Wytchcraft: A Matilda Kavanagh Novel

by Shauna Granger

  “Snap out of it, Mattie,” I said, scrubbing my eyes with the back of my hand. “No more vampires.” I started for the kitchen to wash the dishes and then decided against it, but I did take a minute to stopper the bottle of truth serum before putting it away, hiding it in the cabinet above the fridge. It had been a painfully long night and sunrise wasn’t too far off, but if I went to sleep now, I could wake before sundown and maybe get the jump on Theo and find Roane before her. Tate said she was only looking for him to thwart me, but the Dunhallows had Owen, and I was sure that was part of her motivation. Even if that motivation was to be Owen’s rescuer instead of me. I wasn’t interested in being Owen’s rescuer. I was just trying to save my own neck.

  Unfortunately, in order to save my own neck, that meant I would save Owen as well. That didn’t matter; I just needed to focus. A pain was starting to form behind my eyes as the exhaustion started to pull at me, making each step more difficult than the last. I managed to remember to shut off my television on my way to the bedroom, cutting off the cheery chatter of the newscasters talking about the mysterious lottery winner. I found Artemis curled up in the middle of my bed. I crawled in, not bothering to change out of my regular clothes. I grabbed him and pulled him to the pillows with me and held onto him like a little girl and her doll.

  “Prrrow,” Artie mumbled, finding a more comfortable position to sleep in while remaining in the circle of my arms. I buried my face in his fur and breathed in his smell. He purred and I felt the healing fingers of his familiar magic caressing me, taking me away.

  I dreamt of Owen and the second time we’d ever met. He had gone back to Ronnie’s shop, looking for me after he’d failed to banish the spirit that was haunting him, but I wasn’t working. Ronnie, thinking he was like any other customer, told him where I lived, so when he knocked on my door that night, I was more than a little surprised.

  “Blue-eyes,” I said by way of greeting. He looked as charming that night, dry as a bone, as he had soaking wet the night before. His hair was a rich golden blond with a little bounce to it, not quite as long as I had thought when weighted down by rain.

  “Ms. Kavanagh,” he said, inclining his head toward me. “The girl in the shop said I could find you here. She said you were a witch for hire?” He had a very interesting accent, not quite American, but not quite anything else either. His vowels still held a hint of a faraway land and he had a way of speaking that made you want to agree with whatever he was saying.

  “Ms. Kavanagh?” he said, furrowing his brow at me. I pulled myself out of trance his voice had lulled me into, shaking my head to clear it.

  “Oh yeah,” I said, answering his question ever so eloquently. We stood there for an awkward, silent moment, staring at each other. When he arched his brows at me, I remembered to blink and scrambled to invite him in.

  “Thank you,” he said as he stepped inside, moving so that I could close the door. He shrugged off his leather jacket, folding it over his arm as he waited for me to direct him. He was lean, just like I had thought the other night, but his shoulders were nice and round, full enough that a girl could hold on to them for dear life. He glanced over his shoulder at me, as if feeling the burn of my stare. I recovered quickly, taking a step toward him.

  “Let me take that,” I said, reaching for the jacket. I hung it on the coat rack by the door before leading him to the kitchen table, forcing myself to keep my eyes off of him. “Can I get you anything to drink, ah, um,” I struggled, realizing I didn’t yet know his name.

  “Owen,” he said, one corner of his mouth lifting in the slightest of smiles. I liked that corner of his mouth.

  “Owen,” I repeated, tasting the name. “Can I get you anything, Owen?”

  “Thank you, no,” he said as he took a seat. “I’m fine, Ms. Kavanagh.”

  “Matilda,” I said, waving off the formalities. “My friends call me Mattie.”

  “And which should I call you?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Well, you say your friends call you Mattie. Are you just sharing that tidbit with me, or are you implying that we,” he motioned between the two of us, “are already friends?”

  “Oh, well…” I paused, waiting for my brain to catch up with the conversation. Was this a word trap I’d stumbled into? Would I be giving him something by letting him call me by the familiar nickname? Was he teasing me? I glanced up at him and saw the corner of his mouth twitching again and there was a faint gleam in his eye. Yeah, he was teasing me.

  The heat of embarrassment warmed my face and burned away the nerves that had started to take root in my stomach, and I suddenly felt clearheaded again. I squared my shoulders and shook off the embarrassment. “You can call me Mattie; that’s fine.”

  “Mattie,” he said, rolling the word in his mouth, somehow making it sound intimate and low. I refused to watch his lips as he said my name. I glanced over my shoulder, eyeing the chair behind me.

  “So,” I said, hooking my foot around the leg of the chair and sliding it close to me to sit. “How can I help you? That banishing not work out for you?” All business, that’s what I needed to focus on. Not on the shape of his mouth, the glint in his eye, or the way his head tilted to the side ever so slightly when he listened to me speak. No, none of that was important.

  “No, it didn’t,” he said with a shake of his head, going along with the sudden change in subject. “I was hoping I could contract you to complete it for me.”

  “Sure,” I said with a head bob. “Sure, I can do a banishing, but I have to give you an open-ended quote.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I mean I can’t give you an exact price for my fee until it’s complete,” I explained. “It could be a much more stubborn entity or it could be something violent and cognizant. I can’t anticipate what I’m walking into and give you a proper quote.”

  “I see,” he said. “That’s fine, I’m not concerned about the cost. I’m concerned about living peacefully.”

  “Great,” I said. It was always nice to come across a client who didn’t try to cheap out on the more difficult spell work. “So where is the haunting?”

  “My home,” he said simply. I felt a knot form in my stomach. His home? I could barely keep myself under control with him in my home.

  I cleared my throat and reached for my planner. “Okay, let’s see.”

  “Isn’t this adorable,” a vaguely familiar, but totally out of place, voice hissed in my ear. I spun around, looking for the source, but Owen remained right where he was, not one muscle moving, as though the world had been put on pause and I was the only person still moving.

  A black mist formed in the middle of my eat-in kitchen. The mist shifted, quickly taking on a human shape until a moment later I was staring into the lifeless eyes of Theo. She smirked down at me, the mists folding and floating around her until she stood draped in black robes that fluttered around her lithe body as she moved.

  She was so out of place in my tiny apartment, looking larger than life, like some Renaissance painting come to life. Her tumbling curls were pinned artfully at the base of her neck, the tops of her shoulders exposed by the wide collar of the wispy robes. Her skin was perfect, as if there was any question about it. She moved around the table, sliding up behind Owen, laying her hands on his shoulders, staring at me from over his head. I tried not to look at her fingers, curling into Owen’s round shoulders, shoulders I used to cling to, the pale skin where my nails marked our passion. Those were not her shoulders to touch.

  “So this is how you two met,” she purred. “Isn’t this adorable.” I pulled my eyes away from her pale fingers and met her stare. As a witch, I could look deep into her vampire eyes and not feel a twinge of power and I wanted her to remember that little fact.

  Theo merely smirked at me. I gritted my teeth until I felt a pain forming behind my ears. I didn’t correct her assumption; I wouldn’t tell her how we really met. It wasn’t some great romantic story, but if she didn’t know, I wasn�
�t going to tell her. It was none of her damn business.

  “Seems as though you are always coming to Owen’s rescue,” she said. I tried not to watch as her hands slid down to the panes of his chest, her fingers slipping between the buttons of his shirt, knowing the tips of her fingers were touching his cool skin. I wondered if he felt cool to her or, if to each other, they felt warm. I pushed that thought out of my mind. I didn’t like where it led.

  “Are you the princess in shining armor, Mattie?” she teased.

  “Matilda,” I said through gritted teeth.

  “What’s that?” she asked, pretending as though she hadn’t heard me with her head ducked down, putting her face close to the crook of Owen’s neck.

  “My name is Matilda,” I said, refusing to acknowledge her stupid games.

  “Oh, yes,” she said as though it was the most boring thing in the world. “Matilda Kavanagh, the witch for hire.” She smirked and walked around, dragging her hand over Owen’s body as she moved, placing herself in front of him so I couldn’t see past her. She flicked her robes back so she could place her hands on her hips as she stared down at me. Her eyes glinted with power, though no spark of life existed in their shadowy depths, and not for the first time I wondered why people would give up that spark of life to become one of these creatures.

  “This is just a dream,” I whispered to myself. I closed my planner and shoved it away from me. Bracing my hands on the edge of the table, I bowed my head and closed my eyes to concentrate. “Just wake up, Mattie. She’s not really here; you’re not really here.”

  “Really?” Theo mocked me, even chuckling quietly as she watched me, but I refused to look up at her. Squeezing my eyes tighter, I concentrated on waking myself up. I didn’t care why Theo was here, but I had a feeling it was to keep me off track of finding Roane before her. For all I knew, she had a way of keeping people in an enchanted sleep and I would just lie in my bed, wasting away as I starved to death because I couldn’t wake up.

  Theo made a noise of disgust. I could feel her moving around me, but before I felt her touch or heard another sound, I felt myself falling. The chair I was sitting in was suddenly gone. I opened my eyes in time to see my kitchen and Owen racing away from me as I sped through the world as it became black around me. In the next moment, I jolted up in bed, fully awake and gasping for breath.

  I clutched my covers, my nails threatening to rip the fabric of my sheets. I concentrated on the feel of the bed under me and the caressing warmth of Artemis’s aura beside me. He made a rumbling noise in his sleep, hardly disturbed by my sudden movement. Drawing in a deep breath, I held it until my lungs burned and released it slowly. I was awake and home and safe. Everything was fine.

  “Interesting little trick that was,” Theo’s voice teased from the shadows of my darkened bedroom.

  “Sunnovagremlin!” I cursed, scrambling backward until I was pressed into my headboard. Artie hissed in the dark, and I reached for the light on my nightstand. The light flooded the room and revealed Theo looking exactly as she had in my dream, draped in black robes, as she lounged in the armchair in the corner. She was examining the nails on her right hand, one perfectly shaped eyebrow arched as she waited for me to calm down.

  “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen anyone actually force themselves awake from a dream before,” she said, dropping her hand to look at me.

  I probably made quite a ridiculous sight, clutching the sheets to my chest like some simpering woman in one of those movies from the fifties, terrified someone would see their pajamas. I pushed the short strands of disheveled black hair out of my face, tucking the ends behind my ears, and tried to calm to beating of my heart. I didn’t like the curve of her lips as she watched me, listening to the thundering in my chest.

  “What the hell are you doing in my home?” I demanded.

  “And what a quaint little home it is,” Theo said, giving up her examination of her nails, carefully not answering me.

  “Theodora,” I said, careful to hit every syllable of her name, “you are not welcome in my home. I command you to leave.” We stared at each other, the only light coming from the window. The sunlight made the shadows brown. Theo didn’t move from my chair. I watched as her lips curled into a smile as the moments ticked by.

  “Something wrong, dear?” she asked, tilting her head to the side as she watched my face. I’m sure my shock was plain on my face. I closed my mouth, trying not to grind my teeth. Dropping my covers, I pushed up to my knees and scrambled off the bed, making sure to keep my eyes on the woman the entire time.

  “I take it you never rescinded Owen’s invitation?” Theo asked casually as she turned her attention away from me to look at the clutter on the tiny table beside her. She pushed a few books back and forth to read the titles before she picked up a ceramic dragon my father had given me on my thirteenth birthday. The muscle in my jaw jumped as I watched her lift it, turning it over in her hands to look at the tiny jewels gleaming in its eyes and watch as the crystal wings changed colors in the moonlight.

  “Put that down,” I said through gritted teeth. Theo glanced up at me, a gleam in her eye that looked nothing like the jewels on my dragon. Sparks ignited at my fingertips, fully expecting her to take me at my word and drop the little figurine, making it shatter against the wood floorboards. She cocked an eyebrow at me again, but in the next moment, she set it gently on the table exactly where it had been.

  “Such a temper,” she said, tsking as she shook her head. “Not very good manners.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “Answer my question and you’ll answer your own,” she said.

  “Owen’s invitation?” I asked, and she nodded. No, I hadn’t; I didn’t have the chance. The bastard had left while I was asleep, like a coward. As that mean thought flitted through my mind, I remembered him sitting at my table, warning me that I should help the Dunhallows. I could have rescinded his invitation right then and hadn’t. Why hadn’t I? Was I that pathetic? Would I really let him come and go from my apartment at will on the chance that he’d come back to me? Why in the names of the seven layers of hell would I want him back?

  “You never did, did you?” Theo asked. She was moving again, rising from the chair like a rolling fog through my bedroom. She walked around my bed until she was standing dangerously close to me, her gossamer black robes fluttering around her dainty and bare feet. I was suddenly very aware that I was standing there in a concert T-shirt and underwear. It’s hard to feel very secure without pants on, let me tell you.

  The sparks at my fingertips faltered for a moment as she stared at me. Now we were practically the same height without my shoes on. Her gaze felt overly intimate and I found myself wanting to back away from her. But damnit, I was in my home, not hers! I would not back away. Theo dropped her eyes to my hands, alive with electric power again.

  “I want you to leave now, vampire.” I spat out the last word, hoping my distain would fling her from my home, but still, she just stood there staring at me.

  “Owen belongs to me,” she said, making a muscle in my cheek jump. “My blood runs through his veins. Where he goes, I may go. Seems so unfair, doesn’t it,” she teased, her pretty bow mouth curving into a smile. “Mortals always seem to think so.”

  “Theo,” I said, finding my voice again, “what exactly do you want? Why are you here?”

  “What?” she asked, blinking innocently at me. “You can come and go as you please through my lair, but I can’t pop by for a little chat? Now that doesn’t seem very fair.”

  “I only came to look for Roane.”

  “And did you find him?”

  She knew I didn’t find him, and it was a tough pill to swallow to admit I’d been wrong about her and admit she didn’t have him hidden somewhere else.

  “So what do you think will happen?” she asked, her blue eyes twinkling in the moonlight like only a vampire’s could. “You’ll find the boy prince, return him to his parents, and they’ll release Owen. And then
what? Do you suppose Owen will run to you, sweep you off your feet, and twirl you around like those movies the humans love so much? Then you’ll kiss that one perfect kiss and remember how much you love each other?” She said “love” like it was something slimy on her tongue. “Don’t you get it?” She leaned closer to my face so that her breath washed against my face. It smelled of wine and iron. “You can’t have him; he belongs to me.”

  “I know that,” I said, almost as surprised as Theo was at how soft my words were. There was no venom, no heat. “I don’t want him back.”

  Theo stood up straight, moving out of my personal space. “Please, spare me your little games.”

  “No games,” I said with a shake of my head. “Theo, that night that I woke up and he was gone? When you called him back to you? That was one of the hardest nights of my life.” I didn’t bother to tell her the only other time I’d cried like I had that night was when I’d found out my parents had died in the metro bombing set off by a zealot human hate group, targeting supernaturals on their nightly commute to work. She didn’t need to know that. “Why the hell would I want to go through that again?” I held my hands up, almost pleading for her to understand.

  “Then why are you doing this?”

  “Why?” A harsh laugh escaped me, the sound surprising her into taking a half step backward. “Why do you think? Because I don’t want to die. The Dunhallows think I owe them, and this is the only thing they’ll take as a payment. If I don’t find Roane, or if you find him first, they’re going to kill me.”

  Theo stared at me and I knew she was deciding whether or not to believe me. I expelled a breath through my mouth, giving her the chance to smell the truth in my words. For one moment, I saw the mask falter, a crack in her perfect façade. Could it be she felt bad for me?