Bound Powers

by Saruuh Kelsey

  Gabi looked at her sharply. “I’ll look into it.” But she didn’t have to; she knew nothing else had been taken, knew those files inside out. Or ... nothing large enough to warrant concern had been taken. A fingernail was a small thing. Would Gabi have dismissed a missing toenail, something equally small? Her stomach flipped. She kept thinking about the maybe-meanings of the symbols. Spell components, things taken. Her anxiety rose.

  “Right,” Santiago said, hovering, looking between her and Eilidh. He ran a hand over his face, his shirt riding up enough for Gabi to glimpse bruises on his stomach. Curiosity rose but she pushed it away; it was none of her business. “I just had a feeling. Well then, I’ll be going. Goodbye…”

  Eilidh sighed and gave him her name.

  “Eilidh,” he repeated, blinking hard. “You’re exactly the same as in my dreams.”

  He took a few steps up the road before Eilidh shouted, “Wait! What did you mean dreams?” Everything about her had changed, frustrated dismissal to intent focus.

  He came back a few steps. “I’ve been dreaming of a girl for a while. I could never see her full on, just the side of her face or a bit of her hair or the freckle on her chin.” Gabi contemplated backing away to give them space, her eyes on the freckle he’d just described. He scuffed his shoes on the pavement. “It felt a lot like we were together, and had been together for a while.”

  Eilidh rolled her eyes but—Gabi saw her pause, stumble, and wondered what her coins and talisman had told her. Wondered if she hadn’t dreamt of him too. Above, a shadow passed and out of the sky dove a startling white seagull. He perched on a nearby lamppost and watched Santiago Atteberry. “What do you think?” Eilidh asked her familiar. The gull ruffled his feathers, a response Gabi couldn’t interpret but Eilidh clearly could. “Alright, then,” she said and nodded, turning away. “See you around, Santiago.”

  Her face when she turned ... there was pain there. Gabi looked away, contemplating what it must feel like to dream of someone and then have them be real and suddenly here. Amazing, surely, but bizarre. Unreal. Maybe a little scary, to have something formed in the secret of your mind brought into light and shadow in the real world.

  “Hey, Gabriella,” Santiago said, on the verge of leaving. “If you’re elven … if you can sense the things I do, can you feel that from inside the house?”

  She had a bad feeling she knew what he meant. “Dizzying and pulsing? Pressure inside your head? Tingling up your airways?”

  Santiago nodded. So it was true then, all the connections Gabi had made. Not just confirmed by witches but by the presence of a wrong magic at two crime scenes. She needed to get inside that house.

  “Be careful,” he said, crossing the road.

  Gabi nodded but he was already walking away.

  Eilidh let out a groan the minute he was gone, thumping her forehead with the heel of her hand. “If this turns out to be some Romeo and Juliet shit I swear—”

  Gabi snorted.

  Gabi held tight to Joy’s hand as they followed the trails of Pollok Country Park, sticking to the wooded areas while they searched for the source of Joy’s scrying vision—a campsite of sleeping bag and rubbish beneath a canopy of trees. It took an hour, walking around and around, straying unnervingly close to playing fields and varying buildings all occupied by would-be victims, but eventually one of Victoriya’s dogs sent up a bark. When they reached him—a reddish brown hound with too many wrinkles to logically fit on his face—Gabi was finally looking at the vision Joy had seen earlier.

  The rest of the park smelled clear and woodsy but here just smelled wrong, that same tingling sense, urging Gabi to run. Her instincts went wild as she dropped Joy’s hand—simultaneously screaming at her to protect Joy and to back away from the rubbish on the ground as she inched closer, scanning the area in a spiral pattern. She took photos, circling the site, but when she bent to take close-ups of a footprint her nose stung bad enough that her eyes watered. Whatever this was, this thing, it was unnatural. Something corrupt. Gabi had never felt anything like it. Even Perchta hadn’t felt as bad as this.

  She needed to collect bits of evidence but to have that scent around constantly... She had no choice. She wasn’t about to discard protocol.

  “Do you think they’ll come back?” Eilidh asked, her arms around herself. She’d looked pale and scared ever since Santiago told them about the missing fingernail. She’d looked even worse since Gabi had explained to the rest of the coven that the elf could be killing through nightmares, literally scaring people to death. Gabi had phoned her dad about the possibility but he’d never heard of anything like it. Neither had Salma’s mum or Regina Stone. Things looked bleak.

  Gabi had no answer for Eilidh. This scent … it was fresh. If the killer had left, it was within the past few days. She collected evidence methodically, not really wanting to get close or touch anything but following procedure despite the discomfort pulsing through her head.

  She knelt, reaching for a water bottle with latex gloved hands, thinking about DNA, wondering if the elf would be in a database. It was a long shot but worth a try. Gabi touched the plastic—and pain blew up her head like an explosion. Her eyes streamed with tears, wetness dribbling over her mouth as she cried out a hoarse sound and fell back. It felt like she’d been physically poisoned, punched in the face, and like something malevolent had stroked a slimy limb down her magic, all at the same time. Gabi was aware of falling back—and then nothing until she opened her eyes and found her head in Joy’s lap a safe distance aware from the camp site.

  Joy was stroking her hair while Neil leant over Gabi, dabbing at her nose with a tissue. A tissue stained bright, fresh red. The warm liquid she’d felt made sudden sense.

  “Gabi,” Joy breathed in relief, hugging her close. Gabi’s head thumped but she was okay, just for a minute, laying there in Joy’s arms. But it couldn’t last.

  “I’m alright,” she said, trying not to moan as she pushed off the ground. The trees swayed, dipped and spinning like she was on a teacup ride, but it steadied after a few blinks and deep breaths.

  “How do you feel, Gabriella.” Salma was suddenly in front of her, peering into her face. “Sick? Headache? Dizzy?”

  “Yes to all,” Gabi muttered.

  Salma nodded a decisive nod and began rummaging around in her embroidered bag. Coming up with three vials, a teacup, and her book of spells, Salma spoke an incantation over each one. “Drink this.” She handed Gabi a red vial and Gabi found herself unable to disobey that steely look, the stern mothering, and drank, swallowing the contents of a yellow bottle next. “Victoriya. Flame.” Victoriya complied without argument, opening a sachet to produce a handful of fire. Salma heated up a cup of tea next; Gabi watched, embarrassed, confused, and a little charmed. She gulped down the tea finally and waited for the effects to take hold. Joy held her hand as Gabi shifted on her feet, awkward with so many eyes on her. Even Victoriya’s dogs were staring at her.

  “I’m fine,” she said, taking a step to disperse the circle around her.

  “You sure, Pride?” Gus asked. “You were pretty out of it.”

  “I’m fine,” Gabi bit out. Actually her dizziness was fading. “I need to collect evidence and then we can go.”

  “I’ll do it,” Victoriya offered, still somehow snarling even when being generous. “Tell me what to get.”

  “I’ll help,” Gus said, taking her arm. “I’ve been Googling a lot of this detective shit.”

  Gabi took a step to follow them but Joy refused to let go of her hand and budge an inch; Gabi stumbled back, into her.

  “Don’t even think about it,” Joy warned. “You’re not going back near that thing.”

  Gabi started to protest but she knew that stubborn set of Joy’s mouth. She wouldn’t give in, so Gabi waited while Gus, hands gloved she noticed, bagged and labelled anything that could be useful—from a distance, too far to help. She knew she was pouting, sulking, but couldn’t help it. She didn’t like delegation.
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br />   “Done?” Victoriya asked Gus as he quickly backed away.

  When he nodded, she drew a deep breath and marched towards the sleeping bag, flicking a knife from her pocket and using it to cut a square from the shiny fabric. She got out of there as quickly as Gus and explained, “For tracking,” when Gabi frowned in confusion. Her pack of dogs corralled around her, looking relieved; they hadn’t followed her into that corrupted area.

  “Good idea,” she replied because it was. And because she didn’t feel charitable enough to thank her using those specific words: thank you. She thanked Salma, though, because she felt much more like herself than when she’d touched that bottle.

  Joy leaned against Gabi’s arm, her fingers pale on a smouldering bundle of sage she’d just lit. Gabi was breathless with the need to protect her when Joy whispered, “I feel it now. That darkness. I can feel it.”

  Gabi ducked and pressed a kiss to Joy’s hair, her arm settling around Joy’s waist. “Let’s get out of here,” she said, addressing everyone.

  No one had any complaints—not even Victoriya or Joy’s bad-mannered cat.

  “We’ll have to come back, but I think I know someone who can clear the area.” At least she hoped her hunch was right.

  Gabi had filled herself with coffee instead of food for breakfast and now she felt sick. Or maybe it was the fact that they were no closer to answers, to locking this killer up, to protecting Joy from whatever they meant to do to her. Mrs. Nazari’s words circled her mind, again and again. At some point, Gabi’s usual determination to do her job and do it well had changed to clumsy desperation to keep Joy out of this.

  “I don’t think that changed anything,” Santiago Atteberry shouted across grass and trees and chill air, pushing to his feet. He’d been knelt in the middle of the abandoned campsite in Pollok Country Park—where the killer had slept at least one night. Where the killer might have worked on the triangle of deaths that loomed over Gabi like a flashing light, yellow bulbs spelling out the word failure.

  Santiago had come as soon as Gabi called and explained what Neil had said over breakfast, and Gabi was relieved to have been right about the elf’s abilities. It wasn’t just regular environmental magic she sensed from him, but something muskier, more powerful—expulsion magic, the clear, grassy scent of elven magic but with something more she didn’t have a name for.

  For minutes, he’d been knelt with his palms to the grass next to a dirty sleeping bag and a disposable barbecue while Gabi texted Joy that she was fine and nowhere near the worst area. Now he wiped dirt off his knees and bound over, frowning at Gabi. “I cleared the area but it doesn’t feel connected to any spell as big as you said.”

  “How do you know?” This came from Eilidh, who upon hearing Gabi was meeting with Santiago had tagged along—without asking and without comment—while the rest of her coven had gone across the river to collect tools and ingredients for a much larger cache of offensive spells from an apothecary. Gabi hadn’t complained; Joy was only okay with Gabi coming back here because Eilidh would keep her away from that poisonous power. “Have you felt a large spell before? Or are you just guessing?”

  “Uh.” He stuffed his hands into his jacket pocket. “No, but I’d sense if it was connected to any spell, big or large, and this area isn’t. I’d be able to see … it’s like threads. Some are green, like I’d see if Gabi used her environmental magic now, some are smoky grey or purple or blue, like witchcraft. When I looked at this.” He flung an arm around at the remnants of the killer. “I saw … it was like the threads had eroded and were barely hanging together. Like something had eaten through the magic. That’s the only way I can explain it.”

  “But this area is clear now?” Gabi confirmed, though she didn’t have to—she no longer felt the tingling along her nose, the burning in her throat, the howl of her magic telling her to get away.

  “Yep.” Santiago cast another quick look at Eilidh. “What kind of spell are you looking for? Do you know what the triangle means yet?”

  Eilidh pulled her ponytail over her shoulder, messing with the blue ends of her hair. “No. We don’t know anything.”

  “Well,” he replied, cheerful, “you’ll find it. I’ve gotta go.” He glanced at his watch and winced. “My superior’s gonna be so pissed. I’m meant to be on guard duty in the cells. We had someone get loose last night, crime boss or something, probably had help. Call me if you need any help—oh, and have you asked your friend to go near Edith Merrow’s house and feel that … presence? Her witchcraft looks kinda similar to the threads I saw around that house, so she might be able to work out what it is.”

  “My friend,” Eilidh repeated, raising her eyebrows.

  “Tall, black, some plant around her arm.”

  “Salma? What do you mean her witchcraft looks the same?” Eilidh looked at Gabi. “What the hell is he on about?”

  Gabi shrugged.

  Santiago hovered, clearly wanting to go back to work. “Some people’s witchcraft, magic, whatever, it looks the same colour—it’s usually different, but sometimes you’ll get two people who are so close, emotionally or species-wise or some other way, that the colour of their power is very similar. Your Salma might be able to recognise whatever is in that house. But I really have to go, or I’m gonna lose my job.”

  Gabi watched him leave, somewhere between confused and amused.

  “Did any of that make sense?” Eilidh asked Gabi, watching him leave with a frown.

  “Barely,” Gabi replied. “But even if he’s right and Salma’s witchcraft is similar to this, could it help us? Could she use that to track the killer?” She was thinking of the two locations, and being able to narrow them down.

  But Eilidh shook her head and that hope shrivelled up.

  “Gabi...” she said, and her nervous tone made Gabi stand straight, pay complete attention. “I didn’t want to say anything when the others were here and freak them out but ... I keep thinking about my dad, labelling boxes of Tupperware in the fridge so he knows what’s in them. Do you think ... the branding ... could it be so the killer knows what was taken from who? If something was taken? Like Edith’s mark might say fingernail? I know it sounds stupid—”

  “No,” Gabi interrupted. “That doesn’t sound stupid at all.” In fact it was the only thing that had made sense all day.

  “This is a bad idea,” Gabi said for the second time.

  Joy had found the two addresses the scrying spell had shown them, and the coven had decided to split up—even though their strength came from being together, a whole circle.

  “It’ll be fine,” Gus disagreed, patting Gabi’s arm. “We’re just watching the houses. We’re not gonna go in them.”

  “Unless we see the killer,” Victoriya added, strapping her wand—ebony wood, long and thin—to a black holster on her thigh. “I’m not staying outside if I have a chance to kill the bastard.”

  “Victoriya,” Gabi began but realised the pointlessness of arguing when Victoriya’s eyes blazed in her direction. At least she wouldn’t be storming into the situation alone. “It’s a bad idea,” she repeated. Even though she’d already sent a written report of the past day to Paulina and got permission to stake out the two addresses, even though that meant Gabi was a hundred percent going through with it—she still knew it was a bad idea.

  “We’ll be careful,” Neil said in an attempt to placate the tension in the room.

  Joy pulled her coat on over clean clothes—there’d been a change of clothes buried under all those herbs and vials and spell books in her bag. She looked pale but determined. Gabi’s heart clenched. She didn’t want Joy out of her sight but the groups had already been decided upon and Joy’s group was larger than Gabi’s. Safety in numbers, she told herself. It was a weak reassurance.

  Gabi, Gus, and Salma sat in Gabi’s van opposite the second house—a nice house in an expensive neighbourhood, with ivy trellises on the walls and flower boxes on the windowsills. Hours ticked by and Gabi’s nerves frayed. Gus cru
nched a packet of crisps noisily beside her while in the back Salma read through her book of incantation, every page flip winding Gabi’s patience tighter and tighter until she was ready to snap. Even the anti-anxiety latte Salma had made her—while brewing offensive teas to scald, blind, and disable an enemy—didn’t touch it.

  She texted Joy for the ninth time—all quiet over there too—and glared out the window again.

  The sun finally slipped away, leaving the van sat in a puddle of lamplight. Gabi’s stomach growled, the muffin and crisps she’d eaten insubstantial, and she needed to pee. Cursing her job, Gabi muttered that she’d be back in a minute and went in search of a secluded bush, crouching behind it.

  Stripped of her dignity, Gabi rose and pulled up her jeans, but before she could go back to the van, movement caught her eye. Her heart in her throat, she watched a dark-clad figure climb the walls into the second-floor window.

  Shit. Shit, shit, shit.

  Adrenaline thumped through her veins as she sprinted back to the van.

  Joy

  Joy turned a bloodstone over and over in her fingers, letting it shore up her courage as she walked down the neat stone path towards the house. Beside her, Eilidh clutched the talisman at her neck, breathing shallowly. They could all feel it now, the force of that corrupt magic, had been able to feel it even sat across the road in the car Neil had rented. The killer was here.

  The house looked too ordinary—grey, worn stone with dirty glass around its front door, a half-smashed stone cat curled up on the doorstep before a welcome mat—for the waves of bad coming off it. Thank gods they’d left the dogs in the car; she didn’t want to think about what it might do to them. Joy shivered and clutched the bloodstone tighter in one hand, her wand in the other. No matter what happened, she wasn’t letting go of it. Not again.

  The last thing she wanted was to call on her blue power, her bound powers as Hashem had called it, but if it came down to protecting herself and her coven … she’d let that raw witchcraft rise. She wouldn’t be as powerless as she was in that cell ever again.