There’s a slight tingle from the
warding spells as I crossed the boundaries, like a warm greeting from the
house. It’s comforting, even though they’ve never done it before - nor were
they supposed to.
Behind me, Lee shivers as he
crosses the threshold.
"Woah, did you feel
that?" he asks, running a hand over his bare arms, now covered in
goosebumps.
“It’s... not supposed to do that...” I frown,
my hands already rubbing out the bumps on my arm, and try to think. Had there
been a warning in there? Was the spell warning us it had gone off? Or been
tampered with?
But it hadn’t felt like a warning – in fact it still doesn’t.
Was it another spell? Maybe for surveillance? It hadn’t hurt us, or hadn’t
seemed to.
Lee’s already got the door closed and is heading to the
kitchen for a warm drink, as he passes me I get that extra brush of something
unexplainable in my aura; we’re overlapping again.
“I guess it could have been the spell recognising us like
always, but we just felt it more because our aura’s are hanging out all over
the place...” I follow him, unzipping my coat and tossing it and my bag over
the back of the sofa “Do you feel any different?”
Flicking the kettle on, Lee frowns up at me – well, through
me actually, which is a little creepy right now – and hums.
“Well, I feel lighter somehow – but I don’t know if that’s
just because of not holding back anything... but everything seems fine. Why?
Are you really worried?” He may as well just say ‘internal scan complete –
systems at 100%’
I hum, tapping two fingers against my lips, slipping
discreetly into the same light meditation I use when checking the spells on the
house.
First I send my senses everywhere in the house that I can
reach. Sometimes that’s about a meter around me, sometimes it’s further, but
I’m pretty sure I can check the whole house from the kitchen. For a second I’m
startled – there’s a massive presence all around me pushing my senses back at
me – then I realise the spells on the house ward from both directions and my
senses had swam straight into them. I’ll get used to this increase in control
one day, maybe, but for now it’s dizzying to fling my senses and them actually
go where I want them to.
There’s no one in the house, nothing actually, not even a
spider – so that one I chucked out of a window yesterday must have been the
last of them. No one but me and Lee that is. But I don’t pull my senses back in
straight away, because I’ve just realised I can feel our spells around the
house now. Not just as the presence pushing me back, but the actually
individual spells.
I check through the
one on the door, feeling through it and notice how it’s coloured with both mine
and Lee’s thoughts. Not in an “oh my god, the door read my mind” way, but in a
“we both shaped this spell with our thoughts” kind of way. Other than that it’s
fine.
After a quick check on all of the spells I withdraw, pulling
all my senses back to me in the kitchen. There’s a steaming mug of hot
chocolate on one counter, and a Leigh-John on the other, sipping his own steamy
mug and watching me with curiosity. Apparently tea doesn’t cut it after what
happened at Jim’s – couldn’t argue with that.
Before I take my mug, though, I focus on Lee; ignoring his
frown and slipping deeper into that meditation that used to be so elusive. It’s
like a waking dream, where things aren’t defined by what you see, but the
energy things are comprised of. It’s the way I like to do spell craft, and
after two months of practicing four times a day it’s the most comfortable way
to work magic.
I’m not working magic right now, just probing. The energy of
Lee’s aura is more pronounced that it had been yesterday when we worked
together, but other than that it’s undamaged. His aura isn’t what I’m
interested in though, and I probe past his energy to his body.
There are spells that can be cast on your aura, but they’re
extensive and complicated and I’d have felt it just when I opened my
senses. Most commonly cast spells are
hidden on the body – for two reasons. You don’t have to go into this meditation
when you cast it (assuming you know what you’re doing and aren’t making it up
as you go along – which apparently you aren’t really supposed to do) and also
they become difficult to detect (dependant on the spell) because they get
hidden behind the person’s aura.
As I push my senses past Lee’s aura it changes slightly,
like changing colour, and I can tell he’s discomforted by the sensation this
causes. It isn’t like touching another person with your aura, or the itchy pain
of someone trying to get into your mind, but it feels odd – especially if you
don’t know what it is. Imagine someone lifting your shirt when your eyes are
closed and you didn’t realise you had a shirt on to begin with.
“Um, Lilly... what are you doing..?”
I hear the words but can’t drop my concentration to answer
properly. My mumbled reply could have been ‘hold still’ or ‘one sec...’ I’m not
sure. See, I’ve never been interrupted doing this before, and I’m not sure what
would happen. I carefully check him for spells, or the traces of one, and find
nothing. Not even a hint of the treatise enchantment lingers on him.
“Huh...” I mutter, pulling back from him and releasing my
hold on reality just long enough to check myself for any spells. Nothing.
“What was that?” he asks as I pull myself up from the
dredges of meta-consciousness.
Grabbing the hot chocolate I swig half the mug before
answering. I hate meta-consciousness. That’s probably not its name, but it’s
how I think of it. It’s one step away from astral projection, and the sensation
is creepy as hell, but it’s the only way I know of doing a thorough check of
your own aura and body.
“I was checking for spells on us” I shrug, leaning against
the counter my mug had been rested on. “We’re both clean... like, totally clean
– no traces of a spell anywhere...”
Lee chokes slightly on a mouthful of chocolate “What!?
You’re saying there should be spells on me?” He starts frantically looking at
his arms and torso’s as if symbols will suddenly appear.
“No. Well yes, because we just left an enchantment, but no
there shouldn’t be spells on you.” I’m frowning too hard to laugh at him, even
as he double checks his chest again. “I wanted to make sure no one had spelled
you. But still, there would be the residue of an enchantment...”
Something isn’t adding up. Are my senses still being blocked, but in a specific way? Think, Lilly, think...
“Enchantment residue... yummy...” Lee says, now checking his
hands as if he might be able to wash the last bits of magic away. “How does
that work then?”
“What?” I’m too distracted, and can’t decide which is more
important, talking to Lee or working out what just happened.
“How does an enchantment leave residue?”
I plump for talking to Lee, because maybe, just maybe,
explaining stuff will lead to working things out. Yeah, sure...
“Same way a normal spell would really. It’s not a residue
like a snail leaves behind or anything, it’s more that unless the spell is
purposefully removed, like through a cleansing, its effects are still sort of
there.” I cast around for an example and find the chopping board.
“Okay, look –“ I slide a knife out of its block and place it
on the chopping board.
“A target specific spell is pin-point accurate” I stab the
knife point into the board slightly, just enough to make the mark I need,
“A general spell that you get caught by isn’t” I make a
slicing motion with the knife and am rewarded with a shallow straight line in
the wooden board a few inches from my dot.
“And then you have enchantments that are kind of like a net”
on the spur of the moment I grab a couple more knives and make a few
intersecting cuts with all three at the same time.
Lee looks at me like I might be a little mad, but doesn’t
say anything.
“Now, even though the knife isn’t there, the effect still
is. They all leave a mark – and while this one’s deeper” I point to dimple dot
of my ‘targeted spell’ “This one has more marks” I tap the ‘net’ creation with
a knife “So, while a specific spell will leave a bigger impression if it’s on
you, an enchantment will leave some kind of mark if you’re anywhere in its’
area – just not as big or obvious or anything like a problem.”
“Okay...” Lee looks about ready to tell me I’m crazy “What’s
your point?”
“There should be a mark or something – anything – that says
you were in the enchantment...”
“Yeah, I got that bit”
“But there isn’t. There’s nothing... on either of us.”
“So, there wasn’t an enchantment then?” Oh good, all I’ve
done is confuse him.
“After their reaction there’s no doubt we were in one... but
I’ve got a theory...”
After another half hour of drinks and talking, both of us
are stood probing the spell on the door.
“Well, you may say they yield information, but they don’t to
me...” mutters Lee into the wood, resting his head against the door in
frustration.
I pull out of the spell and frown “Really? But you
understand so quickly... I always assumed they talked to you too.”
His eyebrow rises in an unspoken ‘talk to you?’ or ‘crazy
lady!’ which I ignore.
“Doesn’t really matter – we know these spells now, inside
and out, you could cast them in your sleep same as me. So what thoughts do you
put into them?” my back rests against the door as I tilt my head back to look
at him. It’s a semi-rhetorical question.
“Well, keeping out bad things, stopping entry to anything
harmful... you know, all the stuff you think of when you think ‘protection
spell’.”
“Right. So if there was a spell acting on us, would you
class that as a bad thing or harmful?”
“Maybe...” He shrugs, placing a hand on the door as if
feeling the spell there.
“What about foreign magic itself?” I ask, folding my arms.
I’m finally feeling confident about my theory. After all, my magic is always
based on intuition – so surely my spells will be intuitive too? The logic is
sound. Honest.
“But surely that would bar us entry?”
“But they’re our
spells.” I counter “They know us,
they’re made up of us.”
“I guess it does explain the shivers we got....” he
acknowledges after a minute, then grins and strokes the door, putting on a
soppy voice “Awww, you protected daddy didn’t you, and mummy too – who’s a good
boy? Who’s a good boy?”
“It’s not a dog Lee...” I laugh and move to collapse into
the sofa, head tilted back with my eyes closed.
“Who’s a good boy?!” Lee makes a last show of stroking the
pet door before coming to slump in a chair, grinning.
“And you think I’m crazy?” I ask the ceiling.
“I know you are sweet peach.” he replies “Still, it’s good
to know... I mean, that they’re working – and working better than we thought.”
“True, true...” I sigh, adding a bunch of tests to my to-do
list and reaching for my coat. “Still up for seeing Bree?”
The walk there is going to kill, but I’m also looking
forward to the comfort of healing magic after Hannah and Cairn. A flash of
emerald eyes and red hair darts through my memory, forcing a little heat into
my cheeks – yeah, healing Bree will help with that as well... I hope.
