The Bonfire

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"I don't understand why we can't do this at your house instead of my basement, Riley." Lisa complains, locking the door behind us.

I flipped on the lights and begin unfolding the map of Eppswood I had tucked under my arm and placed on the floor in the middle of the room. I sit my book bag next to it and pull out five white candles and place them around the map.

"Because if my dad comes home and sees me doing magic he's going to freak the fuck out." I answer.

"And what do you think my parents are going to do if they see us practicing the dark arts down here? Be chill about it?"

"Lisa, your parents don't even use the basement, and plus they won't even know we're down here. The spell will take five minutes tops. So just hand me the necklace and sit down."

Lisa digs into her back pocket and tosses me the necklace belonging to Amanda Yern. I wrap it around my hand and dig out a switch blade from my bag. I flip the blade out and slit the other palm of my hand, allowing the blood to drip in the middle on the map.

Lisa kneels down next to me and wraps my hand with the bandages I had also packed in my bag. I wince as she ties the bandage together around my cut.

"Sorry." She says, jumping at my wince.

"It's okay. It didn't hurt that bad, I just didn't expect it." I smile at her trying to calm her down. I can tell she was kind of nervous. She's seen me do magic before but never anything involving blood. Even though I tried to tell her it was nothing serious she was still freaked out.

I open my hands above the circle made of candles with the map in the middle. "Ignium."

The candles all shoot out a tall flame, almost touching the roof of the basement, then suddenly shrink back down to a normal flicker. Lisa scoots back, trying to avoid getting burned.

"Plantasti spirituum mihi videre.... plantasti spirituum mihi videre..." I recite the chant for the locator spell I was using. I figured if they were all taken by the same person, finding one will lead me to the rest. And if not, at least she could tell us what happened to her. It could give us clues to what happened to the other girls, too. I hope.

The blood on the map begins to bubble and shift. It slowly stretched out in one direction and crawled sluggishly. I continued to chant and Lisa kneeled next to the map to try to see where it's going.

"It's headed out of town. It's going towards the forest."

And soon as the blood reached the edge of the forest area on the map, it suddenly stopped and the entire map burst into flames. Lisa and I both jump back as the fire raged out, taking the candles with it.

"Riley put it out!!" Lisa screamed

"Ignium!" I yell, and the fire shrinks back into itself, sniffed out followed by a faint sizzling noise from the burnt wood.

I turn to Lisa. "Are you ok?" I ask checking to see if she got burned.

She brushes my arms of pushes past me. She turns on the basement lights and assessed the now charcoal black stain on the hardwood basement floor.

"What the fuck, Riley?! Was that supposed to happen? What was that?"

"The spell was supposed to tell me where Amanda was located. If she was dead the blood wouldn't have moved. She's still in Eppswood, we just have to find her."

"Wasn't that the point of the spell? To find her?"

"Someone has to be cloaking her. That's the only explanation as to why the map caught fire. Someone doesn't want us to find her."

The Children of Eppswood: Book OneWhere stories live. Discover now