“I’ve never been to the mountains.” She walked a circle then settled in the center of my bed. “Will there be snow? Ice? Sleet? Hail? Oh. A blizzard? Will I need a coat?” She hesitated. “Skip that. I forgot. Wings.”
“We’ll use that spell from when it snowed if you get cold.”
Snow was as rare as hen’s teeth in central Alabama. We got plenty of hail, sleet, and ice. Flurries hit us in late winter edging into spring every other year or so, but accumulation was a major event three or four years in the making.
“Promise to build a snowman with me?” She rubbed her hands together. “We’ll need to pack a carrot.”
Based on past experience, I wasn’t worried about the carrot. First came the rush of enthusiasm, then the stinging pain of frozen hands, followed by soggy regret that ended with me using magic to finish the job.
Glamour might be the bane of supernatural law enforcement, but it was handy when you got lazy.
“Pfft.” I waved off her idea. “The guys will be with us.”
Understanding brightened her eyes. “Snowball fight.”
“Heck yeah.” I grinned. “Girls against boys.”
Finished with my bag, I pulled out a rolling suitcase I used for Colby on trips, but the safe distracted me. I hadn’t gotten the grimoire out since the guys left. That wasn’t to say it hadn’t gotten itself out. It had. Three or four times. Just, there had been too much to do getting the shop back in shape for me to crack it open for study. But this trip would afford me time to read while we were on the road.
Still, I wavered on whether to bring it.
Some dark artifacts grew a certain sentience that resulted in them toying with their masters. Much like a cat, they wanted to be stroked and admired and treated with reverence. They used their ambient magic to convince you there was a topic you just had to read up on. Right now. This very minute.
Hurry, hurry, hurry.
The resulting adrenaline would convince people to pick up the book, and contact strengthened the compulsion until you ended up wiling away an afternoon doing exactly what the book told you to do.
Protections on the safe shielded the dark artifacts as much as they protected me from their whispers.
That I was eyeballing the safe didn’t mean I was in its thrall, but it didn’t mean I wasn’t either.
A shudder rippled through Colby as she noticed the direction of my stare. “Are you bringing the book?”
“I’m thinking about it.” I spelled it out for her. “You’ll be safer once I’ve read it and destroyed it.”
Taylor might not have gotten every detail right, but he did his research, and we couldn’t afford to ignore a potential source of information on Colby. His obsession spilled across the pages, ten years’ worth, but I could admit, to myself, the true reason I kept putting off studying it was the fear I would backslide under its influence. There was a whole lot of ugly in that book, and I was not immune to its lure by any means.
The spells contained within would make any black witch salivate. They would kill to own its knowledge.
To avoid its power falling into the wrong hands, any white witch who stumbled across it would set it on fire, dig holes at the four compass points, divide its ashes and then bury them. Any white witch but…me.
“Yeah, I guess.” Her coarser fur stood on end. “That book gives me the creeps.”
“Me too.” I rested my palm on the safe. “It’s a risk, a big risk, taking it outside the wards.”
It might explore the house on its own, but I was ninety percent sure it couldn’t leave without an escort.
“I’ll sleep on it,” I decided, rolling our suitcases down the hall. “Let’s go pack your bag.”
Aside from her teeny pillow and tiny blanket, I had little to pack for her aside from pollen and sugar.
But first, I had a surprise for her.
In the hall closet, hidden at the very bottom, I located a wrapped box. “I bought this for your Mothday.”
“It’s not my Mothday for two more months.”
One of Colby’s first requests after she settled in with me was no more celebrating her birthdays. The gap between her mental age and physical age would only grow, and she didn’t want the reminder. She was a kid, an eternal one, and I remembered how much it sucked to go from my parents celebrating every milestone to the director only praising me when I sank to new depths of depravity. So, we settled on her having a Mothday every year where she received presents, we partied, and she ate way too much sugar.