by Debora Geary
To Love A Witch
by Debora Geary
Copyright 2011 Debora Geary
Fireweed Publishing
Smashwords Edition
Chapter 1
Jake stood in front of the sign for the Franklin County Youth Detention Center and sighed. How come he got all the juvenile delinquent witches?
Being a monitor for the Witch Sentinel System was supposed to be a life of excitement and reward. At least that’s what his recruiter Duncan had said when he signed on the dotted line. Of course, Duncan was monitor for zone eleven, which meant he mostly got to sit around on Maui beaches.
Lots of sand in New Mexico, but that was about where the similarities ended. And this was the second time in three months a Sentinel alert had led him to a kid in lock-up.
It probably made sense. Uncontrolled magical powers tended to get you in trouble.
In extreme circumstances, you grabbed the witch and asked questions later, but since there were no signs of impending magical disaster, Jake preferred to do surveillance first. He was going to have to get inside.
He reached for power, and reveled in the flow of magic. One of the good things about the New Mexico zone was an ample power supply.
“I ask the power of earth and land,
Come on out, give me a hand.
I need a way into this dive,
Peel away years, ten and five.
Gotta do what must be done,
Make it so, Number One.”
He hoped Jean Luc didn’t mind the line rip-off. Some witches could get away with spellwork that didn’t rhyme, but he wasn’t one of them. And he’d gotten past the “as I will, so mote it be” crap a long time ago.
The bit of his face he could see in his motorbike mirror looked fourteen. Excellent. It was always easiest to cast an illusion that was fairly close to reality. Peel fifteen years off his looks and passing for a delinquent wasn’t going to be a problem.
Franklin County juvie wasn’t one of the hardcore lock-ups, so sneaking in shouldn’t be too difficult. Sneaking out with a rescued witch in tow might be a bigger issue, but he’d cross that bridge later.
Jake walked in the front door and muttered a standard “don’t notice me” spell under his breath. He’d needed that one a lot lately.
Moving to a chair in the corner, he sat down and tried to get a read on the place. Three doors—one for staff only, one into the detention wing, and the front door. Damn, that wasn’t a lot of escape routes.
It was an entirely depressing space. Puke-green walls, grunge floors, and a bunch of bureaucratic paperwork and preachy signs blanketed over the walls. A colorful poster advertising rehearsals for Delinquent Drama’s production of West Side Story was the only thing that kept his eyes from squeezing closed in self-defense.
A hand clamped down on his shoulder. Damn. The hand belonged to a skinny black woman dressed in a guard uniform. Her nametag said Darlene.
“Where are you supposed to be, kid?”
It took Jake a moment to remember he looked fourteen. And delinquent. “Dunno.”
“Well, who left you out here?” Darlene looked very grumpy. He couldn’t blame her. Puke-green walls could cause an epidemic of cranky.
Jake tried his best tough-guy face and shrugged.
Darlene scowled. “You’re never going to be as tough as me, kid. Don’t even try. Where are you supposed to be?”
The wall poster caught his eye. “Stupid drama rehearsal.”
“You one of Romy’s kids? You must be new; I thought I had all her kids pegged. Come on, I’ll take you in.” The hand on his arm was a lot gentler than he’d expected.
Romy must be the do-gooder that ran the drama program. No way the state funded anything that touchy-feely.
Darlene escorted him through the door into the detention wing. The puke-green theme continued, with no windows to see the desert outside. Sadly, he was no longer shocked by where society chose to stash some of their kids. Five years ago, as a green recruit, he’d been horrified.
He suspected his power-detection spell wasn’t going to work very well through concrete walls, but he tried anyhow. Nope. All he knew for sure now was that Darlene wasn’t a witch. Of the magic-wielding variety, anyhow.
She ushered him into a big room and pointed at a row of chairs at the back. “Sit there. Watch. Don’t move.”
Jake sprawled on a chair and got his first look at a Delinquent Drama rehearsal. A kid with tattoos over every visible inch of skin was currently running everyone through a dance sequence.
He tried to think back to the time he’d flown his sister to New York for her birthday, and they’d caught West Side Story. Rival gangs, soppy teen love story, lots of dancing. Tattoo Boy must be one of the gang members. If he wasn’t, casting had totally screwed up.
Except for Darlene sitting in the corner, there didn’t appear to be any adults present. Maybe do-gooder Romy had to pee or something.
Time to give the power-detection spell another crack. You only set off the Sentinel alarms if you had pretty decent power. If his target witch was one of the kids currently learning how to dance in formation, this was plenty close enough to tell.
Jake muttered under his breath. A slight, redheaded girl in the back row of dancers lit up like a Christmas tree, to witch-sight at least. Check. Witch located.
Then the glow abruptly disappeared. Crap. One, the girl had noticed his power-detection spell. And two, she had enough control over her magic to lock it down and go stealth.
Normally, he was a fan of people who could control their magic, but anyone with that kind of skill was going to be a little trickier to rescue.
She hadn’t found him yet. However, judging from the way she was ping-ponging off other dancers, Tattoo Boy’s choreography wasn’t her current focus.
He’d learned a few things in his five years with Sentinel. If you were trying to snatch a witch and run, speed was your friend.
Grabbing power through concrete sucked, but he did it anyhow. No way he got the two of them out of here without a fairly jazzy piece of spellwork.
“I ask the power of earth and land,
Come on out, give me a hand.
Freeze the people in this room,
Long enough for us to zoom.
Lock down the magic of the red-haired witch,
And leave these folks with a memory switch.
Gotta do what must be done,
Make it so, Number One.”
Everyone in the room went stone-still. Awesome. Jake jumped up from his chair, threw the immobilized girl over his shoulder, and ran.
The freeze part of the spell would give him a couple of minutes, but he didn’t trust the lock-down on the redhead to hold for that long.
Tossing out a quick “don’t notice me” spell, he ran through the front room. The clerk at the front desk never looked up.
He felt the bundle over his shoulder start to wiggle and cursed. Any witch who could go stealth could also uncloak with a vengeance, and just like the Romulans, they could be mean once weapons were online.
Throwing an ignition spell at his motorbike, he tried to climb on and dump the girl behind him. It wasn’t the most graceful of maneuvers, and he lost his grip.
She was out of reach in a split second and rounded on him from several feet away. “Hands up, you bastard. What the hell are you trying to do?”
When you were facing a monumentally pissed-off teenage witch with sparks flying out of her fingers, and you were straddling a gas tank, there was only one smart thing to do.
Jake was no dummy. He cut the ignition and dropped his illusion spell. Time for an adult to take charge.
Chapter 2
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Romy was trying not to freak. She’d hallucinated a time or two in her life, but this wasn’t one of them. Her teenage assailant had just aged a whole bunch.
“Who are you, and what do you want?”
The wanna-be kidnapper held his hands up. “Take it easy. I’m here to help you.”
Romy waved her sparks closer to the gas tank. “Try again.”
“I’m Jake. To make a long story really short, you set off an alert with all that firepower of yours. I’m here to take you to a better place.”
Romy took a couple more steps backward and wished with all her heart she could get the magic to calm down. It had been at least ten years since she’d sparked with anyone around to see, and she needed better control if it was going to be a potential weapon.
She tried again to focus on the stranger. “What do you mean I set off an alert?”
“I work for the Witch Sentinel System. It’s my job to find kids with magic in this zone and check things out—make sure you’re in a good situation. Juvie qualifies you for immediate rescue. I can take you someplace better.”
He didn’t look like a dirty old man or a serial killer, but she was well aware that evil came in many shapes. She was incredibly lucky he hadn’t grabbed one of her kids instead. “Kidnapping’s a felony. Swiping screwed-up kids earns you a special place in hell.”
Jake just raised an eyebrow. “You want to stay in lock-up?”
Romy could feel the sparks flaring again. She tried desperately to tamp them down. Surely someone inside would notice she was missing soon. “No one wants to stay in lock-up. I’d have left with any guy who promised me a way out. How many girls have you taken?”
She kept inching backward. A few feet more and she just might risk blowing him up. People who preyed on kids got no chances in her world.
She saw Jake’s temper fire up, and then abruptly die. “I’m not taking you for any of those reasons you’re thinking.” His voice was suddenly very gentle. “No kid your age should even know about stuff like that.”
“I know plenty.” Her certainty was wavering. She’d met a few girl-snatching perverts in her time, and he wasn’t sticking to the script.
Jake just looked at her for a minute. “You don’t have to come with me. Most kids want to, but you don’t have to come right now. It’s tricky for me to talk with you in juvie, but I can probably arrange to get on your visitor list.”
His quiet offer made her ache. As a teen, she’d spent three years in lock-up without a single visitor.
“Who are you?” she asked again, backing off slightly from thoughts of torching him.
“I’m Jake Hayes. I work for an organization that tries to make sure young witches get to grow up in safety. Normally we find you before your magic lands you in trouble, but this zone hasn’t been very well staffed. I just got assigned a couple of months ago, but I’m truly sorry for whatever you’ve been through. I wish we could have gotten here sooner.”
No one had called Romy a witch in ten years, but it was hard to deny when you still had occasional sparks flying out of your fingertips. “What, you’re some kind of witch social worker?”
He grimaced. “Guessing you’re not a fan of social workers. I’m the monitor for this zone. When someone uses magic and sets off the Sentinel alerts, they send me out to assess the situation.”
“So far, that sounds like a social worker. Lots of assessing, no action.”
Jake started laughing. “Really. You get busted out of lock-up by social workers a lot?”
He had a point. “So you just drop in, grab a kid, and run?”
“Not usually. Most kids are fine, and we just keep eyes on them as they grow up. In some cases we put secondary supports in place. A witch-positive teacher or neighbor.”
“Witch-positive?”
“Someone who’s had exposure to witches and can help a kid adjust. If kids have a lot of power, or control issues, we hook them up with a trainer.”
Romy was pretty sure her sparks were finally under control, courtesy of long, lonely practice. No one had ever offered her a trainer, a friend, or anything else. “So why’d you grab me?”
Jake nodded toward the Youth Center. “We figure it’s pretty much a given that no kid should live in juvie. Or a mental ward—occasionally we find one there, too. We get you out, find you a better situation. Usually we place kids with families that have experience with magic.”
Her temper had always been her enemy. She spoke with the quiet precision that made anyone who knew her well head for cover. “So I set off some alarm somewhere when I played with fire, and you swoop in and take me away to some place where people actually care?”
Jake didn’t know her well. He looked relieved. “Yeah. I’m sorry that I’m a little late to the rescue, but I can help you now.” He looked over at the Center. “Ideally, you come with me before a search party comes out of there looking for you.”
Romy swept off her ball cap and let go her blazing fury. She could feel her hands getting hot again. She no longer cared. “You’re about fifteen years too late riding to my rescue, Jake. I spent three years locked up in this place, but I got out twelve years ago.”
He just gaped.
She swung away and walked back toward the Center, furious and aching.
She’d spent half her life wishing for a knight in shining armor. Unfortunately for Jake, it had been the first half. She’d stopped believing in fairy tales when the fires started and no one rode to her rescue at all.
Darlene came barreling out the door. “Honey, are you okay? Where’d you disappear to?”
“I’m fine. I just needed some air.”
“Uh huh. Who’s the guy?”
Romy turned around and looked at Jake. He was still gaping. “Nobody to worry about. Just another one of those people who wants to help a delinquent for a day.”
She opened the door to the Center and waved Darlene inside. “So, did the kids stage a revolution while I was gone?”
“Nope. Skate’s got them under control.”
Romy nodded. Skate had reformed a lot in the last year, but no one messed with him. “How’s the dance number coming?”
Darlene snickered. “Better with you out of the back row, girlfriend.”
“I never welch on a bet. Skate earned his GED, so I can learn a five-minute dance routine.” She hoped. It had taken a big incentive to get Skate to crack the books. She suspected the choreography for this particular number was his way of getting even.
“You keep starting that last bit heading the wrong direction. You gotta go left, then right.”
Romy sighed. “Yeah. So Skate keeps telling me.” As an actress, her left-right dyslexia was a pain. As a dancer, it was a major liability, but since Delinquent Drama was her brainchild, she didn’t get the luxury of whining.
They walked back into the drama room, and Skate looked gleeful at her return. She reminded herself she was in charge. “Good work on the dance number, guys. Now let’s run through the rumble scene.”
Not that most of her kids needed a lot of practice staging a knife fight, but it was a sure-fire way to distract Skate from her pathetic dance skills.
The Sharks and Jets cast members lined up on opposite sides of the stage. “Remember the ground rules—no blood, and take it easy on the body blows.”
“What is this, fighting for wimps?” That was Manny, one of the newest additions to her program. She kept quiet to see if the others could handle him.
Tina, the girl playing Maria, sauntered over. “Real fights are easy. Making it look real? That’s a lot harder. Besides, you get to die. Don’t complain.”
Manny shut up. Tina had a real way with troublemakers—a far cry from the rebel she’d been a year ago. Her audition for Maria had been one of Romy’s proudest moments. And damn, the girl could sing. Almost as well as she could fight.
Chapter 3
Jake grabbed a beer from the fridge and plunked down in front of his computer. He had the sneaking suspicion some cri
tical details had been left out of the background briefing for his current zone assignment.
Time to rectify that. He wiggled his fingers and prepared to do some hacking. Not that he needed an excuse, but it was for a good cause.
First he accessed files at the Franklin County Youth Detention Center. Their security was absurdly lax, but some thoughtful soul had computerized twenty years of inmate records. His red-haired girl said she’d been inside fourteen years ago. He should be able to find her.
He ran a quick scan through the current inmates. It was entirely possible she was fifteen and a good liar.
Unlikely, though. The look of her right after she’d yanked off her ball cap was imprinted on his brain. Furious, surrounded by cascades of flaming hair, and sexy as hell. He was pretty sure his sexy-chick radar didn’t point at fifteen-year-olds.
Confirmed. No hot redheads amongst the current residents. He did see Tattoo Boy, though. In for three years. That sucked. Jake couldn’t imagine living in puke green for that long without losing his sanity.
Pulling up the historical records, he scanned for the younger version of his fiery witch. He almost missed her—red hair wasn’t obvious in black-and-white mug shots—but that was the same face. Fairy-dust features, big eyes, and a really big chip on her shoulder, even then.
He clicked into her detailed record and got his second big surprise of the day. Romy Daniels. Romy was the name of the woman who ran Delinquent Drama. He’d kidnapped the adult in the room. Whoops.
Her own darn fault for hiding in the back row and looking prepubescent.
The story in her file was exactly the kind of thing Sentinel was supposed to prevent. A series of foster homes, and then locked up at fourteen for repeat arson offenses. No one would take in a kid who set fires while everyone else was sleeping.
He tried not to beat on his laptop; it was just the messenger. Witches with fire talents usually came into their power as young teens—and it tended to involve a lot of accidental firestarting. Romy probably started fires while she slept and her control was at its lowest.
The cure for that was a couple of training sessions and careful monitoring, not three years of lock-up in a concrete hell.