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19. Magic

ANDROMEDA

***

Miles Pymer, a witch descendant, performing magic right in front of my eyes. As soon as Rami disappeared from the witch's house, Miles knelt down beside the witch, with the list of spells written on an ordinary wrinkled lined paper placed above the witch's head. Idris, Lysander and I watched as Miles began to whisper a sentence from the paper, while moving his hands, his fingers, at the same time. His fingers moved as if drawing invisible letters and numbers: symbols, over the witch's head. His breathing is steady and no muscles are tensed. His eyes are concentrated on the paper, and overall acting as if Idris, Lysander and I are not in the room.

"Are you sure this man is really who he says he is?"

I ignored the growling, impatient werewolf and focused on Miles. He repeats the sentence multiple times, remaining calm, and soon, a glowing light of blue emerged between his fingers, causing me to hold my breath. The blue light slowly floated down, making its way to the witch's head, though that only lasted for about two seconds before it vanished. Miles cursed and sat on the ground, brushing hands over his face. Hemlock, his cat, or familiar, who decided to follow me, jumped away from his owner and ran towards me, flashing his green eyes. I frowned at the creature and glanced at Idris, who, unlike Lysander, is patiently standing with hands hidden in his pockets.

"What's wrong?" I asked, getting worried that he might not be able to put the witch to sleep after all. She will wake up soon, and we will all be doomed. We got lucky the first time since our plan to catch the witch failed.

Much to my dismay, Lysander decided to use his charm to lure the witch in the house while I watched from a close distance. The witch did not hesitate to pull him inside. He pretended to give her a kiss, but as he got closer, he had pulled out a syringe containing mercury and tried to pierce the needle through the witch's skin and failed. I had a feeling she knew what he was and what he planned to do, because she had wolfsbane in stock and shoved a vial of it down Lysander's throat as she forced his mouth open by magic. That's when I barged in with the iron spear and tranquilizer, though I couldn't even go near her as she sent me flying against the wall. That's when Rami and Idris arrived and everything just went so horribly wrong and then Miles here jumped in to save our asses with his strange magical force.

I heard another growl from Lysander right before I felt a tug on my leg. Looking down, I find Hemlock clinging to my right leg, attempting to crawl up. I shooed him away by shaking my leg and returned my attention to Miles.

"I used a lot of energy when I knocked her out earlier." The man explained, sighing at the woman on the ground. "I can't do it. Not right now, at least. I'm going to need a little bit more time to rest."

I picked up a tranquilizer I dropped on the ground, planning to use it instead of magic to put the witch in a deeper sleep, but it seems all the liquid inside the syringe had spilled on the ground. "Fuck." I threw it down, irritated. "She'll wake up soon. How long do you think your energy or whatever will come back?"

I didn't know magic takes something out of magicians. I thought it's unlimited.

"I don't know. At least half an hour?" Miles smiled apologetically. "I'm sorry."

I shook my head. "It's fine. I'm just going to get more tranquilizers in the car. We'll just have to keep using that so - " I was interrupted as the cat found his way by my waist, his claws on my shirt. "What do you want?" He only meowed in response. "If you're apparently a magical creature of some sort, shouldn't you have magic? Hmm?" I asked the green eyed feline, sighing in desperation.