This Wicked Game

FIFTEEN

The house was quiet without her parents home, the only sound coming from the ticking of the big clock in the foyer. She made her way past it, hesitating at the door to the store before using her key to open it. Despite the fact that the store was an extension of the house, as familiar to Claire as her own bedroom, she descended the stairs cautiously.

It wasn’t the first time she’d been down here at night, but it felt different. She had to force herself to continue, hurrying to the lamp near the counter as soon as her feet hit the floor, fighting the feeling that something was following her into the empty room.

The light helped a little. She stood for a minute, looking around the store, reassuring herself that it was the same as always, that the bolt was down over the private entrance. Once she’d calmed her racing pulse, she turned to the books that lined the shelves behind the counter.

There were three reference manuals on voodoo history. She flipped through them first, looking for any kind of reference to a woman named Sorina. It was a long shot, and she wasn’t surprised when she came up empty. Sorina was probably just a regular practitioner who’d been dealt a bad hand and went a little crazy trying to get revenge for the death of her parents.

Claire scanned the shelves. There were a lot of spell and recipe books.

She was going to be here a while.

She pulled the stool over and started with the top shelf. Working her way down, she skipped over the books geared to specific kinds of potions. Whatever the Cold Blood spell was, she had a feeling it wouldn’t be in African Potions and Recipes for Love and Authentic Haitian Voodoo for Health and Wellness.

By the time she got to the bottom shelf, her vision was blurred and her mind echoed with strange words and phrases. She was flipping through a slim volume titled Traditional Voodoo for Guidance, Insight, and Justice when a recipe caught her eye.

It wasn’t what she expected. Not Cold Blood or anything even close to it, but a potion titled Gaining Wisdom and Insight.

She hesitated as she glanced over the list of ingredients, thinking about the picture, the one she’d crumpled up and thrown across her room. Spells and potions didn’t work. She was almost sure of it.

But there was the truth, admitted only in the privacy of her mind.

The almost.

Could she be sure? Would she bet the lives of the Guild on her refusal to believe, to try? Would she bet Sasha’s life? Xander’s?

She read through the recipe again before moving to the front of the store for a red flannel gris-gris bag. Pulling its little drawstring open, she made her way back to the counter. Then she took several glass jars off the shelves and lined them up in front of her.

She scooped some peach tree leaves out of their container. They dropped into the gris-gris bag with a soft rustle. Working her way down the line of jars, she added sage, verbena, and smartweed. She finished by unscrewing the lid on the jar of Solomon’s seal root chips, scooping them out with the little metal shovel and adding them to the bag, too.

She finally dared to bend her nose and take a whiff. She was relieved to find the scent almost pleasant. Most of the concoctions mixed for the craft were rank, and she would be sleeping with this one under her pillow.

She knotted the gris-gris bag at the top so the ingredients wouldn’t spill out and put the recipe book back on the bookshelf.

She stood there for a minute, contemplating whether to bother with a spell. She could use the gris-gris bag alone. Lots of people did. But her mother and other members of the Guild believed herb and root magic worked together with spellcraft.

Besides, she still had one more book to look through for the Cold Blood spell.

She set the gris-gris bag on the counter and bent down, pulling back the curtain underneath it to reveal a small iron safe.

She vividly remembered the day it had been installed, on the heels of a theft that had cost them one of Marie’s two remaining spell books. Claire had been fourteen when her mother had told her the combination.

“What’s inside is as much yours as it is ours,” Pilar had said. “You never know when you might need it.”

In spite of her impatience to go outside and ride her new bike, Claire had been flattered to learn that the safe had been coded with her birth date. She used it now, turning the knob right, left, and right again.

The safe opened with a quiet pop.

The book was there, just like she remembered.

She removed it with reverence, her previous disdain for it seeming childish. Whether she believed in the craft or not, her great-great-grandmother had owned this book. Had written in it with her own hand.

That had to mean something.

Scooting onto the stool, Claire lowered her eyes to the cover, letting her fingers gently skim the cracked leather surface. It was a soft, mottled shade of green, dips and ridges where there once might have been letters or images.

She opened the book and read the title page, penned by hand.

Recipes, Potions, and Spells

By the High Priestess

Marie Laveau

She decided to look for the Cold Blood spell first and go back through the book for an Insight spell when she was done. That way, she would be sure not to miss anything.

Turning the pages, she kept her eyes on the title of each spell, passing incantations for love and guidance and protection and good health as she searched for anything resembling Cold Blood.

It wasn’t there. In fact, just as she’d expected, there wasn’t a single spell for black magic.

Sighing, she turned back to the front of the book and started again, this time looking for something that would work in conjunction with the potion in the gris-gris bag.

She found what she was looking for about halfway through the book in a spell titled Request for Knowledge.

She read through it, the words connecting with a memory from her earliest lessons with her mother. Claire would sit on the stool, legs swinging, hands and mind wandering, while her mother tried to force her to pay attention.

Ancient Priestesses of the light,

Bestow knowledge clear, true, and bright

Grant me power and second sight

As I move through darkness of night.

When the words felt almost familiar, Claire pulled three purple candles from behind the counter. She struck a match and lit each one. Then, staring into the flames, she spoke the words of the spell aloud, trying to ignore the voice in her head that told her she was a hypocrite.

She repeated it three times, the words moving through the empty store like a wraith. She’d never noticed the mystical quality of a spell before. On paper it looked trite, but saying it out loud transformed it into a living thing, a force she could feel.

When she was done, she held still, letting the words find their place, like her mother had taught her. Then she blew out the candles, feeling oddly at peace with her decision as she ascended the stairs, gris-gris bag in hand.

The house was still quiet as she locked the door at the top of the stairs. She was glad her parents weren’t home yet. Her mother would have been ecstatic that Claire had shown any interest in the craft, let alone actually tried a spell for her own purposes.

Claire didn’t want to give her the satisfaction.

When she got to her room, she shut the door and got into bed. Placing the gris-gris bag under her pillow, she turned out the light. She lay in the dark for a long time, trying to quiet her mind and force herself to sleep.

Finally, she began to drift, the scent of verbena and sage reaching up to her as she moved into the landscape of sleep.