by Jaye Wells
I put my head in my hands and squeezed my eyes shut. How had I gone from a clean-and-sober cop with a great record to a liar who got off on cooking dirty potions in abandoned factories?
A soft knock sent vibrations through the wood at my back. “Kate?” Pen whispered.
I rubbed my hands over my eyes, as if maybe I could wipe away the traces of guilt. With a groan, I pulled my ass off the ground and opened the door just enough for her to slip through.
“Hey,” she said with an exaggerated smile. The kind moms give their kids when they’re trying to pretend nothing’s wrong.
I leaned back against the dresser. “Hey.”
“What’s wrong?” she asked, looking genuinely perplexed.
I shot her a look. “Seriously?”
She sighed. “I don’t get why you’re being so stubborn about this—”
I slashed a hand through the air. “You don’t have to understand it. You just needed to respect my wishes.”
“Rufus thought since you hadn’t been to group in a while—”
“I haven’t been to group because I’ve been fucking busy!”
Her face morphed from confusion to anger. “Jesus, what is your problem? You’re acting like this anniversary is something to be ashamed of.”
“That’s because it’s not a real anniversary. I’ve seen what real junkies go through and my challenges didn’t even begin to compare.”
After my mother died from using a potion I’d cooked, I’d realized that magic had poisoned my life and I’d be better off without it altogether. I’d joined AA to have a visceral reminder of why I’d quit cooking in the first place. Seeing all those sad cases trudge into meeting every week reminded me that there are real human costs to messing with magic in any form.
She frowned. “You have to know what an accomplishment it is. You walked away from one of the most powerful covens in the Cauldron and turned your back on your own magic to give yourself and Danny a better life. That is what’s worth celebrating. It’s not about who had the hardest road to travel. It’s about all of us being so grateful you’re in our lives.”
Those words should have warmed me. Made me thaw enough to admit maybe she was right. Instead, they simply added another layer of frigid self-loathing. “You wouldn’t be grateful if—” I stopped short and redirected. “Look, I’m just tired and I had a shitty day.”
She stepped forward. “Wouldn’t be grateful if what?”
“Just tell everyone to go, okay?” Panic made my voice rise.
“You want them to go?” She stabbed a finger toward the door. “You want to disappoint them and tell them you don’t give a shit that they care about you? Do it your damned self.”
Pen crossed her arms and gave me her best probing stare. The one she normally used on the teenagers she counseled at the school. I was used to interrogating hardened perps who lied as easily as they breathed, but Penelope Griffin had her own methods for applying the screws to stubborn teens—and recalcitrant best friends.
I could feel my temper unraveling. If I didn’t end this soon, I would attack her and say things I didn’t mean but wouldn’t be able to take back. “Fine,” I gritted out through clenched teeth.
I pushed past her, but she grabbed my arm.
All pretense disappeared from her expression. “What are you hiding?”
Cold fear swam under my skin. She had the look in her eyes. Pen wasn’t an Adept, but sometimes she had scary intuition. Maybe it was a skill she’d honed after years of studying human nature, or maybe the ability to read people was what had led her to psychology in the first place. Regardless, that look told me she wouldn’t let me out of that room until I came clean.
I looked her directly in her eyes. “Nothing.”
“Bullshit.” She laughed in my face. “You think I don’t see it?”
My gaze strayed toward the door. “See what?”
“The drinking, for one.”
Frowning, I looked at her. “Please. It’s not that bad.”
She pursed her lips. “Denial, defensiveness. Something’s been eating you for weeks.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but she slashed a hand through the air. “And don’t blame it on the moons again. This started before that. After Danny’s accident.”
“Gee, Pen, maybe I’m still dealing with the fact he almost died. Ever think of that?”
“Try that misdirection bullshit on someone who’ll fall for it, Kate.”
I closed my eyes. I’d been soaking in my secret for weeks. Marinating in guilt until my fingertips were pruney. That was the problem with lies. The only cure for the guilt that came with them was to tell the truth. But the consequences of coming clean were usually worse than the guilt, which is why you lied to begin with.
I’d planned to keep lying to Pen when she walked into the room. But when I opened my eyes and saw the determined tilt of her chin and the hardness of her eyes, I knew that lying to her face would cause more destruction than coming clean.
She was inviting me to jump off the cliff, and I was too exhausted to keep clinging to the edge. “I cooked.”
She blinked. “What?”
“I cooked, Pen.”
Her mouth worked open and closed for a moment. “Wh—when? Why?”
“When Danny was in his coma. With Volos.” My heart should have been pounding and my palms swampy, but they weren’t. I was too numb.
“But—You mean you let Volos cook, right? He said he could cook the antipotion. You were just going to pick it up. Not cook.”
I shook my head. “When I met him at the old brewery, he admitted he couldn’t finish the potion. He—” I cleared my throat because it suddenly felt clogged. “Without knowing who cooked the recipe for Gray Wolf, he couldn’t finish it. So, I—I read it. And then after Bane hexed John with Gray Wolf, I had to do the final processes to finish the antipotion alone.”
The sounds of music and laughter from the living room crept under the door to fill the silent space growing between us. Pen’s normally dark complexion was pale, and her eyes were showing too much white.
The silence shouldn’t have gotten to me. I’d used it as a tactic against criminals for years—too long to fall for it myself. But Pen’s silence wasn’t some sort of interrogation tactic. I’d shocked her, and now that the words had left my mouth I wanted to snatch them back and push them back down into the dark place inside me.
I swallowed and crossed my arms. “Aren’t you going to say anything?”
Her numbed expression hardened. “What do you want me to say, Kate?” She sounded soul-tired.
I blinked. All these weeks of hiding this secret, I’d played out what would happen when I was discovered over and over. Fired from the force, shunned by friends and family—the works. But never in all that time had I imagined what would happen if I came clean, much less what I’d want to hear.
While I grappled with that, Pen rubbed at her eyebrows. “Christ. Why couldn’t you have told me this yesterday? Or a month ago?”
That brought me up short. It wasn’t the complaint so much as the lack of something in her voice. “Why don’t you sound more surprised?”
She crossed her arms and leaned back against the door. “Because the instant you told me, everything made sense. Plus, for real, Katie, this job’s been a kick in the ass all the way. It was only a matter of time until you had to use magic.”
I blinked. “This isn’t about the job.”
She arched a black brow. “No?”
“I did it to save Danny.”
“Who was in a coma because of that fucking case.”
Pain punched me in the chest. It was one thing to see the disappointment in her face, but something else to hear damning words come from the one person I’d hoped would understand. “Screw you.”
“You have a lot of fucking nerve being mad at me,” she said, her voice rising. She pointed a finger toward the shut door. “There are thirty people out there ready to celebrate your abstinence from magic and yo
u choose now to tell me you’ve been lying to us for weeks?”
Confusion kept me silent for a few moments. I had expected anger, sure, but I had not expected to be bitched at about my timing.
“Why the hell do you think I told you I didn’t want a party?”
She threw up her hands. “Well, that’s just fucking fantastic.” Pushing away from the door, she began pacing at the foot of my bed. I crossed my arms and watched her, cursing myself all the while for not bringing a bottle of hooch into the room with me. When she finished her debate with herself, she stopped and speared me with an ultimatum-glare. “You’re going to have to play along.”
My mouth fell open. “What? You can’t seriously expect me to go through with this.”
She tapped her foot. “You’d prefer to go tell everyone out there what you just told me?”
Cold fear sucked the blood from my face. Tell Danny and Baba? Or worse: Gardner and Morales? “Hell no.”
“Then you’re going to march your skinny white ass out there, take the fucking medal, and then never tell anyone what you did.” She took a menacing step forward. “And then you and I are going to have a nice long chat about your life choices.”
I frowned. “Wha—”
“Ever since you joined that team you’ve been different.”
“No I haven’t.” My gaze went south, unable to stand the knowing look in her eyes.
“The drinking, the lies, using magic—how much of yourself are you going to surrender for this job?”
I took a deep breath and tried to keep my tone reasonable. “I told you, I did magic to save Danny. It had nothing to do with the team.” Which wasn’t the complete truth. Eventually Bane might have admitted my uncle had been behind the Gray Wolf case, but I probably wouldn’t have believed him without seeing the truth in the magic, so to speak.
“Denial,” Pen singsonged.
“Don’t pull that AA bullshit with me, Pen. You would have done the same to save Danny’s life.”
She nodded reluctantly. “Maybe. But don’t you see? It’s not just that you cooked. It’s that you cooked and then lied about it. That’s not healthy behavior, Kate. I’m telling you, this task force assignment is bad news.”
I sucked air into my lungs and let out a shaky breath. “I just have to be more careful going forward. Volos got the better of me. It won’t happen again.”
“Keep telling yourself that, Katie.” She put her hands on my shoulders. “But it’s only a matter of time until you’re required to use magic on a case. What will you do then?”
I felt like she’d slapped me. My head shook back and forth in denial. “I had the chance to read a potion yesterday and I didn’t do it,” I argued. “I have it under control.”
That was what I said on the outside, but on the inside a small voice told me she was right. Eventually I’d have to choose, but not that night. That night, I had to focus on putting on a convincing act in front of everyone I loved and respected so they wouldn’t know I was a liar.
Pen blew out a big breath, as if surrendering this particular battle in order to win a different one. “We can discuss your choices later, but for now you need to go play like you’re clean.”
The implication that one slip-up had suddenly rendered me dirty in her eyes filled me with shame. “Are you sure I can’t just sneak out the back door?”
“Take a deep breath, put on your game face, and go do the damned thing,” she said.
I couldn’t believe my best friend was encouraging me to go along with this farce. Receiving a ten-year sobriety token was a huge deal. When she’d received hers, we celebrated into the morning hours with most of the people in my living room. I remembered being so proud of her that night. The exact opposite of how she felt about me right then. Hell, it was the exact opposite of how I felt about myself. “I don’t feel right—”
“It’s too late for that,” she said. “If you refuse the anniversary token, everyone will want to know why. Normally, the group would support you through a relapse, but if your team finds out what you did, you’re toast.” She pulled herself up straighter, as if she was trying to convince herself as well as me. “There’s no choice but to play along.”
With that, she must have decided the discussion was done, because she was already opening the door and pushing me out into the lion’s den.
The sounds of music and laughter from the living room made my steps falter. Pausing by the kitchen table, I saw Gardner and Mez chatting with Rufus and Sarah by the fireplace. Sarah was one of the girls who’d recently joined the recovery program. The first time she’d come to a meeting, her face bore the mottled red sores of a long-term dirty magic user. She’d been too pale and her hands had tremored. But now her skin was clear, and when she reached out to shake Morales’s hand as he approached, her grip was steady. She even smiled, though it was the unsteady expression of one unfamiliar with happiness.
In the last ten years I’d met dozens of former freakers like Sarah. Junkies who’d decided to change their fates and get clean. The zeal of conversion fueled them those first few months. But eventually, once their minds cleared and they started working deeper through their steps, the problems morphed from the physical challenges of detox to the emotional ones of putting your life back together without the help of potions. Let’s face it, most people don’t start using potions because they’re well adjusted. Magic helps people create a sort of artificial wall between them and their demons. And once that wall comes crumbling down, the demons emerge bigger and more pissed than ever.
I didn’t know what Sarah’s particular demons were. Didn’t much matter, really. Everyone’s got some and everyone’s got to figure out how to battle them on their own. Problem was, lots of times those in recovery discovered that battling demons was a lot harder than hiding behind that wall.
“Kate!” Rufus called above the party noise. He waved me over, his demeanor one of someone about to make a grand gesture. “Everyone, your attention please!”
I pressed my lips together to hold in the curse stabbing at my teeth. When I reached him, he pulled me into the center of the room. Everyone circled up.
Directly in front of me, Danny fell in with Pen on one side and Sarah on the other. Pen wouldn’t look at me, preferring to stare at the floor.
“We’ve gathered tonight to celebrate a milestone for our good friend Kate.” He glanced at me with a paternal smile. “Ten years ago, when Pen dragged her to group, I have to admit I had my doubts.”
A titter of amusement trickled through the crowd. My gaze strayed toward Pen. She still wouldn’t look at me.
It had been six months after I’d left the coven. I was so poor it was getting harder and harder not to think about how much easier life could be if I sold a couple of harmless potions to help ends meet. I’d mentioned this to Pen one day, and that night she’d dragged me to meet Ru and the gang.
“But Kate quickly proved she was committed to working the steps. And before long she was encouraging other lost souls to keep the faith.”
That first night Rufus had spoken about his own experiences with recovery. How he’d had a promising career as a baller and pissed it all away for the quick fix of a speed potion. Even getting kicked off the Babylon Enchanters team hadn’t convinced him to get sober. The thing that finally did him in was his girlfriend finding his stash one night when he’d crashed after a weeklong bender. By that time he’d been on the junk so long that he was shooting up a seriously concentrated dose.
He’d found her dead on their bathroom floor with his syringe sticking from her arm.
“It’s hard to believe it’s already been ten years,” Rufus continued. “Despite my initial doubts, I have to say I’ve seen few people dedicate themselves so totally to leading a clean life. I’m sure we’ve all heard Kate’s lectures on the dangers of everything from potion-fueled cars to crops grown using drought-resistance potions.”
More laughter. I forced a smile because it was expected. But inside, I was picturing my
dead mother’s body, blue and bloated from the potion I’d cooked.
That first night I’d heard Rufus speak, I knew I’d met someone who understood the pain I’d lived with since the day my mother died. The acidic guilt eating at your stomach lining until you prayed it’d just consume you whole. He made me feel hope that someone could fuck up and experience heart-crushing loss and still go on to have a good life.
Rufus grabbed my hand and squeezed it. When I looked up, he winked at me. My stomach dipped. I was a grade A asshole for playing along with this farce.
But Rufus was always saying that rituals and symbols mattered. Joining a program like Arcane Anonymous provided structure and support for the battles. Rituals provided focus. And the symbols of recovery could be potent talismans against temptation.
Despite my misgivings about my dishonesty, I knew that stopping the ritual would have consequences beyond exposing me for a liar. The truth was, the tradition of earning anniversary tokens wasn’t just about celebrating the accomplishment of one person staying clean. It was also about giving everyone else faith that they, too, could stay sober. If I came clean and refused the token, I’d be depriving Sarah and the others of their hopes for a long recovery.
Rufus reached into his pocket and removed a small black box. I’d been to a few anniversary events and knew what was inside, but it wasn’t until that moment that it hit me I’d be receiving one. I glanced up, uncertain. Behind Ru, Baba had tears in her eyes, and Danny looked so proud it broke my heart.
Ru opened the box. The room’s lights sparked off a silver chain and pendant inside. He removed them and held them up for the assembly’s inspection. A few appreciative oohs and aahs filtered through the room. My eyes zeroed in on the pendant.
The ten-year token was triangular in shape with a Roman numeral X on one side and the chemical formula for salt—NACL—engraved on the other. Since salt was used to banish magic, the symbol was a reminder to stay clean. The triangle stood for the three pillars of sober living—making good choices, maintaining healthy relationships, and learning gratitude for the Mundane.