Place the dish in the exact center of the circle. (Ah, yes. There’s that word again. Exact. I lined it up with a ruler on four sides. But how could anything ever be exactly exact?)
Say the following spell: “Powers that be, harken to me. Send me success in the thing I confess. To the universe proffering, I make this offering.” Then say what it is that you want.
Light the volcano with an ordinary wooden match that has been blessed by a Practitioner. (A Practitioner is what the book calls people who sell stuff for spells. I had a box of Practitioner Matches with three left in it.)
When the alcohol is consumed, a thick crust will be left in the bottom of the dish. The crust is the obstacles in your path burned away. When the dish has cooled, remove this reverently to the trash.
I set everything out on the kitchen table and said the spell. “Powers that be, harken to me. Send me success in the thing I confess. To the universe proffering, I make this offering. I want to be Juliet. Please, please, please, please, please. Make me Juliet.”
And I lit the match.
There was a quiet whoosh and orange flames licked up all over my little volcano. The red cube burned. It was pretty. Very theatrical.
But it was casting too much light. And for some reason, the light was coming from over my head, like a stage light.
I jerked my head up and saw a bright white glow hanging about three feet over the table, right over my flame.
“Aaah?” I said. Or maybe Uuuuuh? Anyway it was something like that.
And with the bright light came a sound like a low bass note that turned into a sort of rumbling thrill, something like an earthquake.
Everyone in California knows what you’re supposed to do when a quake hits. You stand in a doorway. And that’s what I did, even though this was no quake and I knew it. I clutched the door frame with both hands while the white light suddenly filled the whole kitchen, so bright I couldn’t see anything. There was a bang, and the light was gone.
My baking dish was shattered. It lay in two exact halves on the floor. Smoke curled up from each one of them, but there was no crust. They were clean as a pair of very clean whistles.
But that was not the main thing I noticed. No, the main thing I noticed was the tall young man standing on the table in the middle of my glass round. He was about my age, and for some reason he was dressed in tights and boots and a big poofy shirt like he was supposed to be in a play like, say, Romeo and Juliet.
He even looked a little like Shakespeare.
Long hair, a bit of a beard… I screamed.
He smiled, held up one hand, got down on one knee, bowed his head to me and said some words in a language I didn’t understand.
“Speak English,” I said.
The boy looked up, shocked. “Ye’re never Helen of Troy,” the boy said, and leapt to his feet.
“What?” I said.
“These are never the topless towers of Illium,” the boy said, looking around the kitchen wildly.
I screamed again, and he, for some reason, crossed himself, yanked a crucifix out from under his shirt, held it out at me like he thought it was a shield, and shouted, “Doctor D., Doctor D., where are ye?”
Chapter Two
After those frantic moments, we just stared at each other for a bit.
Finally, the boy gulped. I could see his cross was trembling in his hand. He wasn’t the only one trembling.
“What ha’ ye done wi’ Doctor D.?”
“Who the hell are you?” I said.
“Who in hell are ye?” he asked.
“What are you doing here? How did you do that? What do you want?” I shrieked.
I’d cast a spell and it had worked. But it hadn’t worked right. Something was very, very wrong, and I didn’t have a clue what it was, or how to fix it. I was scared, more scared than I’d known I could be.
“Damned spirit, I charge thee, make Doctor D. appear!” the boy shouted. “By the power of the Cross I command thee!”
That made me mad. It was like some guy coming to your door trying to sell you his religion. And being scared already, being mad on top of it made me furious.
“Who the hell are you?” I said again. “What did you just do?”
“I am friend and follower to Doctor D.,” he said. “Who has power over such as ye. Ye know better than I how I come to be here. Release me and return me to him.”
“Get out of here,” I said. “Go back where you came from.”
“Summon Doctor D., or send me back,” the boy said. “I’ll not leave this circle.”
“Shut up and get off the table,” I said, and my voice was so tough even I was scared of it. “Get off right now. It wobbles.”
“Ha, ha. Ye’d like that very well,” the boy sneered. “Ye know well ye cannot hurt me so long as I remain within me circle.”
“It’s my circle,” I said.
“It is?” He looked down, and saw my round tabletop. “Oh, God, I am truly lost. Saint Mary, help me now.”
“If you don’t shut up and get off my table and get out of here, I’m calling 911,” I said, pulling out my cell phone.
He cringed when he saw it.
“No hellish engine shall conjure me from this spot,” he said. “Fetch ye Doctor D. at once, devil thing.” He waved his cross around some more.
I punched in 911.
“All of our lines are busy now,” a so-friendly recording told me. “Please wait and your call will be answered in the order in which it was received.”
“Shit,” I said.
“Doctor D.! Doctor D.!” the boy shouted. “Come ye to me.”
“The cops are coming,” I said, waving my cell phone. “I just said ‘shit’ because I’m excited.”
“Doctor D.!”
Then I had a wild idea. Before Dad went off to develop himself, he used to work out of the house. Maybe this guy was some new kind of crazy, and had come looking for him. This wouldn’t explain little things, like how he got here out of thin air, but like I said, it was a wild idea.
“Are you looking for my dad?” I said. “He’s a doctor, but he’s gone. He left us. But nobody calls him Doctor D.”
“Nay, ye evil wight, I call on Doctor John Dee—John Dee, the greatest man in England. What have ye done with him?”
I held the phone to my ear.
“—your call will be answered—”
A weird cold calm came over me. Whatever was going on, this guy was more frightened of it than I was. I could take control of this situation if I could get control of myself. Treat him like Dad would have: like a patient. Even if he wasn’t crazy, the situation was.
“If you get down off the table and sit down at it and calm down a little, I’ll put the phone away and try to help you,” I said. “Otherwise, you can explain it to the cops when they get here.”
“If ye are not a demon, give me a sign,” the boy said.
“What kind of a sign do you want?”
“Ye must say the Lord’s Prayer.”
“I’m not going to pray,” I said.
“Aha!