Bone Dry (The Salt Mine, #10) by Browning Joseph & Yee Suzi

Author:Browning, Joseph & Yee, Suzi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Expeditious Retreat Press
Published: 2020-11-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

Lafayette, Louisiana, USA

31st of January, 10:05 p.m. (GMT-6)

In the world of summoning, the guides didn’t require much in terms of material components, but a practitioner had to have these basics. First: chalk to make the circle because nothing was truly safe when a practitioner makes a connection to another plane. Second: candles, convention dictated scented. As far as Martinez could tell, the actual scent didn’t matter as long as it fully engaged the sense. She wasn’t much for scented candles normally, but she tried to pick something she found nice so she could use it to immerse herself in the ritual.

Third, a reflective surface. The guides were able to speak to those that sought information, but they preferred to show rather than tell—a picture’s worth a thousand words. Dedicated scriers had a favored mirror or crystal ball, but any reflective surface would work. In the past, Martinez once made do with bottled water poured into the largest Pyrex pan she had in her kitchen.

On paper, summoning the guides on the road should have been a piece of cake. Chalk, both white and blue, was standard travel gear in her suitcase. Scented candles were ubiquitous, sold in every home goods store, craft store, and most grocery stores. Hotel bathrooms were covered in reflective surfaces.

The problem came in engineering a setup where Morris could observe remotely because of the bad blood between him and the sisters. Thankfully, they were living in the age of video calls. While Martinez summoned them in the bathroom, Morris could be out of sight but watching.

Martinez preferred to put the reflective surface in the circle to keep their magic bound, but that wasn’t possible in this bathroom. The large mirror above the countertop was bolted to the wall, and the full-length mirror hanging behind the door was too long to circle. She could circle the sink, but it didn’t have a great stopper and she worried it wouldn’t hold enough water to last the entire time. It wasn’t like she could top off from the tap mid-summoning. There wasn’t enough clearance in back to circle the toilet, but this was no great loss as far as Martinez was concerned—scrying out of a commode felt categorically wrong. The only time she wanted to be on her knees in front of the john was if she needed to puke, and even then, it wasn’t really a question of want.

After long consideration, the bathtub ended up being the best of a slew of suboptimal choices. She still couldn’t put a hollow circle around it, but at least it provided a large viewing area and held plenty of water to last through the whole summoning.

The drain was sealed and the cold water going full throttle—she wasn’t getting in and the last thing she needed was steam. She pulled the shower curtain to one side and secured it before jerry rigging a stand for her phone out of standard hotel kit. She engaged the speakerphone and positioned her phone on the counter.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.