The Witch Collector Part I

by Loretta Nyhan

  “Gavin convinced my parents he could. If it’s impossible, we’ll know he lied to them.” I sighed. “Then I just have to figure out what else he lied about, and what that has to do with my family.”

  Miro traced his finger down the lists of topics. “Did your aunt tell you this about Gavin?”

  “Yes. She also told me what she knew about unmarked witches.”

  “Which is?”

  “Same thing your dad said. And according to Evie, I’m a target for Black Magicians everywhere.”

  Miro looked at me, the color blanched from his face. “That’s not something to joke about. Do you think she was trying to deflect attention from herself?”

  It was a valid question, but my feelings about Evie’s innocence had grown stronger. She frightened me, but she really was helping in any way she could, and in her own way. “I don’t think she’d do that, but I can’t be certain. I don’t think she knows where my parents are.”

  “You should trust your instincts,” Miro said as he picked up the black phone. “Now more than ever.” He began to dial and stopped, finger hovering over the number two.

  “What are you doing?”

  Miro shook his head and replaced the phone in its cradle. “Nothing. Forget it. Right now we should talk about what happened with Evie.”

  I told him everything that had happened in Evie’s shop. Surprisingly, he listened without interrupting, taking my every word and gesture in with open ears and clear, watchful eyes.

  “Alchemists can be brutal,” he said when I finished. “They have to live by their own moral codes. I’m surprised your mother’s coven accepted her.”

  “They’re family,” I said, shrugging. “Sisters.”

  He nodded, his face clouding with some mysterious thought. “You’re certain she doesn’t know where they are?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “What’s next, then?” he asked after a moment.

  I needed to find Gavin. Since I had no clue where to look for him, I needed to find out about him. I picked up the rotary phone and punched two. I had a hunch. Miro stared at me quizzically.

  “Yes?” a female voice purred. “What is it now?”

  “I need information on Black Magicians,” I said. “I’ll take whatever you’ve got.”

  Agneiska went silent, the sound of her breathing the only evidence she was still on the line. “Okay, Breeda,” she said after a long moment. “You sit tight and I’ll be right up.”

  I hung up and turned to Miro. “It couldn’t hurt. I don’t know what else to do.”

  He picked up the copy of Unmarked and tossed it on the table in front of me. “Put this in your bag and let’s go. Forget the other books. Let’s just go.”

  “And do what?”

  Miro drummed his fingers on the table, a gesture I was coming to understand as one of his nervous habits.

  There was a sharp rap on the door and Agneiska pushed in. She held a black binder, its cloth spine worn to shreds.

  “Take it back,” Miro said, his jaw tight. “We don’t need it.”

  Agneiska ignored him, taking in how close Miro and I sat next to each other, and the tension alight in the room. “This is what you want,” she said coldly to me. “Be careful with it. Our branch has only one copy. I’m not supposed to let anyone so much as flip through it unsupervised.”

  Miro shot her a withering look. “Then why make an exception?”

  Her smile held no warmth this time. “I would never stand in the way of the acquisition of knowledge.”

  “What is it?” I asked. I didn’t have time for whatever drama they were performing.

  “The Crowley Book,” she said. “You have heard of it, haven’t you?”

  I shook my head.

  “It’s a directory of witches who’ve been accused of practicing Black Magic. It’s updated as reports come in.”

  “Agneiska—” Miro said.

  But we both ignored him. “Who gets the reports?” I asked, interrupting him.

  Agneiska turned to Miro. “Is she for real?”

  Miro stood, his face twisted with anger. “Leave,” he said. “Right now.”

  Agneiska placed the binder on my lap. Then she left, slamming the door behind her.

  I hugged the binder to my chest. “Are you going to explain?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know.” He stared at the Crowley Book as though he wanted to rip it from my hands.

  “Well?”

  Miro sighed. “Covens self-report incidents of Black Magic to a watchdog group, and the information goes in this book. If someone is accused, members of the group investigate until they’re certain the accusation is based in truth.”

  “Is that fair? What if they’re innocent?”

  “If it’s proven, the report is removed.”

  “What if they’re . . . not innocent?”

  “An accused witch often disappears before anything can be done, which is often an admission of guilt. They run loose, or try disappearing into another coven. It helps for coven leaders to have this record if someone new shows up. Most covens wouldn’t associate with a Black Magician, so sometimes they join groups of their kind, whose members think that Black Magic shouldn’t be so taboo. They tend not to call attention to themselves.”

  “What if the accused witch stays?”

  “If the accused refuses to leave, the coven breaks the oath with that person, forcing the witch to live as a regular human. If the accused accepts responsibility and agrees to leave on their own, they have to abstain from witchcraft for a certain period of time, and to help witches in need.”

  I couldn’t imagine Gavin, powerful and proud, performing witch community service, picking up spent candles after a Samhain Festival. My mind reeled. If he really was a Black Magician, there was the possibility my parents had reported him. Was he punishing them? Was this why we ran in the middle of the night? But what about the rest of the coven?

  “What will this directory tell me?” I asked.

  “If anyone has reported Gavin as a practitioner of Black Magic, it’ll be listed in here. The names of the accusers who came forward first must be printed as well.”

  If my parents’ names were here, at least I could understand why they left. And a possible reason Gavin might be after them. I flipped through the pages of the directory. The names of the accused witches looked back at me, their photos accompanying the lists of magical crimes. I paged quickly through the first part of the alphabet, part of me hoping Gavin Doheny would be listed, half of me hoping he wouldn’t. I got to the Ds.

  “Breeda . . .”

  But my eyes stopped at the first entry.

  The accused: Dabrowski, Dobra.

  The charge: Black Magic.

  The accuser: Dabrowski, Miro.

  Shock burned through me like a lit match.

  Miro inched closer. “I can explain.”

  CHAPTER 18

  The narrow room suddenly felt claustrophobic. There were so many things—too many—I didn’t understand. Every rock I overturned had a mass of worms underneath, squirming over one another in an effort to hide from the sun. “Were you going to tell me?”

  Miro winced. “Is it really any of your business?” Then, “I’m sorry for that. I guess it is.”

  I ignored him, quickly paging through the rest of the Ds. No Gavin. “He’s not here.”

  “Just because he isn’t in the book doesn’t prove he isn’t practicing Black Magic,” Miro said. “But we do know no one has reported him yet, including your parents.”

  But even if Gavin wasn’t guilty of Black Magic, my parents still had a reason to run from him. And then there was Brandon. Was he running, too?

  I looked at Miro, who stared down at the Crowley Book, at his tender mouth, always held in a faint sneer. There was something about Miro that muddled my thinking. Did I trust him? I didn’t know. I did know that I needed more information about Black Magic, and that I now had someone with direct experience.

  My instincts said
yes—that I did trust Miro. And if I believed anything that he said, it was that I should start trusting myself.

  “Let’s go back and find the others. They might have some ideas.” I briskly gathered our things. “Can we check out The Mysteries of the Unmarked?” I asked, pointedly ignoring the Crowley Book.

  Miro exhaled. “Would you let me explain?”

  “I’d like to hear the story from your father first,” I said, keeping my voice neutral. “I want to know everything he can tell me about Black Magic.”

  “It’s not what you think,” Miro said. “He’s not what you think.”

  “I don’t know what to think,” I said, and opened the door, walking purposefully into the greater library.

  This time, Miro followed me.

  As we approached the Dabrowski apartment, I noticed a figure in the front window, still and watchful, blurred by the rain sluicing down the glass. Dobra. He was waiting for us.

  “I need to speak with Breeda,” he said as soon as we walked in the door. “In my study. Now.” He turned abruptly and strode down the hallway, expecting me to follow.

  The adrenaline that pushed through my veins since I’d left the library slowed to a crawl. I’d tried to cultivate it, to hold on to the energy of my body rewiring itself, and use its strength for what I felt might be a confrontation. Dobra’s request put me on the defensive and gave him the upper hand. Shelley had warned me that Dobra’s pride might make it difficult to get him to talk. Still, she felt I should try.

  She and I had hung back on our walk home. The rain slowed to a mist, blanketing the streets in a soft fog. Miro pushed ahead, walking briskly with Vadim at his side, Ion following at their heels like a scrappy puppy.

  I told her what happened at Evie’s and what I discovered at the Witch Library, choosing my words carefully when I reached the part about Dobra and Black Magic. She was a member of his coven, and I had to respect that. She paled when I mentioned the Crowley Book. “Don’t judge him too harshly,” she said when I finished. “And please, don’t condemn any of us until you know the full story.”

  Walking into Dobra’s musty office, I fully intended to get just that. I wasn’t certain knowing his coven’s story would help solve any of my problems, but I had so many blanks to fill. I hoped that some of them might overlap and provide clues to another question I had.

  Dobra took a seat behind his expansive desk. “Sit down,” he commanded, adding please as an afterthought.

  I sat in a high-backed leather chair.

  “I’ve heard from my contacts in the greater Portland area,” he began.

  My heart stilled in my chest. “And?”

  “There are rumors circulating that the rural coven governed by Gavin Doheny is grieving the death of one of its young female members.”

  “Greta,” I said quietly. “Her name was Greta.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” he said. There was a note of gentleness in his tone that made me fear what he was going to say next. “Your coven leader, Gavin, has since disappeared. The dead witch—”

  I shot him a pointed look.

  “Greta was dropped in a burial clearing outside the city, and has since been returned to the earth. A number of Portland witches have heard rumors her talisman had been removed prior to her funeral, and had been destroyed. It had blackened.”

  “Blackened?”

  “A sign of Black Magic. If this is true, this was not a natural death.”

  Suddenly afraid for Sonya, I instinctively reached for my phone, desperate to make contact. I sent a quick text, glancing up when Dobra cleared his throat. My eye caught some of the intricacies of his talisman that I hadn’t noticed the night before. The jade’s green was threaded with ribbons of onyx. Was it a trick of the light? The blood rushed from my face. Who was Dobra?

  “Are you feeling all right?” he asked. “Should I call Shelley in?”

  I tried to brush my fear away with a shake of my head. I needed information. “Do you have anything more specific you can tell me about Greta’s death?”

  He sighed. “Nothing else. Not yet. I’ll let you know if I learn more. In the meantime, you should be extremely careful. Black Magic is not something to take lightly.”

  I leaned toward him, tipping the chair. “Tell me what you know about it. Tell me what it can do.”

  Dobra froze. He didn’t say anything for a long moment, then said quietly, “So Miro told you.”

  “I saw the Crowley Book.”

  His mouth curled into a sneer. “Oh yes, the grand record of nefarious deeds.”

  I ignored his sarcasm. “I suspect that my coven leader’s name should be in the Crowley Book. And now you’re telling me Greta’s death wasn’t natural. I need to know what Gavin’s capable of so I can defend myself and my parents.”

  Dobra stood and came around the desk, shortening the long space between us. He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back. “Miro obviously trusts you with our family’s secrets. Did he tell you how he killed his brother?”

  Shock stole the words from my tongue. I could barely shake my head.

  Dobra smiled wryly. “I think you are learning that we really don’t know what another’s heart holds,” he said. “I’m going to tell you our story, not because it could help you—which it may—but because my son wants you to know. I owe him that much, I suppose.

  “A little over two years ago, Magda, my wife, collapsed while she was gardening in our backyard. We brought in a healer, who told us her heart was damaged. Death would come in a matter of months.

  “The boys, only a year apart, were approaching their transitions. They needed her. I needed her. And I couldn’t bear it.”

  “Did you take her to a hospital?” My voice sounded dry and hoarse.

  “For what? So they could kill her? Regular humans don’t understand us. Our bodies’ chemistry is quite different, and prompts the medical world to ask too many questions. And their technologies don’t do as much, if anything, for us,” he continued, glancing disdainfully at the phone in my hand. “Your generation is the first to make use of them, and as far as I can see they do nothing but weaken us. Hospitals were out of the question for my wife. She would likely die there. I turned to Black Magic to help her. I’m not proud of this, but it worked for a short while. At least until Miro’s older brother, Piotr, began transitioning.”

  Piotr. Oh, Shelley, I thought. My hand went to the talisman she’d given me.

  Dobra paused, thoughtful for a moment. “Practicing Black Magic means fighting nature,” he said. “And nature always fights back.”

  “By taking one of your sons,” I whispered.

  Dobra nodded, eyes shining. “Yes. And nearly destroying the other. One day, while I was with Magda, Piotr climbed to the roof to practice his gift, which, as with many in our line, was levitation. Miro joined him, to watch. Piotr and Miro had always gotten along so well, but I was naive as to how Black Magic in our house could poison our bonds. Piotr began teasing and taunting Miro because his transition had not begun yet. He became physical, jabbing at Miro, slapping and punching him. Suddenly, Miro’s magic arrived, and he was unable to control it. He levitated Piotr, sending him high into the air. Piotr screamed to be released, and because Miro had no talisman, and no concept of how to control his magic, he dropped his brother four stories to his death.” Dobra hung his head. “I stopped practicing Black Magic that day, but it was too late. Piotr was gone, and my wife passed to the other world not much later.”

  My heart contracted with pity—for a desperate man and his dying wife, for a confused, frightened boy who killed his only brother. For the terror that brother must have felt as he fell to his death. For Shelley, who’d lost her friend.

  Dobra cleared his throat, composing himself. “Black Magic can force a transition. It disrupts the natural order of things. It can kill and destroy and steal. Witches who encounter it are considered contaminated, as if it were a deadly virus.”

  “Your talisman,” I said, gesturing t
oward the darkened stone.

  He flinched, his composure breaking. “It tells the world what I’ve done much more quickly than the Crowley Book can.”

  “Did Miro really report you?”

  “I asked him to, to shield him from suspicion. I took full blame for what happened to Piotr.”

  As well you should, I thought.

  “My coven requested I break the oath and disappear with Miro into the mundane life of regular workaday slobs.” He paused, his mouth hardening. “I couldn’t do that, so we negotiated another penance. I did break with my coven, the oldest in Chicago, but I was allowed to start a new coven—as long as every witch I took in was an outcast, covenless and desperate, and needed a place to go.” He frowned. “I left one of the oldest covens in the city to run a crisis center for wayward witches.”

  Vadim. Shelley. Her mother, Donna. There must’ve been others, too, who I didn’t know. What had happened to them to make them outcasts? The question must have shown on my face because Dobra said, “I won’t tell you their stories. They’re not mine to tell.”

  I understood. I also knew I couldn’t afford to focus on the past when I should be putting all my energy into figuring out the mystery of my present.

  “Last night, you said my parents would have a strong connection to me during my transition. Could Gavin somehow access my powers through them during my transition?”

  Dobra thought for a minute. “I’ve never heard of that. It’s not impossible, but it’s not likely. He needs you if he wants to use your abilities. That I have heard of.”

  “But why hasn’t he tried to contact me, then?”

  “Gavin Doheny was always a mystery,” Dobra said.

  “You knew him?”

  “Not well. He was ambitious then, in a way one fears instead of admires. If he’s practicing Black Magic, it’s impossible to predict what all he might do.”

  “Did you know my parents, Lupe and Ryan Fergus?” I asked. I wanted him to say yes, to tell me they were well liked or charming, or any of the good things I knew about them to be true.