This was why that ring didn’t belong on any witch’s finger. Bosko hadn’t held it for a full day, and now he was dead. I didn’t know what was worse—the murderer having it or the Protectorate bosses in New York. Either way, witches like me were in danger of being exposed, our careers ended, our lives threatened.
I closed my eyes and cast my senses up again for long enough to make myself dizzy, but I couldn’t feel any magic I was familiar with.
The room wasn’t giving anything away. I needed more to go on. “I’m going to follow Flor and Percy’s trails into town on the night of the murder,” I said. “Maybe one of them is lying.”
“We’re calling it a death, not a murder,” Darius said.
I snorted.
“OK, the Protectorate is,” he said. “Let’s go in an hour. I need to talk to the guys in the hall when they finish.”
“No, stay here,” I said. “I need to do this by myself. I’m a local. People will talk to me.”
“People might be too confused, reacting to the exodus spell, to have anything useful to tell you.”
“Another reason for me to go by myself,” I said, walking to the door. “And now.”
“Don’t try to do everything on your own. Keep me in the loop.”
Opening the door, I waved my phone at him and stepped out into the hallway.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The agents cleaning up watched silently as I walked around the containers of cotton balls, bubbling liquids, and iron bars, and in a few minutes I was back out in the driveway, alone except for one young agent standing guard.
I put my hand on my beads and imagined Flor. Because we’d known each other as children, I had an existing connection to her and found her trail after a minute of concentrating. She’d walked in and out of the house many times, some quite recently, and I could feel her aura on the concrete and flagstone. The black Audi sedan near the tasting room, where the trails ran to, must’ve been hers.
Percy’s was less obvious. I was only sure it was his because of the concentrated sense of him around an old Honda hatchback. I went over to the driver’s side door, wiped the handle with a sycamore leaf I kept in my pocket, then wrapped it inside a swatch of velvet. It might help me follow his trail.
It was just past ten on a Thursday morning, so I drove to the taqueria on Main Street and parked. The town did seem busy for a weekday, with people driving and walking faster than usual. The spell was unfolding, compelling the nonmagical to pack up and leave, and even giving me a stressful, anxious sensation. A voice in the back of my mind promised how much better I would feel in another town, another county, another state. Wasn’t I tired of the flooding? The fog, the potholes, the underfunded infrastructure, the wildfires? The cost of living was so much lower in New Mexico. Arkansas. Minnesota.
Seth was from Minnesota, I reflected, staring off into space. He’d been born fae, then placed into the body of a human baby and raised as a nice Minnesota boy.
My thoughts continued to drift pleasantly. There were lots of lakes there. Lakes were nice. And loons—Silverpool didn’t have any loons, and they made such lovely sounds, haunting and hypnotic…
I put both hands at my throat and gripped my beaded necklace as if it were a handle on sanity. The exodus spell was very strong. No wonder people were leaving.
I found a hint of Flor’s trail on the sidewalk and followed it to the door of the restaurant, where it stopped, backing up her claim that she’d been there when looking for a late-night beef dinner for Bosko. The trail then led to the road, then the faded crosswalk; holding my beads, I held her image in my mind and followed the sense of her to the other side. I lost her for a few minutes and had to walk up a few blocks and then back again before I regained it outside the gas station. I walked over to the pumps and found a trace of her there, on the handle and the keypad. Closing my eyes, I felt a larger sense of her near the trash container beneath the windshield fluid and squeegee. Reluctantly I put my hand inside, following my instincts, and felt a jolt of power when I touched a crumpled tissue. I pulled it out.
It seemed like a used tissue, nothing more. It was now stained with coffee and ketchup from other items inside, but it was her… fluids… that had drawn me. It was definitely Flor’s snot. And tears. As a witch, they held some of her power, concentrated in the paper fibers as the water had evaporated. I took out another velvet bag and stuck it inside, grimacing as the ketchup wiped across my knuckles.
Holding the bag, I asked it where else Flor had been. I felt a tug behind me and tried to hold the feeling lightly as I walked slowly toward the sensation. The fog hadn’t burned off, even though it was midday, and heavier clouds had rolled in, dulling the old storefronts of downtown Silverpool into shades of gray. The trail went dim, so I closed my eyes and waited for the sensation to strike again. It took me to a Thai restaurant a block to the west, one that had closed last year. Flor seemed to have lingered at the door, touching the glass, and I could feel more frustration. Then I followed the trail to the deli, which always closed before four p.m. I could feel the panic in her throat and almost felt sorry for her. Silverpool simply didn’t have the population to support many businesses. Cypress Hardware had been an exception, and now I knew it was because an ancient genie had made it possible.
Speaking of Cypress, she even tried there. I followed her scent back to the hardware store, around to the side entrance, where a hot dog truck was parked next to the garden center gate. It would’ve been closed at midnight, of course, but she’d stood and begged for it to open, pleaded with the universe to give her just this one break. Although now it was almost lunchtime, the counter window was shut, and a guy was walking around the back, wrapping the power cord into a loop. They weren’t local and would be feeling the unavoidable urge to go park their truck somewhere else.
I lost her trail for a few minutes, so I walked back to the Thai restaurant, wondering if she’d found the pizza place up the hill. Then I looked across the street where Birdie’s building stood. She’d moved into the apartment above the store, but downstairs was the same as when she’d bought it, dirty and cluttered with an expired travel agency. A bookstore would’ve been a tough sell even without an exodus spell or burying of the wellspring. A surge of compassion rushed through me. I’d been neglecting her. I’d been rude about Thanksgiving and hadn’t yet seen her since she called me in San Francisco. I should’ve already told her about what the Protectorate was doing.
I walked across the street and rang the bell for the unit upstairs, then stood waiting, noting the absence of Flor’s trail. There weren’t any restaurants near that part of the street. I concluded Flor had done exactly what she’d said she’d done: looked for her master’s dinner and failed.
Birdie flung open the door and threw her arms around me. “Alma!” She held me close, wiggling from side to side. “I’ve been so worried!”
I hugged her in return for a few long seconds before drawing back and looking into her face, which was unusually strained. “Are you OK?” I asked.
“Of course,” she said. “You’re my best friend. How could I not be OK?”
Guilt struck me again. “Don’t say that. I bailed on you again.” On the street, cars were going too fast, honking at the stoplight, screeching their tires. Silverpool wasn’t supposed to be like this. As we continued to stand on the landing, I could feel the boundary spells she’d erected. Combined with the exodus spell, it pushed me in different directions, making me queasy. “Can we go inside?”
She reached up her hand and touched my face. “You’re worried about something. Was it the Protectorate? Your father? I’ve”—she squeezed her eyes shut, pinching her face together—“got a bit of a headache. I was trying to ignore it, but it just won’t go away.”
“Let’s go upstairs and you can—”
“No, I’m working downstairs. Let’s talk there.” She gestured to the glass door that led to the former travel agency, still filled with laminate desks and twentieth-century cabinets and
shelving, furniture to assist the needs of a different age. We walked through the dusty remains and sat down in a corner decorated with posters advertising Paris, Mexico, Hawaii. “How about some coffee? I set up the machine. I don’t think it’s old enough to kill. See?” She lifted a foam cup from an end table and gulped it down.
“Oh, Birdie, no. Don’t drink that.” I reached over and took the cup out of her hands. “You really drank something that was left here from the old travel agency?”
“It doesn’t seem to be hurting me, but I’ve only had two pots so far.” She grinned. “You’re so nice to care. I won’t drink it if you don’t want me to.”
“It’s not that it’ll hurt you,” I said. “It’s just… ancient. Doesn’t it taste bad?”
“I don’t mind. Maybe it’ll help the headache.” She rubbed her temples.
“I think that headache is you fighting the exodus spell,” I said. “That’s why I’m here. The Protectorate is driving everyone out of town. Or trying to. You need to stay in your apartment—you’ve got the boundary spells up, which is great—and just ignore it as long as you can.”
“Exodus?”
I set the cup down on a wrinkled 1998 issue of People and told her everything. When I was done, she got to her feet.
“We should go,” she said seriously. “Now. While there’s still time.”
Disappointed, I looked up at her from my chair. Didn’t she want to fight for her dream? “Please don’t panic yet. I’m going to fix things. Just stay put. You can start planning your bookstore layout. Were you still thinking about having a café—?”
“Alma, it’s not safe. Please, let’s go. You and me.” She bent over and caught my hands, squeezing my fingers in hers. “I’m tired of dealing with the Protectorate, aren’t you? Let’s get away. We don’t need them.”
I eyed her critically. The exodus spell could be clouding her judgment. Holding her hands in mine, I spun a cleansing, fresh-air spell around us to temporarily break the influence of the Protectorate magic.
Seeing the confusion in her eyes as the magic went to war on her senses, I said quickly, “Think about your bookstore. How much you want it. You just bought this building. You have the money to make it work. Remember?”
She closed her eyes, obviously in pain, and shook her head. “It’s not safe,” she said. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”
I held her more tightly. “I won’t. Nobody is going to get hurt,” I said. “The Protectorate witches are casting spells that make us feel like we need to leave, but—for right now anyway—we don’t have to.”
“There’s wildfires, there’s floods, there’s murder—”
I held her shoulders. “Birdie. Listen to me. Go up into your apartment and stay there. Your boundary spells should help you feel better. You can clean up and plan the store down here later.” I turned her and guided her to the door. From the way she was talking, the best place for her now was safely tucked away in her apartment. Or maybe…
I stopped in the doorway. “Would you like to come over to my house? You can sleep over. Random would love it. My spells are stronger than yours. You won’t feel nearly as much—”
“No!” She pulled away from me, then shook herself and laughed. “Sorry. I love your house, of course, and you’re so nice to invite me like you have done in the past. But I need to be independent. You don’t need to take care of me. In fact, I think I’m the one who needs to take care of you. Why are you out here trying to save other people when they don’t even appreciate what you do?”
I could only stare at her. Of course I had to fight for Silverpool. Didn’t she want to? Were we really that different?
As she continued to stare back at me, not backing down, I realized Birdie had never confronted me about my actions before. In fact, I couldn’t think of a time she’d confronted me about anything.
Although my first impulse was to get defensive, I stopped myself. It was good for her to push back, to challenge, to question. To stand up for herself. We were friends, right? I’d taught her some magic, but that didn’t make her my apprentice. I didn’t want to be a bully like Bosko had been.
“Thanks for your concern,” I said. “Really. I’m not just trying to help other people. I’m trying to help myself. I love this town. It’s worth fighting for.”
“Other Silverpool people can fight for it.”
Sadly, the declaration was ridiculous. I was the most powerful witch left living in town and the only one to be trained at the Protectorate. The others I knew were retired, indifferent, untrained, or self-centered. “Like who?”
“I’m sure there’s somebody,” she said. “We can leave tonight. I have a lot of money. I’ll buy us new stuff. Stuff is never as important as life. Life is everything.”
The glass door to the outdoors was the only thing blocking us from the Protectorate exodus spell, and from Birdie’s odd behavior, I realized it must be a lot stronger than I could sense myself. “You need to go upstairs,” I said firmly, turning her toward her apartment entrance. “Drink the wellspring water I gave you. Don’t be stingy. Drink it all. Then we can text each other about what to do next.”
She tried to argue, but I opened the door and pushed her through it. Her boundary spells sizzled on my knuckles, making me gasp. She struggled, but I wasn’t going to let her sacrifice herself for me. I cast a secondary boundary spell between us, blocking her, then pivoted on my heel and hurried out the door and down to the sidewalk. I flung up one last spell to stop her from following and hoped she’d forgive my pushiness once she was out of range of the Protectorate enchantment.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
In just the time it took me to walk to my Jeep a block away, three trailers and pickups loaded with belongings sped past me, heading east on the road to Riovaca. I hadn’t realized there were so many nonmagical people living in Silverpool. The enchantments to protect the wellspring had always made everyday life so difficult. How had they survived with so little reliable contact with the outside world? UPS trucks got lost, friends and family forgot the turnoff, landslides cut off the road…
But for so many people, especially in the north coast of California, getting lost was a feature, not a bug. Returning to the normal world would be a shock for them, and if the exodus spell held, they’d never be able to find their way back again.
The thought made me sad and angry. It wasn’t just the witches like me or magical creatures like Seth or even Jen who deserved to stay—it was the nonmag weirdos too.
As I stepped off the curb to get into my car, I noticed a couple sitting close together, kissing, in a familiar car a few spots down. When I belatedly recognized Percy’s old hatchback, I was embarrassed my tracking abilities had completely missed him. I’d managed to trace Flor’s steps from days ago, but Percy had been sitting right in front of me, and I hadn’t felt a hint of him.
I got into my Jeep and used my nonmag senses to watch him now. They weren’t kissing anymore. His companion, a dark-haired woman in large, stylish glasses, was upset with him—that was clear from her expression and his. I wondered if she was emotional, like Birdie, because of the exodus spell, which was a grating, irritating feeling that never went away. She pulled away from him and got out of the car, slammed the door behind her, and strode down the sidewalk in front of me.
“Yuki!” Percy shouted out his window but didn’t get out of the car.
Yuki waved, annoyed, and went into the taqueria. Pulling the shade down and using a subtle spell to hide my face, I waited to see if Percy followed. No. After a minute, he backed out into the street and drove away, back toward the winery.
I waited until he was out of sight before going after her. Percy had a girlfriend. Had she been at the moon party? He was an expert at mind spells, but maybe she wasn’t. If he’d lied, I might be able to unravel it from her brain instead of his.
The spell I’d just used on Birdie had drained my power, and I needed a moment to recover. I reached under my seat and found a pouch I’d put
there with several other items a month ago—my emergency stash. The bag held dried needles from a bristlecone pine tree in the Inyo National Forest—at least that’s what Helen had assured me when I’d paid her for them. I put my nose in the bag and inhaled slowly and deeply. Its tingly, citrusy scent filled my head with energy, and the strength of its ancient lifespan fed my cells.
When I jumped out of the car and strode into the taqueria after Percy’s companion, I was completely refreshed—at least for a few minutes.
“Yuki!” I exclaimed. “Is that you? I can’t believe it! What are you doing way up here?”
The woman turned to me, confused, and I struck her with a borderline Shadow spell often used by con artists, one that said I was safe and familiar, like family. It was usually too weak to be used on trained witches, but she’d just been in an argument with her boyfriend and was still visibly upset, crying and blinking away tears. Staying an unthreatening distance away, I used another spell to make myself look shorter, my voice higher and softer. “Are you OK? I saw Percy. Were you fighting?”
Looking at me with hope, convincing herself she knew me, she nodded. “He— Bosko— Are you here because of what happened to him?”
I couldn’t lie—that would break my innocence spell—so I approached and whispered, as if sharing a secret, “New York thinks a demon did it.” My hope was that she was in the Protectorate, like Percy, and would assume I was a colleague. We were standing in the middle of the restaurant, which had a few agents in a corner having a lunch break but was otherwise empty. The fortysomething woman behind the counter was staring at us, waiting for us to approach and order. She had to be a witch herself to be resisting the exodus spell, but I’d never talked to her. Many Silverpool residents, for all kinds of reasons, kept to themselves.
“I’m not hungry,” Yuki said absently, looking at the menu board above the counter. “I just wanted to get away from him.”
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