Page 21 of Spellbound

“I put a spell on you, and now you’re mine.”

~ Winifred Sanderson, Hocus Pocus

Ben

Asher was glaring at me, his face bright red and full of impotent fury.

He looked scared, but at the same time, he looked like he wanted to murder me.

Why such a strong reaction? He’d just used magic that morning to save himself at the footbridge, and I strongly suspected he’d used it at that waterfall he fell from and other places when he’d needed it to save himself.

Magic was a part of him, and he’d grown up with it in his house all in his life, just like I had.

His own father had been a talented practitioner, and his grandma had a touch of craft too.

She may not have a lot of power, but still, it was in her bones and in her blood.

In other words, he had always known about magic, whether or not he “liked” it, so why was he trying to pretend differently now?

Was it whatever I had sensed inside him when we first met? That dark thing inside him that I’d startled on the road? I thought it was, and it was talking to him now.

His grandma said he didn’t like to talk about it, but there really was no choice.

If he didn’t talk to me, then there would be someone else coming along to talk to him, who might not be as willing to give him time to wrap his mind around all this as I was.

Besides, he was mine to deal with and no one else.

“We’re going to talk about this whether you like it or not,” I said, using a mild voice, completely unbothered by his little outburst, “so try your best to accept it.”

I knew he wanted to shout at me and fight me or storm away and run out of the house, but not only was he still unable to move, but he’d found out he could no longer speak either.

He was trembling with anger. I tried to imagine what he thought might be going on.

He was still glaring steadily back at me, not trying to say anything anymore, but this was intense.

I stepped out on the little front porch and took a deep, steadying breath. I wished my father was here to give me some advice. Then out of the ether, or maybe out of somewhere else came a thought, fully formed into my head.

The witch has spelled him not to believe anyone but her. You’ll have to break that spell first. He won’t listen—he can’t listen—until that spell is broken.”

Of course—that would explain so much. It was suddenly clear as to why he’d been ridiculously stubborn about everything. Why he’d made up fantasies in his mind to “explain” things about his father, when he couldn’t admit the truth. Or why he’d just dismiss things out of hand.

I had to break the spell—the curse, that was riding him so hard. And I had to do it right away, because I had a bad feeling about this. It felt like we were running out of time.

The question, of course, was who would have put a curse on him and why.

I could narrow it down to the ones who had bound his magic, or someone who was close to him.

Someone who had easy access to him. Perhaps someone he trusted.

His grandmother? Hard to believe, but my father loved the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle mysteries, and he loved the quote attributed to Sherlock Holmes: "When you’ve eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. ”

I had to at least keep that in mind.

When I went back inside, Asher was glaring at me, those gorgeous green eyes flashing and his hair falling over onto his forehead.

The look he gave me was daring me to do something, say something.

I was preventing him from speaking, so it was all managed with a lot of attitude, his furious face and flashing eyes—but it was still pretty impressive, for all that.

The change in his demeanor was getting worse, and it was beginning to bother me a little.

Up until I mentioned his mother, he had been his normal self—or what I thought was normal for him anyway.

I decided it was time to get started, but first I needed to see about getting rid of that curse.

On that dark road, it had appeared to me almost like an evil entity, moving and darting underneath his skin.

It peered out at me from his eyes before ducking quickly away again, and it had been much older than he was.

I waited another few seconds, took a deep breath and began again.

“We’ll table the discussion about your mother for a moment since it seems to be so hard for you and work up to it. Instead, I’m going to do a test to see if you’re under some spell or curse. Would that be all right?”

“No! Leave me the fuck alone. I’m not going to drink any stupid potion you give me.”

He’d drink it if I had to pour it down his throat.

A potion would help me see if he was being oppressed or cursed.

That would tell me if he was guilty and I needed to redo the binding spell to strengthen it, or if he was innocent and wrongly accused.

It might buy some time to take him and get the hell out of here if he turned out to be a warlock.

Because I wouldn’t see him hurt or killed.

I put a hand on his head and one on his heart and chanted a shortened version of the binding spell I’d used on that warlock I’d had to deal with not all that long ago.

It put him to sleep and would shore up the original spell but wasn’t designed to harm him.

I needed to think about all that he’d said.

I needed to figure out what it could mean.

Until I knew more, there was no way I could set him or his powers free.

He was breathing much more easily when I was done, so I waved my hand over him, sealing the spell and he sighed.

I bent over him to kiss his forehead. I couldn’t seem to help myself.

I didn’t like hurting him in any way, and I knew I hadn’t, but it felt a little like I was betraying him after making love to him the night before.

I still needed time to think. I needed him to settle down and not be afraid of me, but that was a tall order.

The spell I’d just said over him was making him totally relax to the point that he was in a kind of stupor.

I went out onto the front porch to give him some privacy and quiet and to let him rest. There was a danger in using too much magic at a time on someone, and he’d already been through a lot. The last half hour had been intense for both of us, so I had to give him a break.

We’d never even brought in all his things from the car yet, so I went out to bring in his computer bag.

Putting it down on the kitchen table, as he slept, sitting up on the couch, I sat down at the table to go through his bag.

I pulled out his laptop and plugged it in, since it needed charging.

While I was waiting, I rifled through some papers he had stuffed down in one of the pockets.

It was research he’d done, like he’d told me, and it seemed to be focused on the Home Guard of the Confederate states, like he’d mentioned before.

From skimming over what he’d copied, it looked like something that many people had already researched, so the problem was going to be coming up with a fresh angle to the thing, like he’d said—and he’d written those very words in the margins and notes too.

He seemed to be looking for something that hadn’t already been explored again and again and done to death.

Nothing I saw in his notes convinced me he’d found anything like that.

He didn’t have a password, which was odd, so I could see his file on the screen, labeled Home Guard.

He’d told me he had about twenty thousand words.

I clicked on the file to open it to get a better idea of what his plan for the paper might be.

But instead of anything about the Home Guard or the Civil War, I found only this line written again and again on page after page.

Some twenty something pages of the same line.

“Something wicked this way comes.”

Was that supposed to be some kind of fucking joke or had he truly lost his mind?

It had to be a spell. I tried to picture him sitting in his room, typing that line over and over, thinking he was making progress on his paper.

He would be happy about how far he’d gotten, and I just hated how cruel it was.

This was a curse, all right. A wicked one.

When I found out who was responsible, I’d take them apart, no matter who it was.

How was I going to tell him about this? He’d said he hadn’t gotten too far, but he’d made a start. To realize that all that time he’d been writing complete nonsense would be devastating to him, and I wished I could protect him from it in some way.

First, I was going to take away this fucking, evil-minded curse.

I went into the kitchen to get the jug of rainwater that Rosalyn kept at the back of the refrigerator.

I poured two cups of it in a pan and started heating it to a boil.

Meanwhile I pricked my finger and let a few drops of my blood drop into it.

I added some crushed coriander seed and some water hemlock and while it began to all boil together, I chanted a spell to remove all the poison.

I took it off the heat and let it cool on one of the other unlit burners and went back to set my candles around him.

I would use candles as a focus, and something symbolic to concentrate on to help me access the etheric flow.

I didn’t do much spell work as a rule, and I was a little out of practice.

As with any spell, the ability to produce the desired or intended result depended on the practitioner’s intent and his skill, as well as his ability to access and use the etheric flow.

That term referred to the field that surrounded and penetrated the physical body of all the beings on earth.