The Price Guide to the Occult(10)
“Eat something,” Apothia ordered before disappearing back into the kitchen.
Nor took the tiniest bite of tofu and bean sprouts before she pushed the bowl away and picked up the book. She recognized spells in Fern’s book as their family spells — each and every one with a price attached to it. There was the Weather Jinx, the Spell of Misfortune, Fire Scrying, and the Hex of Guilt, known to bring about hallucinations thanks to a helpful handful of those deceitfully pretty belladonna blooms. But there were other enchantments listed in Fern’s guide that Nor didn’t recognize. Something called Void of Reason claimed to grant the power of mind control, and the Revulsion Curse was supposed to suppress your appetite.
Nor closed the book. She’d been counting on the fact that the art of incantations and spell work had disappeared with Rona Blackburn upon her death in 1907. But looking at them here, Nor was suddenly beginning to have her doubts that that was true. Dread filled her stomach. Her mind filled with images she’d rather forget. The charred black of burned skin. Pools of blood. “What’s going to happen if she can actually cast these?” she heard herself ask.
“Nothing good, that’s for damn sure,” Judd replied, peering out at Nor behind a haze of smoke. “She’d have to commit some pretty terrible acts to perform magic that’s got nothing to do with her own Burden. And something just as terrible is bound to happen because of it.”
She was right. For Fern to practice magic outside her naturally bestowed Burden would require a sacrifice, the kind that caused great anguish. The kind of pain that Nor knew her mother would inflict on another without hesitation. It was likely she would find it quite entertaining, amusing even.
Nor nervously ran her fingers along the inside of her arm; even through the fabric, she could feel the thin keloids of scars there. “So what the hell do we do?” she muttered.
“Not too much to do, girlie,” Judd answered. “Not right this second at least.” She stood, shoved her feet into a pair of giant-size boots, and reached for her rain jacket. Antiquity pulled herself slowly from the floor, shaking the stiffness out of her arthritic joints. “Especially since I promised Harper Forgette I’d see what I could do about that cough of hers tonight.”
The Giantess and the wolfhound disappeared into the darkened yard. Nor flipped on the light switch beside the door. Behind her, she could hear the sounds of running water and Apothia humming to herself quietly in the kitchen.
Nor stared out at the trees, now illuminated by the triangle of light pouring from the porch light. Silently, she counted the lines of raised scars that marred her wrists and the crook of her elbows. She counted them until her hair no longer hung wet from the rain, until she no longer felt like she was choking on the pounding heart lodged in her throat.
It took a force of nature to drive pain away. And as Nor finally turned away from the door, she reminded herself that, while she may not have been such a force, her grandmother most definitely was.
The next morning the grass was wet and gleaming. The remains of yesterday’s rain shower dripped steadily from the pine needles. Bijou followed Nor down Meandering Lane but stopped just beyond the humming alpacas basking in the morning sunshine. It was a beautiful day, the sky a lapis lazuli blue, the leaves — dashes of red and gold and brown drifting across the pavement — the only sign that it was September, not April or March.
Along the side of the road were white yarrow, thistles, and a resilient geranium peeking out from beneath the gnarled root of a tree. Blue lupines swayed gently in the breeze. A few weeks ago, Kaleema had planted daffodil bulbs in the garden beds in front of their farmhouse. Come spring, the yard would be a mélange of yellows.
When Nor was young, she used to pretend daffodils were teacups. She’d have tea parties in the garden in front of the Witching Hour; Madge had once helped her stretch the quilt from her bed out across the dirt, and Nor had spent the day serving dandelion heads and handfuls of clover on the maple leaves she used as plates. Later, Madge had brought out cookies and sugary-sweet lemonade. While Nor had eaten, Madge had pulled her into her lap and woven garlands for Nor to wear in her hair.
It was one of the few happy moments Nor remembered from her childhood. She had no such memories of her mother. With Fern, kindness turned to malice far too quickly for it to be trusted. Causing people pain was a game to Fern, and Nor was often forced to play. It was a game Nor never won.
When Nor turned the corner, she found that the end of Meandering Lane had been transformed, as it was every other Saturday morning. The road, closed to any traffic, was a scattering of pop-up tents and folding tables. The usual locals and tourists ambled through the street. Mothers and fathers pushed small children in strollers as older siblings followed on bicycles. A young couple shared a cup of hot chocolate and cookies, warm and gooey, wrapped in crinkly white paper.
Eclectic pieces of installation art and handcrafted pottery were on display in front of the Artist Co-Op. Outside Theo’s mechanic shop, a collection of sea glass in shades of blue — azure and cerulean, cobalt and beryl — had been spread across a woven blanket.
“What do you mean, what’re they for?” Savvy scolded some poor passerby. “They’re pretty!” Savvy’s hair today was a sunset of hot pink and fiery orange, piled on top of her head in a mess of natural corkscrew curls.
Harper Forgette and Kaleema peddled their scarves and sweaters of alpaca wool beside Reuben Finch with his artichokes, rainbow chard, and parsnips, all of a size that surely only he could grow. Catriona, one of Nor’s former classmates, was selling smoked salmon and cedar grilling planks alongside her gentle — and equally pleasantly plump — mother. It wasn’t like they had ever been friends, really, and it seemed rather pointless to start pretending now, but Catriona waved, and Nor waved back.