Witch in Time: A New Adult Urban Fantasy (Red Witch Chronicles 6)

by Sami Valentine

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  Next morning, Red gripped her golden poker chip and stepped through a janitor’s closet in the casino to the alchemists hidden within. Atoms stretching and contracting in that peculiar portal way, she exited from an archway in a cascade of purple sparks. She followed her friends, surprised to find the wooden platform half empty.

  The transit station of the academy, the archways pumped in sanctioned guests to shop at its bazaar and released residents on their business in the city. It was guarded by the wary agents of the Gendarme in black jackets and bowler hats who checked each metallic key carefully, pulling some people aside to search their bags.

  Red offered documentation with Perenelle Flamel’s signature to bring her belted hunter’s kit into Pyramid Hall. Security had tightened since she left.

  The giant banyan tree in the center garden still amazed with the same awe-inspiring canopy, hazy with mystical vapors.

  Navigating kiosks in the bazaar area of the gargantuan plaza, they moseyed to the buffet in the corner. Hungry adepts and alchemists waited in line. Chatter about the feud with the local vampires hung over every table.

  A dark-skinned alchemist in a headwrap gossiped over frittatas to her friend, “Did you hear that the Mad Supreme…”

  In another conversation, one man declared, “I don’t leave the school now. I’m catching up on my reading.”

  At breakfast, Basil seemed distracted. So did Hannah. The heartbroken teen didn’t fill in the lulls of conversation as usual. Surprisingly, she refused to talk about Jeremy.

  Vic pontificated on the latest television show that he wanted them to watch. He might have been happy to avoid young love woes, but Red wasn’t. She had spent weeks sharing a dorm with Hannah, late nights spent gossiping and pigging out on ice cream. It felt weird not to hear the blow-by-blow of the breakup.

  “Red. Constantine.” Ian Keliʻi approached their table. A tall Hawaiian with a thrice broken nose, he smiled under his black bowler hat. He was flanked by another Gendarme officer—a plump Hispanic woman with a no-nonsense expression. “This is both hello and goodbye, I suppose. The portal is ready for you two.”

  “Thanks again,” Red said. “This shortcut is going to save us a lot of hassle.”

  “And facetime with randos on the road,” Vic added.

  “You’re welcome,” Ian said. “Basil, I need you to speak with my partner, Ortega. She has a question.” He kept his smile, but the request was edged with authority.

  Red hugged Basil and Hannah, promising to call once they arrived in Charm. A school raven cawed overhead as if declaring he had heard the vow.

  The hunters followed Ian to a platform on the far side of the Pyramid. A sparse queue waited to go through portal archways into the casino half of the alchemist stronghold. After cutting the line, a perk of being with a magic cop, the trio exited out into a cavernous concrete room.

  No signs marked the closed garage doors lining the walls. A chill hung in the air, not from air conditioning, but from being underground, far from the penetrating rays of the Nevada sun. The Millennium Falcon waited in the center of the chamber.

  Red slung a jacket over her black tank top. How many subterranean floors did the academy have?

  Ian fished a remote from his black jacket. The device had a selenite crystal embedded in a golden alloy casing. He pointed it at one of the garages on the right. The door opened to reveal a swirling purple nebula. Strange constellations and comets eddied in its depths. “Drive straight in, think of Battle Forge, and you’ll be there. We sorted out the recent kinks with the portal.”

  Vic asked sharply, “What kinds of kinks?”

  Ian grinned. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “And with that reassurance, off we go.” Red saluted, walking backward toward the black van, then got into the passenger side. She tossed her overnight bag behind the wooden chest between the front seats.

  Vic climbed inside and patted the steering wheel. “I’m sorry, Falcon. It’s going to be a bumpy ride. I’ll get you waxed to make up for it.” He turned on the engine and drove slowly toward the portal as if they were passing a busy playground of deaf and blind children.

  “Give it some juice, Constantine,” Red said. “We don’t want to get half stuck.”

  Revving the motor and bracing himself, Vic hit the gas, and the Millennium Falcon launched through the garage door.

  The portal ruptured into brilliant sparkles and phosphorescent lightning at their passage.

  Forcing her eyes closed, Red held onto her seat belt. Her cheeks rippled as silent screams erupted from her throat. The tires landed, shock absorbers creaking. Her head bounced against the headrest when Vic hit the brakes.

  Sunshine beamed down, warming the goose bumps on her skin.

  They were back on earth again.

  The ruins of the mining town groaned in the high winds churned up by the portal. It closed behind them. Only an old tree by a chicken coop marked the spot where an invisible child of the great banyan grew. They were among the few who knew of its existence by the Oregon-Nevada border, and the academy wanted to keep it that way.

  Alchemists and secrets went together like peanut butter and chocolate.

  Vic bolted out of the van to check the tires and scope out the damage. “Last time you drove through a portal, you left the Falcon a mess.”

  Red rolled down the window and leaned out. “Some of that was werewolves.”

  “Nothing looks ready to fall off.” He shrugged and got back inside to drive onto the unpaved main street. “We shaved a day’s drive off the trip. Good job schmoozing with Perenelle Flamel to get us a back door to Vegas. I could get used to this. Think of the weekend blackjack trip possibilities.”

  Squinting at him, Red put on sunglasses. “You went downstairs to gamble after I went to bed, didn’t you?”

  “I went downstairs to win, you mean. $1,438.56 dollarydoos. Thank you very much. Don’t worry, I was the only human at the table.” Vic switched from the static-filled radio to the CD player, turning up his classic rock playlist inside. “Time in a Bottle” by Jim Croce filtered out.

  A patch of goose bumps rose on Red’s arm despite the bright sun. Rubbing the chill away, she said, “Something peppier, I think.”

  The high desert wilderness peeked at her through the road dust. The tightness in her chest eased as it always did when she was on the move. A glance in the side mirror showed Battle Forge shrinking on the horizon.

  Red was ready to go home, but she couldn’t stop looking back.

  2

  July 3, Late Afternoon, Charm, Oregon

  After five, the Millennium Falcon climbed an old logging road into forested hills.

  Charm spread below, inching into view as the van climbed higher. First the village itself, bisected by a narrow river draining into the Pacific Ocean. Then the expansive cemetery, tombs lined up like distant soldiers, and the country club on the seaside cliffs in the south. The road curved to a perfect vista point whittled out of the woods. It was a hundred-and-eighty-degree view stretching to the small port in the natural harbor to the north.

  A center of mystical confluences, dimensions rubbed against each other here like the tectonic plates. From this height, you couldn’t see what really lurked below the picturesque sight.

  In the center of the forest clearing, a small brick house and a shed huddled together. Olivia Benston had given Vic a sweetheart deal for a rental on her family’s land in exchange for being on-call to run off any monsters at their nearby timber operation.

  He backed up to the front door. “Olivia must have been around. The shed’s open.”

  “Or a management company. I doubt the Benstons are hands-on landlords.” Red popped out of the vehicle once he parked and trotted in place. “Get the house open. I need to pee.”

  After her long-delayed business inside, she found Vic examining the side yard by the shed. She called out, walking over, “What are we looking at?”

  “I hoped it was simply tweake
rs looking for power tools to pawn.” He pointed at a strange footprint on the ground. Bigger than a bear, it certainly wasn’t a wolf print or from any other animal Red had seen before. It seemed vaguely humanoid, but too large to be anyone besides a basketball player.

  “Shifter, maybe,” he said. “Lots in this town.”

  “They still could’ve been on meth. Supes are wacky like that.” She hoped not. It jacked them up as much as humans. Charm itself already radiated enough energy that made demons feel juiced. It hovered over the town like a light fog to her third eye.

  He crouched down to inspect the print. “Whatever was here, it didn’t take anything. Might have just walked through. What—”

  A dented SUV rumbled into the yard and parked by the van. Zach Sanchez popped out, clad in his habitual black, and waved. His shaggy dark hair curled over one ear while the other side had geometric lines cut into the fade. He looked ready to hunt, like always, but he’d taken a day off from running Lili’s Diner to help them move.

  Red hoped they’d get done early so she could glam up before meeting Kristoff later.

  Vic beckoned Zach over. “Wanna see something weird?”

  A third pair of eyes didn’t clarify the species of the footprint, so they began unloading the van, first separating Red’s few boxes from the rest. She was living with Stace and Zach for now, so she gave Vic the household goods for his new place. It wasn’t like her inheritance couldn’t get her new supplies when she finally decided where to put down roots in Charm.

  Olivia had already forwarded listings of various homes that her family had for sale or rent. That was a question Red put off for another day. Living away from Vic already made her feel like an unsure kid moving from her parents’ place to a college dorm.

  The sun waned over the distant Pacific as they unpacked and put things away in the sparsely furnished house. It had been used by foremen of the old Benston lumber camps and still had a spartan air. She predicted that, apart from a Tarantino movie poster, it would stay that way.

  Vic motioned them outside. “Break time! Whatever’s still in a box, I’ll get to later.”

  Red whispered to Zach, “I predict that will be in two months.”

  “Three, and I’ll put a twenty spot on it,” the empath replied, shaking her hand.

  “I heard that,” Vic grumbled. “We’ll make a fire, and I’ll cook us some camp pies.”

  The sun set as they finished their dinner and chatted around the bonfire, admiring the village below. Red’s tired muscles sank into her folding chair, sluggish and content, in the warmth of the flames. She savored the idle chatter until Zach dropped a question that made her tense up.

  He asked, “Before you left, did you get a chance to check out those cars that Dale was trying to sell? They were parked behind his mechanic shop.”

  “I didn’t,” she said, avoiding his eyes. “Not yet.”

  “I gave them a once over. They’re all solid and should sell fast.”

  She forced her face into a smile. It was sweet of Zach. Logically, she should just get a car and stop using a bike or bumming rides from friends. It wasn’t like she couldn’t get one, decide she didn’t like it, and then buy another.

  That was another decision, like where to live, that should have been easy to make. Why wasn’t it? That was a question for her therapist.

  She made a promise that she wasn’t sure she’d keep. “I’ll put that on the list for tomorrow.”

  Vic cut in, “Speaking of tomorrow, Josh is doing a virtual D&D session…”

  Red rejoiced at the conversation shift. She let the boys talk about fake magic; she had the real thing.

  Drawing upon her mother’s golden sapphire ring, she focused on a citronella candle in a small bucket at her side. First, she ignited the well of energy within her, thinking as always of her triumph over the ghostly warlock Maxwell Baldacci. It had been a power moment, as Trudy Fox called it, to steel her confidence. Trudy might have tried to kill her, but she had handed down a nifty trick.

  Elemental witchcraft required becoming one with the element, spreading her senses out into each molecule, bringing it to her will. Fire fought her more than air or water. Earth didn’t even answer. Red focused on drawing the energy of the campfire to the candle.

  Mosquitoes nibbled at her concentration.

  She borrowed Vic’s lighter in the end.

  How much would she have progressed in magic if she’d stayed at the alchemist academy? She had mastered the basics of meditation, sacred circles, and crystal grids. Honing her natural talent in elemental magic was another thing. Cutting off her negative train of thought, she checked her phone.

  A neglected text notification from Basil judged her for forgetting to check in with him. She groaned internally at the slip. Why was she like this? Always swept up in the moment or dwelling on the past, never at the right time.

  His message read: Are you home yet? Inquiring minds want to know…I had a dreadful night. Thank God Hannah was there to save me. I’ll let her tell you. I’m taking a Xanax and a vacation starting now.

  A waft of pungent organic funk hit her nose as Red was about to reply. She waved her free hand in front of her face. “Oh my God, who made that smell? Someone’s ass just died tonight. When is the exorcism?”

  “She who smelt it dealt it,” Vic said sternly. “So say the ancient laws.”

  “I got it now.” Zach wrinkled his nose. “It’s in my mouth. Red, did you really live in a van with a guy capable of this raw stench?”

  Vic pulled his Led Zeppelin shirt over his nose. “If it were me, I’d already be bragging about it and referencing Blazing Saddles.”

  A low, wordless cry came from the trees, pitched at a frequency that Red felt more than heard. She’d camped plenty of times and never heard an animal make a sound like that. Stiffening, she switched on her spirit gaze. “Listen.”

  The men stilled, instantly alert.

  A brown and green aura glimmered between two firs. The tall figure was in the shadows, yet she could have sworn it scrutinized them. A feeling came over her like it sensed her attention.

  Don’t take a picture.

  The foreign thought came to her like an outside order, raising the hair on her neck. Obeying, she put her phone in her pocket. It wasn’t mind control, merely a request.

  She tapped into her magic, visualizing curling the energy like yarn around the golden ring on her finger. Thinking of her mother, Brooke, she ignited it and readied herself.

  “I’ll handle this. My bow is in the car.” Zach stood, his heart chakra glowing green from his empath powers. Turning to face the figure, his tough expression dissolved. “It’s hurt.” He stepped toward it slowly, palms open. “Hey, buddy, what’s up? Are you okay? We can help you, little fella.”

  The creature shuffled forward. Nearly seven feet tall, it was not a little fella. It was definitely a male. Cinnamon-colored fur, flat like a spaniel, covered him from head to toe. Thankfully, enough covered his bits to keep Red from blushing.

  The campfire illuminated his ledge-like brow, wide nose, and thin lips. Round black eyes inspected them, intelligent and sensitive as a gorilla, sentient but possessing a different wisdom than their own. He radiated a soft green glow that tickled her witch senses like spring lavender. His physical presence wasn’t as fresh. His strong odor, like B.O. mixed with a compost pile, intensified.

  Long arms swinging, he hobbled to their fire, favoring his right leg. Fresh blood on his thick left ankle reflected the light.

  “It’s a Bigfoot. A Sasquatch, right?” Red asked Vic. “You were serious all those times? They exist!”

  He took a long gulp of his beer. “I was half fucking with you, actually.”

  Zach looked back at them, childlike wonder in his eyes. “This is amazing, guys. He trusts us.”

  “Do we take him to a veterinarian now?” Red asked nasally, pinching her nose. She released her hold on her magic, satisfied that the empath had communed enough with the big beast to lul
l it into docility. “Have you seen one of him before?”

  “No,” Zach said, obviously delighted by the novelty. “I’ve heard the stories, but… Wow!”

  “This is so cool.” Vic slowly stood as one would around a spooked horse. “I’ve got a first aid kit. We can spray some antiseptic on its injury.”

  Obviously, neither man had gotten a telepathic message like Red. They were acting like a golden retriever wandered into the yard.

  The Bigfoot paused, making a cautious low chirp to the empath.

  “We’re going to help you, little guy, I swear,” Zach said. “Go get the kit, Vic.”

  “Don’t scare him off before I come back!” Vic disappeared into the brick house.

  “Are you reading his emotions right now?” Red crept behind Zach, careful not to make any sudden movements. He might see the Sasquatch as a big puppy, but she’d felt the creature’s will before, the silent order. “Is he communicating with you telepathically?”

  “No, I wish. He’s a sweetheart, I can tell. Young, too. Like a teenager. He’s scared and hurt. Look at that leg wound. Did he step into a bear trap? You can tell he tried to clean it in a stream.” He smiled, bobbing his head in approval. “He’s smart.”

  “And strong to step out again.”

  “Thank God.” Zach pulled out a chair and set it halfway between the Bigfoot and the fire before backing away again. He gestured to the beast again. “Sit, your leg hurts. What are we going to call you? Maybe Antonio.” He looked to Red. “What do you think? Does he look like an Antonio?”

  “Sure,” she said slowly. Sweetheart he might be, but the Bigfoot looked like an old shag carpet to her. “You know his home is out in the forest, right?”

  Zach ignored her to go to Vic as he emerged from the house and took a spray can from the offered first aid kit. He slowly walked to the Bigfoot. “Antonio, this might sting, but it will help. We don’t want you to get an infection.”

  Light beamed on the Sasquatch as a motor roared over the crackling fire. A four-wheeler burst from the trees. Earth churned under its big tires. Antonio fled in the opposite direction.