“But why you?” I asked.
“I was in charge of security the night it was stolen.”
“Really? You?”
Phoebe frowned, lifting her chin. “I’m unusually powerful for my age.”
There were different kinds of powers, I thought. But maybe I was a little prejudiced against beautiful, younger-than-me women with high-paying, prestigious jobs. “Of course.”
“Right after Lorne told me to make sure it was protected,” Phoebe said, “I assigned the torc to two of our best agents. They were in the house with it the entire time. They say they saw nothing out of the ordinary, but when Lorne went to retrieve it from the box, it was gone.”
“How could that be your fault?” Jasper asked. “Why not blame the two agents on duty?”
“I chose them myself. I’m responsible. If I don’t find your father and convince him to return the torc, I’ll have to resign. I could never walk into the Protectorate again if I’d failed in my primary duty.”
I wondered if Phoebe intended to insult me with the mention of failure of primary duty, which was what had led to my discharge. Phoebe could simply be so self-centered other people’s feelings didn’t occur to her.
I struggled to keep a bland, sympathetic smile on my face.
“We can call you if we hear anything,” Jasper said.
Phoebe turned to me with pleading eyes. “Would you do that?”
“Of course,” I said. Lies were like pumping water. It could be hard to get them started, but once they started flowing, it was easy to keep going.
“Thank you.” Phoebe stood and offered me her hand, rattling the bracelets again on her wrist. She shook my hand briefly in the limp-fingered way some women did, as if her bones would snap under the slightest pressure. And maybe hers would. She did look as if a canary could knock her over.
Jasper jumped up and walked to the door. “I’ll see you out.”
When Jasper came back into the house, he locked the door and paused for a moment before turning to me. Neither of us spoke.
Chapter Eight
Jasper squatted down to Random and rubbed his ears. “I’m so glad you got a dog.”
“I don’t suppose I could bother you for a cup of coffee?”
“Help yourself. I just made a pot.” Perhaps noticing my evasion, he studied Random with renewed interest. I could sense him probing the dog with a spell of his own.
Because we were both witches of a similar age in a small, isolated community, he’d had me over for coffee every week or two since I moved to town. I went directly to the mugs, poured myself a cup, and plopped down at the kitchen table. The mug I’d chosen bore the logo of an estate lawyer in Santa Rosa, another one of Jasper’s students. Teaching magic was a solid business.
Jasper pulled out a chair next to me. “I’m sorry about Tristan.”
“Yeah.” I was sad and a little afraid, although I hated to admit it. “He must’ve been hurt before they ran him over. He would’ve been able to deflect the car if he’d been in his full powers.”
Jasper reached out and put a hand over mine. “They?”
“Figure of speech. He or she. Them. I don’t know.” I closed my eyes. “I felt magic on the bridge. The Protectorate will probably assume it was demon done, but I’m not convinced.” Even though Seth had shown up so soon afterward.
“I put up an extra guard spell around my house,” Jasper said.
“Good idea.” I pulled my hand away to lift my cup. “I’ve already had company.”
He looked up. “Really?”
“My father. I wasn’t going to tell your visitor that, of course.”
“You lied to a Protectorate agent?”
I hadn’t expected him to disapprove. “They assume he’s guilty.”
“Don’t you?”
I took a long swig of Jasper’s coffee, the best in town. Instead of amulets and charms, he made brew. His talent with liquids included both magical and mundane. I savored the taste for a moment before saying, “Maybe. He was looking for something. Other than some pizza, he didn’t take anything of mine. I think.”
“So if he was at your house, he wasn’t in San Francisco,” Jasper said. “Right?”
“He’s good at getting around.” Out of old habit, I didn’t like to share any of my father’s secrets, even with friends. “He’s always liked doing multiple jobs in one night. It’s one reason he never gets caught.”
“Still, I’m surprised you would try to protect him.”
I preferred to see it as me protecting myself, not him. “I don’t owe them anything.”
He nodded, his gaze warming. “You definitely don’t. The way they chucked you—”
“Hey. Not today.”
“Sorry,” he said quickly. “I didn’t even know Tristan had died until I left the house to go to the bakery this morning,” he said. “I felt something was wrong, but I didn’t realize what until I overheard people talking.”
“The Riovaca cops are investigating. They blocked the bridge.”
“Nonmagicals will assume it was a hit-and-run drunk driver. Narrow bridge, no sidewalk, dark night, and a rich, local history of DUI.” Jasper looked out his kitchen window onto the steep slope behind his house where he grew his fairy bribes. “But if he was dead before the car hit him…”
“It was a magical attack,” I said. “Not an accident.”
“Phoebe thought it was an accident.”
“So she said.”
“So she said,” he agreed.
I was thinking about how Phoebe’s distress felt genuine when Random sat at my feet and let out a loud sigh.
“This dog is a mystery too, by the way,” I said. “He just showed up at my place this morning and won’t leave me alone.”
Jasper leaned over and studied Random under the table. “Could it be Tristan’s doing?”
“I don’t know. I thought if anyone might know, it would be you.”
Jasper shook his head. “Not a clue. You’d need to find a good animal expert to be sure,” he said. “I was just about to text you a warning that I had company. I had a feeling you might come over.”
One great, ironic perk about technology: a nonmagical message was much harder for a witch to overhear than a spell.
“Do you think she’s for real?” I asked.
“Let’s find out.” Jasper removed his laptop from a spell-protected backpack on the counter and opened it. Jasper had never worked at the Protectorate, but he had a knack with computers. Well, he had a knack for spelling apart password protections. Luckily for good and decent people everywhere, or even banks, governments, and corporations, he had no interest in committing crimes.
“She seemed awfully friendly with Lorne,” I said. “Family connection?”
“Probably. Those old magic families stick together like demon spit on a Shadow witch’s—” He glanced up from the keyboard, obviously remembering belatedly that I belonged to such a family, and made an apologetic face. “Sorry.”
“None needed. It’s true.” I sipped my coffee. “If my father weren’t a Bellrose, the Protectorate would’ve locked him up ages ago.” Even without any evidence, which he’d brilliantly prevented. And they never would’ve risked hiring me, a known criminal’s daughter, as an agent.
Jasper worked on the laptop for a few minutes and then said, “She’s legit. At least she really works at the Protectorate. According to the current directory, she’s got a desk on the top floor of the house on Diamond Street. Isn’t that where you worked?”
The Protectorate had offices scattered around the world. Its local bureaucracy was in San Francisco, inside a large converted Victorian in the residential neighborhood of Noe Valley. A century ago, the local members of the Protectorate had been a small cooperative of witches living far from the action in New York, London, Paris, Tokyo. Now it wasn’t much larger, but its location made it rich, and wealth made it powerful.
“Yes, I worked on Diamond.” Although Jasper and I had spent hours togeth
er chatting over coffee, I’d avoided talking about my time at the Protectorate. As I looked into my cup, I wondered if the talented Phoebe had my old desk. It was in the attic, facing west, which could get stuffy on sunny days but had a distracting view of a stunning sunset behind Sutro Tower every evening. “And I slept there, too. Most young agents can’t afford San Francisco rent, and they work around the clock anyway, so most end up sleeping under their desks. It was like boarding school.”
“Without beds.”
“I got pretty good at making a soft-floor spell. And I learned how to close my ears so the snoring didn’t bother me.”
Jasper rolled his eyes. “Gee, too bad you got fired. Sounds like such a great job.”
I poked him in the arm. “You’re just jealous.”
“Nope. I never saw the appeal. Never. Wealth, status, and power beyond measure? Pfft.”
“Are you joking?”
“Of course I’m joking,” he said. “I’d love wealth, fame, and power beyond measure. But they didn’t even respond to my resume. Not once.”
“How many times did you apply?”
“At least twice. Maybe three times.”
I regarded the shallow pool of coffee at the bottom my cup, looking for hints of the future. But Jasper had spelled his house effectively; I didn’t sense a thing. I couldn’t tell him that I hadn’t actually applied to the Protectorate on my eighteenth birthday, that they’d come to me. It might put a strain on our friendship, which I’d come to value, especially now. With Tristan dead, Jasper was the only witch left in town I could talk to.
“Your reputation is better for it,” I said. “I’m a laughingstock.”
Jasper frowned. “Nobody is supposed to know why you were let go.”
“And therefore everybody does. Word gets around.” I pointed at his laptop. “But enough about me. What’s Phoebe’s level in the directory?”
“Quartz.”
I whistled. Most witches hired by the Protectorate stayed at the Flint level, the entry-level tier, for at least a decade. I myself was still technically a Flint. “Either she’s really good, really connected, or she’s using an aging spell. What would you say she is, twenty, twenty-one?”
“At the most.”
“Have you ever heard of any Quartz witches under twenty-five?”
“No,” he said, “but they can spell themselves to look younger, right?”
“Somehow I don’t think she’s older than she looks,” I said. “She acts young.”
“Kind of emotional,” he agreed.
“How about her family. Day. Do you know any Days?”
“Not that I remember. Could be an alias. To make her sound Bright and good.”
“If it is an alias, Lorne would know it was fake,” I said. “Unless she’s so powerful he didn’t unearth her secrets before he hired her.” Every prospective hire at the Protectorate went through a months-long background check and magical brain scan.
“You told me Lorne wasn’t very powerful himself, so maybe she fooled him.”
“He wouldn’t rely on his own powers to test her,” I said. “He would pretend he did though. Most people still seem to think he’s capable. Dude couldn’t even get a sandwich out of a paper bag without his app’s help.”
An app was an apprentice. The term hadn’t been nearly as confusing in the previous century before our neighbors down south in Silicon Valley had changed its meaning. Recently New York had commanded everyone to begin using the title “assistant” instead of “apprentice,” but the abbreviation for that one had been too popular (in a bad way), and so most continued to say “app.” (Although I’d been known to call my least favorite Protectorate people “Ass Mages,” because how could I not?)
“I wish I had an app,” Jasper said. “I’d have him feed the fairies every night when I go to bed so they won’t sing outside my window and drive me crazy.”
“I could come by sometime if you’re really desperate,” I said.
He got up and poured me more coffee. “I might take you up on that. You don’t have to do anything, just sleep on the sofa. They’ll be terrified of you.”
“Me? I doubt that.”
“You’re the most powerful witch I know,” he said.
“The most powerful witch you know with an Incurable Inability.” I smiled. “You don’t have to humor me. I’ve accepted—”
“One thing you can’t do. One. The rest you can do better than anyone else.”
I was too tired to argue. Besides, we’d had this discussion too many times already. “My father doesn’t have the torc,” I said. “At least he didn’t have it when he came to see me last night. He wouldn’t risk bringing something valuable into another witch’s house. He might lose control of it.”
“Phoebe had no right to come here trying to get to him through you.”
“The Protectorate gives her the right. I don’t like it, but I don’t blame her for trying to do her job.”
Jasper moved over to sit on the tile near Random, who was asleep, making faint, squeaky barking noises as he dreamed. “Maybe you should leave the dog here in case it’s a spy.”
“What about the fairies? If he’s just a regular dog, they could hurt him.”
“I’ll hang a charm potion around his neck. The stray cats never let me get close enough to put them on. He seems friendly enough.”
“He’s very friendly.” It would be sad to leave Random behind, but Jasper had a good point about spies. The dog showed up at my house for a reason, and secret reasons were usually bad. “You don’t mind?”
Jasper stroked the sleeping dog with an arm that was tattooed with thin, black concentric arcs that radiated outward from a birthmark on his wrist, like rings on a tree. Each year he got a new one. The outermost ring, the twenty-ninth, now reached the curve of his bicep. “I love dogs. And maybe I’ll be able to figure out where he came from.”
“I’d appreciate that. I’ve never been very good with living things.” I could make an excellent bead necklace or add a fourth leaf to a clover, but I’d never been interested in manipulating anything with a brain. I bent over and scratched Random’s ears, already missing him.
I got to my feet. “I should get going. With Tristan gone, all kinds of trouble are going to get into town before they get a new Protector set up. I’d rather not be caught unprepared.”
But before I went home, I had an errand to accomplish. A little something I wanted to collect before it became impossible.
“I don’t get it,” Jasper said. “Why Silverpool? Why does it need a Protector? It’s the middle of nowhere.”
Jasper leaned back, crossed his burly arms over his chest, and regarded me from under furrowed brows. “And don’t repeat the official line about Tristan loving wine so much he had to have his own winery.”
Chapter Nine
He’s right, I thought. I should tell him. I’ll explain—
A wave of pins and needles swept over my skin. The spell binding me to secrecy was strong, but after what had happened to Tristan, I thought Jasper should know. For his own safety, if nothing else. He might want to pack up and move.
When I opened my mouth to speak, the pins and needles became shards of glass slicing my skin, digging into flesh, piercing my organs. Nothing visible, nothing real, but my nerves didn’t know it was an illusion. Gasping for breath, I grasped at my necklace and tried not to think about the spring deep beneath Silverpool, the spring that held the secret I’d been forbidden to share.
With effort that brought sweat to my forehead, I fought against the pins, the needles, the shards of glass. “Silverpool,” I said tightly, doubling over in pain. “At the solstice. Winter.”
I held my necklace, closed my eyes, and directed my inner vision to the onslaught of power coming at me from all sides. No, mostly to my left, where the Emerald witch had stood when he’d set the spell in San Francisco. I brought his image up in my mind: tall and strong with dark skin, a shaved head, and kind brown eyes.
He had
n’t been the type to enjoy hurting anyone. Like me, he was an idealist, a friend, an artist. Twenty years older than me, with an excellent reputation, he’d had his own office with a view. He’d preferred gold over silver, and the bands of power I could feel snaking into my mind and around my tongue were also gold. Lovely and bright, warm as sunshine.
Tapping into the core of power I’d discovered as a small child, I followed the thread of power several feet in each direction. I gauged its size and shape and then, flinching at another wave of pain, drew deeply on my core. With the knife of my mind, I sliced at each shining band. They were handsome threads, but the witch’s heart hadn’t been in it. Inflicting pain just didn’t come naturally to most good people, even witches. I could feel them shudder, break, fly away. And then suddenly there was no pressure, no resistance, and my tongue was free.
Jasper grabbed my shoulders. “Forget it. Alma. Forget it. I’m sorry I asked. Forget—”
“It’s okay.” I opened my eyes and smiled. “I broke it. I can tell you now.”
He shook his head. “You can’t be sure of that. It might have a second layer—”
“I’m sure. I felt it snap.” I sank into a chair and let Random, who was jumping around my legs in distress, put his paws on my knees. I leaned forward, taking comfort in his soft fur, his cold, wet nose. “You should know about Silverpool. I should’ve tried to break it earlier.”
“I’m not so sure about that.” Jasper went over to a cupboard and reached up to the top shelf for a dark green bottle with a handwritten label. “You look like you need a drink.”
I should’ve protested—time was short, and I didn’t know what I was up against—but he had already begun pouring the black liquid into my coffee cup. White tendrils rose up in a spiral, reaching not directly upward but at an angle to Jasper’s face. He waved it away.
“Drink,” he said.
Reluctantly—all right, eagerly—I lifted the cup to my lips. Jasper’s specialty was in potions, liquids of all kinds; he was a rare type of witch that had no routine job openings at the Protectorate. As I drank, the tendrils returned to the liquid and then filled my body with a soothing, restful glow. It regenerated the magic core inside me, the place old-fashioned hearth witches called the Witchwell.
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