Frost

Chapter SIX

It was easier to break things than put them back together. That was the first rule that Lola and Luke explained to her. Just as it took nearly no effort to shatter a glass it took a very limited amount of knowledge to use your Chemistry to make a mess of things. Even terrible things. Killing wasn't a hard spell to learn, and it could be done in just as many ways as could go wrong in the human body. She'd learned to interfere with the electrical circuit in a lamp with ease. Building things, now that was the hard part so she couldn't get the circuit to reconnect in the lights still. Making specific things was even harder. You could change how someone tasted a lemon but to change it to sweet required precision and usually couldn't be applied to a group. You needed prolonged access to a specific person. Or at least a part of them.

At first she thought protecting her home would be pretty straight forward. She just needed to put a ward around her house that kept out all the werewolves and possibly keep a few papers in her pocket to keep her safe when she was around town. Lola pointed out she'd need to exclude her family from the ward. She thought that wasn't so bad, it wasn't like she wouldn't have access to her family and Mel. But Luke pointed out that she would then need to be species specific or she'd end up giving the poor mailman and her dog a migraine. Easy enough. She would just need to learn how to create that too. Ben had his head low when he asked if he and Chris would be able to visit.

Making a ward to keep everyone away was easy. Making one that let the right ones through and kept from seriously injuring those that weren't allowed wasn't. And she wasn't able to Weave like the rest of them. When she asked Luke and Lola why she couldn't see what they could, couldn't Weave, they'd only exchanged a glance and explained it required a serious sacrifice which then made her worried for Ben. She knew these two were a few crayons short of a box but would they really have thought it was ok to make a kid that young make a decision serious enough they wouldn't even explain to an adult?

Gabby laid on the woven mat in the front of the store and blew some hair from her eyes. So, she'd settled for the drawings Lola had explained to her. They would need to be replaced and she would need to learn them by heart but it would make more sense to use as needed protection compared to a constant one. That wasn't exactly easy either.

"Ehn. Color matter." Lola tapped her foot on the floor. She was lining up the mushrooms on a cookie sheet to dry out.

Gabby glanced at the book and back down at her paper and hissed. The old woman was right. This one would be useless to test. At least she'd gotten all the markings down right. That was practice, she tried to cheer herself. That was the hard part after all.

"What are you making, Lola?"

"Bad soup. You try soup, you are paralyze and sleep for 14 ½ hour."

Gabby grimaced. "Because they pay you, right?"

Lola grinned back at her and brushed her thumb to her fingers, nodding in agreement. "Because they pay." She shrugged. "They do bad thing without me. Better I get money. And soup is specific. Got it?" Her raven ruffled its shiny feathers and began to clean them as though bored by this conversation.

She got it. After she found out that Lola sold more than love potions and health tonics she'd felt slightly ill but then she supposed she'd been roommates with a serial killer for a while. Her choices in company were limited and Lola didn't usually sell anything that caused pain or death. Usually. But she'd taken in Ben. And Chris and herself. And was willing to teach her enough to get her home. Gabby stuck her nose back into her book.

"Want to know how I remember?" Ben pipped up. Ben on the other hand had no bad bones, even stranger considering who raised him.

She propped her cheek against her hand, looking at his bright ink-drop eyes. "How do you remember, Benji?"