The Witch Who Came in From the Cold - Season One Volume One

by Lindsay Smith

“Do I?” Frank gave a sharp little laugh that burned at the back of Gabe’s head. “I thought you knew what you were doing with Drahomir, too.”

  “I did!” Gabe snapped. “I got a head—I wasn’t feeling well. I should’ve called it off. I know that now. But this was different.”

  “You’re on shaky ground, Pritchard.”

  Gabe glowered at Frank, and Frank glowered right back. Nothing would faze an old Army man like Frank.

  “Headquarters determines when someone like Andula Zlata is of interest to our organization. All we needed was a report from you. But breaking protocol like that—it was a stupid move, Pritchard. A dangerous one.”

  Gabe crossed his arms over his chest. Frank had a point. He’d gone to the lecture unprepared for anything beyond a mild altercation, and he could have been walking into a trap without backup. At the same time, though, Andula Zlata felt too important to let slip away. He couldn’t say why. Call it spy’s instinct.

  There was something about her, deeper than the surface.

  Frank stopped pacing. He braced his hands against the desk and leaned in, sliding into Gabe’s line of vision. “We need you following protocol once ANCHISES starts up.”

  Gabe sighed. “Yes, sir. I realize that.”

  “There’s going to be a lot of moving pieces. You run off and do your own thing, you leave a bunch of guys standing around with their thumbs up their butts. You want that, Pritchard?”

  Gabe shook his head.

  “Good. I didn’t think so. If this Andula Zlata thing turns out to be something bigger, that’s fucking fantastic. But if it turns into nothing—and right now, that’s what it’s looking like, a whole pile of nothing—you running off against orders isn’t going to impress Headquarters. You need to keep that in mind.”

  Gabe sat still for a moment, his arms crossed, frustration burning a hole inside of him. Frank slid into his seat, although he didn’t stop glowering at Gabe.

  “I understand, sir,” Gabe finally said, voice so low it was almost a whisper. Frank didn’t take the bait.

  “Good. Now get the hell out of my office.”

  Gabe stood up. Frank was still scowling at him. He went out to the hallway, feeling stunted and angry. Josh was waiting for him, leaning up against the wall, looking concerned.

  “Everything go okay in there?” he said as Gabe brushed past him.

  “Went exactly how I thought it would.”

  Josh had pushed himself away from the wall and was following Gabe over to the desks. The office hummed with activity. Gabe rubbed at his head. Still had traces of a headache.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” Josh asked, frowning.

  Gabe dropped his hand to his side. “I’m fine. Just want to get some work done.” He glanced over at Josh. “ANCHISES is coming. We’ve got a university building to report on. “

  • • •

  Tanya took a bite of the potato pancake she’d bought from a street vendor a few hours ago and then glanced out the car window. “She hasn’t left,” Nadia had said when Tanya slid into the passenger seat beside her to trade shifts. “No one’s gone in. Haven’t sensed any magic, either.”

  “Has the Flame made an appearance?” Tanya asked. “Or the CIA?”

  “No. No one’s interested in our little devushka. At least not tonight.”

  Nearly four hours had passed since then. The pancakes had gone cold and greasy. The window of the Host’s apartment was lit up, a golden square in the snowy darkness. Sometimes Tanya saw a shadow pass by. Andula pacing out her worries, she imagined.

  Tanya pulled out another pancake and ate it distractedly. She ran over her memories of the reception two days ago, the CIA man eyeing her furtively through the crowd. He’d followed Andula after she left, stalking her through the snow all the way to her apartment. She still wasn’t convinced he wasn’t here now, but she hadn’t seen any sign of him. No movement in the darkness.

  Odd. Very odd.

  Something flickered in Andula’s window. Tanya tossed the pancakes aside and grabbed her binoculars. Her heartbeat quickened. The curtain drew back, and there was Andula, her hair pulled back in a messy bun. She peered down to the street.

  “What are you looking for?” Tanya murmured.

  Andula stepped away from the glass. Tanya cursed, set the binoculars in the passenger seat. Someone was out here. Andula must have sensed something, or heard something—

  But then Andula returned.

  This time, she had a candle.

  “Bozhe moi,” Tanya muttered. “Finally.” She yanked the keys out of the ignition and checked to make sure that her gun was still strapped to her leg.

  Andula lit a match and touched it to the candle’s wick. For a moment she stared out at the street, as if she expected danger to be lurking in the shadows. Then she vanished from the window.

  Tanya stepped out of the car. The street was empty, yesterday’s snow crusted over. Tanya slipped her hand into her pocket and touched the construct charm. Tonight, it was still.

  She skittered across the street to the building’s entrance. Then she pressed the button to call Andula, and waited.

  • • •

  Morozova was moving. Gabe shifted, his legs numb from cold and disuse. He’d been up on this rooftop for the last few hours. A personal project, on his personal time. Frank didn’t need to know about it.

  Morozova waited at the door to the apartment building. Gabe quickly scanned the darkness, trying to decide what had prompted the movement. The street was completely empty. Only a handful of the apartment windows even had lights on.

  Lights—

  There. That candle. Third row from the top, smack in the middle of the building. Had it been there a few minutes ago? Shit. He’d been so focused on Morozova’s car that he hadn’t registered activity in the apartment windows.

  He swept his gaze back down to the front door, where Morozova stood with her arms crossed. He hadn’t been able to learn much more about Andula Zlata other than what the office’s files had already revealed: that this was her address, that her sister had vanished back in ’68, that she was otherwise an incredibly dull target.

  The door swung open. Gabe leaned closer, peering through his binoculars. Andula. She gave Tanya a flat, defeated look, and then she stepped away from the doorway so Tanya could step inside.

  “I knew it,” Gabe whispered as the door slid shut.

  • • •

  Andula did not look at Tanya as she led her up the stairs to her apartment. She clutched the banister tightly, her knuckles turning white. On the second-floor landing, she said, “You were watching me, weren’t you?”

  “We were protecting you.”

  Andula paused. For a moment they stood unmoving in the stairwell. Then she turned toward Tanya. Her face was bare, her eyes sunk low in her skull. She did not look like she had slept.

  “Thank you,” she finally said.

  A few minutes later, they were inside Andula’s apartment. It was small, smaller than Tanya’s, the furniture faded and threadbare. The candle flickered in the window. Tanya strolled across the room and extinguished the flame between her thumb and forefinger. Then she set the candle sideways on the frame, pulled the curtains closed behind it: All is well.

  “Lock the door,” she said.

  She listened as the door clicked shut, as the lock slid into place. When she turned around, Andula stood with her arms crossed, looking very small.

  “Yesterday,” she said. “After the reception.” She lifted her head, looked Tanya in the eye. “Were you ‘protecting’ me then? When I left?”

  “I was, yes.”

  “Did you use—um—” Andula shook her head. “It feels so strange to ask this—did you use magic?”

  “Magic?” Tanya frowned. She hadn’t even felt any magic that afternoon. “No, I didn’t.”

  Andula nodded and looked away. Tanya realized her eyes were brimming with tears. “Someone was using it,” she said. “I—I felt it, this surge of power.” />
  “When?” Tanya stepped toward her.

  Andula wiped her eyes. “Here.”

  “What? You mean in your apartment?”

  Andula shook her head. “No. It was outside. As I moved to come in.” She took a deep breath. “And as I was walking along the river—”

  The river. “That’s not surprising,” Tanya said. “The river is important, magically speaking.”

  “I walk by the river every day,” Andula said. “I’ve never felt anything like this before. Ever.” She pulled at the hem of her sweater, her hands working nervously. “I could feel it building up as I walked home. This—pressure, like a storm cloud in the back of my head. And then when I was at the front door, I felt a bolt of electricity, like I’d been shocked—it just slammed into me.” She shook her head. “It didn’t hurt, not really, but it frightened me, and I was afraid one of those—those things from the other night—”

  “A construct,” Tanya said. “That’s what we call the thing from the other night.” She was trying to make sense of this. A wave of magic as Andula walked home? Why hadn’t Tanya felt it, with all her charms and knowledge?

  “Yes, a construct. I was afraid it was something like that, that I would be attacked—but then nothing happened.” Andula sank down into her couch. She looked wilted. Deflated. “I haven’t left my house since then. But you probably know that.”

  A hint of sharpness in her voice. Tanya didn’t answer.

  “Is this going to keep happening?” Andula looked up at Tanya, her eyes pleading. “Am I ever going to have a normal life again?”

  Tanya sighed. She’d almost had Andula at the reception. She would not lose her now. So she had to answer this carefully.

  “I want to tell you yes,” she finally said. “And I think it’s certainly possible. But you will not be able to have a normal life on your own.”

  Andula’s eyes glimmered. She lowered her head, trying to hide her tears. Tanya sat down on the couch beside her—slowly, carefully, the way she would approach a frightened animal. “What you felt yesterday, that wasn’t a construct. I would have felt it, too, had that been the case. But there are other things—other forces—that you will be sensitive to, as a Host.” Tanya paused, studying Andula’s reactions. “Your elemental will tune you in to them. Perhaps that’s what you experienced yesterday.”

  “I don’t want this.” Andula’s voice was small.

  “I know it’s an enormous change. And I can’t tell you I know what it’s like. But I can promise that the Ice can help you find that normal life.” Tanya paused, watching Andula closely. “I swear to you.”

  Andula didn’t respond.

  “Look at me,” Tanya said. “My life—well, I wouldn’t say it’s normal, but it’s not divorced from the normal world.”

  “You’re hardly a good example, KaGeBeznik.”

  “That’s why I said my life isn’t normal.” Tanya smiled, although it was not returned. “But the sorcerous world need not swallow you whole. You can make a space for it, live alongside it. That’s the Ice way. The Flame way, it’s different.” She shrugged. Let the Host come to this decision herself. “If you come with me, I’ll help you find your normal life again.”

  Andula nodded. She looked at Tanya with red-rimmed eyes. “That’s all I want,” she whispered. “I didn’t ask for this—to be a Host.”

  “No Host does,” Tanya said. “But please, let me help you. Let us help you.”

  Andula turned toward the window. The light from her floor lamp illuminated the streaks of gold in her wild hair. And just for a moment, Tanya thought she could see it, the power of the elemental that coursed through Andula’s system, that ignited her, that fueled her. Just for a moment and then it was gone.

  “All I’ve done for the last day is think,” Andula said. “I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t concentrate on my classwork. All I could do was think about what you told me. The pros and the cons. I even made two lists, side by side. I couldn’t make up my mind.”

  Tanya’s heart pumped. Her breath caught in her throat. So close. She didn’t dare ruin it by opening her mouth. She’d learned her lesson yesterday. Andula needed to find her own final nudge. Tanya couldn’t do it for her.

  “The Flame terrifies me,” Andula said. “You, you only scare me.” She peered up at Tanya. She looked haunted.

  “I don’t meant to scare you,” Tanya said. “But the truth of the world can be frightening.”

  Andula nodded. “Yes. Yes, it can.” She closed her eyes. Took a deep breath. Tanya’s fingers curled.

  “When I lit that candle, I didn’t know what I would say to you.” Andula’s eyes flashed open. “But I realize now I’d already made up my mind.”

  Tanya nodded. Excitement prickled over her skin. It was going to happen. She was certain of it.

  “I’ll come with you,” Andula said. “If you promise to keep me safe.”

  Tanya was engulfed by a wave of relief. She turned to Andula and looked her right in the eye, to show she was telling the truth.

  “I promise,” she said.

  Episode 3: Double Blind

  by Max Gladstone

  Prague, Czechoslovak Socialist Republic

  January 26, 1970

  1.

  “We shouldn’t be here,” Josh said. Gabe shouldered deeper into his overcoat, and did not agree out loud.

  Prague Januaries ran bitter and deep. Chill wind whistled off the frozen Vltava down narrow medieval streets and over tile roofs. Earlier in Gabe’s career—in Indochina, in Cairo—crouching sunburned and sweating in some perforated awning’s excuse for shade, he’d dreamed of a post where they’d heard of winter. The world had turned since then, and the worm too.

  Gabe glared at the dormitory across the road through the Moskvich’s tinted windshield, wishing they could run the engine, or at least the heater, or, hell, drink coffee. Why not wish for an American car, while he was at it? About all you could say for their mid-range Russian clunker was that it wouldn’t raise any eyebrows—which mattered for a stakeout. You never could tell who was watching: StB, KGB. He supposed he should add Agents of the Flame to that list now, too. In the parked Moskvich, Gabe and Josh were as unobtrusive as two CIA officers could be, in Prague’s university district after dark.

  “You tailed the mark from her apartment,” Gabe said. “I saw her go inside. She’s there.”

  “She is, all right,” Josh said. “Third floor, corner, by the window.”

  Gabe checked through his monocular. Their target, Andula Zlata, stood backlit in the window, pale and scared. Behind her, a tall blond student slammed a glass, probably of vodka, and wound a scarf around his neck. Another girl wrestled with a thick winter coat. “Looks like they’re leaving. You’re sure they’ll go out the front door?”

  “All the dorm exits lead to the street. But, Gabe, you know what I mean.” Tension edged Josh’s voice. “We shouldn’t be here watching her at all. Stakeouts on college girls, God. Frank still has a chip on his shoulder about our screwing up Drahomir’s recruitment. If you want to prove you’re not crazy, you’re doing a bad job.”

  “I’m the one who screwed the Drahomir op,” Gabe said. “You did fine.”

  “That’s not what he implied.”

  Gabe risked a glance away from the window. Josh, in monochrome blue like an architect’s pencil drawing, sagged against the car door, his chin balanced on his tented fingers. His right hand smoothed out an imaginary wrinkle in his slacks.

  “He lit into you?”

  “Not in so many words. But it was clear I had disappointed him. I don’t like to disappoint people, Gabe. Especially not Frank. This girl better be important.”

  “The KGB thinks she is. We’ve got nothing on her, no signs of interest, no significant political activity—but Morozova went from approach to pitch in twenty-four hours.”

  “Must be nice to move that openly.”

  “That’s a crazy pace even for them. This has to be big.”

  “What’s sh
e studying?”

  “History.”

  “History?” Josh turned from the window, astonished. “Why would they be extracting a history student? Grooming one, sure, cultivating, but extraction?”

  “Makes you curious, doesn’t it?”

  The party emptied. Gabe timed the students’ progress against his resting pulse. Know the target, feel the target: sliding on her jacket, one hand steadying herself against the doorjamb, figure twenty people in that room all walking together. The stair, most likely, is halfway down the central hall, and the building’s about a football field long. Three flights of stairs. Another forty feet to the front door. The average human pace length’s about a yard, walking speed of around five miles an hour unburdened in flats, knock that back a third because they’re in a group and some are wearing heels . . .

  “You ask me,” Josh said, “this whole thing’s a put-on. The handler doesn’t want this girl. She just wants to make us jump, waste our time, and boy did she.”

  Gabe rolled his shoulders. Too tight—too long in this car. Too long sitting down, recently. “Worst-case scenario, fine, they make us jump, we waste a night’s sleep. We’ll get plenty of rest when we’re dead.”

  “Hey, you want to stay up all night just to follow the Prague State University pep squad bar crawl, be my guest.”

  And the front doors should open, Gabe thought—now.

  Right on schedule. The students shuffled into wet drifting snow, huddled in jackets, flushed with booze and cold. Gabe found the girl: Andula Zlata. At the rear of the pack, eyes wide and liquid despite the cold, pale, afraid, hungry. And there, by her side, tall, angular, unafraid—Morozova.

  “The handler is in play,” he said.

  • • •

  Tanya Morozova pulled her jacket close and took Andula’s—the objective’s—arm. She checked the street. A row of parked cars stood across the road, some windows tinted, others not. A man huddled inside a thick jacket at the corner past the bus stop, holding a folded newspaper. Waiting, but for whom? Rooftops clear, and windows. Might be a problem. Might not. Safer to assume the former.

  Not so immediate a nuisance, though, as the big dumb blond comrade to her left. Marcel was walking a step too close for comfort, and stank of the vodka he’d downed before they left the party. “The city,” he slurred, “she impressed me, too, when I first arrived. How long will you stay?”