Mist, Murder & Magic

by Dionnara Dawson

  Immego shimmered. Jackie touched a pointed nail to the obsidian-black Mark just under his right eye. She smiled, showing white teeth. ‘Bury your past and your pain, little brother. The angels are gone. That nightmare is over. And with our weapons, we will never have to fear the demons. No one you love will be taken this time. We will be safe.’

  He straightened. ‘I know.’ He took up one of the weapons Jackie had created: a slim butterfly knife that looked to be made of a black metal with a sheen of blue when you moved it in the light. A Nympha Mark had made this. It was the first Nympha weapon they had made. Immego would not sell it. He flashed it this way and that in the light, thinking of his past. This one would be his. ‘I won’t be afraid anymore,’ he said, more to the blade than to Jackie.

  ‘Be careful with that.’ A smirk curled her dark lips. ‘Those things can kill demons, but you have demon blood too.’

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Harrow

  Harrow had suffered two freaking bullet wounds thanks to those ass-hats from The Force. He should have frozen and shattered all of them. Upon arrival, still chained to the van, someone led Amara inside. Her usually soft eyes were sharp with anger as they closed the door on them.

  ‘Hurry up,’ one guard snapped.

  Amara healed Harrow, his jaw clamped shut at the pain and, before she could do anything about it, was escorted back outside. The van door slammed in Harrow’s face.

  As they exited the van, Harrow grit his teeth. He was surprised to find they were not taking him to their facility (or wherever it was they had now set up), but to Warlock House. His past home. The Force guards pushed him forward, handing him over to the two Sensus sentries who, undoubtedly, had their orders.

  The halls of Warlock House were bitterly familiar. He had visited this place only briefly, but it really felt like he had never ‘returned’ since he had left at thirteen years old. He had never wanted to come back here. He looked at the marble-spiraled walls, all colours of the warlocks intertwined, as if they worked together to create such beautiful art. It was a meaningless façade.

  Harrow knew it wasn’t real. The art was just the face of it, false, like a family. Everyone could see what was on the surface, but underneath, and behind closed doors, was something else entirely. In Harrow’s case, it had seemed that he’d had two parents, who would make a habit of appearing for warlock duties and otherwise looked to be ordinary citizens of their magical community. Underneath, though, only Harrow could see what they really were. He wouldn’t call them monsters, and didn’t think of them as evil. He thought of them as hollow shadows—they were not really there.

  That’s how he’d always felt. His parents would waste away years of their lives in drunken stupors, or on some magical powder-induced high, addicted to various caderes. Harrow wasn’t very good at Latin (having left home, and his studies, early), but cadere he knew meant to fall. His parents, he suspected, had never meant to have him. They would often forget to feed him, if they noticed him at all, and he tucked himself into bed every night, without the kiss on his head he had read about in books.

  Sometimes, when he was younger, he would beg his mother to tell him a story. He remembered one night she lay unconscious on the couch, and he pulled at the sleeve of her shirt. She was in a deep sleep, and he could not yet read himself. It was that ghostly loneliness that clawed inside Harrow, and when he turned thirteen, he could bare it no longer. He’d had to get away. And here he was now, returned, some might say he was even worse off, without a soul, but now at least he couldn’t feel the heartache of that betrayal. Just bitterness.

  Inside Warlock House, the two sentries led him down a spiraling staircase into the basement. The hallways were lit only by fiery torches set into brackets at sections on the wall as they sloped downward. Harrow had never been afraid of the dark. It was the flame that he leaned away from, his natural opposite. He thought he might be able to attack these two Sensus—he didn’t know if they would see it coming—but he wouldn’t get out of the House without being detained again, and he didn’t like the look of his future after an escape attempt on top of everything else.

  He held his head high, shoulders back, as they led him toward a cell. He had seen many dark days in this House, but he had never actually been down here before. It was uncomfortably dense with moisture. Dank and unclean. One sentry stood by Harrow as the other opened a cell with a white plastic key on a loop of identical ones. Plastic, Harrow thought with amusement, so that even Mettalum could be detained. He peered at the bars. They weren’t even metal—they were thick rods of hard white plastic. He wondered what Hella’s fire could do to them. Hell, if Harrow had one of her athames, he bet he could cut through that. To his surprise, the sentries clasped white plastic handcuffs around his wrists.

  ‘Is that really necessary?’ The sharp edges of the plastic dug into Harrow’s skin.

  They did not deign to reply.

  ‘Nice chatting with you, fellas,’ Harrow said. ‘So, what’s going to happen to me? Slap on the wrist? Maybe a fine? Will I be confined to bar-cleaning duties for the foreseeable future? I heard quite a ruckus up there, am I missing a party? Look, I’ll help, but I’m not cleaning up any vomit.’

  They pushed him into the cell, none too gently, and slammed the door in his face. One of the sentries, a man, glared through the bars at him. His eyes swirled pink in the gloom. ‘You killed a member of The Force. And we know you tried to kill the promised witch and a young faerie.’ He snarled. ‘You’re not going to get off so lightly. Take a look around, because this is your new home until your trial, but I can assure you, this, here, is much better than what your future looks like.’

  Harrow smirked. ‘That wasn’t my fault. The witch cast a spell, and, I know this may sound strange, but I don’t have my soul anymore.’ He looked at the Sensus expectantly, knowing that he could sense the honesty of his words. ‘You haven’t seen it, by chance, have you? My soul? Floating around somewhere? No, okay, well if you do see it, be a lamb and don’t step on it.’ Harrow smiled politely.

  The faerie frowned at him. ‘Maybe I’ll mention to the council that you seem to be slightly unhinged, though I doubt that will help your cause, warlock. I would say good luck, but I wouldn’t mean it. Someone will bring you food later.’

  ‘Well, that’s not very polite,’ Harrow murmured, panic rising in his chest. He glanced around at his ‘new home’ and sighed. He would not have thought he would miss the chambers upstairs he had grown up in. Now he almost did. In his cell was a hard-looking bed with a thin mattress, a toilet and wash sink and literally nothing else. ‘Don’t I even get a book or something?’ He called to the faerie’s retreating footfalls. There was no answer. He worried at his cuffs, glancing at the toilet, and at the bed. ‘Do I really need cuffs in here?’

  Awkwardly, he tried to lie down. A spring dug into his back. The plastic cuffs bit into the tender flesh of his skin and he winced. All of this for saving Hella, for the mistake he made of jumping in front of that swinging feather the angel would have killed her with. A dark anger curled through his stomach. What a waste of a sacrifice, he thought. Part of him wanted her in here with him, to make her suffer as he apparently was going to. Part of him just wanted to see her.

  ‘Oh, Hella,’ he said to himself. ‘The fire to my ice.’ He tried to conjure up his ice magic, but it made the dampness of the room stronger. If a Nympha could get out of here, they wouldn’t have put him here.

  He shimmered, his tail sitting uncomfortably behind him on the hard mattress. He tried to use his powers to freeze the handcuffs off, but it did nothing. He wriggled at them, but it only made them dig deeper into his skin. Frustrated, he growled low in his throat. He got up and smashed them against the plastic rods that held his cage. Nothing. He even tried chewing on the cuffs with his teeth, but ended up with a small, sharp cut on his lip.

  ‘Freaking, fucking, argh!’ he yelled. Harrow tried to up-end the bed, but it was bolted to the ground. ‘I ca
n’t even get mad in here properly,’ he fumed. ‘Stupid cage.’

  He looked up at a cement ceiling and could not find sunlight anywhere. There were no windows. In his struggle, the cuffs had created a dark-blue ring of blood around both of his wrists. Anger boiled through every part of him. A small voice in the back of his mind told him to stop, that he might only hurt himself, but he shoved it away. He rattled his cuffs on the bars, pulled at the lock of his cage, and kicked the frame of the bed—ooww—then he sat down on the ground with a huff.

  It would seem he could not get out of here. He wondered if Hella would come to free him the way he had gone to free her from The Force. Somehow, he doubted it. He remembered the look in her eyes as he had been hauled by The Force into the van. She’d been afraid, probably of him. Maybe, maybe even for him.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Hella

  They arrived at Witches’ Wares and immediately started rummaging—carefully, without causing any damage—through the books that might help them find or restore a lost soul.

  Elliot watched them with curious eyes. ‘So, what’s the problem?’

  ‘I did a spell,’ Hella admitted, watching his reaction carefully. ‘My friend—Harrow, he’s a warlock—in the angel-battle, he was hurt. So, I healed him. But he was actually dead, and I accidently brought him back. Turns out the price for that spell was either his soul, or mine.’

  ‘And he tried to kill her,’ Net put in. ‘So, then we knew it had taken his soul. What we need to do is find out how to get it back.’

  ‘Why?’ Elliot asked. ‘If he’s a threat, why don’t you just re-kill him, if he’s technically dead?

  Hella dropped the book she had picked up. ‘No! No, Elliot. He isn’t dead, he’s alive. He’s a normal person—warlock—and I won’t do that. We just have to fix the no-soul part, that’s all.’

  ‘He’s a danger to himself and others without it,’ Net agreed. ‘But we won’t kill him.’

  ‘Even beside all that, we have to get it back to prove he wasn’t in his right mind when he did those bad things,’ Tommy added. ‘If we don’t, the Warlock council will cut away his magic, and believe me, I’ve seen it done, that is a fate worse than death.’

  Elliot considered, his eyes wandering over the store’s contents. He had only ever been here before once, briefly, with Grace and Finn, when Finn had then sent them away so that he could try to murder Hella. Good times.

  ‘Why didn’t it take your soul?’ Elliot asked Hella.

  Hella had started pulling books off the shelves at random, unable to tell apart the ones meant to be bought by gullible tourists from the actual spellbooks. She had created a large wall of books around herself on the ground. Hella glanced up at Elliot. ‘I have no idea. I don’t think that matters, El. We just have to figure out—uh—where his soul went? How to undo the spell, something.’ She picked up a book at random. It was filled with the medicinal qualities of rare herbs, a DIY on growing a herb garden, and what blessings were to be done under a waning or waxing moon. She set it aside. Tommy was in similar situation. His pale face was creased, and she could feel the worry pouring off him as he flipped through pages, unsure what to look for.

  Elliot looked at them. ‘What can I do?’

  ‘Don’t touch anything,’ Hella said.

  ‘But I came here to learn things. Hella, I want to help.’

  Net looked down at the boy with sympathy. ‘How about you come and help me?’

  Elliot paused, and looked to Hella for instruction. She smiled at him and nodded. El went and sat with Nerretti behind the counter and the two fell into a quiet conversation.

  Hella sighed. She had created such a mess with one lousy, accidental spell. If she had gotten to Harrow earlier, she could have healed him normally and none of this would have happened. She cursed at herself as she flicked through a book without seeing the pages. ‘Stupid spell,’ she muttered. ‘Stupid Remy’s amulet.’ She flicked faster. ‘My stupid healing powers.’ She slammed the book shut, having no idea what she had just looked at or if it was relevant or not.

  Tommy’s head snapped up. ‘Hella!’

  ‘Sorry, I’m just frustrated—’

  ‘No,’ Tommy stood up, sending books tumbling to the floor. The bookworm in her cringed. ‘That’s not what I meant. Your healing powers.’ He glanced at Net with significance. ‘Could it be that simple?’ he asked Net, then looked back at Hella. ‘Could you just… heal him his soul back?’ His grass-green eyes were wild.

  Hella’s mouth dropped open. Her head whipped to Net. ‘Why didn’t you think of that? Why didn’t I think of it? Let’s go.’

  But Net was shaking his head. ‘Hella, I’m not sure it’s that simple…’

  ‘We don’t have anything else to try,’ she snapped. ‘I’m going.’

  Tommy put a hand on her arm. ‘I’ll come with you. You’ll need me to get to him.’

  ‘Hella, I don’t think you can just heal it back to him,’ Net said. ‘Look, sure, go and try. But I will stay here and continue looking. Young human, would you like to stay with me?’ He looked down at Elliot who, to Hella’s surprise, nodded, perfectly at ease.

  ‘We’ll be back,’ Hella said, turning to the door. She couldn’t help it, she poured all of her hopes and fears into the possibility that this could all be over if she could just get to Harrow and heal him. Everything would be back to normal. It would be okay again. She could forget that the last twenty-four hours had happened this way. She wondered what it would be like, Harrow healed again. If he would take her in his arms, draw her close, and kiss her. The anvil-like weight that had been in her heart since the moment Harrow took that chilling, ragged breath when she had brought him back, began to lift. She could do it. She could save him. For real, this time.

  Hella started running to him.

  Tommy ran to keep up with her, and together they skidded to a halt by the glaring Sensus faeries posted outside of Warlock House. Hella marched up to them, fired up and steely-gazed, but Tommy put a hand on her arm, steadying her, and plastered a professional smile on his face.

  ‘Good afternoon, Tommy Terra reporting.’ He stared them both down. After a moment, they bowed slightly and let them pass. ‘No running, just be cool,’ Tommy whispered to her as they entered through the large double doors. ‘We’re not supposed to interfere with prisoners.’

  Hella nodded, but almost broke out into a run again, then paused, realising she didn’t know where she was going. ‘Where is he?’

  They both glanced around the foyer. Hella noticed it was mostly empty save for a few people filtering in and out of the bar to the right up ahead. Some people were dressed more formally than others: one woman was in a sharp power suit, her pale-blonde hair tied up perfectly in a chignon. Hella wondered if she was on the council. Tommy tapped Hella’s shoulder and beckoned her toward a staircase to their left. Hella’s gaze slid from the marble-veined walls streaked through with warlock-colours. She followed Tommy to a dimly-lit staircase which seemed to slope downward.

  ‘He’s in the basement?’ Hella growled, peeved on Harrow’s behalf.

  Tommy raised his hands. ‘I didn’t put him there. Come on. Be quiet Hella.’ He led her down the spiralling stairs slowly so they did not slip in the near-darkness. Only torches welded to the walls lit their way. Hella considered using her flames to light their way, but didn’t want to attract any attention to themselves. After what felt like a hundred steps, they evened out to a stone room. Hella’s head whipped around. There were several passageways that led off from here. She glanced at Tommy. ‘Which one?’ Her voice echoed.

  Tommy held a finger to his lips, then shook his head. They spilt off to check at random, silently agreeing that Hella check the ones on the right, while Tommy checked the left side. The first room held a plastic cell. Plastic? Hella thought. Oh, of course. Mettalum’s could break out otherwise. The cell had a bedframe, thin mattress, a toilet and hand basin. It was sparse and empty of prisoners
. The second room was identical. In the third, she gasped. ‘Harrow!’ She smiled, then felt bitter with the gnaw of betrayal. He sat on the bed, facing her, his hands bound.

  He smiled too. It wasn’t his usual smile—there was something lacking in this one. In his normal smile, she could see his bravado, his bitter sarcasm and snark. Beneath that, she had begun to see his vulnerabilities, too, the depth of the ocean in his eyes, in his expression. Now, he seemed like a shallow pool.

  ‘I didn’t think you would come, Hella,’ he said quietly.

  ‘I think I can help you.’ She reached out for him through the plastic bars of the cell, but he shimmered and bounded off the bed. The point of his tail swished, an open threat.

  His smile was sad now. ‘I don’t think I want your help. Last time you healed me I lost my soul.’

  It hurt every time he pointed that out, but it was a terrible mistake, she only wished he wouldn’t remind her. Like she could forget. But he had made mistakes too. Hella retracted her hand from within his cell, clenching her fists.

  ‘After what you did to me, how dare you mistrust me now. The last time I saw you, you tried to choke me, and then freeze me to death. But I’m here for you now, aren’t I?’ Purple flames licked up her fists, dancing by her wrists. Her hair shone with her fire, too, she could feel it. She tried to take a deep breath, calming herself.

  Hella reached out to him again, and this time, when his tail jabbed at her, she caught it in her hand, still aflame, and he yelped. ‘Retract it,’ she ordered through gritted teeth. ‘I have come here to help you,’ she said, her voice low. ‘It’s my fault this happened to you. Let me try to fix it.’

  Harrow shrunk back a little, petting his burned tail. ‘You have a funny way of feeling bad about it. What have you come to do? Wave at me through my cell to make me feel better?’ His black hair fell over his eyes, hiding his annoyance at being locked away. She wondered if he knew how much trouble he would be in if he stayed here.