Snitch Witch

by J L Collins

  My voice was dead in my throat and it took everything in me to croak his name as I tried crawling across the grass to him. When his body thumped to the ground, his eyes open but not seeing, I let out a cracked sob, my throat constricting again as I moved faster.

  The first ogre… or Changeling as I understood, was walking out of the library with something in my hand. Its hand? Nothing made sense and everything was wrong. The golden spine of An Leabhar na Ciallmhar glinted under the moonlight. My vision blurred around the edges, becoming darker as the one who had just choked the life out of Rourke stood over me, his face unreadable.

  “We got what we need. Fix her up,” he said to the one who looked like me.

  “What? Why don’t we just get rid of her?”

  The man regarded my double as if he were an idiot. “No need. We have to set it up, make it look like she did it. But…” he turned away for a moment before looking back down at me. “Grab that mangled thing on the ground over there. The wand. If we don’t conceal it the sneaky bastards will probably do some kind of magic on it that leads back to us. I don’t know. I’m not a filthy Witch.”

  He nudged my back with his foot, and I scurried away, trying to use my arms to help me backwards.

  “Time to wipe your memories, girlie. For all you’ll know, you did the man in.” He said this with a vicious smile as my everything faded to black…

  I jumped up as soon as our hands dropped, the excess of energy rushing through me one last time before it vanished. My throat burned and I gasped for air I hadn’t actually been deprived of. The room spun and I blinked hard to regain control of my own vision—it was almost like trying to clear your head after crossing your eyes for too long. Everything swam back into view and as soon as I could see right again, I ran behind the front desk, yanking open drawers left and right until I spotted what I needed.

  “G-Gwen?” Zoya called out, her voice trembling.

  “Right here.” I took my seat again and immediately picked up the pen and put it to paper. “We need to get this all written down before we forget all the details.”

  She nodded and we got to work, going back and forth to make sure everything was a clear picture of what we had both just seen through the memory.

  When we finished, Zoya put her face in her hands. Her shoulders shook. “I’m s-sorry. This really is all m-my fault. I should have n-never started going to that bar. How else could they h-have known?”

  “Known what?”

  She lifted her gaze, her red-ringed eyes wide. “About the boundary line! I remember . . . a while back I tried to talk some sense into Rourke. We made sense! I was willing to stay within the Athenaeum with him always if he would stop being so stubborn and admit that he loved me back.”

  Even though I’d just seen through her eyes in the memory, I felt oddly weird about being privy to even more personal information.

  “He was the best kind of man. But he told me his first duty was to the Athenaeum, and that he couldn’t expect anyone to live that kind of life with him. Not even me,” she went on, scowling as she wiped at her face. “It was a bad argument. We almost never argued, him and I. But I stormed off because of course I would—rubbing it in his face that he didn’t have the same freedom to do so.” She shook her head, her shoulders caving. “I shouldn’t have. And I sorely paid for it that night when I went to the bar. All I wanted was to get him off my mind for the night. I don’t remember it exactly . . . but a woman was there. We talked about our men problems as one does. She was kind and paid for our drinks. But . . . I think I told her some things that I-I shouldn’t have. About Rourke. About this place.”

  So, it was true. Zoya had accidentally leaked important information about the Athenaeum that compromised its protection. I let out a long sigh, wishing I knew what to say to her. I knew a thing or two about a heart full of guilt. No one deserved that, not after being pushed away like that.

  “I’m sorry Zoya. That must have been hard.”

  She nodded. “And I understand they’ll be upset that I didn’t tell them that part,” she whispered, referring to the Shadow Hands. “They’ll make me leave my position after putting so many in jeopardy with my big fat mouth.”

  Placing my hand over hers, I frowned. “I can’t say for sure what will happen, but you can be sure that I’ll do my best to soften the blow. I have your back, okay?” Everyone makes mistakes. I knew that from first-hand experience. “I’m going to go ahead and send a fire message to my uncle. We should probably prepare ourselves for a long night.”

  I left her to take her time and wash her face, gathering the notebook I’d just written in. This would be enough to put out a warrant for the Changeling brothers. After we’d arrest them, then maybe we’d get some real answers finally.

  22

  Change of Skins

  It took Uncle Gardner all of ten minutes to get everyone rounded up, despite the late hour. His group of Shadow Hands—eight of his brightest and most skilled—were all situated behind him as we approached the foot of a steep hill. At the top of the hill and underneath the protection of one massive tree, was a run-down house. Even from our angle the house looked grimy. It was missing one of its front windows, and if I wasn’t mistaken, the screen door had been torn from its hinges and haphazardly shoved to the side. If this really was the Renaldi Twins’ house, it didn’t bode well for any kind of peaceful confrontation.

  Then again… they were murderers and thieves. So, I wasn’t holding my breath for anything peaceful to transpire here tonight.

  As much as I wanted to be part of the group, I was told to hang back by Uncle Gardner himself. “We don’t want any small detail to possibly invalidate this arrest, Gwen. I’m sorry. You know the rules. Only a member of the MARC’s Law Enforcement Division can detain suspects.” He did look truly sorry though, so at least there was that.

  But the feeling of hanging back left me uneasy. It’s not that I didn’t trust anyone to do their job—there’s a reason why Shadow Hands spend so much time training. The idea of them dealing with two scumbags like the Renaldi Twins just sent my skin crawling. They very obviously didn’t care about the loss of life. So I could only imagine what they’d be like when cornered. Changelings were known for being the stealthiest at escaping any given situation.

  Uncle Gardner snapped his fingers and a brightly-lit sphere of energy formed in his hand, lighting the way up the worn path. I waited for everyone else to go first, giving them a few steps ahead before quietly following up after them.

  I knew that they knew I was here, and even though a couple of them threw dirty looks my way over their shoulders, I didn’t care. I was the one who got to the bottom of things with Zoya. If anyone was going to make sure these jerks were locked up, it was going to be me. Even though I was just technically an onlooking bystander.

  The steps up to the mildew-covered porch were unevenly nailed together, and I wasn’t too trusting of them to hold anyone’s weight. The porch itself wasn’t faring much better. The whole place reeked of old, rotten wood. It didn’t help the tension running through my shoulders, either.

  Uncle Gardner stepped up to the door, rapping at it with two of the beefier Shadow Hands on either side of him. He and the taller Shadow Hand on his right—his best guy, Rufio—both held a pair of magicked restraints that would render their ability to change useless. And in human form, Changelings weren’t nearly as dangerous. Or so they say.

  The scurry inside and the hushed voices were unmistakable. Clearly, they hadn’t expected us, and a flash at the window made me wonder just how intimidating everyone looked standing here. They must have known our intention as soon as they saw us. Saw them, anyway.

  An odd falsetto voice echoed through the door, “Just a minute!”

  When the door creaked open a small dwarf woman stood staring between the wide crack, fear in her eyes. “Yes?”

  A few of the Shadow Hands in front of me whispered to one another. Had they been wrong? Did Uncle Gardner have the right place? I coul
dn’t see quite as well past all the others, but even from my point of view the dwarf looked terrified.

  “Melanda? Who is it?” a much deeper voice called out from behind her. Another dwarf, this time a man with a fully white beard pulled the door open further, looking irritated at first until he saw how many stood here. He cleared his throat. “Ahem. How can we help you, Inquisitor?”

  Uncle Gardner sighed and pulled something from his pocket with his free hand. “Under the MARC regulation number 78-3, I hereby state my intention to arrest you, Gianni Renaldi, and Benito Renaldi. If you come quietly so we can maintain a sense of order, we will not be required to use force against you. However—” he said, cutting off the male dwarf’s spluttering, “if you try to escape, we will have no choice but to use full force against you in the name of the law.”

  “How dare you!” the dwarf said, puffing out his chest. “My wife and I have done absolutely nothing wrong. You’ve got the wrong house!”

  Uncle Gardner stuffed the order back into his cloak, sighing deeply this time. “It’s over, Renaldi. The traces of your change are visible with this.” He removed a tiny iris-colored lens that even I hadn’t realized he had on.

  “Impressive,” I mumbled to myself.

  The looks of fear and agitation slid off the dwarves’ faces like a mask, melting into gazes of absolute indifference. It was crazy to witness something like that—these two were clearly smarter than we gave them credit for.

  “Arrest us? For what? We’ve done nothing wrong,” the ‘female dwarf’ said, using his normal voice.

  His brother turned to him, a smirk on his face. “More oppression against the non-Witches. How utterly predictable.”

  I ground my teeth together. The truth was that there had been plenty of instances of that very thing—where the MARC had prejudiced Witches running things behind-the-scenes. It was a terrible period for Spell Haven. But that was nearly three hundred years ago, and the times and opinions had certainly changed for the better. I was proud of how utterly fair and just Uncle Gardner ran things in his department—the only people who were convicted of wrong doing deserved it based on their actions, not on their birth. For these two fools to throw it in my uncle’s face like that made it look bad on those who had received such grievous treatment. I shook my head, keeping my thoughts to myself.

  Uncle Gardner took a step forward, the restraint firmly in both hands now. “Come now willingly. I will not give you another warning.”

  The two dwarves scanned the scene, their beady dark eyes glittering. They both shrugged and met Uncle Gardner over the threshold, their arms outstretched.

  “If you insist,” the one with the beard said. “I’ll prove we didn’t do anything. Then you’ll have no choice but to free us.”

  “We shall see,” Uncle Gardner said, opening the restraints as Rufio did the same in front of the other brother.

  The glow of the floating orb that circled around us, and the shimmering light of the restraints were the only sources of light. They cast an eerie glow across everyone’s faces, the dwarves especially, throwing shadows that seemed even more ominous. The moment their faces twitched I surged forward.

  Both dwarves shot several feet up and out, crashing through the threshold in an instant with bodies rough and rotund, covered in thick bumps. In the chaos and shock, now ogres, they picked up both Rufio and Uncle Gardner, launching them halfway across the property, narrowly missing the boulders sticking out of the ground.

  I shoved past the Shadow Hands who were trying to restrain the ogres with magic, racing over to Uncle Gardner. “No!”

  He was slowly pulling himself up off the ground, gasping for breath with blood dripping down the corner of his mouth. I slid to his side, tilting his head gingerly from side to side to check his condition. “Are you okay?”

  A groan escaped his throat. “Help me up.”

  Wasting no time as the sounds of battling echoed behind me, I quickly helped him to a stand. I didn’t like the way he was listing too far to the left to stand on his own well enough.

  “Go. I know you want to,” he said through gritted teeth. “Regulations be damned.”

  I was off without another word, obeying the direct command. Really, he didn’t even need to ask—I was already determined to take these two down.

  Each Shadow Hand was stunning the ogres. Elemental stuns like fire and water barely made a dent against the ogres. Ogre skin is very resilient, and made it almost impossible for a spell to break through to cause any damage.

  One Shadow Hand, thinking outside the box, had created a wooden cage of sorts that would at least hold one of the brothers, and was trying to magic the wood just like the restraints, but before she got a chance to finish sealing the perimeter of the spell, one of the brothers knocked through the wood, sending huge splinters through the air. The Shadow Hand had just managed to dive out of the way to avoid getting impaled.

  With a sinister grin, the other brother was advancing on a Witch who had tripped trying to run from a rebounding spell. He picked up a Witch-sized boulder, hoisting it up over his shoulders before trying to crash it down over the top of the fallen Shadow Hand. But the Witch was quick, the magic shooting from his fingers casting a smaller protective bubble around him that the heavy boulder rebounded off of, much to the brother’s surprise. The unexpected weight shift threw him off-balance, the boulder crashing down on his own head as he dropped it. It stunned him momentarily enough for the Shadow Hand to roll away.

  The other brother raced over from behind the property, several of the Shadow Hands giving chase. “Brother!” he shouted, his gravelly voice like rocks tumbling against one another. “Inside! They have the place domed!”

  He wasn’t wrong. A barely noticeable shimmer in the air right along the edge of the property where it started to descend told me that Uncle Gardner must have enchanted a massive boundary protection spell around us, making sure no one could get in or out. A small bit of relief trickled through me, thankful that it was all coming to a head now no matter what.

  I took my wand out, preparing myself with basic protective incantations, mumbling each one under my breath as my skin sizzled with energy.

  For a moment it seemed that the brother who had run up on the other, had disappeared in thin air, but the flutter of tiny wings and a streak of pearly white zoomed through the air, telling me otherwise.

  The second brother, though still shaking his head clear from the boulder, vanished as well. In his wake, a thin stream of that same pearly white shot toward the house.

  “They’ve changed! Be on your lookout—they’re sylphs!” I shouted, pointing toward the house. “Follow me!”

  It didn’t matter that I was pretty much a nobody, the still-standing Shadow Hands followed anyway, all five of us slipping inside the house.

  Using the light from the tip of my wand, I examined everything ahead of me. The house was just as worn-down and abandoned-looking as I had imagined it to be from the outside. It was eerily quiet, the only noise the sound of our shifting footsteps on the old wood floors. I glanced over my shoulder, nodding for everyone to spread out.

  There was no telling where the Renaldis were. The rickety staircase led to an overlooking landing where two doors on either side of it stood open. The dark kitchen was off to the left in front of me, while the sitting room complete with dusty furniture was off to the right. I decided to head to the left.

  Plates were left on top of the Formica-topped table, the food half-eaten. Apparently, we had interrupted their dinner and not their sleep.

  My gaze swept from side to side. Sylphs were bioluminescent creatures who glowed at night. They were small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, which made them incredibly difficult to find in a place like this. I pulled cabinets open slowly, my wand at the ready. I didn’t have the restraints with me, but as an Alchemist, I was trained much more in the ways of herbs and their magical properties…

  I grabbed the small vial full of red liquid from my other pocket,
surveying it for a moment. Frog’s blood, dittany, tarrowweed, and mugwort. Just enough to knock out a Changeling. I’d prepared it back at the Apothecarium before I’d met up with Uncle Gardner. You know… just in case.

  My only hope was that I wasn’t met with both brothers, and that I was in a position to dose whichever one I got to first. They weren’t great odds, but I was willing to take them.

  Nudging an old shoe with my toe, I tensed but nothing happened. After checking in every nook and cranny I could find in the small kitchen, I frowned.

  If it were me… I wouldn’t find a tiny hiding spot. I’d find somewhere more open to hide in a dark corner so I’d have enough space to jump out and shapeshift into a much more dangerous creature. They’d need to fight their way out of here if they wanted a chance, and the only way to do that was to get rid of the barrier spell.

  And that meant getting rid of the spell’s caster.

  A dulled brass doorknob caught my attention, the light of my wand gleaming off of it. There was a small landing off the other side of the kitchen that led to another door. It was closed, and I approached carefully, my heart racing. A number of things could be on the other side. And I had no idea which one to be prepared for.

  I stood with my legs and shoulders squared off, ready as I could be given the situation, and twisted the knob slowly. The light from my wand barely made a dent in the darkness that seemed to descend down some steps. A basement. Because of course.

  “Nothing screams ‘I’m evil’ quite like a creepy old basement,” I whispered.

  My nerves were on edge as I made my way down the unforgiving stairs, the wood groaning under my weight with each step. I was all too aware of pretty much every horror movie cliché about basements and felt the constant fear of something grabbing my ankles from between the steps. There was a small amount relief that fell away as I finally stepped on solid ground again.