Scars, Spells and Secrets

Chapter 12

That evening a white, windowless van pulled up in front of her house. The significant creepiness of it was partially mitigated by the fact that it had the art gallery's logo on the side, and that nobody who exited immediately either offered candy or asked for help finding a lost puppy. Instead two young men came to the door, taking and carefully packing up the paintings that Elizabeth supplied. Elizabeth could only partially see the woman standing by the back of the van.

How in the hell is she doing that while wearing high heels? she wondered. Once they'd left she sent a text to Charline, trying to relax from the nervous high of the fact that, come morning, those would be hanging up in a gallery.

Hey, how's the date going?

Elizabeth wasn't expecting her phone to chime after only a few minutes. Just got home, the text read. She frowned and sat at her desk, sending another message.

So did it go okay?

It was weird.

Of all of the responses, 'weird' wasn't what she'd been expecting. Elizabeth tilted her head slightly, puzzling over it as another message came through.

He seemed really checked out. He was polite but it felt like meeting with a client more than a date. He was really gentlemanly but everything he asked was pretty shallow.

As she didn't exactly have much experience with dating, Elizabeth wasn't entirely sure how to respond at first. Maybe he was having an off day? she finally sent.

The response was a frowny face emoji and a Maybe.

Elizabeth sent another message asking how the food was, but didn't get an answer that night. Eventually she set her phone on its charger and went to bed.

Morning came quickly. She checked her email first thing after getting ready and was thrilled to see something from Visions. It had no salutations and was completely informal, immediately ruling out Alexander as the sender. The subject simply said "Our Newest Artist" and attached were a series of photographs. Her art was on the wall in some corner. There were a few closeups of her work and a short description of each piece as belonging to a local artist with "amazing talent" and "masterful use of her media." Elizabeth blushed at the praise and immediately forwarded it to most of her contact list. She did a happy little dance in her room before resuming going through the rest of her messages. Apparently, she was now also approved to view and post in the witch website, appropriately named "The Coven." Elizabeth quickly logged on and set a new username and password. "WaterColorWitch" was interesting enough, she thought, and besides that the website had said that she could change it later if she wanted.

Elizabeth was surprised to see that it was a simple forum, with a general discussion area and different sub-groups for various specialties. Just the broad categories, of course. Any more would likely clutter it up irreparably. The subforums were filled with either spells or requests for assistance. There was a buying, selling and trading section as well, and one for making general magical items that could be used for different castings. There was even a link to a website that had inexpensive waxes in different qualities and colors. Elizabeth tried to pick out anyone that she might know from the user names, but she wasn't really coming up with anything. There was more than one poster in each of the subsections, so that didn't even narrow it down too much. Finally, Elizabeth just decided to browse. She reads up on various uses for juniper berries and an argument over if soy wax was a suitable replacement for beeswax.

Deciding that she very much didn't care about the different applications of dwarf versus sweet basil, Elizabeth logged off of the computer and grabbed her spellbook. She began flipping through the pages and came upon a new page that was filled in with text, where only blank parchment had been there before.