Hex Girl | The Dark Child Prophecy Series

Chapter Six: Remember

A couple hours later, I was stretched across Luce's bed on my stomach with a laptop and a notebook that was slowly filling up with things I had found. While Luce was in the shower, I had decided to raid his Internet connection for more information on hexes and voodoo. I was also going through pictures of tattoos and magical symbols that corresponded to voodoo and magic practices. If I could find the meanings to the tattoos the man had, maybe it would help me find out who he was.

I twirled my pen around and around before I closed my eyes and rolled onto my back, placing the pen between my teeth. I let the memory play again, blocking the smell and the sounds. I focused on the man. His tattoos were of an inverted pentagram and an inverted Holy Cross. I could make out tiny cursive words around the pentagram in a circle, but couldn't be sure what the phrase said. It was Latin.

I focused in on the cursive alone, willing myself to make out the letters. Renich Tasa Uberaca Biasa Icar... Then the last word wasn't a word. It was a name.

Lucifer.

My eyes flashed open, startled by the connection. It was a summoning spell with Luce's name attached to it. I pressed my palms into my temples, wondering if I had read it right. I was hoping I was wrong. Without calling the memories forward again, I rolled over and scribbled the phrase down on my notebook before I could forget it. I then searched the phrase on the Internet. The words weren't just a summoning spell, but the phrase itself was a prayer.

My boyfriend is being prayed to?

I continued to search through the different pages. Most of them were a load of bull, fake spells and rituals that someone who thought they knew everything about the occult had put down on their blog. Big wastes of time. I opened up a new window and started to search through the symbols again. Maybe these words corresponded to certain symbols. There had also been a crest on the gold ring, but I hadn't studied it close enough. I would have to look at it again.

The thought of going back to the memories made me feel sick and I decided to go without for right now. The tattoos alone would keep me busy.

"Hey, Jenny?" came the sound of Luce's voice from the bathroom.

I closed the browser windows and shut the laptop lid quickly. I then closed my notebook and slipped it under the computer. "Yeah?"

"Do you think those men could have been locals or Americans? They spoke English really well," he continued as he came out of the bathroom in his black sweatpants. He was shirtless and his skin still slick and damp. He was using the towel to rub down his dark hair.  He was talking about the memories. It'd been on his mind, too.

"Maybe. I didn't pick up much of an accent, but I wasn't really listening for it, either," I said honestly.

He paused when he dropped the towel on top of his hamper. "What were you working on?"

I glanced at the laptop and notebook. "Nothing, just perusing. Seeing what all is going on in the world," I lied. I hated the feeling.

"Anything interesting?"

"Humans killing other humans and world sports are all I have to report."

He sighed and shook his head. "People."

I nodded my head in agreement. "Yeah. Makes me kinda happy I'm not a part of the human world anymore." I stared at the closed cover of the notebook, the words of prayer still playing over and over in my head unconsciously. I needed to find out who was using that summoning spell and what it had to do with the man with tattoos.

"You don't miss it, the normalcy of it?" he asked absently, his back to me as he began to dig for a clean shirt in his closet. "I thought that was part of the reason you liked to go out during the daylight hours."

Another sigh fought to escape my throat and I suppressed it. He didn't need to know how much I still had the urges to do some research on any surviving family James and I still had, in the hopes of reconnecting one day. If we became vampires, that would never happen. Maybe one day I could step back into the light of the living, but it wouldn't be while I was under house arrest with a witch-hunt going on.

"I do, I guess," I said slowly. "And I like going out during the day and seeing what the other part of the world is like. For pure curiosity, really. It's hard to forget that there is a whole other world that lives when we're sleeping."

Luce pulled a gray t-shirt on and tugged it down to his hips in one smooth move. I could see the muscles in his back ripple in one continuous motion. Suddenly my mind wasn't on the human world anymore. I watched him as I rolled onto my side as he obliviously began to stretch out his right shoulder.

"Yeah, hard to forget, indeed," he answered calmly, his eyes roaming around the room while the gears in his mind turned. I smiled. Sometimes I could see him thinking without needing magic. "Do you know where my sketchpad is?"
          
My smile turned into a smirk and I waited for him to look at me before nodding my head in the direction of his bench seat in his window. "Where you left it."

Luce nodded and stepped towards it.

"You remind me of James when you start forgetting things," I giggled.

"Well, not all of us remember every little moment of our lives," he chuckled as he pulled the black sketchpad out from under the loose pieces of scratch paper and then dug for a charcoal pencil on his desk organizer.

"I'm human. I have less time to remember everything, so I might as well do it while I'm alive," I answered sarcastically as I rolled over to stay facing him. I didn't mean to purposely pose, but by the time I realized I was, he was already looking at me with a grin.

"Then I guess we better make the best of that, huh?" he asked, stepping over to the bed. I smiled up at him as he leaned down and gave me a kiss on the mouth. My eyes closed and I inhaled slowly, enjoying the feeling of his lips on mine. He pulled back slowly, grinning at me.

"Mm, don't go sketch... Let's just keep doing this," I said, reaching up to touch his chest. "You know, make memories."

Luce laughed softly and gave me a kiss on the forehead before kissing me on the mouth again. "You're distracting me, little girl. What'd I tell you about that?"

I sighed, my nose wrinkling at him. "What could you possibly want to sketch more than you want to be kissing me right now?" I asked, raising an eyebrow at him.

"Those tattoo designs. I thought maybe I could try to track down the artist who did them when I go out with AJ tomorrow for a run to the Underground," he answered, sitting back on his window bench. He reached for his water bottle and took a long sip of it. "If that guy lives here in the major cities, someone will know those tatts."

I concealed another sigh that wanted to make itself heard. "They're black magic symbols that are tied to the occult. Anyone who's seen a movie would know that," I answered, dragging the laptop back over in front of me.

"True, but these were much more ornate than your average pentagram and upside-down cross. That's either a real practitioner or someone with a very vivid imagination," Luce said calmly. He flipped through his used pages before finding a clean one. "Besides, if we find out who has them, maybe we can figure out why there were two men coming after you. Being a witch isn't any easier in today's society than it was since Salem."

"Good point," I mumbled, not sure if I liked him comparing me to the Salem witches. I opened my laptop and began to reopen my browser windows.

"What are you looking for?" he asked absently, his eyes watching his hand as he began to draw.

"Same thing. Symbols and their meaning," I replied, propping my head in one hand as I used my free one to navigate the Internet. I wasn't sure if I should tell him about the prayer/summoning spell yet. It could have just been something a pseudo-fan of the occult thought was cool to make the ring around his pentagram; but I had learned that hoof beats normally meant zebras when it came to things happening in this family.