SpellShocked (SpellShocked Saga: Book 1)

Chapter 4 - Witchcraft For Dummies

"So, I've been searching through a bunch of websites about real life magic," Zac said through the speakers on my laptop; we were video calling each other, "And dude, some people are seriously weird!"

"Well, what do you expect from a bunch of phoney web pages?" I asked, rolling my eyes as his naivety.

"Okay, I'll admit there are some real whack jobs out there. This one guy that said if you dance naked around a willow tree at midnight while chanting bible verses backwards then you'll be able to summon a griffin as your familiar."

I started at him incredulously, "Dude, what did you even google to find a page like that?"

"How to do real magic spells," he said, "Granted I was about seven pages into the google search before I found that particular page." He snorted a little then continued, "But I did find a few sites that seemed a little more legit."

"Okay, I'll bite. What did you find?"

"Well most of what I found related to Wicca, you know, the kind of neo-pagan religion?"

"I've heard of it before, yeah?"

"Well there's a bunch of websites and books about Wicca, and a lot of them talk about how it's like the modern-day version of witchcraft. They even talk about how to cast spells and some of them seem like they could be legit."

"What did they say?" I asked, becoming slightly intrigued, despite my cynicism.

"Well there was this one guy called Aleister Crowley who was born in 1875, and he was like an occult ceremonial magician who described the wiccan use of magic as 'the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with will'. That sounds pretty close to how your magic seems to work."

"But that doesn't actually mean that this guy could really do magic," I reasoned, "He could have been a fraud."

"True," he admitted, "But there's an easy way to find out."

"How?"

"You can try to cast some of the spells in one of his books," Zac suggested, "He wrote about 30 books on Wicca and magic."

"Are you serious?" I scoffed, "You actually want to buy one of his 'books'?" I put air quotes around the term 'book', feeling thoroughly unconvinced that this guy knew anything about real life magic.

"Dude I ordered, like, 4 of them off of Amazon ten minutes ago. They'll be here tomorrow. Prime for the win."

"You're joking, right?" I scoffed.

"Well it was either that or 'Witchcraft For Dummies', and somehow I didn't think that would be very helpful."

"It sounds more official than the mad ramblings of a 19th century 'magician'."

"Yeah, but it wouldn't be remotely as fun." I rolled me eyes again.

"So, have you had any more 'episodes' since the dinner?" Zac asked.

"No, thank god," I said, glancing down at my hands, "I think I'm all magicked out after the incident in the restaurant."

"You mean when you became a human rose bush?" Zac teased.

"Yes, that..." I moaned, rubbing my eyes.

"Let's just hope it stays dormant for a while, so you can get the hang of controlling it," he said, smiling grimly.

"I hope it stops long enough for me to get some sleep,' I yawned, "I'm beat."

"That probably has something to do with being shot at and performing a bunch of magic tricks," Zac reasoned.