Inspired by pennytree's "Bound"
בַּרְזֶ֣ל בְּבַרְזֶ֣ל יָ֑חַד וְ֝אִ֗ישׁ יַ֣חַד פְּנֵֽי־רֵעֵֽהוּ׃
As iron sharpens iron
So a man sharpens the face of his friend.
-Mishlei 27:17
Bonnie
The last week of summer break passed in a haze of melted popsicles and television reruns. Bonnie would never admit it, but she was ready for the new school year, especially when Grams was on one of her occult benders.
"We come from a long line of witches," Grams said, pouring herself another glass of wine.
"Uh-huh," Bonnie said as she rubbed aloe vera on her peeling skin. She always put on sunblock before starting her shift at the pool, but sometimes you'd go home with a sunburn and there was nothing you could do about it.
"Don't you 'uh-huh' me, Bonnie Sheila," Grams retorted, carefully enunciating every word. "I am imparting the knowledge of our family legacy upon you."
"The family legacy of witchcraft." Bonnie said doubtfully.
"Yes!" Grams said, taking a swig of merlot. "We came to Mystic Falls by way of Salem. Your great-great-great-great…" Grams trailed off and sighed. "Well, I don't remember how many greats, but your Grandma Tamar was enslaved by one of the farmers up there. She saw the writing on the wall, and ran off with your Grandpa William before those Puritan morons could say 'hocus-pocus.'"
Nowthatwas interesting. "She ran off with her husband?" Bonnie asked. How romantic.
"Well, he wasn't her husband at the time—he was an indentured servant, and they couldn't get married until their contract's over, but that's not the point."
"What's the point, Grams?"
"Thepointis that we come from a long line of witches, and one day it'll be up to you to—"
"Hey, if we come from a long line of witches, you got a spell that can help with my sunburn?"
"You don't believe me," Grams said, setting down her glass with a huff.
"I mean, I believe you when you said our family came from Salem, but witchcraft? Come on."
"You scoff now, but you'll understand soon. You're growing into your powers, honey."
"Oh,powers," Bonnie said with a laugh. "All right, I'll bite. What kind of powers am I 'growing into?'"
"Small things, at first. You'll have premonitions of things to come. You'll probably manifest psychometry—"
"Are those psychic powers? Are you telling me I'm psychic?"
"You might think it's all nonsense," Grams said, mouth stained red with wine. "But you'll see the truth. Every Bennett does, in the end."
Afterthatfun conversation, Bonnie wandered back into her room and flopped on the bed.
She's bored.
Bonnie's off the clock until next summer. She's watched all the reruns of her favorite shows. She's gone shopping and picked out her outfit for the first day of school, and there's only so many times she could put her new driver's license to use before it lost its appeal. There's probably a party somewhere, but what's the point in partying without Elena and Caroline? Elena's definitely not in the mood for parties—understandably so!—and even if Caroline weren't in Atlanta, Bonnie wouldn't spend time with her without Elena as a buffer.
So that left Bonnie alone, staring at the ceiling fan and counting the cracks in the plaster.
Booooooored.
"Guess I could read," she muttered, rolling out of bed.
Most of Bonnie's teachers didn't peg her as a reader, and they weren't completely wrong. The books they assigned for English class made Bonnie want to rip her hair out—she's pretty sure being forced to readThe Old Man and the Seais a violation of the Geneva Conventions or something, but that doesn't mean Bonnie hates reading. She likes it fine, as long as she gets to choose the book.
Books are kept in Grams's study. There's bookcases of textbooks, poetry and mysteries. There's a few shelves of Bonnie's books that she's collected over the years.
She finds the journal on Grams's bookshelf, tucked betweenThe Magic of Herbsand Audre Lorde. It's made of handsome black leather, with a cracked spine and pages just starting to yellow. When Bonnie opened the cover, she sawEx Libris Harvey Greenspan (Vol. 21)written in her grandfather's looping hand.
Obviously, she has to read it.
May 12, 1994
Shei bought this as an apology—she had to fly out to Portland for business and missed our anniversary. If she thought she could buy me off with stationary, she's absolutely right.Bonnie giggled as she flipped through the journal. The entries were disjointed at best—there were accounts of everyday life, where Gramps would complain about lazy students or brag about Bonnie's first recorder concert. (Bonnie did not tear up, no sir!) There were Yiddish poems, with the Roman phonetics scrawled beneath the text and the English translation on the following pages-Gramps had been a professor of foreign languages at Whitmore; he could speak six languages with fluency and understood another three with proficiency, so he often helped Grams translate old texts. Bonnie remembered finding the two huddled over musty books together, muttering about conjugations and cursing the creativity of Tudor spelling.
And of course, there were the curses.
Curses (I remember Maman using),Gramps wrote.
אַלע ציין זאָלן דיר אַרויספֿאַלן, נאָר איינער זאָל דיר בלײַבן אויף צאָנווייטיק.
Ale tseyn zoln dir aroysfaln, nor eyner zol dir blaybn af tsonveytik.
May all your teeth fall out, except one to give you a toothache.
איך ווינטש אים די דריטע מכּה פֿון מצרים.
Ikh vintsh im di drite make fun mitsraim.
I wish on him the third plague of Egypt.
זאָל ער אַראָפּשלינגען אַ שירעם און ס'זאָל זיך אים עפֿענען אין בויך!
Zol er aropshlingen a shirem un s'zol zikh im efenen in boykh!
May he swallow an umbrella and may it open in his belly!
Jeez,Bonnie thought as she covered her mouth in curses don't mess 'd only met her great-grandmother a couple of times before she passed away at the ripe old age of seventy-six, but Bonnie could hardly imagine that her dignified grand-mère slinging around curses like that.
Her eyes zeroed in on the final entry.The PW is completely impractical,Gramps wrote.Shei did the best she could, given those Gemini bastards gave her as little information about the spell as possible, but a project of this magnitude shouldn't rely on delicate machinery and a single bloodline to 's bound to go wrong, so I'm working on a verbal incantation…
The rest was smeared and crossed out, but below the mess was a sentence:
Aperi, purgatorium. Captivum solve, sed mihi libertatem liga.
There was no translation.
"Aperi purgatorium,"she recited, tracing the letters with her finger,"Captivum solve, sed mihi libertatem liga."
Bonnie shivered, goosebumps creeping up her skin as a chill swept through the room. "Oh, now you want to kick in?" Bonnie muttered at the stupid AC as she slid the journal back on the shelf and grabbed her copy ofElla Enchanted.
That fool of a fairy Lucinda did not intend to lay a curse on me,Bonnie meant to bestow a gift…
Kai
Kai Parker was chucking soda bottles off the fake Eiffel Tower in Vegas and watching them shatter below when he felt something trickle down his spine. He paused, incredulous as a sensation he hadn't felt in over a decade swept across his body.
Magic.
"What the hell?"
Aperi, purgatorium! Captivum solve, sed mihi libertatem liga.-Open, purgatory! Set the captive free, but bind his freedom unto me.