Cresent Prophecy

to lie, but after everything that had happened with Alex and Boone, I’d learned the hard and fast rule about who to trust. Luckily, it hadn’t come to anything too dire. Otherwise, I probably would’ve turfed Lucy out on her backside when I found her juggling crystals. This whole world was like a house of mirrors at the local carnival.
“Aileen never left you anythin’ of the Crescents?”
“Other than this gnarly magic thing, no.” I shook my head. “I learned about it by accident just like everything else in my life lately.”
“How did you find out?”
“You know Sean McKinnon?”
“The drunk guy from Molly McCreedy’s?”
“That’s the one.” I snorted. “I found him drunk in a gutter one night. Completely inconsolable, mind you. I accidentally used my magic to calm him. Luckily, he was out of it. Otherwise, I don’t know how I would’ve explained myself.”
It was true, it was the first time I’d used my magic, but it wasn’t exactly how I found out I was a witch. Not quite.
Lucy frowned. “So you’ve been alone this whole time? You know a lot…”
“I’ve had to learn fast. And some strange things have happened…”
Oh, man, there were so many holes in my story it wasn’t funny. How could I keep Boone out of this when she kept asking a million and one things about verifying my whereabouts on x date? She was so good cop, bad cop.
“Carman and the craglorn…” She eyed me suspiciously.
“My stupid experiments caused one to come looking,” I said, my hole just getting deeper and deeper. I shuddered, remembering the teeth and claws.
“You’re a natural.” Her skepticism was palpable.
“When you’re born to fulfill a magical density, fate has a way of making things really bloody clear. Technicolor has nothing on witches and their prophecies.”
“Prophecies?” Lucy asked, her head tilting to the side. “You asked me about that the other day.”
“I don’t really want to talk about it.”
Thinking about Fae-Alex, I suppressed another shudder. She’d warned me about him, that she felt he had malicious intent. Now I knew the truth about her, it was a lot clearer. She suspected he was a fae, but like me, she couldn’t see his true face. The more I learned about this crazy-ass world, the more I knew that I’d only seen him for what he truly was because he’d attempted to use his magic on me. Magic had broken the veil.
“You sensed something was off about Alex, didn’t you?” I asked, glancing at the witch.
“Yeah.”
“I killed him, but I think you know that.”
“I’m sorry,” she said uncomfortably.
“It wasn’t him. Not really. The fae had stolen his face.”
We fell silent. The only sound was our boots crunching on the path beneath our feet. The forest canopy stretched overhead, blocking out most of the early morning mist. It was days like today that I wished the Crescent Witches had built an indoor amphitheater with central heating.
“Is there a spell that warms your hands?” I asked. “You know, like those little hand warmer thing you sit in your pockets that have the little buttons you click? The stuff inside crystallizes and goes hard, and then you have to boil them to reset the liquid. Is there a work around for that?”
“You’re lucky I came along when I did,” Lucy said with a laugh. “You’re not supposed to use magic like that.”
“Damn,” I cursed. “So can I have an automated magical house like the Weasley’s out of Harry Potter? I really wanted a pair of self-knitting needles. I’ve never had the attention span to knit a scarf let alone a jumper.”
“Magic is supposed to augment life, not replace it,” she went on.
“What does that mean?”
“No quick fixes.”
“Typical.”
The hawthorn came into view, and I immediately felt the pull of the tree. Since the day Boone and I had argued under her branches, its tendrils seemed to have become stronger. I knew it had to do with the connection it had made with me in my despair. I’d called out to my ancestors in a moment of desperation, and they’d tried to answer. At least, I think they did. I could’ve been delirious.
Finding a decent spot in the middle of the clearing, Lucy unfurled the rug she’d brought along and lay it over the dirt. She sat squarely in the middle, leaving me the edge.
“I should’ve brought a sandwich,” I muttered. “And a thermos. A thermos would’ve been good. Hot chocolate.”
“The first thing you should know is magic is a part of you,” Lucy declared. “It’s your energy you’re usin’, so be careful with it. Too much and you could be in serious trouble.”
“I do feel tired after…” I said, the ruse not sitting right even though she was hogging the blanket in a passive-aggressive power play.
I already knew about the transference of power—it sounded all scientific and tangible that way, so that was what I was calling it. Healing Boone after he’d been attacked by the craglorn had sent me to sleep for three days with an awful fever.
“What about potions and pentagrams and all of that?” I asked. “Is that a thing?”
“Fallacy. Well, mostly.”
“So I don’t need to say blessed be all the time?”
“No.” She giggled, smoothing her wild hair behind her ears. “You don’t always need an incantation or an effigy to practice magic,” she went on, giving me an overview of the basics. “There are tools we can use to aid us, but a true master needs none.”
“So all the herbs, roots, and gnarly poems are optional?”
“It depends.” Lucy laughed and nodded. “Unless the spell is complicated, then there’s no way around it. Potions are a thing, but it’s not like you see on television.”
Thinking about the web I’d cast to trap the craglorn, I nodded. That was an exception to the rule. I’d had to anchor the spell to set the perimeters. This witch business wasn’t all it seemed. There were so many nuances it was hard to keep up.
“Sometimes, witches use incantations to better control the spell, or they use them to center