Family Magic
Patti Larsen
Chapter One
I batted at the
curl of smoke drifting off the tip of my candle and tried not to sneeze. My
heavy velvet cloak fell in oppressive, suffocating folds in the closed space of
the ceremony chamber, the cowl trapping the annoying bits of puff I missed. I
hated the way my eyes burned and teared, an almost constant distraction. Not
that I didn’t welcome the distraction, to be honest. Anything to take my mind
from what went on around me.
Being part of a
demon raising is way less exciting than it sounds.
The bodies of the
gathered coven pressed close, shrouded in the same black velvet, the physical
weight of their presence making it hard to breathe. I struggled to censor my
clichéd thoughts and focus on the task at hand. The glow of other candle flames
floated around me, barely lighting faces, enough for a serious case of the
creepies. A low hum sounded from every throat, filling the room with an almost
physical presence. I participated half-heartedly,
wishing I was anywhere but here, knowing despite my personal preferences I had
no choice whatsoever.
The group swayed as one as the hum grew in volume. The
first hint of power made its way around the half-circle. I felt my own power
being drawn away, connected and shared despite my reflexive attempt to pull
free. As much as I suppressed my magic from day to day and refused to use it at
all, the draw of the coven and my attachment to it made it impossible to deny.
Totally crappy. Especially since anything to do with magic
always made me feel slightly nauseated and off balance.
I wiped a smoke-laced tear from the corner of my eye and
blinked at the pentagram etched in the stone at my feet. The lines of the star
began to glow faintly blue, the candles at each point flaring as though with
the heartbeat of the whole, the breath and life of each and every soul in the
room. I wondered if anyone ever checked to see if our hearts really did beat in
sync. Wouldn’t that be special?
I stifled a sigh as a tall, elegant form flowed forward
from the circle to the center of the pentagram. She swept back the hood of her
cloak, her long, thick and perfect black hair a flawless halo around her
gorgeous face. Her eyes glowed with joy, cheeks flushed from the rush of energy
coming from the coven, her coven. Miriam Hayle was everything every
woman wanted to be. Beautiful, graceful, commanding, the perfect witch, the
perfect leader, the perfect everything.
My luck? She was my mother.
I blew on the
smoke from my candle as subtly as possible while barely managing to still the
jiggle starting in my left knee. Somehow I always ended up in exactly the spot
where a tiny little breeze pushed the white vapor the wrong way. A part of me was sure it was somehow contrived that way as
an extra level of punishment piled on to my particular little corner of hell.
And forget the sacrilege of blowing the candle out. It’s not a whole lot of fun being the center
of the displeasure of fifty-odd witches of varying power, so I suffered.
Oh believe me, I
suffered. Every day, every moment, every breath. I, Sydlynn Hayle,
sixteen-year-old all-American girl, was a witch. My mom was a witch. My
grandmother was a witch, if a crazy one. My sister, my mom’s best friend and
every single other person in my life, much to my disappointment, fell in that
category, with a couple of exceptions. Lucky me. Except I spent my entire life
wanting nothing more than to be normal, average, ordinary and just like
everyone else.
Hard to do in a family like mine.
So there I was, another Saturday night, no friends, no
social life, just the stupid coven and another stupid coven ritual. Could one
girl’s life really suck that much?
I glanced down at my little sister as she stared at our
Mom, rapt in attention, beaming a smile. Meira glanced up at me, red-tinted skin
and amber gaze aglow as the power in the room built, triggering her demon
blood. In the ‘real world,’ Meira had to disguise her unusual coloring, her
overlarge eyes and cute little horns peeking out of her silky black curls.
Within the safety of the family she was free to be herself and I know she loved
it.
I always envied my eight-year-old sister her eagerness to
embrace her birthright while I simply did everything I could to ignore it.
Easier for me, I suppose, with my plain, dark brown hair and ordinary blue
eyes, my white skin and handful of freckles. I did what I could not to look the
part, to forget our dad was a demon.
Meira grinned at me, her candle’s trail curling perfectly
upward toward the ceiling in an endless swirl. I waved at my smoke again, the
tickle in the back of my throat and nose getting worse. Meira watched me
struggle like she always did. With laughter wrinkling her upturned nose, she
waggled her fingers at my candle. I felt her power reach out, the thin film of
it forming a delicate tube around the wick. My smoke immediately behaved. She
winked before turning back to Mom.
I felt stupid. So that’s how they did it…! Sixteen years of
this crap, and it took my little sister taking pity on me to finally get the
joke. Of course, if I ever paid attention or agreed to do magic, maybe I’d have
known about it a long time ago. But the fact my suspicions were so dead on,
that Mom obviously instructed the others to let me figure it out on my own or
continue to suffer, made me grind my teeth in frustration. She would do
anything to get me to use my talent, short of putting me in danger, and I even
wondered about that.
I tried to focus on the stupid ceremony and not my urge to
throw the dumb candle in her flawless face.
Yeah, that would go over well.
Mom, either unaware or not caring about my present state of
mind, raised her arms, robe falling into a perfect puddle at her feet,
revealing her model’s figure in a black satin gown, polished silver jewelry at
wrists and throat. She positively glowed with power, vivid blue eyes in
rapture. How pathetically stereotypical. I wanted to throw up.
I felt the strength flow out of me in a rush and struggled
as I always did to control the weakness in my knees and the slow roll in my
stomach. I tried to catch my breath as secretly as possible, furious this
always left me on the verge of passing out. Of course, no one else showed any
discomfort, just little old me. I guess knowing how to use your magic and being
willing to share made the whole transfer easier. That’s me, fight tooth and
nail, even to the point of pain.
Sometimes I wondered why I was even invited.
At least I had the diversion of being responsible for my
grandmother. She stood next to me, as usual, about as into the whole thing as
me, but for different reasons. She hummed softly under her breath, her watery
blue eyes crossing and recrossing as she studied the tip of her protruding
tongue. She turned to me, wisps of white hair escaping from the edges of her
black cloak, fanning back and forth with a life of their own. Her powder white
skin fell in crumpled folds, but her expression was pure childishness. She
cackled, winning me a silent warning from my mother. I rolled my eyes at Mom
before sneaking a caramel out of my pocket and slipping it to Gram. She made a
face. Chocolate was her favorite, but I hadn’t time to track some down. Okay,
honestly, I forgot and raided the candy dish on the way. I prayed the offering
would be sufficient.
Ethpeal Hayle had once been an influential witch. When I
was just a baby, an evil coven challenged our family. She stood against them
alone, cutting herself off to protect the rest of us. The Purity coven fell
thanks to her, but the fight scrambled her sanity. So, I waited for the old
woman to make up her mind about the candy and tried to be patient. It wasn’t
her fault she was nuts.
I saw the flicker
of rejection as her wrinkled old mouth puckered and knew if I didn’t act right
then the scene she could create would probably level the house. The fight with
the Purities may have left her one fortune cookie short of a combo plate but it
did nothing to reduce her power. Knowing I only had one chance, I curled my
fingers and started to pull away.
Her hand shot
out, dagger-like nails brushing my palm as she snatched the sweet and stuffed
it into her face. She grinned at me, nose wrinkling, eyes full of mischief. I
tried not to react, knowing yet again we were saved by careful manipulation of
my crazy grandmother.
I returned my attention to Mom with some relief as,
oblivious to the disaster I averted, she turned slowly, pivoting on manicured
toes. I made a face at her fuchsia piggies, just in time to catch her
disapproving frown. I could practically hear her whole body screaming at me to
pay attention, the little hairs on my arms vibrating from it. I flashed her a
half-grimace, half-smile so she would stop. Her expression softened. She turned
away. Thankfully. I wasn’t sure how long I could keep up the whole fake happy
thing without bursting into flames.
She faced the altar at the back of the room and the
life-sized stone effigy of an impossibly perfect and handsome man with large
muscles and tiny horns on his smooth forehead. She pushed magical force toward
it.
“Haralthazar,” she glided closer to the statue, “we summon
you this third night of Power, nine days and nine nights from Samhain Eve, to
tighten our bond with you and your realm.” She knelt at the foot of the altar,
the picture of the submissive handmaiden. Could she be any more ridiculous?
Seriously. “My love, come and be welcome.”
The blinding flash leaping from her to the statue continued
to pour out of her in a deep blue rush of light. I turned my head slightly to
the side, squinting against the glare, grateful for the edge of the cowl and
the shadow it made. The whole room started to thrum, the floor vibrating with
condensed magic as Mom used the energy we gave her to make the doorway
permitting my father through to this plane.
When it happened we all felt it rather than seeing it. The
power swirled around us, drawing us all closer, forming us into one entity, one
spirit, a seamless conduit to the other dimension. I always hated this part,
the total and utter lack of self that came with the opening of the door. Every
time I went through it I tried to pull back, but my own demon blood wouldn’t
allow it. Even more so than the other witches in the room, my being was tied
completely and without choice to what was happening at the altar. I was always
helpless, tapped into, taken, and ended up on my knees behind my mother, Meira
at my side, as the effigy of my father came to life.
The blue flared to gold and Haralthazar, Demon Lord of the
Seventh Plane of Demonicon, flushed and filled out. Still with the properties
of stone but the appearance of flesh, he materialized from a burst of light as
the gateway to his plane slammed open. For a heartbeat he stood there, haloed
in the back glow of his dimension before the power propelled him the rest of
the way forward and he stepped through and into his statue.
Patti Larsen is an award-winning middle grade and young adult author with a passion for the paranormal. But that sounds so freaking formal, doesn't it? I'm a storyteller who hears teenager's voices so loud I have to write them down. I love sports even though they don't love me. I've dabbled in everything from improv theater to film making and writing TV shows, singing in an all girl band to running my own hair salon.
But always, always, writing books calls me home.
I've had my sights set on world literary domination for a while now. Which means getting my books out there, to you, my darling readers. It's the coolest thing ever, this job of mine, being able to tell stories I love, only to see them all shiny and happy in your hands... thank you for reading.
As for the rest of it, I'm short (permanent), slightly round (changeable) and blonde (for ever and ever). I love to talk one on one about the deepest topics and can't seem to stop seeing the big picture. I happily live on Prince Edward Island, Canada, home to Anne of Green Gables and the most beautiful red beaches in the world, with my very patient husband and four massive cats.
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