by Mindy Klasky
Raven tossed her hair over one shoulder. “Where’s the dotted line? I’m ready to sign.” Somehow, even after a night of fighting, after the physical and emotional blows we’d all sustained, she still managed to make signing a document sound like an exotic sexual act.
David turned on his heel and led the way down the hall.
Sarah Anderson was actually working behind the counter as we poured into the clerk’s office. She offered up her bright smile of recognition, sparing only the slightest glance of concern at the coterie that gathered behind us.
“Of course,” she said when David told her what we needed. She disappeared into a back office for a moment, returning with a sheaf of papers. “You can take them down to the cafeteria to complete.”
Like a horde of zombies, we shuffled to the cafeteria. I wondered if zombies really existed. If the Empire had jurisdiction over their legal claims. I hoped I never found out.
Collapsing at a cafeteria table, I stared at the rows of vending machines. The adrenaline from our battle was finally wearing off, and hunger was taking its place. I’d need to ground myself soon.
But for the meantime, I muttered a quick spell to banish my fatigue. It depleted the last of my reserves, but at least I’d stay on my feet for another hour or two. I’d pay for it tomorrow. For tomorrow, and the entire week to follow.
Shaking my head, I started to read through the legal jargon on the Affidavit. The requirements for joining the Eastern Empire were set forth in a series of bullet points. I had to be physically present in the Eastern Empire for at least thirty months before applying. Reasonably proficient in English or willing to pay for translation services. Willing to forsake all other loyalties, including but not limited to allegiance to Hecate’s Court, Dionysus’s Den, and Mercury’s Council. Familiar with Empire history, government, and society.
“Just sign it,” David said when he saw me hesitate over the last line. I was shocked to hear the sudden exhaustion in his voice. Exhaustion or something more, because he leaned close to whisper: “Sign it, and we’ll get you some sort of astral protector tomorrow.”
His words shocked me more than any affidavit requirement ever could. “You’re my astral protector.”
“I broke my warder’s oath, Jane. I raised a weapon against my witch.”
I laughed in disbelief. “That oath was sworn before a body that cast you out! Besides, you couldn’t control your actions when you were bonded by Ethan.”
“I placed myself under his control. I gambled for Blanton House, and I lost.”
“No,” I said, and now I was getting angry. “If you think I’m letting you walk away after everything that happened tonight, you’re certifiably insane. Do you realize what we discovered out there? Witches can tap into warder’s magic.”
“Jane—”
I silenced him the most effective way I knew, by pressing my lips against his. His pulse jumped, just as it had on the battlefield.
I knew I could reach out for his warder’s power, for that steely sphere deep inside his consciousness. But I didn’t want to work magic. I didn’t want to burst through new astral frontiers. I just wanted to kiss the man I loved.
And so I did, ignoring everyone else in the room, ignoring the affidavit in front of us, ignoring all the things that were wrong in the world so I could focus on one thing that was very, very right: us.
And it was right, because David finally kissed me back.
“Marry me,” I said when we came up for air. “Now. Tonight.”
He laughed. “You’ve been planning our wedding for months. You can’t toss all that away because you’re hungry and exhausted and confused by everything that’s changed.”
“I’m hungry, yes. And I may need to sleep for a week. But I’m not confused, not by anything. I don’t care about our wedding, about flowers and dresses and seating arrangements. And I definitely don’t care about knitted cummerbunds and bowties and bouquets. That’s just one day. I want all the days that come after. I want a marriage.”
“Jane—”
I shook my head. “We’re already going to be standing in front of a judge. We’ve got all the witnesses the Empire could ever require. Gran and Clara, too.”
“But what about Melissa? She can’t enter an Empire courtroom.”
“I’ll tell her we eloped. She did it herself. She’ll understand.”
David opened his mouth. Closed it again. Spread his hands on the table and looked at them as if he’d never seen fingernails before.
“I think,” Neko said, shouldering between the two of us, “the word you’re looking for is ‘Yes.’” He slapped a paper down on the table, another white sheet with bold black letters shouting from the top: Application for Marriage.
“You sign here,” Neko said helpfully, pointing to David. “And you here,” he said to me. He shoved a silver circlet in front of me. “Tony says you can use his warder’s ring. He doesn’t need it any more, not with Hecate’s Court out of the picture.” Neko cocked his head and waggled his fingers at David’s own band. “You can give yours to Jane. She can get it sized later.”
I signed my name, just like my familiar told me to. David followed suit.
I don’t remember any of the details after that. Post-working exhaustion had set in completely, and I had no energy left for another fatigue-banishing spell. I know that Sarah Anderson laughed when Neko handed her the signed marriage form. And she stamped all our Affidavits of Citizenship, providing us each with a copy before she filed away the originals for safekeeping. And we all walked down the corridor to the courtroom, where Judge DuBois sat in his tall chair, steepling his fingers, and pursing his lips at our oddly timed request.
David and I pledged to love each other.
We swore to honor each other.
Neither of us even considered promising to obey the other.
The courtroom cheered when Judge DuBois intoned, “You may kiss to seal your bond.” David’s lips were soft against mine, gentle, the tail end of a promise he’d made the first night a windswept storm brought him to my doorstep.
We walked down the aisle hand in hand. Raven filmed us from the doorway, ignoring Judge DuBois’s disapproving glare. Gran kissed my cheek first, then David’s, stopping in between to wipe away her own straggling tears. Clara held me close, crushing the breath from my lungs in the first maternal embrace I could remember. My students pressed close, buoying us past courthouse security, into the bitter cold of a December night.
Caleb volunteered to spirit my mother and grandmother back to Gran’s house, transporting each of them and their familiars through his waning stock of warder’s magic. Garth hustled off Alex and Seta. Luke took care of Bree and Tupa. Tony brought Raven and Hani home, then came back to gather Neko. Caleb returned to guide Emma and Kopek to their own beds.
Finally, David and I were alone on the courthouse steps. His palms settled on my shoulders, and he leaned close to whisper in my ear. “To Blanton House?”
I nodded. “To home.”
He pulled me to his chest, and I caught my breath, waiting for the world to drop away. Just before we swooped into the darkness, a clock began to toll midnight.
SNEAK PEEK
As you now know, witches aren’t the only supernatural creatures living in Washington, DC. Read on, for a sneak peek at more magic in the nation’s capital, in Fright Court!
~~~
As I watched Judge Robert DuBois drink a steaming glass of blood, I realized that my new job wasn’t going to be the usual nine to five.
This couldn’t be happening to me. I couldn’t be sitting in the courtroom for the District of Columbia Night Court, watching an actual vampire devour a midnight snack. I couldn’t be staring at suddenly-apparent fangs, at jet-black eyes in a whey-pale face, at a cruel and commanding supernatural jurist, where a mousy human judge had sat mere moments before.
It looked like my dream job, Court Clerk for the District of Columbia Night Court, was going to leave a little something to be desi
red.
“James,” Judge DuBois snapped. “Do we have a problem with Ms. Anderson?”
My boss stood at attention beside me. In his impeccable dark suit, Mr. Morton looked every bit the Director of Security for the Night Court. “No, Your Honor. No problem at all.”
But we did have a problem. A huge one—gaping in the center of the courtroom floor. The red-headed Amazon of a bailiff, Eleanor Owens, had pressed some hidden lever on the courtroom wall, and the sleek marble tiles started to slide back, folding away silently, one beneath another. An iron railing rose from the emptiness below. Stairs gleamed as they marched into the darkness, and a metallic clang announced some door opening far below.
Eleanor’s impressive display of violet eyeshadow glittered as she stepped away from the lever and intoned, “Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! All persons having business before the Honorable, the Night Court of the Eastern Empire, are admonished to draw near and give their attention, for the Court is now sitting. May Sekhmet watch over all proceedings here and render justice unto all.”
I barely had time to register the odd words before a woman walked up the shadowy stairs. Exquisitely dressed in a plum-colored suit, she was the living—or, I rapidly came to suspect—the undead image of a professional lady lawyer. She strode to the defense table and snapped open her briefcase.
A doddering old man followed behind her. Okay, he wasn’t actually doddering, and he was probably only fifty-five, but he looked fat and soft and stupid next to the woman. He lugged a heavy litigation bag, one of those oversized briefcases that attorneys use to cart around endless sheaves of paper. He grunted as he hefted the satchel onto the prosecution’s table.
Once both lawyers had settled into their places, Eleanor descended the stairs. My mind was reeling; I was twisting the coral ring on the middle finger of my right hand as if it could turn back time, could make everything normal again. I had only completed one year of law school, but my classes had certainly never prepared me for anything like this. Even my interview with Mr. Morton had seemed perfectly normal—he had glanced at my resumé, asked me a bunch of questions about the three dozen jobs I’d held over the past few years, nodded when I explained that I was good at organizing information. He’d accepted my writing sample, told me that he was looking at a couple of other candidates, and said that he’d be back in touch.
And three days later, I was hired.
Now, sitting in the courtroom, Mr. Morton leaned forward, as two heads came into view on the secret staircase, Eleanor’s and the defendant’s. Clever me—I realized that the slight guy with the white-blond hair and ice-blue eyes had to be the defendant, because a gleaming silver chain was strung between his feet. That, and the fact that he wore a baggy white prison uniform, along with dirty flip-flops.
Eleanor followed behind the guy, towering over him without regard to the sneer he directed at her. She hefted a length of silver chain in her left hand; the links stood out against her heavy amethyst bracelet. In her right hand, she held a wooden stick, the length of her forearm and the width of her wrist. It tapered down to a knife-sharp point.
The Night Court bailiff held a stake.
This had to be a joke—some sort of hazing for the new girl. Mr. Morton had read my resumé. He knew that I’d written my undergraduate thesis on Gothic literature in America—old horror stories, like Edgar Allan Poe. The courtroom staff must have decided to pull my leg.
Strike that. Judge DuBois didn’t look like the type of guy who would put up with courtroom pranks.
This was insane. They couldn’t be vampires. Vampires had no lungs. No beating hearts. I focused on Mr. Morton’s starched white shirt. As soon as I saw him take a breath, I could laugh at myself. I could say that I had been taken in by a strange series of coincidences, that I’d been a gullible fool.
But he didn’t breathe.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Eleanor clump back to her place at the front of the bench. She proclaimed: “The matter of the Clans of the Eastern Empire versus Karl Schmidt, Judge Robert DuBois presiding.”
Mr. Morton still didn’t breathe.
The blond woman stood and announced, “Your Honor, we’d like to call our next witness, Ernst Brauer.”
No breathing yet.
Eleanor heaved herself toward the impossible stairs in the center of the courtroom, stood at attention as another man climbed those steps. Judge DuBois ordered Brauer to take the witness stand.
No breathing at all.
My head swam. My vision clouded, and I realized that I had to get out of that room. “I can’t—“ I started to say, and I staggered toward the courtroom doors, doors that I had watched Mr. Morton lock behind us, a mere half hour before.
“James!” Judge DuBois snapped, and my boss’s hand suddenly reached for my elbow.
“No!” I said, jerking my arm out of his reach.
“Sarah!” Mr. Morton shouted, and he blocked my way to the courtroom doors.
Before I could push past him, a snarl ripped the air—pure animal fury that shattered whatever formality remained in the courtroom. Judge DuBois slammed his gavel down, demanding order in his court. There was a clatter as the court reporter leaped to one side. Eleanor clutched her silver chain, and Mr. Morton grabbed at me again, closing his icy palm around my arm.
But none of it mattered. None of it made any difference.
Ernst Brauer crashed through the wooden gate that separated the active area of the courtroom from the spectators’ seats. He pounced on me, grabbing my hair and snapping my head back like a doll’s. I pounded at his chest, but I might as well have battled stone. His grip was stronger than I’d ever imagined an attacker’s could be. I tried to turn sideways, to pull back toward Mr. Morton, toward safety. Brauer laughed, though, and he forced me hard against his chest, tugging at my hair with enough force to rattle my jaws.
Brauer growled deep in his throat, sounds that might have been lost syllables, twisted words. “Strangle her,” I thought he said. I stared into his face. I could see his red-rimmed eyes, flaming like molten lava. I could see his cracked lips curl back in a snarl. I could see his incisors glinting like a Rottweiler’s, descending even as I gaped.
I screamed as those teeth sank into my neck.
“Fire!” I shrieked. “Call 911!”
I’d taken a self-defense class in college. Some well-padded instructor had brainwashed me that onlookers were more likely to respond to warnings about fire than to everyday cries for help. The same burly guy had promised that twenty-five percent of attackers would be startled away by any loud shout.
Just my luck, Ernst Brauer wasn’t in the twenty-five percent.
Panic flooded my body; my heart clenched with enough force that my entire chest hurt. Barely able to remember my training, I scrabbled for Brauer’s fingers, bending them back until they broke like matchsticks.
In theory. There was no way that I was actually getting Brauer’s hands to move. His fingers might as well have been made of iron.
He snarled against my throat. I actually felt his lips curve back. Hot air rushed against my skin as an inhuman sound rattled out of him. The tiny hairs on my arms rose in primitive reaction—the creature who held me was a predator, and I was prey.
My stomach lurched as I heard the pop of his teeth puncturing my flesh. For one heartbeat, I knew that I was injured, knew that I was going to bleed, and then I gasped at the actual sting of the wound, like a hundred razor nicks all at once. My blood pumped out of my body, suctioned into his mouth. His tongue drove against the pulse point in the hollow beneath my jaw, urging the flow to quicken.
Frantic, I struggled to remember other self-defense techniques. I couldn’t balance in my idiotic new-job pumps; there was no way to get enough leverage to stomp on his insole, to bring my knee up into his groin. That left my hands. Not my own vulnerable fingers, my knuckles that had never delivered a real punch in my life. Instead, I bent my right hand back at my wrist, exposing the hard heel and driving toward my attacker’s solar plex
us. I tried to push through his body, to force every last gasp of air from his lungs so that he had no choice but to drop me while he caught his breath.
Great idea. If, you know, the guy actually needed to breathe.
If I had any doubt left about the creature that was attacking me, any suspicion that he was actually human, that I’d made some fanciful mistake by thinking he was a vampire, his reaction to my punch destroyed it. Any human man would have gulped in air after my blow. Any human man would have loosened his grip, if only for a second.
This creature only pulled me closer. He bent my neck at a steeper angle, slicing deeper with one razor fang to follow the rich lode of my jugular. I screamed as my blood began to flow faster.
Another cry matched mine. A bellow, actually. Suddenly, Eleanor was beside us, and Brauer’s fangs ripped from my neck, tearing more of my flesh as he threw back his head to howl. Taking full advantage of my unexpected freedom, I staggered toward the oaken courtroom doors, toward safety.
I wanted to look away. I wanted not to see the creature before me, not to see his pointed teeth glinting with my blood. But I could not stop watching. I could not even blink as Eleanor wrestled Brauer to the ground, twisting her silver chain around his forehead, dropping it to his neck. She pulled the links tight, snapping them against each other with a vehemence that would have caused anyone—human or vampire—to wince.
The silver, though, made Brauer do more than wince. Once again, he screamed—this time in utter agony. I was almost bowled over by the stench of burning flesh. My attacker fell to his knees, slamming against the marble floor with enough force that my own legs ached. The motion knocked him silent, and I realized that he must have passed out. My suspicion was confirmed when he slumped to one side, collapsing in a heap at the toes of Eleanor’s uniform boots.
In the sudden silence, the only sound that I could hear was my pounding heart. I raised a hand to my throat, catching my breath between my teeth as my torn flesh stung, as I realized just how much damage Brauer had done. I was terrified to move my fingers, too afraid to speak, to do anything that might make my wounds even worse.