Magic Steals

I opened the large chest and took out the statue of Barong Bali. It was about a foot tall, but size didn’t matter. “Please put him under the tree.”

Eyang Ida had loved the tree. It grew with her as she aged, and I could feel traces of her in the tree’s branches. The tree’s spirit loved her. It would help us.

Jim set the statue by the tree roots. I slipped my shoes and socks off and took my offering out of the chest. I had made it in the house before I left. Jim regarded the banana leaf twisted into a small basket, the elaborate palm leaf tray, and the arrangement of flowers and fruit, and raised his eyebrows. I added a donut to it, took it to the statue, knelt, and placed it at Barong Bali’s feet. Jim knelt next to me.

I sat still, sinking into meditation, and let my magic permeate the lawn. It flowed through the soil, touched the tree roots, and spiraled up the trunk into its leaves. A subtle change came over the magic emanating from the tree. The spirits noticed Jim and pondered his connection to me. If there was enough of a bond, they would recognize it. Trouble was, I wasn’t sure if there was enough of a bond.

“So is the sugar-glazed donut a traditional Indonesian offering?” he asked.

Smart-ass. “No, the traditional offering calls for cakes. In this case I’m offering something that I like very much. The effort in making canang, the offering, is what counts.”

“Why don’t you just do your sticky-note thing?”

The last time we went into a house corrupted by magic, I had written protection kanji on a sticky note and stuck it to his chest.

“Because this dark magic is of Indonesian origin. I’m much stronger at my native magic than I am at writing curses on pieces of paper.”

The spirits still weren’t sure. I couldn’t just leave him on the lawn here. He would beat his chest and follow me into the house. I had to show them why he was important.

“Jim?”

“Yes?” he said.

“I need help.”

“I’m here,” he said.

“I need you to think about why you first asked me out. Like really think about it.”

“I asked you out because—”

I raised my hand. “No, please don’t tell me.” I was too scared to find out. “Just think about it.”

“Okay.”

I knew exactly why I had a crush on Jim. It wasn’t just one thing, it was the whole thing. He was one of the smartest men I’ve ever met. When Curran painted himself into a corner, he went to Jim and trusted him to think of a way out of it. He looked . . . Well, he was hot. Unbearably hot, like the kind of man you might see in a magazine or on TV. There was this raw masculinity about him, a kind of mix of male confidence and power. He was so unlike me. I was small and slight, and he was large and corded with muscle. I liked that duality, the contrast between me and him. It turned me on and I watched him when he wasn’t looking. I knew the way he held his head, the angle of his shoulders, the way he walked, unhurried and sure. In a crowd of identically dressed men, I would instantly know my Jim.

But what made me fall in love with him wasn’t his smarts, his looks, or even the fact that he was lethal. All that was great, but that alone wasn’t enough. So I opened my heart and let the spirits look within. My life was often chaotic. I got scared. I lost my temper. I freaked out. I was never sure if my curse magic would work or not. I was helpless without my glasses and that scared me, too. But Jim . . . Jim could take a single step into my chaos and suddenly my problems sorted themselves out. He tackled them one by one with his calm logic and then he would turn to me and say, “You can do this.” And I realized that he was right and I could. He believed in me.

A warm feeling spread through my bare feet and streamed through me, all the way into my fingertips until they were tingling.

“Something’s happening,” Jim said, his voice calm.

“Let it happen.”

Jim sat very still. Muscles tensed and gathered on his frame, as if he were about to pounce. The spirits were touching him and he clearly didn’t like it. Apparently “let it happen” meant “get ready to kill.”

The amulet on his chest shuddered. The Barong Bali’s eyes snapped open with a metallic click. The spirits recognized our bond and granted their protection to him. Of course it also meant that Jim would see things through my eyes now. It would be a bit of a shock.

“The spirits granted you the gift of sight,” I said. “Now you can see the world as I see it. It’s only temporary. If you take off the amulet, you will become magic blind again. Also it will likely stop as soon as this magic wave is over.” I rose to my feet. “We’re going to enter the house now. You might see some really weird stuff. Don’t freak out.”

He gave me another flat Jim look.

We walked to the door. I put the key in, turned it, and swung the door open. The house lay before us, dark and cold. A faint stench of carrion drifted through the air. Jim shifted his stance, falling into that loose, ready pose that meant he was ready for something to leap on him and try to rip his neck open. I put my hands together, closed my eyes, and let my power roll in a wave from me.

Jim snarled.

I opened my eyes. Viscous, fetid magic dripped from the walls all around us, sliding along the panels, translucent and dappled with blotches of darkness.

“What the hell is this?” he growled.

“This is you dipping a toe into my world. Stay close, Jim.”

The walls near the door were lighter, the foul magic patina thinner, but at the end of the hallway, the magic grew thick. I could see the open kitchen window from where I stood, and the dark slime pouring through the frame into the house. Whatever it was came from the backyard.