Witch's Bell Book One

And stories... they had power.
    Ebony remembered, with an uncomfortable tingle along her spine, that terrible day she'd had with Flora several weeks ago. Sheesh, that fool was infuriating. She had no clue, simply no clue. Ebony had warned her in, all sincerity, that powerful-magic performed without patterns attracted... others. The one-time, accidental cases Ebony was looking at now weren't the same thing. A ratty kid in a basement that accidentally summons the monkey of death is only going to make that type of mistake once. And while it is technically possible that some passing force might latch onto his purposeless-magic, it is unlikely. But the more someone practiced purposeless-magic, the more likely it became that they'd attract attention from all the wrong kinds of creatures.
    Flora was playing a very stupid game. She was playing with something she didn't understand. Like a child playing with a lighter and petrol, she'd probably be surprised when it all blew up in her face.
    It was the entire point of magic, after all, that it had a purpose. Magic was used to make the unlikely possible. It brought about mini-miracles, small pockets of the incredible. And just like a miracle, magic had to be part of a story. You called on magic when you needed something. When you stared into the face of the undesirable-probable, and somehow plucked the impossible out of it. Magic was at its best when it was finding fire-swords for heroes in need, or reducing the shackles of the bound to sudden piles of dust, or giving wings to the damsel flung off the wall of the castle.
    Magic had to be part of a story for it to be appreciated as magical. If magic was purposeless, if it just happened for no reason, then it was nothing more than chaos.
    It was the first lesson of raw magic: give it purpose, and you'll bend it to your will. Practice the force without a goal, and a stronger creature than you will take it from you – bending you into the arc of their own, greater, story.
    Regardless of what Nate thought, magic was one of the universal forces. But it was curious in the extreme, and incredibly hard to understand. And that is what Ebony had tried to teach Nate all those weeks ago – that magic was indeed a force of Nature, even if it did sit outside his square, objective, scientific world. It was a type of Movement – a transfer of energy, a means of change, a way to alter. And just like motion, magic could gain acceleration. If directed along the correct path, if given purpose and led forward, instead of being allowed to branch off in any old chaotic direction – magic would gain inertia. But, just like other forms of movement, if the magical came up against a greater force, it would be stopped. And that greater force would seize upon the power, the inertia, the potential, and bend it to a new purpose. It would redirect the flow, change the story, and replace the author.
    This was the risk Flora ran, that her pattern-less rambles of magic would be picked out by a creature, a creature far more powerful than her. They would absorb Flora into their own story, taking her magic for their own, directing it along their own lines, for their own purposes. She would become a sideline, a footnote, a character in the background. And so she would be owned, taken over, and absorbed. She would be transmuted from gold into lead.
    Magic, in this way, was like marbles. Unless your aim was steady, right, and true – the person with more marbles would win, and claim what you had as their own.
    Marbles, creatures, magic, and a whole lot of trouble. Flora simply had no idea.
    Ebony gave a shudder. It all depended on what creature took hold of her, too. Being owned was one thing, but being taken by a full-demon of Hell, or a vicious wizard, or a homicidal witch.... Well, it wouldn't be pretty.
    Ebony eventually took the last sip of her milkshake, returning it to the metal table with a clang, and wiping her lips with delicate pats of her fingers.
    She finally closed the file, satisfied she was up to speed. She always liked to stay up to date with the cases she wasn't directly involved in, just so she could keep the general pattern of random magical-crime in her mind, if that made any sense. She was like a film editor, she reasoned, sitting on the carpet with every single frame of a movie cut up and sprawled out before her. If Ebony could keep every single possible scene in her mind, then she was more likely to be able to predict how they all fitted