look around, will it? I asked. I really do need to talk to him about everything that’s happened. And you’d be able to sense the spells and warn me away, wouldn’t you?

  “I could sense most spells, yes,” he said, “but I can make no guarantees I’d be able to sense everything.”

  I was starting to feel seriously annoyed. Well, do you have a better idea?

  Pal was silent for a moment. “No, I’m afraid not. I suppose we might as well take a careful look around.”

  The bus ground to a hissing halt in front of the stop. Pal and I got on after the college students; the driver either didn’t notice Pal, or didn’t care one way or the other.

  The bus made its leisurely way down High Street and finally dropped us off at Fifth at five thirty. High Street was bumper-to-bumper with rush-hour traffic. I crossed the street after the light turned red and headed west down Fifth toward the Warlock’s bar, Lingham Liquors Lounge.

  I was a whole block away when the anathema sphere surrounding the bar became visible. The entire building was engulfed in a throbbing red glow that made my eye ache and my ears ring. Looking at it for more than a second made me want to throw up.

  “Man,” I said, leaning against a nearby brick wall and closing my eye, hoping the nausea would pass. “That’s as subtle as a bullet in the head.”

  Pal couldn’t look at it, either. “It’s unsubtle, but strong. I don’t sense anything else at work here, but what else could they possibly need? No Talent can go near the place, and the Warlock can’t get out.”

  You think he’s still in there? I asked.

  “They wouldn’t bother warding an empty building.”

  What about his mundane regulars and staff?

  “Well, that spell’s nearly as powerful as the isolation sphere they cast to contain the Wutganger. It’s bound to make approaching the bar a fairly anxious prospect for anyone even remotely sensitive to such things.”

  I’m glad to see I’m not the only one they felt like destroying financially, I thought bitterly. Is there any way to get past it?

  “With magic, there’s almost always a way,” Pal replied. “But this one’s going to be sticky. I have to give this a good hard think.”

  And I have to get some tea, and something to eat, I replied, still feeling shaky and headachy. And then I really need to find a place to crash for the night.

  I backtracked down Fifth Avenue to Victorian’s Midnight Café. I ordered an iced tea, an oatmeal cookie, a grilled egg sandwich, and a small cup of water for Pal at the counter, juggled the drinks and dessert, and sat down in one of the comfy purple chairs by the window to wait for the waitress to bring out the rest of my order.

  An eighteen-or nineteen-year-old white kid with dreadlocks and a scruffy soul patch was up on the stage in the corner, reciting a rambling poem about Che Guevara, John Lennon, and, near as I could tell, marijuana. He finished his verse to a smattering of applause, then gathered up his canvas messenger bag and went to the community bulletin board. He pulled a flyer with tear-off tags out of his bag and tacked it up among the ads for yoga lessons and used sofas and bicycles. I could just make out the words ROOMMATE WANTED at the top of his paper.

  Wait here and keep anyone from taking my seat, would you? I thought to Pal.

  “All right,” replied Pal, hopping off my shoulder onto the back of the chair.

  I got up and approached the dreadlocked kid. I got a good whiff of him when I was thre
e feet away. Yep, that poem had most definitely been about marijuana.

  “Hi, I’m Jessie,” I said. “You’re looking for a roommate?”

  He looked startled. “Whoa, did you have an accident or something?”

  “Yes, it was extremely accidental, So, you need a roommate? What’s your name?”

  “Uh, yeah, I’m Kai. Me and my buds, we have this house on East Avenue, and this guy Boomer just totally bailed on us, I think he was in trouble with the cops or something—”

  “Is it a room to share with somebody else, or is it a private room? ‘Cause I need my own room, and my own bathroom would be sweet.”

  “Well, see, Boomer was in the attic room, and that’s got its own bathroom, it’s just a sink and a toilet and a shower but sometimes the shower don’t work right, but Mikey wanted it so we were gonna rent out Mikey’s old room on the third floor—”

  “Can I talk you into letting me rent the attic room and have Mikey stay put?”

  “Uh. Well, see Mikey and I go way back and he was really cool and stuff when I was having trouble with my folks and so I really owe him—”

  “I can make it worth Mikey’s while. And yours. Everybody in the house would find me to be a very worthwhile attic roommate.”

  “Like how?” he asked.

  “Like I can get you as much liquor as you want, whenever you want.. For free,” I replied. “And if you, perhaps, were into cultivating certain species of indoor plants that have been a bit reluctant to grow, I can help with that, too.,,

  “Are you a farmer?” he whispered.

  “Better.” I leaned in close to his ear and spoke low. “I’m a witch. The real kind. I can grow anything.”

  “You’re shitting me,” he said doubtfully.

  “Nope, not one bit. I’ll give you and your roommates a free demonstration at your place, say in two hours?”

  He agreed, and gave me a copy of his flyer with his phone number and address. I folded it against my thigh and stuck it in my back pocket.

  The waitress arrived with my grilled egg sandwich soon after I reclaimed my seat by the window.