Free The Source (Witching Savannah, Book 2) by J.D. Horn Page B

bow.
    “No need to bend over for Jilo. You ain’t her type,” the old woman sniped and then chuckled at her own barb. “Let’s get on with this.”
    “You have the jar?” I asked, meaning the Ball jar where we’d been storing the remaining flames.
    “’Course,” she said, her voice laconic, cold. Her eyes looked in our direction without focusing on us. Her mouth was set in a straight line. I hadn’t seen this look on her in quite a while. I had grown unaccustomed to Jilo’s reptilian mask. She had allowed Oliver into her realm, but she would not display any sign of gentleness that he might mistake for weakness. She pulled her red cooler literally out of thin air, its color a vibrant contrast to this turquoise world.
    Jilo opened it and passed the jar to me. Bright little sparks flitted about inside, bright little sparks that would hopefully lead me to my twin. I watched them interact for a moment, changing colors briefly as they bumped into one another and then flew apart. I offered the jar up to Oliver’s outstretched hands.
    “So how will this all work?” I asked, as he placed a satchel that I had not previously noticed on the floor next to him.
    He knelt and set the jar down next to the satchel, then opened the bag. “Earth,” he said as he pulled a brown paper sack out of it. He gave Jilo a taunting look. Dirt played such a great role in her form of magic, but she and I had completely overlooked its power up until now. Jilo grunted to show that he had not managed to impress her.
    “That’s from beneath the sundial?” I asked.
    “Yes,” he nodded. “It’s the earth where Maisie was standing when she disappeared.” He sat the bag down. “Air,” he continued, pulling out a perfume atomizer and giving it a quick spray. Maisie’s favorite scent rose up around us, summoning an image of her face as clearly as if she’d appeared before me.
    “Fire,” he said lifting up the Ball jar. “And water.” He produced a bottle of scotch and three glasses. “Single malt, twenty-one years old. I’d intended it as Maisie’s birthday present.” He lined the three glasses up on the ground next to the satchel, filling them without spilling a drop. He held a glass up. “Mother?”
    She hesitated, but only for a moment. She took the glass from Oliver’s hand. “Thank you,” she said, and then knocked it back in one gulp. “Amen,” she said, sucking in a deep breath. Oliver saluted her with his own drink and downed it in the same manner.
    “I can’t,” I began. “Baby and all that.”
    “Oh, this one isn’t for you, Gingersnap. We need this for the spell. You’ve had a chance to check out our workspace here?” he asked, pointing at his chalk sigils.
    “Yeah, but I have no idea what it means.”
    “It’s known as the Tree of Life, and much ink has been spilled in trying to describe what it means. Most of that ink died in vain.”
    “All right, professor, why don’t you enlighten us?” Jilo said, but there was no real rancor in her words. It must have been very good scotch.
    “No. I don’t want to color Mercy’s perceptions. I’m going to let her do all the enlightening today.” He made quite a show of moving his elemental markers over to the diagram, placing earth and fire at the lower part of the pentagram and air and water at its hands. “And now for ‘spirit,’ or perhaps, more correctly, ‘power.’ ” He motioned for me to join him, and I went and stood at the head of the star.
    “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do here. I don’t understand any of this.” I started to step away, but his hand shot out and held me in place.
    “Don’t move. Don’t tell yourself what you don’t know. Now, Mother, would you stand next to Mercy, right outside the pentagram?” Jilo shuffled her way into the diagram, keeping a wary eye on Oliver the entire time. “Thank you,” he said as he stepped outside the chalk lines and pulled a metal bowl and a short stick from his satchel. I