Trial by Fire (Covencraft Book 1) (3 page)

The first snap-hiss of the pot starting up always gave her a sense of trivial accomplishment. She eyeballed her half-f mug cupboard. It was time to do a complete search of the apartment and track down all her cups. She tended to drink coffee while she got ready in the morning, leaving her mug wherever she happened to be when she downed the last swallow. She would find one or two in the bathroom, maybe one on her dresser, one by her computer. Once she found one inside the freezer.

She grabbed a mug, saw that all her favorites were gone and made a note to go hunting for them.

As soon as she had a cup of coffee.

She pulled open the fridge and immediately scrunched her face when she picked up the half-and-half. She gave it a little shake.

Only enough for one cup.

Jade looked sideways at the cup on the counter and then back again at the nearly empty milk container. The math was already done. If she drank it now, there’d be none tomorrow morning. She’d already used up her emergency powdered creamer last week and had forgotten to restock.

But it was stupid not to drink it now as she’d already made the pot of coffee.

She’d have to go out and get more half-and-half if she wanted coffee tomorrow morning. Jade had tried to get into the habit of stopping somewhere on her way to work for coffee but that early in the morning she couldn’t stand any conversation, let alone dialog with overly perky coffee baristas. Or worse, other customers. It was infinitely better to have her own coffee in her apartment while she got ready than trudge with the masses to the closest shop.

So, late evening trip to the grocery shop it would be.

Decision made, Jade poured the last bit of cream into her mug and then topped it off with coffee. The pot dribbled a bit onto the counter and she pushed around a tea towel that she kept close to the pot for just such occasions. Satisfied she made at least some kind of effort, she took her coffee and sat down on the sofa with the books she’d picked up over the week.

She’d grabbed a few on Wicca, some on actual witchcraft, two on various psychic phenomena and was slowly working her way through them. Even when the material didn’t seem at all helpful, she still found it interesting. The one she liked the best so far was purely a neuroscience book. She enjoyed the crossover with mathematics and computer science but also the parts that delved into linguistics and philosophy.

It wasn’t really helping her with her little ‘setting things on fire’ problem, but it was interesting reading. Jade kept her laptop open as she read and jotted a few things down here and there, making a note to pick up another one of the books in the reference section when something struck her fancy.

After making a decent dent in the books by the time she checked the clock, she had worked up the energy to go to the grocery store. She decided her current outfit of leggings and a t-shirt, while slightly threadbare, was passable to get groceries. She stuffed her feet into her runners and grabbed her wallet on the way out. After missing – no, make that skipping - her workout for the past three days, a swift, two-block walk made sense.

Dusk had arrived on the heels of the day with early fall not quite giving a nip to the air - enough that she was glad she was in a t-shirt and not a tank top, but not so much that she was wishing for a jacket or a sweater. Just outside her apartment building she paused, the hair on the back of her neck tingling. She stopped and absorbed her surroundings. Jade was suspicious by nature and she didn’t care if people noticed her scrutinizing them or if she made others uncomfortable. She saw kids on skateboards, a couple out walking a dog, cars going by, and people waiting for the bus. Nothing out of the ordinary and yet her eyes were drawn upwards, to the building across the street and her gaze narrowed. She couldn’t explain it. It was like there was an invisible string tugging on her forehead, pulling her face toward the building. She looked at the windows, the almost-set sun making the glass reflective and bright, giving nothing away.

Reluctantly, she turned away from the building and started heading toward the grocery store but the prickling on her neck remained, even as she put distance between her and the windows.

*

From his vantage point in the building across the street, Paris watched Jade step out of her apartment building and then suddenly halt - taking a measured, shrewd look around. She threw her magic out, like a net and then pulled it back in toward her body. He felt her power brush up against his own and make the base of his skull tingle slightly. Unerringly, her eyes drifted up and settled on his building, at his window, right at his level. He stepped backwards even though intellectually he knew there was no way she could see him in the fading daylight, four floors below.

Jade stared intensely up at his location for a moment with an uncanny, eerie focus. Paris took another step back involuntarily. Then, as if some decision had been made, she reluctantly turned away from him and headed down the street. He let out the breath he didn’t realize he had been holding.

The woman clearly had no idea what she was doing. The touch of her magic, though brief, was unfocused and confused, almost messy in its approach - thrown out quickly and dragged back just as fast - blunt and disorderly.

But not malicious. Merely… curious. Wary but interested. Like it was an extension of herself. He didn’t think he’d ever felt magic with a personality before, but hers had been almost alive in its own right.

He’d wanted to watch her for a few days, see if he could get a sense of her first without approaching her. He knew her name and where she worked. She didn’t socialize much, if at all. She spent her nights at home possibly watching TV, reading or on her computer. Without actually breaking into her apartment, there wasn’t much he could do to figure out exactly how she spent her time.

Paris wasn’t quite ready to commit breaking and entering, though he was sorely tempted.

Callie had accompanied him to search for and find out more about their missing witch. After one day in town, they’d managed to narrow down Jade’s location quite easily and then, the next day, while trying to pick up the trail of magic in the air, Callie turned and stopped still where she stood.

Callie nearly pointed and squealed, but Paris grabbed her arm and hauled her into the nearest coffee shop just as Jade jogged by.

“Oh my god, that’s her! Did you see her? That was her! It’s so strange. A witch without a coven! I’ve got to look this up in some of the older grimoires. She doesn’t even feel like another witch but she definitely felt like magic, didn’t you think?” Callie babbled, her face almost pressed to the glass of the coffee shop like a kid in a toy store.

“And an amazing job you would have done introducing us by falling all over her,” Paris said dryly.

Callie slapped him on the arm. She always did treat him more like a brother than her Coven Leader. “Shut up, I was caught off guard. I don’t think she noticed us, do you think she noticed us?” Callie was heading back toward the door, pulling it open and leaning her head outside to look after where Jade had passed by.

“No, I don’t think she did,” agreed Paris, similarly drawn to gaze down the street, toward the direction Jade had gone.

Callie bounced a bit. “Ooh. So exciting! Okay. We’re going to need some place close by…”

They’d been watching her for two days. Surveillance wasn’t nearly as exciting as books and movies made it sound. Jade went to work at the same time each and every workday, came home at the same time each night, went jogging only the once. The lights in the apartment went out at the same time and came on again in the morning at the same time.

A creature of habit who, apparently, preferred the safety and solitude of her home.

So when Paris saw Jade heading out, he didn’t think about it. He rushed to the door, calling over his shoulder to Callie as he did that Jade had gone out and he was going to follow her. He didn’t wait for a response.

Paris rushed out the building but couldn’t see Jade on the street. He closed his eyes for a moment and tried to feel her magic, feel where it went, follow its trail.

In his mind he could see it dimly, like a colored scarf trailing down the street, fading in her wake. Paris tracked her to the local grocery store, but stayed outside. He could easily see into the bank of front windows - the bright fluorescent lights illuminating the till area. He was close enough that, with the doors propped open for the end-of-summer breeze, he could even catch part of the conversations drifting out from the checkout area.

After about ten minutes Jade showed up at the nearest till, a small basket hooked over her arm but he couldn’t see the contents from where he stood. She grabbed a tabloid as she stood in line, frowned at the cover and then put it back. She touched one of the chocolate bars and he could see the debate going on in her head, but she ultimately didn’t pick it up, frowning again. Jade craned her neck slightly to see what was going on with the person in front of her and when she saw a man counting out pennies her large grey eyes widened and one of her eyebrows went up in annoyance.

The man in front of her fiddled with more change in his pocket, pulling out small coins and flipping through them with his fingertips. Paris was surprised when he saw Jade seemingly square her shoulders and lean forward.

“This is why people have credit cards,” she snapped.

Paris’ lip reading was fair, if underutilized, but Jade’s voice was strong and even, carrying easily over the distance to his ears. Paris had to bite his lip to keep from laughing at the outraged look on the man’s face. The man sputtered and coughed and Jade rolled her eyes at him before grabbing another tabloid magazine off the rack, flipping its pages without interest.

“I beg your pardon?” the man finally sputtered at Jade.

“With the amount of time you’re taking, you totally should.” She didn’t even look up from her tabloid.

The man opened his mouth, closed it, and opened it again. Jade finally looked up at him.

“I think you want to pay and go,” she said quietly.

Paris could almost see the magic flare out of her and push against the man. Curious, Paris let his own magic uncoil like a long, serpentine spring. Although he had known she was using her power, he was still surprised when his power brushed up quietly against hers. Unlike the innocuous touch of her power earlier, this time her power lashed out at his sharply, slapping it away. It occurred to Paris that last time her power reached out to investigate, but this time it was reacting like his power was a trespasser - an enemy. It was fast, angry and Paris immediately snapped down on his automatic response to send his power flaring back. Regardless of what was going on magically, Jade didn’t appear to notice his power, nor her own response. Instead she was focused on the man at the till as he turned, almost mindlessly and handed dollar bills to the cashier. The man grabbed his grocery bags and left, never once turning back to Jade; strangely and intensely focused on the door and the way out.

Doing exactly what he’d been told
, Paris realized.
Paying and leaving
.

Jade placed the tabloid back on the rack and waited for her things to be rung through. Paris let his power drift closer to her again, slower this time, more carefully, circling her cautiously instead of approaching straight on. He closed his eyes as he tried to focus on her, to get a reading.

She was bleeding power from every part of her.

She watched her groceries as they were scanned, a bored look on her face. Then, she handed over her credit card, tapped her fingers against the pin pad of the cash machine and waited for her receipt - seemingly unaffected by the power she’d just flung out at the stranger in line before her and the power she was hemorrhaging as she stood there. As she picked up her bags, her power swirled up around her, almost like it was anxious to leave.

Paris waited for a moment and followed Jade out of the grocery store, staying far enough behind to not spook her. She started the walk back to her apartment, her grocery bags pulling down on her arms, laden with bananas, coffee cream and some other odds and ends he couldn’t quite see. Even with the bags, she kept a brisk pace, not expending any extra motion other than her determined forward walk.

She halted suddenly and turned around. Paris spat out the quickest spell he could think of, an obfuscation spell, one he hadn’t used since he was nine when he tried to sneak by his mother with a bag of cookies. The spell hadn’t worked on his mother - his spells rarely did work on her - but it seemed to work on Jade. She stared intently at the space where he stood, but not directly at him. Most people would stop, look and then move on. But she was doggedly determined, staring at him for long enough that he thought she certainly must see him. Surprisingly, none of her magic appeared to slink out of her toward him. It darted all around her, like confused and abstract fireworks - jarring and unfocused - but nothing came close to him. It was chaotic, distracted. It reminded him of watching a hungry child find a buffet of treats - all excitable energy and frenzy but no intelligence about it.

Jade finally turned and started walking again, her first few steps slow and reluctant but then speeding up and returning to her normal pace. He breathed out slowly, waited a moment longer and followed. Jade’s power jumped around as she walked, darting into corners, pulling ahead of her, reaching behind her. At one point, it came dangerously close to him, and he wondered if he would have to use another spell. He carefully pulled his own circle of energy back, folding it closer to himself than he usually kept it. Her power danced around, like it was looking for him, and then curled back toward her. He realized that was probably how she sensed him before. He hadn’t felt it, but her power must have brushed up against his, and somehow she had known.