Holidays Are Hell Read online

  Lips parted, I looked at the pages. I was okay with earth magic, but these looked really hard. “Robbie, I—”

  My words cut off and I stared at the page. “Oh wow,” I breathed, looking at the charm.

  “See,” Robbie coaxed, his voice eager. “Look at that stuff. It’s yours if you want it. All you have to do is work for it.”

  “No, look!” I said, shoving the book across the table and standing to follow it around. “See? There’s a charm to summon the wrongfully dead. I can ask Dad. I can ask Dad what he thinks I should do.”

  Robbie’s mouth dropped open. “Let me see that,” he said, bending over the book. “Holy shit,” he breathed, long fingers trembling. “You’re right.” He was wearing a smile when he pulled his gaze from the pages. “Tell you what,” he said, leaning back with a look I recognized, the one he used to wear when he was getting me into trouble. “You do this spell to summon Dad, and ask him. If it works, you do what he says.”

  My pulse quickened. “You said it was an eight-hundred-level spell.”

  “Yeah? So what?”

  I thought for a minute. “And if he says I should join the I.S.?”

  “I’ll sign the application myself. Mom gave me your guardianship right after Dad died.”

  I couldn’t seem to get enough air. It was a way out. “And if I can’t do it? What then?”

  “Then you come out to Portland with me and get your master’s so you can do every single charm in that book. But you have to do the spell yourself. Front to back. Start to finish.”

  I took a deep breath and looked at it. At least it wasn’t in Latin. How hard could it be?

  “Deal,” I said, sticking my hand out.

  “Deal,” he echoed. And we shook on it.

  Chapter 2

  Squinting, I crouched to put my gaze level with the graduated cylinder, knees aching with a familiar fatigue as I measured out three cc’s of white wine. It was this year’s pressings, but I didn’t think that mattered as long as the grapes had been grown here in Cincinnati, in effect carrying the essence of the land my dad had lived and died on.

  My mom’s light laughter from the other room pulled my attention away at a critical moment, and the wine sloshed too high. She was cloistered in the living room with Robbie under the impression that I was making a last-minute solstice gift and the kitchen was totally off limits. Which meant I was trying to figure out this crappy spell without Robbie’s help. See, this was why I wanted to be a runner. I’d be so damn good, I could afford to buy my spells.

  I grimaced as I straightened and looked at the too-full cylinder. Glancing at the hallway, I brought it to my lips and downed a sip. The alcohol burned like my conscience, but when the liquid settled, it was right where it was supposed to be.

  Satisfied, I dumped it into Mom’s crucible. She had gone over it with a fine-grit sandpaper earlier this afternoon to remove all traces of previous spells, as if dunking it in salt water wasn’t enough. She had been thrilled when I asked to use her old equipment, and it had been a trial getting everything I needed amid her overenthusiastic, wanting-to-help interference. Even now, I could hear her excitement for my interest in her area of expertise, her crisp voice louder than usual and with a lilt I hadn’t heard in a long time. Though Robbie being home might account for that all on its own.

  I leaned over the textbook and read the notes at the bottom of the page. WINE AND HOLY DUST ARE INVARIABLY THE BUILDING BLOCKS OF CHOICE TO GIVE SPIRITS SUBSTANCE. Scratching the bridge of my nose, I glanced at the clock. This was taking forever, but I’d do anything to talk to my dad again, even if the spell only lasted until daybreak.

  It was getting close to eleven. Robbie and I would have to leave soon to get a good spot at Fountain Square for the closing of the circle. My mom thought Robbie was taking me to the Takata concert, but we needed a whopping big jolt of energy to supplement the charm’s invocation, and though we could find that at the concert, the organization of several hundred witches focused on closing the circle at Fountain Square at midnight would be safer to tap into.

  I had really wanted to go to the concert, and sighing for the lost chance, I reached to snip a holly leaf off the centerpiece. It would give the spell a measure of protection. Apparently I was going to open a door, and holly would insure my dad’s essence wouldn’t track anything bad in on the soles of his feet.

  Nervousness made my hands shake. I had to do this right. And I had to do it without Mom knowing. If she saw Dad’s ghost, it would tear her up—send her back to the mess she was in almost five years ago. Seeing Dad was going to be hard enough on me. I wasn’t even sure by the description of “desired results” how substantial a ghost he’d be. If we both couldn’t see him, Robbie would never believe that I’d done it right.

  Standing at the table, I used my mom’s silver snips to cut the holly leaf into small segments before brushing them into the wine. My fingers were still shaking, but I knew it was nerves; I hadn’t done enough to get tired, low fatigue threshold or not. Steadying the crucible with one hand, I started grinding the holly leaves with all my weight behind it. The lemon juice and yew mix I had measured out earlier threatened to spill as I rocked the table, and I moved it to a nearby counter.

  Lemon juice was used to help get the spirit’s attention and shock it awake. The yew would help me communicate with it. The charm wouldn’t work on every ghost—just those un-restful souls. But my dad couldn’t be resting comfortably. Not after the way he died.

  My focus blurred, and I ground the pestle into the mortar as the heartache resurfaced. I concentrated on Robbie’s voice as he talked to my mom about how nice the weather was in Portland, almost unheard over some solstice TV cartoon about Jack Frost. He didn’t sound anything like my dad, but it was nice to hear his words balanced against Mom’s again.

  “How long has Rachel been drinking coffee?” he asked, making my mom laugh.

  Two years, I thought, my arm getting tired and my pulse quickening as I worked. Crap, no wonder my mom quit making her own charms.

  “Since you called to say you were coming,” my mom said, unaware it was my drink of choice at school as I struggled to fit in with the older students. “She is trying to be so grown up.”

  This last was almost sighed, and I frowned.

  “I didn’t like her in those college classes,” she continued, unaware that I could hear her. “I suppose it’s my own fault for letting her jump ahead like that. Making her sit at home while she was ill and watch TV all day wasn’t going to happen, and if she knew the work, what harm was there in letting her skip a semester here or there?”

  Brow furrowed, I puffed a strand of hair out of my face and frowned. I had been in and out of the hospital so often the first four years of public school that I was basically homeschooled. Good idea on paper, but when you come back after being absent for three months and make the mistake of showing how much you know, the playground becomes a torture field.

  Robbie made a rude noise. “I think it’s good for her.”

  “Oh, I never said it wasn’t,” my mom was quick to say. “I didn’t like her with all those damned older men is all.”

  I sighed, used to my mom’s mouth. It was worse than mine, which sucked when she caught me swearing.

  “Men?” Robbie’s voice had a laugh in it. “They’re not that much older than her. Rachel can take care of herself. She’s a good girl. Besides, she’s still living at home, right?”

  I blew a strand of my hair out of the mix, feeling a tug when one caught under the pestle. My arm was hurting, and I wondered if I could stop yet. The leaves were a gritty green haze at the bottom. The TV went loud when a commercial came on, and I almost missed my mother chiding him. “You think I’d let her live in the dorms? She gets more tired than she lets on. She still isn’t altogether well yet. She’s just better at hiding it.”

  My shoulder was aching, but after that, I wasn’t going to stop until I was done. I was fine. I was better than fine. Hell, I’d even started jog
ging, though I threw up the first time I’d run the zoo. All those hills. Everybody throws up the first time.

  But there was a reason there were very few pictures of me before my twelfth birthday, and it didn’t have anything to do with the lack of film.

  Exhaling, I set the pestle down and shook my arm. It hurt all the way up, and deciding the holly was pulped enough, I stretched for the envelope of roots I’d scraped off my mom’s ivy plant earlier. The tiny little roots had come from the stems, not from under the ground, and the book said they acted as a binding agent to pull the lingering essence of a person together.

  My head came up when the TV shut off, but it was only one of them turning on the stereo. Jingle Bells done jazz. One of my dad’s standbys.

  “Look, it’s snowing again,” Robbie said softly, and I glanced at the kitchen window, a black square with stark white flakes showing where the light penetrated. “I miss that.”

  “You know there’s always a room here for you.”

  Head bowed over the mortar as I worked, I cringed at the forlorn sound of her voice. The spell had a pleasant wine-and-chlorophyll scent, and I tossed my hair out of the way.

  “Mom…” Robbie coaxed. “You know I can’t. Everyone’s on the coast.”

  “It was just a thought,” she said tartly. “Shut up and have a cookie.”

  My knees were starting to ache, and knowing if I didn’t sit down they’d give way in about thirty seconds, I sank into a chair. Ignoring my shaking fingers, I pulled my mom’s set of balances out of a dusty box. I wiped the pans with a soft rag, then recalibrated it to zero.

  The wine mixture needed dust to give the ghost something to build its temporary body around, kind of like a snow cloud needs dust to make snowflakes. I had to go by weight since dust was too hard to measure any other way. Robbie had collected some from under the pews at a church while out shopping for a coat, so I knew it was fresh and potent.

  My breath made the scales shift, so I held it as I carefully tapped the envelope. The dust, the wine, and the holly would give the ghost substance, but it would be the other half with the lemon juice that would actually summon him. Yew—which was apparently basic stuff when it came to communing with the dead, the ivy—to bind it, an identifying agent—which varied from spell to spell, and of course my blood to kindle the spell, would combine to draw the spirit in and bind it to the smoke created when the spell invoked. There wasn’t anything that could make the situation permanent, but it’d last the night. Lots of time to ask him a question. Lots of time to ask him why.

  Guilt and worry made my hand jerk, and I shook too much dust from the envelope. Please say I should join the I.S., I thought as I alternately blew on the pile of dust and held my breath until the scales read what they should.

  Moving carefully to prevent a draft, I got the tiny copper spell pot with the lemon juice and carefully shook the dust into it. I breathed easier when the gray turned black and sank.

  The box of utensils scraped across the Formica table, and I dug around until I found a glass stirring rod. It was almost done, but my pleased smile faltered when Robbie asked, “Have you given any thought to coming out with me? You and Rachel both?”

  I froze, heart pounding. What in hell? We had a deal!

  “No,” she said, a soft regret in her voice, and I stirred the dust in with a clockwise motion, paying more attention to the living room than to what I was doing.

  “Dad’s been gone a long time,” Robbie pleaded. “You need to start living again.”

  “Moving to Portland would change nothing.” It was quick and decisive. When she used that tone, there was no reasoning with her. “Rachel needs to be here,” she added. “This is her home. This is where her friends are. I’m not going to uproot her. Not when she’s finally starting to feel comfortable with herself.”

  I made an ugly face and set the stirring rod aside. I didn’t have many friends. I’d been too sick to make them when younger. The girls at the community college treated me like a child, and after the guys found out I was jail bait, they left me alone too. Maybe moving wasn’t a bad idea. I could tell everyone I was twenty-one. Though with my flat chest, they’d never believe it.

  “I can get her into the university,” Robbie said, his voice coaxing. I’d heard him wield it before to get both of us out of trouble, and it usually worked. “I’ve got a great two-room apartment, and once she’s a resident, I can pay her tuition. She needs to get into the sun more.”

  We had a deal, Robbie, I thought, staring at the empty hallway. He was trying to work an end around. It wasn’t going to work. I was going to do this spell right, and he was going to sign that paper, and then I was going to join the I.S.

  “No,” my mom said. “Besides, if Rachel wants to pursue her studies, Cincinnati has an excellent earth magic program.” There was a telling hesitation. “But thank you.”

  “Did she tell you she’s taking martial arts?” she said to change the subject, and I smiled at the pride in her voice. The lemon half was done, and I reached for the mortar with the wine and holly mix.

  “She got her black belt not long ago,” my mom continued as I stood to grind it up a little bit more, puffing over it. “I wanted her to tell you, but—”

  “She sold The Bat to pay for it,” Robbie finished glumly, and I grinned. “Yeah, she told me. Mom, Rachel doesn’t need to know how to fight. She is not strong. She never will be, and letting her go on thinking she can do everything is only setting her up for a fall.”

  I froze, feeling like I’d been slapped.

  “Rachel can do anything,” my mom said hotly.

  “That’s not what I mean, Mom…” he pleaded. “I know she can, but why is she so fixated on all these physical activities when she could be the top witch in her field if she simply put the time in? She’s good, Mom,” he coaxed. “She’s in there right now doing a complicated charm, and she’s not batting an eye over it. That’s raw talent. You can’t learn that.”

  Anger warred with pride at his words on my skill. My mom was silent, and I let my frustration fuel the grinding motions.

  “All I’m saying,” he continued, “is maybe you could get her to ease up on trying to be super girl, and point out how some guys like smart chicks wearing glasses as much as others like kick-ass ones in boots.”

  “The reason Rachel works so hard to prove she’s not weak is because she is,” my mom said, making my stomach hurt all the more. “She sees it as a fault, and I’m not going to tell her to stop striving to overcome it. Challenge is how she defines herself. It was how she survived. Now shut up and eat another damned cookie. We get along just fine here.”

  My throat was tight, and I let go of the pestle, only now realizing my fingers had cramped up on it. I had worked so hard to get my freaking black belt so the I.S. couldn’t wash me out on the physical test. Sure, it had taken me almost twice as long as everyone else, and yeah, I still spent ten minutes at the back of the gym flat on my back recovering after every class, but I did everything everyone else did, and with more power and skill than most.

  Wiping an angry tear away, I used the stirring rod to scrape every last bit off the pestle. Damn it. I hated it when Robbie made me cry. He was good at it. ’Course, he was good at making me laugh, too. But my shoulders were aching beyond belief, and a slow lethargy was taking hold of my knees once more. I had to sit down again. Disgusted with myself, I sank into a chair, elbow on the table, my hair making a curtain between me and the rest of the world. I wasn’t that much stronger now than when they kicked me out of the Make-A-Wish camp. I was just getting better at feeling it coming on and covering it up. And I wanted to be a runner?

  Miserable, I held my arm against the ache, both inside and out. But the spell was done apart from the three drops of witch blood, and those wouldn’t be added until we were at the square. Mom and Robbie had lowered their voices, the cadence telling me they were arguing. Pulling a second dusty box to me, I rummaged for a stoppered bottle to put the potion in.

>   The purple one didn’t feel right, and I finally settled on the black one with the ground glass stopper. I wiped the dust from it with a dishtowel, and dumped the wine mix in, surprised when I found that the holly and the ivy bits went smoothly without leaving any behind. The lemon half was next, and my fingers were actually on the copper pot before I remembered I hadn’t mixed in the identifying agent.

  “Stupid witch,” I muttered, thinking I must want to go to the West Coast and bang my head against the scholarly walls. The spell wouldn’t work without something to identify the spirit you were summoning. It was the only ingredient not named. It was up to the person stirring it to decide. The suggested items were cremation dust, hair…hell, even fingernails would do, as gross as that was. I hadn’t had the chance this afternoon to get into the attic where Dad’s stuff was boxed up, so the only thing I’d been able to find of his was his old pocket watch on my mom’s dresser.

  I glanced at the archway to the hall and listened to the soft talk between Mom and Robbie. Talking about me, probably, and probably nothing I wanted to hear. Nervous, I slipped the antique silver watch out of my pocket. I looked at the hall again, and wincing, I used my mom’s scissors to scrape a bit of grime-coated silver from the back. It left a shiny patch, and I rubbed my finger over it to try to dull the new brightness.

  God, she’d kill me if she knew what I was doing. But I really wanted to talk to my dad, even if it was just a jumbled mess of my memories given temporary life.

  My mother laughed, and in a sudden rush, I dumped the shavings in. The soft curlings sank to the bottom, where they sat and did nothing. Maybe it was the thought that counted.

  I gave the potion another quick stir, tapped the glass rod off, and poured the mess into the glass-stoppered bottle with the wine. It was done.

  Excited, I jammed the bottle and a finger stick into my pocket. The book said if I did it right, it would spontaneously boil when I invoked it in the red and gray stone bowl I’d found in the bottom of a box. The spirit would form from the smoke. This had to work. It had to.