Page 38 of Witches of Dubious Origin
“Olive has a poison garden. That tracks.” I nodded and pulled Jasper’s coat tighter around me.
“Which is why she’s absolved from bringing anything to our potluck lunches—ever,” Jasper said.
A laugh burst out of me before I could soften it. I was so loud, in fact, that I startled a bird off the roof of a nearby gardening shed. As it propelled itself into the air with its powerful wings, I noted it was a raven. I watched as it circled the rooftop before flying away toward Central Park.
“Beautiful birds, ravens,” Jasper observed.
“If you say so.” I shuddered.
“You don’t think so?”
“No.” I shook my head. “I’ve had a particularly pesky one sitting outside my house on my mailbox for the past week. It’s a bit too Edgar Allan Poe for me. He’s always skulking around.”
Jasper frowned and looked about to protest, but both Milesand Tariq began to cough as if trying not to laugh. He glared at them, and I wondered what inside joke I was missing.
Before I could ask, Miles turned to me and said, “Have I told you that I once worked with your grandmother?”
“No.” I straightened up.
“It was decades ago.” Miles held out the empty two-tiered plate to me. “Sweet is on the top, savory the bottom. Tap either plate three times.”
I tapped the top one, naturally. Three perfect petit fours appeared as if they’d mushroomed out of the plate.
Tariq handed me a small plate to put them on. I picked up the pink one with the white frosting ribbon and sniffed it. It smelled of vanilla and strawberry and yum.
I glanced at Miles. “How?”
“It’s an enchanted plate,” he said. “From Versailles, during the reign of the Sun King, so it can only conjure the foods Louis XIV enjoyed.”
I took a small bite. It was delicious. “Wow.”
Miles passed the plate to Jasper, who tapped the lower plate three times. In a blink, three meat-filled pastries materialized. Jasper let out a low rumble of approval and set them on his own plate.
“You were saying about my grandmother?” I reminded Miles. The petit fours were drool-worthy and the magic plate a showstopper, but I wanted to hear his memories of Mamie.
“We were young, both still apprentices of the craft, but there was a dark witch terrorizing the covens of the Northeast, so an alliance was formed to rid the region of her.”
“How was she terrorizing the covens?” I asked.
“She was using dark magic to steal the powers of prominent witches and mages,” Miles said. “It was a very scary time.”
“I remember hearing about it from my mother,” Jasper said. “Ariana Darkwood was one of the reasons she didn’t want me to come work in the States.”
“My family as well,” Tariq said. “She took the powers of twenty-seven witches and mages.”
“Wait,” I said. “Ariana Darkwood? Isn’t she the one whose heart is trapped inside the bookEl Corazónin the BODO?”
“She’s the one.” Miles sipped his tea. “And that’s all thanks to your grandmother Toni. She set a trap for Ariana, pretending to be a much more powerful witch than she was at the time. She was absolutely fearless.” The admiration in Miles’s voice made me feel a surge of pride for Mamie. “When Ariana stepped into her trap, a group of us bound Ariana with a spell while Toni usedEl Corazónto lock Ariana’s own powers into the book,which is that book’s intended purpose.”
“When I first sawEl Corazónon the shelf, I envisioned a beating heart encased in ice.” I picked at the yellow frosting flower on the top of a chocolate petit four, not wanting to make eye contact with anyone if I was completely off base.
“Because witchcraft comes from the heart, that is the form her power took when sealed inside the book,” Miles said. “The book was crafted by a dark mage with the intent of stealing his wife’s power.”
“Sounds like a swell guy.” I ate the chocolate pastry in one bite.
“He was jealous that she was more talented than he was,”Tariq said. “The story goes that he gifted her with the book to write her spells in, but when she did, the book stole her spells and her magic, leaving her powerless.”
“This sounds like a horrible fairy tale,” I said.
