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“Let me finish.” I sat up and tried my best to adopt an even tone of voice. “There is a witch spell that lets you mimic someone’s powers for a little while. And yes, it involves sex, and yes, you can do it in such a way as to make the other person think that their powers are gone, but they aren’t. Not really. Your power is who you are. It’s in your blood, it’s in your bones; it’s in every cell of your body. That’s why people burn their bandages, because their magic lingers in their blood even after it’s separated from their bodies.” That’s why if anybody ever got their hands on my bloody bandage, I’d have to kill them.
She opened her mouth.
“Let me tell you something about the spell. It’s called mirror lock. You know how sex works?”
For a second she struggled between proving to me that I was full of shit and wanting to show off her adult knowledge. The need to impress won. “Yeah. The man puts his stuff…”
“Penis.”
“…penis into the woman.”
“And what happens at the end?”
“Orgasm.”
“And what causes orgasm in a man?” Kate Daniels, the sex-ed specialist. Kill me, somebody.
“Uhhh…?”
“Sperm comes out. He ejaculates.”
“That’s how you get pregnant.” She nodded.
“Now remember that blood has magic? Well, sperm has magic, also. It’s the man’s seed and it’s very potent. Lots of magic. The way mirror lock works, the witch, a woman, has sex with the man. His seed is now in her body and it can stay alive in there for up to five days. As long as the seed lives, she can use this seed to mimic the man’s powers. Those powers won’t be that strong, but if she has done everything right, she will have them. Now at the same time while she and the man are having sex, she casts spells that numb the man’s senses and make him very tired. He feels weak. He can try to do magic, but he doesn’t feel his own power. And then the spells wear off and he’s back to normal.”
I’ve run across the mirror lock twice, and both times the victims had killed the witches responsible. It was a nasty spell, used almost always for the wrong reasons.
“Do you understand now why it only works when a woman is casting it? The woman’s fluids simply don’t enter the man’s body in a large enough amount for the spell to work the other way.”
I watched it sink in. I wished we could have stopped right there.
“Somebody, probably a witch, told Red about the spell. It’s a dangerous spell, Julie. Many things can go wrong. Red knows enough about magic to figure out that it’s risky and, if he stopped to think about it long enough, he would also figure out that it can only work one way. But he wants the power so much, he didn’t even think about it. He jumped on that chance.”