The Witch Who Came In From The Cold: The Complete Season 2: The Complete Season 2 (The Witch Who Came In From The Cold Season 2)

by Lindsay Smith

  He was fucked.

  She was a Flame agent. Had to be. Someone had sent her, same as Dom. Yes, she’d seemed sincere in her apartment. But then, if she’d shot him in her room, that would have been an investigation. So much easier to get him cashiered—he’d left himself wide open. She’d accuse him of misusing resources, that would be easy enough, get him reassigned, and whatever Flame muckety-muck sent her would send his replacement, and then the Flame would own both sides of the game in Prague, which meant, probably, game over for the world.

  And even if she played it slow and didn’t try to use this against him now, she could just say, there’s nothing here, and send the files back, and so much for Tanya’s hope of tracing new arrivals from the Flame.

  But if she didn’t find anything—that wouldn’t prove she was a Flame agent, because one way or the other she wasn’t letting him get his hands on those files, and there might not be anything in there to—

  She was glaring at him, flat and unimpressed, over a file she held out between them. She tapped a number with the eraser end of her pencil. “I said,” she repeated, “does this mean anything to you?”

  Gabe reeled. He read the dot matrix heading: phone records, Dom’s. “Um. It’s a phone number?”

  “It’s the number of a pay phone in Ankara.”

  “You know pay phone numbers in Ankara.”

  Her stare, roughly translated into English, read: Try to catch the fuck up, darling. She grabbed a second piece of paper, from the entrance permit file that had started this whole evening’s nonsense.

  “To be specific,” she continued, “it’s a pay phone number a few blocks from the registered home address of this individual.”

  Most of the details—birthday, purpose of visit, passport number—sailed right past Gabe, but the name hooked him, and the face, for all the grainy Xerox, lit his nightmare bonfires: in a dark dank room in Egypt, knife raised. The face he’d seen himself. The name, he’d learned from Jordan.

  Terzian.

  His hitchhiker stirred.

  “Mean-looking son of a gun,” Gabe said, and hoped Edith was too caught up in her own triumph to catch whatever he’d let slip.

  “A mean-looking son of a gun,” Edith said, “who arrived in Prague two days ago. And who told the border guards where he planned to stay while he was in the country.”

  “People lie on those things all the time.”

  “But it is more of a lead than we’ve found in two days’ work.” She flicked on the safety, and stowed the gun in her purse. “Go ahead. You can drive.”

  5.

  In Gabe’s defense, the hotel was already on fire when they arrived.

  Terzian’s address belonged to the kind of ratty guesthouse Gabe had seen entirely too much of in his travels, the sort of place any half-decent market economy would have put out of its misery decades ago, remaining in business only by virtue of payoffs and kickbacks to the responsible authorities. The fire, if nobody stopped it soon, would do what the market hadn’t. Gabe really didn’t care what Marx would have thought about that. He parked the car, jumped out, and ran through the first rubberneckers into the building, with Edith chasing after.

  They’d arrived even before the engines. The fire seemed to have just started, and it was burning from the roof down. He had a guess where Terzian’s room would be, but, screw it, he checked the desk ledger anyway—no clerks to stand in his way now. “Fourth floor,” he shouted to Edith, who’d followed him into the dingy lobby. Not bad. Two floors down from the roof—maybe the fire hadn’t reached it yet. He fought through the flow of people from the stairwell, elbowed past panicked apparatchiks and tired men, seeking Terzian in their faces, finding nothing, but at least breaking a path for Edith.

  Every good instinct his body possessed fought him as he approached the heat. He kept his head down. The stairwell wasn’t burning, yet. Yes. Good. That made all the difference, that made this course of action okay—that the stairwell wasn’t burning yet.

  The crowds thinned out as they climbed, and by the time they reached the fourth floor, everyone who could had already left. He burst into the hall, and found he needn’t have checked the ledger. Someone had already broken Terzian’s door off the hinges.

  He ran through, into an inferno.

  There had been no smoke, no heat, but suddenly he was aflame. Fire caught his trousers, his coat, his hair. He screamed, doubled over, clapped his hands to his face—

  His hitchhiker, the elemental half-stuck within him, turned. And the pain stopped.

  Flames licked the room around him, blazed from his clothing and from the carpet, but he stood there unharmed—his elemental, keeping him safe. Which it wouldn’t do from normal fire. So. Magic.

  Someone, something had wrecked Terzian’s room. Everything that wasn’t shadows and flame was splinters and dust: paper turned to ash, furniture shattered, even the bed tossed aside. Sigils burned on the walls and floor, wards and magic nonsense blackening wallpaper. And there, near the window, stood a figure wreathed in green flame.

  It wasn’t Terzian. Gabe remembered the Flame cultist as tall and reedy, skin slack on his frame, as if the furnace that powered his eyes had melted away the rest of him. The figure he saw through the flame was little more than an unfinished silhouette, strong and stocky, a blur of power beside a broken window.

  He stared into the shadow’s eyes—he thought they were eyes—and his heart broke with the weight of a feeling that both was, and was not, recognition.

  Then he heard a scream, and remembered Edith.

  She’d been mere steps behind him—and she didn’t have an elemental to keep her safe.

  He turned from the shadow as it slipped out the window into the night.

  He tackled Edith back out into the hall, pressed her to the carpet with his body. The flames around her vanished—after she crossed the threshold? After he touched her? She rolled onto her side, and coughed. Her sweater stank faintly of burnt hair, and her skin shimmered red. But she’d been in the heat for a second, at most. She would be okay. He hoped.

  Calculations still ran, always ran, in the back of his mind: The room hadn’t been busted up like it would have been if there had been a fight. So the fire—maybe that was a trap? If so, triggered by who? The shadow? Didn’t matter. If Edith were Flame, she would have recognized the magic.

  In this moment, crouched over her, he hated the part of himself that thought that way. He glanced back into the fire, but the window was broken, and the shadow was gone.

  “What—” Edith coughed again. “What was that?”

  “It’s fine,” he said. “Can you walk?”

  “I believe so.” She held out her hand, and he helped her to her feet. “But I rather think we should run, don’t you?”

  • • •

  The ambassador’s wife answered Tanya’s knock in a patterned silk robe, with her hair up. Even in such relative undress, Zerena Pulnoc still made Tanya feel—wrong-footed, that was the way of it. Often, facing Zerena, she felt under-everything: dressed, educated, polished. Now, standing on the woman’s doorstep, wearing her best skirt and blouse and boots and lipstick, armor she’d chosen piece by piece for the encounter, she felt like a schoolgirl still in uniform.

  “I,” she said, and lost her train of thought. Her hands found each other in front of her skirt. She’d told Nadia she could handle this. She could.

  Zerena waited in the crack in the door. Tanya ought to have been able to see past her, into the residence itself, but some combination of the bright front porch lights and Zerena’s pale glow made the woman seem an angel guarding the abyss.

  Zerena waited, and Tanya realized she had not finished her sentence.

  She tried again. “I’ve been thinking about what you said.”

  “Have you?” Zerena made it sound like nothing: as if she’d offered Tanya a passing suggestion about how to wear her hair, or recommended a restaurant.

  “I think maybe we can help each other.”

 
“Come in, darling,” Zerena said. “I wouldn’t want you to catch cold.”

  • • •

  Kazimir hailed Josh and Nadia when they returned to the room with the boxing ring, and got them more drinks, and carried on most of the conversation himself as they got ready for the next fight.

  “It’s very exciting!” Kazimir’s Russian was better than his English, but no less enthusiastic. “We have a new middleweight in town. We have had such a difficulty finding a good match for Andrej”—he pointed to the short, square, burly man ducking through the ropes, testing his gloves—“ever since he broke Blahoslav’s three front teeth and his four ribs. Which is a shame, because I do love to watch Andrej fight. This middleweight, you will like, I trust,” he said as he set a hand on Nadia’s arm. “Very much your kind of fighter. And you,” he said to Josh, “do you have a kind of fighter? Of your boxers, is there one you enjoy most?”

  Josh was looking for a way to say he didn’t follow boxing without damaging his rapport with Kazimir when audience uproar gave him the perfect excuse to swivel in his chair and face the ring.

  Kazimir’s new middleweight had entered the ring while Josh looked away, wearing a hooded robe. That by itself would not have caused a fuss. But the person who revealed herself when she threw the robe aside did.

  She was, he thought, Southeast Asian. Short hair. Her sleeveless top bared thick arms and the trace of a tattoo. Her eyes were still, and sharp. Burly Andrej, across the ring, bounced on his toes. The new middleweight did not bounce. She rose onto the balls of her feet. Taut muscles shifted in her calves. She settled down. Dust burst from the mat.

  They touched gloves in the center. Andrej’s bounced off hers. They were about the same height. He was thicker. Her bones must be heavy, or her muscles dense.

  “What’s her name?” Nadia asked. And Josh’s eyes flicked off the fight as the bell rang.

  The Russian watched the ring, fixed, pinned, sure as Josh had been pinned to that wall.

  And Josh realized Alestair was right.

  Josh would have to go through the motions, to come on to Edith, to convince her he was straight.

  He hated it, almost enough to hate Alestair himself. Because the Russian across the table, she was better at this spy stuff than Josh. No sense denying it. And even so, a blind man could have read her now, as she watched the woman box. He knew that cocktail’s taste: awe, and hunger, and need, each strobing and transforming into the next and back.

  He heard glove strike flesh. He saw, out of the corner of his eye, Andrej go down, saw the middleweight raise her gloves in triumph. Saw, out of the other corner, the hint of teeth in Nadia’s grin that said I want one.

  He turned back to the ring, sipped his bourbon, and watched Andrej lose.

  The Witch Who Came In From The Cold

  Season 2, Episode 3

  Old Game, New Players

  Ian Tregillis

  Prague, Czechoslovak Socialist Republic

  April 7, 1970

  1.

  “Just what sort of place is this again?”

  Edith stood outside Bar Vodnář, frowning. Somebody had emptied their stomach in the gutter, the yellow spume as yet untouched by spring rains. The investigator from Langley chewed her lip, staring at Gabe, then the puke, then Josh.

  “It’s nicer inside,” said Gabe.

  Edith’s frown turned into a moue of distaste. As she had all afternoon, she looked ready to call the whole thing off. Josh’s unusual enthusiasm for the outing had barely moved the needle on her inclination to get tipsy with them.

  Why so hesitant? Don’t like the neighborhood, or is it that you don’t like the way this place makes you feel? Gabe watched her carefully. Their recent close call at Terzian’s apartment had mostly assuaged his concerns that Edith might be another double agent working for the Flame. But, then again, if she really wanted to sell her cover, blithely walking into a magical booby trap would do it. So the niggling doubt lingered in the back of his mind, alongside the hitchhiker. Are you hesitating because your idea of fun is going home to inventory all the spoons in your cupboard, or because the ley lines have your blood fizzing like a can of Coca-Cola that someone tossed down the stairs?

  “Every city has the occasional drunk,” he said. “Don’t blame the bar for that.”

  “Yeah. People throw up in the street all the time,” said Josh, looking straight at Gabe. Or on police officers, said the twitch at the corner of his mouth.

  Gabe shot him a Look: You’re not helping.

  “What Josh means, I think, is that it’s not putting its best face forward tonight.”

  Jordan’s place was his trump card. If Edith were another Flame adept who’d infiltrated the CIA, the ley line nexus quietly thrumming under the bar should have set her hair standing on end. Before he’d achieved détente with the hitchhiker, trips to the Vodnář had always come with an unpleasant full-body tingle, like munching on aluminum foil with metal fillings. Taking a magical adept to a ley line nexus was like taking an alcoholic to a whiskey distillery.

  Sometimes you could learn a lot by being a bastard.

  He had to know where Edith stood. Was she an ally, a neutral party, or a dire enemy?

  So Gabe watched her for twitchy fingers, nervous tics, beads of sweat on the brow. But she was cool as a cucumber. If anything, Josh was the more conspicuous of the pair, constantly licking his lips and stealing glances at her, as if screwing up his courage for a suicide mission.

  Finally, she sighed. “All right. I’m trusting you two.”

  “Great. First round’s on me.” Gabe opened the door. The smells of anise and incense wafted from the bar, as did a few measures of a Louis Prima song. “Ladies first.”

  She frowned at that, too, but entered. And without so much as a catch in her step. The hitchhiker found her unremarkable. But it’d squawk if she reached for the ley lines.

  The bar was about half full, typical for a Tuesday night. They wended past the dart players toward a table in the far corner.

  “Is that a vintage Wurlitzer? How’d they get that in here?”

  Gabe shrugged. “I don’t know how Jordan gets half the stuff in this bar, honestly.”

  “So, hey, Edith,” said Josh, after they sat. He scooped a handful of peanuts from the bowl on the table. “I wanted to ask you something.”

  His tone was light, but he looked like a man strolling to the gallows.

  Oh, hell. I know what this is about.

  Gabe stood, perhaps a bit too quickly. “I know Josh’s poison. What’s yours?”

  “Gimlet, please. Gin, not vodka. The rail is fine.” Straight to the point, even when ordering a drink. But she’d swill the cheap stuff, for which his finances thanked her.

  The music fell silent, the jukebox whirring as it changed out the 45 to trade Louis Prima for The Beatles. Here I stand, head in hand…

  At the bar, Jordan didn’t return his nod, just reached under the bar and produced two beer bottles without saying a word. Then, after hearing Edith’s order, she silently stood on her toes and plucked a dusty bottle of Rose’s Lime Juice from the shelf. She didn’t speak, didn’t look at him.

  “You’re acting like I just tracked dog shit in here.”

  “Maybe you did, Pritchard.” She punctuated this with the thunk of a knife slamming into a cutting board as she sliced a lime to garnish Edith’s glass.

  “Oh, come on. What have I done wrong now?”

  “In case you’ve forgotten,” she said, fingertips brushing her bracelet charm, “this is supposed to be neutral ground. Neutral. Your little stunt earlier this spring cost me credibility.” She meant him and Tanya and Alestair, he knew.

  “I don’t recall anyone twisting your arm.” Taking out Dom’s plane was the right thing to do, and you know it.

  “Yeah, well, you’re officially out of favors.”

  “I’ll make a special note in my diary.” He pulled out his wallet and flicked a few bills on the bar. “Keep the change.” He made to sc
oop up the drinks.

  “Pritchard. Wait.”

  “What now?”

  Jordan rubbed her bracelet, hesitating, as if choosing her words carefully. “There’s somebody new in town. Don’t know who she is, but she’s to be taken seriously.” Her knuckles had turned white where she gripped the charm that prevented casual eavesdropping. “She’s a strong magician,” she said. “Very strong.”

  Well, God damn it. If Jordan had said he, Gabe would have assumed she meant Terzian. But she didn’t. Edith, you scumbag…

  “Yeah. We’ve met her.” He looked over his shoulder. Edith had a strange look on her face and Josh was talking fast, waving his hands.

  “No, not your friend over there. Somebody else.”

  Oh. There were times when it was a relief that one’s paranoia didn’t pan out. This was not one of them.

  “Flame?” he whispered. She shrugged.

  He leaned across the bar. “Jordan, what happened?”

  She released the bracelet, shook her head. “That’s all you’re getting. Now go. I have other customers.”

  As he reached for the drinks, Edith’s voice cut through the hubbub.

  “WHAT?”

  Gabe craned his neck so quickly the muscles in his neck gave little warning twinges of dismay. He wasn’t the only one staring. Everybody put their conversations and dart games on hiatus to stare at the table where Edith sat with a deeply blushing Josh. It was a wonder the look on her face didn’t strip the paint from Jordan’s walls.

  Josh, whose face had assumed a color Gabe wouldn’t have believed possible—or healthy—stammered, “Um…”

  Into the void, John Lennon sang, Hey, you’ve got to hide your love away…

  Gabe sighed. Reluctantly, he turned his back on the scene, fearing that without witnesses, Edith’s scowl might kill Josh and chuck his lifeless body into a shallow pit of quicklime.

  Cursing under his breath, he tossed more cash on the bar. He indicated Edith with a tip of his head.

  “Better make hers a double.”

  • • •

  Zerena had been just sixteen, an uneducated farm girl with coarse hands and an even coarser mouth, when first exposed to the mysteries of the Flame. Inherently ambitious—hungry, some might have said, but that was always true when one grew up poor—but born to a dead-end life that offered nothing to strive for, no fuel for that ambition. But then Terzian found her, recognized her talent for magic, and widened her horizons far beyond the village of her birth. She didn’t have to settle for becoming the local milkmaid, or even the local hedgewitch; she could mingle with the great and powerful. She could be great and powerful.