Witch on a Roll

by Evelyn Snow

  “No! That’s not true.” Duncan floated up to the perimeter wall, pressing his hands against it. “Who told you that?”

  “Ashmore’s attorney, Morrigan Shade,” I explained. “Why would she insist Echo is still alive?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “Try me.”

  He sighed heavily, forcing the ethers of his ghost body to swirl. “Tell me what you’ve been told.”

  “That Echo, the witch you say was formerly known as Becca, has or had spectral disorder,” I began. “Medical doctors couldn’t help. That’s when Ashmore stepped in with his magical mojo. You ruined everything by helping her escape. If Ashmore’s private vampire had found the two of you in time, a tragic and completely unforeseeable accident need not have happened.”

  “You sound like you don’t believe what you’ve been told,” Duncan said, giving me an appraising look.

  “I have a hard time accepting that a random gas explosion was triggered at the exact moment a witch suffered a seizure from spectral disorder. Not to mention, no one is talking about all that dark magic, which, in my experience, is not normally found in residential natural gas pipes. Care to explain why it showed up after you cast a spell?”

  “Oh, okay,” Duncan said, “I see it now. You think I killed Echo for her magic? Like that’s the only explanation.”

  “No one’s calling you a murderer.” That I knew of. “They say you panicked in Wichita and three cops killed were killed as a result. Negligence, not malice.”

  “It wasn’t my fault!” Duncan started pacing around his circular enclosure. “At least Sullivan halfway believed me and promised to look into my story. That’s why he wanted me to stay out of sight.”

  “Why Ecuador?”

  “Sullivan stashed me with a shaman friend.”

  “How did you end up at Whitfield instead?”

  “Ashmore killed those cops. Sullivan told me to hang loose. He swore he’d let me know if he found anything on Ashmore.” Duncan shrugged. “Months went by. I never heard anything. The shaman was a drag, and I’m not a fan of tropical climates. I decided to go after Ashmore by myself.”

  “If you were in Wichita and knew what Ashmore had done, why would he trust you now?”

  Duncan remained silent for a long moment. “I told him that seeing him in action had been a revelation. Until that moment, I hadn’t realized what it truly meant to be a great wizard. Blah, blah, blah. I shoveled it high and deep. He bought my story. He said he could use help managing some of his patients. I went to work for him.”

  “While you were back in the country working at the clinic, Sullivan went on thinking you were still in Ecuador? He never checked up on you?”

  “Yeah,” Duncan said sheepishly, “that turned out to be a problem.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “When Sullivan discovered what I was doing, he said we needed get the girls out of there—”

  “Girls? There were more?”

  “Three others. They weren’t witches like Echo, but ordinary young women.”

  “What did he want with them if they weren’t witches?” I asked, frowning.

  “He believed he could turn them into witches.”

  I didn’t want to ask the next question because it would make Duncan more defensive. “Is that what happened … in Wichita?”

  “Not exactly. I was sent on a regular crime scene assignment where I located a cache of dark magic. A homicide detective and two uniforms were on the scene.” He shook his head. “I didn’t see why I couldn’t watch over the site while the locals conducted their investigation.”

  “You were expecting scavengers?”

  “Sure. I wasn’t worried about handling them. Only Ashmore showed up instead of an MBI cleanup crew. He actually expected me to turn the cache over to him. When I refused, he said he’d teach me a lesson. That’s when he killed the others … and I … I ran. I’ll never forgive myself for not standing up to him.”

  One thing was clear: Duncan Frost was after redemption. I couldn’t say I blamed him. What would I have done if it had been Ashmore who had shown up at the Mulberry Street house instead of Maddox?

  “What happened to the other young women?”

  “They weren’t witches. When Ashmore injected them with magic … their bodies couldn’t take it.” He shuddered. “No one should die that way. It ripped them apart.”

  And neatly placed the blame on shifters.

  “Was the death of the third girl what made you and Echo make a run for it?” I asked, getting to my feet. Things were starting to come together.

  “Echo sensed the girl was dead before I did. She was frantic, begging me to help her get away. She knew he’d be coming for her again. I told her we had to wait. I’d already contacted Ballard about bringing her across the bridge, but I hadn’t heard back from him yet. The news reported the girl’s body had been found. Feral shifters were the suspects. It only made the professor more confident than ever. He said people in the Greater World were so stupid about magic, he could do anything, get away with anything. Echo was terrified, so we ran.”

  “Why Ballard?”

  “Echo was powerful—you have no idea. I didn’t know what kind of effect she’d have on the Pale or the bridge.” He made a disgusted noise. “Of course, by that time I’d given up on Sullivan. He’d had months to investigate and done nothing.”

  The crow that had helped me with the perimeter spell launched into the air. I looked up, following his flight, only then noticing the rest of the flock had already departed. Even the seagulls were gone. I didn’t miss their raucous noise.

  “Can you unpack what you said before about Echo surviving death?”

  He coiled around the tire iron as if leaning on it for support. “Ashmore takes subjects—supernaturals and humans alike—and hits them with high doses of dark magic.”

  “Maybe he is trying to find a cure for spectral disorder,” I said, playing devil’s advocate. “Chemotherapy drugs are poisons that kill cancer cells.”

  Duncan looked incensed. “Don’t defend him. The difference is that none of Ashmore’s victims were sick to start with. He wasn’t trying to cure anything.”

  “I’m not defending him. I’m trying to understand.”

  “Before Ashmore got hold of the girls,” Duncan said, giving his words cold precision, “they were ordinary humans. Echo might have been a witch to start, but the treatments killed her all the same. The difference is that Echo came back. Every time he killed her with high doses of magic, she came back. Each time, she lost a bit of herself. Each time she was more powerful than ever.”

  The image of a young woman in a pink bathrobe jumped into my memory. I remembered the way she’d smiled when the magic slammed into the house. She’d known what it was—if she’d been frantic to escape—why had she smiled?

  “Why that particular house?” I asked.

  “It was an MBI safehouse. I was waiting for a call that never came.”

  “From Ballard?”

  “Obviously.”

  What was I missing?

  Mo said the couple’s absence from the clinic was logged between 8:30 and 9:00 P.M. Assuming Mo had been notified and Zen had been dispatched immediately, he couldn’t have spent more than fifteen to twenty minutes searching for the couple. By 9:30, the vampire been fifteen miles south of Montemar, waiting for Ashmore at the bridge.

  Holden and I left The Demon’s Horn around 8:30 because Kerri had to be back in her dorm before 9:00. I wasn’t certain how long our dust-up with the vigilantes lasted. Holden had made short work of them.

  When we reached the bridge, Ballard had looked wrecked. He’d been in the process of closing early. Perhaps to make sure the bridge would be clear of other travelers so an extraordinarily powerful witch could cross safely?

  Ashmore’s arrival had startled the bridge tender. As the professor’s accomplice, Ballard had to know Ashmore was up to no good. Yet, he’d whispered that I owed him. For what?

  The ligh
t on the bridge spire had shifted from green to purple. That was when I believed Ashmore had fired the dark magic that ultimately killed both Duncan and Echo. At the time, I hadn’t noticed anything. If not for Holden, I wouldn’t have paid attention to the color change on the spire.

  Nevertheless, Ashmore had managed to upload a ton of dark magic under my nose. How was it possible I’d missed a spell like that? It had to have been massive. I might be self-taught and relatively inexperienced, but I would not have missed a spell that powerful.

  There could be only one reason I’d seen nothing: Ballard Kepler. He’d fiddled with his levers and gears and whatnot for several minutes. He must have been manipulating the bridge spells to conceal Ashmore’s actions.

  What would I have done if I’d noticed? I wouldn’t have been quiet, that’s for sure.

  A shiver passed through me. Ashmore had killed three police officers to make a point. What about a half-witch/jinx and her shifter friend? The wizard wouldn’t have blinked.

  Ballard had saved my life.

  I was about to ask how Duncan had managed to retain his powers as a wizard after death when the answer hit me. It was obvious. Now. Oddly, it resonated in my mind in Gunny’s gravelly voice. Stop avoiding what’s right in front of you. At the same time, the pain in the back of my neck returned, pounding in time with my heart.

  “How many times did Ashmore kill you?” I asked. “Was Wichita the first?”

  Duncan whispered, “I’m sorry.” He was staring over my shoulder.

  “Only twice, and the third time wasn’t my doing, I’m sorry to say. If it had been, I can assure he wouldn’t have been able to return.”

  I whirled to see Professor Ashmore. The air around him vibrated slightly. The effect was seen with translocation.

  A chill rushed through me that had nothing to do with the cool breeze off the ocean. I’d made it halfway through mentally forming a protection spell when Ashmore lifted a hand.

  I froze. Not willingly. Not because I was afraid, although that was the truth.

  I froze because Ashmore was in control.

  “Death should be the biggest thrill of all. Why save it for the end? Sadly, Dunkie was a lackluster candidate. I’m shocked he came back the third time.”

  He strolled across the beach, passing my position to circle the tire iron. Duncan had vanished.

  He lifted a hand and pressed against the perimeter spell, jerking his hand back quickly, as if he’d been burned. Ashmore cursed softly. “That’s right. Hide inside cold iron like the miserable coward you are.”

  I couldn’t help. I might as well be tied to cold iron myself. At least Ashmore couldn’t break the spell the crow and I had placed. I felt a surge of savage satisfaction.

  “No matter. Wizards are less vital in some ways than witches,” Ashmore said as he approached. “Dunkie was squeamish about his treatments. That’s why I started calling him Dunkie. Although I have to give him props for determination. After Wichita, I didn’t not expect him to come back for more. Sometimes, the only way out is through the dark. Unless you’re like me and decide the dark is where you want to stay.”

  He came to a halt in front of me. “Echo was a fine witch. She could have become so much more—my Babylon, my goddess. Instead, she chose to die. Such a shame.”

  He lifted my chin with two fingers. “I’ve been waiting years to get my hands on a jinx. This ought to be fun.”

  Chapter 29

  I’d seen this movie before.

  Start with a dark and stormy night. A young woman trapped in a lab by an evil scientist too far off his rocker to listen to reason or stop playing with his glass beakers and all those shiny tools. Add a castle on cliff overlooking the ocean. It’s miles from civilization and no one will hear her scream.

  Or was it only in space that screams were silent?

  My reality wasn’t anything like a movie. No lab, no beakers, no Bunsen burners making strange liquids bubble. I wasn’t strapped to a metal gurney. The effects of the binding spell that had made me immobile this afternoon seemed to have lifted. That was the end of a much too short list of positives.

  I was tied to a Barcalounger with silvery mage rope. It repelled magic and made my powers useless. The places where the rope touched my bare skin burned like a new cut.

  The Barcalounger sat in the middle of a large, carpeted living room. On one wall, a chimney surround made from river rock rose about twenty feet to a cathedral ceiling. On my left, a wall of windows revealed a deck and the vast gray of the Pacific Ocean. The last rays of an orange sun were barely visible above the horizon. Lightning arced through leaden clouds.

  Inside, a fire burned in the grate—a magical fire—judging by the fire elementals dancing in the flames. Based on this room alone and venturing a guess, I was in one of the newer houses built overlooking the ocean on the peninsula north of the city, near the Whitfield Clinic.

  The worst part of my situation was that Professor Ashmore wasn’t any sort of scientist. Scientists, even crazy ones, followed a method. They had procedures.

  Ashmore was an alchemical wizard from another reality who believed he was above the laws of any world.

  But wait, that wasn’t the worst part. I was wrong. The worst was that no one knew where I was, and for that blazing bit of stupidity, I had only myself to blame. The pain in the back of my neck had been a tracking spell all right. I had overlooked where I was when it kicked in—Morrigan Shade’s office.

  A smart person would have gone home—or to some other safe place—this afternoon and waited to hear from Sullivan. She wouldn’t have hightailed it to an empty beach for a chat with the dead. On the upside, I had learned many things from Duncan. Not that the information would do me any good while tied with mage rope.

  Based on Duncan’s story, though, could anyone count on hearing from Sullivan Shield? During my exam, he’d said, Releasing the regrets of some dead necromancer is way down my list of priorities… I’d assumed he’d been speaking in general terms and not referring to a specific case.

  Duncan Frost had been the dead necromancer. He was no one’s priority. Sullivan had stashed a wizard who wouldn’t stay all-the-way-dead with a shaman buddy and walked away. I wasn’t ready to join Duncan’s fan club, but what Sullivan had done seemed callous.

  If Duncan had been telling the truth that that Sullivan partially believed his story, it would have placed the burden on Sullivan to build a case against Ashmore. It wouldn’t be a simple or easy task. I could hope Sullivan was on the job now—not that it would be of any help in my current circumstances.

  From the location of the sun, four or five hours had passed since I’d been taken from the beach. The dull ache in my backside suggested I’d been reclining in the same position for about the same length of time. What was Ashmore waiting for?

  The self-proclaimed genius sat at a desk by the windows, his head bent over a wooden rack containing short glasses. Each glass contained a liquid—one green, one blue, one golden, and the last, purple. Next to the wooden rack lay an open journal where he was writing. Somehow, I suspected he wasn’t noting his impressions of a set of samples of local craft beers.

  He turned, resting one arm on the back of the chair. “Ah, you’re awake. Excellent.” Putting down his pen, he rose and took of my hands in his. He couldn’t lift it far as my arms were bound to my body just below my elbows. His dark eyes gleamed with a strange intensity. “You’re about to go on an amazing adventure. I envy you.”

  “Here’s an idea—how about we trade places then?”

  He chuckled. “You’ve no idea how much I’d like to do just that. But if I did, who then would take up my work?”

  Because I wanted to keep him talking, and if he was talking, he couldn’t get on with the killing, I asked, “What is it exactly you’re trying to do? Duncan didn’t explain it very well.”

  Ashmore sniffed. “Poor Dunkie, he’s not much of a wizard, I must confess.”

  “He said Echo was quite the witch.”

/>   “She would have been exquisite, but what’s done is done.” He released my hand and walked around the Barcalounger, studying me. “You’re an interesting problem. Half witch, half jinx.” He rubbed his chin. “Would that make you a winx or a jitch?”

  It made me plot ways to kill him.

  “I think I’ll go with winx,” he decided, punctuating his words with an actual wink.

  Death was too good for him.

  “Jitch is less than charming.”

  “About Echo?” I prompted.

  “Why do you want to talk about her?” He frowned. “I would have given her everything. Made her so powerful even a stormbringer would have feared to look upon her.”

  “Fiona would hate that.”

  “Exactly.” He smiled. “You’re not very bright, but you are inquisitive. I like that about you, and you have spirit. I’ve found that spirit is the most important factor in my work. It takes spirit to face death.”

  “When you, um … gave Echo her last … treatment, was that what you sent from the bridge?”

  “You noticed!” he cried. “I was so hoping you would. That shifter friend of yours, standing there looking at the sky like the dullard he is. I’ve never been able to understand what you see in him. If you’d come with me that evening, we could have begun the work immediately.”

  “Silly me. I didn’t … understand. In some ways, I still don’t.”

  “Death and power are the same thing, basically. When I gave Echo her last treatment, as you call it, she had a choice. She was already powerful enough to have withstood a massive infusion. Yet she rejected it outright. And did she care that in the process she killed poor old Dunkie again? No, she did not.” He shook a finger at me. “You, I hope, will not be so shortsighted. Live and learn.” He blinked and then chuckled. “Or die and learn, as the case may be. Sometimes I amuse myself.”

  From the hallway on the other side of the arch leading into the living room came footsteps and then a voice. “Evie? It’s okay. I’m here now. Are you there, Evie?”

  Miles north of Montemar, a day after my old life had ended, I heard Uncle Delano and felt relief. Then I turned to see the professor’s reaction. I might be bound, but I still had my voice. I could yell a warning to my uncle and—