by Jayne Hawke
No two magic users feel magic exactly the same way. Most witches feel magic as threads. Some will taste, see, or hear the magic. I’d never seen the world in the clean threads the rest of my coven seemed to. It was far more than that. It was a world of fabrics, mists, and sensations I couldn’t find anywhere else.
The note had a soft touch of mist clinging to it, marking it as having been wrapped in witch magic. There wasn’t enough to pinpoint the individual witch’s signature. Every witch has a unique touch to their magic, which can be found if you know where to look. Finding the signature allows you to find the witch who wove the magic. The problem was, the magic faded quickly, and the signature was usually one of the first things to go.
“We know this isn’t from the stalker. The paper, handwriting, and method are different. No, this person used witch magic to drop the note directly in my home,” I said.
“So, we’re dealing with two problems,” Castor said drily.
“How? How did they find me?”
“James and Liam both said someone has been digging into your old coven. They must have had more success than we feared.”
“Why now? How did they find something? We were so careful.”
I paced around the living room, trying to pull my thoughts together. This wasn’t a disaster yet.
“I don’t know. Your wolf is at least helping with the stalker problem.”
“But he’s now at risk from this new asshole, too,” I said with frustration.
I hated the idea of putting Elijah in danger, but I wasn’t ready to give up his company either. He was the first person I’d begun relaxing around and actually enjoying time with. I didn’t know if I’d ever have that again. It was selfish, but it had been so long since I’d had a friend, let alone something more.
Elijah came to my door that morning. He held up a bag of fresh pastries.
“I’m worried about you, and I brought food.”
It wasn’t fair to him to let him remain close, but I craved what he was offering. The chance at a normal life, to relax and feel safe for a short while. I let him in.
“Liam found something weird about the Inverness coven.” Elijah placed the danishes and pain au choc on the plates I’d put out. “Apparently a witch was missing from the remains. They think she might be alive somewhere.”
He said it so casually.
The images from that night crashed down over me.
At first, it had seemed like any other ritual night. The coven was fond of making use of the full moon to bring down lots of magic for their stores. I’d assumed they were trying to bottle luck again, something which sold incredibly well. The coven bank accounts were already overflowing, but there was no such thing as too much money in their minds.
I sat at the top of the grand stairs gazing out over the manicured gardens, which held every magical herb and plant known to witch kind. There were even a few fae plants in there that the fae weren’t supposed to know about. The moon began rising, and the stars started glittering on the black canvas of the night sky.
Rituals weren’t something I was allowed to be involved with. No one had ever told me why. I’d given up asking why I was treated so differently to the rest of the witches my age. Where they were being taught herb magic and rituals, I was taught to fight and how to twist the magic into something combat effective. We weren’t a combat coven. None of the adults took that role.
I’d turned sixteen a couple of days before, although it felt like no one noticed. Sixteen was something the other witches celebrated with great fervour. They were given a great deal of freedom and started to consider men from other covens to screw. There was no romance there. It was all politics.
Celeste and Fiona, the two most senior witches in the coven, strode up the stairs towards me. At first, I’d thought they planned on beating me for some mistake I hadn’t committed, but they gently took my wrists and guided me down the stairs.
“Tonight, you will join us in the ritual,” Celeste had said with a broad smile.
I was naive. I thought that I’d finally done something right and was going to be involved in the larger coven. In a way, I wasn’t wrong.
The old ballroom of the stately mansion had long ago been converted to the ritual space. It was stripped of any decoration or furniture. With bare dark wooden floors and windows taller than I was, it was an imposing space, especially in the darkness. The coven were all gathered and stood in a silent circle around sigils and markings that I didn’t recognise.
I’d been teaching myself every piece of magic I could find in the two-storey high library while no one was looking, but still this wasn’t something I was familiar with. A heaviness hung in the air, and my instincts screamed at me to run. Still, I wanted to be involved. To be accepted.
I should have run.
Thirty
Celeste guided me into the very centre of the circle. My coven was all dressed in large ritual robes almost as dark as the rest of the room. Their faces were hidden beneath deep hoods. Fear began to sharpen my senses. My instincts kicked in harder, screaming at me to run far and fast. I ignored them.
“Remain where you are, Amelia,” Fiona ordered me.
I rooted my feet to the dark wooden boards and waited. Even if I didn’t have an active role in the magic, I would finally be part of something, of the coven.
They began whispering something in a language I hadn’t heard before. It was a sharp-edged and yet poetic language, something that conjured images of something dark and ancient. The whispering picked up in pitch, and one of the younger girls began singing in that same language. The song felt like it was calling.
The weight of the room wrapped around me until it was suffocating. Still I didn’t move.
My coven started chanting and singing those strange sharp words which seemed to swell and grow around me. A presence was forming. It was more than a great web of magic. It was a being, something dark and powerful. My blood froze in my veins, but still I remained.
Celeste dropped to her knees and pulled a great curved dagger from the folds of her robes. She lifted her eyes and whispered something deep and angry. Then she rushed me like a great bull. The dagger was aimed at my heart. The coven began screaming.
My combat training kicked in, but I never had a chance to use it. A woman swathed in the darkest shadows appeared before me. She reached into Celeste’s chest and ripped her heart out. The still beating organ remained in her hand. Large crimson droplets of blood slipped between her fingers as Celeste’s lifeless body slowly collapsed to the floor.
The next few minutes are a blur of darkness, screams, and blood. My coven was dead around me. Their blood pooled on the dark wooden floors that I had wished to stand upon for so many years.
The shadowy woman whom I knew in my bones was a goddess turned to me with a gentle smile. Her porcelain skin was flawless. It made her brilliant artic blue eyes even more striking.
“Child, these people bore you with the intent of taking your life and nothing more. They had planned on stealing away my magic to use as their own.” She reached out and gently caressed my cheek with cold fingers. “I give you a sliver of my magic, and all of the magic in their veins. It is your due.”
I blacked out as my body was suddenly filled with more magic than I’d ever imagined possible. When I came to, I found Castor in his fox form gently nuzzling my face. He’d shifted into his human form and helped me escape that place. He had been a gift from the shadowy goddess. The goddess that I knew would come asking for something from me when she was ready.
“Lily? Are you ok?” Elijah asked as he reached out to take my hand.
“Hm? Yea. Sorry, I was just thinking about what an awful thing that was. Why do we care if a witch lived, though?”
“Well rumour has it that there was some really weird magic involved that night. Given our thief clearly has some odd magic, they could be one and the same.”
They weren’t.
“I hadn’t thought of that. Good catch.”
I bit into a raspberry danish and tried to shift my thoughts to something else. Elijah was already paying far too much attention. I didn’t need to make it any worse.
“Is Liam ok? He’s getting some sleep, right?” I asked.
Elijah smiled.
“Yea, I made sure he headed to bed early last night. He gets a bit too invested and chases leads until the crack of dawn if I let him. He’s a good fox, his enthusiasm just gets the better of him sometimes.”
Castor reached over and stole the last of the custard crowns.
“Thank you, Elijah. You’ll have to leave the name of the bakery. These pastries are truly exquisite.”
“Any time.”
Elijah was watching me, waiting. The pressure of his gaze sat upon me, making me want to sit up taller and stare him down. I’d never done well with challenges or authority.
“So, what rattled you?” Elijah asked.
“Just this stalker nonsense. He, they, were right there in that coffee shop and I didn’t know.”
“Liam went over the footage from the coffee shop and got nothing. The actual murder was in a blind spot.”
“Of course it was,” I said drily.
“We’re dealing with someone who knows what they’re doing. Perhaps someone with a lot of experience.”
“You think this might be an assassin?” Castor asked.
I didn’t much relish the idea of being up against a fellow assassin of this calibre.
“Maybe. We’re looking into every avenue right now.” Elijah stood and tidied the plates and such. “Don’t worry, we’ll make sure nothing happens to your witch.”
Castor narrowed his eyes a little but said nothing.
“Ready? Jess was out last night seeing if anything new had turned up.”
“We’re taking my car.”
“Does that mean you’re inviting me back here for dinner later?” Elijah said with a grin.
Damn him.
“Lily would love to cook dinner for you tonight. And it just so happens that I have a date and won’t be back until morning.”
I glared at the traitorous fox.
Get laid, Castor mouthed at me.
I turned away, trying not to blush. That fox would be the end of me.
Thirty-One
We never made it to the office. News came in that someone else had been killed. I drove a little too fast and ducked into the last parking spot near the park where it had happened. A cluster of people were gathered around dark stained grass. A pair of bounty hunters were trying to keep them back.
These situations were sticky. I didn’t technically have jurisdiction because I was freelance, but that didn’t stop me from trying my luck. Elijah set his shoulders back and strode up to the bounty hunters with his full alpha presence rolling off him. The two witches visibly shrank back.
“We’re here to see the scene,” Elijah said.
“And you are?” the blond witch asked meekly.
“Officials,” I said sharply.
They nodded and made room for us to get to the scene.
I immediately noticed the lack of magic. Even the grass had been drained of what life essence each blade had within it. The area was stained with dark red blood. Elijah crouched down near the remains, which were a mess of organs, torn muscles, and jagged broken bones. Who- or whatever had done that had a real anger problem.
“The scent is here,” he said as he stood.
I looked at the face of the dead woman, trying to see if I recognised her. Nothing came to mind, but it was hard to be sure. Her jaw hung loose, and she was missing one eye entirely.
We headed back to my car. I tried to find some sort of magical trail as we did so. Nothing. The lack of magic ended at the edges of the neat circle, and nothing stood out from there. Whoever it was was very good.
“Did you know her?” Elijah asked once we were in the car.
“I don’t think so.”
“I sent pictures of her over to Liam. He’s trying to pull up her face.”
I pulled out in the morning traffic and turned the happy pop music up louder. That was another person dead, possibly thanks to me.
“The scent was stronger there. Likely due to his rage. I don’t know what made him so angry this time, but we have to think that he’s escalating. You’re in greater risk.”
I knew that stalkers often turned violent when they didn’t get what they wanted. The gods knew whoever it was wasn’t going to get some weird romantic fantasy fulfilment with me. If he came at me, I’d show him just how good of a combat witch I was. My shadow blades could cut through anything.
Liam had managed to pull up a face for the dead woman in the park. She hadn’t aged much since I’d seen her last in Inverness. I’d seen her once a week since I was ten or so. She sold crystals and metal disks to our coven for rituals and workings. The younger witches burnt through a lot while they were working. The coven sold the rest on at their shops in Inverness and by the loch.
My stomach twisted. I couldn’t tear my eyes away. She had been kind to me. She’d also known my face and would no doubt have recognised me should we have met in the city. Castor had texted saying another note was waiting for him when he got home. That one had simply said, ‘I’ll keep you safe.’
That meant that two people knew who I was.
“Do you know her, Lily?” Liam asked gently.
“I saw her in the market a few times. I don’t remember her being rude, but maybe she took a piece of fruit I wanted or something. This guy clearly has a twisted view of right and wrong.”
Another death on my hands. Another innocent life erased because some crazy asshole had decided they liked me a little too much.
Thirty-Two
Elijah hadn’t let me forget that I was supposed to be cooking him dinner. I’d tried to tell him I was an awful cook, so he’d pulled up his favourite Chinese takeaway place on my laptop. Once the food had arrived, we’d sat on the couch with our thighs pressed together and an action movie on the TV.
“What do you do in your down time?” Elijah asked.
“Watch movies, hang out in bars, sit by the sea.”
Go through my katas, practise my shadow magic, hope I was wrong about the goddess coming for a favour one day.
“No real hobbies?”
“I guess nothing’s appealed. You?”
“I run with the pack, read, and I dabble in carpentry.”
“Seriously?”
I looked up at him.
“I only dabble. I’ve made some tables, a couple of cabinets, a few pretty boxes.”
He pulled out his phone and opened up a picture of a stunning wooden box with enamel inlay.
“You call that dabbling?”
He grinned at me and put his hand on my knee.
“I don’t believe in doing anything by halves.”
A warmth pooled in the pit of my stomach at his sinful suggestion.
“Well, I’ll have to keep that in mind,” I teased.
He reached out and stroked a strand of hair out of my face.
“You would tell me if I was pushing or going too fast...”
I put my hand on his enjoying the warmth of his caress against my skin.
“I would.”
He smiled.
“Good, I’d rather not lose you just yet.”
“Oh? Is there a time limit on this?” I said with a laugh.
He grinned at me.
“You seem like the type to jump out of a window if I make any suggestion of this being something more.”
He wasn’t wrong.
I curled up and leaned against him, resting my head on his hard chest. It was nice to enjoy his strength as he wrapped his arm around me and took away the stresses and strains of the world for a little while. I reminded myself to enjoy every little moment, because it couldn’t last.
We were back in the office trying to figure out who and what the stalker-thief was. Liam had compiled a list of artifacts, rituals, and spells that would
allow someone to wipe away the magic as the stalker had done at every scene. He had another list of potential beings and heritages which would give the stalker the scent they carried.
The first list was far longer than I’d have thought. There were a lot of artifacts that I’d never heard of. It seemed that the fae got bored during their ridiculously long lives and started playing at making all sorts of things. There was a pair of boots on there that gathered up air magic and allowed someone to float for a short period of time. When said boots were combined with a fae-made wig which had been designed heighten someone’s glamour, it eradicated all magic in the area.
The list of beings was thankfully far shorter. Of course, it was complicated by the fae’s long-standing and only recently abandoned habit of screwing everything with a heartbeat and producing part-breeds. The number of part-breeds being born had dropped to almost nothing when Ryn, the fae lord to rule all fae lords, brought in a law that said all fae must take responsibility for all part-breeds they produced. Suddenly the fae were incredibly talented at huge arrays of contraceptive magics. It was weird how that worked.
“So, my money’s on it being a bean finn halfbreed, using the charm of purity, in the kitchen,” Jess said.
Rex looked at her with a deep frown as though she’d just declared that peanut butter grew on trees.
“Cluedo,” Jess said with a shrug.
“You are far too young to be playing something like Cluedo,” he grumbled.
“You’re too young to be such a stick in the mud,” Jess said.
“I am not a stick,” Rex said as he crossed his arms.
“You communicate in growls and grumbles.”
“I’m the life of the party.”