Trio of Sorcery Page 2

  She had Memaw cut her hair boyishly short, but nothing would get him to stop. Finally she decided she was going to curse him.

  It wasn’t hard to get “something” from him. She used her big vocabulary for once, standing where the teachers could see her, but not necessarily hear her, and started taunting him. Finally, as she had known he would do, he flew into a rage and came at her.

  She’d been dodging worse things than him for two years at that point (though never, never as bad as the things she encountered once she was a Guardian). She was coming into her magic, and arcane critters smelled that, and scented her youth, and came hunting. She easily dodged him, but while he was windmilling away, trying futilely to hit her, she snatched a tiny handful of hair. He squalled and came at her harder, which was when the teachers finally took notice (or resignedly knew they were being forced to take notice, they didn’t care for her either), and pulled him off.

  She had her prize.

  She took it home and began to construct a Curse Doll. Memaw caught her at it of course, because all manner of tiny little nasty things started flitting about her the moment she began doing something that dark. Rather than stop her, though, Memaw just stared her down until she stopped of her own accord.

  Then Memaw told her, in blunt and no uncertain terms, about the Threefold Law. “Now,” she finished. “I don’t for a minute think that boy doesn’t deserve a set down. But if you give more tit than he gave tat, you will be getting every bit of that, times three, right in your face. Reckon you want that?”

  Now, by this point, she was accustomed to actually stopping and thinking things through when confronted by such a question, and it didn’t take much thinking to realize that no, she didn’t want that. All he’d done was taunt her. Well, she’d taunted him back, she’d made him furious, and gotten him in trouble at school for fighting on top of that. The score was probably even at this point.

  But Memaw hadn’t let it rest there. “You want to teach some sprout a lesson, you put the Mirror on him,” she continued, an ever-so-slightly malicious smile on her face. “I’ll show you.”

  So that afternoon she had taken the doll and showed Di how to cast the Mirror of Consequences on someone. It was hard. It was the hardest spell she had ever done to that point, even with assistance, and it was still hard, to this day, because you had to be absolutely fair about it, or it wouldn’t work, it would be flawed, and the flaws would break it. What it did was to reflect everything that someone did right back at him. So there were immediate consequences to his actions and words, instead of delayed. If he taunted someone, those taunts would be reflected back on him, so that instead of getting the laughs he’d gotten before from calling her Wednesday, people wouldn’t find it quite so funny, and would think about the time he’d called them, or a friend, similar names. If he tried to fight, he would lose; either his opponent would suddenly find more strength and skill than he normally had, or an authority figure would take notice and intervene right away. The more he hated, the more he would be hated.

  But it wasn’t all one-way, this Mirror. If he started acting nice to people, that would be reflected too. People would like him more, just for starters.

  Now they call that “instant karma,” she reflected.

  “You’ve done this before, haven’t you?” she’d said to Memaw, who only smirked.

  Well, Jimmy got his dose of instant karma when everyone started calling him “Mason Jar.” It was a stupid name, it wasn’t even that much of an insult except that Jimmy was built like a fireplug. But it got his goat. And when he came at people, the teachers noticed instantly. He didn’t have any time to taunt her anymore, and without him to keep it going, people stopped calling her Wednesday.

  Later that year his dad’s job moved them down south, so she had no idea what happened to him. But Memaw had reminded her to take the spell off him, so she did. Reluctantly, but she did. Did he ever learn his lesson? Maybe. Maybe not. Whether he did or not, as Memaw reminded her, was up to him, not her.

  “You can’t make someone change,” she’d said. “All you can do is make it uncomfortable for ’em not to. And if you aren’t around to supervise, well, better take the heat off before they boil over.”

  Memaw had let Di read virtually anything she wanted to, from the old grimoires in spidery handwriting to the comic books that she got with her allowance money. And maybe that was the reason why, all those comic books, and the idea that if you had power you had to do something good with it, that she’d done what she had done. She still could not imagine herself saying anything but yes to the question that had been posed to her, the night she turned sixteen.

  She didn’t remember most of it, actually. Which the few other Guardians she’d spoken to so far had told her was pretty typical. Mostly they all remembered very intense light, the sense that they were being offered enormous power if they only used it to keep ordinary folks safe, and someone or something waiting for an answer. And then the next day…well, there it was. Where there had been a little warm glow of magic inside, there was now this—atomic reactor. And there was the certain knowledge that if it was ever used selfishly it would be abruptly taken away. There were no second chances when you were a Guardian. And Di suspected that if you said no, you wouldn’t ever remember getting the offer.

  Memaw had recognized what had happened to her. The moment that Di came down to breakfast that first morning, Memaw had given her a strange look…and from then on treated her not like a teenager, but like an adult who simply didn’t have as much experience as she did.

  She had shown Di some passages in some of those old grimoires, about how to call the Guardians if you were in trouble. There was even something like it in a Dione Fortune book, although Fortune didn’t call them “Guardians,” and her ritual was dorky and awkward, if sincere, and nothing like the ones the witches used. By that point, of course, Di had known that the ritual itself didn’t matter, it was that you knew Guardians existed, and that if you got into occult trouble that you hadn’t caused, and you called on them, they’d come.

  “But what if what happens is your fault, Memaw?”

  “Depends. But everything has consequences, my girl, and those consequences fall harder on those who meddle with magic. Just bear in mind, when you get the Call, you must answer.”

  Within a week of accepting the power and the job, she had gotten the Call.

  That memory was as clear as the one of being offered Guardianship was vague.

  The funny thing was she had half expected to be jolted awake in the middle of the night, or to see some ethereal creepy-crawly come smashing through her bedroom window. What happened was much calmer than that. In the middle of the day, a strange woman had come up to the door and knocked. When Memaw answered, the woman had said hesitantly, “They say someone here can help me—”

  Then she had seen Di, standing behind Memaw, and nodded. And Di had known.

  “I can,” she said steadily, and stepped forward. And Memaw, who otherwise would have had all manner of questions, simply moved aside.

  It had been a matter of a family curse, which Di had never felt was a particularly fair situation, and in this case, where the woman was someone’s illegitimate child, the daughter of a man she didn’t know, it was particularly unfair. This first time—other Guardians told her the first time was always easy and clear-cut—the solution was simple and straightforward. She offered herself as the woman’s Champion, was accepted, and fought a mage-duel with the revenant that kept the curse going. It fell and dissipated, and that was that. Well, not quite that simple; it had been one heck of a fight and had required everything she could muster. But she had never had a moment of doubt that, as long as she kept her head, she was going to win.

  As “just” a witch, she would never have had the strength to fight off a revenant like that. It probably would have taken an entire coven to take the thing down, and maybe not even then. Most of the time, if a family curse was involved, all a coven could do was shield one individual from the effects of the curse; the next appropriate family member would then find the full curse descending on him or her. And it was heartbreaking, utterly heartbreaking, to see someone who was the last in a line have to decide whether or not to risk having a child. Not children, because it would be difficult to protect two people from a powerful, generational curse with the resources of a single coven; three would be almost impossible. A single child would be all that a cursed individual would dare to have. And then that meant that eventually the parent would have to subject that child not only to the need to protect itself but the decision of whether or not to have a child of his or her own. And so on…

  But no. Di was a Guardian. And if the person in question was truly innocent, and the curse in question entirely unfair, she could end it by ending the thing that powered it.

  Even if…as in this case…the thing that powered it was the tattered and bitter remains of the spirit of the person that had created the curse in the first place.

  It had been simple. It had been very clear-cut. The solution was obvious and well within her arsenal of spells. As other Guardians said, the first time was always clear-cut and easy in the sense that the solution was obvious. But easy in the sense that it was effortless? Not even close.

  It’s raining. Why does it always rain when the shit hits the fan?

  And night. It was always night when bad things happened, but that was kind of par for the course. Bad Things liked the night. The few Bad Things that didn’t like the night generally preferred the other extreme, burning sun and destructive heat. She didn’t think it was likely she was going to run into any ancient Egyptian demons any time soon, so she had better get used to after-hours work.

  Mind you, she was having no trouble actually seeing. There was so much light
ning that it was like a disco or a rock concert.

  It was midnight, she was in the middle of nowhere, and it wasn’t just raining, it was bucketing down. If Di hadn’t been reasonably sure that some Guardianly immunity from lightning strikes was going to protect her while she was doing Guardian business, she’d have been flat on the ground praying she didn’t get hit.

  She slogged through knee-high weeds in her toughest (soaked) jeans and the rubber stable boots she was glad Memaw had insisted she wear, with a sledgehammer in one hand and a duffle in the other, making her way by what she could see in the flashes. She was in the barren graveyard of an old farmstead, which itself was nothing more than the stump of an old chimney and a riot of blackberry vines. The graveyard was so old and abandoned that the headstones were all but unreadable, but she didn’t need headstones to tell her where her target was. The spell she had cast to allow her to see magic left no doubt as to where she was going. She crossed the line where the old wooden fence had once been, stepped onto the graveyard soil, and paused.

  A heavy black miasma hung over the grave she was seeking. She approached it, keeping her shields up against a thick fog that actually resisted her as she pushed her way to the headstone. It couldn’t touch her, not through her protections. It kept clear of her by a good three inches, trying to surge forward but not getting past her shields.

  Once she reached the grave site itself, she put down the bag of tools she was carrying in her right hand, and shifted the sledgehammer she had been carrying in her left into both hands. It was as heavy a hammer as she could manage to swing. Memaw had suggested it. “Some people would leave the headstone, but since there isn’t anyone going to notice out there, I say, be sure.” Di had agreed, and together, the two of them had made plans to consecrate it.

  Lightning flashed as she swung the sledgehammer grimly over her head, and thunder boomed just as she hit the stone.

  She didn’t think it was coincidence.

  When the flash and boom repeated with each of the next three blows, she became sure that it wasn’t coincidence—and given the surge of energy she felt each time she hit the headstone, she was also sure that whatever was in control of the lightning was also on her side. She wasn’t a weakling…but she wasn’t all that strong either, and the granite headstone shouldn’t be shattering the way it was, like a Hollywood rock in a movie about chain gangs. With exactly nine blows, the marker was obliterated, no piece any larger than a quarter.

  Di reached into her bag and pulled out the shaker jar of consecrated salt. Ordinary salt would do, according to the grimoire, but as Memaw said, why take chances? Sheltering the jar from the rain so the salt wouldn’t clump and clog the holes in the top, she shook the jar vigorously and coated the fragments and rubble of the headstone with the salt.

  Nothing happened when she did that, but she hadn’t expected anything to. The real fight was about to start.

  She was soaked to the skin despite her raincoat, her hair was plastered flat to her head, and it was a good thing she’d tied it back hard or she’d never have been able to see. The miasma roiled in protest, rising up in waves that threatened, but did not actually wash over her. Dear gods, it was freezing—much colder than it should have been. It was a cold she knew; she’d felt it before around ghosts. What was new was the fury she felt directed against her, like a blizzard wind, ice-edged and lethal.

  She put the sealed jar back down in her bag. She was going to need it again in a while. Then she took out the shovel.

  Bloody hell, I don’t know why they didn’t issue me with a little Guardian ditchdigger while they were giving me the rest of it.…

  This time there were no timed rumblings in the heavens when she took the first shovelful. Once again, though, it was as surprisingly easy to dig as it had been to shatter the headstone. This wasn’t like moving heavy soil loaded with rain, it was more like shoveling sand at the beach. Maybe they weren’t giving her a little work crew of her own, but at least they were helping. Whoever they were.

  The rain pounded on her head and the black fog circled her, hating her, but still unable to touch her. Di figured that since no one had come after this thing before, and it had never encountered opposition, it wasn’t sure what to do about her. She wasn’t one of the ones that had been cursed—but she was marked as the woman’s protector. The rules had been abruptly changed, and it didn’t yet know how to react.

  While she worked, she talked. She had very little expectation that the revenant was going to listen to her, but hey, it was worth a shot. No matter that she could hardly hear herself over the thunder, the revenant would hear her no matter what was going on. It didn’t have a choice in the matter.

  “I understand why you’re angry,” she said, punctuating each word with a shovelful of dirt. She was already knee-deep in the grave, and very glad that she was used to a certain amount of physical labor. Never thought I would be grateful to Memaw for making me chop all that firewood.…“Silas Macreedy was a horrible, horrible man. I am sure that he is in some version of hell, and he deserves to be there.” She dug into the sides, lengthening the hole and making it wider. “He preyed on you and your family in every way possible. There was no excuse for what he did. In a fair and just world, he would have been caught and punished. I cannot even begin to imagine how hard it was for you, to see what he did to them, and as for what he did to you—well, I’ll be honest with you, I’d have shot him too.” Of course, it wasn’t just that you shot him. It was that you served as his guide out into the woods, then shot his ankles, then spent three days torturing him before you killed him. On the other hand, I can’t really blame you too much. He was a beast. She put her intent behind the words. Maybe, just maybe, that would get through to the revenant. “His son was just as bad. Even after all that came out, you got no justice at all. The Macreedy family used their money and influence to get you hung, to discredit everything you said. They managed to sweep everything Silas had done under the rug and a death curse is exactly what they deserved.”

  The miasma didn’t seem mollified.

  “But only the first generation. That was punishment enough. Your curse ruined them, they all died in painful, awful ways, and no one who was responsible for what happened to your family escaped. But it should have ended there. The second generation was more honest, and before he died, Everett Macreedy told his wife and children what had happened and charged them with making it up to your family. That’s where it should have ended.” Why punish the innocent? That’s like the Mirror Curse, left on someone when you know you won’t be there to take it off if things go too badly. Only much worse.

  “You shouldn’t have continued the vendetta past them. Not like this. Brenda didn’t even know she was a Macreedy until she found an honest psychic. She never did anything to you or yours. She is a good woman. How can you blame her for simply having the misfortune to be born to an idiot who vanished on her mother? I’ve looked into every nook and cranny of her life, and she has never been anything but a good person. There’s no one left of your family to make further atonements to. You have to stop now.”

  The digging really was going faster than it should have. Then again, the hard part was yet to come. She’d been afraid as she got deeper that the walls of the hole she was digging would collapse in on her, or that she’d be digging in a rapidly deepening pool of mud and water, but the earth stayed firm and the water drained away, leaving her with wet dirt under her feet. The hole was waist-deep now.

  “Six feet” was the prescribed depth of a grave, but not in this soil. Bedrock was only four feet down, which was good, since her kit bag was on the side of the grave and she would be able to reach inside easily. She’d hit the coffin soon—

  Her shovel scraped along something that sounded hollow.

  And that was when the miasma came together into a shape and loomed over her from where the headstone had stood. Vaguely human, with burning-hot green eyes. She looked up at it.

  “You know nothing!”

  The words didn’t so much resonate in her ears as in her head. She was expecting that. The very few immaterial things she’d spoken with had “talked” like that. Memaw said that some things could make real sounds, but not many, and most of those had a way to become fully material, like the banshee. This one’s words were laden with a terrible anger, as if it was trying to frighten her out of the grave. Each word hit her like a blast of ice.