Finding Magic

Not a lot. No, definitely not a lot; she did manage to do that, to stop it after she’d swallowed half a mouthful or so. Not even a real shot. It hardly mattered because it wasn’t even a full shot, it was barely more than a sip. Right?

She told herself that was right. She knew it wasn’t.

Fuck! What was the—what was wrong with her, damn it? Even as warmth spread in her stomach and drifted out through her bloodstream, even as her eyes half closed in relief and her head sank back to rest against the wall behind her, she felt it, the shame, the sickness festering deep inside her, the fear of what it meant. Her first day outside of class, her first real work for the Church, and she couldn’t even make it four hours before she was at the flask.

Never again. Okay, she’d done it, but she’d never do it again. Yeah, it was her first day, but it was a grisly ghost murder, and really, most people would be freaked out by that, right? Most people were freaked out just hearing about such things; sure, it had been seventeen years, but people still remembered. They’d always remember. And even if they tried to forget, the Festival still happened every year, the dead still walked the surface for six nights, reminding humanity that they were still there and the Church was still in charge.

So it was perfectly natural that, being faced with two corpses chopped to bits by ghosts, she’d need something to calm her down a bit. Doctors even prescribed a little nip to people who’d had a shock, right?

Right. It was totally understandable. It was totally natural. She’d just never do it again, was all.

Never again. She promised.

With her head somewhat cleared, her body calmed, she glanced around the bathroom. She couldn’t stay in there—she had to get pictures of those spells for Jillian—but she could sit just a few more seconds. And grab some cinnamon candies from her bag, too, because she’d need them. Vodka might not have a specific smell but it certainly smelled of alcohol, and she couldn’t have that.

As she stood up and popped the candy into her mouth her gaze fell on something beside the sink. Another spell, it looked like; well, sure, lots of people kept magic somewhere they’d be likely to see it often and come in contact with it, since most spells relied on physical closeness to work. People kept sleep-safes under their bed or behind the headboard, that sort of thing, which—Actually, yeah. Why had the luck charms been in the closet? Why had the sex spell been in the closet?

Chess braced herself and reached out to touch the bag, feeling brave because her mind was still calm enough from the—well, the thing she shouldn’t have done.

A protection charm. Right, because people shaved in bathrooms, maybe? Either way, she felt the difference. If that was Mr. Waring’s energy, which she thought it was, it was definitely not the same as the energy of the person—the man—who’d made the sex spell. No aggression colored this magic, no anger. And hardly any power, either; the man who’d made this might as well have just thrown some cotton balls into the bag, for all the strength it had.

Well, Jillian had said someone else must have been hired to make the sex spell, so no big surprise there, right?

That still didn’t explain why they’d kept the sex spell so far away, though, or why it had felt so angry.

Whatever. Maybe the spell had been too strong for them. Maybe they’d felt the anger somehow, too, and just hadn’t gotten around to tossing the thing. Maybe they liked to fuck in the closet. Probably didn’t matter as far as the case went; probably none of her business.

She rinsed her hands and popped another candy into her mouth, giving herself one last glance in the mirror. Did she look okay? Sober, calm, collected? Yeah, basically, at least she thought she did, so good.