“I wish this was over,” I said, running my hand over the weathered leather of Ms. Terwilliger’s latest book. It was an old handwritten one called Summonings and Conjurations. “I hate living with the uncertainty, worrying that Veronica’s lurking behind every corner. My life’s already complicated enough without witches coming after me.”
Adrian, face serious, stretched out on the blanket and propped his head up with his elbow. “If she’s even coming after you.”
I sat down cross-legged, careful to keep a lot more distance than in the Velvet Suite. “Ms. Terwilliger won’t listen to me. She just keeps stressing over me.”
“Let her,” he suggested. “I mean, I totally get why you’re worried about her. I am too. But we have to accept that she knows what she’s talking about. She’s been involved with this stuff a lot longer than we have.”
I couldn’t help but smile at that. “Since when are you involved with magic?”
“Since I started looking after you and being all manly and brave.”
“Funny, I don’t remember it that way.” I worked to keep a straight face. “If you think about all the rides I gave you, me getting you into college . . . well, it kind of seems like I’m looking after you.”
He leaned toward me. “I guess we look after each other.”
We locked eyes and smiled, but there was nothing sensuous about it. There was no trick here, no sly move on Adrian’s part to advance on me. And there was no fear on my part. We were just two people who cared about each other. It reminded me of what had initially drawn us together—before all the romantic complications. We connected. Against all reason, we understood each other, and—as he said—we looked out for each other. I’d never had a relationship quite like that with anyone and was surprised at how much I valued it.
“Well, then, I guess I’d better get to work.” I glanced back down at the book. “I haven’t had a chance to look at what she wants me to do. It doesn’t sound like a defensive book.”
“Maybe you’re graduating from fireballs to lightning bolts,” Adrian suggested. “I bet it’d be a lot like throwing ninja stars. Except, well, you could incinerate people.”
When I found the page Ms. Terwilliger had marked, I read the title aloud: “Callistana Summoning.”
“What’s callistana mean?” asked Adrian.
I scrutinized the word, making sure I was deciphering the elaborate script correctly. “I don’t know. It’s kind of like the Greek word for ‘beautiful,’ but not quite. The spell’s subtitle is ‘For protection and advanced warning.’”
“Maybe it’s some kind of shield, like the one Jackie had,” suggested Adrian. “An easier one.”
“Maybe,” I agreed. I wouldn’t mind a little bit of invulnerability.
I opened up the bag Ms. Terwilliger had given me. Inside, I found dragon’s blood resin, a small bottle of gardenia oil, branches of juniper berries, and a glittering smoky quartz crystal, rutilated with lines of gold. Although she’d provided the ingredients, the spell’s directions required that I use and measure them in a very specific way, which made sense. As usual, it was the caster’s work that powered the magic. Adrian sat up and read over my shoulder.
“It doesn’t really say what happens when you cast it,” he pointed out.
“Yeah . . . I’m not really excited about that part.” Presumably, the caster was supposed to just know what she was doing. If this was some kind of protective shield, then maybe the shield would materialize around me, just as it had for Ms. Terwilliger. “Well, no point in wasting time. We’ll find out soon enough.”
Adrian chuckled as he watched me walk over to a clear piece of land. “Am I the only one amazed that you now perform magic blindly?”
“No,” I assured him. “You’re not the only one.”
I had to pluck the juniper berries off one by one and make a small ring with them, saying, “Fire and smoke,” each time I placed one on the ground. When I finished, I anointed each berry with a drop of the oil and recited, “Breath and life.” Inside the circle, I lit a small pile of the resin and rested the smoky quartz on top of it. Then I stepped back and reread the spell, committing the words and gestures to memory. Once I was satisfied I knew it, I handed it to Adrian and shot him a hopeful look.
“Wish me luck,” I said.
“You make your own luck,” he replied.
I tried not to roll my eyes and turned toward the circle. I recited the spell’s complex Greek incantation, pointing in the four cardinal directions as I spoke, per the book’s instructions. It was startling how quickly the magic welled up within me, filling me with that blissful power. I spoke the last words, pointing at the juniper circle as I did. I felt the magic pour from me and into the quartz. Then I waited for something to happen.
Nothing did.
I looked back at Adrian, hoping he noticed something I hadn’t. He shrugged. “Maybe you did it wrong.”
“It worked,” I insisted. “I felt the magic.”
“Maybe you just can’t see it. At the expense of getting myself in trouble here, you should know how amazing you look when you do that stuff. All graceful and—” His eyes went wide. “Um, Sydney? That rock is smoking.”
I glanced back at the circle. “That’s just the resin that’s—”
I stopped. He was right. Smoke was coming out of the quartz. I watched, fascinated, and then slowly, the quartz began to melt. Rather than dissipate into a puddle, though, the liquid began to re-form into a different shape, one that soon hardened into something new and unexpected: a crystalline dragon.
It was small, able to fit in a palm, and glittered just like the dark brown quartz had. The dragon looked more like the serpentine kind usually associated with Chinese culture rather than the winged types of European myth. Every detail was meticulously carved, from the tendrils of its mane to the scales on its hide. It was stunning.
Also, it was moving.
I screamed and backed up, running into Adrian. He put an arm around me and held me as protectively as he could, though it was clear he was just as freaked out. The dragon opened its crystal eyelids and peered at the two of us with tiny golden eyes. It elicited a small croak and then began walking toward us, its small claws scraping against the rocks.
“What the hell is that?” Adrian demanded.
“Do you really think I know?”
“You made it! Do something.”
I started to ask what had happened to him looking out for me, but he had a point. I was the one who’d summoned this thing. No matter where we moved or backed up to, the dragon continued to follow and make a small, high-pitched screeching noise that sounded like nails on a chalkboard. I groped for my cell phone and tried to dial Ms. Terwilliger, but there was no reception out here. Darting over to the blanket, I grabbed the spell book and then hurried back to Adrian’s side. I flipped to the index, looking up callistana. There I found two entries: Callistana—Summoning and Callistana—Banishing. You would’ve thought the two would be near each other in the book, but they were pages apart. I flipped to the latter and found the instructions brief and to the point: Once your callistana has been fed and rested, you may summon and banish it at will for a year and a day. A short incantation followed.
I looked up at Adrian. “It says we have to feed it.”
“Will that make it shut up?” he asked. His arm was around me again.
“I honestly don’t know.”
“Maybe we can outrun it.”
All my instincts about hiding the supernatural world kicked in. “We can’t just leave it for some hiker to find! We have to get it some food.” Not that I had any clue what to feed it. Hopefully humans and vampires weren’t on the menu.