Thicker Than Blood by Annie Bellet

Author:Annie Bellet [Bellet, Annie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Supernaturals, UF
Publisher: Doomed Muse Press
Published: 2015-11-11T05:00:00+00:00

Noah brought me three books and a bonafide scroll. He also gave me a notepad and a box of pens and pencils.

“These are reproductions, so don’t worry about touching the pages, no matter how old they seem,” Noah said.

“Thank you,” I said, taking the books and putting them onto the desk.

“Good luck,” he said. Then he left with a half-smile playing around his lips.

I tried not to think about what that meant. Either he approved of what I was trying to do, or he thought I was crazy and was just handing over things to keep me from picking more fights with Kira. Like giving the rowdy kid a coloring book and some crayons to distract her.

Only my crayons could maybe do magic. I shrugged off worrying about the vampire’s motivations and got to work at the small desk.

One of the books was a thick tome bound with red leather and closed with three brass clasps. It looked like a proper spell book, so I started with it first. It was written in Latin, with some of the spells in older languages, variants of Coptic and Greek. I turned the pages carefully, almost wishing I had gloves, despite what the Archivist had said. The spells in this book were complex, rituals for harvest or dealing with spirits, though I found two that might help us see the invisible. Both required a full moon and specially prepared garments. I set that book aside.

My wizarding was off to grand start. Sorcery was so much easier. This material components and casting time stuff was bullshit.

The next book I picked up was a slender volume with the title Triewe Lacnunga. A grammatically suspect Anglo-Saxon title that meant roughly “True Remedies.” I was guessing the title had come after the book itself, though the text was mostly in Anglo-Saxon, with a few of the spells in Latin. I paged through the book quickly. These spells were far simpler, mostly based in herbs with basic invocations. Tearing up a piece of notepaper, I made bookmarks and marked off a couple promising spells. One was very simple, dealing with making light, and I figured I could use it as a practice spell. I had no clue if I could make magic work even with real spells, after all. Going from zero to seeing invisibility was probably a mistake.

Not that I had time to give myself a true crash course in working this kind of magic. Even with spells and ingredients and everything else right, I was pretty sure it took witches and other human magic users years or more to be able to master gathering power and executing these spells. It had taken a full coven just to flood my shop with bugs, for example. My only hope was that since I was used to bending power to my will, and totally comfortable with the idea of magic itself, that I could skip the whole “years of study” thing.

I didn’t have years. My friends didn’t have years. We might not even have days.

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