Drawn to You

Chapter 2

Each witch found their way into magic differently. Some, like Piper, had a family tradition of spellcraft and grew up with grimoires alongside bedtime stories. Ones like Liv, where the magic skipped a generation or two, often discovered their skills randomly. Her outlet had been through art. She had always been a bit of a daydreamer, prone to doodling on her school notes when she was bored. Once she was put in charge of laundry to help out her mother, her scribbles extended to her jeans; after all, if she was the one washing them, no one else had any right to complain if the ink didn't come out.

One day, however, when Liv got home and tried to take off her jeans, she discovered they were stuck to her thigh where she had been writing. When she finally managed to pull them off, the doodles she had been aimlessly drawing had gone all the way through the cloth down to her skin, looking like faded tattoos on her leg. She chalked that up to an extra-strong marker, but then she started noticing little things. As she had doodled the broken heart, she had been wishing the school bully would leave her alone—and the next day, she did, seeming to forget Liv's existence entirely. Curious, she tried an experiment, drawing on her jeans with intention rather than out of simple boredom. She picked a simple enough thing to track—a good grade on her upcoming math test—and sure enough, her study session seemed easier, the test wasn't as scary, and she scored twelve points higher than on her previous test. The magic was never a cure-all: she still had to put in the time and effort, but she found that the symbols helped her focus, stay on track, and get prepared.

It wasn't until she was working at Hooters, of all places, that she met a witch named Alladia —Allie on her name tag, so as to not confuse the clientele—who explained that she was working actual magic, not just doodling and wishing. Since then she learned bits of magic from everywhere: witches she met, books from the library, websites. For her first match, she drew stars on her wrists before wrapping them up. Some of her fellow wrestlers assumed it was just a positive affirmation and asked her to do the same for them, but Finn's sigils were the real deal.

Liv liked working on Finn's designs when she was backstage at an event. It made it easier to capture the energy, the atmosphere, the chaos. She would usually find a somewhat quiet corner with the equipment trunks and take a small dollar-store sketchpad so no one would take her doodles too seriously; so far no one had made the connection between her drawing habit and Finn's amateurish ink and she wanted to keep it that way. He was married, so he definitely didn't need people thinking he was having an affair, and both of them tried to keep low supernatural profiles within the company. As far as most of the wrestlers knew, Liv was just an airy new-age type, into candles and crystals and other pretty decor.

"Heya, Liv. What are you drawing?" Becky stopped a few feet away, giving Liv time to hide her sketchbook if she wanted to. A banshee herself, Becky was one of the few people who knew that Liv was a witch.

"Just something for Finn," she said vaguely, motioning Becky forward. Becky knew all about Finn, of course, so Liv didn't mind showing her.

Becky tilted her head this way and that and finally shrugged. "Sorry. I'm not sure what it is. I mean, I know what it is, but...."

Liv didn't take offence. Her first sketches were purposefully vague, even clumsy, to distract from their true intentions. "It's going to be a palm leaf. I thought it would make sense because he lives in Florida, you know?" She rolled her neck from side to side. When she was drawing, she tended to have terrible posture. "I asked him what his wife's favourite flower was, but he never got back to me, so I'm improvising, I guess."

"Vero?" Becky took out her phone and scrolled a bit. "I don't have any pictures of her with flowers. I can ask her if you want?"

Liv shook her head. "No, that's okay. Finn might have plans to get a tattoo for her and I don't want to mess that up. The palm leaf should be okay." Then she paused. "He's eventually going to get all these covered up with some legit tattoos, right?" He had asked her to purposefully use a more child-like style in her art, but she didn't want him to be stuck with scribbles forever either.