Spell Book

Hi everybody! First submission here. Happy to take criticism, as long as it’s constructive. This is also the first chapter in what is 10+ chapters and still growing. No sex in this first chapter, all setup. Things heat up starting in Chapter 2!

 

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“Hey Riley, I have a package,” I said, stepping up to the manager’s counter of my apartment complex. I dropped a paper on the counter. There had been a bunch of package thieves in the area, and a large group of people had complained about them, so instead of having the packages delivered to the appropriate apartment’s door, they were delivered to the front desk. The complex staff would drop a slip of paper in the mailbox notifying us there was a package waiting, and tenants would pick it up from there.

Slightly annoying? Yes. Safer for our stuff? Absolutely.

Ryley stopped staring up at the TV behind her and turned to me. The TV, as usual, was playing the news. There was another gigantic super hero fight in Castaway City. Teek Man was flying around a giant robot as it swatted at him like a drunken man trying to kill a fly. Teek man wasn’t made of wood, by the way. Teek as in T.K. as in telekinesis. It seemed like there was some crazy thing happening in Castaway City every other week. Riley blinked at me several times. “Sorry, what?”

“Package?” I asked.

“Uh, yeah–yes! Hold on. Sorry. I need to see your ID…”

“Seriously? Every time?”

Riley frowned sympathetically and nodded. She was a college student who started working at the front counter just a few weeks ago. The counter was used to manage the complex’s gym, pool, party rooms, public computers for the luddites in the complex, and maintenance staff, as well as the package issue. “Sorry Mr. Deekin,” she said, her face flushing bright red.

“Please drop the ‘Mister,’ ” I said. We weren’t friends exactly–though I certainly wouldn’t have minded, the girl was a knockout–but we knew each other well enough to be on a first-name basis. Between going to the gym, picking up packages, and occasional flirtations getting my mail, we were familiar enough with each other. It also helped that I had my comics shipped to me directly, and it was my Wednesday pick up. This was the third time we’d had this exchange. “How many times do I need to say it? I’m only a couple of years older than you. I keep looking around for my grandpa when you say that.” I flipped my wallet open and she gave it a quick glance.

She smiled at me, her cheeks turning a deeper shade of red. “Sorry, I just–I get nervous with the cameras. I forgot. Won’t happen again. Dan.” She waved at the wall behind her, where four cameras oversaw everything that was happening in the office entrance. “And I get in trouble if I don’t at least ask. Sorry. I’ll go get your package. Sorry.”

She turned and walked into the back room, opening it enough for me to get a peek at…someone…inside the room. She was sitting at the employee table, and looked up as Riley came in. The girl at the table was beautiful, with black hair and extremely pale skin.

Her eyes were what caught my attention, though; they were bright red. Not her pupils, but the whites of her eyes were a bright red. Her pupils were a stunning dark green. Her top was low-cut enough to reveal a long line of cleavage, and she had a pair of sharp, four-inch long horns protruding from her temples. She looked like she was in her mid twenties, from the short glance I got before the door closed.

I blinked at the quick glimpse of the strange girl, but before I could make sense of what I saw, Riley came back out with two boxes. She grinned at me and set it on the counter. The girl had disappeared in the space of a pair of seconds between the door closing and Riley coming back out. I craned my neck to see better but the door swung closed before I could get a look.

Riley furrowed her brow at me. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah, sure. Who was that girl sitting at the table in the break room?” I asked.

Riley shook her head, a puzzled frown pushing her lower lip out in a way that I found adorable. “Nobody’s in there. I’m the only one in the office right now. Ugh, I hope it’s not a ghost. I hate ghosts.” She shivered.

“No, it was–there was a girl in there with, uh…red eyes and horns…you know what? Never mind. It’s not important.” I realized in mid-sentence how crazy that sounded out loud, and closed my mouth. I put my mail on top of my boxes and pulled the stack off of the counter. I was a big nerd about my comics, and the boxes that they arrived in tended to be pretty heavy because I ordered so many books, depending on the week. “Thanks for this. Have a good day.”

Riley nodded, her eyes lowered to the curve of my arm. Her tongue darted out and licked her lips before she realized that I was saying goodbye. Her face flushed a deep, dark red. She was extremely pretty, with a dainty upper lip and thicker, voluptuous bottom lip. It was a combination that, to me, made her extremely kissable.

She was of Asian descent, though we haven’t gotten close enough for me to feel comfortable asking what her heritage was. Her eyes were a bright brown, with flecks of green in them, and her dark brown hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail, leaving her slender neck and clavicle exposed. I wondered briefly what it would taste like to run my tongue from the dip in her clavicle up to the spot where her jaw met her neck. She was thin, but had enough curves to be intriguing. She had been staring at me, lost in her own thoughts. She snapped out of it with a shake of her head. “Oh! Uh, s-sorry, yeah, you too.”

I chuckled, and walked out of the office with a smile on my face. It always felt good to notice someone checking me out. The smile faded quickly though, as the girl with the red eyes and horns popped back into my head. Who was she? Why was she in the employee room? Why didn’t Riley tell me she was there?

It seemed weird, her lying about someone being in there. I could clearly see into the room. But she had been gone when Riley came back out. It was weird. How had she disappeared so fast? The door opening and closing hadn’t given me much of a look inside. It would have been easy enough for her to have gotten up and stepped out of my line of sight. But why? And why would Riley lie about her?

Maybe she was one of Riley’s friends and not supposed to be there. Easy enough explanation. Though it didn’t explain the horns. Or the red eyes. I shook my head as I climbed the stairs to my front door. I had a pretty solid amount of reading to do for the rest of the afternoon. The stairs stopped at a small hallway, where my door and my neighbor’s door faced each other. My neighbors were a pair of girls in their twenties, both maybe a little older than me, and they were definitely in full party mode. They had mild parties every weekend, though they had never managed to bring it up to total rager status. They usually invited me over, and I had fun hanging out and flirting with them, though nothing so far had come of it.

Nobody seemed to be home at the moment, a bittersweet relief, and I awkwardly pushed my door open with my mail held in both hands. It was a little heavier than usual today between both boxes. I knew I had a couple of graphic novels in with my monthly comics, but I wasn’t really sure what the second box had in it. I glanced at my watch, 1:37 pm. I was planning on spending a couple more hours working, and the rest of the evening reading through my most recently acquired nerdiness.

I worked from home as an accountant for a marketing company, and still had a few things to finish up before logging off for the day. I put the box on my kitchen table and moved into my bedroom to keep working.

Once I was done with that, I went back to the kitchen table and sorted through my mail. It was almost all junk, a couple of bills, which I paid right away. If I didn’t do it right then, it wouldn’t get done, so I made it a point to deal with things as soon as they cropped up, if I had the time. Keeping my ADD in check made forgetting things really easy.

I finally turned to my boxes of comics and flicked open the knife that I used to open my mail. I carefully cut the tape on the flaps, and pulled them back. I pulled out the filler paper, revealing a large, leather-bound book with a name printed across the front of it in a language that I couldn’t read. I frowned at it, pulled it out of the box, and flipped it over, hoping to find something in English on the back. There wasn’t any writing on the back of it.

“Weird,” I muttered, and flipped it back over, then opened the cover. The same title in the same strange writing was on the first page. No table of contents, no copyright pages, no nothing. It was as if the book was handmade. Maybe something from Etsy? Why was it sent to me? “So weird.”

The longer I stared at the writing, the more the script seemed to almost wiggle, as if it were alive on the page. I blinked and rubbed my eyes at it, but the more I looked, the worse it became. It was as if the words were changing before my eyes. I closed my eyes for a long moment, then opened them, blinking rapidly.

The writing continued shifting, blurring out of focus completely before snapping into place. I rubbed my eyes again. The title of the book was now clearly legible, Luth Parv. I frowned. The script and the words seemed oddly familiar. It took me a moment to realize why. “What? Is this in…Elvish? Sindarin? That wasn’t Elvish a minute ago.”

The script on the page danced around again, this time restructuring into a completely different but even more familiar script. Nordic Runes now decorated the page, and these were even more familiar to me than the Elvish language Tolkein had invented. I had studied Nordic culture in college, and had been using Runes for divination since I was in high school. My mind translated the words even faster, once I realized that it was written in the traditional right-to-left orientation instead of the modern left-to-right. “Spell Book? What the hell is this?”

I flipped to the next page, which was blank, then to the page after that. Also blank. However, the more I stared at the pages of the strange book, I found that ink began appearing from right-to-left, filling the pages with Runes. It was as if the book was writing itself as I watched.

It reminded me of the Darkhold from Marvel Comics, a demonic book which possessed the minds of the people who read it. I wondered if I should stop reading, but that was ridiculous. Marvel was fiction. Real spell books like this didn’t actually exist. I mean, super science and people who flew like Superman were real, sure. But it was nothing like in the comics. Magic, on the other hand, didn’t exist. Spells didn’t exist.

Except I was staring right at one.

I leaned back in my chair after reading several pages. The spells it outlined seemed very simple. Incantations which, when spoken aloud, or focused upon in one’s mind, could have a real-world effect.

Magick, in no uncertain terms.

“Bullshit,” I muttered, then continued reading.

The next time I looked up, night had fallen. I stood up and stretched, walking over to the light switch. How had I been reading in the dark? Weird. I looked at my watch, and saw that it was almost nine o’clock. Where had the time gone? I opened my mouth and spoke in the language of the book instead of English.

My hands burst into purple fire.

I jumped up, screamed like a girl, and ran over to the sink, hands held away from my body. I couldn’t feel the flames on my hands at all. I turned the sink on and put my hands under the water, but the flames didn’t die under the stream of liquid. I spoke again, this time what came out was a phrase which ended the spell I had cast, and the purple fire went out in twin puffs of smoke.

I started to say something else, but stopped, realizing that the book really was a spell book.

And then I realized that I had used a spell in the book, and that it worked.

I sat down, hard, right there on the floor of the kitchen.

I opened my mouth to speak, then paused, again, worried that I would cast another spell. I took a deep breath in through my nose, breathed it out as long as I could through my mouth.

“Hurdee gurdee flibbitee schpekel doink,” I said, doing a passable impression of my favorite Muppet character, the Swedish Chef. Not a spell. Progress. Tried again, only with real English this time. “Okay. Someone sent you a spell book, and suddenly you can do magic. Real magic. Don’t freak out. Don’t…”

A thought occurred to me.

Had they sent it to me, though?

I pushed myself off the floor and ran over to my table. I grabbed the box and folded the top closed and looked at the address.

It was my neighbor’s apartment. “Shit,” I muttered. I opened their mail. The name it was addressed to was Danielle Dagon. I frowned at that. Who was Danielle? The girls next door were named Aria and Cally. My name was Daniel Deekin, so I could see what happened there. Between the almost identical apartment number and both packages being addressed to someone with DD as their initials, it would make sense that Riley could have thought it was my package. At a glance, at least.

I sighed. What if I just kept the book? That wasn’t likely to work. Aside from the fact that Riley might realize she screwed up when Aria or Cally came looking for their delivery, the fact that it’s a literal freaking magic book probably means that they’re expecting to see the book sooner than later.

No, the only thing to do was to take it across the porch to the girls’ apartment. Besides, there was that little thing called Karma which I was fairly certain would catch up to me. And if this wasn’t the only magic that the girls knew, and I kept it from them, there was the clearly likely possibility that they could curse me or something. For real. That didn’t sound like fun.

I stood up and grabbed the book off the table. I stared at the cover, now with the clear Norse Runes spelling out the title on the front. “Nice to meet you, Spell Book. Let’s get you to your actual owners.”

I opened my door and stepped outside, walking the seven feet to the door across from mine. I knocked on it, and waited. I heard voices and footsteps, and a moment later the door opened. “It’s Dan from next door!” Aria yelled over her shoulder. She smiled at me, her shoulder-length green and purple hair framing her face. “Hey, what’s up?”

She wasn’t wearing much makeup but with full lips and large green eyes, she was still easily model-quality beautiful. She had two lip rings and a nose stud, and her left ear had at least six piercings. She was the epitome of punk rock gorgeous. She was too friendly for her beauty to really ever stop me from chatting with her, though a couple of years ago I would have been too shy to even try to talk to her without the pretext of being a neighbor. She was also only wearing a camisole top and panties, and it was abundantly clear that she wasn’t wearing a bra. Her nipples pressed against the tight material and I blinked, hoping she hadn’t noticed me checking her out.

She obviously had no problems answering the door like that, and the entire package pretty much surprised the words out of my head.

I wasn’t about to tell her that I could see bits that most people wouldn’t want someone they weren’t intimate with to see. If she was cool with answering the door of her house like that, who was I to criticize? Besides, I’d been nursing a crush on both her and her roommate since they had moved in.

I opened my mouth to explain what happened, or at least say a basic “hello,” but was still struggling to find words.

Her smile went from friendly to mischievous as she watched me staring at her with my mouth opening and closing like a fish on the floor. I could see that she had both nipples pierced through the thin material of her shirt, and it looked like there was a ring down between her legs as well.

I was suddenly having an issue with how tight my pants were.

I shook my head quickly, trying to figure out how to speak all over again. “Uh,” I said. The picture of eloquence.

She giggled, adorably, and put both hands behind her back, jutting her chest out on purpose. A shameless flirt.”You wanna come in? Cally’s finishing up in the shower, she’ll be out in a couple minutes.”

“What does he want?” Cally called from deeper in the apartment.

“Dunno yet,” Aria said. “I think he’s forgotten how to speak. My beauty spell totally works!”

“I haven’t!” I spluttered. “I was just–I was…what spell?”

She laughed at my stuttering and winked at me. She crossed her arms under her breasts–bringing my eyes back down with the movement–and cocked her hip out, emphasizing the curves further down. Which of course prompted my eyes to travel even further down her body again. “Come on in.”

“How many…no, never mind,” I said, trying to get my hormones under control. I started to ask how many piercings she had, but decided it wasn’t really a question worth asking. If she wanted me to know, she seemed like the kind of person to make it obvious. She clearly wanted me to look at her body right now.

“How many what?” She turned and walked into her living room, and I followed her inside, watching as her legs and ass carried her across the room.

She stopped walking, looking pointedly at me over her shoulder and grinning lasciviously. “You doing okay over there?”

“Yeah, you’re fucking gorgeous,” I said without thinking. My eyes widened in horror and embarrassment as I heard the words after I said them and my entire face turned a bright red. “I’m so sorry, I wasn’t–that isn’t…I have a hard time with my inner filter sometimes, and I wasn’t expecting you to answer the door without pants. No, that isn’t any better, I’m just…shit. Can I start over without saying something too offensive?”

“First of all,” Aria dropped onto the couch, her breasts bouncing with the sudden drop. I couldn’t not look at that. “I’m not offended by anything you’ve said. Second of all, you look like you’re having a hard time, all right.” She pointedly grinned at my erection trying to burst out of my pants. “And third, I don’t mind you looking at all. Otherwise I would have put a robe on. Or something. Probably. Fourth and finally, I admit I’m both an exhibitionist and a tease. I did invite it. This time.” She made a show of crossing her legs slowly, giving me a good view of what was between them through the underwear. Definitely pierced down south. She patted the couch next to her.

Deeper inside the apartment, the water stopped running, and a door opened.

I sighed, and sat down. “Okay. That totally wasn’t why I came over. I owe someone here an apology. I’m just not sure who Danielle is.” I put the book down on the coffee table in front of us.

She gave me a sidelong look that was pure sexiness and glanced down at the book. She looked back at me and then her eyes widened in horror, her entire demeanor changing from playful sex kitten to mild panic. She turned back to the book so fast I thought she was going to get whiplash. She snatched the book off the table.

“What the actual fuck,” she said. It wasn’t a question. “Cally! Get out here!” She turned to me, her face worried. “Did you open this? Did you fucking read this? How did you get this?”

“Well, yeah, I–” I started.

“I’m getting dressed!” Cally called from the bedroom.

“I need you out here NOW!” Aria shrieked.

“Fine! Fine, coming! Goddess!” The bedroom door opened from the hallway in the back of the apartment and Cally came out, dressed in a comfortable bra and panties, blonde hair still wrapped in a towel. Aria stood about five foot three inches and was curvy in all the right places, where Cally was tall and skinny. She stood just a little bit shorter than me at five foot nine. Her face was still flush from the shower, and the freckles that crossed her cheeks and dotted her nose gave her an adorable girl-next-door look. “Jesus, Dan’s still here, what the hell–”