Wickedly Spirited Read online

  Bella narrowed her eyes, then shrugged. “Okay. I know I told you to ask questions whenever you wanted to. I just worry that you’re in a hurry to master the big magics before you’ve got a handle on the small ones, and will get in over your head.”

  “You mean like that chili?” Jazz said, gesturing at the pot boiling over onto the stove.

  Bella shrieked and grabbed a pot holder, and after that, the conversation moved on to safer topics. But Jazz stowed what she’d learned away in the back of her head for later, just in case she needed it.

  Chapter Two

  Jazz spent the next few weeks sneaking over to look at the book whenever she had a chance. It wasn’t that easy though. She had to go out on a Call with Bella for three days to deal with a series of earthquakes in Oklahoma that had been triggered by the fracking going on in the area. Once they’d gotten back, it was tough to find a time when neither Sam nor Bella was around.

  Sam, a former Hotshots firefighter who had been terribly burned in the forest fire that had killed the rest of his team, had been working as a watcher in a fire tower when Bella and Jazz had first met him. Barbara had used the Water of Life and Death to heal his lungs when they’d been racing to rescue Bella and the Riders, and most of his scars had vanished at the same time. But he’d never regained his ability to fight fires directly, so these days he was studying to become a wildlife rehabilitator, an interest he’d picked up during his time in the tower.

  Bella, when not out doing Baba Yaga things, was a talented artist. She was busy setting up a show at a small gallery in town, which took her out of the house for a while every day, but the rest of the time she was either painting or wandering around the nearby forest sketching. Between the two of them and their erratic schedules, it was difficult for a teen to sneak around effectively. Jazz thought it was very inconsiderate of them.

  Not to mention the book itself was a pain in the butt.

  Start with the fact that it had been written in by multiple Baba Yagas over the centuries, some of whom had terrible handwriting. (When this was all over, and she’d managed to get the Riders back their immortality, Jazz was seriously going to talk to Bella about putting the whole damned thing on a thumb drive. This wasn’t the Dark Ages anymore, for god’s sake.) Add in that various Baba Yagas had scribbled notes in the margins of the already-messy pages, and you had something that was nearly impossible to read.

  Plus, of course, some of it was in Russian. Freaking Russian. Jeez.

  Talk about impossible to read. Luckily, much of the earlier Russian bits had been translated by later witches, or Jazz wouldn’t have gotten very far. Still, the thing needed to be typed up and put into a format that was easier to read. After all, the Baba Yagas had already given in to modern life by transforming their traveling huts on chicken legs into various less obvious modes of transportation, like Bella’s caravan and Barbara’s Airstream trailer, and their dragon companions were disguised as more or less normal-looking pets (albeit huge ones). It was definitely time to update the book too.

  Jazz was for sure going to mention that as soon as she was done sneaking around.

  Thankfully, she’d finally narrowed down her choices to three different spells, each of which she thought had the potential to be combined and adapted into the magical formulation she needed. Once she’d copied those down as carefully as possible, she was able to retreat to the safer environment of her own room, where hopefully her preoccupation would be blamed on studying. Or, you know, the Internet.

  * * *

  Jazz typed the last of the items into her spreadsheet and printed it out to put with the copies of the three spells she’d chosen. Each spell had a list of ingredients and tools that were needed to perform it, and she was going to have to figure out which ones she was going to keep and which she was going to do without. After all, she didn’t need all that stuff for the one spell she was going to end up with.

  She picked up the printed sheet and scowled at it. Some of the elements were pretty simple. For instance, the first spell, Return of What Was Lost, was designed to help find lost items, and all you needed for that was a scrying bowl, a white candle, and a few simple herbs, like rosemary, that Bella was sure to have in the kitchen. Piece of cake.

  The second spell, Longevity, was more complex. Of course, the Baba Yagas didn’t need anything like it to make them live longer, since the Water of Life and Death they got from the Queen of the Otherworld did that for them. The spell looked like something some witch had cooked up along the way to prolong the life of a Human companion. (Thankfully, the Queen had agreed to allow all the husbands of the current Babas to have small amounts of the magical Water—they probably wouldn’t age as slowly as their wives did, but at least it would help.)

  But because it was a more complicated spell, it had more exotic ingredients. The ginseng wasn’t too bad—Jazz could get that at the local health food store. Rutilated quartz and peridot she could probably search out. But then there was some weird Chinese herb called He Shou Wu and another one from Siberia, Rhodiola rosea. Jazz wasn’t sure if you could find them on the Internet, or if Bella would have them tucked away among her magical supplies. Jazz would have to take a look the next time everyone was out of the house. She probably wouldn’t need both of the herbs, but to be on the safe side, she’d want to have at least one.

  But that wasn’t the worst of it. The final spell, Transformation, was what Bella would have called “highly advanced” magic. Her head probably would have exploded if she had any idea Jazz was even looking at it. It was one of the oldest ones, translated by Bella’s mentor, with a big red note next to it that said Results undependable. Avoid using except in case of emergency. Yeah, well, this was an emergency, wasn’t it? Three great guys were suffering, and nobody was doing anything to help them.

  Jazz knew what that felt like—better than most. She’d spent a big chunk of her life feeling lonely and afraid and unloved. Not to mention the abusive crap some of her foster parents had pulled: locking her in dark rooms, beating her, withholding food if she didn’t meet whatever standard for childhood perfection they had, or sometimes even if she did. She knew what it felt like to wait for someone—anyone—to come to the rescue. And wait. And wait. Alone in the dark, when no one ever came.

  She wasn’t going to let that happen to the Riders. They’d gone through hell because of a Baba Yaga, and it was only right that a Baba Yaga helped them get their lives back. And yeah, maybe she was only a Baba Yaga in training, but she’d be damned if she would let them sit there waiting until she was fully trained. That would take forever, and the Riders no longer had forever.

  So she was going to have to figure out a way to get the ingredients for the Transformation spell. Even if it looked like most of them could only be found in the Otherworld.

  Chapter Three

  Jazz rattled the latch to the cabinet in the caravan that led into the Otherworld, teeth clenched in frustration. She’d seen Bella open it plenty of times, and there didn’t seem to be anything magical about it. But clearly there was, since the thing stayed stubbornly shut even though there was nothing that resembled a lock in sight.

  “Oh, come on, you stupid door,” she muttered. “Presto. Open sesame. Let me in, dammit!” She kicked it with the toe of her clunky leather boot and could have sworn that it kicked her back. “Ow. Jeez.” She tried looking away, as if she’d lost interest. “Never mind. I don’t want you to open up. Forget it. I wouldn’t walk through you if you begged me.”

  Nope. Nothing. Apparently reverse psychology didn’t work on magical doors. Crap.

  “Going somewhere?”

  Jazz jumped, sure for a second that the door had spoken to her. But no, almost as bad, it was the giant Norwegian Forest cat sitting on the table behind her, his gleaming eyes almost on the same level as her own.

  She tried looking innocent. “Uh, no. Not going anywhere. I was just, um, making sure the door was still lock
ed. You know, so no one could sneak through.”

  Koshka snorted, tiny wisps of smoke drifting up toward the low wood-paneled ceiling. “Right. As if anyone could get into this caravan who didn’t have Bella’s okay ahead of time. Pull the other leg. Go ahead, I’ve got four.”

  Giving up, Jazz slid down to sit on the floor with a thud. “Are you going to tell Bella?”

  The dragon-cat raised a furry eyebrow. “Depends. Why don’t you tell me why you wanted to go into the Otherworld on your own—something that is strictly forbidden—and if I think your reason is good enough, maybe I’ll keep my mouth shut.” He jumped off the table, the thump of his landing shaking the whole caravan. He was a big cat.

  “It’s a secret,” she said.

  “I’m a dragon disguised as a cat living with a powerful witch from Russian fairy tales. I can keep a secret.”

  Good point. And she didn’t see any way around it anyhow. “It’s about the Riders,” she said.

  Koshka just cocked his head and stared at her, waiting for her to go on.

  “I want to fix them.”

  The dragon-cat sighed. “We all want to fix them, little one. It just isn’t possible.”

  Jazz leaned forward. “I think it is. Really. I’ve figured out a spell that will restore their immortality. I just have to get a couple of ingredients that can only be found in the Otherworld.”

  Koshka looked intrigued. At least she thought that was what that expression meant—it was hard to tell with cats. Even ones that were really dragons.

  “What makes you think that you could do such a thing when the Baba Yagas, the most powerful witches in the world, couldn’t?” he asked, sounding as much curious as doubtful.

  “Maybe they haven’t even tried, because they believe it is impossible.” Jazz wasn’t completely sure of the answer either. All she knew was that giving up was never an option. “Or maybe I just brought a fresh pair of eyes to the problem. Either way, I want to try. But I know if you tell Bella, she’s just going to yell at me for getting ahead of myself again and give me that stupid lecture on patience.” She ground her teeth together. She hated that stupid lecture.

  “Huh,” Koshka said.

  “Is that ‘Huh, you’re an idiot and I’m going to rat you out,’ or ‘Huh, you might just be onto something’?” Jazz crossed her fingers behind her back.

  The dragon-cat heaved his bulk up off the floor. “It’s more like the second, but I’m going to want to see proof. If you’re making this up, I’m going to bite you. Just so you know.”

  “I’m not, I swear!” Jazz sprang to her feet and led the way to the door to the outside. “Come up to my bedroom and I’ll show you what I’ve got.”

  “Okay,” Koshka said. “But there better be treats. And Bella should be home soon, so let’s get a move on.”

  * * *

  Koshka pulled the copies of the spells toward himself with a delicate claw and made a grumbling kind of noise as he read them—not quite a growl, not quite a purr. Then he looked at Jazz’s spreadsheet and finally at the scribbled pieces of paper on which she’d been experimenting with combining pieces of the spells to make a new one. She still hadn’t quite gotten it right yet, but she thought she was close. All the papers were spread out on the bed, where they could both sit and look at them together.

  “Interesting,” the dragon-cat said in a neutral tone. “And where exactly did you get these first three spells, might I inquire? They wouldn’t by chance be from a certain book I told you to stay away from, would they?”

  Nabbed. “Does it really matter, if my idea ends up working?” Jazz said.

  “Hmph.” He patted one of her most recent attempts with one massive paw. “This one shows some promise. Why don’t you walk me through your thinking on it?” He was clearly not taking the option of turning her in to Bella off the table just yet. But for the moment, he sounded as though he was keeping an open mind.

  “Okay,” Jazz said. If she was being honest, she didn’t actually mind having a second, more experienced opinion on the whole thing. As long as the owner of that opinion didn’t shoot down the idea entirely. “So obviously, I would combine elements of the Longevity spell with the Transformation spell to give the Riders back their immortality. You know, like kind of transforming their current mortality back to the longevity they used to have.”

  Koshka looked at her down his long nose and narrowed his eyes. “You do realize that there is a reason there is no spell to make people immortal? It would be too dangerous to have such a thing out in the world. Humans would do anything to get their hands on it.” He thought about what he’d said. “Plenty of Paranormals, too, those who aren’t as long-lived as the Fae. Or dragons, of course.” He looked justifiably smug.

  Jazz sat up straighter, her voice rising in her excitement. “But don’t you see? That’s why I included the bits from Return of What Was Lost. It will be designed specifically for the Riders—it wouldn’t even work on anyone else!”

  “Hmmmm.” Koshka studied the spells for another few minutes while Jazz sat on the edge of the bed and tried not to squirm. She’d learned from experience that squirming was likely to get you a claw in the thigh.

  “Well?” she said finally. “What do you think?”

  He licked a brown and gray paw thoughtfully, then gazed into her eyes. “I think that if Bella had any clue you were working on this, she would ground you until the next century.” He made the noise that sounded like gravel being ground in a blender that she was pretty sure was a laugh. “I also think that I am inordinately fond of the Riders, and I despise what that cursed witch Brenna did to them. If I could, I’d burn her to a crisp a second time.”

  Jazz held her breath, afraid to say anything. Was he actually considering helping her? The Chudo-Yudos were companions to the Baba Yagas, not pets or servants, and they definitely had minds of their own, but at least in her admittedly limited experience, they rarely went against their Baba Yagas’ wishes.

  He let out a great huffing sign breath. “It is not as though Beka, Barbara, and Bella don’t want to help the Riders. Or even the Queen, for that matter. Although she most of all is so sure it cannot be done, I don’t believe she has even considered it since the day she announced they had lost their immortality.” The dragon-cat stared off into the distance, as if seeing something in a place far away in time or space or both. “I, on the other hand, have been working with the Riders since the day they started assisting the Baba Yagas. Not just for decades, like the current witches, but centuries. I cannot find it in myself to simply give up on them.”

  Jazz nodded silently, so moved by the rare emotion in his voice, she felt tears prickle at the backs of her lids. She blinked rapidly.

  “Does that mean you’ll help me?”

  She got the narrowed-eye look again. “It means I will take you through to the Otherworld to find the supplies you need. And I will consider allowing you to continue working on this spell, with my advice and supervision.”

  A big grin spread across her face, only to evaporate when he added, “And if and when I believe you have something that might work, we are going to take it to Bella together, and she and the other two Baba Yagas will decide if it is worth the risk.”

  Chapter Four

  It just wasn’t fair.

  Seriously. She’d done all the work, when no one else would even consider it, and the dragon-cat was just going to hand it over to the Baba Yagas? She didn’t think so. This was her opportunity to prove that she could make a difference. Make them see she was worth keeping around and that Bella had been right to take a chance on her. But Jazz kept her thoughts to herself as she and Koshka walked down a winding path in the Otherworld, passing hummingbirds the size of eagles, and eagles the size of mice. She had a job to accomplish here and she was going to do it. She’d figure the rest out later.

  Grasses the color of Easter eggs and nearly as high a
s her shoulders waved in the breeze as they passed by. The whole place was so freaking cool, it was hard to keep her mind on her task. She dragged her eyes away from a trio of bright blue rabbit-things hopping across the meadow. “So, this first one on the list,” Jazz said. “Centaur tears. Is that some kind of folk name for an herb, like ‘eye of newt’ was really just mustard seed?”

  Koshka snorted. “This is the Otherworld, kiddo. If the spell says ‘a dozen centaur tears,’ it actually means you need the tears of a centaur. I’m assuming that they’re used in the Transformation spell, because centaurs are creatures that are part man and part horse, and therefore constantly in the process of transformation somehow.” He gave his coughing laugh. “Either that, or someone had a warped sense of humor.”

  “What do you mean?” Jazz suspected she wasn’t going to like the answer.

  The dragon-cat took a sharp left at a tall willow tree whose branches ended in a series of chiming bells. “Centaurs aren’t exactly known for their sentimentality. I’m not sure how you’re going to get them to cry. Assuming you can get close enough to them to collect the tears, even if they did.”

  “Well, hah,” Jazz said. She’d actually prepared for this, just in case the description had been literal rather than figurative. She knew she only had one shot; if she couldn’t get everything she needed on this trip and convince Koshka she knew what she was doing, odds were, she’d never have another chance to get it right. She’d brought everything she could think of that might possibly be useful, all of it tucked into the backpack slung over her shoulder. “You get me to the centaurs, and I’ll take care of the rest.”

  The dragon-cat swung his huge head around and stared at her over his shoulder, then raised one furry eyebrow. “Okay then. This should be interesting.”

  He led the way around another curve in the path, and they ended up at a grove of trees on the edge of a small green lake surrounded by cattails and ferns. A dozen centaurs were gathered by the water’s edge, betting loudly on the outcome of a race between two giant otters with bright orange fur. The centaurs, who had the torsos and heads of men set atop the bodies of horses, stomped their hooves on the muddy ground to encourage the two swimmers.