Chapter Thirty-Two

Once the door closed upstairs, Subira waved a hand.

"No one will hear us," she said quickly. "Jacky, this happened to Hasan. That means the modern world is uncovering secrets from the ancient one and they are stumbling on things that we should be concerned about. If they fixed certain mistakes with the original spell, and I bet they have, then we have a lot of problems. Hasan and I will speak about it later, along with the entire family. I'm telling you first."

"What's the mistake with the original spell?"

She reached into her pocket and pulled out her cellphone.

"You can use this better than me. The code is 5124. It's exactly how old I am."

Considering that most of my siblings didn't know their exact ages, it truly surprised me that Subira did, but I knew that was a conversation for another time. I typed in the passcode.

"You'll be taking pictures. Spells can leave marks. This spell needs something to identify the pairs. The mistake of the original witch was not making the mark used permanent. She had to redo it, and she was a bit too late. However, newer witches are smarter. Back then, it wasn't really known that we had a silver weakness, so it was practically impossible to scar us."

She started tearing off the clothes of the body closest to her, the one she had initially looked at when we got downstairs. It didn't take long to find it—a scar on the witch that reminded me of other magical symbols.

"There it is," she said. "Take pictures. We don't need to discover which of these humans was controlling which werewolf or anything. I need to study what sort of symbols they're using."

"Are they… a language?" I asked, studying the mark scarred into the woman's chest, right between her breasts.

"Yes and no. They aren't discovered or invented anymore, depending on your perspective. These aren't authentic, but they are similar to the real ones," she said, moving to the next body. "See, much of the world we once lived in relied on belief. We believed those symbols had power; therefore, we accidentally gave them that power, fed by the world. But perhaps they always had power since those of us who initially used them could see them in the world's magic. The way I perceive the world is different from others. The same for any of the truly ancient witches. Zuri and Jabari could have tapped into it if I had allowed them to go deeper into magic at a much younger age, but since I stunted their growth, they have an immense amount of power, but the limitations of belief like modern witches."

"Hence why the origins are so confusing."

"Exactly. It's difficult to explain my views on magic and what I definitively know about it to anyone else, so I tend to be very coy about it, knowing I could never give anyone a proper explanation that would serve them in the world. Witches today are so… limited. They don't understand that humanity advanced therefore their magic diminished." She revealed another mark in the same place on the next witch, and I moved to take pictures.

"So, technology destroyed magic?" I asked as I waited for the third witch, whose mark wasn't on her chest. The werecat's witch had done it somewhere else.

"No!" Subira earnestly shook her head. "It wasn't the technology; it was the knowledge." She flipped over the witch and revealed a scar that covered the witch's entire upper back. She ran her fingers over it. "They needed something bigger for this witch and the werecat, but why?" Her question was soft, not really directed at me, but I considered it anyway, deciding to throw out a guess.

"Would it strengthen the spell?" I asked, kneeling beside her as I started taking pictures. Once I was done taking them, I lowered the phone and looked at her. She hadn't moved, still staring at the massive and intricate scarring on the back of the witch.

"Possibly," she said, nodding slowly. "That might explain why it's only for the werecat. Probably from the differences between us and the werewolves. When it comes to magic that can control, werewolves are one of the few supernaturals that have it inherent to them."

"So, we would be harder to control because we're fiercely independent while werewolves, ignoring an Alpha, have their will bent regularly due to the magic," I said, nodding as I listened. "Something else is that the witches controlling werewolves all have really similar designs."

"They do. Minor variations that might not change anything except to add an identifying factor. The werecat's is also wholly unique in that way as well." Subira moved on, and I kept taking pictures.

"You mentioned knowledge was the reason magic wasn't as great as it once was. What did you mean?" I couldn't resist. I had Subira alone, talking about magic. I wanted more than anything to understand and to hear it from her since she was magic. Not just as a witch, but her entire life and persona. As she herself had said, she saw the world differently.

Subira paused on the last witch and straightened up, staring at me with that unreadable expression. I accepted the weight of it because I was her named daughter now, and if there was a woman I would die for, it would be her. She was full of secrets and knowledge, but she loved me, just as much as she loved Zuri or Jabari or any of the family. She accepted Dirk and Landon with open arms. She fought for us against a man she had loved for five thousand years. Whatever the weight was in her gaze, I would carry it without complaint.

"What is the moon?" she asked finally.

"A celestial body, orbits Earth, and is tidally locked," I said, shrugging. "It's stuck in Earth's gravitational field and has its own rotational spinning. I'm not really a space person."

"You don't know everything about it, but you know, for certainty, that it's not a god or goddess. You know that it's not magic," she pointed out. "The witch that created the moon cursed didn't know those things. The witch that created us couldn't have known that."

"What?" I heard what she had said. I understood what she had said, but I was still blindsided by it.

"The witch who created the moon cursed didn't know the moon wasn't magic. It was heavily tied with the feminine, though. Always had been and always will be, thanks to the timing of human female reproductive cycles, the tides, and stereotypes. What better object could be used when a woman is turning men into monsters?" Subira kept staring at me, not moving at all, but her expression seemed distant, unfocused. "The moon isn't magic, people now say. We know too much about it. Yet… it is now. She made it magic by tying a powerful and eternal curse to it. Only the best of witches, warlocks, wizards, whatever they want to be called, can actually tap into that magic because it is very far away. Only the best of them, of us, can actually feel the magic in it, forever flowing, forever vast, and forever feeding an unbreakable curse. I can, but I am also cursed, so I'm not human on the nights when it would be the most potent. Even though I can tap into the magic she placed there, the world today isn't wrong. The moon itself was never magic. It was the moon, a large rocky body floating around our Earth with nothing special about it and is still that moon."

"Uh…" I understood, but it felt too big for me to know. Such a simple idea of knowing versus not knowing that as humans explained more of the universe, the less powerful they could be because they believed it was impossible. Even with such a simple explanation and the truth thrown at me, I couldn't bring myself to believe the moon was actually magic. It was impossible.

"I see," I said softly, nodding as I realized what hurdles were faced when it came to such a concept. You spend your entire life being told something was right and something else was wrong because neither was supposed to be true at the same time. I was learning both were true.

"The curse we have, Jacky, was the first time humans irrevocably changed the world we are in with magic. It was the first and greatest of the impossible magic. It slowly tapered off over the centuries until we have the magic we have today in the vast majority of mortal witches. All the others ended up using what she left behind to do other things, but none were as great as what she did because there was literally nothing telling her that it was impossible. If witches today believed that nothing was impossible, they could band together and do great things, but they don't therefore they can't. Knowledge, while valuable, also contaminates and ruins the possibility of seeing magic like that ever again."

"On a scale of… making the moon magic and making a piece of bread that feeds someone in a single bite, what is this?" I asked, waving a hand at the witches in the room.

"Oh, they've done great magic, without a doubt. There can't be many who can properly do this, certainly not in this day and age. It's not the type of magic I enjoy, but I could do it. Zuri, if she trained to it, could do it. Jabari and Makalo have the power. It's great magic because it's considered somewhat impossible to rob someone of their own will and thoughts, to completely subjugate like this. Human science certainly never found a way. However, in the supernatural world, it already exists, so that is the shred of belief they needed, and it was an easy connection. Magic does this in other ways; certainly, they can do it now with magic."

I could only nod. Subira thought this was great magic. Great didn't mean positive, and I had to reframe some thoughts as I considered that. She was using great as is in powerful, immense, world or belief altering.

"You have other questions," she said gently. "Ask them. I don't often offer information for free. I want to hear the questions. It keeps me from offering more than someone is willing to handle."

"Have you done impossible magic?" I wanted to know. She was powerful. She had no ego about it. She just was, and no one could tell her otherwise. "Have you done great magic, to steal your term?"

"I have," she confirmed. "I still feed and focus on those spells to this day."

"Wait…" That related back to something she'd said while the others had been downstairs. "But you aren't like them. They were defenseless and…"

"I'm better than them." Subira shrugged. "But it's also why I don't do large and impressive magics much anymore. You've seen me do some impossible things. Freezing Aisha in time to give her a chance to survive her injuries, but I couldn't hold it for very long because I must constantly keep a large portion of my power dedicated to other spells I cast thousands of years ago."

"And that's why you do things like… potions, charms, foods…" A dozen questions of mine had been answered so quickly. Maybe even more.

"Exactly. I can do small things now, but I try not to do much else because it's a risk for me to do much else. I will, and I have to recover from those because…" She waved a hand at the dead. "Luckily, I can heal from the problems faced from having to hold multiple powerful spells that once took all of my power to cast."

"How do you keep focusing on them during the full moon?" I asked, imagining the pain of the Change and the way a werecat's instincts could go a little haywire in those moments.

"Because at a full moon, I might not be in a human form, but I'm more powerful than I ever am," she answered, a coy smile on her face. "Because the moon is magic, and that magic is for us."

"Are you saying…"

"That I tap into our curse to make myself more powerful? Absolutely," she said, the coy smile growing into something truly joyful and victorious. "Something no purely human witch could ever really do, not like I can." She stepped closer to me. "I heard once that Hasan threatened Matilda and Johann with bringing me into that situation in front of you. Do you know why they're scared of me?"

"You're more powerful than them by several degrees?" I had thought my idea of it was right, but she made me think otherwise.

"Because I've done impossible things from a time before knowledge tainted all the witches in the world, and because I've done them, I can do them again. They don't know what I have and haven't done, and they don't want to find out what unknown impossibilities I can achieve. If they knew, they could defend themselves, or they would have some hope of being able to defend themselves. Raw power, in a magical sense, is nothing without skill and creativity, both of which I outdo them by several degrees, as you say. Now, that also means the reason I don't tell people all of what I can do is so I can keep that element of surprise. While I would love for all my children to know everything about me, not even Zuri and Jabari know some of my greatest spells, and if I have my way, none of you ever will."

"Does that mean if you stopped holding those spells, you could do big, insane things like that witch who cursed us?"

"Possibly, but I will never stop holding those spells, not willingly. Those spells are more important than the Tribunal. They are more important than world peace. They are…" Subira tilted her head, her eyes faraway again. "The greatest thing I have ever offered this world." Then she was back in the present. "Like the witch who created the moon cursed, I will die for those spells if I must."

"Please don't talk like that," I said quickly, uncomfortable with the idea that the ancient woman who adopted me with an open heart would ever die. I hadn't known her long, but imagining a world without her felt like imagining a world that was empty. She was woven into the fabric of the life I knew now. If her thread was pulled out or cut short, everything would unravel.

"Would you like to know more of her story? That witch?" Subira quickly turned the subject for me, away from her possible death.

"Yeah, definitely," I said but quickly realized we were done downstairs. "But we're in the middle of a lot right now, and I've kept you from seeing everything else."

"I don't need to see everything else, but those above us will want to hear from you," she said, sighing. "Hasan is doing his best right now. Before we arrived, I warned him that this might be the case. I had my suspicions based on what Davor had relayed to us to convince everyone that I needed to come. He's not trying to be intentionally cold right now. He's trying not to think about the worst time of his life."

"I figured he was following your orders not to talk to me," I said, shrugging. "But I get that this is probably making one of his old scars itch."

"There's some of that, too, but yes, it is making him think of a particularly bad time for him. He'll have to avoid Kushim for a little while. I should send everyone to Zuri"s territory or Mozambique when he arrives in my territory." She shook her head slowly, and sadness rose in her scent, but it was gone quickly. "Let's go upstairs and see if those werewolves have been brought back."

"Okay." I waited for her to get on the stairs before I asked one more question, something I hoped wouldn't be out of bounds at all. "Is our curse really unbreakable?"

"The only possible way would be to get rid of the moon," she answered.

"So, it's not unbreakable, but it is unfeasible." Nodding, I accepted that and followed her up the stairs.

"And it might not work," she said, chuckling softly. "Because magic is like that. We could end up not being able to Change anyone else or not being forced to Change on the full moon since there would be no more moon." She stopped at the top of the stairs, turning toward me. "And therein lies the greatest problem with the greatest of magics."

"What?"

"You never know what the consequences of them will be," she answered softly. "Because the witch who created the moon cursed only cast it on her brothers. It was only supposed to be them. My aunt was powerful, but in her dying breath, she didn't consider what the consequences were going to be by not making sure it could only be them. None of the most powerful witches at that time ever did…" With a heavy sigh, she turned away. "Myself included."

Then she opened the door and walked out, leaving me with that bombshell.