Witcha Gonna Do? (Witchington #1)(69)
“But, Tild—” Birdie’s sneeze cuts off the rest of my name.
“It’s okay.” I take her hand and I swear I can feel the sizzle of magic waking up in the air around us, a live, palpable thing. “We can do this.”
Neither of them looks convinced, but Eli takes Birdie’s hand. “Maleficas omnium magicas veterum ac novorum nostram appellamus ad libertatem.”
The invisible electric magic shifts around us, and one of the tarot cards on the table flutters in the air before falling back down. Erik glances over and glares at us before turning his attention back to the communication portal.
“Close.” Birdie looks up at Eli and gives him a soft smile. “Maleficas omnium veterum ac novorum magicas appellamus . . . ah . . . ah . . . ah—” Birdie fights back the sneeze, her eyes watering as she goes still trying to fight it off, but she can’t. “Ah-choo.”
The lights in the train car get blindingly bright for a second before flashing out and leaving us all in the dark. Yeah, it feels a little spot-on for me too, but the universe is like that sometimes. You feel like you’re in the pit of despair and it can’t get worse? “Oh here,” the universe calls out, “let me prove you wrong.” And that’s how you end up standing in the dark facing down one of the most powerful witches in Witchingdom with absolutely no hope of making it out of there.
“Dad, everything’s under control. I’ve gotta go.” There’s a soft yellow glow around the portal and then it disappears right before Erik waves his hands and sets off a spell without even having to utter a word.
There’s a whoosh of magic, and the scent of fresh-brewed coffee fills the train car half a second before the lights blast back to life. Eli, Birdie, and I all exchange what-the-fuck eyebrow raises. Vance is still knocked out and magically duct-taped to a chair. There’s power and then there’s power. The oldest Svensen sibling definitely has the second one.
“Look.” Erik shoves his fingers through his dark hair roughly enough that it’s all spiked up. “I don’t want to do this. LeLe would—Well, that doesn’t matter, does it? Where’s the book?”
“I don’t know.” It’s the truth. For all I know, Gil is taking it to some undiscovered island in the Pacific Ocean to prep it for auction to the highest bidder. “Gil took the book and magicked his way out of here right after you got here.”
Erik starts pacing in front of Vance’s chair again and lets loose with a string of delightfully creative curses about Gil that I mostly agree with. The man does deserve to attend a troll dinner party as the main dish. Of course, none of that is going to get Birdie, Eli, Vance, and I out of this mess. My family is still frozen. Gil is gone. There’s no one left to help. We have to come to our own rescue.
That’s when I spot two of Birdie’s allergy pills from Griselda on the tarot table next to a glass of water.
Leaning in close to her, I lower my voice. “Your pills, you gotta swipe them.”
Her eyes go wide. “He’s watching.”
I lift an eyebrow in challenge. “And here I thought you had all sorts of sleight of hand skills.”
One side of her mouth curls up as we all brace our legs as the train takes a bend in the tracks at top speed. Yeah, that’s the Birdie I know and love.
“Sorry,” she says.
I have half a heartbeat to wonder what about before she stumbles forward, her foot landing hard on my bare toes. My yelp of pain is genuine and just enough to snag Erik’s full attention as Eli shifts his position to give Birdie cover as she reaches behind him and grabs the pills and downs them dry.
“What’s going on?” Erik asks.
“Nothing, just lost my balance,” Birdie says with a ditzy giggle. “I’m good now.”
“Well, thank the fates for that,” Erik grumbles as he resumes what seems to be his life’s mission of wearing a hole in the lounge car’s carpet, “since everything else has gone straight to shit.”
All but ignoring us since he’s no doubt decided we aren’t really a factor in the whole magical-power thing, he continues to pace and wonder out loud to himself about what in the hell he’s going to do now and something about how LeLe is going to kill him. Honestly, as a fellow talk-to-myself person, I kinda feel for him on this. Beyond the whole knocking out Vance and trying to steal back his own property, he seems like a nice enough guy. And if Leona is going to kill him, she’s gonna do it slow, so he is in for a world of misery. She looks sweet and innocent, but in reality, my next-to-oldest sister is mean as hell. Seriously.
Birdie starts, her voice barely above a whisper. “Maleficas omnium veterum . . .” She pauses, the tip of her nose twitching.
I’m holding my breath and trying to watch her fight off the sneeze with one eye while keeping watch on Erik with the other, which is about as easy as you’d expect.
Eli takes Birdie’s hand and continues the spell, “Ac novorum magicas appellamus ad . . . ad . . . ad . . .”
Birdie smiles up at him and leads the final part of the incantation, “Ac novorum magicas appellamus ad libertatem.”
Watching each other, they start again as the softest flickers of magic start to glow in my peripheral vision. I take Eli’s hand and start to recite the spell with them.
“Maleficas omnium veterum,” we say, our voices growing more confident with each Latin word, “ac novorum magicas appellamus ad ac novorum magicas appellamus ad libertatem.”