Chapter 12

Chapter

Twelve

A t noon, I went around to the occupied spaces in the park to let my tenants know I'd be doing the protection spell tonight at midnight and to stay inside their homes.

The side benefit of delivering the announcements personally was I scored a fresh-baked cinnamon muffin from Jaq and Xandra, a jar of boysenberry jam from Trini Orosco, and some leftover wine snacks from Ida.

Oh, and I got another lecture from Sra. Cervantes.

Lucky me.

"I swear to every goddess in the firmament, if one more person tells me, ‘Lila wouldn't have done it like that,' I'm going to lose my blessed mind."

Cecil looked up from his workstation, purple hat flopping over his nose. Fennel was rubbing against my legs, trying to calm me. I was supposed to be setting up the ingredients for the protection spell, and all I'd done so far was make a mess of things.

"Plus that cryptic comment from Sexton. Vita ? Life ? I know the soil is capable of life. I want to know how to make it not hate me. Why can't anyone answer that question?" I asked Cecil.

The gnome shrugged, which was a trick with no visible shoulders, and went back to his work. He was making a charm, and it wasn't any kind I was familiar with.

"Please tell me there isn't a manifesto attached to that."

Cecil's head turned until his nose pointed at me. Then he slowly swiveled back and began working again.

"You scare me, gnome." I glanced down at Fennel. "Keep an eye on him, please." To Cecil, I said, "No more letters to the editor of the Smokethorn Valley Press. You're going to get me arrested."

He made a chittering sound that I took to be gnome curse words and flicked pollen from his hat in my direction.

Fennel set a lavender flower on my foot and meowed. Most cats couldn't tolerate the herb, but Fennel was a different sort of cat.

"Sorry for being such a grouch. I guess I'm just disappointed by Sexton's talk with the soil. It was a once-in-a-thousand-years stroke of luck that he offered to do it. I was hoping he'd find out more."

I picked up the bud Fennel had gifted my foot, walked to the lavender planter, and sank down beneath it.

A feeling of peace immediately washed over me.

Lavender, in all its wondrous forms, was my favorite herb. The woodsy floral scent alone was often enough to pull me out of the foulest of moods. Cecil had taken to hurling bunches of it at my head after he did something atrociously bad, like the time he'd knifed Sra. Cervantes's tires in retaliation for her yanking out a patch of dandelions growing in her yard and tossing them into the dumpster.

She'd viewed the plant as a weed. Cecil viewed it as an edible green and her as a wasteful heathen.

Fennel curled up in my lap, and I stroked his sable fur.

"I have to find a place with soil receptive to me, and soon. The past three years have drained my magic and part of my soul. I can't last here another year with things as they are."

Cecil abandoned his evildoings and perched on the edge of his worktable, his tiny, chubby, bare feet swinging back and forth. He clicked and snicked, conveying a feeling of sympathy to me.

"Thanks. I know you guys understand. Probably better than anyone." I let out a sad, shallow sigh and ran my hand lightly over the cat's soft ears. "Wherever I end up, you guys are welcome there. I'd never make you come with me, but I hope you will."

Fennel meowed, rubbed his face against my leg. Cecil clicked.

"Your choices. Always." I made to stand. Fennel padded to his bed beneath the herb planter, and Cecil went back to his work. I returned to crafting the protection spell, feeling calmer overall.

Except for one thing…

"Cecil, if you swear to cease whatever havoc you're about to wreak, I'll share the jar of boozy jam I got from Trini with you."

He snick-chittered his disapproval.

"No, you can't have it all." I peered over my shoulder at him. "What if I throw in a sour apple Four Loko?"

That did the trick. He pushed all the ingredients he'd been assembling into a pile, chanted a few hums and clicks, and the pile turned to ash. It smelled vile.

I propped open the door to the garden room with a rock. "That was a death potion. No death potions ." I shook my finger at him. "I'm already dealing with a lot. Don't get me on the bad side of the goddesses for crafting dark magic, too."

He squeak-tweeted back at me, his bulbous nose bright pink. The picture of innocence. Right.

"Fine. It wasn't a death potion. It was something close, though. I recognized that combination of hemlock and nettle. You aren't dealing with a newb here, gnome."

He faced me for a moment longer then dashed down the leg of his workstation, across the clay tiles, and into a planter of wildflowers.

" There'd better be enough horehound left for my spell tonight ," I yelled after him.

The protection spell wasn't complicated, but because I always went over it two times—measure twice, cast once—it took a lot out of me. And, of course, there was the soil issue. If the earth under the park had been cooperative, it would've been a breeze. Then again, if the soil had been cooperative, the saguaros would still be alive and we wouldn't have needed the spell.

I went home after checking everything a second time. I needed rest to restore my energy and my magic.

Though the trailer was small, I'd managed to find places to stick plants. Succulents, ferns, and herbs grew in tiny pots tucked onto shelves and on precious counter space. I needed green things, growing things, living things around me as much as possible. It was important to my magic and my peace of mind.

My oldest plant, a cutting from a Crassula ovata I'd inherited from my mom, sat on a wall ledge above my flatscreen TV. Jade plants symbolized wealth and renewal, and Mom had always been partial to them.

Mom .

Gods, I wished she was here. And from my run-ins today, everyone else did, too.

"What were you thinking?" I asked the ceiling. "You call me because you need help with a spell then don't wait for me to get here? I left the minute you called." My throat burned and my eyes glazed with tears. "No matter how much you pissed me off at times, I always came when you called." I sucked back a sob and burrowed into my pillow.

A familiar twinge of guilt bit me, a reminder that when she'd needed me most, I'd been hours away. Mom had taught me nearly everything I knew about magic. Though it had been—and still was—hard to live in her shadow, I would've given anything to have her back.

And not only so I could leave this place and start my real life, either.

I put on the radio, and easy-listening seventies songs played softly through the speakers. The final strains of Andy Kim's "Rock Me Gently" were followed by "Moonlight Feels Right" by Starbuck. The band, not the coffee place.

Comforted, I snuggled back under my bedcovers, humming along until my brain stopped whirring. The music, my warm blanket, and the plants soothed me, and I dropped into sleep like I had a cement block chained to my leg.

Fennel woke me with a paw swipe straight to the face.

" Me. Ow ."

I awoke with a gasp, the heaviness of deep sleep clinging to me. "I'm up. What time is it?"

A glance at my phone told me it was nearly midnight. Time to get the spell started.

"How the heck do you get in here? This time I locked the door and spelled it."

" Meow ," he replied insouciantly and stalked into the kitchen.

"I'm going to figure it out someday, cat."

I rolled to my feet and shuffled into the kitchen to start a pot of coffee. I gave Fennel the last of the salmon from this weekend and threw a black sweatshirt over my head with Lurk Laugh Loathe written across it in macabre, gray letters.

When it was ready, I poured the entire pot into a thermos and added half a pint of whipping cream. I needed both the calories and the stimulant.

Cecil met Fennel and me at Orange's grave by Maria Cervantés's trailer. I knelt in front of the stones ringing the soil where its roots lay and dug a shallow hole. Cecil came up beside me, a burlap bundle in his arms. There were seven bundles total—one for each dead saguaro. I'd brought them with me, along with the coffee and a jug of water.

The saguaros were dead, but their dormant roots still produced enough magical residue to power up—or, rather, re-power up—the original protections. With the cooperation of Mom's soil, my spell could tease it out of them. However, getting the earth here to cooperate for even this small amount of time was a challenge.

I untied the bundle and laid the ingredients in the hole—Cecil had left me enough horehound after all—and poured in a cup of sea water, mixing everything together with my finger.

Pure water acted as a dissolution agent, diluting magic as it washed away intention and ingredients. Sea water was not only electrically conductive, it aided magical transmission, too. I'd driven five hours round trip to the Pacific Ocean last week to refill the jug.

When the surface of the water had stilled, I hovered my hands over it and chanted the spell, using English, Spanish, and a few Latin words, as I'd been taught. The language didn't matter, and neither did the words. It was the intention that counted.

Like the road to Hell, the road to effective magic was paved with good intentions. Also bad intentions, but I kept away from the dark stuff.

For a moment, just one, I felt the raw power in the soil. Life sprang from it like a jolt of electricity, treating not only the water as a conductor, but my body, too. Together, we acted as an infinity loop of magic and intention. Together, we spoke to the roots of the saguaro, coaxing magic from them.

Together, we met in love and purpose to protect this park and the beings residing inside it.

Tears rolled down my cheeks as I reached for the saguaro spine. I chanted as I set it on the water's surface.

" Protegerlos . Protect them ."

The salt water jetted up like a fountain, balancing the spine on a single drop of water three feet in the air then fell back to earth in a slow-motion splash, taking the saguaro spine, the spell ingredients, and the salt water with it. The surrounding soil filled the hole, and my magic came back into me in a whiplash snap, leaving me flat on my back and gasping for air.

When the effects of having the wind knocked from my lungs subsided, I rolled onto my side, careful not to squish Cecil, and sat up. The gnome had already placed a fresh stone atop Orange's grave. It would be a fully-powered key by morning—no need for me to use any additional magic for it. Sra. Cervantes would know to pick it up before leaving for her how to be the world's biggest grouch class, or whatever she did with her time.

" Meow, meow ."

"Yeah, that did suck, Fennel." I grunted and rolled to my feet. Took a swig of coffee, downing the equivalent of a full cup in two gulps. "Look at it this way," I said, as I screwed the cap on the thermos, "I only have to do this six more times."

The last saguaro of the spell was also the one with the most residual magic.

Red.

By the time I got to him, I'd polished off the thermos and was still dragging. The amount of caffeine I would've required to stay fully alert would've poisoned me, so I'd accepted one of my awaken charms from Cecil to make it through the last few cactuses.

My magic was so low, an outside attack from even a low-power witch would've taken me out. I couldn't run, couldn't cast, couldn't defend myself. This was the moment when the spell became dangerous. If anyone knew how weak I was tonight, they'd be able to kill me as easily as killing a human.

I knelt in front of Red's grave, hissing as the bruising on my knees reminded me I'd been doing this for three hours now. I dug the hole and performed the spell, the salt water splashing me as it rose high above my head, too high for the amount of water I'd poured. The saguaro spine was absorbed into the flow, traveling through the spurting water into the earth.

That was Red. He always did things differently than the other saguaros. Done , I reminded myself. He'd always done things differently. Because although I could tap the magic in his roots to power Mom's old spell, he wasn't alive anymore.

Like Mom.

No matter how much I wanted things to be different, neither of them would ever be back. Even if I managed to grow the saguaros from the sleeping roots buried here, the cactus that formed wouldn't be Red. Not my Red.

" Protegerlos . Protect them ," I whispered, infusing the words with the last of my magic.

The fountaining water fell to the earth with a splat, and the magic punched out of me, leaving me so weak it was all I could do to breathe. I crawled onto the damp soil of Red's grave, curled up, and passed out.

I awoke two hours later, finding four awaken charms draped around my throat and my cell phone beside my head.

Fennel sat beside the phone, his tail curled around his legs.

"Don't tell me. All hell broke loose last night?"

" Meow ."

I glared at the phone I was certain I'd left charging in my trailer. "So not all hell. Just a small corner of it?"

" Meow ." He batted the phone, sending it spinning in my direction.

I sat up. Sleeping on Red's soil had a rejuvenating effect as well as keying me into the park spell, similar to how I keyed the stones for my tenants. I took off all but one of the awaken charms and made a mental note to ask Cecil to help recharge them later. He'd long gone to bed, leaving Fennel to watch over me and, apparently, my phone.

"Seriously. I'm going to figure out how you keep getting into my place. I locked the door last night, Fennel. I always do before I renew the spell."

He lifted his front paw and examined it, gave it a nibble and a lick. The cat equivalent of a sarcastic shrug.

I unlocked the cell.

There were thirty-two text messages, all from Alpha Floyd, all after midnight, all making demands using degrading, hateful language. The term, "filthy, low class, trailer-park grunge witch" came up several times.

Great band name, but I wasn't taking that BS from him.

Now that I'd agreed to work for him, the wolf thought he could abuse me the way he did his wolves. He figured he had the upper hand.

Fennel lowered his paw and cocked his head. Waiting.

I looked from him to the messages to him again.

"Someone needs to learn a lesson about how to treat a witch. You in?"

" MEow ." Fennel bobbed his black head up and down.

"Get Cecil and meet me in the parking lot in five minutes. Tell him to bring the Alpha Pallás special. He'll know what I mean."