Dirty Little Misery (Miss Misery) by Tracey Martin Read Free Book Online Page A

caused. He’d loathed himself for it, but being an addict meant he didn’t have to take responsibility, at least internally. It was the perfect fucked-up relationship.
    “Where are we going by the way?” I asked. We’d been walking with a purpose, but since I had no idea where anything was on this floor, I was totally turned around.
    “Right here actually.” Bridget opened a door to a long room similar to the one we’d left, only this one, instead of being decked out with a blood pressure monitor, scale and other basic medical equipment, contained what I thought might be charm-making supplies.
    A couple obsidian bowls sat on a stone counter that spanned the length of the room, along with an assortment of knives, several mortars and pestles, and multiple sinks. One of the shorter walls was lined with locked cabinets. The room’s only living occupant was a white-haired man who was reading a magazine.
    Bridget pulled a chair over for me. “Andre said you’re supposed to get protective charms.”
    Before I could respond, the man set down his magazine. “Yes, if you’re Jessica. I’ve been waiting for you to arrive.”
    I started to say I didn’t need any protective charms, then caught myself. If I said it, I’d have to explain why I felt that way, and I wasn’t willing to enlighten the Gryphons yet.
    So what the hell. I might as well take advantage of what they could do seeing as I didn’t have a choice about working for them. After all, a protective glyph or two wasn’t going to hurt me. Not too long ago, I’d have needed to pay a lot of money for such a thing. It was kind of satisfying to be given this sort of charm for free.
    I’d learned a bit about magic during my time at the Academy. Enough to realize I didn’t know salamander spit about how to do anything, and enough to appreciate why high-quality charms cost so much. On one hand, magic was an awful lot like chemistry, but grosser given what went in to making many spells. On the other hand, there was a certain art to it that required the person creating the spell to be able to sense the magical properties of every ingredient and adjust them on the fly. As such, even though all Gryphons had to learn basic spells, only certain ones specialized in magic.
    Fascinated, I watched this one, who Bridget introduced as Mike, combine the charm components into a paste.
    Once the paste was ready, Mike rolled a wooden dowel through it until it was coated. Then, with a pair of tweezers, he took a tiny red salamander egg from a spelled container, set it in a large obsidian bowl and dropped a lit match on it.
    The fiery creature burst from the egg and scampered around the edges of the bowl, unable to get out. In its baby state, it was almost cute. Flaming, but cute. The ones that had not so long ago destroyed a good chunk of the city, courtesy of Victor, had been huge and anything but.
    Mike stuck the paste-covered dowel over the bowl, and the salamander obliged, chomping down on it with burning teeth. As the magical fire cooked the paste, it turned from brown to bright blue, and the salamander grew bigger.
    I’d owned protective charms before, but nothing like this. The more you used charms, the faster you used them up. I’d bought cheap ones, which were nonetheless expensive. They’d come in refillable charm vials, and I’d only worn them when I was going into Shadowtown. Such was my best effort to help them maintain their potency as long as possible.
    But spells could be worked in several ways. One of them involved a complicated series of glyphs, almost like a spell-caster’s alphabet. A glyph or several, applied directly to the skin and made of the correct ingredients, could produce far more potent effects than my vials. They would also be used up much faster, but I supposed that didn’t matter to the Gryphons.
    The paste had turned a bright cobalt blue by the time Mike removed it from the salamander. He waved the dowel a few times, as if trying to cool it