Six months of practicing and John had a minimal amount to show for it.
"Ignis veni ad me," he repeated for the fifth time, eyes squeezed shut tight in concentration.
His chin was tilted heavenward, arms outstretched at his sides with palms up. A man uninitiated into the realm of magic might assume he was participating in some kind of full-body prayer. The reality was a tad less holy and would hopefully yield better results than his prayers—not that he bothered much with those at all, anymore.
When he failed to feel the heat of a flame in his hands, he re-opened his eyes and cursed quite loudly. "Stupid bloody spell books never work properly. I know I got it right that time. I should just throw the fuckin' thing in the garbage—" he ranted, grabbing the sizable tome off of a nearby table and chucking it across the room.
"It's not always about the words on the page, John. It's about intention."
John groaned and turned back around to face the winged irritation who had materialized uninvited in his home. "Manny, what an unwelcome surprise. What do you want?"
The angel smiled at him in that cryptic way he often did. "Oh, you know. I was in the neighborhood and thought I'd give you a little visit. See how you've been doing and all that."
John scowled. "I think you can see bloody well how I'm doing, mate. I can't even manage a simple fire-summoning spell. I'm fucking useless."
"You just lack proper motivation," Manny replied, wagging a finger at him.
"What do you—"
Before he could finish that sentence, the angel disappeared and something barreled through the front door of the mill house. John held up a hand to shout a banishing spell, and to his surprise and begrudging elation, a yellow-orange flame appeared. Having not anticipated this turn of events, he threw the ball of fire in the general direction of whatever had just burst through the door.
"That's right, you bastard! No one barges into my house uninvited!" John exclaimed.
The fire hit its target and said target crumpled to the ground with a groan of pain—a very familiar groan, at that.
"Dude, was that really necessary?" Chas asked, slowly getting back up. "Was that fire? How did you—actually, I don't wanna know."
"You're not a demon," John said disappointedly, crossing his arms over his chest.
"No, I am not," Chas agreed as he shrugged off his now-singed jacket. "This was new, y'know. You owe me a jacket now."
John rolled his eyes. "Why're you here? It's the weekend. Aren't you supposed to be off doing that family-time BS?"
"I told you yesterday that Renee and Geraldine were going on a girls-only trip this weekend. I also explained that I'd be doing some maintenance outside today—which led to me accidentally kicking over a beehive and being chased back in here by a very angry swarm of those bees. I see that you've been too self-involved as usual to recall that, though," Chas replied, looking rather annoyed.
"Bees? Really?" John scoffed.
"You wanna go out there and deal with them?" Chas retorted. "Actually, if you got a flamethrower or something, maybe we could use that to get rid of the fuckers…" he trailed off and looked around the room, presumably for a flamethrower.
"I was using magic, actually," John said. "That's kind of my thing, in case you hadn't noticed."
Chas's eyebrows rose. "You summoned…fire? You can do that?"
John shrugged, but he couldn't help the smirk that crossed his mouth. "Apparently. Took six bloody months, but I think I'm finally living up to my 'Master of the Dark Arts' title."
Chas whistled low. "Damn. In that case, maybe you really should handle the bees. I was gonna call an exterminator, but frying them up works just fine for me."
"I literally just learned how to do this," John spluttered. "Let's not push it."
Chas made a face but didn't make any further comments on the matter. He announced that he was going to take a shower and attempt to launder his half-burnt clothing. John obliged when Chas tossed him his ruined jacket, taking it over to a mostly forgotten trash chute and throwing it in.
The past six months had been…interesting, to say the least. For some reason, demon attacks had lessened, giving John time to hone his magical skills. He knew that something terrible was probably waiting in the wings, as that seemed to be how his life went, but the reprieve was nice nonetheless.
Less cases meant less reasons for Zed to be around, though, and that bothered John more than he cared to admit aloud. He missed her friendship, as much as he knew he didn't deserve it. Things had been awkward between them ever since he'd caught her snogging that bloke, Jim Corrigan, at the bar all those months ago. Things had gotten even more awkward when Zed began to date Jim two months ago.
John wasn't jealous, though. He wasn't. He had no reason to be.
The exorcist was snapped out of his thoughts at the sound of frantic knocking on the front door. He rushed over to open it as a familiar voice cursed in Spanish and then switched back to English to curse at him directly.
"Dammit, John! Open the fucking the door!" Zed yelled. "I'm being swarmed by—bees? You have attack bees now? Aren't the wards good enough?"
"Sorry, sorry!" John called back, unlocking and opening the door. "Chas knocked a hive over earlier and they appear to still be quite upset about it."
"You don't say?" Zed replied, glaring at him as she threw herself inside and slammed the door shut behind her.
"Did you get stung? I think I have some Benadryl around here somewhere…" John trailed off, glancing over the mess that was his current residence.
"I'm fine," Zed said. She walked past him and into the living room area. "I had a new vision earlier today and I thought you might be interested."
She pulled a few pieces of paper from her purse and handed them over as John approached. He leafed through them, eyes catching on the charcoal drawings of shadowy monsters and what looked to be a burning building.
"I think they're demons," Zed said, glancing down at the drawings still in John's hand.
"Aren't they always?" he quipped before dropping the papers down on a side table and reaching into his trench coat pocket for his lighter and a cigarette. "Well, it'll give us something to do, if nothing else. Gotta say, love, it gets pretty bloody boring in here these days. I've had half a mind to summon something myself just to send its arse back to hell."
Zed pursed her lips together as John lit up his cigarette. "Those are gonna kill you someday, you know."
"Eh, nobody lives forever," John replied with wink before inhaling the cancerous substance that surely would one day be the death of him—if something else didn't kill him first, that was.
"You're disgusting," Zed frowned, though there wasn't much bite behind her words.
John blew out a smoky breath and snorted when Zed swatted the second-hand smoke away. He knew she didn't care for what some might be inclined to call an unhealthy coping mechanism or bad habit, but she'd made the ill-advised decision to be his friend—she knew what she was dealing with. He wouldn't pretend to be something he wasn't just for her benefit.
This is all there is, love. If you're looking for a Prince Charming, try that cop boyfriend of yours.
"You got any idea where that house might be?" he asked a moment later, pointing at the top drawing of the building on fire.
Zed shook her head, still frowning. "No idea. It just looked like any old generic townhouse to me."
"Well, it's a start, at least. Maybe you'll have another vision that'll be a bit less vague."
"Hopefully," the woman responded. Then, "I, uh, haven't been getting as many migraines lately. Turns out that less visions also means less of those. So that's been…nice." Zed sounded a bit uncertain, and they both knew why.
The tumor was still there, unable to be removed due to its possible link to the visions. It was a fact John didn't care to acknowledge and Zed generally did not talk about in front of him.
You'll be the death of her, too, said the nasty voice in his head. Just like everyone else who's made the mistake of becoming your friend.
"Glad to hear it," John said, managing a smile around the cigarette still hanging from his mouth.
Zed gave him a look he couldn't quite interpret, and before he could ask, Chas sauntered back into the room.
"What'd I miss?" he asked, walking over.
"Zed found us a new case, it seems," John answered, grabbing the small stack of drawings to show his friend. "By the looks of it, we're dealing with two or possibly even three demons. I don't know about you lot, but I've been itching to send more of those bastards back to hell."
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I have the first 7 chapters of this fic posted on my AO3 account. I'm only putting this here to direct people there, since this fandom seems pretty dead on this website, lol. My username on AO3 is missxfaith, and you'll find this fic on my profile. :)