The Hollows Series Books 1-4. Kim Harrison
a fistful of salt, I turned to her. “I’m going to make a salt circle. Don’t try to cross it, okay?” She stared, and I added, “It’s a potentially dangerous spell. I don’t want anything to get into the pot by accident. You can stay in the kitchen, just don’t cross the circle.”
Looking unsure, she nodded. “Okay.”
I kind of liked seeing her off balance, and I made the circle bigger than usual, enclosing the entirety of the center island with all my paraphernalia. Ivy levered herself up to sit on a corner of the counter. Her eyes were wide with curiosity. If I was going to do this a lot, I might want to blow off the security deposit and etch a groove in the linoleum. What good is a security deposit if you’re dead from a misaligned spell?
My heart beat fast. It had been a while since I’d closed a circle, and Ivy watching made me nervous. “All right, then …” I murmured. I took a slow breath, willing my mind to empty and my eyes to close. Slowly, my second sight wavered into focus.
I didn’t do this often, as it was confusing as all get-out. A wind that wasn’t from this side of reality lifted the lighter strands of my hair. My nose wrinkled at the smell of burnt amber. Immediately I felt like I was outside as the surrounding walls vanished to silvery hints. Ivy, even more transitory than the church, was gone. Only the landscape and plants remained, their outlines quavering with the same reddish glow that thickened the air. It was as if I stood in the same spot before mankind found it. My skin crawled when I realized the gravestones existed in both worlds, as white and solid looking as the moon would be if it were up.
Eyes still closed, I reached out with my second sight, searching for the nearest ley line. “Holy crap,” I murmured in surprise, finding a reddish smear of power running right through the graveyard. “Did you know there’s a ley line running through the cemetery?”
“Yes,” Ivy said softly, her voice coming from nowhere.
I stretched out my will and touched it. My nostrils flared as force surged into me, backwashing at my theoretical extremities until the power equalized. The university was built on a ley line so big that it could be drawn upon almost anywhere in Cincinnati. Most cities are built on at least one. Manhattan has three of considerable size. The largest ley line on the East Coast runs through a farm outside of Woodstock. Coincidence? I think not.
The ley line in my backyard was tiny, but it was so close and underused that it gave me more strength than the university’s ever had. Though no real breeze touched me, my skin prickled from the wind blowing in the ever-after.
Tapping into a ley line was a rush, albeit a dangerous one. I didn’t like it. Its power ran through me like water, seeming to leave an ever-growing residue. I couldn’t keep my eyes closed any longer, and they flew open.
The surreal red vision of the ever-after was replaced by my humdrum kitchen. I stared at Ivy perched on the counter, seeing her with the earth’s wisdom. Sometimes a person looks totally different. I was relieved to see Ivy looked the same. Her aura—her real aura, not her vamp aura—was streaked with sparkles. How very odd. She was looking for something.
“Why didn’t you tell me there was a ley line so close?” I asked.
Ivy’s eyes flicked over me. Shrugging, she crossed her legs and kicked off her shoes to land them under the table. “Would it have made any difference?”
No. It didn’t make any difference. I shut my eyes to strengthen my fading second sight while I closed the circle. The heady flood of latent power made me uncomfortable. With my will, I moved the narrow band of salt from this dimension into the ever-after. It was replaced with an equal ring of ever-after reality.
The circle snapped shut with a skin-tingling jolt, and I jumped. “Cripes,” I whispered. “Maybe I used too much salt.” Most of the force I had pulled from the ever-after now flowed through my circle. What little remained eddying through me still made my skin crawl. The residue would continue to grow until I broke the circle and disconnected from the ley line.
I could feel the barrier of ever-after reality surrounding me as a faint pressure. Nothing could cross the quickly shifting bands of alternate realities. With my second sight, I could see the shimmering wave of smudged red rising up from the floor to arch to a close just over my head. The half sphere went the same distance beneath me. I would do a closer inspection later to be sure I wasn’t bisecting any pipes or electrical lines, making the circle vulnerable to breakage should anything actively try to get through that way.
Ivy was watching me when I opened my eyes. I gave her a mirthless smile and turned away. Slowly my second sight diminished to nothing, overwhelmed by my usual vision. “Locked down tight,” I said as her aura seemed to vanish. “Don’t try to cross it. It’ll hurt.”
She nodded, her placid face solemn. “You’re—witchier,” she said slowly.
I smiled, pleased. Why not let the vamp see the witch had teeth, too? Taking the smallest copper mixing bowl, about the size of my cupped hands, I set it over the lit campfire-in-a-can that Ivy had bought for me earlier. I had used the stove for crafting my lesser spells, but again, a working gas line would have left an opening in the circle. “Water …” I murmured, filling my graduated cylinder with spring water and squinting to make sure I read it properly. The vat sizzled as I added it, and I raised the bowl up from the flame. “Mouse, mouse, mouse,” I mused, trying not to show how nervous I was. This was the hardest spell I had tried outside of class.
Ivy slipped from the counter, and I stiffened. The hair on the back of my neck rose as she came to stand behind my shoulder but still out of the circle. I stopped what I was doing and gave her a look. Her smile went sheepish and she moved to the table.
“I didn’t know you tapped into the ever-after,” she said, settling before her monitor.
I looked up from the recipe. “As an earth witch, I don’t very often. But this spell will physically change me, not just give the illusion I’m a mouse. If something gets in the pot by accident, I might not be able to break it, or end up only halfway changed … or something.”
She made a noncommittal noise, and I set the mouse hair into a sieve to pour milk over. There is an entire branch of witchcraft that uses ley lines instead of potions, and I had spent two semesters cleaning up after one of my professor’s labs so I wouldn’t have to take more than the basic course. I had told everyone it was because I didn’t have a familiar yet—which was a safety requirement—but the truth of it was, I simply didn’t like them. I’d lost a good friend when he decided to major in ley lines and drifted into a bad crowd. Not to mention my dad’s death had been linked to them. And it didn’t help that the ley lines were gateways to the ever-after.
It’s claimed the ever-after used to be a paradise where the elves had dwelt, popping into our reality long enough to steal human children. But when demons took over and trashed the place, the elves were forced to bide here for good. Of course, that was even before Grimm was writing his fairy tales. It’s all there in the older, more savage stories/histories. Almost every one of them ends with, “And they lived happy in the ever-after.” Well … that’s the way it’s supposed to go. Grimm lost the “in the” part somewhere. That some witches use ley lines probably accounted for the longstanding misinterpretation that witches aligned themselves with demons. I shudder to think how many lives that mistake had ended.
I was strictly an earth witch, dealing solely with amulets, potions, and charms. Gestures and incantations were in the realm of ley line magic. Witches specializing in this branch of craft tapped directly into ley lines for their strength. It was a harsher magic, and I thought less structured and beautiful, since it lacked much of the discipline earth enchantment had. The only benefit I could see in ley line magic was that it could be invoked instantly with the right word. The drawback was that one had to carry around a slice of ever-after in their chi. I didn’t care that there were ways to isolate it from your chakras. I was convinced that the demonic taint from the ever-after left some sort of accumulated smut on your soul. I’d seen too many friends lose their ability to clearly see what side of the fence their magic was on.
Ley