Where A Witch Goeth

Chapter Three: Unger and Straup

A twenty-minute drive was all I had to work with. For the first five minutes, I tried meditation to focus my personal power. My father scoffed at this white way of raising power as meager. Today, it most definitely was—I was too upset and distracted.

For the next five minutes or so, I tried to persuade Nick to stop the car, hoping that I could raise more energy if I planted my feet and hands in the soil. That method of pulling power smacked more of Druids and the few actually powerful Wiccans—who borrowed their strength from the network of root and vine—than witches, who typically gravitated toward siphoning animal power. But for whatever reasons, grounding usually worked pretty well for me. There were many dead things in the soil, though most witches didn't work hard to connect with their power, as I did. Nick wasn't giving me the chance to recharge with a little grounding, though. He gave me serene smiles but ignored my reasoned requests to pull over for a bathroom break.

Desperate now, to fight my father's spell, I went with my go-to. Blood sacrifice. My hands had reluctantly dipped into the blood of many creatures my father had sacrificed during rituals, but I stubbornly refused the athame to draw any blood but my own, which I prepared to do now. Not that I toted my consecrated athame around in my purse. I did, however, have a pretty little Damascus steel pocketknife that I used for casting on the fly. I fished it from my purse in the floorboard, made a thin slit on the ball of my thumb, repocketed it in my coat for further use if necessary, and swiped Nick's forehead with a scant streak of blood as I hissed at him in Latin.

"Verum videre, verum videre, verum videre."

Weak as I was, my blood did not compel Nick to see truth as I commanded. I wasted the full third quarter of our twenty-minute drive casting, because even I didn't believe I could break my father's spell.

Goddamn my dark dad, his fucking evil games, and his assholish superior casting. If he hurt Nick, I would let him die in misery. I was going to draw every single dark photon of his power with glee as he choked on his curse. Slowly.

For the last five minutes, I went on this way—free-styling profanity at my father, while Nick continued driving, unphased. Ironically, that last five minutes of our drive was my most well spent. I could feel my power rising a little. Anger was a thing with which I could conjure, whereas fear was not.

The driveway to the ruins that were once Sanguine Springs Resort and Therapeutic spa was typically barred by a padlocked iron gate, but the caretaker was waiting for us, gates flung open.

Everyone in Lycombe County called old Robert Livingstone the caretaker of this place, but in fact, he was the owner of the property. The owner of this entire deserted valley. He was the last of the Livingstone family that founded Sanguine Springs. When the hotel had burned to the ground in 1924, and the town floundered shortly thereafter, the bulk of the Livingstone clan apparently picked up stakes and went elsewhere. But as long as I had been alive, there had been Robert Livingstone, living like a ghost in the graveyard of Sanguine Springs.

Robert was Lycombe County's Boo Radley. A subject of fascination, fear, and subsequently, intense hatred. Throughout my life, I've heard people call him a pervert, a Satanist, and a goddamned hippie. More likely, he was just an eccentric, wealthy, octogenarian who liked to be left alone and who didn't give two figs what people called him behind his back.

Unfortunately, ignoring what people said didn't mean you could ignore a witch's words. The fact that he was waiting with gates open let me know my father had bespelled him, too. That made four people he was controlling at once. That was good, actually. The more people he tried to bind to his will, the weaker his hold would be on each. Especially since he was operating at somewhat of a deficit, despite stealing my power. He was probably holding some in reserve, too—for whatever he was planning to do to Nick.