“So, for all you care, they could kill Owen?”
“No,” I said with a sigh, putting my hand to my face, rubbing my tired eyes. I fell to sit on the edge of my bed, pulling the sheet over my legs to chase away the chill. “Of course I don’t want them to kill Owen, but he’s not the main reason why I’m doing this.”
“So you do still care for him.”
“Look, I’m not okay with anyone killing someone and then blaming me for it,” I said, fisting the edge of the sheet in my hands.
Theo stared down at me, down that perfect right angle of a nose as she weighed my words.
“I have it on good authority that you didn’t have anything to do with Roane’s disappearance, okay? So I’m not going to bother you again,” I said, hoping it would get her to leave.
“Good authority,” she said, rolling the words in her mouth. “Someone has betrayed my secrets?”
“That’s not what I said.” I started to stand, but Theo lifted a hand to stop me. She pursed her lips and looked out the window.
“Perhaps not, but it’s what you meant,” she said almost too softly for me to hear. I damned that junkie with that innocent comment. Theo would ferret him out and his dead blood would be on my hands.
“Theo, please,” I sighed, feeling the weight of world on my shoulders, “just leave me alone. Let me find Roane, free Owen, send him back to you, and just…” My words trailed off and I felt the first sting of tears. I closed my eyes, damming them before I said, “Just leave me alone.”
I felt the air shift around me, and when I opened my eyes again, I was alone in my room. I drew in a deep breath through my nose, holding it until I was sure I wasn’t going to cry. Artemis came in through the bathroom door, his head moving from side to side as he searched for Theo.
“She’s gone, you chicken,” I said, pulling my legs up and crawling into the middle of the bed. Artie jumped up, his weight shifting the covers as he walked up to my face. He butted my head with his, rubbing his face against mine. I couldn’t give him too hard a time for hiding from the vampire. They were known to dine on animals just as easily as humans, after all. I wrapped my arms around his plump little body and curled around him. He purred against me, going boneless to accommodate me, and with his warm, soothing magic settling over me like another blanket, I managed to fall back asleep.
Chapter 13
The sun was setting, melting slowly into the west, causing the bright orange rays to cut through my kitchen windows. It was so bright I cringed away from it, my eyes still crusted with sleep. I needed to get ahead of all this bullshit if I ever wanted another decent night’s sleep. I groaned when I realized I’d forgotten to make coffee before passing out for the day and the carafe sat there, empty and cold. It was all Theo’s fault, all of it, including the unmade coffee.
I grabbed my wand off of the window sill and gave the coffee maker a good whack with it, watching as purple sparks ignited from the end. A moment later, I was rewarded with the first hiss and sizzle of brewing coffee hitting the bottom of the warming glass carafe. It was a stupid parlor trick that drained my wand of power, but at that moment, as I scrubbed the sleep crust from my eyes, I just didn’t give a rat’s ass about wasting a little power.
Artie was sitting on the counter by his empty food bowls, just staring at me. His fluffy black tail hung limp over the edge of the counter, not a flicker of movement. I huffed before opening the fridge and pulling out the half-gallon of milk.
“Mrrrrr,” Artie warned just before I poured the milk, his tail swishing threateningly.
“You’re gonna get fat if all you drink is cream,” I said as I capped the jug, switching it out for the cream anyway.
“Mrrrrr,” he said again, his ears flickering indignantly.
“Well, it’s true,” I said after splashing the cream into the bowl and filling the second with dry food. His whiskers twitched for a moment, as if he really was reconsidering asking for the cream, but it wasn’t long before he dipped his head forward and began lapping it up anyway. I snickered at him as I reached for a coffee cup.
While I was fixing myself a cup of the glorious ambrosia, I heard the whisper of paper against wood. My spine stiffened before I turned to face the front door, peering around the kitchen wall to stare at the white envelope on the floor. Even at this distance I could see the swirling red script on the white paper.
“Do they know how to do anything in a non-creeper way?” I asked Artie as I stood and started toward the door. Before I could bend over to pick it up, Artemis was in front of me, placing a black paw on the envelope, stopping me. I waited as he inspected the delivery; any witch who didn’t take a warning from her familiar was likely to become a dead witch. When Artie was satisfied it wasn’t poisoned or deadly in any way, he sat back on his haunches and let me pick it up.
My name was scrawled across the front – Matilda – just like the first threatening message. When I opened this envelope however, there was a lovely stack of bills inside, about half an inch thick. I breathed in the scent of the money, sighing happily as a knot between my shoulder blades magically loosened. It was human currency, which was great because it was easier to move than gold or jewels. Those usually caused too many questions from nosey bankers, which was why Jimmy’s gemstones were still hidden in my room.
I took a moment to thumb the stack of bills, giving them a cursory count. Every bill was a one hundred dollar bill. My heart lodged somewhere in my throat and I couldn’t swallow it down for a few moments. And this was only half!
A small, petty part of me wanted to run out of the building right then and hit all the shops I was too intimidated to ever go into and buy myself a whole new winter wardrobe. But another part of me, the more practical and terrified part of me, seriously thought about marching down to the front counter and paying my rent for the next six months. Clearly I had no idea how to manage this much money all at once. Maybe I would talk to Ronnie about it later.
I tucked the money back inside the envelope and pulled out the slip of paper inside. There was no salutation or signature, just some coordinates.
“Way to be cryptic, guys,” I muttered. “Who the hell still uses coordinates?” I shook my head, thanking whatever gods had convinced me to get a computer last year. I was piggybacking my internet connection from Frankie’s apartment below mine, and so far she hadn’t noticed; again, thank the gods for that. But at least I had a way to look up the coordinates.
I took the money and stashed it in the same hiding place as the gemstones: the false bottom of the bottom drawer of my nightstand. At least now I didn’t have to worry about spending the bills I had left in my purse from Jimmy’s payment. I could eat and shop without a rock forming in my stomach.
“Well I guess I know how I’m spending my night,” I muttered.
After a shower, a few swipes of mascara, and a third cup of coffee, I was dressed and out the door. I had managed to find the location of the coordinates after a quick internet search and wrote the directions on a slip of paper so I wouldn’t get lost. The field where Roane’s token had been was in an unincorporated area, and based on the satellite pictures of the area, there wasn’t so much as a park ranger’s station for miles around. Not exactly the smartest place to put it, if you asked me.
If I were a fairy with a token to protect, I think I would actually put it within a city park, some place where people weren’t allowed to go after hours; some place that had regular security monitoring the area. It was strange that the tokens were kept outside at all, but my mother had told me once that fairy tokens had to be outside so that they could draw their power from the sun and earth. If a token withered and died, then the fairy would wither and die as well. And whatever world the fairy was in, they had to take their token with them, so really, traveling from one world to another was somewhat dangerous because they had to dig their token out of the earth and transplant it before it weakened and died. Not sure I would take that risk if it were me. But then again, I’d always thought
fairies were a little weird.
It took me nearly an hour’s drive to get to the field. I thought about leaving the car running with the lights on to give me something to see by, but I didn’t want to take the chance of drawing some passerby’s attention. So I cut the engine, grabbed the seeking talisman I’d whipped up, and climbed out of the car, making sure I had my cellphone in my pocket before I headed into the darkened field.
I held up the talisman and whispered, “Peto.” It spun on the cord for a moment before it swung forward, straining in the direction it wanted me to go. I started walking, placing my feet carefully for fear of gopher holes and other ways of twisting my ankles.
It was a twenty minute hike before the talisman came to a stop, hanging limp in my hand. My shirt was starting to stick to the small of my back, and I was brushing my bangs away from my forehead. Despite the cold of the night, I was sweating from the mostly uphill hike. I pulled my phone out and used it as a flashlight.
The ground around me was scorched and dead, as if someone had set fire to this small, circular patch of earth. Clearly the witch who’d cast the locator spell wasn’t very skilled. They should’ve been able to find the clover and pluck it without damaging the ground around it, which made me think they’d used black magic. It was the only explanation I could think of that would harm life-giving earth like this. I shook my head, realizing I was gonna be up against someone who didn’t mind causing permanent damage to get what they wanted.
“Not good,” I muttered to myself. I knelt down on the edge of the green grass, pulled out the crystal vile I’d brought with me, and gathered up a sample of the scorched earth, plucking a few of the white roots still reaching through the earth and putting them inside as well before I corked it. I was going to use the sample to find the signature of the witch who’d stolen Roane’s token. The fact that they also hadn’t taken the time to clean up their mess made me wonder how inexperienced these people were. I mean, if it were me, I would have cleansed the area and then done a regrowth spell to cover my tracks. But these guys? They had just left the evidence for all to see. Now I could take this home and draw out their magical signature and brew a locator spell that would be as strong as if I had a drop of their blood to activate it.
By the time I was back in my car, I was shivering. It had started to rain again and my sweat damp shirt was sending chills up my spine as the rain plastered my hair to my head, sending freezing drops of water under the collar of my jacket. I sat in the car for a few minutes, letting the engine warm up and waiting for the heat to fill the interior. When my hands stopped trembling, I pulled the glass vial out of my pocket and held it up, examining it by the light from my dashboard. The dirt was mostly black and the tiny roots were already shriveling up.
I had a feeling I knew what kind of spell had been used, not the kind of spell a witch like me or Ronnie would ever use. It was a fiend fire spell, where the caster set a ring of fire around an area where they were looking for something and the fire would slowly burn, the circumference of the ring shrinking in upon itself until it centered around the item the caster was looking for. Then it would just continue to flame and smolder until you took the item you were looking for, finally extinguishing the flames. The burned area was about four feet wide, so they’d managed to get pretty close to the clover. They just didn’t want to take the time to comb through the hundreds of three-leaf clovers to find it by hand.
“Strange they got so sloppy when they were so close,” I said. Reaching for my bag, I slipped the vial into the zipper pocket to keep it safe, hoping it was secure enough to keep the cork from coming out.
Driving home was much faster now that I knew where I was. I could feel the zing of power from my talismans as I walked through the various doorways, stepping over thresholds as I went. At least those were still working, giving me a little peace of mind. Frankie’s brother, Ramon, was manning the front desk tonight and he offered me a toothy smile and a wave as I passed by. I just nodded at him. Ramon was a notorious flirt who did not discriminate, so if you so much as opened your mouth and said “hello,” he’d pounce and you’d lose twenty minutes of your life trying to get away. I just kept moving resolutely forward, grateful for the gremlin man who stepped off the elevator just as I reached it.
I was inside, pressing the closed-door-button as fast as I could. The gilded doors slid closed on the disappointed face of Ramon just as he was stepping around the front desk. I breathed out in relief, bracing one hand on the wall. The ride up was as shaky as ever, but that time I didn’t notice as much.
The zing of power snapped at the soles of my feet as I stepped onto my floor. I rushed to my door, keys already in hand when I reached my apartment. There was no one else in the hall with me, but after all of the unexpected visits I’d had, I couldn’t help but feel the creeping, sneaking fingers of paranoia crawling up my spine, reaching to grab me, pull me back and away from the safety of my apartment.
I slammed my shoulder into the door to open it, spinning around and slamming it shut, throwing the locks into place with shaking fingers. It took me two tries to get the freezing spell to take on the knob. I rested my shoulders against the door, trying to get my breathing and heartbeat under control. Artemis sat a few feet in front of me, his black head tilted to the side as he watched me pull back from the edge of a panic attack.
“I’m fine,” I whispered. Whether I was answering his questioning face or trying to convince myself, I wasn’t really sure. “Everything quiet here?” I asked, happy to hear my voice wasn’t quite as shaky as it had been a moment ago.
“Prrrow,” Artie answered, licking his paw before dragging it over the top of his head.
“Toads,” I cursed under my breath. “I’ll bet that bitch, Theo, did something to the hallway out there to freak me out!” I ripped my bag off and let it fall to the floor with a thud before I started tearing at my boots to get them off. I flung my coat at the couch as I stalked across the room, heading for the bedroom to change my clothing, having to peel my shirt from my back.
“Now I gotta cleanse the hallway!” I snarled, pulling open my drawers, pawing through the folded clothing, turning the organized shirts into a mess as I finally picked a black shirt with the logo of Black Witch White Magic, my favorite band, written in sparkly purple script across the front. “As if I didn’t have enough to do already,” I raged, pulling a brush through my tangled hair and grabbing two small clips to pull it out of my face while I worked in the kitchen.
By the time I was cleaned up and back in the kitchen, any chill from the wet night air had been burned out of me by my own temper. I could even feel the heat of my anger in my cheeks and my hands were trembling for a whole different reason.
“I’m gonna stake that bitch one day,” I said to Artie as he waited patiently for me on the counter.
I took a moment to catch my breath, bracing my hands on the counter and letting my head drop, counting in my head to slow my breathing. I felt Artemis’s warm power next to me as he sat on the counter, waiting patiently for once in his nine lives. After a few silent moments, he butted his head against my arm, getting me to look up at him. He was purring softly, picking his way carefully across the edge of the counter until he was standing between my hands, arching his back to rub against my face. The stitch in my chest loosened and I chuckled, pushing away from the counter so I could scratch him. He was a pushy bitch sometimes, but other times he was the only thing that kept me from losing my mind.
“All right, Artie,” I said, running my hand down his furry spine. “Time to get to work.” Artemis mrrowed his consent and bounded across the counter, leaping to the other side of the kitchen before jumping on top of the fridge. He watched from his perch, his yellow eyes looking dark at this angle. His tail fell, forming a perfect black J against the silver fridge.
I grabbed a copper pot and filled it under the tap before setting it on the stovetop. I had to clear away a couple of pans that I’d forgotten to wash, dumping them into the sink. I would
kill for two stovetops so I could cook at one and spell at another and never worry about cross-contamination. Picking up my wand from the window sill, I jabbed at the burner under the pot until blue flames burst to life. Artie made a small noise of approval.
I hurried into the living room and dug into my bag until I found the vial of scorched dirt. Clutching it in my hand, I rushed back into the kitchen and set it on the counter. I started rummaging through my cabinets for the necessary ingredients, finally putting my wand between my teeth to free up both hands so I could dig and grab as needed. I heard Artie make a noise of contempt, knowing I shouldn’t be biting down on my wand, but I only had two hands after all.
Half an hour later, the counters were strewn with chopped herbs, spilled water, my mother’s brass scales, and wooden talismans. I tapped out grains of the scorched dirt onto one side of the scales, the other side balanced with the one ounce weight, watching until the two sides shifted back and forth, finally settling on an even keel. I brushed the dirt into the cauldron and was rewarded with the sudden bubbling of the concoction, threatening to bubble over the edge and stain my stovetop. But it stopped just at the edge, settling down to a rolling boil.
I checked the timer on the microwave; I was moving at a good pace. If I did this right, I’d have the witch’s signature in ten more minutes. I blew out a breath, sending a loose strand of hair fluttering out of my face. Artie jumped down from the fridge, landing carefully so that he didn’t knock over any of my bottles or send any piles of herbs to the floor. He picked his way across the counter until he was standing by the cauldron. He stretched until his tiny pink nose was close enough for a sniff. I watched as his whiskers twitched. When he sat back and turned his smushed face toward me, I knew something was wrong.
“What?” I asked, stepping forward to look into the cauldron. The liquid should be on its way through the spectrum to clear and right now it should have been somewhere around lilac, but as I stared, I felt my heart leap into my throat; the liquid was pitch black and congealing.
Wytchcraft: A Matilda Kavanagh Novel Page 20