The Problem With Black Magic Page 9
When Cassie woke up on Saturday morning, the buzzing that she felt between her shoulder blades— so normal for her now, she barely noticed it anymore— had turned up in intensity. She figured it was probably some sort of magic indicator; now that Sam had done the protection spell, she could feel it. She wasn’t sure if that was a consequence of being his familiar, or just the advantage of having a lot of latent magic that was virtually useless to her.
She grimaced, pulling the covers over her head. What was up with that, anyway? How unfair was it that she had magic, but only someone else— and someone she didn’t particularly care for— could use it? Maybe there was something she could do about that.
It was easy enough to convince Annette to let her spend all weekend at home; all she had to do was mutter about doing a few more practice SATS, and her mother was pacified. Cassie’s grades were good, but not Harvard-tier good, and Annette was hoping against hope that Cassie would pull her scores up and become eligible for the best universities. Up until a week ago, Cassie had been very interested in the question of where she was going to college, but right now, it seemed kind of remote.
She actually did start a practice test, snacking on cinnamon toaster cakes and trying to think of geometry and Latin-derived terms instead of magic. After she found that she was re-reading the questions multiple times because her mind refused to focus, she gave up and pulled out her laptop. Maybe the internet would yield some answers to her demon-related problems.
As she expected, her preliminary searches turned up a lot of nonsense: people nattering on about Satan-worship, and other things that didn’t jibe with her recent experience of actual magic. She also browsed witchcraft and Wicca sites, hoping to find something that would convince her she could one day use magic like self-proclaimed witches, but most of the more reputable sites seemed to treat the idea of magic as more of a kind of new-aged religion then well, actual magic.
It wasn’t that she didn’t see the value of modern-day witchcraft as a belief system; she could believe that performing a “positive affirmation spell” could affect one’s confidence and thus generate results, but she’d seen a man freeze time; she wasn’t interested in the kind of magic that could largely be explained as a placebo effect.
She did find some accounts of powerful magic, but in general, the more spectacular the magic, the more disreputable the source. She tried to keep an open mind, but after the fifteenth blog post somewhere along the lines of “I turned my cat Snuffles into a person and now he’s my friend! We go to school together, but he still likes catnip!” she had pretty much given up on finding anything of value.
Just when she was about to give up on the internet and return to the entertaining world of SAT vocab and Spanish irregular verbs, she found a forum that appeared to be devoted to demon familiars. At first, she thought it was more of the same, but she noticed something curious: for all the ridiculous posts, there were several she deemed credible, followed by a message from a moderator for the poster to check their private messages, or their e-mail.
Cassie clicked on a thread entitled “What to do When You’ve Become a Familiar?” with a frowny-face icon:
Hi guys, I know this is going to sound crazy but I’m hoping someone can help me. This guy I know, I think he must be a demon (he has these eyes!) did this thing to me— can’t explain it— and I’ve been feeling weird. Like, it’s hard to explain but my body feels different now. Now, he says I’m his familiar, and I should be happy because I’m poor and he can help me. I am 11, no one believes me and I don’t know what to do! How do I stop being a familiar!-Ethan.
A few of the responses were mocking, telling Ethan that he should be happy that a demon had Chosen him; others explained elaborate “cleansing” rituals that Cassie was quite sure weren’t safe or hygienic. The last message was from a moderator “Demon’s Bane,” who told Ethan to check the email account he had used to sign up for the forum.
Cassie sat back from her laptop and exhaled; assuming her situation wasn’t unique, some of what was on this forum was probably real, like poor Ethan. Even if a solid 95 percent of it was all made up nonsense, this “Demon’s Bane” person apparently used the forum to sniff out real familiars and contact them. But for what purpose?
Whoever he or she was, she hoped they could be trusted for poor Ethan’s sake. Assuming his story was even legitimate, she had no way to help him, but she hoped someone could.
Cassie shut her laptop closed. She was tempted to keep poking around the forum, looking for more information about the whole familiar situation that Sam had yet to share with her, but how could she tell what was real? For every post that was obviously trolling or just plain made up, there were several that her recent experience wouldn’t allow her to completely dismiss. Trying to separate the wheat from the chaff would drive her crazy.
She finished another toaster pastry, deciding not to worry about undoing her short-lived weight loss when she had this much homework to do. She would finish the practice test, finish all her homework, then read some of Annette’s stupid mystery novels for the rest of the weekend. By all means, she would not go on the internet again until she knew what to look for.