“What is this,” Tammy heard Becky ask. She turned to see her friend cupping an egg in her hands. The narrow end of the egg was covered with red wax. Becky was gently prodding wax with a well-manicured fingernail.

Tammy felt her lips curl upward in a slight smile. Her best friend knew full well about Tammy’s spell casting. Still, she sometimes had trouble accepting the incorporation of magick into everyday life.

“It’s a magick charm,” Tammy explained as she walked across the living room of her apartment toward Becky. “It’s meant to collect negative energy. To keep it from floating around free and infecting other people.”

Becky raised her emerald eyes from the egg in her hands and looked at Tammy. Raising one eyebrow, she asked, “Does it work?”

Tammy shrugged. “I’m not sure,” she admitted. “It seems to.”

Becky used her fingernail to flake away a bit of the crimson wax from the egg.

“Don’t do that,” Tammy told her.

“Why?” Becky asked with a frown.

“You might release whatever energy it’s collected, that’s why,” Tammy told her.

Becky held up the wax-blotted egg. “How does it work?”

“You take a raw egg,” Tammy explained, “and carefully punch a small hole in one end. Then, you extract the egg itself from the shell. Next, you take the hollowed out eggshell and fill it with salt. After that, you use wax from a red candle to plug the hold and seal the salt inside the shell.” She paused, then added, “It’s supposed to draw negative energy into it and trap it inside.”

Becky nodded. “Kind of like a mystical air filter, then?”

Tammy laughed. “Pretty much.”

Rolling the egg over in her hands, Becky asked, “How often do you need to change it?”

Again, Tammy shrugged. She pointed to the charm in that Becky held. “That one has been here for months. The salt should clean whatever energy it traps, purifying it.”

“I could use one of these for my own apartment,” said Becky.

“Want me to make you one?” asked Tammy.