Chapter 8

The calls started early the next morning. I hadn’t been downstairs for more than a few minutes before the phone rang. I hadn’t even had time to start breakfast before I was on the phone.

The first several calls were from regular customers, and their orders would be easy to fill. I informed them that the price had gone up now that I was using Ley Line Magic to make my charms and amulets, but they would be more powerful and would last longer.

Following those calls with real orders, the crazy calls started. I had managed to make and eat breakfast between the earlier calls. I had even been able to fix Al his food.

These next calls were from people I had not dealt with previously, and some were truly outrages.

“Can you cast one of your wards around my house or business?” was typical of these calls. One even asked if I would cast one of my wards around a competitor’s house. At first, I was simply shocked by these kinds of requests, but quickly developed a standard answer.

“Yes, I can. It will cost a thousand dollars per acre, minimum of one acre. Have you considered how you will leave or enter the warded area?” I would ask.

“Can’t I just walk through it?” was the usual answer.

“If you could move through it, so could everyone else. Once I cast the spell, no one without a substantial ability to use Ley Line Magic will be able to pass through it,” I told them. This usually resulted in sputtering from the other end of the line.

“Can’t you design it so that only I could pass through it? I saw you pass through your wards on television,” some of the brighter ones asked.

“No, they don’t work that way. The spell needs to be lowered so someone can pass through it and then raised again,” I told them.

“Oh, what does it take to do that?”

“Knowledge of the spell, and the ability to use Ley Line Magic ... a lot of Ley Line Magic,” I would tell them.

“But you can do that, right?” they would ask.

“Yes. If I have to do that for you, the charge is two thousand dollars ... each time,” I told them. They had usually hung up by that point.

There were others who also called for amulets, charms, or spells of various types. I didn’t know where they had gotten my number, as they were new customers. I doubled my previous prices for these new customers.

By noon, I had enough orders for the various amulets and charms that it would have required a week of hard work to create them using my Witch Magic. There would have been the gathering of the required ingredients for the different spells, and then grinding, chopping, or otherwise preparing them. Then, there would have been the mixing the ingredients in a specific order and quantity in addition to heating them in my copper pots while chanting the correct spell. Only pure water could be used in the brew. Finally there would have been the activation of the brew by adding three drops of my blood before dipping the chosen charm or amulet material into the brew to create the actual charm or amulet. They would then need to be hung up to dry.

The object that I use for this is a wooden disk hung from a loop of string. For the disk, Yew is best, especially that obtained from a church yard. I had a good supply of these round disks. My second choice is Elder, and I have a lot of them also, as my mother used it a lot. They are in the shape of an isosceles triangle. These too are suspended from a loop of string at the apex of the triangle. The cords or strings are made of linen thread and are long enough to go over the head of the wearer, so the charm or amulet hangs down on their chest.

With my new Ley Line Magic, none of this is required, and I can produce a large quantity of either charms or amulets simply by chanting the correct Witch spell and drawing its sign or glyph on the air in front of the disks or triangles suspended on their cords from a rack that was formerly used for drying them, and then touching each one with a finger.

A different spell is required for each kind of charm or amulet, but I could use the Witch spells that I had learned in college with the new Ley Line Magic. I would make a number of extras to keep for future use. They would all need to be kept in marked envelopes to keep them organized. When delivered, these charms and amulets represented a substantial increase in my income.

The drawback, to all of this, was that it would take time away from my studying to create them and to deliver them, as the customers lived all around Atlanta and in some of its surrounding communities. I would need to take one area each day and work my way through all of them. I would also need to phone each customer the night before to be sure they would be available the next day to receive the item or items, they had ordered. I would need to start work immediately, rather than studying as I had planned to do today.

After arranging the orders into the different types of charms and amulets, I checked my supplies and discovered that I would need to go out and buy more of the small linen envelopes that I stored and delivered the individual charms and amulets in. For this I would need to go to Trafficville to obtain them from the only local store that carried them, and other items used by Witches.

“Come on, Al, we’re going shopping,” I called to my Familiar after dressing to go out.

In the car on the way to Trafficville, I checked my gas gauge. After the trip to Atlanta yesterday, I discovered that I was in need of gas and stopped at one of the cheap gas stations to get twenty dollars of gas. That should hold me for a while, or at least until I had collected for some of the charms and amulets that I was going to make.

When we arrived at the store, there were a couple of other local Witches there. They were not happy to see me.

“What are you doing here?” the taller one demanded in an unpleasant voice on seeing me and Al.

“I came for some supplies,” I returned in as pleasant a voice as possible.

“We saw you strutting around on the television news last night, and what you did. You should be ashamed, consorting with Magic users,” the second, shorter one, scolded me.

“Consorting with Magic users?” I asked, confused.

“Yes, that Wizard who was following you around,” the second one answered.

“That was Josh Molony, my neighbor. Those from the Wizard’s Guild attacked him. I just cleaned up a bunch of crooks who were using force and Magic to extort money from other Magic users,” I explained, but the words had no more than left my mouth when a demon appeared in the store.

This one was taller than Bob, being about 5’-6’’ or 7’’ tall. He or it was dressed like a pirate with a bandanna tied around his head with his horns protruding through it. He had on a loose blue shirt with baggy sleeves, a pair of red pantaloons, a broad black belt holding a sword, and black boots that came up midway to his knees and had floppy tops.

“Get behind me,” I instantly shouted to the Witches and the store’s owner before the demon could do anything.

It was a good thing that I had warned them, as several seconds later, the demon finished the spell he was casting, and fire flew from his fingers and splashed against my wards, which I always keep around me now when out of the house.

It had no effect on my wards or me, but the splatter was setting things in the store on fire. The nearest Ley Line wasn’t a strong one, but I drew as much Magic from it as I could, so I could stop the demon.

“Ar ais go dti bhunadh,” I shouted in Gaelic while sketching a sign in the air, and the fire bounced off of my wards to return to the demon, and his own fire set him ablaze. He or it instantly vanished leaving a now roaring fire in the store.

“Tine amach,” I said, and the fire went out. It hadn’t required much Magic, which was good as I was tired and felt weak.

“You used a lot of your personal Magic for those spells,” Al told me. He had been inside my wards, or he would have been crispy from the amount of fire that demon had sprayed at me.

“It will require time to rebuild your Magic,” Al was saying when I was paying attention to him again. “You should move closer to a stronger Ley Line to reduce the amount of time to restore your Magic,” he continued.

When I looked around the store following that, both Witches and the owner were staring at me with shocked expressions on their faces.

“What was that?” the taller Witch asked in a very quiet voice.

“That was a demon. Probably, the same one that tried to turn me into a crispy critter before. I was better prepared for him this time,” I told them to even more shocked expressions.

While the Witches were absorbing this, the owner was looking around at her store and the disaster it had become.

“Who is going to pay for all of the merchandise that was destroyed and the damage to my store?” she demanded a short time later in an angry voice.

I had to admit that the store was a mess, but I hadn’t caused it, the demon had. She might not see it that way, and I didn’t need to be sued, or have the police involved in this. I probably wasn’t well thought of by the police after yesterday. What to do was the question?

I considered several spells that I had learned while studying Ley Line Magic. There was one to renew all of the things burned, and another one to replace everything, but both of those spells require a lot of Magic to cast them, and I was currently a bit short of personal Magic, plus the nearest Ley Line was a weak one. What to do?

“Just return everything to their previous condition,” Al prompted me. Why hadn’t I thought of that, I wondered? It would require much less Magic than replacing everything.

“Fill ar do thionscnanh,” I said after pausing for a short time to gather sufficient Magic from the nearest Ley Line. Everything in the store returned to its previous condition. This also shocked all of those in the store again.

“What did you come in here for?” the owner asked after a silence of several minutes while she and the others looked at everything, even the items that had not been destroyed.

“I need the small envelopes to put charms and amulets in,” I told her.

Going behind the counter, she reached for and set a package of 50 envelopes on the counter.

“I’ll need more than that,” I told her.

“How many?”

“Four packages, 200 envelopes, please,” I told her to a surprised look from her and the two Witches, who were still in the store.

“All right,” she agreed and placed three more packages on the counter, before informing me of the total.

“Don’t come back here,” she said after taking my money. “If you need anything else, call me and I’ll have it delivered. You’re too dangerous to have in the store,” she finished. While this surprised me, I had to agree with her. After picking up the envelopes, Al and I left the store.

After dropping the ward around my car, we got in, and I drove over near the hospital where there is a much stronger Ley Line. I parked in a business parking lot, not going onto the hospital’s parking lot as they charged for parking. I just sat in the car with the windows down under a small tree and absorbed Magic from the Ley Line that ran close to the hospital. Al was asleep on his converted child safety seat.

After sitting there for a half hour or so, I felt a lot better, and we took a different road home than we had coming here. The traffic was still heavy in Trafficville, but it was better when we got away from it on the way home. I still had a lot of work to do making charms and amulets.

Feeling better on the way home, several questions occurred to me.

“Who is sending that demon after me?” I wondered out loud, before something else occurred to me. “How in ‘h-e-double hockey sticks’ did he or it know that I would be at that store this morning?” I asked in a demanding voice.