“Yes, Ms. Winters?”
“I told my friend Zoe Lashley that I would cover her shifts at the café this week.”
He waved a hand. “It’s already taken care of. Is there anything else?”
Actually, there was. “About Alexander Marcusi’s file …”
Before our last mission, Director Abrams and I had made a deal: I would help the CIA catch their havoc-wreaking dark mage and he would give me Alec’s CIA file. At the time I negotiated the deal, I’d thought Alec was dead and had spent the better part of seven months driving myself crazy wondering what had happened to him. Once I learned he was alive, I wanted the file more than ever. Sure, I wanted to know what he’d done to wind up on the CIA’s most wanted list, but more than that, maybe something in that file would help me clear his name so he could finally come home.
And Abrams had promised to show it to me. Today. Maybe he’d forgotten, but I sure as hex hadn’t.
“It’s being redacted,” he said gruffly. “I’ll see that it gets to you before you leave for Brazil.”
It wasn’t the answer I was hoping for, but at least it was something.
Abrams looked at me expectantly.
“Er, thanks?” I said.
He studied me a moment then shrugged and stood. “You gave me a lot of grief and negotiated a stiff trade before you agreed to assist with our last mission. I thought you’d ask for something else in exchange for your help on this one.”
Crap in a cauldron. He was right. Was it suspicious that I had agreed to this mission so quickly? From his expression, yes. A resounding yes.
“Erm, right. I almost forgot. I want a …” Um. I wracked my brain for something. Anything. “A new car.”
“Ms. Winters, the CIA is not a game show.”
Right. “Okay, a dollhouse then. A big one. Fully furnished, with working lights and a comfortable bed and one of those remote-control Barbie Dreamhouse cars.” Golem needed somewhere to sleep, and he’d get a kick out of them. Plus I liked the idea of the CIA shopping for dollhouse accessories.
One steely eyebrow lifted, as if to say, You’re a weird one, aren’t you?
“Fine,” he said. “Consider it done.”
Ryerson was waiting for me in the hallway, arms crossed, frown firmly in place.
“What was that about?” he asked as I brushed by him, marching deeper into the MPD.
“That was none of your business.”
He fell into step beside me and we walked the rest of the way to Andersen and Dahlia’s office in silence.
“Office” was a generous word for their slice of headquarters. “Lair” was more like it. Dahlia was the MPD’s tech guru and a communications specialist, so her side of the room brimmed with computer monitors positioned above a sleek glass-and-chrome workstation overflowing with assorted tech gadgetry. As the MPD’s resident mage, Andersen’s side of the room looked more like Morgan le Fey and Bill Nye the Science Guy spent a rainy afternoon designing a joint lab. A large wooden table with built-in burners dominated the middle of his space, while the walls were lined with glass-fronted cabinets stocked with herb and potion bottles labeled with rune markings. It was just as easy to label them with their actual names, and Andersen wasn’t a rune mage, so it was probably his way of preventing agents from pilfering his stock when he wasn’t around.
As for two of the smartest people I’d ever met, they were squared off over Andersen’s table, glaring at each other.
It was a weird sight.
Andersen wore khaki pants, loafers, and a slightly wrinkled polo shirt and generally looked like he was about to TA one of my dad’s theoretical physics lectures. He had light brown hair and bright blue eyes that usually held a hint of mischief, but right now were narrowed at the woman across from him.
Dahlia was a year or two younger than Andersen, but thanks to an aging curse placed on her by the witch whose boyfriend Dahlia had slept with, she looked closer to eighty-two than twenty-two. Which made the thick black eyeliner, purple lipstick, and rhinestone-studded choker all the more startling.
“Are we interrupting something?” Ryerson said in a tone that suggested he didn’t much care.
“Yes,” Andersen said at the same time Dahlia snapped, “No.”
They glared at each other a moment more, and then Dahlia pushed away from the table. “We’re done here.”
She flounced back to her side of the room, or as much as a woman chasing ninety could flounce. Today the streaks in her gray hair were blue, and she tossed a storm-colored curl over her shoulder and dropped—gingerly—into her chair with a disgruntled “hmph.”
Ryerson joined her, and they launched into a totally boring conversation about something called “op specs.”
I wandered into Andersen’s side of the room and flopped down on the couch, sinking into the worn leather with a groan of satisfaction. It wasn’t as comfortable as my cozy recliner at home, but it came close.
With one last scowl at Dahlia’s hunched back, Andersen spun around and started flinging open cabinets. He yanked a potion bottle off the shelf and set it down on the table so hard that it teetered precariously on the edge. I leapt up to steady it, grabbed the next one out of his hands before he could slam it down, and then snatched the next few out of the air as he flung them in my general direction. Most of the runes were archaic and I wasn’t sure what they meant, but best not to break them and find out.
He slammed the last cabinet closed and stormed back to the table. I eyed him warily. “Want to talk about it?”
“Do you want to talk about why you and Ryerson aren’t on speaking terms?” he snapped.
It was clearly a rhetorical question meant to make me back off. I shrugged. “Okay.”
He blinked. “But I don’t really want to hear about it.”
“Too late.” I pulled a small amount of magic into my fingertips, drew a quick rune, and flicked them both at the long row of desks separating the work spaces. A shimmery, soundproof veil of magic dropped like a curtain, sealing us off from Dahlia and Ryerson. Then I dropped onto the couch.
“Ainsley …” Andersen said.
“Do you want me to go first?”
Andersen sighed and sank onto the couch next to me. “Dahlia wants me to date other women.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You and Dahlia are dating?”
“No.” Andersen gazed wistfully across the room, at the old woman pointing a wrinkled, knobby finger at something on her screen. “That’s the problem. You know, right before the curse, I finally worked up the nerve to ask her out. She said no. That she was dating someone else. Well, turns out that someone had a girlfriend. Then she got cursed, and now she’s single and more determined than ever that I give up on her and move on.”
It was possible Dahlia simply wasn’t interested, but from the looks she gave him when he wasn’t looking, I doubted it was as simple as that.
“She’s just looking out for you,” I said, and his scowl deepened. “Well, look at it from her perspective. She’s suddenly old and dealing with a lot of new things, like”—I wracked my brain for things my grandmother used to worry about—“falling in the shower and where she put her teeth. Maybe she doesn’t want to worry about a new relationship too. Plus her last relationship clearly ended badly, as did her last encounter with magic.”
“So?”
I shrugged. “So you’re a mage. Maybe she’s a little wary.”
Andersen didn’t look happy about that, but he nodded. “I suppose.”
“Or maybe she’s trying to protect you.”
He raised one skeptical eyebrow.
“I’m serious. Maybe she’s worried she’ll be old forever, and she wants you to live a normal life. You know, with babies and whatnot.”
“I don’t care about that,” he said, but there was the slightest hesitation in his voice that made me think that wasn’t entirely true.
I shrugged. “She won’t be old forever. We’ll find a way to change her back, and then you can ask her ou
t again. If she turns you down then, you’ll know she just doesn’t think you’re as sexy as you believe you are.”
“Thanks,” he said drily. He pulled his gaze away from Dahlia and focused it on me. “Distract me. Tell me what’s up with you and Ryerson.”
“He doesn’t want me on this mission.”
“Well, of course not.”
I turned a glare on him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He held his hands up defensively. “Sorry. Did he tell you why he doesn’t want you on this mission?”
“He says it’s too dangerous.”
“It is dangerous.”
Now it was my turn to scowl. “I can take care of myself.”
“Can you?”
I decided that I was wrong; talking about it definitely did not help. “I took care of myself just fine on the last mission,” I reminded him.
“Look, you did good on the last mission. Hell, you did great. That’s why Director Abrams asked you back. But how much of that was skill and instinct, and how much of it was luck?”
I opened my mouth to argue and then clamped it shut. After all, wasn’t that the same conclusion I’d come to right before I got here? Ryerson had skill and instinct in spades, but me? I’d mostly just been lucky.
“Face it, Ains,” Andersen said, relaxing back into the cool leather and nodding across the room. “They’re trying to protect us.”
“Or themselves,” I muttered.
“True tha—shit,” Andersen muttered.
I followed his gaze to Ryerson, who was frowning at us. No, at me. His mouth was moving, but no sound came out. I whispered the deactivation phrase, and the soundproof veil vanished.
“—you seriously just erect a sound wall?” Ryerson finished, his eyes narrowed.
There was no good answer to that, so I just smiled winningly, mimed that I couldn’t hear him, and turned back to Andersen. “Show me some spells?”
He looked relieved to have something to distract himself. “Thought you’d never ask.”
For the next thirty minutes, Andersen showed me the potions he’d prepared for the mission and then walked me through a few spells that he’d translated into runes, just for me. Andersen was an aura reader and a spellcaster. Runes weren’t his specialty, but he’d done a good job with these. I made a few minor tweaks, and they were ready.
“I need to show these to Ryerson now, so he knows what’s in your arsenal this trip,” Andersen said.
So while Andersen and Ryerson talked magic, I wandered over to Dahlia’s side of the room. She didn’t glance up from her monitor as I sat in one of the spinny chairs and spun in a slow circle.
Finally, she gave up and turned to me with an expectant look. “Well? What did he say?”
I stopped spinning and glanced toward the guys, but they were at the far end of the room and I couldn’t hear them, so I didn’t bother erecting another sound wall.
“That you want him to date other women.”
“And?” she prompted.
“And what?”
“Why won’t he?”
I shrugged. “He doesn’t want to.”
“Why not?”
“He likes you.”
“I’m ninety.”
“I thought you said you were eighty-two.”
She shrugged. “Eighty-two-ish. And he needs to find someone else. I can’t even think about dating someone, not like this, and who knows how long it will be before the curse is lifted. If it’s ever lifted.”
She sounded so miserable. Andersen was a talented mage and very motivated, but so far he’d been unable to lift the curse. Then again, Andersen was only one mage. Maybe what we needed were more witches working on a solution. I had a mission to pack for and new runes to practice, but I couldn’t just do nothing about Dahlia’s situation, either.
“Listen, my Aunt Belinda’s coven meeting is tonight. Why don’t you come with me? We can ask them about your curse. Maybe one of them will know something that might help.”
Dahlia perked up. It occurred to me she probably didn’t get out much these days. I didn’t know if she had family, but she probably had friends, and it’s hard to explain that you’re the same twenty-two-year-old they knew when you suddenly looked ninety, no one knows magic exists, and you’re sworn to secrecy by pesky national security laws.
She caught herself and shrugged. “That doesn’t sound terrible.”
“Great. It’s the Painted Urn herbal shop on Washington. Um, can you still drive?”
She glared at me. “I’m ninety. Not dead.”
Right. “Great. Meet me in the parking lot at seven.”
“Why not inside?”
“You’ll see.”
3
The Painted Urn, Aunt Belinda’s herbal shop, was tucked between a pizza parlor and a twenty-four-hour gym. When I pulled into the parking lot behind the shopping strip, Dahlia was already waiting for me.
“I tried the door,” she said after I parked and got out. “It’s locked. Do you have a key or something?”
“Or something,” I said as we walked toward the back door. Six feet from the building I felt it: a thickening of the air and the absolute certainty that the building was locked up tighter than the MPD and we might as well go home. I raised my hands and pressed the air where it felt the thickest. It shimmered and rippled under my touch.
“What is it?” Dahlia asked.
“A ward.”
She nodded approvingly. “Cool.”
Like other humans, Dahlia couldn’t see the faint flickers and colorful striations of magic woven into the ward. Which was too bad, because it was actually pretty beautiful. All wards were meant to keep someone out of—or occasionally, in—something. But each one boasted its own unique features, adopting the temperament and the intent of the witch or mage who cast it. They were like magical quilts, each one unique, sewn together with slightly different materials so the purpose was generally the same but the appearance varied. This one was streaked with lavender and gold and smelled faintly of honey. Aunt Belinda had used coneflower in her spell. The better to numb the mind against anything other than what the ward insisted was true.
I plunged my hands deeper into the ward and sucked in a breath. It didn’t hurt, not exactly. More like a pressure building around my arms. I waited while the ward ran shimmery magic fingers over my arms. It tickled, but I was careful not to laugh. Wards could be sensitive sometimes. This was a relatively simple cloaking ward. Its purpose wasn’t to cause harm, just deter. But like most magic, over time wards can develop a personality of their own. That personality was usually a shadow of its caster’s, and Aunt Belinda was thick-skinned. Which meant that if I laughed, the ward probably wouldn’t decide to fry me like an egg, but better not to insult it and find out.
Eventually, the ward decided I was acceptable and opened a doorway in itself. I grabbed Dahlia’s hand, and we walked through it.
“What did you do to it?” Dahlia asked.
“Nothing. The ward is meant to deter humans, not witches. Once it knew what I was, it let me in.” We stood in front of the back door to the magic shop. I twisted the knob, and the heavy black door opened easily.
“That was locked,” Dahlia protested.
“The ward is spelled to make you think you tried the door and found it locked, but you never came within six feet of it.”
“Oh. Andersen’s wards usually just shock people if they try to touch his stuff.”
“Andersen doesn’t have to hide his wards from the human world. Everyone in the MPD already knows magic exists. Wards in the real world have to be more nuanced. A door that shocked people would get a lot of complaints and probably end up with the police sniffing around. Most witches don’t like to advertise what we are, or that magic even exists. Historically speaking, it usually ends badly for us.”
We wended our way through a maze of mismatched bookshelves laden with crystals and books, candles and bulk jars of dried herbs, to the basement door. Dahlia eyed the
steep steps warily and white-knuckled the railing with a bony fist. I moved to the other side and offered her my arm. She scowled and swore, but in the end she took my arm, and together we descended into the basement.
For a boxy, concrete storage room, the basement was actually pretty cozy. There were no windows, which was part of the reason they’d chosen this spot for their monthly meetings. The storage boxes—mostly inventory, office supplies, and seasonal decorations, I knew from the summers I’d spent working here—had been pushed against the walls, and Aunt Belinda had cozied up the center of the room with a thick rug, an old comfortable couch that spent its former life in my parents’ living room, and a mismatched collection of wooden chairs and used recliners she’d picked up from coven members and garage sales over the years. She’d tried to confiscate my comfy chair, even magicked it into the basement once. I didn’t know any telekinesis runes, so I’d borrowed my brother and his pickup truck and hauled it right back.
In the middle of it all sat a low, round altar. Most humans would mistake it for a coffee table, but you’d never catch a witch setting a drink on that.
Aunt Belinda’s coven members milled about the room, talking and holding small appetizer plates and drinking coffee and punch from a folding table set up against the far wall. I spotted Aunt Belinda across the room, but before I could reach her, a rasping voice called, “Yoohoo, Ainsley!”
I sucked back a groan as a diminutive woman with close-set eyes, large spectacles, and hair even frizzier than my own elbowed her way through the small crowd.
Most of us witches didn’t advertise what we were. We wore normal clothes, had normal jobs, and some of us got married and had normal—or not so normal—kids. We lived normal lives. We just also happened to be witches.
Eugenia Halfpenny didn’t do normal. Today she wore a flowing blue robe and a headband with wilting flowers glued to it. During the day, she worked as a psychic doing palm and tarot-card readings, although she was less successful at it than one might expect a witch to be. I thought this had a lot to do with her fondness for predicting everyone’s death, which, according to Eugenia, was usually imminent and gruesome. Aunt Belinda believed it has more to do with the fact that she’s not actually prescient.
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