by Rhea Watson
He chattered back at me in his stupid, high-pitched baby voice, the one that everyone at the café laughed at—he was such a huge cat and had such a dainty, squeaky meow. Here, the sound felt like home. Witch and familiar, together again, and while I could sense him emboldening my magic, giving selflessly from his own supply to fuel mine, it was a futile attempt. The collar clamped down on the well within, sealing it shut even as Tully tried to top it up. If I ever got rid of this thing, all the raw, simmering magic inside me would go off like a bomb.
“The collar,” I whispered. “I can’t… I can’t take what you give me anymore.”
He could use his magic on me, but he couldn’t give it to me—just another part of my life Xargi had destroyed.
Tully nosed at the leather strap, then hissed, tail darting about furiously. Still, even if I couldn’t take all that he had to offer, he had the power to heal, magic of his own that he seldom ever tapped into. So I clutched him to me, basking in his healing aura, relishing the warmth of his fur, the scent of…
Well, I’d never been able to put words to what Tully smelled like. But it was good. Always had been. Tully smelled like freedom and security and life. Tully’s scent was paradise, and I stuffed my face deep into his side, breathing him in as he fixed me up, made me stronger. By the time I finally let my head thump back against the wall, suddenly painfully aware that my cell door was open, the aches and pains of intense labor had vanished. I felt refreshed for the first—and possibly only—time in months, and as I turned my back on the doorway, massaging his ears and smoothing my fingers across his scent-gland-riddled cheeks, I vowed to spoil him even more when we eventually got out of here.
My familiar was a tubby, lazy, pampered prince, but when we finally escaped, he would ascend to king status. I owed him my life ten times over, even if what he had done—finding me in an uncharted supernatural prison—was what familiars were supposed to do for their witches. To some, familiars were servants, underlings, there to do as the witch or warlock ordered, to make them stronger and complement their magic. Tully had been my partner from the moment we locked eyes, him a malnourished kitten and me a depressed teenager.
He had saved me more than once, helped me cope with loss, with soul-crushing grief, and now this?
Tully Fox deserved to be knighted.
“Okay, okay, okay…” Begrudgingly, I loosened my hold on him—not all the way, an unwelcome fear flaring that if I let go, he might vanish. “You need to tell me everything.”
But I had to release him—had to trust that he was well and truly here, that I wasn’t losing my mind. Sniffling, I busied my hands with my tearstained face, wiping away the damp and dragging my nose across my forearm. Tully, meanwhile, positioned himself on my lap, nestling in the dip of my crossed legs, prim and proper again, tail swishing. With my back still to the open door, I hoped—prayed to anyone who might be listening in this forsaken place—that the guard monitoring the cellblock this afternoon wouldn’t suddenly have an interest in doing his job.
Taking a deep breath, I locked eyes with Tully. Blue to blue, I peered into the depths, picking through the fine flecks and streaks, until slowly, the world around us went hazy. First it blurred, then it darkened—then it was all gone. Black. While witch and familiar had an unspoken bond deeper than any she would have in all her life—although the arrival of a fated mate certainly threw that theory for a loop—we couldn’t communicate telepathically. No words shared between minds; magic bound us, and it was Tully’s magic that wove the tale.
Pictures flashed by my mind’s eye, snippets of memory, the figures shadowy but their faces clear, tinted by a sepia filter. After the bounty hunters—two men and one woman—had crashed Café Crowley and hurled Tully into an unused oven—
Wait.
Those fuckers tossed my familiar into an oven?
My hands balled to such tight fists that my nails bit furiously into my palms. But the images didn’t stop, moving fluidly like some artsy indie flick, flashes and flares, the figures almost dancing.
Screaming for someone to call the police, a horrified Annalise had freed Tully from the oven, which must have locked when the hunter slammed the door shut. He’d then shot out of the café, hot on their trail, scenting their footsteps through Seattle. Found them at a bar, the trio wasting away my bounty on liquor. Detected my location from their conversations—Siberia—and snuck aboard a plane.
My familiar couldn’t teleport, but he excelled at shadow magic. Tully could blend with a shadow no matter the intensity or size, and in the darkness, he disappeared.
The images came faster now, time passing, Tully hitching rides around the globe, catching snippets of chatter from other supers about Lloyd Guthrie’s new criminal empire at the top of the world. He eventually found the prison, but it stayed hidden behind the ward. From his perspective, the vast grassland was empty except for the faint rainbow shimmer, but he sat for days in the shadows of the nearby mountains, watching trucks and cars rumble down a dirt road and then vanish into oblivion. Warlocks came and went to a nearby village, and although he didn’t take the time to show landmarks or much of the scenery, it was obvious Guthrie had stationed his mob henchmen—now guards at his prison—there with their families.
Tully had found a family.
The Thompson family.
He had chosen the least threatening of the Xargi warlocks as they climbed off the transport bus and rubbed up on his leg. Purred. Really put on a show. Exhausted but receptive, Thompson had brought my familiar home to his three kids and a wife pissed to be living in the middle of nowhere instead of their Manhattan brownstone.
But the young Thompsonites seemed to adore Tully, bits of their arguments over which bed he’d sleep in that night making me grin. At least they had taken care of him, this huge, bushy stray who slept by the fire and on their laps, who watched Thompson’s wife cry after he left for work and the kids disappeared for lessons at the village’s pop-up academy.
This morning, my darling boy had followed Thompson into the prison. Slunk in the shadows. Hid on the bus. Crossed through the ward when it opened for the guards.
Searched cellblock after cellblock, darting between the shadows, sniffing doors, searching, searching, searching so frantically…
Until he found me.
The last thing he showed me was a misty image of myself stretched out on this shitty cot, hair frizzy and cheeks sunken, eyes stamped with faint black circles that were probably permanent at this point.
And then I was back in the cell, color and light trickling into my field of vision, stronger and sharper with every hard blink.
“Oh, Tully,” I whispered shakily as I wove my fingers into his fur, tears swelling again, “you’re my hero.”
He returned the sentiment with two deliciously slow blinks and then let me clutch him to my chest again, purring up a storm. I eased onto my side, curling around my familiar and basking in his feel-good aura. With Tully in my arms again, I forgot about Lloyd Guthrie, about my guilt over lusting after other men when a gorgeous dragon shifter had claimed to be my fated mate. I forgot about the awful cafeteria food and the backbreaking labor of solo bakery duty. For just a little while, it was me and Tully, together again, and nothing else mattered. Nothing.
But the silence shattered—it always did. My belly looped at the arrival of familiar voices, locks clinking open and inmates returning from their work assignments. The fact that Deimos worked in the library was beyond my understanding; of all the possible positions, that had to be the cushiest. And then there was crazy Constance at the other end of the spectrum on janitorial duty, so, in the grand scheme of job titles, mine could have been a hell of a lot worse.
Lips wobbling, I stroked Tully’s velvety soft ears, his face, holding back tears and wishing we could have just a little while longer—to suspend my miserable reality for an hour or two so I could well and truly forget this place.
For now, I’d take what I could get. Tully wasn’t going anywhere, and neit
her was I, and that had to be good enough.
I felt Elijah before I heard him, his hulking presence looming in my doorway. If we didn’t spend the day in the bakery together, we were each other’s first visit once we returned to the cellblock, as if driven by instinct, like birds headed south at the first breath of winter, drawn to the other’s cell.
“Katja, are you…” I peeked over my shoulder when he trailed off and found him blocking the entire doorway with that magnificent mountain of a body. Sweat glistened on his forehead, his cheeks, his scruff so fucking gorgeous—just one glance at it and I swore I felt its bite along my inner thighs. He frowned down at me for a moment, then cocked his head to the side, pointing at Tully. “Is that… a cat?”
“Say it louder,” I hissed, tucking Tully closer to my body. “He’s my familiar.”
Rafe’s head popped over Elijah’s shoulder, the vampire squinting against the sunlight, just out of its golden reach, and his dark brows furrowed even deeper when those beautiful aquamarines landed on Tully. His mouth opened and closed a few times, confusion obvious, but before he could get a word out, there was Fintan’s olive-skinned magnificence peering over Elijah’s other shoulder, a dusting of black soil on his forehead.
“You guys have to see this,” the fae purred, eyes alight with dangerous mirth. “The fuckwit brigade has officially…” He stopped suddenly, expression shifting to genuine befuddlement and then unabashed delight as he struggled to shoulder his way around Elijah. “Is that a cat?”
Rafe rolled his eyes, and I bit back a grin, pleased to have a wall of hotness hiding Tully from the influx of guards. “Gentlemen…” Knowing Tully would hate me for it and doing it anyway, I hoisted him up Lion King style to show off the one man in my life who would never, ever disappoint me. “This is my familiar. His name is Tully, he’s brilliant at shadow magic, and he’s my very best friend.”
Elijah’s lips lifted affectionately, and he studied Tully with the eyes of the dragon, all molten gold and primal. What I wouldn’t give to know what his inner dragon thought about all this—prison, captivity, the collar, me. Fintan, meanwhile, offered a tentative nod, eyeing Tully warily, and Rafe managed an awkward wave, boxed out of my cell by the other two. From the slight arch of his brow, I knew precisely what tonight’s chat would be about.
And I couldn’t wait.
Just as I was about to beckon them in—we occasionally hung out in each other’s cells if Deimos’s crew was being especially obnoxious, so it wouldn’t be too suspicious—an alarm screamed through the cellblock. Light strobed around the common area, and the footsteps of additional guards implied a bunk raid.
Oh no.
Not now.
No.
Damn it.
I clutched a puffed-up Tully to me, hurriedly scanning the cell for a shadow to stuff him into—and finding nothing. Darkness was limited with late-afternoon sunlight beaming into the space and illuminating every corner, and the guards tended to obliterate your cell when they came through on these random inspections, tossing cots and using their wands like flashlights.
Tully couldn’t—
He…
“Give him to me,” Rafe ordered from just outside my cell, motioning for me to hand Tully over with a wave of his hand—his pinky catching the sunlight and sparking, then smoking. He yanked his hand out with a hiss, but I still managed to barely hear him add, “There are always shadows in my cell. Hurry.”
With a permanently blocked window, he wasn’t wrong. Those assholes would need to blast a floodlight or two in the vampire’s domain to shoo away every speck of darkness. Frantic, the alarm screeching and guards shouting for us to take our positions, I leapt off the cot and stuffed Tully into Elijah’s huge hands, who then passed him over to Rafe—who shoved the cat into his jumpsuit without an ounce of his dignity intact. My familiar went in yowling, and, from Rafe’s wince, claws out. But the vampire said nothing, holding his jumpsuit shut as he zipped into his cell.
Without a word shared between them, Elijah blocked Rafe’s retreat and Fintan conjured a distraction, roughly bodychecking Blake on the way over to his cell. True to form, the rat shifter retaliated, all bared teeth and crazy eyes, forcing the guards to intervene.
Shaking, I padded to the spot just outside of my cell, loitering between mine and Rafe’s, feet glued in place. As soon as the rest of the block did the same, someone finally—mercifully—cut the alarm, and the raid began, half the guards on Fintan and Elijah’s side of the block, half on mine and Rafe’s. I risked a glance in the vampire’s direction at my left and found his jumpsuit misbuttoned, but otherwise flat and Tully-less.
A trio of guards blitzed by into my cell, Thompson among them, and I listened, fighting to keep my breath even, as they tore everything apart. My metal cot clanged when someone flipped it over, and my pathetic excuse for a pillow landed in the doorway when someone else flung it aside. The toiletries I’d spent my hard-earned wages on clattered to the ground. Book spines split noisily as some dick cracked them open, searching for contraband.
Less than sixty seconds later, they were gone, filing by me and into Rafe’s cell, leaving the usual chaos in their wake, but none of that mattered today. I caught Rafe’s eye as they tore his cell apart, papers rustling and shredded, a few balled-up notes bouncing across the floor and out his door. Artificial light danced around inside from wands capable of inflicting unspeakable cruelty. The vampire shook his head ever so slightly, a reminder not to react. I managed a subtle nod, then quirked my eyebrow, shooting the unspoken words right back to him. Fury contorted his dark, brooding features, his cheeks sunken and his gaze murderous; Rafe absolutely despised cell raids.
Suddenly, the madness stilled. Silence exploded inside, and once again my nails sliced into my palms—
Out they came a few painful beats of my heart later, leaving Rafe’s living quarters just as destroyed as mine. I slumped against the wall and exhaled a stuttering breath, my knees weak and my stomach in vicious knots. Grateful tears blurred the cellblock, and I sniffled softly as I glanced at Rafe, another bob of my head communicating all I couldn’t say.
Thank you.
He blinked back, purposeful and reassuring, and then busied himself with his jumpsuit, correcting the buttons casually like he hadn’t been hiding a fugitive.
My fugitive.
I owed Rafe so much.
I owed all of them so much.
I had no idea how to repay them, but it would come to me eventually. If Xargi Penitentiary gave its prisoners one thing, it was ample time to think.
Time to think of a way to pay off this debt of kindness.
Time to think about how to get the hell out of here. If Tully could get in, we could get out.
And I would.
One way or another, Tully and I would escape this hellhole—and we were taking my guys with us.
16
Rafe
Brilliant sapphires glittered down at me as I lay flat as a board on my cot. Eyes I had studied for months now, the blue so expressive, so deep, so full of mystery and wonder and the promise of a brighter future—
I had imagined meeting these eyes in the shadowy recess of my cell for ages, pictured them heavy-lidded and blazing with desire. Sometimes I saw them in my dreams, haunting me until morning when an obnoxious siren would rouse me—and I’d suddenly remember that I was here, in prison, not out in the free world where I could see those eyes sparkle with genuine wonder…
But they were here now, so big and blue.
Only they belonged to a fucking cat.
“So…” I winced as Tully adjusted himself on my chest, shifting from the seated position where he’d been lording over me since I’d returned from breakfast to standing, all four paws digging into my bones. He then blinked slowly, those sapphires flashing, and started to pulse his claws in and out of me, massive front paws kneading my jumpsuit, my body, like I was a bit of raw dough. “Oh… Okay. So… Yes, ouch.” I grimaced when the familiar really sunk in on the ne
xt knead. “That’s… Okay. Right. Whatever you need to… do.”
Was this a good thing? My only experience with cats were the feral ones who roamed the property back home, mousers who hissed if you got too close and snarled if you dared reach out to touch. Tully, meanwhile, had broken every preconception I possessed about the standoffish feline, and had spent half of last night pressed up against the mousehole, chittering softly for Katja, and then the rest on my cot, curled up in the most awkward of places.
Behind my crooked knees.
Nestled against my lower back.
Across my neck like a damn lead scarf.
I’d woken up this morning to the fat fuck on my face, snoozing away. Had I needed to breathe, he probably would have smothered me in my sleep.
Unfortunately for my favorite witch, Cellblock F had decided to have a riot on the way to the dining hall during yesterday’s supper. The entire prison went into immediate lockdown, leaving the rest of us to scarf down whatever food we could—wasn’t exactly difficult to chug a test tube of cold blood on my end—before being hauled back to the cellblock and thrown into our cells. No one in or out. No post-meal socializing in the common area before bed. The rioting idiots had assured the rest of us a security-heavy night, all the lights kept on, patrols marching in and out of the block for hours. My fellow inmates had emerged from their cells this morning bleary-eyed and cranky.
Tully, however, must have thought it best to continue hiding in my cell. After all, the infinite shadows offered the best hiding spots. Unfortunately for him and his witch, there simply hadn’t been the chance for him to slink back into her cell.
So, he had spent the night here.
And was now clawing up my chest while purring and slow-blinking down at me.
Fucking sadist.
Actually… It sort of felt good. Like a prickly massage from a huge black cloud that in another life could have easily passed for a sidhe, although Tully lacked the telltale white mark on his chest. So. Definitely not a witch or a tricky fairy in hiding, pretending to be Katja’s familiar all these years. Just a standard, run-of-the-mill familiar—who loved his mistress so ardently that he’d scoured the globe to find her.