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“That witch,” Rose said eventually. “She is mad, no?”
“I’m not sure. I mean, some people are born with…a lack of empathy, or no concept of right or wrong. Those are psychopaths. Some of them turn violent, and many of the most famous serial killers in history were psychopaths. But not everyone who commits a crime or becomes violent has a mental health problem. Some people, they know exactly what they’re doing is wrong, and they may even feel that wrongness. But for whatever reason, something inside them is stronger than the moral compass they grew up with, and it makes them violate laws and harm others. Some people have a goal that they want to achieve, some mission they pursue, and in their eyes, the end justifies the means.”
Just like Isabel had believed that harming Maeve was acceptable collateral damage on her way toward a glorious future without demons.
“What will happen when you catch the witch?”
“She will be judged by her Elders and punished for her crimes. Blood magic is forbidden, and killing humans is sacrilege, especially in the pursuit of power.”
“Sacrilege?”
“Ah…” Hazel searched for words. “It goes against the laws given to us by the gods. But it’s also just a perversion of our power. Magic is life, life is magic. We are supposed to use it to protect, not harm.”
Rose nodded, looking out the window. “It feels better to create, not destroy.”
Hazel shot her a glance. “Yes.”
They spent the rest of the ride in comfortable silence. Parking to the side out of view from the main road, Hazel led Rose through the abandoned nursery compound to the greenhouse still standing vigil over the gruesome murder scene.
When they stepped inside, Rose gasped at the sight, her face going pale.
“I know,” Hazel said quietly. “It’s hard to look at.”
Taking out the jar and knife from her bag once more, Hazel made short work of slashing her wrist, collecting her blood, and then splashing it at the glass panel again. Next to her, Rose startled and took a step back.
Murmuring the words to hold the sigil, Hazel then healed her wrist again, put both hands on her hips, and regarded the sigil for a moment. All right, then. With a heavy exhale, she bent to her bag and pulled out a bunch of different herbs, salt, a ritual dagger, candles…the works.
The dirt floor was too uneven to draw chalk lines, but a ring of salt was quite possible. Using the athame—the ritual dagger—she drew a pentagram within the circle, hovering over the earth with the tip of the dagger instead of actually touching the soil. Visualization was half the work when casting spells or prepping for rituals, and in cases like this, imagining the shape of a pentagram was just as powerful as actually drawing one on the floor.
She set a candle on each of the five envisioned points of the pentagram and lit them from within the circle, standing in the middle.
“I will try to break down this sigil,” she explained to Rose. “Every spell and magical work has a loophole to undo it, and I just need to find the right one. If I can destroy this, the spell the witch is trying to work will not go active.”
Rose nodded, watching Hazel with rapt attention.
“Okay.” Hazel took a deep breath. “Here goes nothing.”
First up was a combination of herbs and a spell to lift a hex. No effect.
Next up she tried “cutting” through the magic of the sigil with the athame, which sometimes worked to break a curse. It didn’t even touch the sigil’s magic.
Grabbing the extra candle she’d brought, she wove a spell of fire to burn through the power behind the sigil. Nothing. The flames slid off the sigil’s magic like rain off a leaf.
On and on she went, going through all the different tools and methods to lift, remove, break, or destroy magic that she knew of. In the end, she sat there, having exhausted all her knowledge, all the accessories she’d brought, sweat beading on her forehead and running down her back.
“It’s no use,” she said softly to Rose.
“You can’t remove it?”
Hazel shook her head, an insistent ache starting behind her temples. She’d done a lot of magic in a short time, and she needed to lie down and recharge soon.
“Why don’t you just break the glass wall?” Rose pointed at the glass panel on which the sigil was painted.
Again Hazel shook her head. “The sigil protects it. Even a bulldozer couldn’t take down this wall now. Anything you throw at it to break the glass would bounce off, and if you drove a car into it, the car would get wrecked, but the glass wouldn’t have a scratch. No, the sigil can only be removed by magic.”
“But you tried that. It doesn’t work.”
Hazel pressed her lips together. “Because it’s not the right kind of magic. This”—she nodded at the sigil—“needs the same type of power used to create it in order to destroy it.”
