by Jayne Faith
“Besides, I’ve got lunch break in five minutes anyway,” he added, completely destroying his rebellious façade.
I reached to start the ignition. “I should probably get out of here before they try to cite me for trespassing.”
He straightened. “Okay, we’ll talk later.”
I nodded, and then for the final time, I pulled out of the spot in the officer parking lot that had been mine for the past several years.
My anger fled abruptly, and I was left with a forlorn, empty feeling. I found myself clinging to Damien’s words, even though I’d brushed them off in the moment. Sudden, unexpected gratitude swelled in my chest, adding to the chaos of emotions that were having their way with me. Damien was the last good thing Demon Patrol had done for me. When my old partner Terrence retired, I’d never imagined that anyone could take his place. Damien and I had only known each other a few months, but from the start, he’d jumped to the forefront of my life. Next to Deb, he was the person I relied on the most.
I grumbled and swiped my fingertips under my damp eyes. Fed up with my mushy feelings, I grabbed my phone. I called Johnny Beemer so I wouldn’t have to sit in the silence of my thoughts. Johnny and I had been seeing each other since August. There was an obvious mutual attraction, but lately I’d started to wonder whether the relationship really had any legs.
Lately, it seemed like we’d been arguing more and more. Our fights usually had something to do with a decision of mine that he disapproved of. He seemed to have fallen into a pattern of accusing me of impulsiveness and taking risks that made him nervous. Still, he’d been there for me through more than one tough moment.
He answered on the third ring. “Hey sugar, what’s up?”
“I just got fired from Demon Patrol,” I said, my voice thick with indignation.
I recounted the whole thing, and he was suitably outraged on my behalf. It made me feel a little better.
As I went into my apartment, I called Deb. It was still the middle of the school day, so I didn’t expect her to answer, and she didn’t. I left her a long, outraged message.
Realizing I still hadn’t heard anything from Rogan, I called him next. He didn’t pick up either, so I left him a voicemail.
“Guess what,” I said. “I know the name of my reaper. It’s Xaphan. Oh also, I just got canned from my job. Call me.”
I knocked around my apartment for a while, unable to focus on anything for more than a minute or two. Finally giving up, I changed into sweats and a parka and went out into the back yard to practice with my whip. It was a lot less fun to go through maneuvers without magic to enhance my movements and control, and in some ways it was like learning to use it all over again. But I figured some practice was better than nothing.
Damien and I had created a target dummy out of a thrift-store snowsuit stuffed full of wadded newspaper and plastic soda bottles weighted with water. Brice, as we’d named the dummy, hung suspended from a limb of the maple tree that reached over into my yard. Brice’s head was a man’s mannequin head secured to the neck of the suit with tacks and a lot of superglue. The dummy’s name was courtesy of Damien, and he’d picked it in honor of an old boyfriend who’d dumped him by moving to Paris one weekend and then texting him from overseas to tell Damien it was over.
I took out my frustrations on Brice for the next couple of hours. By the time I was done, sweat dripped down my temples and my right arm ached.
Deb called just as I got out of the shower.
“Ella, I can’t believe they did that!” she said vehemently. “Are you okay? Do you want me to come home?”
I knew she’d planned to stay after school and grade papers for a couple of hours.
I wiped condensation off the mirror with the heel of my hand. “Nah, that’s all right. I’ll see you when you’re done at school.”
She demanded I tell her again how it went down, so I did. After we hung up, I dressed and went out to grab a sandwich at Blossom’s Deli downtown.
I didn’t have to be at Lynnette’s meeting until later, but I wanted to talk to her alone beforehand. Several of the witches in the coven still didn’t know that she’d been opening small interdimensional rips in order to harvest the powerful rip magic around them, and that was what led to the death of one witch and the Baelman horde being sent to kill the rest of them. Even Deb still didn’t know about the rips.
I was going to force Lynnette to confess. She might have bound me to the coven against my will, but I had no intention of making life easy for her. And Deb needed to see Lynnette’s true colors. My best friend was committed to the coven, but there was too much she didn’t know. I couldn’t force her to quit, but I sure as hell could help her understand what was really going on.
I didn’t have my magic, but I was determined to try to accomplish something. One of those things on my to-do list was to get myself and Deb out of Lynnette’s clutches. If I could find the silver bullet to do this, I’d gladly use it, but I suspected it was going to be a process.
No better time than the present to get started on it. I tossed my sandwich wrapper and headed to Lynnette’s house.
Chapter 4
WITH NO SMALL sense of irony, I realized that my forced membership in Lynnette Leblanc’s coven was one of the few things I had to focus on these days. I was still pissed about how she’d manipulated me, but the coven was a distraction from my other troubles.
When I’d first awakened from the battle with Jacob Gregori’s horde of Baelmen assassins and realized I couldn’t draw magic or feel the reaper soul within me, I’d thought for sure Lynnette would release me from my magically binding agreement. At the time, I’d thought getting kicked out of the coven might actually be the only good outcome of nearly dying after pulling too much magic from the in-between.
But Lynnette refused to let me go, even though I was basically dead weight to the coven. None of the witches held it against me. On the contrary, they’d spent the first week after the Baelman attack bringing me casseroles, homemade teas and tinctures, and other gifts. I’d almost sacrificed myself to save them, and they weren’t shy about showing their gratitude.
The shower of offerings and teary hugs was more than I could take, though, and I demanded that Lynnette call them off. They didn’t quit entirely. They just got sneakier about it. The day before, for instance, I’d opened the front door to get the mail and nearly stumbled over a wicker basket with a six-pack of my favorite locally brewed lager, a box of salted caramels, a bag of organic dog treats for Loki, and a gift card for pizza delivery, all wrapped up in cellophane and tied at the top in a big purple bow.
Most of the women in the group did seem to be good people as Deb had claimed. It was their leader who posed the problem. As much as I wanted out, I had enough sense to see it would be easier to help Deb understand she needed to distance herself from Lynnette if I did it from the inside.
Just as I eased my pickup to a stop in front of Lynnette’s modern Victorian two-story, a light dusting of snow began to fall from the overcast sky. It was early December, and winter had firmly set in with daytime temperatures dipping into the thirties.
Soft light glowed invitingly from Lynnette’s windows. I stepped onto her property and crossed a series of wards on the way to the front door, but none of them resonated to register my presence—a quirk of the reaper soul I carried. Good. If I could take her by surprise, all the better for me.
I pressed the doorbell with my thumb. I saw movement at a side window, and then the door opened.
Her usually sleek ebony hair was twisted up in a messy bun, but it was the only thing that betrayed she wasn’t expecting anyone yet. Her eyes narrowed briefly before she composed her expression.
“Hi, Ella,” she said. She stood in the doorway with one hand holding the door close, so her body took up the open space. Not exactly inviting.
“Hello, Lynnette. I need to speak to you before the others arrive.”
I moved forward a step, and with some reluctance, she stepped as
ide so I could go in. She closed the door, turned to me, and crossed her arms. She stayed near the door, leaving several feet between us, as if she expected to let me right back outside.
“I still have preparations for the meeting,” she said.
“Okay, I can make this quick. You need to tell the entire coven exactly why Jacob sent the Baelmen after all of you. Tonight. It’s time to come clean.”
Her mouth flattened into a tense line as she regarded me silently.
“Or?” she asked, drawing the word out a little.
I raised my brows innocently. “What, you don’t think honesty among coven sisters is important? What about all that no-secrets-in-a-coven talk I keep hearing?”
Her arms dropped to her sides, and her eyes took on an intensity. At first I thought she was gearing up to argue, but then it hit me. She was pulling magic. I couldn’t feel it, though. It was too subtle. I had no idea if she was going to try to slip in some verbal magic or do something more overt.
I curled my fingers into loose fists, my right hand ready to snatch the whip that was attached to my belt loop.
When I saw the index finger of her right hand twitch, the handle of my whip was in my hand, and in the next split second, I’d flicked my wrist and caught her arm in a neat, tight coil. I twisted and yanked, jerking her arm hard. She started grabbing at the end of the whip at the same time, distracting her enough that when I pulled her off balance she fell to one knee to catch herself.
It all happened in a blink. I gazed down at her with a satisfied smile tugging at the corners of my mouth. If somebody took a quick picture right then, it would look as if Lynnette were bowing before me.
She sprang to her feet, red-faced and cursing. She unwound the end of the whip from her arm and threw it at me.
“Don’t ever do that again,” she hissed through clenched teeth, fury flashing in her eyes.
I rotated my wrist, making the end of the whip dance across the tiles.
“Then don’t ever use your magic against me again,” I said. I slowly coiled up my whip. “Tonight, you tell the others about the rips you’ve been opening and how they put you in Jacob Gregori’s crosshairs. If you don’t do it, I will.”
I could have told the witches about it myself, but I feared it would be too easy to brush off, the way Jen and Deb had found ways to dismiss how Lynnette had manipulated me into the coven. I needed to try a different tactic. If I stood up and started slinging accusations, I’d look like the enemy. The women appreciated me, but they were deeply loyal to their leader. They needed to start hearing about the deceptions straight from the horse’s mouth.
I snapped my whip back onto my belt loop and gave her a steady, unblinking look. She was still rubbing her arm where the whip had left a reddened band of skin. In the silence, I started to wonder how long our staring contest was going to continue. After a few seconds I realized she was still trying to compose herself. The rage in her eyes surprised even me.
“Get out,” she said through clenched teeth.
“Which is it going to be?” I pressed.
“I’ll tell them about the rips,” she finally said, her face twisting as if the words tasted like spoiled milk.
I nodded once, turned, and let myself out. I wasn’t stupid enough to stand around and gloat.
My phone buzzed as I pulled away from Lynnette’s. It was Deb. I knew she was worried about how I was taking my loss of employment. She was probably at home, and seeing that I wasn’t there, felt the need to check in.
“Ella, that place is just shit for letting you go. Obviously! How are you doing?”
“Still pissed,” I said heatedly, fueled by my confrontation with Lynnette, on top of my simmering anger about losing my job.
“Is there anything you can do about it?”
“I guess I could try to fight it, but I really can’t afford to,” I said.
She huffed a loud sigh. “It’s too bad Demon Patrol isn’t unionized like teachers are. You’d have someone to go to. Maybe it wouldn’t have even happened in the first place.”
There was a group of officers pushing to unionize, and we’d actually had a couple of votes in my years on the job, but there was never a big enough majority to get the union going.
“I’m just going to have to figure out something else.” I forced my voice to brighten. The last thing I wanted to do was stress her out more. Deb had enough weighing on her mind. “It’s an opportunity to pursue something new, right?”
She snorted a laugh, and I knew what she was thinking because I was thinking it too. I didn’t say sunny things like that. Not with a straight face, anyway.
“Hey, I’m heading home,” I said. “The truck’s warmed up, so I’ll swing by to get you, and we can stop at the yogurt place before the meeting.”
One of Deb’s current pregnancy cravings was pomegranate frozen yogurt, so just about every night we went to Cherri Berri to get her some.
“Okay, I’ll be ready. See you soon.”
Daily fro-yo wasn’t really in her budget these days, what with the pending divorce, baby on the way, and her miniscule teacher’s salary, but for how happy it made her it was worth it. I hoped her next craving would be something cheaper, maybe along the lines of deep breaths of fresh air or rays of sunshine, because my sudden and untimely exit from Demon Patrol and its regular paycheck certainly wasn’t going to help with the financial strain.
“How’re you doing really?” Deb asked after she settled in the passenger seat with the lap belt tucked below the small swell of her belly.
My jaw muscles clenched as if reflexively resisting any talk about my feelings.
“I really am pissed,” I said. “Now I feel even more cut off from everything. Magic. My job. An income.”
The ability to gallop away to Nevada and bust Evan out.
Useless. That was how I really felt.
“As soon as the coven charter goes through, you’ll have that income, at least,” she said. “I mean after we’re profitable.”
Right. I’d almost forgotten that coven members were required to pool their respective incomes to the group. The money would then be distributed equally between everyone, after operating expenses. But the coven was brand new and likely wouldn’t be in the black right away. I had no interest in mooching off the group, anyway. Plus, I intended to make my exit before I got too entrenched in the business dealings of the coven.
We both went silent as I drove through downtown, and the gravity of the situation hung heavy in the air. Deb had moved in with me to save money and so I could help her out. When my severance money ran out, she would be the one supporting me. I couldn’t allow that.
“It’ll all work out,” she said after a while, but she sounded tired.
“It always does.” It came out sounding more grim than I intended.
I pulled into the lot of the strip mall that housed Cherri Berri FroYo. Inside, I got a small cup of pom yogurt, too. The older couple who owned the yogurt place greeted us both by name, and they gave Deb’s Cherri Club punch card a few extra punches. I didn’t usually partake, but it always worked so well to cheer up Deb I figured it was worth a shot. We sat at one of the tables for a few minutes.
“Yummm,” Deb crooned around a mouthful. “I just want to live in a swimming pool filled with this stuff. Can we open a shop?”
“Bad idea,” I said. “You’d spend the whole day dispensing it straight into your mouth.”
She gave me a mock-hurt look. I quickly downed the rest of mine and tossed the cup so I could pull on my gloves. It was too cold out for frozen treats. I had to admit my mood was a little lighter, though. Or maybe I was just anticipating Lynnette’s confession to the coven.
I slid Deb a sideways look when we idled at a stoplight. She was a decent person with a good heart. But her allegiance to Lynnette had nearly gotten her killed and the coven charter wasn’t even sealed yet. I just really wanted her out of Lynnette’s clutches.
At Lynnette’s we all piled into the living roo
m, a space with faux leather sofas and heavy velvet drapes. It was the place where we’d carried the limp bodies of the unconscious witches after the first Baelman attack. Then, it had looked like a disaster triage, but Lynnette had put the place back together, and there was no sign of that violent night.
I shivered, remembering the sigils illuminating over my skeletal arms in the in-between and the torrent of silver magic that had rushed through me from that realm to this one.
I caught Lynnette’s eye, and the coven leader gave me a beatific smile that I didn’t like at all. It wasn’t the face of a woman who was about to confess something that could possibly do irreparable damage to her reputation. My mood turned darker as I scrutinized her expression.
She raised her hands and spoke over the chatter. “Okay, let’s settle. We’ve got a lot of things to talk about tonight, and I want to get right to the agenda.”
The energy and anticipation in her voice caught everyone’s attention. I chose a spot at the far end of the room, sitting on the floor where I could watch her as well as everyone else.
“First, I have something unexpected, and really quite . . . remarkable.” She blinked rapidly and shook her head as if still trying to process something. She drew out a pause and then spoke in a hushed voice. “We have an anonymous benefactor.”
She beamed at us.
“Like some long-lost miser uncle who wants to leave us his fortune?” Jen called out.
“Just about,” Lynnette said. She held up a few pieces of paper with typed text on them. “I received this last week, and it took me some time to verify its authenticity. Someone is offering to fund our coven as an angel investor. The only thing they want is to ensure that we get our charter and seal our membership immediately.”
She paused, and her eyes found mine. “As long as we can lock in our current membership, our mystery angel will grant us sixty thousand dollars a month for the first six months of our charter. So as long as none of you are planning on jumping ship, we’re going to be light years ahead of other new covens.”