No Rest for the Witches

by Karina Cooper

  She took a deep breath. Found that core of her where it frothed and thrummed, and cracked it open.

  It had been a long time since she’d used charms or trinkets to help focus her ability, but it seemed as if she didn’t need them these days. All too easily, she slid into that calm, quiet place where her sight could soar.

  And though she was aware of the chair beneath her, of Silas’s warmth beside her and the balmy heat of the hot springs air, her mind told her she was somewhere else. An intricate place, dark but for the skein of vibrant threads coming together in a monstrous tangle.

  Jessie had never figured out why she saw life like a thread. It just was. Each gleaming skein was a person, each a thing or concept or idea. The world was full of them, connecting people to each other, to places.

  All she had to do was concentrate on the one she wanted, and she could find it.

  She pictured Lillian as she’d known her—an elegant woman with summer gold hair kept in a chignon and eyes that hovered between green and gold. She was an aristocratic woman by nature, clad in tailored suits and possessing a no-nonsense kind of demeanor. But she loved her wife and son.

  Lillian’s image rose easily to her mind.

  Her thread did not.

  Jessie frowned. Summoning her will, she thought again of Lillian. Remembered the way she’d exchanged loving smiles with Gemma Clarke, and the way she’d sobbed when her wife had died.

  But her thread, if it was there, didn’t come to the surface.

  This wasn’t a good sign. Stomach twisting, she stared at the pulsing ball of light and energy and hoped to hell Lillian wasn’t dead.

  She took a deep breath, smelled sulfur and Matilda’s sweet tea with one part of her but nothing with the other. At the moment, her vision was just that, sight. It formed as a one-way glass, a way to look at the world.

  Unless she was feeling spiky, in which case she could sink deeper into the world she spied upon, but doing so had a nasty habit of back-lashing on her. She’d done it once with Silas, accidentally. His Mission tattoo, the seal of St. Andrew, had flung her out of his space so hard she’d been violently ill. Jessie had never tried to affect the skein of threads directly, and something told her that doing so wouldn’t be worth the consequences.

  But there was more than one way to find someone.

  She summoned the energy to travel, to think of the Mission and their cells. She turned to Silas—her body didn’t turn, but the formless part of her that she embodied now was aware of him.

  Threads dangled from his . . . no, not his body. More like his soul, his essence. They spread out. Thin ones that bound him to Matilda, even to Joel. A solid band connected to Jessie, and she smiled upon seeing it. Sensing it. Another glowing, pulsing thread vanished back into the house, the thread that linked him so strongly to Naomi.

  There were others. Thinner skeins, some so fine they were all but invisible. Everybody had them; connections, ideas, emotions that bound them to people and places. When she concentrated, like she did on Silas, they shimmered into focus.

  The thread uniting her to Silas was the brightest and thickest of the connections attached to her formless self. There should have been a second. One that bound her to Caleb, her brother.

  She hadn’t seen that one for a long time. Her vision shuddered. Shimmered as if a heat wave rolled across her eyes.

  Stop it. Her own emotional state could affect everything, and she tamped back on a surge of fear. Of anger. Her little brother frequently made her feel both.

  Sifting through his threads, she found one that would take her where she wanted and seized it with her mental hand.

  The scene abruptly shattered, fading to stark white walls and a row of metal doors. The Mission quarters. Mid-low, Jessie figured, given the somewhat shabby state of her surroundings.

  A female witch hunter she didn’t recognize strode by the bank of cell doors, her coffee-colored skin sallow in the cheerless light. Jessie quickly hurried out of the way. She wasn’t there, not really, but she didn’t know what would happen if one of them ran through her presence. Would their seal warn them?

  She couldn’t see the tattoo through the long-sleeve thermal and scuffed jeans the hunter wore, but she knew Naomi’s was scandalously low on her abdomen. They could choose to put the seal anywhere, and there was no guarantee this witch’s seal wouldn’t flare up with the so-called holy protection the Mission wove into the ink. Better not find out.

  The Church thought she was dead. She needed to keep it that way.

  She made short work of the cells, peering through every one. Her heart twisted as she saw two were occupied, one of them by a listless girl no older than fourteen, but neither was Lillian.

  Damn the Mission. Damn the Church that continued to hold a net of fear over humanity.

  Over her. Witches like her.

  Dimly, she was aware of discussion around her, but it wasn’t here in the Mission jail. They were talking around her body. Matilda and Silas and Joel. About what?

  “Never seen anything like—”

  The white walls dimmed, and she jerked her focus back to her sight. She could only see one thing at a time.

  Lillian. Where was she? Where would they keep her?

  With a thought, she moved away from the headquarters, rose through the city. Suddenly, her mental eyes flared as daylight shattered through the lower level darkness she’d gotten used to.

  Jessie reeled for a moment, blinking hard, and found herself not in the topside Mission headquarters but above them.

  New Seattle stretched out beneath her. Like a mountain of glass and metal, of smog and cloudy wisps entangled in the streets, it went on and on. Hundreds of feet. Thousands of feet. Miles. Only the top third was visible from where she hovered, just above the Cathedral of St. Dominic’s highest spire.

  It was crowned with a cross. She’d never seen it before. Hell, she’d never been outside the lower streets before, and even when she saw, she’d never been this high.

  It was beautiful.

  Even if it housed the organization that wanted her dead.

  The scene frayed at the edges. Unraveled, like a loose thread pulled along the sides.

  She glanced down, saw the four sides of the city’s most central structure. As if the founders had taken four skyscrapers and combined them with a courtyard, four walls of metal and glass stretched to the sky. This was the heart of New Seattle. The place where the Holy Order of St. Dominic was most concentrated.

  This was where the main headquarters of the Mission shared space with the Holy Order’s vast library. Where the Cathedral held Mass every week, where the Magdalene Asylum shared ground with the hospital. This was where the city government worked and debated and screwed over people like her.

  Witches were burned here.

  Jessie had never been inside. Had never wanted to. But if Lillian was there, she had to find her.

  Focusing intently, she gathered herself. Sharpened her sense of place and being and stepped into the Mission side of the quad.

  And rebounded so hard, she felt it jar all the way to her bones.

  Jessie gasped.

  Fingers grabbed her shoulder, words echoed distantly around her, but she stared down at the quad she couldn’t get through and reeled as it pushed back.

  The sky darkened. Magic crawled into the air around her, ghosted across her skin—her senses. It didn’t feel like anything she’d ever come across before. She flung out her hands, found them suddenly entangled in threads of no real color, each shot through with light. They came from nowhere, wrapped around her wrists and ankles. Her waist. Feeling, prodding through her formless body. Searching for cracks, for weaknesses.

  For her location.

  Adrenaline spiked in her head, her heart, followed quickly by panic as her limbs were wrenched back.

  The scene shuddered, shimmered in and out of focus, but the threads only tightened. Became more real.

  Jessie struggled. “Let me go!”

  She mu
st have said it. More words blared in her ears, and the image shimmered, dangerously thin.

  Was it some kind of ward? But how? She didn’t affect anything, hadn’t opened herself to the location she saw. She hadn’t even made it inside to get caught by any holy wards the Church might have set in place.

  What was happening? She wrenched her arm, snapped several of the threads and stared.

  Each frayed tendril trailed a thin sliver of light. It glimmered through all of the tendrils wrapping her in place, bound them as tightly as they bound her.

  Magic. Someone else’s, to be precise.

  Teeth clenched, her breath coming in harder gasps as the tendrils constricted, Jessie scraped together what focus she had as her lungs—not real!—clamored for air.

  “Jessie?”

  The voice echoed around her, as out of place in the open sky above the city as she was.

  No! If they pulled her out now, she’d lose it.

  Someone didn’t want her here. She wanted to know who, and why.

  Summoning her will, forcing herself to crack open the doors shielding her power, Jessie flung everything she had out in a sparkling net. She saw it visually, she always did—skeins of power, woven together, made to reveal everything to her sight. It hit the bonds holding her in place, the manifestations of another’s will.

  The net enfolded the tendrils, which did nothing. Slid through the air, as formless as she was supposed to be. Caught nothing. There were only those snapping, angry threads shot through with power.

  Whoever he was, whatever kind of witch had caught her, he was damned good.

  The net drifted harmlessly into nothing, but in its wake, each ropy skein of magic gleamed brilliantly with the assaulting witch’s power. The magic didn’t lie. She saw the connections, the tiny frayed edges that sought her own.

  They fused to her formless consciousness. As clear a marker as a neon sign.

  The witch knew her? Somehow was connected to her?

  But who?

  Her stomach twisted. Caleb? Her brother had supposedly died in a bomb explosion that destroyed the Coven of the Unbinding, a rogue witch coven that tried to kill her. Caleb had been working with them, and to this day, she wasn’t entirely sure why. But he’d saved her in the end.

  And though Silas wasn’t convinced, Jessie knew he wasn’t dead. She’d always been able to tell when her brother wasn’t being straight with her.

  But this didn’t feel like his magic. She’d know.

  The images wrenched. The witch’s magic dragged at her, sucked her deeper into the heart of the city. She felt like she was drowning. Sunlight turned to muted half-light. The city loomed over her. She kicked, struggled, body desperate for air. For life, for—

  “Sunshine!” Silas’s voice. Angry. Demanding.

  Fading.

  Jessie’s mental eyes fluttered closed.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The place was beautiful.

  Phin Clarke paused on the porch, bracing his unbound right hand against the weathered wooden rocking chair for balance and a chance to catch his breath. The sling binding his left arm in place took the worst of the strain off the bullet wound in his shoulder, and Silas had assured him it’d heal in no time.

  It didn’t hurt half as bad as the sheer panic twisting in his gut.

  In the space of an hour, his whole life had gone to hell. Again. Phin was working overtime to keep the Church off his back, away from the people he’d promised to protect. Just because Timeless was nothing more than a burned-out husk didn’t mean Phin’s responsibility ended.

  It never occurred to him, not once, that the Church would break all protocol, risk the political backlash, and come after the Clarkes with operatives. Those were lower city shenanigans.

  Something must have pushed the Holy Order to it.

  So they’d gotten his mother. Those bastards. And Joel had barely gotten him out before Phin had gotten himself killed. Thank God for small favors.

  If Phin died, who would take care of Naomi?

  He almost laughed, but it hurt too much to take that deep a breath.

  That was assuming she needed care. This place she lived in, it was almost enough to forget everything for a while. Lose himself in. Everything smelled like flowers and sulfur; a strange kind of spicy fragrance that made him think of warm climates. Long, slow days in the sun.

  This place completely blew his mind.

  At the base of the porch, the ground was black with rich earth and speckles of yellow sulfur deposits. Rocky outcroppings hugged the shore, where the greenest water he’d ever seen lapped at the canyon walls. Steam rolled across the surface, ghostly wisps of gray and white. To his left, lush green foliage shrouded what looked to be some kind of path—glassy black stones paved the way into the miniature jungle.

  As he gingerly made his way down the three porch steps, every movement, every breath jarred his wrapped shoulder. He grimaced, hoping Silas’s “in no time” translated to “immediately.” He’d never been shot before now. Even Carson, the rat fink bastard, had only stabbed him.

  A subtle whiff of something much more delicate caught his attention. He glanced up, inhaling deeply, and smiled in surprise as purple flower petals scattered across the roof of the green house.

  A real fairy tale place.

  Almost as if nothing else existed. No city, no Church. No urgency.

  His smile faded as he dropped his gaze back to the wooden dock jutting out into the water. The woman he loved crouched there, her fingers trailing into the green liquid, and something hot and sweet filled his heart.

  The first time he’d kissed her, Naomi had been crouched the same way in Timeless’s courtyard pond. The water then hadn’t been as warm as it was now, and he wondered what she’d do if he picked her up and waded with her into the steam-covered bay.

  Of course, he thought as his shoulder throbbed steadily, the odds of that weren’t great.

  She stared out at the canyon wall, fingers trailing lazily across the surface. Ripples spread out in tangled circles. Her full, kissable mouth was turned down at the corner, a deep line of something Phin didn’t know how to read.

  It had been at least a month since he’d seen her. A month of empty nights, desperate dreams.

  And it had taken him getting shot to get here. His mother getting arrested.

  His footfalls crunched as he limped to the dock. Every beam creaked, and he watched her shoulders stiffen.

  Not a good sign.

  Phin didn’t touch her. Simply watched the back of her head, her hair tinted in purple streaks and sliding across her nape. The jeweled beads pierced through the back of her neck weren’t visible, but he knew if he swept her hair aside, ran his fingers across her sensitive skin, he’d find them.

  He exhaled, a short burst of soundless need.

  Now wasn’t the time. But then, was it ever?

  “What’s going on?” His voice drifted into the steam-ridden air and faded.

  Naomi didn’t look at him. “I’m sorry about Lillian.”

  “Silas and Jessie are working on that.” And he had to let them; had to be okay with his inability to help. He’d never been that much of a fighter—Naomi could kick his ass with a hand tied behind her back—and the healing wounds he sported now convinced him of it.

  His job was to heal up. To start planning for the next step.

  It would involve every contact he’d ever had, but he could do it. He had to. Lillian needed to get out of this city, and he was the only one who could scrape together the means to do it. Which meant he had to stay calm now, and trust in Naomi’s friends.

  “I meant,” he continued lightly, “why are you out here alone?”

  She rose, a long, lithe flex of incredible grace, and turned on him. The look in her eye confused as much as it challenged him. He recognized it—fear. Echoed fear that they’d be too late, shared fear of losing Lillian.

  Phin had already lost one mother. But for Naomi, who’d somehow bonded with Gemma in ways he
didn’t understand, this had to be worse. She’d been betrayed by her own mother as a child, and what scars that act left were made worse by years of working as the Mission’s best assassin.

  Phin spent every moment with her trying to combat those scars. Sometimes, she didn’t let him.

  He reached out to touch her cheek.

  She caught it in a grip made of steel. “Don’t,” she said softly. The green water behind her made her eyes look startlingly violet. And just as glassy.

  Phin didn’t tug his hand free. Didn’t even flinch, his gaze serious. “What did I tell you?” he asked, and didn’t let her turn away as she dropped his hand. Instead, ignoring her warning, he slid his fingers into her hair and tilted her face up to his. His thumb stroked across her cheek. “Remember?”

  “I don’t—”

  “Three months,” he said over her. In his bare feet, he was only a few inches taller than her. Which put her mouth temptingly close to his. It quirked, now, but downward. A frown.

  “Phin.”

  Only an excuse would follow that tone. His ex-missionary had a hell of a martyr complex. He grinned, angling his body so that she had only one way to go to escape—into the water. She took a step back. Her heel hit the edge of the dock, and as she stiffened, he filled her space.

  His chest to hers. Thigh to thigh.

  Her full mouth parted on a gasp.

  Phin’s fingers tightened in her silky, pin-straight hair. As her tongue slid out to lick the small silver hoop at the center of her full lower lip, his gaze dropped to it.

  Heart hammering, he said, “Remember, Naomi? Three months, I said we’d be right here again.”

  Her lashes flickered, a thick black veil that did nothing to hide a sudden bleakness in her eyes. “Now’s not the time, Phin,” she said, echoing his earlier thought. She leaned so far back, all he’d have to do was breathe wrong and she’d fall into the water.

  She didn’t want him close.

  He dropped his hand as disappointment welled up beside the heat that never seemed to go away when she was involved. He wanted her. He loved her.

  He’d promised her forever.