Humans Bite Back

The location for our first coven meeting was to take place in the industrial district that was tucked out of sight behind Brewery Street. The track would have been easy if I had traveled directly from work, but I had to return home to borrow a few potted plants from Finn.

Acquiring the potted plants had been burdensome, considering that I had not asked for my Aunt’s permission. Aunt Finn had plenty of plants to spare, and I am pretty sure she would have been happy to give them to me if I had asked, but not without an inquiry as to why I wanted them.

Since The Grandmasters had agreed that we should keep our coven a secret for the moment, I had been reduced to darting in and out of my back garden like a sneak thief.

Kenny had texted me the location, and though I had been slightly tardy, I had not come empty-handed.

The witches abandoned the building when their Bad Brew beer began to take off; they had acquired the old furniture factory at the end of the district, which offered more space for their ever-growing distillery and distribution efforts.

Bad Brew was now being shipped internationally; the beer was so good that humans were willing to turn a blind eye to the hallucinatory effects caused by the consumption of too much Bad Brew. Of course, this is common with most alcoholic beverages, but a side effect of Bad Brew was teleporting to an entirely different continent.

Kenny had discovered a broken door lock that led to an ancient boiler room that had managed to escape the original updates made during the Bad Brew occupancy.

A cinder block ledge appeared to have been erected to hold large amounts of coal. I placed the potted plants on the ledge when I arrived.

Bryce gazed down at the stolen plants with an unimpressed expression. “This is why you are late?” he scoffed, “You had to stop for some plants to spruce up the place?”

“Do I look like Martha Stewart?” I snapped as I nudged him aside and started unpacking the pots. “They are for our first magic lesson,”

My announcement garnered the attention of all the warlocks who began gathering around the ledge.

“I brought something too,” Kenny announced, setting his backpack on the floor and unzipping it. From the dark recesses of the bag, he produced baseball caps in various colors, which he turned and offered to the group. “Pick one,” he insisted.

I selected the red one and examined it. Kenny had had the words “Grandmaster” embroidered into the front of each cap, directly above the bill.

“This way, we will all be designated Grandmaster,” Kenny explained.

“These are pretty lit,” Jacob told him as he arranged the pink one on his head. “But I thought we all agreed that there would be no Grandmaster.”

“Yes, as in a singular Grandmaster,” Kenny persisted, “But since we are all learning magic together, we are a legion of Grandmasters.”

Kenny looked to me for approval, his expression displayed that he was prepared to be disappointed, but I surprised him by putting on the cap and stating, “That settles it; we are legion.”

I was about to start when a commotion erupted from the bowels of the dim room, causing everyone to jump, with the exception of Jacob.

“It was probably that dumb cat,” he spat, rolling his eyes.

“There’s a cat?” I asked, confused, “Why did you bring a cat?”

“I didn’t bring it; it followed me.” Jacob explained, “Someone had left it in front of the werewolf bar to find a home for it. I had stopped to pat it on the head, and it followed me here.”

“We’ll have to recapture it before we leave,” I told them, “I’m not fond of cats, but I’m less fond of leaving them trapped to starve to death.”

As if the cat sensed that we were talking about it, a meow of agreement floated through the darkened room.

“Forget about the cat,” I ordered them, rubbing my hands together, “Let’s get to work.”

I lined up the potted plants and assigned one to each warlock. I then vocally gave instructions while demonstrating how to conjure the energy that encouraged growth.

I had to close my eyes to any visual distractions, and though I had been reluctant to do this, I discovered that I could picture the sprout stretching and pushing against the dirt. “Close your eyes,” I instructed the warlocks as I moved my hands.

Though my eyes remained closed, I could feel the stem produce additional stems that flowered into leaves. I was so inundated with my own manifestation that I hadn’t heard the other warlocks struggling on each side of me.

“This is stupid!” a frustrated Jacob finally erupted. My eyes flew open just in time to see the potted plant fly across the room with such force that it hit the stone wall and shattered.

The plant’s demise was as much of a surprise to Jacob as it was to the rest of us. He raised his hands defensively, “I didn’t touch it.”

“He didn’t,” Kenny confirmed with eyes as round as saucers, “I was watching him the entire time.”

Bryce broke out into a grin as he walked up behind Jacob and treated him to a pat on the back. “You showed that plant who was the boss.”

I looked at the remaining potted plants, with the exception of my healthy green sprout; very little progress had been made. I looked at Jacob and asked, “Do you think you can visualize the plant growing with the same passion you felt when you imagined smashing it?”

Jacob hesitated a moment and then nodded. “I think I can.”

“Kenny, may we borrow your plant?” I asked Kenny as I switched positions and stood next to Jacob.

Kenny shrugged, “I guess it wasn’t doing me much good anyway. Perhaps it will respond to Jacob’s Jedi mind force.”

I centered the plant in front of Jacob. “Close your eyes,” I instructed him. “I’ll talk you through the visuals; all I need you to do is focus with that same energy.”

Jacob did as I directed, and I joined him. As I focused on the sprout, I was sure an accurate depiction of the immature shoot formed in my mind. I described the urge I suddenly felt to stretch and push against my soft dirt prison.

In my mind’s eye, I could see the stalk rise from the dirt, new sprouts split and formed, and to my surprise, white flowers burst from the stems.

The gasps of surprise and delight around me broke my concentration, and that was when I opened my eyes and saw that what I had imagined had found its way into reality.

Jacob and I looked at each other with shared enthusiasm. “I didn’t just see it; I felt it,” he gushed. I looked at Kenny and Bryce; though they looked equally amazed, I could see that they were a little disappointed that they hadn’t yet managed to grasp botanical magic. Though I didn’t want to admit it, I could feel Jacob’s pulse while we had been conjuring together, and his natural aptitude had far exceeded my own.

“Now it’s we have to bring the rest of the Grandmasters up to speed,” I said in an encouraging tone as I repositioned myself in between Bryce and Kenny.

Jacob and I spent the rest of our time working with Kenny and Bryce. It was a strange sensation, sort of like a melding of the minds. I could see what they were seeing, sharing in the same visual energy and distractions, but once we were in sync with one another, that was when the magic happened.

The plants eventually outgrew their potted prisons, and the ceramic began to crack so that the ledge was littered with terracotta shards.

Though I was exhilarated, I was also feeling emotionally spent, and I could see the other boys were exhibiting some of the same symptoms. Though the witches made it look easy, magic was a little taxing.

“I think we should call it a day,” I told them. “Besides, the sun will be setting soon, and I don’t want to be here when it does.”

“I wonder why our fathers failed so miserably at this,” Jacob commented, “In one afternoon, we accomplished far more than they did in their entire lifetimes.”

I shrugged, “I don’t know. Aunt Finn says the coven feeds off each other by sharing their magic. Our fathers were so determined to be in charge that they never managed to come together.”

I picked up the box that I had transported the plants in and began to carefully pick up the shards of terracotta and dispose of them in the container. “I borrowed the plants from my Aunt Finn, and I don’t think I can return them without her noticing,”

“We can toss them in a dumpster,” Jacob suggested, “There was a large one near the bar where I found the cat.”

“That darn cat, I had almost forgotten about him,” I said and then began scouring the room for the fuzzball.

An orange male tabby sprung from the shadows and leaped onto the ledge as if on cue. Though cat’s abandonment must have been recent because it lacked the gauntness of starvation and its fur was still clean and absent of matting.

The cat closed his eyes and began to rub its face against one of the flowers, which provoked unconscious sounds of endearment from the boys watching it.

He seemed like an ordinary cat, exhibiting his cuteness in hopes of garnering adoration, but there was something about the cat’s expression that I found unsettling; he appeared to be grinning.

I halted the cat in his antics by picking him up. “Heavy little sucker,” I commented and then lifted the cat and turned it around so it was facing me. “Seems like those bar patrons are feeding you well.”

The cat just grinned at me, but then its mouth began to twitch, and its eyes rolled back in its sockets. Frozen in inaction, I cried out, “Guys, something is wrong with the cat.”

Only the whites of the cat’s eyes were visible now, and its mouth was twisted and twitching. “I think he might be having a seizure,” Jacob said sympathetically as he began to stroke the cat in a gentle manner.

The cat’s mouth finally stopped twitching, and its lower jaw went slack and hung there like a door with loose hinges. A long low croak started deep in the bowels of the cat’s throat, and then suddenly, a burst of cool musty air escaped its lips.

A paralyzing chill ran up my spine; however, my brain was screaming in horror and demanding that I release the cat and flee. My body ignored my brain’s instructions as my fingers remained laced around the cat’s body while my feet remained stubbornly planted.

I could feel the Grandmasters edging away, attempting to create distance between themselves and what was occurring. Still, none of them could turn away from the events unfolding, so they were forced to remain frozen in abject horror as the cat’s eyes rolled around in their sockets, finally stopping to meet my gaze straight on.

The eyes I was gazing into belonged to no feline or any other creature that I had ever encountered. They were misty pools of deep jade that caught the little sunlight that still managed to filter through the dirty windows that lined the room.

“You must seek out the lost chapter,” the cat said in a cracked voice. I held my breath, expecting the creature to say more, but then the jade globes rolled back into the cat’s eye sockets, and the little furry body I held in my hands began to spasm.

The spell was broken, and my first instinct was to send the cat flying across the room, I would have if Jacob hadn’t regained his composure in time to catch it.

As soon as I was free of the cat’s grip on me, my arms crossed my body protectively, and an intense shudder seized my body, causing my forearms to burst into goosebumps.

Kenny, who was also visibly shaken, was the first to speak. “Maybe leaving that cat behind isn’t such a bad idea….”

Jacob scowled at him as he hugged the cat protectively to his chest. As if he understood what Kenny was suggesting, the cat looked back and narrowed his eyes at Kenny. Though I still found the feline terrifying, it did appear to be a typical cat once again.

“It’s not his fault; the sign did say he was mildly possessed,” Jacob said defensively as he began to comfort the cat in his arms. The cat responded by closing his eyes and purring.

“And you didn’t think to mention this earlier?” Bryce spat; now that he was no longer frozen in terror, he was justifiably angry.

Jacob shrugged. “I didn’t take it seriously; people give all sorts of excuses for dumping their pets.”

“The cat can be hair-brained,” Kenny suggested.

“The cat is weird, but I don’t think it’s stupid,” I told him.

“It’s a witch term,” Kenny clarified, “Witches can shift into cats, but if they stay in cat form for too long, they have a difficult time shedding their cat instincts. It happened to my mom once; she broke all of our salt shakers and wouldn’t stop relieving herself in our sandbox.”

“Witches usually shift into female felines,” I said, then pointed to the cat’s private area, “That cat is a male.”

Bryce tilted his head back and began to rub his temples as if the latest events had caused him to develop a headache. “Maybe the cat is cursed; either way, we should put him back.”

Jacob looked down at the cat in his freckled arms and said, “He’s still a breathing being, even if he is cursed,” the cat, sensing that Jacob was looking down at him, simply looked up and beamed.

“He obviously put a spell on you,” I commented and then turned back to the others. “We need to make tracks; I don’t want to be stuck in the dark with a cursed cat.”

We hurried to gather up the remnants of our plants and exited the building together. We began to make our way to the Werewolf bar called, A Howling Good Time, where Jacob had found the cat.

I disposed of our garbage while Jacob returned the tabby to a box next to a standing cardboard sign which Bryce read aloud. “Friendly, good with kids, mildly possessed.”

Kenny squatted and unzipped his backpack; after a bit of digging, he located and produced a black marker which he used to cross out the word “Mildly.” “There should be truth in advertising,” he explained before tossing the marker in his backpack and standing back up.

“You may have just hurt his chances of finding a new home,” Jacob scolded him.

Kenny shrugged, “If I were a parent, I would want to know if my kid’s cat was either mildly possessed or an active poltergeist.”

Jacob gave the cat another goodbye pat, and then together, we began to walk back to our perspective homes.

“I wonder what that cat was talking about,” Bryce said aloud, “I thought The Lost Chapter was just a folk tale?”

I pictured my mother’s grimoire at that moment, and I had to wonder if the cat’s message was meant for me.