“I don’t know what you mean.” I threw my hands up in the air.
“I can’t tell you. You have to tell me, that’s the way it goes. You saw my markings first.”
“What the fuck? The way what goes?” I growled and left him on the steps.
A post-traumatic numbness settled in my bones. I didn’t care what he said, I just wanted to go home, to any home. Kitty’s key was still in my backpack.
“You’re making a big mistake. We can help each other. La Roux!” he called, but I was done listening, especially when he called me by my full name. It made me feel like the scared little girl I used to be. I waved goodbye over my shoulder as I crested the top of the steps and into the parking lot.
Commotion covered the scene. I ducked past and hid my face until I found the paramedics and asked about Leila. They said I’d have to speak with the hospital. She was stable but not responding. I watched as they wheeled her into the back of the ambulance. Maybe I should have been feeling more. But I didn’t. I felt only relief—relief that the witch was gone.
Leila’s not your real sister. She didn’t care for you the way a real sister should.
Still, she suffered. Everyone deserved to have someone care for them, someone to miss them when they were gone. Who would miss me?
A handful of police made their way through the crowd shining flashlights into faces, checking identities. Others surveyed the scene with hands poised over their weapons and one cop had a portable electromagnetic field detector in his hand. He’d find nothing. The witch was gone.
I felt his life-force before he said anything. An invisible thrumming crawled up my skin, a warm sensation at my back. Aura-sensing was becoming easier. But where had the skill come from?
“Roo,” the familiar voice said. I turned to find my probation officer, Jed.
My hand rushed to my neck. “I’m sorry Jed. It broke. I don’t know what happened. It exploded when she attacked me.”
He looked at me with sad brown eyes and rubbed his bottom lip with his thumb. “You know I don’t want to do this Roo, but I have to.”
Jed and I had grown fairly close over the past three years, he was one of my biggest supporters. I searched his face for understanding, but his emotions hid beneath a mask of cool indifference—his work face. I’d seen it before when he’d had to take a call, or someone asked him something law-enforcementy. A heavy weight settled on my shoulders. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking, but he took his job seriously. I could guess.
He pulled handcuffs from around his back. “La Roux Urser, you are under arrest. You are not obliged to say anything, but anything you say or do may be used as evidence against you in court. Do you understand?”
“Yes.” I held out my hands. The cuffs he secured were made of glass. I raised an eyebrow.
“Sorry, these are standard issue for witch suspects. The glass insulates electricity. If you are a witch, you’re powers are ineffectual. Worst case scenario, you slit your wrists if you try to escape.”
“Charming.”
I’d seen freedom on the horizon but then my collar had exploded. How was I going to explain that? Coolness at my middle prompted a glance downwards. My shredded shirt gaped open to reveal my smooth flesh beneath. In that instant, I remembered somebody had their smart phone out, they could’ve captured everything. This was more serious than a probation violation.
I could burn for this.
Chapter 7
It took two hours to process me. That included EMF scans, a mug-shot, a humiliating shower in front of two guards and fingerprints taken post-finger-pricking for a blood and print sample. And if that wasn’t enough, they DNA-swabbed my mouth—all without removing the cuffs. Since the end of the war a few years ago, the lawful time to detain someone accused of witchcraft had been extended. “As long as we see fit” could mean anything.
Before I was assigned to the glass-encased, witch-holding cell, I asked to call Aunt Lucy. She didn’t pick up. Probably got wind of the situation and avoided me like the Black Plague. Jed gave me an orange juice, though, as a consolation prize. I wasn’t shocked Aunt Lucy didn’t want anything to do with me. It left me in the same position I’d been in for the last three years—on my own.
The light in my cell flickered. Irritated, I paced, and took my thoughts rambling back to the first time I suspected I was different. I might have been six or seven and was playing in a fresh rain puddle outside Leila’s psychologist’s office. I’d used one finger to poke the water and make tiny ripples until a thought popped into my head. It guided me to imagine the ripples turning into different shapes. I remember being thrilled when my daydream manifested before me, but my father must have seen what I was doing through a window because he’d bolted out of the psychiatrist’s office, stepped in the puddle and splashed my shapes to smithereens. He yelled at me, saying I was too young—whatever that meant.
“Why can’t you be normal,” he’d said. “Unless you want to be taken away, act like your sister.”
I’d fallen onto my backside in the scramble to get away, my face had tingled with shame. If he thought Leila was more normal than me, and she saw a doctor, what on earth was wrong with me? I tried to copy her for a few years after that. I dressed like she did, read the same books, and followed her like an annoying shadow. Eventually I grew bored and used my abilities in secret. Then the war came, and I understood how different I was. I was in danger—not just of a belting from my father, but of being persecuted by the world. It was easier to pretend to be normal after that.
Sleep tugged at my senses, so I lay down and glared at the glass walls of my cell. My bright overalls cast pink reflections on every surface and my eyes watered from the effect. Pink was the reserved color for witch offenders. Pink so they could tell us apart from the rest of the murderers, thieves and sex offenders.
I pulled my damp hair in front of my face to inspect the light tipped strands, all blood had been washed out. Having my clothes confiscated for evidence could be a good thing because finding Leila’s and my blood on the fabric would confirm what was filmed by the witness—that I was attacked. I hoped the video recorded had been confiscated too.
“Oh, shit.” I bolted upright. The memory byte had been buried deep in my jeans pocket. “Shit, shit, shit.” I pounded my fist on the cold wall next to me. Hell, they’d probably already found it. The memory was damning evidence that I could be a witch or, at least, had something to do with witches. I wasn’t even sure how to explain what had happened.
Okay, okay. Think, Roo, think. There are a few things going on here. First, the incident at The Cauldron heralded the return of witches. The Purge had failed. This wasn’t so bad for me because, hopefully, the PR shit-storm would be more important than my probation violation. Second, they only had video of my skin healing, my ability to cast a hex was not captured. I could claim the injury was only a scratch, but I didn’t like my chances, there had been a lot of blood. Third, the witch tried to possess me in front of everyone. Shouldn’t that absolve me of being possessed? I hoped so because that was the card I’d play. My whole defense would fall apart if they found the memory byte.
I yawned and fell back on the cot. My fingers ached for a computer so I could search for answers. I’d be looking up Nephilim and maybe revolutions. And Cash! He was just as intriguing. Maybe I’d find something out about his tattoos and why he was such a grumpy bum. I chewed my nails. He did seem to know a lot about witches. He said I wasn’t one—and after seeing the evil pour out of a real witch, I knew he was right.
What was I then? And why did Petra think I had the answers to her problems? The thought of her sickened me. One thing was certain, as long as I was in town, my friends would be in danger. I needed to get rid of Petra and disappear. Start again where nobody knew me.
The light flickered then cut out, cloaking the cell in darkness. I didn’t know the time, only that the sliver of sky through the high, cell window was pitch black. It had been hours since I’d left The Cauldron, my eye
s burned and when I blinked, I imagined shadows dancing across the glass walls. Turning away I held my hands up for inspection. I’d chewed the tip of my nails off, leaving dark purple jagged edges, but that wasn’t what bothered me. Ever since my collar had come off, my fingertips had felt warm. They sizzled my tongue when I bit my nails. Maybe it was linked to my new sense? I groaned and rolled onto my side hugging the musky old blanket to my chest. I needed answers. I stared at the wall until my eyelids drooped. When I opened them, sunshine streamed through the window.
I wiped the sleep from my face and stared around the room.
The last time I’d been in jail, they didn’t have glass cells, just iron bars—what?
I’d never been in jail before. Even during my trial, I’d been released on bail. I shivered as the wrongness of my thought settled on me.
Why would I think that?
A shadow in the hallway snapped me out of my daze. I jumped and almost fell off the cot. A pink HAZMAT suit waddled up to the glass barrier and slapped the button that opened the sliding door. The suits had been employed during the war to avoid contamination by hexed bodily fluids. Ridiculous.
The door whooshed wide open.
I recognized the energy leaking through the cracks in the suit. “Jed?”
“Hi, Roo.” His voice came out hollow through the suit speaker. He waved down his body. “It’s insulated, so you can’t bewitch me.”
“You know that’s stupid, right? It’s still me,” I scoffed. “I’m not like that crazy witch. I would never do that to you, even if I could.” I’d never tried to bewitch someone before—well, not intentionally. It was entirely possible I’d accidentally bewitched Steve, but I didn’t like the idea of purposefully messing with someone’s will. I steered clear of it.
The HAZMAT suit shrugged. “I know, but it’s procedure. Got in trouble last night for not wearing it. I’m taking you to see someone,” he said, and wrapped my wrists in glass cuffs. At his direction, I moved through the door with my arms resting on the back of my head.
My stomach cramped. I was hungry and nervous. Who was I meeting? I heard a whisper while being processed that the Inquisitor was coming to town. My least favorite person. He’d failed to see me burn at my trial and he’d come to finish the job. I could be tied to a pyre by the end of the week. I could almost smell the burning wood and swallowed.
“Jed, I’m scared.”
“It’s okay.” Jed’s shoulders slumped, and he patted my arm. “This could be a good thing, try to stay positive. C’mon, we need to get a move on, he’s on his way.”
Jed ushered me into an interrogation room lined with black rubber, the sort you find on a gymnasium floor. In the middle of the room sat a pair of rubber chairs and a rubber-lined table held together with duct tape. Jed fixed my cuffs to a metal ring on the table and I licked my lips when I spotted the two bottles of water sitting there.
A dull thud resounded through the room as Jed shut the door and left. It reminded me of the last time I’d been chained and locked in a room. The memory conjured not only visions, but crippling feelings with an intensity so sudden, I gasped. I dipped my head and squeezed my eyes shut, but the inside of my eyelids gave the perfect backdrop to play unwanted memories.
I’d was secured to a reclined medical chair. Electrodes were connected to my head and chest and I clenched a worn leather strap between my teeth. Some electrodes weren’t for monitoring, some were for harm. The Inquisitor had forgone my right to a muscle relaxant, not caring if I convulsed hard enough to break bones. He did, at my aunt’s insistence—my father was on a tour of duty for that instance—inject me with a local anesthetic, but my rapid healing burned the drug out of my system within minutes. This was a fact I had to hide every time they buzzed me. In pain but pretending I wasn’t.
My head had been strapped and my eyelids taped so I could only see the Styrofoam roof. Then a face entered my field of vision. I’d memorized it. His dark, tilted eyes were too far apart in his rectangular face. Round reading glasses balanced on his snub nose and his cracked lips pulled thin when he sneered, exposing crooked teeth as he turned up the electrode dial. I tried not to scream as the electric current whizzed through my body, seizing muscles, contracting tendons, burning nerves. The Inquisitor laughed from his perch, watching like a voyeur from somewhere behind. Much of the time, the sound of a scribbling pencil or a lighter clicking on and off was often all I heard. The tests were stupid. Electroconvulsive therapy did nothing but gave me short-term memory loss—a side effect completely useless for questioning a suspect. If it worked on witches, it hadn’t on me.
I waited an hour in the rubber room and still no one had arrived. Last time I’d seen the Inquisitor at my trial, he had been waiting in the viewing dock running his fingers over his white furry eyebrows. I tensed at the thought of him, wanting to hug myself but couldn’t. He’d been the driving force in the West Australian Purge Campaign. He and his snub-nosed sidekick executed any accused woman, be it hearsay or speculation. Thankfully, by the time I’d been accused, stricter laws were in place to conserve the remaining female population. Once again, they needed proof before executing. Without a body to show that Steve had committed suicide, I couldn’t be killed. The Inquisitor put me through some torturous tests but I survived. I’d bet he’d love to get his pudgy fingers on me again.
My brain tumbled down a dark road into the past so I refocused my attention and began to play a game called Guess Who? The game involved me trying to picture the person walking down the hall based on their personal energy signature. I soon realized every person had a different one, like a fingerprint. It wasn’t the best game, but the ridiculous names I made, kept my mind off the bad things. Like my ravenous hunger.
Light, erratic pulsing... Nervous Nelly. Nervous Nelly had soft footprints, probably an administration girl.
Dull, sluggish drone... Overweight Oscar. He had heavy footprints. I nodded, he’s definitely overweight.
Loud, buzzing boom... Bully Bradley. He walked heavily, but I didn’t think his weight was the cause. His energy felt arrogant, I’d bet he’s a cocky superior—must be a man. Probably played sport in high school and liked drinking wine to feel sophisticated. I snorted as I imagined him swirl his wine glass with a pompous look on his face.
Ooh, there went Jed. He stopped not far from the entrance to the room and his energy levels spiked and fell. I couldn’t sense another aura, so he was either thinking something interesting, or talking to himself. His energy exploded, receded and then spiked again. Suddenly, the door flew open, banged on the rubber wall and bounced back. Cash stopped it with his hand and scowled at me. I sunk low in the chair and yanked silently on my restraints.
Chapter 8
Cash strode into the room. That made sense. I’d thought Jed had been talking to himself because Cash was invisible. What didn’t make sense was that neither wore a HAZMAT suit.
They’d been arguing. I could tell from the echoes of emotion on their faces—well, Jed’s face—and from the spikes of electricity jumping about his body. He blew air through his flared nostrils and his shirt hung out at the back. Cash, freshly shaved, and dressed in a crisp, expensive suit looked completely composed in comparison. Not a bead of sweat on his brow, no red flush, deep calm breaths. In fact, no expression at all crossed his chiseled features, except in his eyes. They shot me daggers.
He turned back to Jed. “That will be all, Constable Green.”
“It’s Sergeant Green, thank you, Mr. Samson, and no, that will not be all.” He lowered his voice. “There are more questions we need you to answer and papers to fill out.”
“Get the papers ready and I’ll sign them on the way out. I’ve told you all you need to know so, respectfully, fuck off. I have work to do.” Cash closed the door.
My jaw dropped, and I felt an overwhelming urge of protectiveness for Jed. He was just trying to do his job and Cash had been a dick.
He turned to glower at me. “Your name is fucking Urser? You didn’t
think to tell me that at the beach?”
I glowered right back. “Excuse me? No, my name is not ‘fucking Urser’. It’s just Urser, and I don’t go waving it around. I hate my father, why would I advertise my attachment to him?”
During an awkward silence I watched as he regained his composure. He adjusted his tie, cleared his throat and sat in the chair across from me. I got the impression he was the kind of man who was used to getting his way and liked to be in control. This situation messed with him.
“Let’s try this again,” he started.
“Is Leila okay?” I asked.
“Depends on what you mean by okay.”
“Is she going to recover?”
“Depends on what you mean by recover.”
I gritted my teeth. “You know what I mean. What is Leila’s condition?”
He leaned forward and splayed his hands on the table. The blue and purple tattoos peeked out from under his shirt.
“Let’s get this straight,” he said. “I don’t have to tell you anything. You’re the prisoner here and, if I’m not mistaken, there’s no one else scrambling to help you. Someone posted a video of your incident online and now the whole world knows witches aren’t really dead. They never were. You can’t kill a witch with fire.” He stood up and paced around the table. “I’ve been trying to tell them that for years. Drowning is the only way to kill a witch. It causes their life-force to dissipate into the water. Air conducts it, feeds it, so the hundreds of thousands of women who burned at the stake died for nothing. Half of them probably weren’t even possessed. When the government figures that out, the Purge will be defined as the biggest failure the world has ever seen.” He jabbed his finger at me. “They’ll be looking for a scapegoat and frankly, you’re it.”
I suddenly felt very cold. “I don’t see how that’s my fault. I’m the victim. She tried to possess me, and those injuries weren’t as serious as everyone thought.” There, I’d said it, glad I’d practiced. The words sounded almost confident.
The Game of Gods: Series Box Set Page 6