by Annie Bellet
There were so many horrible things she’d done to me in the past—beatings, verbal abuse—but the pain I'd experienced should be her burden and not mine. I let her be and fetched her a towel.
By the time I caught my breath, it took everything I had, including popping a few anti-anxiety pills, to stop myself from really looking at the sad state of my former home. I was alive. Erica was alive.
The rest could be dealt with in time.
I opened the bedroom window to air out the room and spotted someone standing outside the house.
Of course, there was our goblin boss. The cavalry had arrived. Conveniently late, I might add. “Holy shit. I hope you got good insurance, Nat.”
To humans, Bill was just a tall, thin man with wire-framed glasses. But I’d seen goblins for real, and they were quite ugly and reeked of magic with a bitter tang of iron. The invisibility spell he used was quite welcomed.
“Good insurance?” I snapped. “I bet The Bends has no plans to compensate me for the damages.”
Bill was the kind of guy who scrambled for dropped change off the flea market floor. I wasn’t getting a damn thing. I took in my bedroom. My bed smelled like shit. My whole house smelled like shit. Which meant there was no way in hell I was sleeping tonight at my new house until every inch of this slimy crap was wiped up.
Effectively pissed now, I began to clean up while my co-worker slowly healed. As I tossed soiled linens out my bedroom window, Bill joined us.
He tsked at the sight. Erica continued to sit against the dresser as if she was glued to it.
“So what are we taking back again?” she murmured. Even her voice sounded tired.
She had a good point there. Most likely the trunk wasn’t back at The Bends and the creature was gone now.
“I don’t know.” I turned to Bill. “Do you know anything about the steamer trunk or the basilisk we found inside?”
He shrugged. “Beats me. I bought it cheap off the goblin market, and someone delivered it.”
I sighed. It was always about money. Nothing he’d bought before though had ever attacked us like this. “What about the man who owned the black truck? The man who got eaten.”
“Took care of it,” Bill replied. “He was a drifter passing through town.”
Bill’s nonchalant attitude forced a growl from my throat. “How do you know that guy didn’t have a family?”
Bill stiffened. “I said I took care of it, Nat. Unless you’re willing to cast a spell or two. Perhaps call in a favor?”
“Not happening.” He knew very well I’d learned a thing or two, and I wasn’t willing to pay the price to do werewolf magic.
“Some prices are worth paying,” my grandma Lasovskaya always said. She’d saved my life using werewolf magic, but I’d seen the cost and it wasn’t worth it to me. I was going to live as long as possible with Thorn now that we had each other again. No spell was worth losing that.
I paused in the middle of working as my unease grew again. The basilisk had known where I had lived.
Someone placed a target on my back.
“So you don’t know where it came from or why that thing was hiding in my old house?” I asked.
Bill shrugged and pushed his glasses up his nose. The smile on his seemingly innocent, pale face sent a chill up my spine. “That’s the crazy thing about dark magic, Natalya. You might think you’ve dodged the worse of it, but what goes around seems to always come back around again.”
If this was just the beginning of what was coming for me, I was scared senseless of what might come next.
Shawntelle Madison is a bestselling author of paranormal romance, urban fantasy, and young adult science fiction. Shawntelle works as a web developer and can often be found online through social media or coding away on her next project. She can be found on Facebook, Instagram at @shawntellemadison or on Twitter with the @shawntelle handle.
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Illusions
Christine Pope
Warlock Damon Wilcox is plotting to kidnap the most powerful witch in a rival clan. But Damon’s brother Connor has plans of his own…
Connor Wilcox reflected that having a dark warlock for an older brother could be a real pain in the ass sometimes.
Not that Damon actually thought of himself as a dark warlock, of course. He’d always claimed that everything he did, he did for the good of the clan. Most of the time, those claims were more or less true. But now Connor knew he had to put his foot down, even if all his protests would probably turn out to be futile.
Crossing his arms, he said, “Jesus, Damon, the girl is barely old enough to drink. There’s got to be a better plan.”
The two of them were in Damon’s study. One of the windows stood open, letting in a cool breeze faintly scented with pine. In a few weeks, the weather might be too chilly to have the windows open like that, but now, at the beginning of October, Flagstaff was pleasantly mild. And since the house sat on a lot of more than an acre, with its neighbors on equally large lots, it wasn’t as if they had to worry about anyone overhearing their discussions.
“This is a reasonable plan,” Damon retorted. He’d been standing by the window, gaze seemingly fixed on the tall stands of pine that sheltered the house, but now he turned toward his brother, black brows pulling together. “The best plan. Once I’m bonded with the prima of the McAllisters, my own powers will grow that much more. And then maybe I’ll finally have a chance of ending this nonsense once and for all.”
That “nonsense” being the curse that had hovered over the Wilcox clan like a black cloud for almost a hundred and forty years. Damon had suffered its effects already, like all of the clan leaders before him. Connor knew his brother still mourned the wife he had lost, but in the years since her death, he hadn’t once spoken her name.
The whole situation was intolerable, but that didn’t give Damon the right to kidnap the young woman who was supposed to one day preside over the rival McAllister witch clan.
Connor drew in a breath, about to continue with his argument, but Damon steamrollered right over him, saying, “Besides, Angela McAllister is nearly twenty-two, and therefore certainly old enough to drink. Among other things.” He moved away from the window then, going back to his desk. Across its surface were scattered a number of photos, all of them prints from images taken with cell phone cameras. The subject of every one of those photos was the same — a dark-haired young woman in her early twenties, with a pale, pretty oval face and striking green eyes.
Angela.
Connor had to wonder what Damon’s department head at the university would think of his brother’s obsession with a young woman roughly the same age as many of his students. But then, Damon would never be so careless as to let any outsiders see the collection of photos he’d amassed. The house was big and well-suited for entertaining, but Damon had never allowed anyone who wasn’t a clan member inside. Because he was a talented instructor and researcher, no one ever questioned that one small eccentricity. If only his fellow professors had known that his aversion to having guests was only the least of Damon Wilcox’s eccentricities.
Since appealing to his brother’s better nature — if he had one — obviously wasn’t going to work, Connor decided to try a different tack. “They’ve got that town of theirs warded six ways to Sunday. None of us will be able to get close. They can smell a Wilcox from a mile off.”
Damon scowled. “I’m well aware of that, and I’m working on it. But I wanted to try something else first.”
That didn’t sound good. “What?” Connor asked, tone wary.
“Nothing too complicated, although it will require you to use your own particular skills.”
Just what he’d been afraid of. Connor knew his powers couldn’t begin to match his brother’s — Damon’s own peculiar power was power itself, possessing an innate ability to get to the very heart of magic and twist and turn it to his own ends — but
when it came to undercover operations, Connor knew he’d always be his brother’s go-to guy.
“It doesn’t matter whose face I’m wearing,” Connor said wearily, admitting to himself that these arguments mainly consisted of going through the motions. “They’re still going to know I’m a warlock as soon as I get close.”
Because that was just how it worked with witch-kind. As soon as witches and warlocks were within a few yards of one another, they could sense they were in the presence of someone with magical abilities. Some people might experience a tingle, while others might hear a faint ringing in their ears, like the onset of tinnitus. Being a visual person, Connor usually saw a faint shimmer when he met a new witch or warlock. It never lasted; that first sensation, whatever it might be, was just a tip-off, sort of the witching world’s equivalent of a secret handshake.
But it was also something you couldn’t circumvent. Connor might be able to deploy his own powers of illusion to mask his face, but he certainly didn’t have the ability to conceal his true nature.
“Not necessarily,” Damon replied. Now he was smiling, but Connor sure as hell didn’t trust that smile. Whenever his brother smiled like that, it meant he was about to put one of his pet schemes in motion. “That’s something else I’ve been working on.”
“You’ve been busy,” Connor remarked. “No wonder you make your T.A.s grade most of your students’ papers.”
A flash of irritation passed over Damon’s features, but then his expression smoothed itself as the smile returned. “This is more important. I realized early on that any incursion into McAllister territory would require a two-pronged approach. Yes, your Wilcox identity would have to be masked for you to get past the wards, but I’d also have to block any hint that you’re of witch blood. The wards are still proving difficult — mainly because I can’t go to Jerome myself to fully investigate how those spells were cast — but I think I’ve worked out the solution to camouflaging your witch nature.”
“And what is it?”
“I could try to explain, but I doubt you would understand.”
Connor lifted an eyebrow. By this point in his life, he was more or less used to his brother’s condescension — after all, a master’s in studio art couldn’t really compare to a Ph.D. in physics — but the superior attitude still rankled. “Try me.”
A shrug. “All magic is energy. It’s just a matter of altering that energy. I’ve learned how to change the energy signature a witch or warlock radiates. Right now I can only do that on one person at a time, but I’m working on strengthening the spell so I can cast it on a group.”
A group that would probably be sent into tiny Jerome — home base for the McAllister witches — to steal Angela away when the time was right. Never mind that such an action could make all of Arizona explode into the sort of clan warfare that hadn’t been seen for generations. When Damon wanted something, he wanted it, and that was the end of the matter.
“All right,” Connor said wearily. “So you can arrange it so no one will know I’m a warlock. What good will that do if I can’t get past the wards in Jerome?”
“I want to do a test run. Not in Jerome itself, but in McAllister territory. One of my students overheard Angela saying she’d be going to an art walk in Cottonwood this Saturday. We’ll test the spell there, see if anyone recognizes you as a warlock.”
Great. Talk about putting your head on the chopping block. No, Cottonwood wasn’t Jerome, wasn’t warded, but it was still deep in the territory the McAllisters called their own. And because Damon could only cast that spell on one person at a time, that meant Connor would have to go in by himself.
He didn’t even bother to bring up Damon’s comment about one of his “students.” True, the person involved probably was a student of his, but the more accurate term would be “spy.” Since his students were mainly civilians — those without witch blood — Damon used them to do recon for him. Go to Jerome, which was a tourist destination anyway, snap a few surreptitious photos of Angela, eavesdrop on her conversations while pretending to shop at the store her aunt owned and where she worked…and get whatever information he required. He’d always couch the need for information in innocuous terms, saying he was thinking about going up to Jerome for the weekend sometime, or might want to purchase a vacation rental there, or whatever. The students never seemed to question these requests, mainly because they probably saw it as an easy way to earn some brownie points with a professor who had a reputation for being overly tough.
Or maybe Damon just cast a subtle spell of coercion over them. Technically, that wasn’t his talent, but he’d gone far beyond the gifts he’d been born with, twisting power to his own ends.
Connor had always thought the whole spying thing beyond creepy, but since Damon didn’t give a good shit about his opinions most of the time, he hadn’t wasted his breath on any protests. Maybe in other witch families it wasn’t a big deal to argue with the clan leader. With the Wilcoxes, however, the primus’s word was law…even if the one handing down the edicts happened to be your brother.
And because Connor also knew that protesting now wouldn’t make any difference in the end, he made himself shrug and said, “Okay. Tell me where and when, and I’ll work on figuring out which face to wear.”
***
Back home at his apartment, Connor resisted the urge to crack open a bottle of beer, turn on the TV, and forget that conversation with his brother had ever happened. He could pretend all he wanted, but nothing he did would change the situation; like it or not, he had to be in Cottonwood two days from now, protected only by an untested spell Damon had cooked up in his spare time.
“Shit,” Connor muttered under his breath, then took the beer with him into the downstairs guest bath, since climbing the stairs to his own bathroom upstairs felt like way too much effort. Might as well practice so he didn’t have to think twice when the time came. The core of maintaining a good illusion was to have it down so well that you didn’t have to think about it anymore, could leave it running in the background, automatic as breathing.
He stared into the mirror, pondering his own features. Most Wilcoxes had his near-black hair and somewhat dusky complexion, inherited from a long-ago Navajo ancestor. He’d need to lighten that up, so as not to attract attention.
As he watched, his hair turned sandy, and his dark green eyes lightened to bright blue. Skin still tanned, but with a ruddy tinge to it, the kind of tan that only occurred after a good sunburn. Connor had never been sunburned in his life, but of course the whole point was to look like someone else entirely.
Make the face a little rounder, the nose less defined. He looked at himself critically, trying to see if there was any trace of the real Connor Wilcox under the illusion he had just created. Nothing he could note at first glance, which meant there wasn’t anything a McAllister would be able to detect, either. He’d never set foot in their territory before, and none of them had ever been to Flagstaff. Some clans were a little more open with one another, but there’d been bad blood between the Wilcoxes and the McAllisters going way back.
There wasn’t much he could do about his height and general build. His skill was illusions, but only taking on the appearance of someone close to his same size. He couldn’t look like his cousin Marie, or Eleanor, the clan’s healer. Otherwise, he probably would have disguised himself as a woman, just to be doubly safe.
Oh, who was he kidding? There wasn’t anything remotely safe about any of this.
What would they do, those McAllisters, if they discovered the enemy within their midst? Despite his brother’s machinations, Connor truly didn’t mean any of them any harm. But he doubted they’d believe any protestations of innocence on his part.
And maybe his motives weren’t entirely pure, either. After all, he had to admit to himself that he wanted to see Angela McAllister in person, rather than in a blurry image snapped from someone’s cell phone.
That was one secret he’d managed somehow to keep from Damon. Luckily, Damon was
many things, but a mind reader wasn’t one of them. Connor had remained mostly silent on the subject of Angela McAllister, and for good reason.
The dreams had started a few years earlier. At first he hadn’t even really paid much attention to them, because he wasn’t the sort of person who tended to remember what he’d dreamed. Gradually, though, he began to realize that he kept seeing a dark-haired girl at the edges of his sleep, in the background of crowds, but coming closer and closer, until one day she turned around and stared straight at him.
She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, with those wide green eyes and that cloud of dark hair.
But he still didn’t know who she was. Not until Damon had spread those photos out on his desk and announced he had a plan to kidnap the McAllisters’ prima-in-waiting. As soon as Connor gazed down at the pictures and saw the young woman’s brilliant green eyes staring innocently up at him, he realized that the woman of his dreams was the same one Damon planned to make his.
Knowing what his brother’s reaction to that revelation would most likely be, Connor had kept silent. He’d only listened as Damon explained how Marie, the clan’s seer, had had a vision that the McAllisters’ next prima, or head witch, would bond with a man of the Wilcox clan, joining their power forever. That revelation had been enough to set Damon on a whole new round of plotting.
Connor’s mouth tightened at the recollection. His brother didn’t see anything wrong with stealing the young woman from her clan, forcing himself on her. Then again, since Damon thought he was meant to bond with Angela, he probably didn’t believe there actually would be any force involved. There never was, in those sorts of scenarios. Like went to like when a prima paired up with her consort, in the sort of heated encounter rarely seen outside the pages of those bodice-rippers his Aunt Janelle read and tried to hide from everyone.