A Witching Well of Magic Read online

  The other part of it all was internal. The outcome had to be visualized clearly, and the intention that it should all come to pass had to be committed. Bailey was committed, though visualizing the outcome was problematic; but she got it close enough probably. Magic was all about symbols and meaning, anyway.

  Nothing much really seemed to happen at first. When she had the last bit of crushed, dried flower in her fingers, and was looking at the last line, she tried to really mean it when she said the words and cast the component into the coals.

  She felt a momentary rush of expectation.

  But, nothing happened. Nothing really interesting, anyway. She didn’t feel any different. She wondered if Gavin did, wherever he was? Were he and Piper even now having a talk? How long did this sort of thing take? The text was vague on that point. Time, when it came to magic, was often a variable figure.

  Still, when she used her ability she felt something very specific. And when she worked the candle spell, she felt something there as well. Was there some component to this spell that had to be taught? One of the components she’d just burned had been sort of difficult to get—she hoped it wasn’t wasted.

  A stiff breeze blew through the window, gathering up ashes from the bowl in a swirl, and Bailey panicked. She snatched the bowl out of the way before it made a terrible mess. At that particular moment, there was a knock at her door.

  Scrambling, Bailey capped the bowl to put the coals out, stuffed everything except the fire hazard back into her chest, and quickly put her room in some semblance of casual order. The coals were out, but at least they weren’t showing under the bowl’s cover.

  Finally, she cracked the door cautiously, peering out with her best impression of the bleary eyed look she ought to have had from a short nap.

  Ryan raised and eyebrow. “Doing alright in her, Red?”

  Bailey nodded. “I’m fine, Dad. Just tired. Sorry, how long have I been asleep? I must have dozed off.”

  “Must have,” he said. He seemed very interested in the sliver of her room he could see through the cracked door. “Well, anyway I’m about to make myself a sandwich. Nothing fancy. Wondered if you were hungry?”

  “Starving,” Bailey said, honestly.

  “Well come on down then,” he said, “and let me make you something.”

  She promised to be down shortly, and changed into a tee shirt and pajama pants. When she came down, Ryan had already finished one sandwich, and was on to the second. He was seventy, but didn’t look it, and he was still spry as far as Bailey could tell. The key, he often said, was to keep moving. Now that he wasn’t writing for the paper, she wondered what would happen to him.

  They caught up a little—Bailey hadn’t gotten home in time to see him last night, and he didn’t know that she’d gotten her old job back. On the subject of Aiden Rivers, he had little to say, other than that it made sense for Poppy to sell the place. She’d put the cash away, probably, to collect interest, and have a nest egg when she got out, which wasn’t likely to be in her lifetime but then you never knew.

  Bailey avoided asking about the paper, at least initially. However, they ran out of things to talk about rather quickly and all that was left to try and discuss had to do with Bailey’s new world, her powers, and this magic she was exploring. And she couldn’t have that talk.

  “So, I saw Trevor and Gloria last night,” she said.

  Ryan paused, the second half of his sandwich on his way to a delicious end. “Is that so?” He asked. “How’d that go?” She expected him to sound perhaps sheepish, but instead he seemed sharply concerned.

  “Uh... it went okay, I guess. It was brief. Dad, Trevor said you quit the paper.”

  Her father only shrugged, and then nodded once.

  Bailey waited for more, but no more came.

  “I thought you were fired,” she said when it was clear Ryan wasn’t going to elaborate himself. “I thought you all got into some kind of argument, and that afterward, you know... you didn’t work there anymore. Why would you quit?”

  Ryan chewed his bite of sandwich thoughtfully. He was ordering his words, Bailey knew. He never said anything without thinking first. Not like she did.

  “I never said I was fired, for the record,” he told her when he was good and ready. “I just said I no longer worked there. But, as for why; Trevor and Gloria want to keep the story of Martha Tells going, and I thought we should lay it to rest with her. Her murderer is in prison, justice is served, her funeral was perhaps undeservedly lovely.”

  “But?” Bailey urged.

  He sighed, and laid his sandwich down. “But, they’re convinced there is still more to find. They keep digging, into everything and everyone and they keep coming up empty handed. I understand that they want there to be more, but at this point they're just firing into a crowd. And they’re focusing all of the paper’s resources there, as well.” He shook his head, and when Bailey peered at him he kept his eyes pointedly somewhere other than her.

  “Dad,” she asked cautiously, “what else?”

  “I don’t want to alarm you,” he said. “But they asked a lot of questions about you. Since you found Martha, and then found Poppy as well. Chloe figured into that part, but they seemed hung up on you and where you came from. They dug up that you were adopted, and it became a conversation that then became an argument. I wouldn’t have them investigating our family, so I told them in no uncertain terms that their questions were not welcome, and that we wanted to put this whole awful business behind us.”

  “And then you quit?” Bailey wondered.

  “No,” Ryan said. “Trevor and Gloria wanted to know what I had to hide, and started saying things... things about your recent association with the bakery women. I told them you were just working there part time, but they seem to think there’s something else going on. Trevor seemed reasonable, for a moment, but Gloria said something rather strange. Something about how all their work being pointless. Trevor seemed to think she was talking about re-branding the paper, and I said the Coven Grove Weekly—Daily, now, I suppose—had always been more about local news and uplifting stories and public announcements and generally keeping the people here up to date on the wider world.” He scrunched his face up with disgust. “Not this new trend of looking for tragedy where it no longer exists.

  “Trevor offered me more money to follow up on some of the leads they had, and promised me there was a story to find but...” Ryan shook his head sadly. “I couldn’t do it if it meant using you, Red. It just wasn’t right. I could tell they weren’t going to drop it, so; I quit.”

  Bailey wasn’t sure she could speak clearly, so instead she just hugged her father. He didn’t know it, she knew, but he’d given she and the Coven a huge advantage, and one they hadn’t even known they needed.

  More than anything she wanted to tell him they were right. There was more to it. And Ryan, for his part, seemed to sense this. “Is everything alright?” He asked when she pulled away from their hug.

  “I just worry about you,” she said. “That’s all. You’ve got to keep busy, you know? Keep moving.” She didn’t say that she couldn’t bear to lose him as well. It would make the inevitable possibility too real, too soon. She knew he wouldn’t live forever; she just didn’t like to think about it.

  “I know, Red,” Ryan said. He studied her for a moment longer before he pulled her in again and hugged her. “I know. Don’t feel bad for me. I love you more than anything, just like your Mama would want; I’ll always look out for you, always put you first. Okay?”

  “Okay, Dad,” Bailey muttered.

  “Promise me,” he said.

  She nodded. “I promise.” But, it was broken the moment she said it. It was because of her he’d quit the paper. Because of her secrets, and because of the people that wanted them, even though they didn’t even know what it was they wanted.

  Well, she and the coven would put an end to that.

  In the mean time, Ryan wanted to put on a movie, so Bailey let him, but she
didn’t stay up for it. She had to go to bed eventually, and she had a mess to clean up already.

  But when she went upstairs, dreading the process of vacuuming and wiping up ash from all of the room where the wind had gusted into the bowl, she was pleasantly surprised—and a little bit bewildered—to find that there was none. Not a single bit of ash from the bowl had ended up anywhere inside the room.

  Chapter 9

  After the tours the next day, Bailey left before Aiden could arrest her attention again. He did catch her on the way out, but it was brief when she apologized, and explained that she had some work to catch up on at the library. Still, he seemed like he had something he wanted to say.

  “It can wait,” he told her. “Don’t let me take up all of your time. I’ll see you tomorrow, though?”

  There were tours scheduled, and Aiden still hadn’t managed to even take a full tour with Bailey, so of course she would be there tomorrow as well, before the Tour Office was closed for a day. “Same time, same place,” she told him.

  “Then I shall speak with you then,” he said, smiling. “Have a wonderful evening, Bailey.” Always with that wink of his. It was infuriating that he was so handsome. Why couldn't he have been some old geezer with a bird beak for a nose and a comb over. Bailey shuddered. Well maybe it was better to have Aiden and his good looks than the other option she thought.

  She pried herself away from the curiosity of wanting to know what he wanted to talk about. The list of things she needed to speak with the Coven ladies about was getting long.

  Rita was there when she arrived at the Bakery, but was on her way out. She looked upset about something. Or, then again, maybe that was just how she always looked. She gave Bailey an appraising look as she left, however, and it left Bailey wondering if, this time, she really was upset—and somehow, at Bailey.

  “Everything alright?” Bailey asked the women when she was alone with them. The evening crowd hadn’t quite started to trickle in yet, but they would soon.

  Francis, Aria, and Chloe had some silent conversation between them, spoken with looks, eyebrows, and shoulders. They decided, apparently, that whatever was going on didn’t concern Bailey. It was frustrating, but that was how it went sometimes.

  Under other circumstances, Bailey would have pressed them a little more for something. As it was, she was happy just to skip past the usual riddles and cryptic comments and go straight to what was on her own mind.

  “Can we talk?” She asked. “Upstairs, I mean.” She gave it the sort of grave, pointed undertone that she hoped they took to mean it had to do with Coven business.

  “Aria,” Francis said, “you’ll mind the counter?”

  Aria looked like she might complain, but didn’t. Instead she leaned sullenly on the counter behind the register. “We’ll be busy soon,” she warned them. “Don’t let me get swamped down here on my own.”

  Chloe and Francis assured her they would not—Chloe patiently, Francis with something a little sarcastic. “Aria’s perfectly capable of handling a full house,” Francis explained on the walk up the stairs, “she has this little trick for guessing the next order. Minor divination stuff. She just hates being alone, is all.”

  Bailey wondered exactly what that ‘trick’ was, and whether Aria could teach it to her. She didn’t ask, though. When the door was closed, and Chloe had her arms folded in concern, and Francis with her hands impatiently on her hips, she wasted no time. The ladies looked irritated enough already; even Chloe, though her expression was less sour than Francis’.

  “First,” Bailey said, “Trevor and Gloria have been asking a lot of questions about me, and Martha, and, I think, possibly the three of you. Do you think Martha might have told them about us? Before she came here, I mean? Gloria did ask about whether there was another cave, back before...” it was still difficult to say it, “...everything that happened.”

  Francis and Chloe both pursed lips, and made their respective shows of being thoughtful. Francis scowled into a middle distance, while Chloe chewed her lip, very much like Bailey tended to when she was deep in thought. After a moment, they glanced at one another.

  “The caves have a way of keeping themselves safe,” Chloe said finally.

  “And the Coven, as well,” Francis added. “I wouldn’t worry about those two. Plenty of people have come sniffing around here looking for answers and left empty handed.”

  “Agreed,” Chloe said. “Though I’m glad you brought it to us. Where did you hear about this?”

  “Dad quit the paper because they wanted him to do more... I don’t know, expose type work on me,” Bailey said. “He seemed upset.”

  Francis didn’t seem particularly moved by that, but Chloe winced. “I’m sorry, Bailey,” she said. “I know all this would be easier if he knew about you. And probably for your friends as well.”

  “We’ve all been there,” Francis said, not entirely unsympathetic, but a little scolding all the same. That, though, Bailey knew, was just her way. She’d have sounded the same relaying a recipe for bread. “You get used to it after a while.”

  Bailey didn’t want to get used to keeping secrets, but for now she moved on. If they weren’t concerned with Trevor and Gloria’s digging around on them, then probably she didn’t have to be either. There was still the matter of Aiden, though.

  “The other thing,” she said carefully, “has to do with Aiden.”

  “What’s happened?” Chloe asked.

  Francis narrowed her eyes. “Handsome men aren’t the exception to the rule, young lady.”

  “What?” Bailey stared at Francis.

  “Francis,” Chloe chided the woman, and turned back to Bailey. “Go on. What about him?”

  “Well, he seems sort of... different.” She related his probing questions, and the general feeling she got from him, and neither Chloe nor Francis seemed terribly concerned. Then, she got to the part where she’d been unable to read his mind.

  Both women were quiet for a long moment.

  Finally, Francis spoke—just as Chloe was about to. “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “Some people are just like that. Can’t read ‘em. Spells slip right off some people as well, it’s just a fact of life; quirk of nature. Nothing to waste time worrying about.”

  “Alright,” Bailey said uncertainly. “Its just that—”

  “Francis is right,” Chloe said. “Sometimes people are just naturally defended from magic. It happens. Or he could be under some kind of spell, like a geas. We can’t read anything that’s been bound like that. It’s part of the magic of it; so they can’t give a secret away even to someone who can read it from their mind.”

  “I understand that,” Bailey said, “but you told me a geas was voluntary. So, if he’s under one, then he took it intentionally, which, again, means there’s something a little stranger than ordinary about him, isn’t there?”

  “You don’t have to know you’re doing it,” Francis said. “You can be tricked into it. Plenty of people are. Dimwitted people.”

  Bailey frowned at her. That didn’t sound like Aiden. And this all seemed a bit like they were reaching.

  She knew she shouldn’t have tried, but she did it anyway. She opened her mind to the two of them, and tried to glean something from the surface, but all she got was a quiet, psychic stillness; the mental equivalent of the gentle lapping of ocean waves against the beach and the wind over the rocks of the cliff face.

  “Now, none of that,” Francis said sharply.

  Chloe didn’t say anything, but she did look momentarily pained. Bailey’s guilt was immediate. But it didn’t get rid of her growing frustration. It just wasn’t fair that they kept so much from her. She’d kept their secrets, and they were hard to keep. Whether they know that difficulty or not, she deserved answers some of the time—when they concerned her directly. She had to work with Aiden on a daily basis.

  If she’d known the subject was about to change, she would have let it go, and bid them a good day. However, it was, it seemed, a
bit late for that.

  “Now that’s out of the way,” Francis said archly, “there’s the other matter.”

  Bailey frowned, confused. “What’s that?”

  Chloe bunched her eyebrows together, and sighed. “We know about the spell you took,” she said quietly.

  Cold fear ran through Bailey’s stomach. How had they known? Well that was a still question to ask; magic, obviously, of some kind.

  “Did it work for you?” Francis asked, though she sounded more accusatory than curious.

  Bailey feared speaking, so she just shook her head slowly.

  “How do you know?” Francis pressed.

  Well, for that Bailey had no answer. “I... don’t?”

  Chloe drew Bailey to one of the four chairs that graced one corner of the attic, very near the chest that contained the spell book. “We really need to know all the details, Bailey,” she said softly, kindly, but with some firmness. “It’s important.”

  So, they knew she had messed with the book, then, but didn’t know which spell she’d taken. Or, they did and wanted her to admit it. There was simply no way to know, so instead she opted for total honesty. Even if it was because she was in trouble, it was at least nice to not hide anything for a moment.

  “I took a reveal spell,” she said. “Page... four hundred seventy three? I think. Or close to it. To reveal a person’s intentions—voluntarily,” she added quickly when Francis scoffed. Bailey’s very first lesson had been on the dangers of violating a person’s free will. “I figured it was like a nudge, instead of... I don’t know, a compulsion.”

  “Good Lord,” Francis groaned.

  Chloe was more patient, at least. “Okay. And, what happened when you did the spell.”