A Fistful of Charms. Ким Харрисон

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       Seven

      I took a shaky breath and reached for the counter. It was black? I had taken a black charm? This just keeps getting better and better. Why in hell hadn’t she told me?

      “Hell no!” Jenks rose in a flurry of copper-colored sparkles. “Just forget it. Ivy, forget it! I’m not doing this!”

      While Ivy snarled at Jenks that he would or she’d jam him through a keyhole backward, I wobbled to the table and slumped into my chair. Ceri was so odd, seemingly as innocent as Joan of Arc but as accepting of black magic as if she sat at Lucifer’s feet and did his nails every other Wednesday. They were all black, and she didn’t see anything wrong with them? Come to think of it, Joan of Arc had heard voices in her head telling her to kill people.

      “Rachel…”

      Ceri’s hand on my shoulder pulled my head up and I stared. “I, uh,” I muttered. “I kinda expected they were black, but you didn’t seem to be having any problem making them, so…” I looked at the remainder of Jenks’s potion, wondering if he quit now whether he’d be okay.

      “He needs this curse.” Ceri gracefully sat so I couldn’t see Jenks and Ivy arguing at the far end of the table. “And the smut from one or two is trifling.”

      Matalina zipped in through the pixy hole in the screen at one of Jenks’s sharp squeaks, bringing the smell of the spring noon with her. Her yellow dress swirled prettily about her ankles when she came to a short stop, her expression inquisitive as she tried to figure out what was going on. I couldn’t seem to get enough air. Trifling? Didn’t she get it?

      “What if I only use them for good?” I tried. “Will they still stain my soul if I only do good with them?”

      Matalina’s wings stopped and she dropped three inches to the table, losing her balance and falling, to bend a wing backward. Ceri exhaled in obvious exasperation. “You’re severely breaking the laws of nature with these curses,” she lectured, her green eyes narrow, “far more than with earth or line magic on their own. It doesn’t matter if they’re used for good or bad, the smut on your soul is the same. If you mess with nature’s books, you pay a price.”

      My eyes flicked past her to Matalina and Jenks. The small pixy woman had found her feet, and she had a hand on Jenks’s shoulder as he hunched over his knees. He was hyperventilating by the look of it, pixy dust shading to red sifting from him to pool and spill onto the floor. It swirled in the draft from the window, and it would have been pretty if I hadn’t known that it meant he was severely stressed.

      Ivy’s lips were a thin line. I didn’t understand why she was arguing with him. I didn’t expect him to go through with it if it was a black curse. Damn it, Ceri had been calling them curses all along, and I hadn’t been listening.

      “But I don’t want my soul to go black,” I almost whined. “I just got rid of Al’s aura.”

      Ceri’s delicate features went annoyed, and she stood. “Then get rid of it.”

      Jenks’s head came up, his eyes looking frightened. “Rachel is not a black witch!” he shouted, and I wondered at his hot loyalty. “She’s not going to foster it off on an innocent!”

      “I never said she should,” Ceri said, bristling.

      “Ceri,” I said hesitantly, listening to Matalina try to soothe her husband. “Isn’t there another way to get rid of the reality imbalance than to pass it to someone else?”

      Clearly aware of Jenks ready to fly at her, Ceri calmly went to her brewed tea. “No. Once you make it, the only way to get rid of it is to pass it to someone else. But I’m not suggesting you give it to an innocent. People will accept it voluntarily if you sweeten the deal.”

      I didn’t like the sound of that. “Why would someone voluntarily take my blackness onto their soul?” I said, and the elf sighed, visibly biting back her annoyance. Tact wasn’t in her repertoire, despite her kindness and overflowing goodwill.

      “You attach it to something they want, Rachel,” she said. “A spell or task. Information.”

      My eyes widened as I figured it out. “Like a demon,” I said, and she nodded.

      Oh God. My stomach hurt. The only way to get rid of it would be to trick people into taking it. Like a demon.

      Ceri stood at my sink, the morning sun streaming about her making her look like a princess in jeans and a black and gold sweater. “It’s a good option,” she said, blowing at her tea to hasten its cooling. “I have too much imbalance to rid myself of it that way, but perhaps if I forayed into the ever-after and rescued people stolen and still in possession of their souls, they might take a hundred years of my imbalance in return for the chance to be free of the ever-after.”

      “Ceri,” I protested, frightened, and she raised a soothing hand.

      “I’m not going into the ever-after,” she said. “But if the opportunity ever arose that I could help free someone, will you tell me?”

      Ivy stirred, and Jenks interrupted her with a hot, “Rache is not going into the ever-after.”

      “He’s right,” I said, and I rose, my knees feeling weak. “I can’t ask anyone to take the black I put on my soul. Just forget it.” My fingers encircled the remainder of Jenks’s potion and I headed for my dissolution vat. “I’m not a black witch.”

      Matalina heaved a sigh of relief, and even Jenks relaxed, his feet settling into a puddle of silver sparkles on СКАЧАТЬ