Muddy Waters (Otherwhere Book 1)

by Sara O. Thompson

  I, however, am not so subtle. Or patient.

  “I don’t teach. I don’t need an apprentice. And I don’t sell spells. Crystals are twenty-five percent off today and incense is buy-one-get-one-free.” I turned my back on her and stomped over to a display case. I don’t need the Arcana or anyone else coming down on my ass. Again.

  “Please?” she whined. Even put her pretty hands in a prayer posture and stuck her glossy lower lip out in an exaggerated pout. Few things irritate me more than whiny, rich, blond bitches. (Nothing against any of those traits separately, just all together.)

  “No.” I set aside my inventory list, picked up a feather duster, and busied myself very aggressively cleaning a display of chakra crystals.

  “But I can pay.” She pulled a wad of cash from her expensive purse. So help me―a wad of cash. Judging by the purse and the big red SUV hybrid she had parked outside, that wasn’t her babysitting money. “Come on. Just a little spell. I need to pass all my finals this semester, or I can’t go to prom, and then Jacob Moore will take Hannah Liston instead of me.”

  Oh, she really burned my toast. I faced her and slowly walked over. “Athena’s tits, kid, you’re really asking for it. In my day, you worked for what you had. Including your grades. Kids didn’t get money and fancy cars from their parents. I didn’t even go to my high school prom. Are you kidding me, coming in here flashing your money like this is a fucking Turkish bazaar? Go home, Bambi, before somebody shoots your mother.” I emphasized my words with the feather duster. “I told you. No spells.” I stopped myself from swatting her in the face with the very same duster.

  The doe-eyed begging look dissolved into enraged petulance as she folded her arms tightly. “How dare you talk to me like that? Fine. I’ll just go tell the police that you did magic on me, but I didn’t want you to. I’m a Human. And a minor.” Whose smirk I itched to smack off her face with something much heavier than a cleaning implement.

  “For the love of Odin, will you bugger off?” I came back out from behind the counter. “Just for argument’s sake, you have zero proof. And you know what, Bambi? If I was going to do magic on you, I’d make you a nicer person. And ugly. Really. Stinking. Ugly.” I got right in her overly made-up face and dropped my voice. “Do you even know how hard it is to undo an ugly spell? You don’t, do you? Well, let me put it to you this way. I might do little jail time, but you? You will be hideous.” I paused for a moment before whispering ominously, “Forever.”

  That did it. She positively quivered in horror.

  “Look, its 9:00 a.m. Go on back to school, Bambi. I should call your principal and tell him you’re truant. Do you know what ‘truant’ means?” I pointed at the door with the duster, my other fist clenched. She looked at me as if I’d slapped her, trying to think of some comeback, then slunk out, muttering self-righteously about the Witch bitch.

  Like I’d never heard that one before.

  I put on a relaxation CD and lit some calming incense.

  Besides the people coming to the shop, people used to show up at our back doorstep all the time at the big house on St. James Court. Pretty young women desperate for love. Conmen with hearts of gold. Old ladies yearning for youth. But no matter what, there’s a little rule most of us Witches live by. Don’t do blood magic for anybody. You can do it for yourself, since you’re the only one it would hurt, but even still…

  This was tested once when I was a teenager, and my aunt Tamsin got herself in a bit of trouble. It was the middle of January, a foot of snow on the ground, bitter cold, and there was a knock. Dressed in a sequined evening gown and nothing else, Tamsin staggered into the foyer and fell at Mama and Auntie Vi’s feet.

  She had fled her home in New Orleans after a mobster’s jealous wife paid to have a curse put on Tamsin. It wasn’t just a killing curse. No, that would’ve been too quick. Slow, wretched poison that would take a good long while and a lot of pain to finish her off.

  And it wasn’t good magic. The wife employed the services of a shady Hedge Knacker, someone with such a small amount of innate talent to go with a wild kind of knacked, impure magic as to be incredibly dangerous. Knacker’s magic is stolen, so it’s muddled, their spells coming out twisted, wrong. It’s like having bad baking soda. You know you’re supposed to use it for the cookies, but you can’t figure out why your cakes taste funny. Funny enough that you notice the strange, almost salty taste, and maybe, the batter didn’t rise to where it should, but not bad enough that you won’t eat it. You can train up the Hedge Witches, sure, but it’s best to shut them down altogether. It’s safer, really.

  Now, we all knew Tamsin hadn’t touched the mobster. The sin she might have been guilty of was being prettier and flirtier than the mobster’s wife. But she was a nightclub singer, and it was kind of her job to be prettier and more flirtatious.

  And my mother thought it was the coven’s job to lend Tamsin a helping hand, so she and the others fought about it for a while. Violetta didn’t want any part of a counter-spell for a shitty Hedge’s hex. She told Tamsin she should’ve handled it herself. Vi wanted justice to come dispensed by someone else’s hand and the Threefold Law to come down on someone else’s house. Why―they grouched―not simply send Tamsin back to New Orleans and let one of the voodoo queens take care of it.

  “No,” said Tams, “the voodoo queens won’t come near me. They know who the Reddicks are.”

  “Clearly, the stupid swamp Witch who put together this hot mess of a curse is unfamiliar with us,” Violetta snarled. “It’s against the laws of magic, is what it is.”

  When Mama tried to be reasonable, Tamsin and Violetta almost came to blows. Finally, Mama threw up her hands. “What do you want me to do, Vi? Call the police and tell them a shoddy Witch is killing people, and could they please arrest her and make her reverse her hex?”

  But Tamsin was family, so in the end, she moved into the little bedroom at the end of the hall. Then the coven worked a complicated counter-hex, which I was forbidden to participate in.

  They fasted and chanted and prayed and sprinkled salt for three days, the Hedge Knacker’s efforts to stop us from completing the ritual notwithstanding. But Tamsin didn’t get well.

  One night, I helped Mama tend to her. “She’ll turn into a wraith,” Mama said as we closed the door behind us.

  “A what?”

  Mama shook her head, the dark braid around her head glimmering in the hall lamplight. “A wraith is… a soul that’s been stripped of its self. In essence, the soul is destroyed and all that’s left is the rage. It’s like making an outline of a person then filling it with all the bad you can find.” She looked at me with her luminous purple eyes. “Truly, a fate worse than death.”

  The counter-spell put the mobster’s wife in a coma. It killed her husband and the woman he was really carrying on with, behind his wife’s back, and the Hedge Knacker. The wife came out of the coma, but she wasn’t right anymore. She died maybe six months later. Tamsin stayed sick with fever and lost the sight in her right eye. She lived out her days in the little room upstairs, rocking and singing to herself.

  It’s one of the most important laws of magic and a lesson some folks learn the hard way.

  Since I’d reopened the Broom Closet, I had lots of customers, but I hadn’t seen a single one of its regulars. The solitary Witches who practiced their own kinds of magic without covens. My family’s old friends or those clients recommended to us. All gone. Plenty of casual shoppers, several gawkers, and kids like this girl; plus some online orders, because the Internet hadn’t realized I was “that Witch who killed her family.” Or maybe it had and wanted a souvenir? At any rate, I craved news from friends or allies, but they stayed quiet.

  And so I waited, doing the adult-y things. Though that was just an excuse. In truth, I was scared.

  The doorbell tinkled again.

  “Look, honey, I don’t mind you looking around but―” My hackles rose then settled down when I saw him.

  That black hair, tips of
slender pointed ears just poking out. Pewter t-shirt under a black leather jacket, even though it was the middle of summer and already beginning to swelter by 9:00 a.m. Dark jeans. Black boots. He looked like a willow tree. A sexy, moody willow tree.

  “Oh. Qyll.” Brilliant. Why can’t I be a little more… suave? I hadn’t seen him in more than a week. There had been a bunch of cold leads on the case he’s been feeding me, so little need to chitchat as I’d gone over the files he gave me, with no fresh ideas. I ran a hand over the violent mop that was my hair, wishing I’d at least washed it before I came down in the morning. And why didn’t I wear makeup when I was in the store? “I was just opening for the day.”

  He stood at the edge of a sunbeam, just out of the swirl of dust motes between a rack of velvet capes and a bookshelf that bore titles such as The Green Goddess in You, Raising a Pagan Baby, and New Spells for the Modern Witch.

  “There’s been another murder. Pryam is already at the scene. She believes it’s connected to the other murders.”

  “Good morning to you too,” I muttered, rounding the counter to put my feather duster away.

  He watched me with those inscrutable silver eyes. “Will you come? I haven’t time to waste. I was on my way there.”

  “Why can’t you just use the phone like everybody else? You live in Earth now.”

  “It… wasn’t necessary. Your shop is on the way from my home to the crime scene.” His shrug was elegantly careless. “You can ride in my car.” He waited for me to come along. Qyll, it should be said, as a Dark Elf, has sometimes startlingly Otherwhere-ish ways, such as his aversion to cell phones.

  I sighed. “Let me get my things.”

  Qyll asked, “Will you be wearing that footwear?”

  “What’s wrong with my boots? I love these boots. These are my favorite footwear of all time. Got them at a rodeo.” We both looked down at my cowgirl boots―deep red with a pattern of birds tooled into the leather.

  He sort of smirked. Qyll does this sometimes. I think he thinks he’s joking with me. But it comes out weird. It’s okay. I’m no stranger to awkward moments myself, especially with menfolk.

  “Let’s go,” I grumbled.

  Qyll’s car was parked outside, behind mine. I flipped the shop door sign over to read CLOSED and got in. Seatbelt―safety first. Window down. Seat back. “Let’s do this.”

  Off we went.

  “Why do you even drive? You can navigate Other, why not just slip through the Rift?”

  “I rather enjoy automobiles,” he said. I couldn’t see his eyes behind his dark sunglasses. “And things are somewhat unsafe for Earthsiders, even those native to the other side. It isn’t wise to walk the ways of the Other just now.”

  “You know, you never say anything about where you come from or what you’re doing here. When did you come to Earth? Why?”

  “I had always wanted to come to Earth. Well, when I learned it was a real place. We grew up thinking you are just as much legend as you us. In fact, one of our most beloved figures of folktale is Niall, ancestor to your St. Patrick.”

  I laughed. “We got Legolas. You got St. Patrick. And the FBI seemed like a good idea for something to do here? Why didn’t you… go back home. Or, be an actor. A model. You could’ve been in the movies or something. Been famous.” I leaned back in my seat, propping my arm on the console between us.

  He shook his head. “My people are not performers. And I very much enjoy my work with the Bureau. Human crime is fascinating. But I do miss the old days.”

  “The old days?”

  “I came across in your year 1946.”

  “What? Are you serious? Also, how old are you?”

  “I came in search of information.” Our car swung the car into traffic with expert ease. “Somehow, a Project Mogul balloon made its way into our realm. My father was asked to send someone to investigate, see if it was a war salvo.”

  I swiveled to face him. “You mean to tell me you came to Earth to investigate what started the alien conspiracy theory debate in Earth for oh, eighty-something years? You. Mr. Dark Elf Secret Agent Man. Mr.… Mr.… well, whatever.”

  Project Mogul, you may remember, was a 1940s-era U.S. military project designed to float microphones on unmanned balloons in an attempt to detect sound waves from Soviet atomic bomb testing. When one of the balloons crashed in the desert of Roswell, New Mexico, in July 1947, the military moved to conceal the true nature of the project and probably to stop the public outcry in Russia resulting from the U.S. government confirming it was spying on Russian bomb testing. The PR man released a statement saying it was just a weather balloon―no big deal.

  “You may have read about Major Marcel?”

  “Was he the one who went to the farm and picked up the debris?”

  “Correct. Now, all the reports mention he was accompanied by a man in plainclothes.”

  “You were the man in plainclothes?” I slapped the console, grinning. “You are killing me right now! I used to watch all those alien conspiracy shows and stuff. I mean, we know now it was a spy balloon―but man! So, you were there?”

  “The balloon we found on the Other side was indeed a Mogul spy apparatus, pushed through the ether into our world from yours. My father sent me in to find out if this was a sort of espionage or an act of war. And there was another balloon found on a ranch in New Mexico. But that rancher did indeed see something else that was not Human in origin.”

  “What did he see?”

  “A sand scaler. Small sand spirits. Harmless, but they adore string for some reason. It had gotten caught in the balloon. It was nearly dead when we got to it. I wanted it sent it back to the sand, but too many people knew too many half-truths by then. I think that’s why the UFO conspiracy began. We couldn’t keep up with the rumors.”

  I burst into laughter. “This is great. I love hearing about you.” In the times I had spent with him, he was usually quiet, all business.

  He finally looked at me, my face reflected in his aviator sunnies. “There isn’t much interesting to tell.”

  I snorted. “Patently untrue. Do Elves even commit crimes?”

  He smiled a tiny bit. “Every race in the known and unknown universe commits crimes, Tessa. It’s really a matter of who does the judging that makes the difference.”

  I nodded. “Very sage of you. So that’s how you became Special Agent Toutant. How did―” And then, my phone rang. I fumbled with it so long, I thought it would end up going to voicemail. I was still getting used to the damnable thing. During my time at Lakeland, cell phone tech had advanced far beyond my old clamshell model.

  “Is this Tessa Reddick?” I struggled to roll up the window to hear over the rush of traffic and wind.

  “Uh, yes.” I am always so leery of strangers calling me. I’m just positive it’s bad news, like the Arcana calling to send me to the furthest evil reaches of Otherwhere. Now, I know they wouldn’t call me on a Human phone, but stranger things have happened.

  “I’m sorry to bother you. This is Dr. Charlie Bartley. I wondered if you had some time to talk? I have a few questions of a spiritual nature. I really need to speak to someone about this.” He spoke softly and quickly.

  I sighed. My mother and aunts used to get various flavors of these calls from time to time, especially right after the Rift, when everybody in America immediately went either totally Jesus-crazy or some variation of neo-pagan. “Mr. Bartley, I didn’t know Jehovah’s witnesses made phone calls these days, but I assure you, I have no need to find religion.”

  I know exactly where the religion is and mostly run in the other direction. It’s not the God part that bugs me―it’s His self-styled minions.

  He laughed nervously. “Oh no, no. I’m not peddling anything. Listen, how about I pay you for your time, say 125 an hour? And after an hour, you can kick me out if you like.”

  Well. He had me over a barrel there. Money talks, people. That’s why I have set up shop call forwarding, after all. In case someone urgently wanted
to deposit a handy sum in the Closet register in my off hours. “You have a deal. Can you come by the shop later? About eleven-thirty?”

  “Off Bardstown Road? I’ll be there.” He hung up quickly.

  Qyll didn’t seem to care about my conversation, so we sat in silence for the rest of the ride out to the northeastern suburbs, to an enclave of enormous modern mansions. I’m always surprised to see he is a good driver, despite the fact that he spent his whole life in Otherwhere lounging around on moonbeams and munching on evening primroses or whatever it is Dark Elves do.

  As we turned into a driveway, police officers waved us through the gate. Up a slight hill stood a sleek chrome and glass palace. Caution tape fluttered in the summer breeze. Half the place looked like a giant had stomped on it.

  On the way up toward the house, Qyll murmured, “I must caution you, the situation is rather gruesome.”

  “I can handle gruesome, Q.”

  “No, you can’t. Everyone knows that.” I blushed. In truth, while I had done well at Quantico, the report to Pryam included several warnings that I may be a liability where graphic violence is concerned. Which… well, I certainly hadn’t been the one gunning for this gig in the first place. So the SI jack wagons could just stuff it.

  Qyll turned to look at me, which is unnerving at the best of times. “Not to mention, this is… immediate, Agent Reddick. There are several victims, and as you can see, the place was ruined.”

  “Several? More than four?” I blurted. That’s a lot for one murder scene in a town like Louisville, even post-Rift, when things went from weird to worse.