For the Love of Magic Read online

  Jolie closed her eyes. When she spoke, Libby started writing. “We’re all dancing in the sanctuary. It’s a ceremony but I don’t recognize it. Maeve and Nathalia are in the center and they’re dancing and kissing.”

  Maeve couldn’t suppress a guffaw. “A cat and a camel making out?”

  “No, it was actually you and the Abbess. We were in the sanctuary—the one right out there.”

  Libby and Nathalia exchanged a glance. “Maeve, she needs to concentrate. Details can be everything,” Nathalia admonished. “Go on Jolie; we were dancing and kissing in the middle of a ceremony.”

  “Then something changed,” Jolie continued. “I move a little to get a better look at them, because I realize it isn’t Nathalia and Maeve at all. It’s…a man and a woman. There’s blood everywhere, circles like ripples coming out from them. I am so afraid. The two people in the center are cutting at the air, slicing it, hacking through something. I try to leave; something horrible is going to happen. I can feel it, but I can’t move. I’m trapped by the lines of blood. Light, brighter than anything I’ve ever seen comes streaming through the lines the priest and priestess have cut in the air. A feeling of euphoria washes over me, but it doesn’t last. I can tell my ability is being stolen. The light isn’t shining on us, it’s pulled from us. It’s horrible. Then something steps through. I must have been screaming because JD woke me up.”

  Libby and Nathalia had stopped writing. They all three stared at Jolie, who had started to shake. Maeve put her arm around her, hugging her tightly and Jolie started to cry.

  SOFE?

  Maeve nodded. It could be. “Everything is going to be fine, Jolie. Nathalia will keep this from happening. Your ability allows us to see what could happen if we don’t do something to change the outcome. It’s not set in stone.”

  “That’s right. The gift of prophesy is a hard one to bear, but good can come from this. Maeve and I are familiar with this dark magic. We can keep this from happening.”

  Jolie shook her head no against Maeve’s shoulder. She spun to face her Abbess. “That’s just it. You can’t. You won’t. You’ll be dead. It’s your blood they use to let that thing out.”

  After Jolie went back to the outside world to be with JD, and Libby went back to the library, Maeve stayed to talk to Nathalia. Neither spoke for several minutes. Nathalia absentmindedly rubbed the scars on her arms while Maeve chewed her already too short thumbnail.

  Nathalia finally said, “The SOFE are here in Austin.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Apparently. Eddie showed me pictures that looked every much like a SOFE pentacle of evocation. The symbols were all marred to keep anyone from identifying them, but I knew right away. They didn’t just take some blood; they killed a virgin for it. That’s the murder that the Capacitors felt. She was a match for one of my marks.”

  Nathalia sat by Maeve in the window seat. The sun felt good on their backs. It had always burned away that cold drained feeling they had after an encounter with SOFE. They had dabbled in it in middle school. It was just play-acting; slumber party tricks. It was fun and rebellious and exciting. They gave it up as soon as the true dark nature became apparent. Michael saw something in Nathalia. He came for her blood on a regular basis, even when it wasn’t needed for a ritual. He liked to hurt her. She didn’t tell her friend until years later after the two were lovers. She could hardly hide the scars of his years of abuse while they were intimate. The small thin white scars started at her ankles and looked like tiny ladders up and down her body. They were so prevalent that most of the Daughters thought they were purposeful scarification, a body modification type thing.

  Maeve hoped for the best. “It’s just a coincidence that she was linked to us.”

  “I don’t think so,” argued Nathalia. “Michael’s involved. I can feel it. We need to know what they’re up to. If he’s involved, neither you nor I could get very far. I wish we had somebody on the inside.”

  Maeve rummaged around in her bag, took out something small, and put it in Nathalia’s hands. “I think we already do.”

  SWEET STEAM from fig preserves filled the industrial-sized kitchen. Jarring and canning might be a dying art form even in the South where it was once commonplace, but not with the Daughters. Every Ingenium learned. From Novice to Primo, the potion makers canned and jarred everything from hot sauce and pea relish to pickled okra and jelly. These weren’t magical concoctions but provided food for the whole coven and built a sense of community amongst them.

  Normally the kitchen bustled on a canning day, but today was special. Making sacred fig preserves was a magical rite. Only Ingenium Primo Ingrid and her top apprentice participated, doing everything from slicing the figs to labeling the cooled filled jars. Making the sacred fig preserves was not hard, but tradition dictated only the top two herbalists participate. Since increasing the recipe and cooking it together made the jam inconsistent, several batches cooked at the same time.

  Tara Kay, Sophomore closest to ascending to Primo, handled the figs. It was the most important step to the quality of the jam, followed closely by the actual recipe, which Ingrid did herself. Tara sliced the ones with thin skin, but pealed off the thick or ugly skin. Nothing but the best made it into the pot.

  Nathalia interrupted, “We need to speak with both of you when you have a stopping point.”

  Ingrid greeted Nathalia and Maeve, “Certainly. We should be able to take a break for a bit in just a sec. Let us get this last batch boiling and these jars filled and in the water bath. Here, you’ve never tasted nothin’ till you’ve had ‘em fresh.” She served the warm preserves on freshly made bread with tea and then got back to it.

  Nathalia and Maeve sat at the great table and watched them work. Tara Kay put the last of the ripe figs into the pot and Ingrid began adding the sugar, lemon, water, salt and a secret ingredient while Tara moved on to jars. The Mason glass jars, sterilized by a boiling hot water bath, now must be removed with ordinary kitchen tongs, and placed on a waiting towel. Their extreme heat quickly evaporated any water left after draining. Tara dumped all of the lids and bands into the boiling water pot and Ingrid put the funnel into one of the waiting jars.

  Then their paced quickened. They moved like a synchronized team. Tara, with her oven mitts on, held the jars and moved the funnel from one to the next. With her soup ladle, Ingrid filled the jars to the top lip in rapid-fire succession. Then they both used the back end of the lid lifters to remove any bubbles. Tara made sure no preserves remained on the lip of the jars and Ingrid used the magnet side of her lid lifter and placed the lids precisely on top. They twisted the bands tightly closed and used the jar tongs to place the whole thing back in the boiling water bath.

  The last jar in, Ingrid sighed and wiped the sweat from her head with the back of her hand. She snatched the kitchen timer off the counter and gestured to the sliding glass door. “Let’s take our break outside. I need some fresh air and a smoke.”

  The air outside was cool, a welcome relief from the hot kitchen. They sat on a couple of concrete benches that faced each other around a smoking area, the Ingenium on one, Maeve and Nathalia on the other.

  “So, what’s up? We’ve got fifteen minutes.” Ingrid set the kitchen timer beside her where it ticked away. She gestured to Tara Kay with two fingers to her mouth, the universal sign for cigarette.

  Tara took a gold case out of her pocket. Without looking, she flipped it open, retrieved two hand-rolled smokes and closed it all with one hand. She put the cigarettes to her mouth and lit them in one graceful movement. After Tara lit them, Ingrid took the one closest to her. They each took a big drag and let it out slowly.

  Nathalia broke the silence. “We know Tara’s been dealing to outsiders.”

  She didn’t react to the accusation but jumped on the Abbess about her name. “Don’t call me that. I am not dirt. I’m special. Special K to be exact, or Kay if you prefer, but not Tara.”

  Her apprentice hadn’t denied it so Ingrid admonished, “Kay, yo
u didn’t! After all those talks we’ve had about our sacred abilities, not to mention it’s against the Daughters’ rules.” She took another puff, shaking her head no as she blew out smoke scented with a combination of herbs.

  Tara Kay stared at them in defiance. She would use her magic as she saw fit and no coven was worth giving up the thing that made her special.

  Nathalia held out an empty vial.

  Tara Kay rolled her eyes at their evidence. “So what? I’m out, just like that, for breaking your ridiculous rules?”

  “Are you at least making something useful for others or just getting them high?” Ingrid asked, sounding hopeful.

  Tara Kay ignored her. “You’re wrong, you know,” she challenged the Abbess. Gesturing with her cigarette at Maeve, Tara Kay continued, “She uses her matchmaking ability on all kinds of outsiders. The healer goes to the hospital on a regular basis. You sit in on court cases to make sure they come out just right. I’m following our Rede, just like the rest of you. I use my ability to bring good to every deserving person I meet. I use my one life to do magic for the benefit of humankind. You are trying to keep me from doing that. I can’t spend my life making jam and hiding my real talent.”

  “You’re selling to the wrong people,” Nathalia admonished.

  Tara Kay raised her voice. “There are no wrong people.”

  Ingrid opened her mouth and Tara Kay knew it was to fuss at her for being rude to the Abbess. She put her hand up to stop Ingrid. She calmed her voice. “What we do is just an extension of nature. Every feeling humans have, every experience, is chemically driven or caused. Love is just a certain mix in the brain that gives a particular feeling. There is nothing else besides what happens in our own bodies. I make the mixtures that tell the brain to feel a certain way. I give people control over themselves.”

  Tara Kay knew they disagreed with her. The Abbess was closed-minded when it came to potion making. It wasn’t the first argument they’d had about her skills.

  “Do you remember making this?” Nathalia asked her.

  The Ingenium Sophomore signed “gimme” with her hand. Nathalia passed the vial to Tara Kay, who unscrewed the lid and smelled it. She nodded and shrugged at the same time and then flipped the vial up in the air and back to Nathalia.

  Nathalia held it up at eye level. “Who did you make this for and what’s it do?”

  Tara Kay took a long drag and blew it out slowly, thinking. A girl named Liz had come to see her at the club a few weeks ago. She said she’d heard Kay was the person to see about getting tailor-made drugs. She wanted something that would “thin the veil between this world and the next.” She wanted to commune with the old forgotten gods. Tara Kay hated when people tried to attribute religious meaning to physical highs. Liz had said there were seven of them, some men, and some women that would all take it at once, so Kay added a little something that would dissolve the separateness of self. They asked her to tweak it a few times, which she did, and eventually came up with something they really liked.

  Tara Kay decided she wouldn’t tell the Abbess anything. Nathalia and Maeve were always so high and mighty. They had no idea what she was capable of. They might never find out. She sat staring at them as her anger grew. She smoked but said nothing.

  Maeve jumped in, “We already know you made it for a group of SOFE. They are incredibly dangerous, Tara…Kay. They use blood magic, for Goddess’ sakes!”

  “Yeah, well, guess what Maeve?” She said the Vinculum’s name like a curse word. “So do I! Every potion you’ve ever gotten from me involved blood magic. I speak to the Great Mother Earth and she hears and answers me. Who are you to question the language we use, Sex Witch?” She addressed Maeve as if she were a filthy streetwalker, barely deserving of life, much less respect.

  Her admission that she used blood magic left Maeve and Nathalia looking dumbstruck. She looked at Ingrid. Tara Kay wanted to give her mentor a chance to stand up to the women who restricted her magic.

  Ingrid nodded and spoke softly. “She’s right. The Great Mother answers whenever she makes an offering of her own blood. It’s never more than a drop of two and there’s no violence so I don’t see any harm. We all must find our own way in this world.”

  Tara Kay barely contained her smirk. She couldn’t remember Ingrid ever taking her side over the Abbess’.

  Nathalia didn’t let up. “Your Primo should supervise what you’re making and know who you’re selling to. You’ve yet to take your final vows. Do you want to stay with the Daughters?”

  Tara Kay lifted her shoulder and dropped it. “Yeah, but I won’t stop using my ability. You know, maybe Ingenium don’t belong here. Our magic isn’t based in sex, but the earth. Maybe we would fit better with elemental witches. Maybe with the SOFE is where we belong.”

  “Maybe, but you don’t know what they’re capable of.” The egg timer rang. “Time’s up. What’ll it be, Kay?” Nathalia pressed. “Are you in or out?”

  A flash of defiance in her eyes, Tara Kay threw her roach down on the stone pathway and ground it out with her flip-flop as she stormed away. Ingrid took a last hit and then ground out the ember on the underside of her concrete seat. She and Nathalia nodded to each other then she took off after Kay.

  “WHAT WAS all that ominous head nodding about?” Maeve asked. She lay face down on her lounging lawn chair and her brown nipples, hard from the cold, peaked from between the strips of material that made up the back of her chair.

  On the next chair over, Nathalia lay on her back, with her face turned to Maeve. She longed to reach out and touch her friend’s curvy body, even if it was covered in goose bumps. She didn’t. They hadn’t been lovers since the night Maeve ascended to Primo. After that, sex was all business for Maeve.

  Nathalia was an enigma for all Vinculum: immune to their magic, a black void to their magical eye. Maeve and Nathalia often discussed the reason behind her blind existence to matchmakers. Sara practiced with Nathalia now and she confirmed it. Nathalia had no match in the world.

  Nathalia turned her face up to the sky, closing her eyes. “Tara Kay is stubborn. Even more than you. She doesn’t take orders and she doesn’t follow rules. Ingrid and I have known for a while that she was dealing to outsiders.” She said, quietly, “We decided to let it slide but that was before I knew the SOFE were in Austin.”

  “Then, she’ll go to them?”

  “Maybe. She’ll lead us to them.”

  “But they’ll kill her if they think she’s betrayed them!”

  “Don’t worry. That’s what the nodding was about. A while ago Ingrid found an old spell and she’s been perfecting it in secret. It allows her to trace a person’s location. She will be able to feel where Tara Kay is. Tara won’t even know she’s betraying them, but we’ll be able to follow her right to them.”

  The sun felt good on their skin, but the wind chilled. Tanning salons were solitary, and Nathalia and Maeve needed time together, so they tanned up on the roof. December was cold, even in Texas, though not freezing. More like October in the North. Neither woman had seen snow or ice since they were children.

  Thinking of their childhood made Nathalia smile. “Remember when it snowed that time when you were at my house?”

  “I was only supposed to spend half the night.” That’s what they called it when their parents had gone out to dinner and a movie and picked them up late after they’d gone to bed. Maeve and Nathalia always made a pact to beg their parents to let them stay the whole night if either of them woke when being taken from bed. They always woke up separate in their own beds. They tried to hold hands while they slept so that it would wake them up when the other was pulled. Maeve continued, “The roads were so bad that Mom and Dad actually changed their minds and let me stay.”

  “Then in the morning, we were so happy to wake up together but we really didn’t have any plans past that. We’d won, but we were bored. Momma made that sled for us and the rest of the day was a blur.”

  Maeve laughed. “Oh, shit. That t
hing was awesome. It was just a scrap of old linoleum with a bit of rope to hold on to. I can’t remember ever laughing that much.”

  “You saved me that day,” Nathalia reminded her. “I almost put my tongue on the metal swing set because Daddy said it wasn’t cold enough for it to stick. I believed everything anybody told me back then.”

  Maeve asked, “Remember when Renee’s dad told us that we could train our bodies to live on sunlight the way plants do?”

  “Of course,” Nathalia replied. “He was always so straightfaced. I could never tell when he was joking.” She shook her head in disbelief of her own gullibility. “My experiment didn’t go as well as I’d hoped.” Nathalia had immediately cut out everything but vitamin water for thirty days and lying out in the sun for three hours a day. She had made it for nine days before collapsing. She was taken to the hospital for starvation and sunburn. They both tried to moderate their sun exposure after that.

  “He was so upset when he brought Renee’ to see you. He just couldn’t believe that anyone would take something so silly so seriously. Thank Goddess we have Camilla now. I don’t think I could live without my sun tanning.”

  With an on-call healer, they were both addicts. There was nothing to keep them from it without the threat of skin cancer.

  Nathalia put her hand out, palm up, like a preteen boy at the movies with a girl he liked. “You know how much I love you, right?”

  Maeve didn’t hesitate to put her hand in Nathalia’s. “I love you too.”

  A cell phone rang.

  “You better get that. It could be the Chief.”

  Maeve nodded. Removing her hand from Nathalia’s, she reached under her chair. Rummaging through her clothes, she found her jeans where the tiny phone hid in the front pocket. She rolled over and then flipped open the phone.

  “Hello, Maeve speaking,” she answered. “Oh, hi, Aaron.” Maeve paused.

  Nathalia stiffened at the mention of a man’s name.