Tethered 01 - Catalyst (16 page)

Crossing the room, I snagged it up and went back to the book. I began drawing a thick circle on the dark hardwood floor, making my way around the table where I’d set everything else. It was far from perfect, the line was shaky and the circle was sort of oblong, but it would work. I hoped. I didn’t need any crazy mojo coming after me while I was trying to do this spell.

Stepping inside of the circle, I closed it behind me and sat the chalk on the table beside the ingredients I’d gathered. Glancing back at the book, I read what I was supposed to do next.

Pour the rubbing alcohol into the casting pot.

I reached for the little glass bottle that had nothing besides
alcohol
written on it and prayed it was the right thing. Binks stood and began stretching. He moved to sit on the table beside where I’d set the casting pot as though he was curious now about what I was doing. His tail wrapped around his paws as he stared at me fixedly.

“I don’t know what I’m doing, I know,” I said to him as I fumbled to twist the cap back onto the bottle, which should be empty, but still appeared to be entirely full. “Honestly, I don’t even know why I’m attempting this. If Kace is right, it won’t even work.”

Binks meowed at me, and I was nearly positive it was a meow of encouragement. I scratched him behind the ears as thanks, and then turned my attention back to the book.

Light the candle and set it beside the pot. Toss the lit match into the rubbing alcohol.

I bent three matches horribly before I was finally able to get one to light properly. I put it to the candlewick first and then hesitated before tossing it into the alcohol. My palms grew sweaty as I held the tiny match between my fingertips. I took in a deep breath, silently prayed that it wouldn’t blow up in my face, and then tossed the lit match in. My eyes closed at some point in preparation for an explosion that never came. When I opened them, the casting pot had reddish-blue flames flickering across its top. I released my breath slowly and swiped my hands across my shorts before glancing back over to the book.

Hover your hands over the casting pot while staring into its fires and say:

Blazing power of revealing fire

Expose what cannot be seen

Banish the hidden, this is my desire

Help me see what is unseen

Xs 3

I did as the book said. The words felt strange at first, but after the second time, they lost their oddness. And by the third, the fine hairs across my body stood on end and something shifted in the air. A sudden heat flared from within me, running over my body and making my breath hitch in my throat. Binks meowed three times after I said the final sentence for the last time, and a loud crack of thunder clapped directly above the house, nearly making me pee my pants. At the same time as the thunder, the fire went out on both the black candle and the pot.

My heart raced, and I covered it with both hands in an attempt to keep it in and slow it down all at the same time. I laughed nervously as I stared at Binks and listened to the storm outside. The entire clichéd moment of thunder at that exact moment was incredibly laughable. Same as Binks’s meows.

“This is crazy,” I said as I took in long, calming breaths to slow the rapid pace of my heart and shook my head. “I can’t believe I did this.”

Quickly, I began to clean up everything and put things back in their place. Without thinking of grabbing a towel or something first, I reached out and gripped both hands around the pot to move it back to its rightful place on the shelf. I jerked my hands back upon contact, not because it was hot like it should have been, but because it was cold. Icy cold, as though it had held no fire within it at all moments ago. I wondered if it had something to do with the metal as I placed it back onto the shelf and turned off the light.

Within minutes, I was changed into my pajamas and crawling into bed, listening to the crazy storm that had seemed to come from nowhere brew above the house. I hated thunderstorms. And I especially hated being alone during one. Too bad Vera had decided to ditch me before her two weeks were up. I fell asleep wondering what had driven her away and if that spell I’d attempted would show me anything.

I woke the next morning to the alarm on my cell at eight. I’d set it the previous night because today was my first day of work at Spellbinding Reads and I didn’t want to be late. Yawning and stretching in bed, I sat up and stared at Binks’s curled-up frame resting at the foot of my bed. He looked so sweet. After scratching him between the ears, I slipped from bed and headed to the bathroom for a shower.

My shower didn’t last nearly as long as I would have liked, because Binks began frantically scratching at the closed bathroom door and meowing at the top of his lungs for no apparent reason. Freaked out by it, I hurried and got out as quickly as I could to see what his problem was. When I opened the bathroom door, I expected him to be hurt or something, but all I saw was him sitting and staring at me intently.

“What’s the matter with you?” I asked him with my hands on my hips. He ignored me and started toward the stairs. “Good grief, are you really that hungry?”

I descended the stairs to follow him, grumbling all the way. When I rounded the corner into the kitchen, what I saw made me stop dead in my tracks.

Strange black and gray symbols floated in the air, hovering just above the trash can. I took a step into the kitchen, mesmerized by them. They appeared to be made of some sort of smoke, instantly reminding me of the caterpillar from
Alice in Wonderland
and how he’d made the vowels out of smoke in that one scene. I inched farther into the room and noticed Binks sitting to the side of the trash can, staring at the same floating symbols I was with an incredible dislike glaring in his slanted eyes and the hair on his back standing on end.

“What are they?” I whispered aloud.

An overpowering desire to reach out and touch one of the symbols, which upon closer inspection resembled skulls and bones but blurred, gripped me entirely. I extended a hand out just as the memories from last night and the spell I’d attempted to cast flashed through my mind. Was this what had drove Vera away so quickly? Was this what the spell was revealing to me? I licked my lips and bent down slightly to get a closer view of the oddities floating above the trash can. Just as my fingertip nearly brushed one symbol, Binks hissed and I jerked back like I’d been bitten.

“Stop it!” I scolded him. He straightened and sauntered just a few feet away from the trash can with more attitude than I thought any animal should have.

I reached out again and this time, touched one. My fingertips didn’t slip right through it like I’d thought they would. Instead, a vision played out before my eyes like a movie clip.

Someone with dark hands mixed a reddish powder together with what looked like dirt in an old stone bowl. They mumbled something in a language I couldn’t understand as they continued to mix, and I was certain I was listening to the voice of an old woman. Everything the old woman had been mixing was then scooped into a black drawstring bag using some sort of spoon made of bone.

Her dark fingers pulled both strings to close the bag and handed it off to hands of the same color, but larger and less delicate. Male hands. They cradled it carefully as they carried it out of a house, across a crumbling front porch, and inside an older black truck where it was then tossed into the passenger seat. The drive was far, but soon the truck engine was cut off and the male hands gripped the bag once more, stuffing it into a loose-fitting jean pocket.

The man’s hands retrieved it from within the pocket moments later and spread the dark powder across the floor just inside the front door to my house. Another few sentences were mumbled in the same strange language—this time in a voice I swore I recognized, but couldn’t place. A thump coming from someplace inside the house sounded, startling whomever it was, and he dumped the remaining contents onto the floor, and then closed the door as he left. Time sped up. Sunrise brightened the floor surrounding the mixture and a pair of bare feet with neon green toenails descended the stairs.

“Seriously?” Vera said hotly. “What a freaking mess!”

Her feet disappeared only to reappear a moment later, along with a broom and a dustpan. She swept the mess up, managing to only step in it twice and have to stop in her cleanup to brush the bottoms of her feet off. The mess was then dumped into the trash can.

My lungs struggled for air as my regular vision came back. I choked and gasped as I tried to catch my breath. My heart pounded too fast within my chest, and my skin broke out in a cold sweat. The symbols faded away into nothing as I continued to stare at them. What the heck had that been?

I found my phone and called the one person who would know what that crazy powder had been and why it had been placed there—Kace. He didn’t pick up. Instead, I got his voicemail. I left him a message telling him I was working at Spellbinding Reads today, but that I needed to talk to him about something later. My heart was still pounding from what I’d seen, and I recoiled away from the trash can.

“Here, these just came in. Can you put them over there on display somehow?” Admer paused in what he was saying and gestured to the mess that was the front desk. “That way they’re easily found. I promised a friend of mine I’d sell her odd Celtic music.”

“Umm, sure,” I said, taking the stack of CDs from his hands and glancing around. “I think I’ll start with organizing the desk first, though. Then I’ll find a place to put these. And why are you calling it odd, isn’t that what we’re listening to now?”

Admer smirked at me. The expression seemed out of place on his normally serious face. “Tis true.”

I spent nearly two hours riffling through everything that had been scattered across the front desk, weeding out the trash and creating folders for all of the receipts that had been tossed around. I was just getting ready to start placing things neatly back on the desk the way they should be, when my cell vibrated in my back pocket. It was a text from Vera. I smiled when I realized it was her, glad things hadn’t been too weird between us since she’d left.