Witch (Supernatural #2)

3: To Deal or Not To Deal

Time, noun.

1. the system of those sequential relations that any event has to any other, as past, present, future; indefinite and continuous duration regarded as that in which events succeed one another.
2. duration regarded as belonging to the present life as distinct from the life to come or from eternity; finite duration.

***

Grandma's magic room was dusty like no one had cleaned there in decades. The place looked like a stereotypical witch's lair you might see somewhere on a Hollywood movie set. It was filled with old and dusty books on plants, from herbs to trees, and grimoires of dozen different witch and warlock bloodlines, as dusty as the rest of the room. There were jars with all kinds of ingredients used for spells and potions and rituals. The stereotypical cauldron was nowhere to be found but there was an impressive range with pots and pans for cooking up said potions for spells and rituals.

It was the perfect place to practice magic.

Even if it was limited to changing the color of a candle's flame.

Something I did not see the use of but was ridiculously complicated.

That was our training today. Noah and I had been at it since after dinner. Two hours and thirty-four minutes to be exact. See, while changing the color of a flame was incredibly complex as it involved changing its very essence, changing its shape only involved its outer appearance. But that wasn't what Grandma wanted; she wanted to see if we were capable of changing the very core of the flame. To see if we were capable of the magic and the concentration required to do it. If we knew our way around grimoires enough to find the right spell, and if we knew enough about ingredients to combine them together.

In short, this was her testing our magical abilities. And she didn't start us of nice and easy, slowly building the degree of difficulty.

Noah and I had been chanting different spells, using different ingredients and leafing through grimoires trying to find the solution to the task Grandma had set us. Right now, we were sprinkling mistletoe, pine needles and dried moss around and over the candle. Our current spell came from in a medieval French grimoire, written in words that felt funny to my tongue. It was the twenty-seventh variety of our spell and we were going nowhere. It was annoying.

"I need a break," Noah sighed, closing the grimoire in his hands. The French accent magic gave us lingered in his voice. He took the words right out of my mouth. This was frustrating, and not helping my already somber mood. He cleared his throat before speaking again, "And something to drink. Coke or lemonade?"

"Coke," I told him with a sigh.

The spell in the book before me should have done the trick. It was all about changing the inner being of someone, or something. It should have worked perfectly; the flame should have gone from orange to whatever we wanted it to be. Why hadn't it worked? Why hadn't any of it worked? Glancing back at the ingredients, my brain rattled off all the possible combinations. They came out either wrong or uncertain; I knew this, yet I could hardly focus on what I knew was stored somewhere in my brain.

"Why the hell can't we figure this out?" I muttered to myself as I turned over the page.

"You know why," Noah said as he came back in. He handed me my Coke can and gave me a knowing look. Damn him. "Talk to me, Isla. What has you so unable to focus?" Damn him for knowing me so well.

I didn't answer him right away, mainly because I didn't want to acknowledge that is was my fault we weren't getting this done. But I knew better. Just my luck that my head wasn't in it. When practicing magic, one had to believe in what they are doing; there is no room for doubt. There was no room for a lack of concentration either. Magic required a witch's complete and undivided attention. Right now, I was feeling neither one hundred percent confident nor one hundred percent concentrated. My thoughts were all over the place, and my magic kept wavering. Flickering like the candle in front of us.