Demon's Moon: A Celia Winters Novel Book 2 by D. L. Harrison Page A

else?”
    “Oh, Lily took our daughter and granddaughter over to the
wolf pack this morning.  To meet the new wolf shifters, apparently that all
went well in their first meeting this morning.  It’s good that they are adding
to the pack after last month’s fiasco.”
    She nodded in agreement.  They chatted a bit more, but
didn’t really come up with anything that seemed realistic, so she and Ed
decided to head back to the store before it got too late and the lost the
sunlight.
     
    It was close to four when they got back to the store.  When
Dan picked Berny up she was surprised to see he was also dropping off Mia since
they planned to close at seven and get to the coven house by nightfall.  She
let Mia run the front while she packaged up the day’s internet orders,
hopefully UPS would be by at seven, or they’d have to drop the packages off at
a collection center on the way.
    She looked up and bit her lip.
    “Ed, I need a few minutes upstairs, think it’s okay if…”
    He didn’t look excited about it, but he nodded slowly,
“Sure, I’ll be down here with Mia.  Don’t take too long though.”
    She would go as fast as she could, she didn’t want Ed, and
Mia dealing with an attack without her.  Not that they were helpless but… she’d
feel guilty if anything happened, but she needed a moment to decompress alone,
and she also wanted to look up what her family books had on elementals.  She
also wanted the time to pack a small bag with a couple of changes of clothes
and a few other necessities, just in case.
    When she got upstairs she took a deep breath and tried to
relax.  She’d noticed over the last few hours that Ed… looked at her a lot. 
She wondered if that was a new thing, or if she was just becoming more aware of
it because of her own shifting focus.  He wasn’t creepy about it, but she got
the idea he always knew where she was the room, and wasn’t sure what to do or
think about it.
    She got out her books and started thumbing through them
until she found what she was looking for, and started to read.  There were a
lot of warnings and the book wasn’t specific on how any of it was done, it was
more of a list of reasons why not to summon or deal with elementals than
instructions on how.  But she was fine with that, as it was exactly what she
needed.
    The book likened dealing with elementals to restraining and
commanding nature itself, which was in the end entirely impossibly.  It might
work a few times, but she compared it to sailing a boat into a storm, she might
live the first time, or even the tenth time, but nature was capricious and
eventually… sunken boat.
    It wasn’t the same at all, compared to controlling fire or
air like she could.  Dealing with elementals was more like controlling the
nature behind fire and air, the spirit of it.  A witch willing to take that
risk would need to build a containment circle, and summon the elemental. 
Included in the circle, were the spells so the witch could see the elemental,
otherwise he or she would be blind to it.
    Assuming it was done correctly, and the elemental couldn’t
break out and kill the witch for their trouble, because it would try to do
exactly that, there would be a challenge when the witch and elemental looked at each other.
    The challenge was not a physical contest as she had been
thinking that afternoon in the woods, but rather it was more a battle of wills. 
If the witch won this battle of wills, he or she would be able to give the
element a task to perform, either a single act or the gaining of knowledge.  If
the witch failed, there were cases where they went insane, or even died without
a mark on them, as if the elemental scrambled their mind and memories.
    There was a further risk, once the witch won a task or
information, he or she had to word the request very exactly.  The elemental was
alien in mind, so nothing could be assumed at all in the request.  Badly worded
requests had led to some serious repercussions