by Linsey Hall
Except for the paintings on the wall. Those were done in bright shades of neon, making the subjects—wizards and witches in traditional garb—appear to be partying at a rave. And the lights in the chandelier—those were a bit weird as well. The bulbs were all colors of the rainbow.
The effect was kind of… insane.
A shrieking laugh echoed from the back of the house, followed by a scream that sounded something like, “I will murder you…stealing my pigeon, you...”
I shot Jeeves a look. “Her pigeon?”
“I really couldn’t say, sir.” He gestured to a small door in front of me. “Come, follow me.”
Sora and I shared a look, then followed Jeeves into a small corridor. It struck me that I hadn’t sensed any magic. Though it was clearly here—there was the unmistakable buzz of it—I got no hint of the dozens of magical signatures that should be shooting around this place if there were thirty witches present. Each of them would have at least one signature, but I could sense none.
Just like I couldn’t sense it from Sora.
This town really was serious about keeping their magical signatures on the down-low.
Jeeves led us into a slightly larger room. The space was cluttered with four suits of armor, one in each corner. In the middle of the room sat two small, ornate couches facing each other. The electric lights had been replaced with open-flame candles—a serious fire hazard—and there were empty wine glasses scattered around on the little tables.
Jeeves’s eyes went immediately to the glassware, and he made an annoyed tsking sound. I could almost feel his desire to mutter something, but he bit it back. That had to be a good butler trait, especially in a place like this. Not that I had much experience.
“Please, take a seat.” Jeeves gestured elegantly to the chairs. “I will announce your presence, and someone will be with you shortly.”
“Thanks, Jeeves,” Sora said.
Together, we sat on the same couch. It was so small that my thigh pressed to hers, and the heat soaked through my jeans to my skin.
Screams and crashes echoed from the back of the building, and I looked at Sora. “So this is normal, right?”
“Oh, very.” She nodded. “They're…kind of nuts.”
“Cool. But they’ll give us the ingredient?”
“Sell it to us, more like.”
“Fair enough.”
She leaned up to whisper in my ear, her words so soft that I could barely hear them. “We could be under surveillance, so let’s keep details minimal.”
I nodded.
The door banged open. Three witches tumbled in, and…
Well, yeah.
They were nuts.
The woman in the lead was young—not much over twenty. She was tall and slender. Her jet black eyes gleamed with cunning under the candlelight, and neon green striped through her straight ebony hair. She was dressed like a ballerina, with a matching neon green tutu and tank top. The only difference was her extremely chunky black boots. She carried an enormous purse over one shoulder.
“That’s Coraline,” Sora whispered.
Behind her was a ghostly pale girl whose bright pink hair matched her eyes. She looked like an albino Easter rabbit, but she was dressed like a cowboy, with the chaps and everything.
I looked at Sora to get her name, and she murmured, “Mary.”
The last girl to enter was slight but strong looking, with warm brown skin and blindingly white teeth. She was the only one dressed like a normal person in a T-shirt and jeans—that is, if you ignored the pigeon sitting on her shoulder and the green braids that had tiny black eyes at each tip.
At first glance, they looked like snakes. They weren’t—just a very clever decoration—but the effect was eerie.
“That’s Beth,” Sora said.
Beth caught me looking at her hair and glared. “Medusa was misunderstood.”
I’d had a friend run into the real Medusa once and share the story. “I agree.”
The girl arched an eye, her tone challenging. “Met her?”
“No, but a buddy of mine has.”
She shot me an impressed look.
“Are you having a costume party?” I asked.
“No.” Coraline tilted her head and glared at me. “Why would you think that?”
“He’s not from around here,” Sora said. “Thank you for meeting us, though.”
“Where’s he from?” Mary looked me up and down, her lips pursed appreciatively. Made me feel a bit like a horse up for auction, actually. I wasn’t a fan.
“Magic’s Bend.” I stood and held out my hand. “I’m Connor.”
“Alchemist,” Sora added.
“Potions Master,” I corrected.
“Master, eh?” Mary grinned. “Must be good with your hands.”
“Okay, okay, back off,” Sora said. “Do you have the ingredient or not?”
“Calm down, calm down!” Coraline raised her hands in a placating gesture.
The three piled onto the couch and leaned forward, staring at us.
“So, you need the Ascencia root,” Beth said.
“Powdered,” I specified.
All three gave us sympathetic frowns.
“Well, that might be a bit hard,” Mary said. “All we’ve got are seeds.”
“You said you had it,” Sora said, her tone irritated.
“And we do.” Coraline shrugged. “You just need to wait for it.”
“I don’t have time to wait for it.”
“The sorcerers have a spell that will make it grow fast,” Mary said.
Beth elbowed her. “She can’t ask the sorcerers.”
“Right.” Mary shrugged, clearly not caring. “You could break in, I guess.”
Sora cursed.
“Anyway,” Coraline said. “We need payment for the seeds.”
“What have you got?” Mary’s gaze moved between the two of us.
“Ah…” Sara’s voice trailed off.
Before I could say anything, Beth leaned forward. “I know what we want.”
“What?” Sora frowned.
“Your obsidian dagger. The enchanted one.”
“No.” Sora’s voice was firm, but there was the smallest hint of fear at the edge of it.
Or maybe I was imagining that.
All three girls leaned forward, their eyes ravenous. They spoke in unison. “We want it.”
Okay, maybe I hadn’t imagined it. There was something going on here. I looked at Sora, spotting a sad cast to her eyes.
“Fine.” She bit out the words, pulling a tiny dagger from her pocket. As she withdrew it, the thing lengthened in front of my eyes, growing into a wicked eight-inch blade.
The three witches all grinned, their eyes gleaming with greed.
I glanced back at Sora.
Yeah, she was sad.
This blade was special to her for some reason. It wasn’t just that it was badass. I could almost feel her grief over parting with it. A gift from someone she loved? A parent, maybe? Boyfriend?
“You guys suck, you know,” she said.
“Whatever.” Mary grinned and held out her hands, her pink-tipped nails gleaming in the light as she made a grabby-hands gesture. “Give it over.”
“Show me the seeds first,” Sora said.
Beth’s lips twisted in an unsurprised smile as she reached into her pocket and pulled out a tiny velvet bag. She poured the contents into her hand and held out the seeds for our inspection.
Sora looked between me and the seeds. “Well?”
Though they were tiny, each had the distinctive blue and red star pattern. I nodded. “They’re the real deal.”
“Told you.” Mary smirked.
“Fine.” Sora expertly flipped her dagger so that the hilt pointed toward the witches, then thrust it toward them. Coraline took it with a triumphant smile and slipped it into her huge bag, patting the side with a satisfied look.
Sora’s eyes followed the dagger, and my heart ached for her.
&
nbsp; Beth dumped the seeds back into the little bag and held it out to Sora. “Nice doing business with you.”
“Sure.” Sara’s tone was sharp, and I was sure that if it hadn’t been a matter of life or death—or at the very least, losing her home—she wouldn’t have traded the dagger.
The witches laughed victoriously.
Sora stood and looked at me.
I nodded and rose, turning so that the witches couldn’t see my hands as I withdrew a tiny vial from the sheath at my wrist. It was no bigger than an inch long, and the glass was so delicate that it would give a Christmas ornament a run for its money.
Sora turned and went to the door, and I followed. As I walked by the witches, I pinched the tiny vial in my hand, hoping my new potion would work. I’d tested it plenty, but never on witches. And it was impossible to know what kind of charms protected them or this place.
As the glass shattered between my fingers, a tiny cloud of pink dust exploded from my hand, and I looked at the witches.
The dust spread quickly. As soon as it touched each of the witches, they froze, time stopping around them. I was immune, thanks to the fact that I’d slowly built up a tolerance, but their bodies were completely susceptible.
They weren’t dead, or even unconscious. Not technically, at least. They just had no idea what was going on around them.
As I wanted it to be.
Sora was far enough away that the dust couldn’t reach her. She turned back to me. “You coming?”
I ginned at her.
Confusion gleamed in her eyes as she tilted her head and inspected the three witches, each of whom was still sitting on the couch in mid-laugh. “What did you do to them?”
“A new potion. Powder, actually. They have no idea that time has stopped, and when it starts back up again, they’ll remember nothing.”
“Why?”
I bent and hovered my hand over the bag into which Coraline had dropped the dagger. It sparked with protective magic, as I’d guessed. As I drew my potion bag from the ether, I asked Sora, “Do you want your dagger back?”
“Yeah. But…” She frowned. “They’ll notice. And they’ll want payment. I don’t want the Witches’ Guild after me.”
“I thought you had friends here.”
“Sort of? Not the kind who would let me steal from them, though.”
“We’ll leave something of greater value than the seeds.” My gaze flicked to her. “The Ascencia seeds are valuable, but not that valuable. They just knew you were desperate.”
“That’s the truth. I am desperate.”
“Not for long.” I retrieved a potion from my bag that would temporarily disarm the charm on the bag and poured a drop onto the handles. The charm fizzed and broke, and I reached in to retrieve the dagger. I held it up. “What does this do?”
“Just what you saw. Turn really small and big on command. And it’s a good-looking dagger.”
She wasn’t wrong. It was a beautiful weapon. But it wasn’t insanely valuable. “So they wanted it because you want it.”
“And because it’s gorgeous.”
I nodded. “Then we’ll give them something they’ll want more.”
“What?”
“Proprietary potions of mine. I rarely share them, but when they get a load of what these babies can do, they’ll be satisfied.” I tucked the dagger under one arm and collected a half dozen of the most valuable potion bombs from my bag. My potions were unlabeled—I could tell what they were by color and shape of the glass container.
“Are you sure?” she asked.
“Of course. They didn’t wait to see what I had to offer in a trade. And you were handing that dagger off so fast I’d think you didn’t want it.”
“I do.” She scowled. “But that’s not what you’re here for. You’re helping me make the potion. Not helping me with other stuff.”
“Maybe I want to.” As the words left my lips, I knew they were true. Except, it was a seriously loaded statement, and it hung heavy in the air. Every second that passed made me more confident that she was the one. Hell, I knew it.
I could freaking feel it.
She was my fated mate, and every ignored Fae bone in my body recognized it.
But Sora might not recognize it. And now was not the time to talk about it. And we needed to get out of here.
My gaze fell on a notebook and paper sitting on a table near the door. I jerked my chin toward it. “Will you get that for me, please?”
“Sure.” She grabbed it and hurried over.
Quickly, I slipped the six potion bombs into the purse, then traded Sora for the notebook, giving her the dagger in exchange. I looked down at the notebook and spotted a crude drawing of two vampires going at it.
Oookay.
I flipped to a clean page and put pen to paper.
“What are you writing?” Sora asked.
“A description of each potion bomb and a note to find me for more if they want them. I’ll make them a second batch free of charge if they leave you alone.”
There was a moment of silence, and I realized that I was basically spilling my heart out to her. This was a lot of magical firepower I was trading on her behalf, and it wouldn’t be cheap to make.
Whatever.
I finished the note and slipped it into Coraline’s bag. “Okay, I’m going to snap them out of it. Go back to the door where you were so everything looks normal.”
She nodded and shoved her dagger into her pocket, then turned and hightailed it to the door. I got into the same position I’d been in when I’d released the first potion and drew a second from my wrist cuff. This one was a pale green, and when I crushed the glass vial between my fingertips, a pale green mist escaped. A moment later, the witches immediately jerked back into action.
My heart pounded in my ears in the split second it took to see if they realized something was off, but they just keep laughing.
I strode quick to the door and followed Sora out into the hall. We didn’t wait for Jeeves, just hightailed it toward the exit.
“Hurry,” Sora whispered. “We need to get out of here before they go for the dagger. They’ll strike before they read your note, I bet.”
“That quick to violence, huh?”
“Oh, you don’t know the Witches’ Guild.”
6
Sora
The witches’ laughter echoed as I hurried through the foyer and out the main door. Watery sunlight gleamed as I took the stairs two at a time. Exhilaration surged through me.
I looked over my shoulder at Connor and said, “We totally pulled a fast one on the witches.”
He grinned, his long legs eating up the ground as he followed me down the stairs. As soon as we reached the bottom, we broke into a run down the path. My heart pounded, and joy made me feel like I was floating.
As we sprinted toward the shelter of the streets, I began to laugh. “That was amazing.”
“Those witches were bitches.”
“Kinda.” Laughing, I stumbled to a halt in the nearest alley, the narrow space providing a shadowed spot to hide.
Connor stopped next to me, and we turned back to the tower to look at it. The Witches’ Guild tower still tilted ominously to one side, looking extremely creepy through the thin fog.
My laughter faded, and I turned to look at Connor. “Thank you for the help. Seriously.”
“Anytime.” His grin faded, replaced with a worried smile. “Those are your friends?”
“Not really.”
“But you want them to be.”
“Not really.”
“Then what’s up? There’s something…wistful about you.”
Could I tell him that I just wanted friends… like, full stop? That seemed really pathetic to admit. I was in my mid-twenties. I should have a ton of friends by now.
My silence must have lasted too long, because Connor changed track. “Why did the guard call you Sora the Broken?”
I hissed at the name. I’d mostly gotten people to stop calling
me that. It’d been easier to hurl it at me when I was a teenager and couldn’t hurl my obsidian dagger right back at them.
“And why have you been stealing so much from the Sorcerers’ Guild?”
“Attempted stealing.” I winked, knowing it probably wasn’t covering up my discomfort. “There’s a much shorter jail time for that.”
“Yeah, well, why?”
I bristled under the question. I didn’t want to answer this. I hardly knew him. Why would I spill my guts to him about my sad sack of a life story? I much preferred to present the world with who I wanted to be, not who I was.
And the genuine caring in his eyes made me feel panicky. I wasn’t used to this kind of thing.
I swallowed hard, mind racing. “Why should I tell you anything when you have your own secrets?”
“Because your secrets are the reason we’re here.”
I shrugged, not caring that it was true. “Whatever. If you want me to tell you my serious shit, you have to tell me yours. You’ve got a past…I can see it. There’s conflict floating around you like an aura.”
His jaw firmed, and his eyes flashed dark.
Clearly, he was debating.
“Come on. You show me yours, and I’ll show you mine,” I said.
His eyes sparked with a different kind of darkness, and I found that I liked it. I punched him lightly in the arm, just to keep him on track. “Come on, spill.”
He leaned against the alley wall and looked in both directions, as if checking to see whether other people were around. Or he was stalling. Either way, I was surprised when he finally opened his mouth.
“I’m Fae.”
My brows rose. “I couldn’t tell.”
He tapped his rounded ears. “Hidden.”
“Wings?”
“Gone.”
“Gone?” I frowned. “That’s possible?”
He nodded. “Definitely.”
“That’s terrible. How did it happen?” He could understand what my life felt like. He’d had his magic taken from him as well.
His gaze cut to mine, and there was something I couldn’t read in it. “I chose it.”