Nava Katz Box Set 2

by Deborah Wilde

  “Don’t mock Rabbi A.”

  “I’ve known the man for over forty years. I’ll mock all I want.”

  “He must be here for Mandelbaum’s big meeting.”

  “Mandelbaum.” Esther examined the entertainment cabinet. “He’s been harassing Raquel.”

  “Raquel held her own. But yeah, he’s on the warpath for witches.”

  “He’s on the warpath to find one he can use. He doesn’t give a damn about us other than how we can serve him.”

  “If Sienna targeted the Brotherhood because of what happened to Tessa, she’ll go ballistic if he hurts any innocent witches,” I said.

  “I hope it doesn’t come to that.”

  We had no luck in the living room, so we moved into the kitchen, methodically searching every drawer and cabinet.

  I rummaged through the junk drawer. There were old chopstick packages, a cloth measuring tape, a tiny battery-operated fan, and a rolling pin.

  “As soon as Lilith’s out, I’m going to take everyone out for a fancy dinner. All the witches, and Rabbi A, and Ari, and Rohan, and Baruch, and Kane and the L.A. Rasha. Oh, and Maya and Dev.”

  Esther opened a drawer revealing pots and pans inside. “How are you going to pay for it all?”

  “Rohan obviously. We’re celebrating his girlfriend being alive.”

  “He’s a lucky man,” she said wryly.

  “Right?” I opened the freezer. There was a freezer-burned bag of corn and a cloudy tray of ice. “This is pointless.”

  We hit the jackpot in the bedroom.

  “It’s like conspiracy central.” I whistled at the grainy photos of an Area 51-esque compound in the desert that were tacked to the walls. All the angles were covered: from aerial views to shots from every side taken using a telephoto lens.

  A huge map of the California desert was also pinned up, with sections crossed out in marker. It was exactly what Bastijn had been doing to find Sienna and would have been funny if it wasn’t a hunt for a powerful witch mirroring a hunt for a secret compound.

  “Fuck.” Esther picked up a crescent moon pendant from the dresser.

  I scurried over because she didn’t drop F-bombs.

  “Is that the necklace Tessa was wearing in the photo I have of her and Ferdinand?” I sniffed the air. “I smell bitter lemon.”

  She pressed down on one of the points of the pendant and it popped open, revealing a narrow hidden compartment filled with a pale yellow powder. The smell of bitter lemon intensified.

  “Erocine powder,” she said. “Its organic base is a mild toxin, but according to lore, witches would combine it with dark magic and let it sit, growing in potency until it matured to full power on the summer solstice. It would have been bright yellow at that point and instantly fatal.”

  “Does it lose its strength? Because it’s almost white again.”

  Esther closed up the pendant. “Yes. Erocine powder was banned by our community about a hundred years ago. Tessa may have been planning to use it on Ferdinand.”

  “Or Mandelbaum. It would make sense. She hated Rasha and here was the leader. She could have gone along with his plans as a way of getting close enough to take him out. Pity.”

  “Condoning murder now, are you?” she said.

  “Meet the man and then get back to me.” I photographed the compound photos.

  “Finish up and we’ll head to Raquel’s. I’ll meet you in the living room.”

  “On it.” I sent the photos to Ari, with a short note explaining where I’d found them and that we needed to know where and what this place was.

  “Where are my damn glasses?” I heard Esther say.

  Chuckling, I headed down the hallway after her and stepped into the living room doorway. “On your…”

  Esther pressed one hand to the bloody gaping gash across her throat, blood spilling through her fingers like silk. She reached out for me with the other, her fingertips grazing mine before she crumpled to the ground next to her purse.

  “…head.”

  I shook my head, not computing. Not Esther and not Oskar, standing in the open front doorway.

  Esther gave a gasping wheeze like a slow pressure cooker decompressing. Her eyelids fluttered and she fell still.

  “Stop it.” I fell to my knees, shaking her.

  Oskar flung green magic at me. It passed over my head to hit the wall, eating through the plaster.

  I blasted him into the kitchen, clamping my left hand against Esther’s throat and attempting to use my healing magic to fix her.

  To get her to breathe.

  Blood coated my hands, viscous as molasses. Its hot sickly stench turned my stomach. I sealed her flaps of skin together and pressed my lips to hers to give her mouth-to-mouth.

  Breathe.

  She refused to obey. I fixed the image of Lilith’s box in my mind and swiped inside the hairline fracture to grab a metaphoric fingerful of Lilith’s magic straight from the source. Like stealing batter from a magic cookie bowl.

  I couldn’t get into the box. I could only access those wisps that were doing fuck-all.

  Breathe.

  Oskar jumped me, knocking me sideways. He grabbed my head and slammed it onto the ground, face first.

  My vision doubled and a tinny ringing sound overpowered everything else. His acid magic sizzled through my scalp, hot rivers of lava burning their way into the side of my head. My hair fell to the ground in charred clumps.

  I’d barely pushed myself up before he yanked my head back again.

  My electric magic exploded over my skin, crackling away like a bonfire.

  “Shut it down.” Still standing behind me, he clamped my jaw, twisting my face up to his. “Or I’ll melt that pretty face of yours before I kill you.” His flat, expressionless eyes belied any promise of compassion.

  I snapped his hold, twisting out from under him to slam my palm against his heart that beat strong and steady.

  He didn’t transform before my eyes to a flickering life force. No, Oskar remained flesh and blood, reminding me how human he was. Should I memory wipe him? Or should I cross that one remaining line and purposefully take a man’s life?

  Keep my last vestige of humanity or enact the only justice Esther would ever see?

  I was breathless, caught between these two versions of myself, swept away by loss and hurtling toward the unavoidable. The inescapable.

  I flooded him with my magic. This was worth becoming a monster for.

  Oskar twitched and danced; his flesh bubbling from a light pink sunburn to black ash.

  I poured more power into him, blinking against the electric magic pouring out of me, and then against the split-second image of Sienna standing there poker-faced.

  His life drained from his body. I drank it in like an elixir until my puppet on a string thrashed one last time and his heartbeat stopped.

  I hadn’t even needed any of Lilith’s magic to do it.

  Outside, a car blasted The Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations.” Light glinted off the photographs and dust motes danced through the air, beautiful, fat, silvery dots lazily bobbing in a sunbeam like it was an ocean.

  I retrieved Esther’s purse from under Oskar’s body. Something jangled inside. “If those are her glasses, you’re in so much trouble,” I sang.

  I fished around in the contents, finding the oval, clay vessel to contain Lilith.

  “Silly me. Your glasses are still on your head.” I smiled at Esther.

  She smiled back, but not with her mouth, with the second set of smeared red lips Oskar had given her across her throat. The ones made deeper red and black by the acid burn that had torn her flesh apart and still hissed, dully.

  I grabbed a raggedy tea towel from the kitchen and tied it around her neck like a scarf.

  “Very jaunty.” I kissed her forehead. Closed her eyes.

  Once upon a time, I’d killed my first demon and called my brother to come save me. I knew better now. A phone call that could fix everything was a lie because there
were certain things that could never be saved.

  Esther’s life.

  My innocence.

  Funny, what you didn’t realize you had until it was gone.

  I looked back at the mess, knowing it was my duty to clean up, that this was part of my job and that I ought to be able to do it alone. Then I shucked my burner phone out of my pocket and punched in Ro’s contact with shaky fingers.

  “Clean up on aisle nine,” I said and began to laugh hysterically.

  24

  “You’re not leaving that note.” Rohan tossed a corner of the triple-layered, blue plastic tarp to Ari which they unrolled on the living room floor.

  “That’s incredibly short-sighted of you,” I said.

  He and my brother dragged Oskar’s body on to it. “Are you seriously criticizing my decision-making skills in front of the man you just massive coronary’d to death?”

  “Don’t you dare define me by the one time I killed someone.”

  The guys tied off the corners so Oskar lay in a little tarp packet like fish in aluminum foil.

  “One murder, one assist,” Ari said. “As you didn’t pull the trigger on Ilya.” He kicked the dead man in the gut. “And you had no choice with this one.”

  “Oh, I had a choice,” I said. “I could have memory wiped him and he’d never have remembered I was here.”

  “He still would have tried to kill you,” my brother pointed out.

  “Regardless. I wanted him dead. Still believe I’m not a monster?” I said to Rohan.

  He sliced the Rasha’s head off with a savage blow. “Still believe you are?”

  “Nice thought, Snowflake, but catch-up decapitation doesn’t count. Your hands are clean.”

  Could you regret something and still not want to change it?

  I ran to the bathroom and threw up, heaving until there was nothing left inside me but the dark taint on my soul. I slammed on the tap, rinsed out my mouth, then squeezed half the bottle of aloe vera soap over my hands, furiously scrubbing my skin like I could wash away the symbolic blood as easily as the real stuff. Out, out, damn spot.

  I scrubbed until my skin was red and raw and would have kept scrubbing except Rohan yanked my hands away, gently encasing them in a towel.

  “Stop.”

  I pulled my hands away from the compassion in his touch, avoided the sympathy in his eyes.

  Did it count as regret if, despite feeling like I’d lost an essential part of myself, I’d kill Oskar all over again if faced with the same choice? Would I have killed him if it meant Esther would survive?

  I threw the towel on the vanity and marched back to the living room, locking down all my horror and disgust. Next Thursday. I’d collapse under the weight of what I’d done then. Right now, I had a war to win.

  “Esther’s death is not going to be in vain.”

  “I give up,” Rohan muttered, right on my heels.

  Kane stepped inside the tarp with the body. He’d arrived, glared at me, then wrapped an arm around my shoulder, and stayed by my side. “This entire system has broken down into utter fuckery.”

  “I wasn’t the one to unleash the slaughter.” I placed the note asking Sienna to contact me at the phone number I’d left on the dining room table. “That’s on Mandelbaum. And Sienna. I just embraced the bloodletting.”

  Kane’s hands turned iridescent purple. Grimacing, he rubbed them over Oskar’s naked chest. “I’m talking about the fact that I’ve been relegated to some kind of marinade. You’re lucky I’m a good person, babyslay.”

  Ari froze. “What?”

  He didn’t speak with snark or sarcasm, just disbelief. Like Ari had grown up constantly being told by someone that the world was flat, and no matter how many times he patiently tried to prove otherwise because it was an important basic concept, it had been to no avail. But now that flat earther had done a 180 and Ari couldn’t wrap his head around the fact that maybe he wouldn’t have to fight this battle anymore.

  “Babyslay. It’s been my nickname for your sister for literally months now, catch up.”

  “No,” Ari said slowly, “the other thing.”

  “I’m a good person,” Kane repeated. “Obviously. No one but a good person would melt an entire unsexy evil henchman for a friend.”

  Rohan gathered up Oskar’s clothing and stuffed it into a trash bag. “You’re not leaving your phone number for Sienna. Stay away from her.”

  I watched my brother for a moment longer, but he shook his head at me and moved over to the window. “I thought you gave up.” I said.

  “I gave up trying to get you over your warped self-image,” Rohan said. “I’m not half-done on this.”

  I frowned at the smear of blood I’d left on the edge of the note. “It’s not ideal, but I have to tell her about Esther.”

  Or had I really seen her for a second and she already knew?

  “She doesn’t deserve that consideration,” Rohan said.

  Kane rolled the body over. “Could his ass be any hairier? This is not how I like my men.”

  “But dead and headless is okay?” Ari asked.

  “If you’re going to be all logical about it.” Kane massaged his poison onto the body with sulky vigor.

  “Think practically, then,” I said. “Sienna might know where the compound is. If it’s faster to ask her than have us track it down, we have to try.” I left out that I had a magic back-up plan in case the note didn’t work.

  “And you think that after you tell her the Brotherhood killed her friend that she’ll be in a sharing mood?” Rohan tied the bag of stained clothes closed.

  “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” I crossed my fingers that having killed Esther’s assassin would buy me some goodwill.

  “Done.” Kane stood up, cracked his neck, and stepped out of the tarp. His poisons were already kicking in, eating away at the Rasha’s flesh.

  “How long for the bones to dissolve?” Ari zipped up the protective chemical suit he’d brought and slid on the gloves.

  “About a day?” Kane said.

  “That works.” Ari sealed the tarp with a ton of duct tape before slinging the body over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry.

  “Careful.” I pointed to a spot where Kane’s poison had eaten through.

  “Back in a sec.” Ari jumped into the shadows and entered the EC, where he was going to leave the body. We didn’t know if anyone else had the ability to access the shadows like Ari did, but in case someone did, we didn’t want proof of this crime to exist, hence the poisonous finishing touch.

  Nothing like body disposal to show you who your true friends were.

  Kane went into the bathroom to scrub the poison off.

  I moved the area rug back into place. “Crime scene cleaned. I’ll grab Esther and we can get out of here.”

  I entered the kitchen and crouched down beside the body bag Rohan had put her in. I reached for her shoulders, but pulling her to her feet when she couldn’t stand on her own wasn’t going to work. I attempted to scoop her up, but that was weird, too. Maybe the answer was to sling her over my shoulder.

  “Do you want me to take her?” Rohan said.

  I love you for trying to spare me.

  “She was my friend. I’ll carry her.” I stared down at the black body bag. “It looks like a garment bag, doesn’t it?”

  “Not really.”

  Esther’s unseeing eyes.

  “Hangers are vaguely people-shaped, so I’m right. I could unzip it and find a beautiful ball gown.”

  Her throat, eaten away by magic.

  I gripped the counter.

  “Nava?” Rohan clasped my shoulders.

  “I can’t…” I clawed at the neckline of my tattered and acid-burned shirt, hyperventilating.

  “Sweetheart, you’re in shock. You can breathe. You’re not a monster. You saved yourself and you’ve suffered a huge trauma with Esther. Watch and breathe with me.” Rohan planted himself in front of me, taking exaggerated deep breaths. “Your
body knows what to do.”

  Yeah, it did, but it wasn’t in control. I tried to tell Rohan, but the world and my oxygen supply fell away and all was black.

  I came around at the tug of my pendant being pulled off.

  “You’ve got the fucking Bullseye. Use it!” Rohan held me in his arms, the only part of him not outlined in sharp, deadly blades.

  “Wait.” Raquel retrieved the vessel from Esther’s purse. “The others will be here within the half hour. I need them all.”

  She wasn’t blinged out and dressed to kill. She wore a denim mini, with a measuring tape slung around her neck and a handful of pins stuck haphazardly to the front of her green cap-sleeve shirt that brought out the red in her puffy eyes.

  She wiped her eyes with an already soaked tissue, then stared at it, like she had no idea why it was in her hand.

  “No Bullseye,” I croaked out. I pushed against Ro’s chest to make him put me down and when he ignored me, I wriggled onto my feet.

  “You can’t even stand. Stop fighting.” Rohan retracted his blades, slid his arm around my waist and held me close. My wobbly legs had no issue with that.

  I snatched the pendant back. “You’re not using the Bullseye.”

  Rohan and Raquel gave me identical “yes, we are,” scowls.

  I needed to buy myself a couple of minutes to formulate my plea deal. I had one shot to convince these judges. “Where am I?”

  Bolts of fabric from rich hand-dyed silks to the palest laces leaned up against walls, while one wall was essentially a giant corkboard, filled with sketches. A red dressmaker’s dummy stood in one corner, with dials to adjust the bust, waist and hips. The long table against the wall underneath the cabinets was exploding with fashion magazines and spools of thread in every color.

  “In my studio.” Raquel lay a cool hand on my forehead. “You’re not blue anymore. That’s a step up from how you were half an hour ago. And you’ll be in perfectly good health, when we use the Bullseye on you.”

  I stroked a half-stitched corset in black satin, draped over the sofa next to me. “You’re a lingerie designer? Don’t you run a coven?”