The Trouble with Magic
I love hanging out with author friends. And I know some awesome authors, so I’m spoilt for choice when it comes to hanging out with awesome people.
One of my favourite author friends is Tania Hutley, the one person I’ve ever agreed to write a book with.
We spent months hanging out on Skype, chatting and planning our series, writing and editing it—mostly just as another excuse to get to hang out and talk about writing. 🙂
The series we wrote, called the Elemental Witch series, features one of my favourite heroines. Saffy, a witch who was banned from using her uncontrollable magic, kicked out of the witching community when her parents are killed, and is then blamed for a murder she didn’t commit.
You could say that she’s having a bad day. 🙂
I’m just going to drop this The Trouble With Magic excerpt here, and you can see for yourself…
The ladder wobbles.
Dropping the cleaning rag, I shoot out a hand to steady myself on the ceiling beam I was wiping. Instead of wood, my hand hits a rusty old nail. The sharp point rips open the skin on my palm. It hurts like hell.
“Shit!”
My calloused hands aren’t exactly delicate or lady-like, but the nail has torn through my roughened skin, deep into my flesh. Blood flows from the ragged wound, and for a moment, I’m frozen. The rush of power in my blood holds me spellbound.
Literally.
My magic struggles to break free of the powerful council bonds holding it dormant. The released blood calls to my magic, both the earth and animal sides. It throbs inside me, pushing against its restraints. Pulsing in time to the song by The Flaming Buttholes that’s pumping out of my stereo system.
But how can my magic be surging? The crushing bonds the Blood Council placed around it have held it in place for years. I’ve cut myself hundreds of times in the years since the spell was cast with no reaction. I don’t understand what’s happening.
And then another wave of magic hits me and I can’t think of anything other than the need to control and contain my magic before I hurt someone.
The magic is insistent. Urgent.
Dangerous.
With one hand, I stumble down the ladder, cursing the urge to clean drywall dust off the walls that led me up there in the first place. Desperately holding the power in, I’m relieved to feel the council bonds tightening back around the magic, helping me fight it. I press the wound into my Death Metal Forever T-shirt, wrapping the fabric around my hand to constrict the blood flow. Better. As the bleeding subsides, so does the power inside me. I let out a long breath, releasing some of the tension holding me rigid.
There’s a pause in my favorite song, the musicians catching their breath before launching into the climax. In the silence, I hear somebody banging on the front door. They’re pounding hard, probably using the side of their fist. How long have they been knocking? When the lead singer’s gravelly voice starts up again, it all but drowns them out.
I won’t do what ya want. I won’t be what ya make me. Hard as ya try, ya still can’t break me.
The power is all but gone and my panicked heartbeats are slowing. I probably shouldn’t open the door before I’ve bandaged the cut on my hand, but whoever’s banging isn’t letting up. It sounds like they’re trying to break the door down. It must be urgent.
With my injured hand pressed against my T-shirt, I stride into the hallway and pull the door open.
Big mistake.
Agnes Postlethwaite—AKA the demon neighbor from hell—is standing on the doorstep. All five feet of her trembles with outrage. Damn. My roommate Jess is good at dealing with the old battleaxe. Me, not so much. People skills aren’t exactly my super power.
“Sapphira Black, I’m sick and tired of coming over here.” Agnes has to shout to be heard over the music, and the best thing that’s happened to me all day is that the singer has just launched into the climax of the song. He’s now screaming, ‘You’re a butthole,’ over and over. Perfect timing.
“Turn off that horrible noise and stop hammering at all hours,” shouts Agnes. “Or I’ll call the police.”
“I was cleaning, not hammering,” I yell back, glancing at the antique grandfather clock behind me. “And it’s three o’clock in the afternoon. When am I supposed to play music?”
“That’s not music, it’s an abomination.”
I shrug, not prepared to argue with her about this yet again.
“What if I were giving a piano lesson?” She looks down her long beaky nose at me, disapproval etched into her face. She’s made it obvious she doesn’t like anything about me. Not my music, what I do for a living, or the way I look.
Too bad for her.
During the week, I work as a stonemason. On weekends I work on my house, rebuilding the rooms that were damaged in the explosion. I have three pairs of jeans I wear on rotation, and washing them never gets all the building dust and mortar out of them. The ones I’ve got on could stand up on their own.
But I’d rather wear filthy jeans and a blood-smeared death metal T-shirt than look like Agnes. She’s wearing brown slacks with creases ironed down the front of the legs, a matching brown cardigan, and a blouse with ruffles. Ruffles! She’s probably about fifty, twice my age, but her gray hair makes her look older. It’s styled in such perfectly-crafted waves, I can count how many curlers she must have used.
My thick black locks are pulled into two messy pigtails, one on each side, and probably covered with white drywall dust. Agnes and I couldn’t be more different. Still, I had nothing against her until she went to the police to tell them about an argument she heard me having with Mom before her death. I already feel terrible for losing my cool and screaming at Mom, without Agnes trying to convince the police it was something sinister instead of a normal family disagreement.
Since then, I haven’t been able to look at Agnes without getting steamed.
“I keep the volume down for you all week,” I yell. “Now you want me to tiptoe around on Saturdays too?”
“You could employ a little courtesy.” Her nostrils flare as she focuses on my hand. “Are you bleeding?”
When I look down, blood is trickling over my hand, shockingly red against my skin. The magic surges again, fighting against its bonds. My mother’s ring feels hot on my finger. Her blood inside the clear crystal orb is glowing, as though drawing from the power inside me.
My magic is begging me to use it. I’m a witch, after all.
Something dark curls up inside me. I used to be a witch. Now I want no part of it.
“Are you going to do something about that?” Agnes glares at me with beady eyes, judging me yet again for not doing what she considers the proper thing.
She’s a mundane through and through, with no idea about witches or magic, but I have a feeling if she found out it’d be the last straw. She’d vote herself in as the head of the witch-burning committee of Druid Park Drive, and I’m the first one she’d throw on the fire.
With a final crescendo of dueling guitars, the song ends. In the silence, all I can hear is my magic, still thrashing against its bonds in a ferocious battering of frustrated energy.
“I was about to bandage it when you knocked,” I tell her, gritting my teeth against the renewed surge of magic. “Better go and do that.” I start pushing the door closed.
The first notes of next song fill the air behind me. It’s called Thrill Me, and it starts off a little quiet, with a pulse like a heartbeat and a single electric guitar winding up slowly. But I think Agnes can tell it’s going to get loud again, because she steps forward and catches the door before it shuts.
“Not so fast. I’m turning off that stereo.” She pushes the door all the way open and barges in, charging past me like she owns the place.
Seeing as I heft rocks for a living, I should have been able to stop her easily, but the magic is making my reactions sluggish, so instead I just watch with my mouth open. I’m shocked that she thinks it’s okay to barge in here. There’s even a little part of me that’s impressed by how badass she is.
Then my responses kick in.
She’s in my home, and I sure as hell didn’t invite her in. This is my place. My sanctuary. And with my magic surging, I don’t have time for her outraged self-righteousness.
“Stop,” I snarl. “You’re like a clucking chicken, poking your beak into my business.” I grab her arm. As soon as my wounded hand touches her, smearing my blood on her bare skin, I realize my mistake.
Too late.
The heat in my veins turns to fire. I try to erase the image of Agnes as a beaky, squawking chicken, but that’s the picture in my head. I can’t change it. The image is clear.
The magic bursts out of me. My earth magic is strong on its own, but intertwined with my mother’s animal magic it feels like a freight train tangled up with a roller coaster. They tear out of me so fast and hard, I have no chance to control them.
It’s the animal magic that pours itself into Agnes.
One moment I’m holding the cool flesh of my piano-teacher neighbor, the next there’s a chicken in my arms.
The bird flaps and pecks me, but I’m already letting it go. My muscles have turned to water and my legs can no longer hold me. I collapse to the floor, trembling all over, the after-effect of the magic I’ve just released for the first time in five years.
To read more of The Trouble with Magic, click this link to buy it on Amazon.