by Annie Bellet
I knew in that moment that whoever Tess was, I would be stupid to underestimate her. And more stupid to keep her around. Either she had been sent by Samir to kill or weaken me, or he’d severely misjudged his new apprentice and lover. Maybe both.
And yet I was tempted. She seemed so afraid, so certain he would kill her. Which he would, sooner or later. It was what Samir did, after all. She had knowledge of magic—I felt it, saw it in her economy.
“How old are you?” I asked, unable to keep the awe out of my voice completely.
She looked up at me, surprise flickering in her brandy-colored eyes. She started to turn her head slightly and look at Alek, but seemed to think better of it. “Older than you,” she said. “I was born a decade or so before the American Civil War.”
“You avoided Samir for more than a century, no?” Alek asked her.
“Yes, but I could not do so forever. He has eyes and ears everywhere. The moment anyone gains enough power to be noticed, to be identified as a sorcerer, he pounces. The pretty ones, the young ones, he keeps as lovers, until he grows bored. And it seems he grows bored more quickly with each passing decade.” Her body was tensed, poised for flight.
I got the feeling she hadn’t planned on telling me these things, had hoped I would take her at face value. I hadn’t been around a hundred and fifty years, but I wasn’t exactly born yesterday, either. She was good at deception, and I wondered what I would have done if I hadn’t had Alek here to keep her on the truthful path.
“Look,” I said. “I can’t trust you. You fear me, too. This is a disaster in the making and we both need to just admit it. I believe that you are genuine in your fear of Samir. You don’t strike me as a stupid woman and I’m guessing you figured you could pretend you were a naïve young thing for a while until you found a way to bring him down or get away. How am I doing?”
“Better than I expected,” she said, the ghost of a smile touching her ruby-red lips.
“I can’t help you. I am not sure I would if I could, honestly. I mean, I’ll do my damndest to bring down that bastard if he ever deigns to show himself, but having you here is just one more fucking worry I don’t need on my plate.” I paused as I realized her showing up here and the unicorn getting mauled were probably related. Coincidences? Don’t exist on my planet.
“You can help—” she started to say.
I cut her off with a raised hand. “You know anything about evil creatures in the woods killing unicorns?”
“What? Unicorns?” Her confusion seemed genuine and Alek raised an eyebrow at me. “Unicorns aren’t real.”
“I just patched one up tonight,” I said. I still didn’t believe in coincidences, but it was clear if the unicorn murders were related to Tess, it wasn’t in a way she was actively in on.
“Unicorns are real?” she said.
“Yep,” I said. I took a deep breath, marshalling my thoughts. She couldn’t tell me where Samir was. She was dangerous in many ways, most of which I probably hadn’t even thought through yet, because damnit, I was tired as hell and hadn’t had time.
“You can’t stay, Tess,” I said, trying to be kind. “You need to destroy that charm and then run, far and fast. Don’t use your magic. Hopefully Samir will think you came to me and that I’m hiding you. His attention at the least will be divided, right? So you’ve got a chance. Take it. You need money?” I doubted from her designer clothes that she did, but who knew how controlling Samir had gotten.
“No,” she said. “I have money. But I have nowhere to go.”
“Neither did I, twenty-five years ago,” I said. “I made do. You’re a survivor, I bet. You’ll be fine. Run, and don’t look back.”
“I can help you,” she said. “You are powerful, right? But I know magic. I’ve been using it a long time. We can be stronger together than apart. Two against one. Don’t send me away, Jade Crow. Please.”
I think she would have sunk to her knees if she’d thought it would help, but instead she rose, staring me down eye to eye. She was white, her skin milky pale, and her hair was a deep reddish-brown with a gentle curl to it, but in other ways she and I were mirrors of each other. Nearly the same height, though her heels were giving that illusion, same thin body type. I lacked her generous chest, but we shared high cheekbones, dark eyes, long hair.
I wondered if her desperation and terror had ever been reflected in my eyes. I guessed it probably had, the day I’d shown back up on my adopted family’s doorstep. The first time I ran from Samir.
It broke my heart a little to turn and walk away. I opened the kitchen door, letting the cold October night sweep inside.
“I can’t help you,” I said. “You are a risk I can’t afford. Go. Run.”
She left without a word, leaving behind a silent room and the faint scent of blackberries.
I closed the door and leaned into it, listening to her footsteps retreat down the stairs. Only after I heard a car engine start and the crunch of tires on gravel did I turn and look at Alek.
“Did I just make a horrible mistake?” I asked.
“Perhaps,” he said. “That was cruel.”
“Geez, tell me how you really feel and totally don’t hold back.”
I unzipped my hoodie and hung it beside the door, then walked past Alek and into the bedroom. My limbs and heart felt like lead and I debated crashing without bothering with clothing or shoe removal. Alek had been sleeping over most nights, so we’d made a nest of quilts on the floor. It looked safe and inviting, if empty without a twelve-foot white tiger keeping watch over me.
Said tiger in human form came up behind me and pulled me into his arms. He tucked my head beneath his chin.
“It was cruel,” he repeated. “But I understand. She is a dangerous unknown. There is too much at stake here, and we cannot trust her.”
“The good of the many over the good of the one,” I muttered. I felt shitty anyway. I had told her she was alone, on her own. She wasn’t one of us, part of me and mine.
The safe decision, perhaps even the smart one. Definitely not the kind one. It was not what Sophie or Todd or Ji-hoon or Kayla would have done.
And look where it got them, the cold part of my heart whispered. They are dead.
I turned my face into Alek’s chest and let my tears soak unnoticed into his shirt.
The next day was completely and almost suspiciously uneventful. I hung around my shop half expecting every person who walked through the door to be Tess, but none were. My friends were all busy with unicorn fever, taking turns watching over the recovering stallion. There was a minor argument over the name to give him, but common sense had prevailed and we all agreed on Lir, after the prince who had loved the last unicorn.
Depressing thought, really, in some ways. As far as Yosemite knew, Lir wasn’t the last, but he might be the last in this wilderness. Unicorns were very rare, the druid said, and only thrived where the wilderness wasn’t overly damaged. That was precious few places in the world anymore.
Harper called me two days after and said she was running late, so I opened the store by myself. Alek had gone with Yosemite into the woods that morning, leaving our makeshift bed in the wee hours with a soft kiss and assurance he wouldn’t do anything stupid like get himself hurt or killed. I tried to pretend I believed him.
I was tidying up things that didn’t really need tidying and avoiding doing translation work, which is what I do to actually pay the bills that comics and games don’t cover, when Brie walked in. The tall baker was without her usual apron, but she had a box in her hands that smelled like sugar, spice, and everything buttery, fattening, and delicious.
It had been exactly a month since she’d told me in no uncertain terms that I wasn’t allowed in her shop, that she wanted nothing to do with me, and that she considered me and my kind the epitome of all that was wrong with everything, ever. Well, those weren’t her exact words, but she’d been pretty clear she meant it. I had been shocked and hadn’t the heart to tell her that she paid rent to me eve
ry month, though for a second I’d been tempted.
“Don’t give me a look like that,” she said, setting the box down on the glass display counter that ran down one side of my store. “Iollan told me what you did. I admit I might have judged too harshly and too quick.”
For a moment I couldn’t figure out who Iollan was. “Yosemite?” I said.
She nodded, bright red curls bouncing with the motion, and looked down at the box. “I brought those little cupcakes you and Harper like.”
“This mean I’m allowed to talk to you again?” I asked, raising my eyebrows. I really was trying to be civil, but her outright rejection of me had stung. But I really did miss those damn cupcakes.
“I knew a sorcerer once,” she said, her eyes meeting mine. “He talked a woman I loved out of her home, away from family, hearth, and all who loved her. When he tired of her, he took her heart.” Her eyes were shadowed with pain and she swallowed visibly.
“Sounds like we might know the same guy,” I muttered.
“I guess we might,” Brie said. “I do not like losing the ones I love. Ciaran assures me that you are different, but it is hard to trust.”
I flinched inwardly at that. It was difficult to trust, and I was feeling the full consequences of that these last two days. I wanted to cast my eyes skyward and tell the universe that it was okay, I got the freaking message already.
“I’m glad I could help the unicorn,” I said instead.
“I am also,” she said. “He would not have let you help if you were of an evil disposition, I don’t think.”
Remembering that wild rush of power, the pure joy, I knew she was right. I tried to take some comfort in it.
“I am not sure I am very good,” I said. I brought my hand to my mouth, surprised. Damn out-loud voice, sneaking up on me.
“None of us are only one thing or another,” Brie said with a gentle smile that made her look strangely ancient and almost painfully beautiful from one breath to the next.
I wondered what she was, revising my idea she was just a hedge witch. I made a mental note to ask Ciaran when he got back from his latest antique-buying trip. Not that I expected a real answer from the leprechaun. He had a way of keeping secrets.
Brie had to get back to her bakery, and I resigned myself to waiting for Harper before I opened the cupcakes. Harper would never forgive me if I ate them without her and it wouldn’t be worth the whining and reproach. Besides, she’d be shocked that Brie and I had made up. I couldn’t wait to see her face when I told her. So I turned to my computer and opened the latest work file, making my brain move away from the world of unicorns and mysterious red-haired people with ancient Irish names, and to Japanese car documentation contracts that needed to be put into English.
Harper’s face was priceless when she showed up that afternoon and saw the box from Brie’s bakery sitting on the counter.
“Did you check for traps?” she asked after I told her the story of my morning.
“Nope, I figured I would wait until the rogue got here.”
“Maybe there’s an invisible ooze or something,” Harper said, poking at the box.
“Maybe it is poisoned. Should we call a cleric?” I sniffed the box, though I didn’t really need to since the smell of sugar and lemon had been taunting me for hours now.
“Tell Max he can have my Game Boy,” Harper said, pulling open the box and lifting a mini-cupcake out. She popped it into her mouth.
“It’s a good day to die,” I said, snagging a cupcake and following suit.
Harper replied but I couldn’t make out a word of it around the mouthful of cake. Guess I’d finally found a language I didn’t understand, har har.
“How’s Lir?” I asked when we’d finished off all half-dozen cupcakes.
“He’s standing, but still pretty weak. Max won’t leave his side. It’s kind of cute. But I get it, you know? I could almost like horses as much as he does if they all looked like a unicorn.” Harper flopped into her usual chair and pulled her laptop from her backpack.
I almost told her about Tess, but she started humming and wasn’t paying any attention to me at all, so I turned and went back to translation. The weather outside had turned blustery, and rain spat from the sky. It was a weekday, so there wasn’t much traffic through the store. We worked in near silence, Harper playing Hearthstone and swearing about the RNG gods.
Possible conversational openers ran through my head. I wanted to share what had happened with her. She was my best friend. I trusted her more than anyone, maybe even more than Alek. I was afraid I’d made a horrible mistake with Tess, that I’d turned away someone in real need over stupid fears. I wasn’t sure what I wanted Harper to say, how talking to her about it would assuage the guilt and doubt eating me alive, but it was getting messy to keep it inside. Part of not hiding anymore meant trusting the people around me with the ugly things as well as the good.
Besides, for all I knew, Harper would say good riddance, tell me in her best Mr. Torgue impression that Tess was going to betray the fuck out of me, and I’d find some kind of closure there.
“So,” I said, “I had a visitor the other night.”
Harper looked up from her game and tipped her head to one side. My face must have given away that this was serious because she slapped her laptop shut and set it on the counter beside where my phone was charging.
My phone buzzed, choosing the worst time, of course. I checked the text and saw it was from Alek.
“What’s the word?” Harper asked.
“Nothing. He and Yosemite are doubling back; he says the trail keeps going in circles.” I closed my phone after checking the battery level. I’d bought a cheap one this time, having lost the last two in pretty quick succession.
“So, someone came to see you?” Harper said.
The bell chimed as a figure pushed through the front door. This business would be so great if it weren’t for the customers and their immaculate sense of timing, right?
Only it wasn’t a customer. It was a bloody witch. Well, not literally bloody. Not yet.
“Hello, Peggy,” I said to the head of the Wylde coven, putting a bit of frosty power into my tone so that my breath literally puffed with chill. I wasn’t above theatrics, even if I couldn’t turn her into a toad. Not yet, anyway, not before I heard her out. It would be impolite.
“Today is the thirtieth day,” she said, no preamble, no pleasantries. Her hair was in its perfect bun, though damp from the rain, and she held a dripping umbrella in one hand which she pointed dramatically at me. “You are to be gone from this town by dawn, or else.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Harper said. “Ms. Olsen, you are a total asshole, you know that?”
“Out of respect for your mother, young woman, I will ignore that you run with such a crowd and spare you.”
“Spare me what?” Harper said, coming around the counter. “Plagues of bugs? Snootily looking down your nose at me? You are a fraud, all of you stupid witches. Jade could fry you like hotcakes into dust with a wiggle of her little finger, you dumb bitch. But you know she won’t, which is why you feel okay threatening her, right? Cause you wouldn’t be so goddamn stupid if she were actually dangerous.”
Wow. I sat back, forgetting to be mad for a moment. I’d never seen Harper go after anyone like that, not even in the infamous flame wars on the net that she often found herself immersed in. I had to admit I was impressed and more than a little warmed by her profanity-laden defense and display of friendship. I prepared a shield, holding my magic tightly, my hands loose on my thighs, just in case Peggy the librarian got frisky when challenged.
Harper’s jeans pocket began playing “The Imperial March” at the same time as my phone rang with “Bad to the Bone.” It sounded like Max was calling his sister at the same time Levi was calling me. That couldn’t be good. I froze, unable to decide between going for the phone and dealing with the witch.
“I will not be spoken to like this. You will rue this day, both of you.” P
eggy stuck her nose in the air in a bad high school drama way and shook her umbrella. “Hexen!” she shouted. The lights, my phone, both computers, and, judging from Harper’s sudden leap sideways and subsequent outpouring of swearing, Harper’s phone all flickered, crackled in spectacular sparks, and died.
Peggy fled as soon as it happened, making a very undignified exit out my door as quickly as she could.
I had no time to get a shield up, distracted by the ringing phones and more expecting an attack directly on Harper or me, not our poor innocent electronics. Summoning light into my d20 talisman, I held it aloft and surveyed the damage. The bulbs in my strategically placed lamps had all turned smoky black. Greenish, acidic smoke trailed off both computers. My phone was a useless brick of plastic. Light still shone from the street lamps and the bakery, so I had hope the hex hadn’t damaged anything outside this room.
“She fried Cecilia!” Harper cradled her laptop in her arm, blowing at the smoke.
“I really hate witches,” I said.
“We could go after her,” Harper offered.
“Nope,” I said. “We can’t. One, she’s probably in a car halfway across town by now, and two, you were right. I can’t do shit about this without looking like a total asshole.”
“I’m revising my opinion on that. This is, like, totally the gauntlet thrown, dude. So not cool.” She opened her laptop and tried to turn it on, but we both knew it was a doomed act. “You would think she’d obey that threefold law thing. Bitch.”
“Threefold law thing?” I asked.
“Yeah, I read it in one of the Wiccan books at the library. Supposedly if you do magic, it comes back to you three-fold, especially the bad stuff. So like you are supposed to avoid cursing people and crap, cause it’ll just go like mega worse for you. Haven’t you ever seen The Craft?”