by Rhea Watson
At no point was I about to call out a Hello? like I was some idiot in a horror movie. Nibbling my lower lip, I padded toward the stacks, mindful of my heels on the hardwood. My palms prickled with charged energy, magic thrumming through my veins, surging, ready for any kind of nonsense.
Three stacks over, I spotted a book on the floor. Herbs and their Uses: A Guide to Practical Hedge Magick. A bit on the nose, but there was zero harm in humans reading about non-magical plants that, when brewed properly, could dull a headache or soften period cramps. Loitering at the end of the two bookshelves, I stared at the tome for a moment, daring it to move, daring someone to move it, and then sighed when it just sat there.
“Henrietta, please don’t be back.” Shoulders slumped, I marched in and swiped the book off the ground. Adrenaline was a great tool, but when it faded, it sapped all your energy right along with it. Suddenly my eyes felt tired, the weight of the day dragging on me as I carefully slid the book back into its place on the second-highest shelf.
Strange that it had fallen.
Henrietta was our last ethereal visitor, a mischievous ghost who liked to rifle through my office and burn the few breads we made in-house. I’d hoped she would have been reaped by now—or taken out by whatever celestial being dealt with rogue spirits. Apparently, I needed to re-check my crystals; if they had lost their charge, she might have found a way back inside the premises.
Just as I smoothed a hand over a few of the spines, checking for dust, Tully yowled.
A high-pitched, terrified howl that I felt in my bones, our heightened emotions twined together as witch and familiar. I gasped, pushing away from the books and racing down the stacks.
Only to find his hammock empty on the other side of the café, one of the suction cups torn from the window.
“What the hell?” I hissed, adrenaline back with a fury. It made me shake, heightened my senses. Somewhere deeper in the back, a door slammed shut, and I nearly jumped out of my skin at the wham echoing through the building. “Tully?”
Footsteps skittered through the stacks, boots clomping down one of the back aisles. I whipped around and shoved my fear deep, deep inside. No time for panic. No time for paranoia. Tully could handle himself; hopefully, he’d beelined to a high vantage point at the first sign of trouble. Sure. Whatever you need to tell yourself to not spiral, Katja.
Hurriedly, I reached into the ether. No vibrations of another rogue spirit—just the hum of a supernatural being. If I had to guess… Warlock, based on the familiarity.
Damn it. I’d never been in a serious duel before. Never fought with other supers, never been forced to defend myself unless I was sparring with my dad or my brothers. Besides that, I preferred to do any serious casting with my wand; although I’d been cultivating my magic for the last twenty-nine years, it had a tendency to do whatever it wanted without something to channel it. My hands were unstable when casting, sad as it was for an adult witch to admit, and I’d always wondered if I’d be less of a mess if I had the backing of a coven. At least more senior witches and warlocks could have helped train me after Dad finally passed on. Instead, I stagnated, needing a wand for anything beyond the basics just to keep things neat and tidy and not accidentally set on fire.
But my wand was in my office, tucked securely in my desk. Rowan wood, griffin feather core, eight inches—described by the wandmaker as, quote, elegant.
Right now, I’d go with untested.
Two more books crashed to the ground, distinct, falling like thunder. The crack of their spines set my teeth on edge, and I hesitated, scanning the stacks for the best approach to this—to a very real person in here, screwing with me.
“This is Lloyd Guthrie’s doing.” Dad’s raspy voice rattled deep in the darker parts of my mind, a memory of him on his deathbed flashing yet again tonight. His withered body, his bulbous knuckles, his wispy grey hair littering the pillow—ravaged by disease. My mom had died giving birth to me. My brothers died, one right after the other, in freak accidents that had some in our community dubbing the Fox coven cursed. All his life, Dad had been capital-O obsessed with a warlock mobster in New York City named Lloyd Guthrie. Supposedly, that guy had it out for our family… In Dad’s mind, anyway.
Before he died, I’d thought it was just paranoia, that he was looking for someone to blame for all the tragedy in our family. But he had been so sincere when he whispered it to me, using his final breaths to warn me—to make me swear I wouldn’t take any extraordinary risks, would never draw too much attention to myself.
“If you ever see him, hear from him, sense anything out of the ordinary…” He’d struggled to say that much in a single go, fighting, clinging to my hand with both of his, with papery skin and frail fingers. “Kitten, don’t hesitate… You just run.”
In that moment, I’d experienced real terror. I had believed him, just that once, because he had sounded so passionate. So desperate. And looking into my brother’s accidents, they were suspect. No one could explain Dad’s sudden and violent illness that ripped him away from me long before I was ready to say goodbye.
For five years, I had Lloyd Guthrie on the brain—all because of my dad. Never seen the mobster. Never heard of the warlock in social circles. Never experienced anything unusual…
Until tonight.
It couldn’t be.
Lloyd Guthrie was like the Fox coven boogeyman… He wasn’t real. And if he was, why would I even matter to him? Successful as the business was these days, personally I was inconsequential. A simple witch with simple dreams.
And a missing familiar.
More footsteps tromped down the stacks.
Run, kitten.
Tossing my head side to side, I cracked my neck. This wasn’t my dad’s worst nightmare. If anything, this was a warlock trying to rob a supernatural-run business when it looked like it was closed. Nothing more, nothing less.
My hands buzzed with offensive magic, an immobilizing hex on the tip of my tongue as I stalked back into the bookshelves. I let my heels click, wanting to draw him to me, wanting him to think my black stilettos and my flouncy skirt meant I couldn’t fight. That my lipstick wasn’t war paint. Let him underestimate me, this little witch charging headlong into the darkness.
Let him think I hadn’t done this before.
I mean.
I hadn’t.
But I had a lexicon of spells in my head—and I’d sparred with friendlies at the academy. So. Bring it.
Halfway down an aisle, I stopped, listening, waiting. My blood ran cold when a figure drifted down the aisle beside mine, footsteps slow and steady, a black shadow ghosting along in the corner of my eye. A soft exhale behind me had my palms burning. I licked my lips. Now or never.
I whipped around and fired. “Debilito!”
Red electricity crackled from my fingertips, fast and furious as it hurtled for my opponent. A tall silhouette dressed all in black loomed at the end of the aisle, and while he raised his hands, one clutching a thick, rigid wand, I caught him off guard. My hex illuminated the entire café, painted it red, highlighted the widening whites of his eyes and struck him square in his huge chest. Sent him flying back. Seconds later, he crashed into a table and some chairs, and victory twisted in my belly.
“Nescius,” a masculine voice rumbled, voice soft as velvet—and his spell strong as steel. I only managed to pivot halfway around before a blue bolt slammed into my temple, and I was unconscious before I even hit the ground.
2
Katja
Everything hurt when I came to. Head, especially where that spell had landed. Neck, stiff and achy like I’d pulled something on the left side. Shoulders, like I’d ping-ponged between two brick walls for hours. My ribs, as if they’d become best friends with a steel-toed boot. My wrists—on fire.
“T-Tully?” His name came out all thick and croaky, throat like sandpaper and dry beyond belief, as if I’d been sleeping with my mouth open for a week straight. I swallowed with some difficulty and winced through t
he sharp twinge. It didn’t matter when I finally pried my heavy eyelids open, because whatever space I suddenly found myself in was pitch-black anyway. Seated on something hard, I shuffled side to side, metal creaking beneath me—and snapped tight around my wrists. I flexed my fingers in and out, and a hard jerk got me nowhere; I was cuffed to the chair, the restraints attached at the wrists and ankles.
Had I been… kidnapped?
Finding one’s footing in the darkness sucked, senses somehow both on overdrive and painfully muted. Couldn’t see. No sound. No movement in the shadows. From the smell of it, I was far from Café Crowley, and when I reached out to him through our bond, Tully was nowhere to be found.
My eyes stung with a rush of tears. We had never spent a day apart. My familiar slept in my bed, stood guard outside the shower every morning, and ate breakfast on my lap while we watched the morning news, ruminating together about the depressing state of affairs in the human world. He came with me to work, snoozed around the café all day, and then sauntered after me on the walk home. Tully was my world—and I’d done nothing when I’d heard him yowl. I’d left him to fend for himself.
Guilt struck, hard and vicious and deep, like a knife to the gut twisting when his fat fluffy face flashed in my mind’s eye. Mercifully, I couldn’t feel any intense emotion through our connection. He wasn’t suffering, wherever he was, but he also wasn’t with me. And the fact that I couldn’t feel anything from him at all only made the guilt worse. What if he was hurt? What if those bastards had killed him?
What if—
Obnoxious light erupted above me, painting the small space in a white glow that made me flinch and squint. Sniffling, I pushed Tully deep inside, hoping that no news was good news for my familiar—that he had found a safe place to hide from whoever had kidnapped me and stuffed me inside a teeny box of a room. As I blinked back tears, I took in my surroundings: tiled walls on either side, grimy cement floor, a metal table in front of me and an iron chair beneath. Iron had a specific look to supers, a faint shimmer. While it had no effect on witches or warlocks, this would have been a death trap for a fae.
“Recludo,” I whispered, bracing for the telltale clicks of the shackles unlocking, then the satisfying thud when they fell to the ground. Nothing. I blinked, peering down behind me, my arms locked straight, my wrists raw and red. Thin cuffs snared me tight, and my spell had done nothing to change that. Frowning, I cleared my dry throat and tried again. “Resigno.” Nothing. And again. “Resero.” And again. “Apertum… Fucking fuck.”
While I felt the familiar hum of magic in my palms, the buzz that coursed through my veins before bursting from my fingertips, nothing happened. Some witches had performance anxiety, unable to cast if their emotions weren’t right, but that had never been the case with me. Even in my darkest hour, mourning the fact that I was all alone in the world, I had been able to spit everything under the sun successfully. Sloppily, sure, but that was just par for the course without a wand. Every spell, glamor, and hex in my arsenal—it came to me, whether I was broken or not.
Today—tonight?—shouldn’t have been any different.
Yikes. No windows, not even on the huge, intimidating metal door dead ahead. Not a great predictor of my chances when I couldn’t answer where or when.
Willing myself to relax with a deep breath, I unlocked my jaw and forced my shoulders down. The tightness remained, despite my best efforts, and the crick in my neck hurt when I rolled my head side to side, trying to work it out.
It was then I felt it—featherlight and barely there against my skin. Like a pair of lips whispering across my throat, so different from the shackles around my wrists and ankles, whatever it was evaded me when I peered down, high enough on my neck to hide under my chin. Cursing softly, I glanced over my shoulder…
And saw myself staring back.
In a mirror.
My heart plummeted. Was that a… two-way mirror? Were people watching me? Fighting to keep my breath even, to not spiral out, I gave my rumpled appearance a quick once-over. Although my flaming red hair was no longer neatly knotted on top of my head, frazzled instead with loose wisps spilling everywhere, I wasn’t beat up. No bruises or marks. No split lip. Everything hurt, but there was no indication that someone had taken a baseball bat to me in my sleep. Although, my shirt had been torn, one shoulder exposed, and then twin slashes cut over my waist. Same with my leggings, ripped up the middle like they were a cheap pair of split tights.
Heat flared in my cheeks. Sure, I was still covered from head to toe, my shirt long-sleeved and my leggings opaque, but someone had stolen my skirt. Ripped it clean off if the soreness around my waist was any indication.
Took that but left the four-inch heels. Sure. Why not?
A thick leather collar snaked around my neck, its girth suggesting it ought to be heavy and very present. Instead, I barely felt it.
Seriously though.
What had happened to me?
Fear made my chest tight, and after another quick scan, the room had an unnerving sense of familiarity to it.
An interrogation room.
Oh gods, it really did look like an interrogation room, something straight out of one of those human cop shows. The table, the chair, the cuffs, the mirror… None of it good.
Shitshitshitshitshitshit. Panicked, I struggled against my restraints, a string of spells flying from my lips as I fought for freedom. In the end, the cuffs just bit harder, sharper, my wrists brutalized, the skin on the verge of splitting open. No way was I going to bleed in here. Blood had such potency in our world, used for both light and dark magic, and I wouldn’t spill any unless I had to.
Maybe…
No, I couldn’t cast. Couldn’t reach the ground to draw a blood-magic portal even if I tried. And if I succeeded, I clearly had no juice to fuel it.
Craning my head back once more, I squinted at the mirror, eyes narrowed on the collar’s reflection. Although it was obviously leather, with no end and no beginning, just a perfectly fitted circle, there was more to it. Runes. Sigils carved into the black, unrecognizable—but I’d been out of the academy for a while. Magical runework had never been my strong suit; I much preferred earthbound magic. But these definitely weren’t for decoration. They had purpose. Marks that most likely stopped my magic like a cork in a bottle. Made me pliant. Made me weak.
What was a witch without her magic?
Practically human.
I flailed again, battling my restraints as a high-pitched whine stretched through my skull from one ear to the other, growing louder by the second—
Until the door opened.
And then everything inside went quiet, save for the hammering of my heart.
A towering blonde in a navy pinstriped pantsuit strolled in, clipboard in hand and a pair of reading glasses propped up on her head. Peering down at the documents, her heavily masacara’d eyes narrowed briefly as the door swung shut behind her, nothing but a dimly lit stone corridor on the other side.
“What the hell is—”
“Katja Fox?” she interjected, gaze snapping to mine. Ice blue—severe, like the rest of her appearance, from the too-tight high ponytail down to the svelte white heels with their ridiculously pointy toes. If she kicked me with those things, would I bleed? Because it looked like she had a pair of knives strapped to the front of her feet.
She arched a prompting eyebrow when I just gawked at her, and I cleared my throat, the brief surge of bravado vanishing.
“Uh, yes, but—”
“I’m Gabriella Smith,” she stated, tugging out a stool from under the table with her foot, then dropping her clipboard with its enormous stack of paper onto the stretch of polished metal between us. It landed with a crash, making me jump again, and I frowned as she settled down across from me, bringing with her a strong whiff of menthol and smoked salmon. Gabriella Smith. That was a fake name if I’d ever heard one. When I tried to steal a glance at the information on the top sheet, she placed her forearm across it and waite
d until I looked her in the eye again. “I’m the intake supervisor at Xargi Penitentiary.”
My blood ran cold. “P-penitentiary?”
“Yes.”
“But I’m a witch—”
“We’re aware,” Gabriella remarked, and with a curt snap, a silver ballpoint pen materialized between her fingers. Even her stationery was sleek and cold. She hastily scribbled something in the corner of that first page, distracted. “This is a supernatural penitentiary.”
“Those exist?”
Supernatural prisons weren’t a thing. Sure, a few academies specialized in reforming delinquent supernatural youths, but that was hardly the same thing as a lock ’em up and throw away the key prison. Individual communities within the grander supernatural sphere adhered to their own laws; witches had a different set of rules than vampires, and they had their own courts, judges, and councils to deal with lawbreakers. For the most part, supers also followed the human rule of law—if only to keep off their radar. There were always troublemakers, of course, but dealing with them fell to their own kind.
Vampire gone on a killing rampage? They had a freakin’ monarchy to dictate law and punishment. For witches, our coven leaders were the first line of defense, and then it went higher and higher all the way to the tippy-top High Council, with representatives from each continent who met up in Rome for lawmaking and trying of the most serious crimes.
The status quo didn’t seem to faze Gabriella. She sniffed, scanning her clipboard, and then glanced up. “Hmm? Yes, they exist. You’re sitting in one, Miss Fox.”
She spoke perfect English with a faint, barely discernable Russian accent—maybe even Ukrainian, similar to my elderly neighbors back home. Beyond that, she addressed me like I was the biggest idiot on the planet, and if my hands weren’t strapped down, I could have just slapped her.
Not that I would. Hardly my style. But, you know, extraordinary circumstances called for extraordinary action.
I… I could hit a bitch if necessary.