Beguiled

by Darynda Jones

  Damn it.

  I blinked out of Olly’s mind, hurried out of the Bug, and went around a shop that sold T-shirts to hopefully cut him off. Roane was going to confront him, but he seemed to be having a hard time getting a face-to-face. My chances were even slimmer, but I had to try. I quickly told Olly my plan, based on the fact that the hunter almost certainly realized my familiar was following him, and waited.

  Sure enough, when Olly turned a corner, the hunter was ready for him. He waited until Olly passed by a courtyard with an iron-and-brick fence, and then he jumped down off the fence to corner him in the blocked-in area.

  Startled, Olly caught the tail end of the jump and started to dart off, but the hunter threw something on him. Dust of some kind. Powder. And Olly couldn’t move.

  I took off, trying to get to my familiar before the hunter did something.

  He knelt in front of Olly, tilted his head, and tried to look inside his mind. Olly couldn’t even blink, so the hunter had free rein as he tried to peer inside.

  “Who sent you?” he asked, his voice deeper than I would’ve suspected.

  I found the courtyard at last and skidded to a halt behind the hunter. He stood and whirled around, and I knew I had to do something fast. I just didn’t know what.

  I had no idea if it was Olly in my head or Gigi in my head or my magics taking over, but I brought up my hand and drew a spell just as the hunter threw the same powder at me.

  My spell first blocked the powder, then bound the hunter.

  His handsome face blanched with surprise. He blinked at me and tried to move but couldn’t. My spell had bound him to the spot.

  Yes!

  Now what? Blood rushed in my ears. What did one do with a hunter who would just as soon kill me as look at me? And I had to ask again, where was a wolf when I needed one?

  The hunter calmed, as though accepting his fate. “I’m impressed.”

  I swallowed hard, lifted my chin, and demanded, “Release my familiar.” The confused expression on his face had me wondering what I said wrong. “Now.”

  He could move his head. He turned it just enough to look at Olly, who still stood frozen before fixing his gaze back on me. “That’s not a familiar.”

  “He is, too. How do you know?”

  Honestly, the looks he was giving me made me question my own sanity. “You’re a charmling.”

  “And?”

  “Do you even know what that is?”

  “Look, just release him, okay?”

  He gave me a once-over, as though trying to figure me out. “It’ll wear off. But as a charmling, you would know that.”

  “Right.” I nodded. “And I did. I knew it. I was just testing you.” Gawd, I was such a good liar. I checked my phone, panic beginning to take hold. If the powder wore off, would my spell? Was it only a matter of time?

  Olly shook his head, already coming out of it. He released a loud mew of aggravation as he tried to walk and tipped over. Poor little guy.

  “Almost there, buddy.” Words of encouragement could only help. I checked my phone again. A lot could happen in two seconds. Nothing, so I refocused on the hunter. “Why are you here? In Salem?” When he didn’t answer, I moved in and locked gazes with him. His eyes didn’t waver, so dark they looked like the ocean at night, deep and dark with mysteries galore. “What are you searching for?”

  The hunter narrowed his lids. “You can’t compel me, witch. Who are you?”

  “My name is… Tiffany.”

  “No, it’s not. Your power is old—”

  “Old?”

  “—but you know nothing about it.”

  “How old?”

  “The power my employer felt—the one that was taken—was different.”

  “Is that what you call him? Your employer?”

  “You’re a seeker. The charmling who was killed was a healer. Her power escaped and found a descendant. A blood heir.”

  “Is that supposed to mean something to me?”

  “It means you’re not the one I was sent after.”

  Sharp pinpricks of anxiety rushed up my spine. He really had been after Annette. “And yet here I am.”

  He smiled. “Oh, we’ll take you both, Sarru.”

  “Mm, that doesn’t work for me.”

  “You misunderstand.” He cocked his head to one side like we were having a polite conversation and he hadn’t just threatened to kidnap me and my best friend. “My employer can protect you. He has the last of your sister charmlings under his protection.”

  “Is that what he calls it? His protection?”

  “For the first time in centuries, the powers of two charmlings have found their way back to actual blood heirs. This is unprecedented. And my employer simply wants to help.”

  “Yeah, I’ll bet he does. So, this faux charmling… where is she?”

  “Safe. In hiding. With two charmlings murdered now, one can’t be too careful.”

  “Two?” I asked, alarmed.

  “You didn’t know?”

  I crossed my arms over my chest and waited.

  “The first charmling was killed over forty-five years ago, murdered in her sleep. Her power escaped, but it was quickly cloaked before any of the founding warlocks could locate it.”

  “And what exactly did these founding warlocks find?”

  “We’d wondered for decades if it returned to a blood heir,” he said, ignoring my question. “I guess now we know.”

  “And the second one?”

  “Murdered a few days ago the same way the first charmling had been killed decades earlier.”

  “No doubt a charmling who stole the power from its rightful heir.”

  He shrugged, not denying it. “No doubt. But you must understand, we didn’t know there were any rightful heirs left.”

  “Either way, she was no sister of mine.”

  “Be that as it may, my employer is… concerned. Charmlings are impossibly strong, but they’re even stronger together. You could combine your powers. Find who killed your sister charmlings.”

  “So you want me to follow you into the spider’s web?”

  “It’s actually a rather modest house in Poughkeepsie, but yes. It would be a mutually beneficial arrangement.”

  “Funny how the scales of such arrangements always tip in favor of the one with the penis.”

  “I tracked the power here,” he continued, “but couldn’t stay locked on. It was sporadic. The energy. Coming in and out like a faint radio signal. Intermittent and random.”

  Yep. Definitely Annette.

  Olly struggled to sit up, then began licking his paws.

  “Olly, come here.” He hobbled over to me, one leg still stiff, and I picked him up.

  The hunter frowned. “I wouldn’t touch that if I were you.”

  “Hey. Do I dis your familiar?”

  He lifted a shoulder, giving up.

  I heard running and turned toward the gate to the courtyard, worried this was all a setup and I was about to be ambushed. Roane cornered the building and stopped as he took in the scene, breathless and astonished.

  I held up a hand. “Before you get mad, hear me out.”

  Roane blinked between me and the hunter, then took a wary step toward me. “You… you captured him?”

  “Yes, but in my defense, he was about to petrify me with cocaine.”

  Roane gaped at me for, like, an hour, then said, “You are such a badass.”

  “Wait, really?” I laughed and waved a dismissive hand. “Stop.”

  He stepped closer and looked me over. “Are you okay?”

  I stepped closer too, close enough to feel the heat radiating off his body. “Yes.” I couldn’t stop taking in the lines of his perfect face. The sensual shape of his mouth. The—

  “Please, just kill me.”

  We turned toward the hunter, but Roane seemed to notice the gigantic black cat in my arms for the first time. He looked down at him.

  Olly put a paw on his cheek and went in to smell
his mouth.

  “What is that?” he asked, keeping his lips as closed as possible.

  “Olly. The creature formerly known as Bead-uh. My familiar.”

  “That’s not a familiar.”

  “Why does everyone keep saying that?”

  “I’ve been completely honest with you,” the hunter said. “Mind releasing me now?”

  “Why? So you can go back to your master—”

  “Employer.”

  “—and tell him about me and Annette.”

  He lowered his head. “Is that her name?”

  Shit.

  “My employer is willing to risk his life to protect you both. Something bad is coming. The charmlings can only stop it if they work together. He offers you his services.”

  “Yeah, well, he’s going to have to service someone else. That came out wrong, but you can tell him no and thank you.”

  “Then I am going to take advantage of the fact that you know very little about your powers.”

  “Oh? And how are you going to do that?”

  A malevolent grin stole across his face a microsecond before he shifted. Shifted! Clothes and all! He shifted into a white hawk right in front of us. My binds fell away, dissipating on the air, and he catapulted into the sky with one giant push of his powerful wings. Another push got him over the building while I looked on with my jaw unhinged.

  “He’s a shifter?” I screeched. “No one told me hunters were shifters!”

  “I didn’t know either. Let’s get out of here. Who knows what other tricks he has up his sleeves?”

  “Or feathers.”

  Roane took my arm and ushered me out of the courtyard, keeping an eye on the skies above us.

  “That explains why you kept losing his scent.”

  “Yes, it does.”

  “You know, he just didn’t seem that horrible to me.”

  “Remind me to tell you about the massacre of ’74.”

  Nineteen

  Trauma?

  Oh, you mean the reason I’m fucking hilarious.

  —T-shirt

  “And then he shifted!” Naturally, I had to tell everyone what happened the second we got home. I started with Annette and Gigi because they were the only ones in the kitchen when I rushed in, practically bursting at the seams, adrenaline shooting through my nervous system like I’d been hooked up to a drip.

  “So,” Annette said, leaning close, “was he like another shifter we all know and love?”

  “In what way?”

  She smiled and then spoke without moving her lips, like that would prevent Roane from hearing her. “Was he hot?”

  Unsure of where the wolf had run off to, I looked at my bestie and nodded, just in case he really was listening. Then I whistled softly and fanned my face. Right as Roane walked in.

  “I heard that.” He put down a bag of groceries. “You do realize he’s an emotionless assassin who—”

  “I know!” I stopped him with a hand. “Who would just as soon kill me as look at me. I got it. But that was so cool how he just launched into the air, almost before he’d completely shifted. And he did this hawk screech thing.”

  “He didn’t screech.”

  “I think he screeched.”

  “You screeched.”

  “Either way, it was crazy. I sent Olly after him again, but I don’t have high hopes. He keeps getting distracted. I think he’s hungry.”

  Gigi put down her coffee and the book she was reading to spear me with one of her grandmotherly glowers.

  “I’m not sure I like the tone of your glare, missy,” I said, teasing her.

  “Defiance—”

  “I know.” I held up my hand again. “I get it. We have to kill the hunter.”

  All three gazes landed on me.

  “He came here for you,” I said to Annette. “He didn’t even know I existed. His warlock is apparently worried about his faux charmling and wants us to team up with her.”

  “A team? Really?” Annette asked. “How exciting. We could be called the Charmers. Or the Hexers. Or the Witchettes.”

  “So your big plan is to kill him?” Roane asked.

  “’Parently, but I have to find him first.” Killing in self-defense was one thing, but could I really take a life just in case? Probably not. I liked to think I could, though. Pretend I was a hardened killer with mad skills. That I’d be okay if I were ever sent to prison. Sadly, I’d be somebody’s bitch before the first sun set through the bars in the big house. Just one more incentive not to go to prison.

  “Not yet, missy,” Annette said. “We have a séance to get ready for. It starts at sunset.”

  “Annette.” I tapped my phone to bring up the time. “That’s in less than three hours. There’s a hunter out there, and I need to find Joaquin Ferebee. Did your ruse work?”

  “The one where I pretended to twist my ankle so that the stupid-hot bagboy at Crosby’s would help me to my car?”

  “No.” I blinked at her. “Annette.” I blinked again. “The one where Joaquin Ferebee was going to call you to get his license back.”

  “Oh, right. No. You nailed it. He probably just checked his wallet.”

  “I guess I’m just going to have to go door to door at all the hotels in town. How many can there be?”

  “I checked. There are over fifty in Salem alone. Only five of those would tell me if they had a guest under the name Ferebee, and that took some smooth talking. You could do a location spell.”

  “True. I have this.” I pulled out the receipt Mr. Ferebee had dropped that morning. The one that was getting warmer in my pocket and now emitting a soft glow. That was the universe’s way of lighting a fire under my ass.

  “Perfect,” Annette said just as someone knocked on the front door. “Can this wait, though? The caterers are here. They want to see the space before they bring the food.” She hurried toward the door.

  “Caterers? What the hell?”

  “Would you rather I cook for our guests?” she yelled over her shoulder.

  She had a point. I called out to her as she opened the door. “Annette, no one expects to be fed at a séance.”

  “Now you tell me!”

  After three failed attempts at locating Joaquin Ferebee—I used to be so good at this sort of thing—and a good bit of convincing, I talked Roane into accompanying me to the police station. I was going to do everything in my power to see if the chief could ping the guy’s phone. I had no idea what laws were involved with such a thing, but hopefully he could help.

  The locator spell seemed to work one minute, and then it would just stop. Like he would vanish. Maybe he was a shifter, too. Doubtful, but something was blocking me.

  We sat in the chief’s office, trying to convince him to ping Mr. Ferebee’s phone.

  “Why don’t you just call him, Daffodil?” The chief had gotten the man’s cell number for me and the make and model of his vehicle while he looked into his case, but apparently there were laws when it came to pinging. Something about civil rights violations.

  “How can we be violating his civil rights if we’re trying to help him?”

  The chief deadpanned me.

  “I’ve tried calling. It went straight to voicemail. If you just pinged his phone, I could hunt him down and talk to him face-to-face.”

  “You mean stalk him and then use magics on him.”

  “Yes. The universe wants me to help him, and I’m going to do it, damn it. If you’ll ping his phone.”

  “I can’t ping his phone without a warrant. And I can’t get a warrant without proving exigent circumstances.”

  “But these are exigent circumstances. They are totally exigent.” I leaned over to Roane. “What does exigent mean?”

  “It means pressing or demanding,” the chief said.

  “Exactly! The universe is pressing and demanding that I help this guy. I have no idea why, but you’ve seen enough of our world to know it’s important.”

  “I have.” He drew in a deep breath. “
Look, I know a friendly judge. I’ll talk to her.”

  “Thank you!” I jumped up and rounded his file-laden desk to hug him.

  He chuckled and patted the arm I was nigh choking him to death with. “Don’t get your hopes up, Daff. I’m going to have to give her a very good reason. I’ll make something up. In the meantime, why isn’t your location spell working?”

  “It must be on the fritz. Either that or he’s just driving around town, back and forth, for no reason.”

  “Almost as if he’s searching for something?” Roane asked.

  “Yeah. Wait, you don’t think he’s still searching for his son, do you?”

  “I hope not,” the chief said. “I spoke to the same detective Annette did. There is just no way that kid survived. There was way too much blood at the scene.”

  My chest tightened at the thought. “And they’re certain it was his son, Milo’s?”

  He nodded. “And all of this happened in Chicago. Why would he be searching here?”

  “That’s a good question. Someone sent him something. I don’t know what. He asked if I’d sent it, and it really upset him. Do you know what it could’ve been?”

  “I have no idea. Just be careful. If he doesn’t want your help… You can’t save everyone, Daff.”

  “I know, but that doesn’t mean I can’t try. Let me know on the ping thing?”

  “Roger that.”

  Roane and I ended up driving around town in search of both Mr. Ferebee and the hunter. The hunter’s hotel room was empty but, thanks to a tiny reveal spell, the desk clerk told us he’d checked in under the name Hunter Arawn, which, according to Roane, was the name of the Welsh god of hunting. So, we were back to square one.

  I’d sent Olly in search of the hunter as well, but I was beginning to reconsider and have him search for Mr. Ferebee’s truck: a dark-gray Dodge Ram with Illinois plates.

  When we got back to Percy, the front door swung open before we even got to it.