by D. N. Hoxa
And my head got a little clearer, too. That’s when I thought to really look at the kid behind Bender.
Her hair was so blonde, it almost looked white. It was cut close to her chin and hidden under a black, sleeveless hoodie. Black eyeliner lined her eyes all around. Her skin was white, too, which made her look like a ghost. She was shorter than me and definitely thinner. Her arms were folded in front of her chest as she analyzed me, her black eyes shining with curiosity.
That’s when it hit me. My stomach dropped, and I had an even greater desire to puke my guts out.
The girl was Evelyn Davis.
“No.” I didn’t care what Bender thought he was doing. This was not happening.
With a sigh, he lowered his head for a second, and then turned to his niece. “Can you wait outside for a sec, Evie?”
The girl rolled her eyes. I expected her to say something, but instead, she turned around and walked out the door. I looked at Bender with a new wave of anger.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I hissed. The girl couldn’t hear us, but I still felt the need to whisper when I wanted to yell at him, so badly.
“What we said I would,” Bender said, squinting his eyes at me.
“We didn’t say anything. I said no about…this!” I waved at the girl standing in front of the door, still looking right at me through the glass. It made me so uncomfortable, I went back to the kitchen, knowing Bender would follow me.
“You said yes, Winter. And I have it in writing,” he said and pulled out a piece of paper from his pocket.
“What?”
“Last night, at the Spell Licked Liquor. You said you’d take her to be your apprentice. You even signed the contract,” Bender said.
The letter was right in front of my eyes. He held it there because I was too frozen to take it in my hands. My eyes scanned through the words so fast, the headache behind them tripled in seconds. It was an agreement between me and Joseph and Caroline Davis regarding Evelyn Davis. They’d signed it at the bottom.
And so had I.
Blinking fast, I looked at the signature again. It looked like my handwriting, and you could definitely tell that I was drunk as hell when I’d written it.
Laughter bubbled from my throat. I couldn’t believe it. Bender had perfectly played me like the fool that I was.
“You bastard!” I shouted and laughed some more. “That’s why you came here in the middle of the night! You tricked me!” And I couldn’t believe how surprised I was.
Bender didn’t even try to deny it. Instead, he smiled. “You still signed the agreement. She’s here now.”
“And she’s going right back where she came from. You can’t do this. I won’t allow it.” I might have been drunk enough to not know what I was getting myself into the night before, but I was sober now.
“You promised me, Wayne,” Bender said, his hands on his hips.
He stepped forward until our noses almost touched. Shivers washed down my back. What the hell was he doing?
“Look, maybe I tricked you, but it’s for your own good. It’s for her, too. She needs you and you need her.”
My throat dry all of a sudden, I looked down at my sneakers. I’d been close to Bender before, but not like this. I could never actually feel the heat coming off his body like that, and it was making me very uncomfortable.
Reluctantly, I took a step back. “I don’t know the first thing about talking to a teenager.”
“Just talk to her the way you talk to me,” Bender said. He moved his head to the side to try and catch my eyes. I realized how childish I was being, keeping my head down like that, so I stopped it.
“Look, I don’t know what I said to you last night, but I don’t remember it. I was very drunk.” He already knew that, but it needed to be repeated. “I can’t do this. I don’t know how! We’re both better off alone.”
Bender stepped close to me again and put his hands on my shoulders. I had no choice but to meet his eyes.
“Give it a chance,” he whispered. His breath blew on my lips and those shivers washed over me again. What the hell was it about him this morning? “For my sake. Please, Winter.”
The tips of my pointy ears grew very warm, though my hair was still wet and loose around my shoulders.
“You never called me Winter before.” For whatever stupid reason, that came as quite a surprise to me, too.
Bender raised a brow and smiled. A dimple appeared on his cheek, right underneath his stubble. How had I not noticed that before?
Better yet, what the hell was going on with me?
“Just give her a chance. A week is all I’m asking for. If by then you still feel the same, she’ll be out of your hair for good.”
Bender stepped back and it could have been just my imagination, but I could swear his eyes fell on my lips for a second too long.
“I promise you.”
“Okay.” The word left my mouth before I could stop it.
His face broke into a wider smile. Now that I was looking for them, his dimples were perfectly visible. Something was definitely wrong with me. I said it before and I’ll say it again: I’m never drinking again.
“You won’t regret this. You’ll see,” Bender said. He lingered for just a little longer, before he ran to the door to get his niece back in.
“You be a good girl, or they’re going to send you to Washington, Evie. After this, I won’t be able to stop them,” he whispered to her. My eyes squeezed shut. I left the coffee by the sink and just hugged myself for a moment. “Call me for whatever you need. And please don’t do anything you’ll regret later.”
But Evelyn didn’t speak at all. She just nodded and looked down at her shoes, even when Bender planted a kiss on her forehead. When he turned to me again, he found me looking right at him.
“The driver will be here to pick her up at eight. Take care of her, Wayne. I’ll call you later.”
It seemed we were back to Wayne again. Why on earth did that made me feel somewhat sad?
I need a shower.
Fuck. I’d just had a shower. But could I take another one anyway?
I still hadn’t decided when Bender left us alone. Silence fell heavy in the office. It was suddenly very hard to breathe. The girl would no longer look at me like before. Instead, she was analyzing the office.
Seeing her there, looking so out of place, it made me realize just what I’d done. I’d actually agreed to take her in as my apprentice. A teenager. Jessica Davis’s sister. Eli Bender’s niece.
What the hell was I thinking?!
About Bender. About how close he suddenly got to me. About how warm he felt. About how handsome his dimples made him look.
“For fuck’s sake,” I whispered to myself, though the girl could probably hear me. I was screwed. So screwed, I couldn’t see the end of it.
I grabbed the coffee again and drank half of it as fast as my stomach would let me. I needed to wake up. That’s what was wrong with me. I was still drunk from the night before, so now I was imagining things. As soon as I got sober, I’d figure out a way out of this. I’d get myself under control and never allow myself to slip that way again.
And if I didn’t, Bender asked for a week. A week was nothing. I could handle seven days. After that, this would all be over.
With a new wave of energy, I drank some more coffee and cleared my throat. “Welcome, to Manhattan—and my office, Evelyn.” The words sounded forced, as they were, but it was better than the suffocating silence.
“It’s Lynn,” she said. Her voice was surprisingly strong for her small frame.
I walked over to my desk, feeling more awkward by the second. I hadn’t been kidding when I told Bender that I had no idea how to speak to a teenager. I really didn’t.
“Okay, Lynn. Tell me about yourself.” My own mind laughed at me. What was this, the first day of school?
Lynn looked at me like I’d lost it. She was right. “I want to learn how to kill.”
Oh. That was
pretty straightforward. “Why not take a karate class?”
Her small hands pulled up in fists. “I want you to teach me how to do what you do,” she rephrased. That piqued my curiosity.
“What do you think I do, anyway?”
Lynn shrugged. “You kill.”
Well, that was a bit harsh. “I fight, and I kill people who try to kill me, yes, but I don’t just kill.” Was that what the rest of the world thought about me? That I just killed?
“You caught my sister’s murderers when nobody else could for a decade. You killed them all, too. I want to learn how to do that. How to find bad guys and how to end them.”
“I didn’t catch those witches alone. I had help.” But I had killed them myself. That I couldn’t deny. Shit. I really did sound like a coldblooded killer. It made my heart sink all the way to my heels to realize that. What was up with those realizations today?
“Look, I know you don’t want me here. I know you’re only doing this because of Uncle Eli, but the sooner you can teach me how to be like you, the sooner I’ll be off on my own,” Lynn said, and for a second, she looked so much older than she was. It was obvious now how much pain her pitch-black eyes held. She was nothing like her sister, though I’d only seen Jessica in pictures.
“Things like this take a lifetime to be learned,” I said reluctantly as memories of my mother and her demands came rushing back to me. She’d made me train. Made me fight. Made me learn everything by memory. Useless things I didn’t think I’d ever have a need for, but she insisted, and she punished me when I wouldn’t listen. When I just wanted to be a normal teenager. I was thankful for it now, but if I’d been a bit more like Evelyn Davis here, I’d have been thankful then, too.
“Just show me the basics. I’ll be eighteen in two years and a month. Then, I’ll be on my own,” she insisted. I’d never thought a teenager could be so determined.
“First of all, you need to learn things you can only find in books. You need to teach yourself magic before you get your powers. You’ve got two years to do that. After you get your magic, if you still want to learn how to be a private investigator,”—I said those last words slowly so they’d stick—“you’ll go to school. Learn as much about people as you can. The fighting lessons come last.” Though it hadn’t been that way for me—fighting had always come first—I wouldn’t want someone like her to go through the same things. Not only because of the physical issues a still developing body has when exposed to that amount of pain, but because of the psychological toll fighting takes on a person, too.
“My mother is going to ignite my magic,” Lynn said, as if I was supposed to know what that meant. When she saw that I didn’t, she continued. “Her magic is weak. Mine will probably be the same.”
“You don’t know that,” I said, shaking my head.
“The point is that I don’t want to rely on my magic. You don’t. Everybody says so. I want that. And if I do have enough magic to help me later on, even better.”
The lie stung, especially coming out of the mouth of a fifteen-year-old girl. But she was right—the whole world believed that I had no magic. That I didn’t rely on it, when the last two times I’d seen death in the face, my magic had been the only thing that saved me. It sucked that I couldn’t show it for everyone to see, almost like I was betraying my magic.
“Well, you are a fifteen-year-old girl,” I started.
“Sixteen next month,” she said, but I pretended I didn’t hear her.
“And since you’re here and you want to learn from me, you’re going to learn what I’m willing to teach you. You’re not going to like it, but you don’t really have a choice.”
I stood up and tied my hair behind my back with the tie I always kept around my wrist. If Evelyn Davis thought the life I led was easy, she was in for a surprise. I was going to teach her the way my teachers and my mother taught me. By the end of the week, she would be full of knowledge she may or may not need in the future.
“What do you mean?” Lynn said, confused but excited.
“It means we’re going to start with spells. Your magic is your greatest advantage. I’ve been teaching myself how to stir and we can learn together while you’re here.”
Lynn’s jaw almost touched the floor. Her cheeks burned bright red. “I don’t care about stirring,” she said. “I want to see the work that you do so I can learn that from you!”
“Unfortunately for you—and me—this is my work for now. I’m a fairy, as you’ve noticed.” She hadn’t even looked at me differently since she came into my office, and I couldn’t say I didn’t appreciate the change. “So I’m not terribly busy right now. It will be a while before someone is in need of my services. Until then, we will learn how to stir and how to conjure. Together.”
I could almost hear her teeth cracking. She was pissed off, all right. It kind of made me want to smile.
“This is bullshit,” she hissed.
“Yep. And you’re going to hear a lot of it in the days to come.” I was just being honest with her. She was a kid. I wasn’t going to lie to a kid and try to be who I wasn’t around her. I was just going to be me, just like Bender wanted. Too bad if this wasn’t what he, or Lynn, had in mind.
“Can’t you take me through the cases you’ve had before? I want to know everything about the Hedge witches. That’s going to help me a lot more than stirring,” she cried.
“But how will it help me to sit around and talk all day long, when I can do something productive with my time?” Stirring was productive. Watching movies and talking about the past wasn’t. Since there was nobody knocking on the door, Lynn was going to have to suck it up and deal. Who knew? Maybe, by the end of the day, she would no longer be interested in being my “apprentice.”
“Uncle Eli said—”
“Uncle Eli is a liar. He tricked me into signing that agreement. Now, if you want to learn about stirring, I suggest you take that hoodie off and come with me to the kitchen.”
I had no idea how we were going to even fit in there, but it was a good thing we were both petite.
“But—”
This time, I didn’t cut Lynn off. The door did. A woman walked into my office, her green eyes wide and her lips a dry mess. Her blonde hair was greasy and it stuck to her forehead, making her look even sweatier than she really was. She looked at Lynn first, and then turned to me.
I stepped in front of her. “Can I help you?”
The woman took all of me in, ears, eyes and all. “Are you Winter Wayne?”
“Yes,” I said without hesitation. Could it be…
“My name is Dena and I really need your help,” she said breathlessly.
Through the corner of my eye, I could see a ghost of a smile appearing on Lynn’s pale face. She knew what this meant as well as I did: I had a new case.
Four
Dena really looked shaken up. I dragged Ms. Riley’s chair close to my desk and waved for her to sit while I went to fetch a glass of water. Lynn stood to the side, arms crossed in front of her chest, eyes full of excitement.
With a nod, Dena thanked me for the water. I took my seat behind my desk, feeling a bit more comfortable about receiving people in my office but nowhere near relaxed.
“So Dena, do you have a last name?” It might have not been the best opening line, but I’d feel better with more knowledge about her first.
Looking at me like she couldn’t figure out what I was saying for a second, she left the glass still half full on my desk and swallowed loudly.
“Waldorf,” she whispered. “I really need your help.”
“Let’s just start from the beginning. What kind of a witch are you?” Because she was no werewolf. Definitely not a vampire.
“A Blood witch,” Dena said and shook her head. “That’s not the point. I need to know if you will help me.” Suddenly, she sounded a lot angrier.
I rested back on my chair and cleared my throat. “And I needed to know who you are first. Why don’t you tell me what you need from
me?”
Dena looked up at Lynn, who was looking at her like she was in love, shiny eyes and all. “I’d like to speak to you alone,” the Blood witch finally said.
“It’s okay. Lynn here is my apprentice,” I mumbled reluctantly.
Raising her brows in disbelief, Dena offered me a dumbfounded smile. “She’s a kid.”
On that, we agreed. At least one person was seeing this the way I did. It was a nice reminder that I hadn’t lost my mind. “I’ve got her parents’ approval. Go ahead and pretend she’s not even there,” I said to Dena.
I widened my eyes at Lynn to tell her to back off. Nobody could focus on anything with someone else breathing down their necks. Biting her lip, Lynn lowered her head and stepped away from my desk. At least she wasn’t going to be difficult.
With a halfhearted smile, I nodded at Dena as if all was fine now and she could continue. Maybe it was just my imagination, but when the Blood witch sighed, it almost sounded like she’d already regretted coming to my office, and that made me want to slam my forehead to the desk. I didn’t do it, but I really wanted to.
“There is this guy,” Dena started, whispering like she wished Lynn couldn’t hear us. “His name is Blake Powell. I need you to give him a beating for me.”
The words didn’t register in my brain for a long second. When they did, I still held my breath and expected her to start laughing.
She didn’t.
“You do know that I’m a private investigator, Miss Waldorf?” Maybe that part had skipped her mind when she rushed into my door.
“Yes, I know. Everybody knows you killed those Hedge witches in Staten Island. You’re the right person to kick Blake’s ass because he’s a very strong witch,” she said in a hurry.
This time, I laughed all by myself. A second later, I had no idea whether to continue to be amused or to be insulted by her request.
“I’m sorry, Miss Waldorf, but you seem to have the wrong idea about what it is I do here. My services are those of a private investigator, like I said, and beating people up isn’t anywhere on that list.” I stood up to tell her that I wasn’t just being hard—I really meant it.