The Problem With Witches Read online

  The Problem With Witches

  The Elemental Witch Series: Book 2

  Tania Hutley

  Trudi Jaye

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter One

  An awful moaning fills my ears. Pain flares at my side, and my neck feels like it’s cemented to my shoulder. Panic churns along my nerve endings but I can’t actually remember why I’m so filled with dread.

  Forcing my eyes open, I blink at the arm of the lumpy couch I've been sleeping on. Why did I sleep on the couch? And why do my eyes feel like they've been dipped into a vat of salt and chlorine?

  My gaze goes to the person next to me. The moaning is coming from Xander.

  His large body is splayed awkwardly over the other side of the sofa, his legs tipped off the side and his face squashed against the cushions. He’s making a tortuous sound, like he’s in terrible pain.

  “Xander!” I grab his shoulder to shake him awake.

  The instant I touch him, my mind floods with darkness. A nasty voice penetrates my brain, the words like silent probing fingers clawing deep inside my head.

  “Join me, Sapphira,” it rasps, “and you will have power beyond your wildest—”

  I jerk my hand back with a curse as a painful burning sensation spreads up my arm.

  Just like I did in the Blood Council chambers, I see strands of magic, this time black and oily. They’re coming from Xander, and they’re oozing toward my shoulder.

  I leap up, my heart hammering, and shake my arm out. The strands vanish and the feeling of my arm being on fire subsides. But I’m left with terrible memories spreading through my consciousness like a virus I can't stop.

  A demon called Jeqabeel is inside Xander.

  The Blood Council forced me to become one of them.

  And I killed Uncle Ray. Oh God, I turned him inside out. I put my hands over my eyes, trying to banish the gruesome image of his blood-covered body.

  Suddenly I remember our time limit, and jerk around to check the clock in the hallway. It’s ten o’clock in the morning. The council gave us just forty-eight hours to find a way to get Jeqabeel out of Xander, and now seven of those hours are gone, wasted because we couldn’t keep our eyes open.

  We have forty-one hours left before the council turn Xander into a statue to keep the demon from escaping and killing us all.

  Xander groans and opens his eyes. For a moment, they look blood red. My heart stutters. Am I seeing the demon inside him?

  Then he blinks, and his eyes are back to their normal ice blue.

  “Hey.” He sits up and stretches with a grimace that tells me he’s as stiff and sore as I am. “You don’t want to know what I was dreaming.” He shudders. “I’ve never been so glad to wake up.”

  “We shouldn’t have slept so long.”

  “After the night we had, we both needed it.” Xander sounds way too calm. “Besides, you had to rest to get your magic back.” He stands up, running his hands down the front of his jeans. “No pressure, but it’d be great if you could magic the demon out of me now.”

  “I wish it were that easy.” I say the words without thinking and then wish I hadn’t.

  Xander’s expression tightens, fear momentarily clouding his eyes.

  I reach out to touch his arm, then remember the demon and snatch my hand back. Dammit, I’ve give just about anything to be able to hug him right now.

  “Don’t worry,” I tell him. “I’ll find a way.” I have to, because if we don’t, Xander gets turned to stone. That’s some serious motivation.

  “How hard will it be?” Xander’s a smart guy, a detective used to reading people. He’s not fooled by my show of optimism.

  “My magic’s been bound for years,” I admit. “I don’t know how to use it.”

  “But you’ll try, right?”

  I nod, because what choice do I have? “I’ll do my best.”

  “Good. I trust you.”

  If only I trusted myself. Xander has far too much confidence in me, but I hate to argue when my magic’s the only thing giving him hope.

  I reach up to run my hand through my hair, and it gets stuck in the tangled bird’s nest at the back of my head. My hair’s hard to control at the best of times, let alone after a night sleeping on the sofa. “I’m going to wash up, and check on Ratticus.” Sylvia’s pet rat is in a cardboard box in the corner. I can hear his wheel squeaking as he runs inside it.

  Xander nods. “I’ll make coffee.”

  I emerge from the bathroom a short time later, freshly showered, wearing clean clothes, and with my hair secured in two long pigtails. Xander’s in the kitchen with two steaming cups of coffee, and when he offers me one, I take hold of it with the relieved sigh of someone who’s critically caffeine-depleted. Then I fall onto a slice of toast as though it’s the last piece of food left on Earth.

  While I’m devouring every crumb, he disappears upstairs to shower, and I make a second cup of coffee and more toast. I’m sitting at the kitchen table licking butter off my fingers when Xander comes back smelling fresh and clean, with his hair damp. He hasn’t shaved for a while, and his jaw is dark with stubble. The rugged look suits him. My eyes catch on his lips. I remember all too well how amazing it felt when he kissed me. In fact, if he didn’t have a demon inside him, I’d be tempted to run my fingers over his stubble while I test how soft his lips must feel in comparison—

  “You okay?” Xander frowns, rubbing one hand over his bristled jaw. “Why are you staring at me like that? Do I have something on my face?”

  “No.” I let out a long sigh. “It’s nothing. Wishful thinking, that’s all.”

  “Are you ready to try magicking the monster out of me?”

  “I’d like to.” With another sigh, I pull my mind away from Xander’s lips, back to the far more important question of how to save his life. “But I don’t know how.”

  “Just zap it.” He aims a stage magician’s hand motion at me, as though he’s shooting lightning into me from his fingertips. “Slam it with your magic.”

  “That’s way too dangerous. Remember how I accidentally turned Agnes into a chicken? What if I do something even worse to you?”

  “Worse than having a demon inside me? Worse than your council turning me into a statue?” He raises his eyebrows. “They only gave us forty-eight hours, remember. It’s worth taking a risk.”

  I suck in a breath, thinking hard. “When I was younger, I learned spells to direct my earth magic. But I haven’t used spells in a long time and Magnus said I couldn’t use them to control two types of magic. Anyway, what kind of spell would banish a demon?”

  He sits down next to me at the kitchen table. “Maybe there’s a demon-banishing spell in the book the Unseen wanted.”

  “The dark magic grimoire?” It’s a good idea, and he’s probably right. It’s far more likely than an ordinary grimoire to have spells relating to demons, especially given that it was written by the witch who brought Jeqabeel into this dimension in the first place.

  It’s just a shame I
can’t read it.

  “Using dark magic is strictly forbidden,” I tell him. “Besides, I left the grimoire in the library by mistake. Seeing as we almost destroyed the building, getting it back might be difficult.”

  “So how are we going to get the demon out of me?”

  I hate having to admit I’m totally clueless. “I’m not sure.” I mumble the words into my coffee cup.

  “Then we’ll have to try zapping it.” He lifts both hands as though my magic’s a football I’m aiming to throw at him, and he’s ready to catch it. “Hit me with a spell.”

  I let out a long, reluctant breath. “Tell you what. Let me try using a spell on something other than you. Something inanimate. If I manage not to blow it up, that’ll be a good start.”

  “Here, magic this cup.” He pushes his empty coffee cup toward me. “Turn it into a chicken.”

  “It doesn’t work like that. Give me a minute to feed Ratticus, and I’ll try to remember some of the spells I used to know.”

  Ratticus is still running on his wheel in the cardboard box I set up for him in the living room. He climbs out of the wheel when I fill up his bowl, and I pick him up to stroke his furry back while I think.

  How many earth magic spells can I recall? A few easy ones, for moving dirt and stones. And one to shape a stone into a statue. Dad taught it to me, so I could give a carving to Mom for her birthday.

  Can I still remember that spell? I trace the rune in the air with the hand that’s not holding Ratticus. That’s it, isn’t it? It’s been so long, I’m not entirely sure.

  “Pity you’re only a rat,” I tell Ratticus. “You must have watched Sylvia use dozens of spells. I bet you know lots of runes, don’t you?”

  “Does he ever talk back?” Xander’s voice comes from close behind me. “Is Ratticus just a regular rat, or can he speak?”

  I snort. “A talking rat? That’s ridiculous.”

  “Is it? I’ve seen stranger things lately.”

  I guess he has a point.

  “It’d be great if Ratticus could share Sylvia’s secrets,” I say wistfully. “She was an archivist, so she could use her books to do a little of every kind of magic. Unfortunately, Ratticus would need a brain a little bigger than his pea-sized one to be able to tell us anything.”

  I give the rat one last pat, then head back to the kitchen and pull a sharp paring knife from the drawer. I have to figure out what I’m going to do with each of my two types of magic. “Let’s go outside. I’ll use my earth magic on the stones in the courtyard seeing as they’re already messed up.” Using my magic outside will also mean less danger of bringing the house down by mistake.

  Not that I’m going to say that. Not when Xander’s so hopeful my power can save him.

  He leads the way out the back door, and with every step my dread grows stronger. The large courtyard pavers are already in pieces, evidence of how unpredictable my magic is. The two halves of my magical whole are tangled and chaotic, the animal magic fighting against the earth magic.

  Even though I can now see the magic as I’m using it, and the strands make more sense, I’m still terrified of hurting Xander. Since the explosion that killed my mother and stuck her animal magic inside me, my power has been impossible to control. Last time I tried to destroy the demon, I accidently let Jeqabeel escape into Xander.

  Hardly the solution I was aiming for.

  I search the mess for a stone I can use to carve a figure, and pick up one that’s a little bigger than a closed fist. That’ll do.

  “Stand back.” I lift the stone in one hand. In the other hand, I hold the paring knife in such a way that I can rest my thumb against its blade.

  The Blood Council’s shared magic is now inside me along with my own. The council magic is much stronger than mine, but it’s balled up and isolated, like the scary monster under the bed has gotten itself tangled in a bed sheet and all it can do is growl.

  Aunt Therese warned me very clearly not to use it, that it would overwhelm me if I did. Even if she hadn’t, I wouldn’t be the slightest bit tempted. Their magic would probably tear me to pieces if I so much as looked at it funny.

  Instead I feel for my own magic, the animal and earth magic that’s enough of a tangled mess all on its own, without adding any extra power. They’re both twisting inside me, waiting for the blood that will set them free.

  For the spell to work, I need to cut myself, then draw a rune, preferably with my blood. When I only had earth magic, I could control it as it came out, giving me time to cast the spell. With two types of magic, it’s too difficult to control the second type while performing the spell with the first one. The magic is too fast, too eager, too messed up.

  Maybe if I draw the rune quickly enough, I can cast a spell with my earth magic before my animal magic does something unpredictable?

  “If the spell goes to plan, the stone in my hand will turn into a small statue of a dog,” I tell Xander, who’s hovering beside me.

  “What kind of dog?”

  “A Labrador. It’s going to be sitting down.”

  I picture the dog I want to create. When I have the image firmly in my mind, I drag my thumb along the knife’s blade.

  My heart pounding, I quickly draw the rune on the stone. I concentrate on trying to push the animal magic deep inside me, holding it in while letting the earth magic filter into the stone I’m holding.

  At first, it seems to work. My earth magic is being directed into the stone, and it starts to morph and change. A little bubble of hope expands in my chest. Maybe I really will be able to do this.

  Then my animal magic slams against the barriers inside me. It’s too strong to be contained. With the Council bindings gone, it’s filling me up, expanding exponentially as it strains to be free.

  When I used it at the council chambers, I managed to keep the earth strands and the animal strands from getting tangled. But whatever control I had was born of utter desperation. I don’t know exactly how I did it. And now it turns out I can’t replicate it.

  As my earth magic expands and swells into the stone, my animal magic is dragged out with it. I manage to hold it back for a moment longer—and then it’s over.

  Both sides burst out of me fast and hard. The strands weave around me; my animal magic sparks with unrestrained energy while the earth magic is thick and heavy with power. The force of it sets my body alight. I have as much chance of snatching lightning bolts out of the sky as controlling this much magic.

  The air leaves my lungs, and for a moment, I’m breathless. Frozen in place.

  I’m in the middle of a vortex, both sides of my magic swirling around me. Any control I had was just an illusion. The earth and animal magic collide and crash against each other, creating sparks of energy that amp up the magic even further.

  As I try desperately to pull at least some of the magic back in, the earth magic slams into the stone in my palm so hard it explodes in my hand. I snatch my arm back with a curse, and the remaining stone pieces drop. The magic hits the paving stones with a deafening crash, and dust billows up in a giant mushroom cloud.

  Through the fog of debris, a shape rises. The dust half-blinds me, but the shape is huge. Blinking hard, I make out a giant statue of a dog that’s bigger than I am. My magic has created a statue out of the tiny piece of rock I gave it, pulling up more paving stones for good measure. The statue looms over me menacingly. For a moment it feels just like when the pack of possessed dogs attacked me at my house and I accidentally enlarged a savage Rottweiler. Can this dog move? Will it attack me just like the demon-dogs?

  Panic flares, and I take a lurching step backward.

  My foot snags on one of the broken pavers, and I stumble. I swing my arms, trying to regain my balance, and my animal magic swirls faster around me. I land heavily on my butt and let out a cry of pain.

  My last tenuous hold on my magic fractures.

  The animal magic arcs toward Xander, then veers away, as if repelled by the demon. It streaks toward the hous
e and disappears.

  I feel it pouring itself into the only other living creature nearby.

  Ratticus.

  Frantically, I try to drag the magic away from Sylvia’s poor rat, but it doesn’t work. I feel it transform him, but I can’t tell how.

  Scrambling to my feet, I stagger toward the house, dragging in a lungful of stone dust as I go. It turns my throat into sandpaper. Coughing and hacking, I double over, desperately trying to blink dirt out of my eyes.

  Behind me, Xander is coughing too. He opens the back door with one hand, grabbing my arm to tug me away from the dust.

  As soon as he touches me, darkness fills my brain. Burning pain, and tendrils of dark magic snake along my skin. The repulsive voice reaches inside me, whispering in my head. “You will have your deepest, darkest desires, Sapphira. I can bring your parents back to life—”

  Still coughing, I jerk away from Xander.

  “Sorry,” he rasps. “Forgot.”

  I stumble inside to the kitchen, and hesitate at the door to the living room. What am I going to find on the other side? Perhaps I could board up the living room and never go in there again? Then I wouldn’t have to see what terrible thing my animal magic has done to poor Ratticus. Best-case scenario, he’s a paving slab. Worst case… I don’t want to think about it.

  Behind me, Xander doesn’t realise what I’ve done. He pours us both a glass of water, and when he hands me the glass, I gulp mine down. It soothes my throat, though using my magic has made me feel weak and shaky.

  “I take it that didn’t go exactly to plan?” asks Xander.

  “Not exactly.” I drain the glass. “It was actually a new low for me. I caused two major disasters.” I glance toward the living room where Ratticus’s cage is.