You Only Spell Twic

by Paige Howland

  Clearly, I still needed practice.

  “It should fade by the time we reach the airport.” I sounded grumpy, and I told myself that was because of the hex and not because I already missed Ryerson’s touch.

  Ryerson looked skeptical. “What exactly did you do last night?”

  “Hung out with Dahlia.”

  One dark eyebrow lifted, but I had remembered why I was mad and decided I was done explaining myself. I grabbed my overnight bag and hefted it toward the door.

  “Ainsley, wait.”

  I dropped the bag and turned, folding my arms over my chest.

  “You were right.”

  “Of course I was,” I said. “About what?”

  “I don’t want you on this mission with me.”

  Okay, wow. I mean, I already knew that, but hearing him say it hurt more than I thought it would.

  “You were right about that,” he went on, “but not for the reasons you think. You’re a good witch, Ainsley. And you’re smart. You think fast on your feet. But the work I do, it’s dangerous, and you haven’t been trained for it. I just … I don’t want anything to happen to you.” He looked like he wanted to say more and then stopped himself and shoved a frustrated hand through his hair.

  When Andersen had said it, it had felt insulting. Like I couldn’t handle myself. But when Ryerson said it, it somehow felt … really sweet.

  And just like that, all the anger I’d felt toward him since yesterday melted away. He looked so frustrated that I stepped back into the room and put a hand on his arm. Electricity shot through my fingertips, and this time it had nothing to do with magic. Not the witchcraft kind, anyway.

  He looked down at my hand, and then his gaze met mine. Emotion swirled there, intense and unexpected. I swallowed hard.

  “Are we good?” He looked unsure. It was the first time I’d seen anything less than complete confidence from him, and it took me a moment to recognize it.

  “Yeah, we’re good.”

  He nodded then grabbed my bag and slung it over his shoulder. “Ready?”

  Not really. But I grabbed the mission dossier from the nightstand. Only it wasn’t one packet, it was two. I flipped to the second and sucked in a breath.

  Alec’s file.

  Director Abrams had come through on his promise after all.

  “You okay?” Ryerson asked.

  I shoved both packets into my carryon to read on the plane. “Yep. Let’s go.”

  I called out a goodbye to Golem, left a voicemail for Mr. Wong that I’d be gone for a few days and asking him to check in on Jinx, and followed Ryerson out the door.

  Until last week, I’d never been on a plane. After he’d stopped being a total prat, Ryerson had actually been pretty nice about it, and each flight got a little easier. I mean, I still preferred cars over flying metal death traps, but I also no longer felt the urge to kiss the grimy airport floor every time we landed. It was progress.

  The last time Ryerson and I had flown to a foreign country, another CIA agent had met us at the airport. This time, no one was there to greet us. Ryerson led us out of the airport and into the cool Sao Paulo air, to a small red Fiat parked in a far corner of the parking lot. At first I thought he was going to steal it (he does that sometimes), but he opened the door, popped the glove box, and retrieved a keyless remote.

  We drove to an apartment complex on the edge of the city. Ryerson shouldered both bags and led the way to a fourth-floor apartment. He dumped the bags on a saggy couch while I headed straight for the kitchenette. When he walked into the tiny kitchen thirty seconds later, I was frowning into the refrigerator.

  “What?” he said.

  “There’s no food.” A note of accusation crept into my voice.

  He checked his watch. “We have a couple of hours before the mission.”

  I brightened. “Enough time to order pizza.”

  He shook his head and grabbed my jacket off the countertop, tossing it to me. “You’re in Brazil. If we’re going to eat, we’re going to do it right.”

  I was doubtful that anything could be more right than pizza, but in the end Ryerson drove us to a restaurant that sold tacos through a window abutting a busy street across from a lovely park filled with rich greenery and people walking and biking along the curved pathways. We ate our tacos in the car, overlooking a wide river and beyond that, downtown Sao Paulo, a sprawling gray metropolis speckled with pops of color: the blue of the sky reflected off the high-rise windows, the cheerful green of treetops sprinkled through the city, the gold dome of a cathedral nestled amongst its more secular neighbors. An enormous curved bridge spanned the river, hundreds of thin cables stretching out from its X-shaped midpoint to grip the road, like driving straight into the heart of a perfectly symmetrical spider’s web.

  My first taco was stuffed with spicy chicken and peppers smothered in a tangy, sweet sauce. I bit into it and groaned.

  Ryerson glanced at me, a rare smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Good?”

  “Amazing.”

  “Better than pizza?”

  “Let’s not get crazy.”

  His smile widened, and the dimple in his cheek did funny things to my stomach. I looked away. We ate in comfortable silence, watching the river and the people walking and biking along its shore.

  When we were done, I crumpled the trash and stuffed it inside the bag while Ryerson started the car and maneuvered into traffic.

  “So what’s the plan?” I said.

  He flashed me a frown. “Didn’t you read the mission report?”

  Er. About that. Alec’s file had been thick, and my lingering magic hangover meant I’d only had time to read one of them on the plane. Alec’s file had also been heavily redacted, and the parts that weren’t blacked out were mostly stuff I already knew, like his family background and that he’d been partnered with Ryerson before they were both reassigned—Ryerson to the MPD and Alec to a series of missions that eventually landed him the werewolf curse and a spot on the CIA’s most wanted list.

  I felt a little nosy reading through his medical record, but I was pleased to learn he was fit as a frog except for a few gunshot wounds, concussions, and too many stitches to count, mostly from work and one bar fight that had nothing to do with his job and everything to do with one too many whiskey shots, a girl, and her unamused bouncer boyfriend. Mission details, known associates, and timelines had been mostly redacted. In fact, the only name besides Ryerson’s that had not been redacted was someone named Orel. And that name was toward the end of his medical file—not his mission file—amid hundreds of pages of semi-redacted lab reports. Still, I’d pieced together what I could from the sparse information Director Abrams had left me, like the fact that the lab reports seemed to begin around the same time the CIA had told Alec’s family that he had died in the line of duty. Which would have been around the same time he was made a werewolf. Maybe Orel had been one of his doctors? I’d made a mental note to ask Dahlia and Andersen if they’d heard of him.

  The details of Alec’s last mission, the one I was most interested in, were the most heavily redacted of all. The bits of information that remained only confirmed that Alec had been on assignment when all five of his team members were murdered and Alec went rogue. All of which I already knew, except for two lines in a sea of black: The remaining five members of the special operations team were found shredded. Preliminary review of the scene suggests wild animal attack.

  I had no doubt that Director Abrams had deliberately left those lines for me, to show me why the CIA had concluded that Alec was responsible for those operatives’ deaths. And even I had to admit, it was pretty damning. But the Alec I knew would never have done that. He just wouldn’t. I had hoped his file would give me some direction on how to clear his name, but no such luck.

  With effort, I pulled myself out of my head and back to the present, where Ryerson was waiting for an answer.

  “Yeah, sure, of course I read the mission report,” I said. “But it can�
�t hurt to go over the plan one more time, right?”

  “You didn’t even open it, did you?”

  “I opened it! I just didn’t read it.”

  Instead of getting angry, which would have been totally fair, concern colored his tone as he said, “Did you get airsick again?”

  “No.”

  His expression darkened. “It was that TSA agent in the security line, wasn’t it? He was too handsy with you. I wasn’t able to focus for a while after that either.”

  That agent had been really thorough. “He said he saw a weird shape on the scan, and he was very professional. Wait, why did that bother you?”

  Ryerson looked away, but a muscle in his jaw flexed. “Because you’re my partner.”

  I waited, but he didn’t offer any further explanation. Fine.

  “You were asking about the mission plan?” Ryerson said, still not meeting my eye.

  “Yeah.” I thought about telling him I’d spent the whole flight reading Alec’s file instead of the mission report, fat lot of good that did me, but decided that starting a fight minutes before our mission was not my best idea. “Maybe just give me the highlights?”

  “Sure. According to our intel, Isadora Carvalho—the witch with the Grimoire—lives on an estate just outside the city. The estate is owned by her boyfriend, Eduardo Alvarez. Alvarez is the leader of the Ninth Command, one of Brazil’s most powerful drug cartels. Alvarez is in prison, but that doesn’t seem to have diminished his control or his expansion ambitions. These days he’s started a turf war with the Sousa Cartel, which supplies Sao Paulo and much of Rio de Janeiro. Rumor is that Alvarez has his sights set on the Sousa Cartel’s customer base, which the Sousas obviously aren’t happy about. Alvarez hasn’t made a direct move against them yet, but once he does, it’ll get messy real fast. The Sousas are just waiting for him to make a move, and then they’ll come after him with everything they’ve got. All of which means Alvarez’s estate is likely to be heavily guarded. I need you to keep an eye out for magical security measures that I might not be able to see.”

  Breaking into a heavily guarded palace during our last mission had taken loads of advanced planning. Breaking into a cartel kingpin’s compound couldn’t be easy, and Ryerson was nothing if not meticulously prepared. Now that I thought about it, it was weird that he hadn’t insisted we spend every minute since we left DC going over the plan details.

  “So what’s the plan? Are we sneaking in through a long-forgotten sewer tunnel? Meeting a team there to storm the place? Parachuting in through the skylights?”

  He flicked me a look. “You watch a lot of TV.”

  So no parachutes. Good. I didn’t love heights anyway. “Smoke bombs and a SEAL team?” I tried.

  He turned off the main road and onto a long, curving driveway. “We’re going to ring the doorbell and ask the mistress of the house to give us the Grimoire.”

  Um. “And then fight our way past the witch and her armed posse when she says no?”

  “If all goes according to plan, that shouldn’t be necessary.”

  We drove around a bend, and a house came into view. It was enormous, all white stone and turrets surrounded by a manicured lawn studded with narrow, precisely trimmed evergreen trees.

  “Why not?” I said, a bad feeling creeping up my spine.

  “Because,” he said as he drove right up the circular drive and parked in front of the mansion. “She’s expecting us.”

  5

  Ryerson killed the engine and stepped out of the car. I scrambled out after him.

  “You didn’t tell me we had a meeting with the gang leader’s mistress!” I whisper-yelled. Stealing from bad guys was one thing. Doing business with them? That felt plain wrong.

  “It was in the report,” he said in a frustratingly reasonable tone.

  “Why would she just hand over the Grimoire?”

  “Because we’re going to give her something she wants more.”

  “Like what?” I asked warily.

  “A shaving from the kokia cookei tree,” he said quietly as we walked up the front stairs. “It’s a rare tree extinct in the wild but grown on a few private ranches in Hawaii.”

  I froze halfway up the stairs and stared at his back until he turned around.

  “What?” he said.

  “The CIA’s plan is to give the evil witch a rare plant she undoubtedly needs for some nasty spell? Have you guys ever even seen a Disney movie?”

  He sighed. “Look, spy work isn’t always crashing fancy parties and storming the castle. Sometimes it’s giving the bad guys something dangerous in exchange for something even more dangerous.” I started to argue, but he shook his head firmly. “The deal’s already been made. We’re just the delivery team.”

  Something caught his attention over my shoulder. His gaze snapped up, searching the tree line, and I tensed. It must have been the wind or an animal or something, because eventually his gaze returned to mine.

  “We need to do this now. Our intel says Isadora was in negotiations with the Chinese Ministry of State too.”

  “What does she want from the Chinese?”

  “I don’t know. Obviously she accepted our offer over theirs, but I wouldn’t put it past the Chinese to send a team to try to change her mind. Or to steal the Grimoire before she can trade it to us.”

  I still didn’t like it, but I rubbed the leather bracelet at my wrist and followed him up the steps. “Do you even know what spell she needs this cookie plant for?”

  “The kokia cookei,” he murmured, his voice quiet as we reached the door, “is known for its enhancement properties. There have been rumors of Isadora’s ambitions to usurp Alvarez as leader of the Ninth Command. Our team believes she is attempting to consolidate power in Alvarez’s absence. They believe this spell is part of that plan.”

  Right. And the United States government doesn’t much care if a South American gang leader’s mistress takes over his empire. But what if the CIA was wrong about what spell she needed the plant for? Not to mention the last spell to come out of that Grimoire nearly got a lot of people killed, including me and Ryerson.

  I opened my mouth to make that point and then snapped it shut when the front door swung open to reveal a hulking beast of a man.

  I’d once read that the reason people usually die when they hit a moose on the highway is that moose are tall and top-heavy, which means the heavy part topples over the hood and into the windshield and everything goes splat. This guy reminded me of that. There were three guns strapped to his body: a rifle slung across his back and two handguns tucked into the shoulder holster he wore over a tan T-shirt that struggled to contain a thickly muscled chest and biceps wider than my legs. For all his bulk up top, his hips and legs were surprisingly narrow.

  Moose’s gaze swept right over me and landed on Ryerson.

  “Armas,” he said.

  Without a word, Ryerson pulled a gun from the holster under his jacket and a wicked-looking knife from a sheath at his ankle and handed them over.

  Apparently not the trusting sort, Moose set the weapons aside and patted Ryerson down thoroughly. Then he turned to me.

  “Armas.”

  “I don’t like guns,” I told him.

  He patted me down anyway, all brusque efficiency, and then stepped back from the door. “Venha comigo.”

  We followed him through a marbled foyer and into an extravagant sitting room complete with crystal chandelier, red leather couches, and a wood-burning fireplace nearly as tall and at least as wide as Moose.

  But the room itself felt dull and colorless when compared to the woman seated in a wingback chair in front of the crackling fire. Isadora Carvalho swept gracefully to her feet, and I couldn’t help but stare. She was beautiful. Flowing black hair, a svelte green dress that hugged her hips and ended sharply at mid-calf, and jeweled, strappy sandals that probably cost more than my car.

  “Welcome.” Her accent was thick as honey as she offered one slender hand to Ryerson, who took it in
both of his. Her gaze swept down his body appreciatively, and I felt my eyes narrow.

  Ryerson’s expression was a mask of indifference. “Thank you for agreeing to meet with us, Senhora Carvalho.”

  “I am pleasured to do so, Agent Adams,” she purred, and since I’m diplomatic as hex, I did not roll my eyes.

  Maybe she felt the heat of my gaze because she turned to me. “And who is this?”

  Ryerson’s name was not Adams, which meant the CIA thought it was a bad idea to give their agents’ real names to the bad guys they did business with. Fine by me. Ryerson opened his mouth, but I beat him to it.

  “It’s Meade. Julia Meade.”

  Isadora lifted one perfectly arched brow. “How coincidental. That is the name of Tom Cruise’s wife in Mission Impossible, is it not?”

  Hex on a broomstick.

  Ryerson’s expression didn’t change, but I knew what he was thinking, and I shrugged. How was I supposed to know that Brazilian gangsters watched Tom Cruise movies?

  She offered me her hand. I took it and smiled tightly as her magic swept over me, testing me. Confirming what she already suspected: that I was a witch.

  Apparently unimpressed, she released me quickly and turned back to Ryerson. Fine by me. I had work to do. While Ryerson took the seat across from Isadora, I called my magic and pushed it out into the room, careful not to touch Isadora with it. She must have already known what I was doing—why else would the CIA bring a witch?—but it felt rude to rub her nose in it.

  Now, witches could sense magic, but the farther away the magic was the harder it was to sense, even with the signal-boosting rune Andersen had taught me. And this house was enormous. There were no spells in this room, but I’d felt the buzz of wards along most of the doors in the hallway, and there was something else. Something powerful.

  While Ryerson and Isadora talked, I concentrated on my magic, pushing it deeper into the house, searching for the source of that powerful magic.