Page 7 of The Fang Arrangement (Celestial Witches #2)

T he curtain in my bedroom rattles as the gossamer material shifts to the side, and sunshine floods my room as Gus rustles around.

I can tell he hasn’t slept with the way he’s shifting back and forth, his small paws clicking the aged floor.

“Gus, what?” I groan as I pull the patchwork quilt up to my face.

“You need to get to work on the spell he sent you home with immediately,” he says in a sharp tone.

“I will. I don’t need to get started at sunrise.”

He jumps on the bed and I’m not sure how it’s possible for a raccoon to frown, but that’s what he’s doing as he grabs the quilt away from my face.

“Did you even bother reading the whole thing? Or did you just go into this completely blind, just like you did when you made an unbreakable vow with a vampire you know nothing about?”

I want to tell my familiar to get off my back, but there’s also this guilt in my stomach that knows he’s right.

I messed up big time and I have no idea why I did it. There’s no logical reason, besides what would happen if I face the vampire council. It’s almost like I was under some sort of haze the entire night when I agreed to this stupid arrangement.

“The spell must be conducted with the sun high in the sky. I’m hoping you have some moon water at the ready?

” he asks, irritation and urgency clear in his tone, even as he speaks to me telepathically.

“I don’t know why this vampire is offering you a spell to protect yourself from other vampires, but you’d be an absolute fucking idiot not to take it.

The quicker you have some protection, the safer you’ll be. ”

I’ve never seen Gus afraid of anything, while he’s always been protective of me in his own way, this is beyond anything I’ve seen from him.

Familiars are still a bit of an anomaly in the magical community.

I don’t know how old he is or where he came from.

Just that one day, he scratched on my door and told me we were magically connected and that he wanted a bowl of ramen.

We’ve been stuck together ever since, and not even at my lowest have I seen him this frantic.

“What do you know about vampires?” I ask.

A small chuffing noise leaves his throat as he hops off the bed and heads for the door.

“Never invite them in. And never trust them,” he says with an eerie finality as he scurries to the kitchen.

None of it makes sense, but Gus’ worry has me on edge. Have I put us in that much danger?

I groan, pulling myself out of the bed. With my wand in my hand, I flick my wrist, my hair braiding itself and a T-shirt and pair of jeans flutter across the room and land on my bed.

Hecate, I love magic.

My magic may be the reason I’m in a bit of a pickle right now, but something tells me if I was a human I’d find myself in sticky situations too. But I can’t imagine life without magic, without a coven. It’s who I am, and if anything, I’m on a quest to become even better at it.

Maybe I agreed to be Warin’s on-call-witch because he sees potential beyond my elemental magic, or maybe I’m an idiot like Gus says. Or maybe it has something to do with this magnetic pull I’m trying to ignore that I feel toward the manipulative vampire.

I grab a quick breakfast, the grimoire under my arm as I head outside, ready to hopefully master this spell.

I shouldn’t be surprised when I head outside that all the garden fairies know what happened last night. But I’m currently surrounded by magically grown flowers, a pissed off raccoon, and a mob of garden fairies that look like they want to start a riot.

“Are we even safe here? I heard vampires love to drain fairies dry. We’ll be the first targets,” Tabitha whines in her high-pitched fairy voice.

“My protection spell of the garden will keep you safe.”

“Yeah, what about at night?” Domingo questions.

“You all can sleep in the cottage at night,” I suggest, trying to save myself from a mutiny.

“The fuck you mean they can sleep inside the cottage?” Gus seethes.

A frustrated sound slips out of me as I rub the back of my neck.

“I need to work on this spell. You’re all still safe here, and well, if you don’t think you are, you can try to find somewhere better,” I say, standing up straight and immediately feeling guilty right after. I should turn around and apologize, but Gus nips at my ankle, making me jump.

“Forget about the winged freeloaders. You have a spell to master.”

“Right,” I say, sitting on the old worn bench, surrounded by my rose garden. I open the grimoire.

Gus sits next to me, though he looks like he’s about to doze off by the way he’s slumped against the armrest.

With each delicate turn of the page, I read the looped words.

I’m not sure if it’s because she was powerful, but as I read it’s almost like I can feel her presence around me as I go through her spell.

It seems simple enough, the incantation, the time of day, the swish of your wand.

The only thing that complicates everything is the last line.

Vampire blood is essential for the spell to take. It doesn’t matter if it was taken or willingly given.

The object you wish to bless protection on must be submerged in a mixture of moon-blessed water and diluted vampire blood before the spell can even be cast.

Why give me the ring or spell at all? Unless he was setting me up to fail. Stubbornness rises up in my chest. There’s this constant need to prove myself, and I don’t like the idea of him having the upper hand on me.

Wait…

I open the book back up and re-read the page.

It doesn’t need to be willingly given! I jump off the bench, startling Gus awake as I run back into my cottage and grab the dress from last night.

There were just enough spots of vampire blood on the dress from when the vampire was staked.

The vampire who got me into this whole fucking mess—that I absolutely did not kill.

When I’m back outside with the dress unscrewing the lid of moon water, Gus is rubbing over his eyes and snout.

“What’s this?”

“Vampire blood. It’s the last thing I needed,” I tell him, feeling almost manic as I drop the edges of my dress into the moon-blessed water and watch as a small tendril of blood spreads throughout.

“Will it be enough?” Gus asks, and I give him a shrug as I put different patches of the dress in the water, trying to get as much blood as possible.

I take off the ring, and plop it into the now slightly pink tinted jar, and watch as the water makes it look larger than it actually is, until it finally settles on the bottom.

Based on the witch's instructions, the jar needs to be in direct contact with the sun, so I scoop it up and make my way to the meadow until I reach an outcropping and place the jar on a stack of rocks and take a deep breath.

It’s serene in the meadow, quiet minus Gus’ panted breaths and the buzzing of the pollinators in the meadow.

My wand is firmly in my hand and I whisper the incantation to myself one last time before getting down on my knees and staring at the jar.

“Okay. Here goes nothing.” Deep breath. “Protect thee who wears this ring. Shield them from the demons of night. Strengthen their mind from evil delusions and protect them from an unwanted bite.”

I flick my wrist one last time, the end of my silver wand pointing at the jar and I watch in fascination as the jar turns a shade of deep red, nearly black, before shifting back to clear.

The exhale I let out is dramatic and Gus looks at me suspiciously as I unscrew the top and dig out the ring. It looks and feels the same. Even when I slide it back on my finger, nothing changes and I wonder if I fucked the spell up.

“Do you think it worked?” I ask Gus.

“Let’s fucking hope so. Judge Judy is on and I need lunch,” he complains, rushing back to the house.

The sun winks against my ring and hope fills me. Maybe I really did this right on the first try, all by myself. Or, I’ve made a fool out of myself and I’ve disappointed the very witch who came up with the spell to ward herself against vampires.

I guess only time will tell.