A Spell to Die For

by Gretchen Galway

  My vision failed. Gravity ceased for a moment, and then in another, slower moment, I was floating and floating, and then it pulled my cheek against the cold, rocky driveway. Pain shot through my skull.

  Vision returned. Head on the ground, I was staring sideways at Flor’s shoes. Exposed toes, pink nail polish. A silver toe ring with a tiny ruby setting. The world seemed oddly peaceful, and then I realized I’d gone deaf.

  I found the energy to tilt my head just enough to look up. Flor’s arm was raised, hovering above my face. She was about to strike me again.

  Her voice, the only thing I could hear, was the same low command as before. “How do you think I did it?”

  Tell her, you must tell her, my own voice insisted. Tell the truth. You must tell the truth.

  I felt my jaw lock. With it, my lungs stopped pumping. Trying to keep up with the panic building in my mind, my heart began to race, then tripped, wavered uncertainly, began to slow.

  My own magic was pushing me to speak, but I couldn’t speak. I would die if I didn’t make her stop.

  Suddenly I felt Birdie’s hand on my cheek. She’d managed to break away from Flor’s hex. Sound roared back into my ears.

  “Alma,” she said softly.

  The agony eased. She was giving me just enough power to protect myself.

  But then Flor lunged forward and picked up my staff. Because the command to speak was coming from me, and I’d used the staff, it momentarily increased the pressure building in my chest.

  Her reflection spell was throwing every spark of my power back at me.

  “Let it go,” Birdie said. “I’ve got this.”

  My vision faded to a dim haze. How could she break Flor if I couldn’t? Maybe if Flor was locked onto me completely, she’d have nothing left to fight a hex from another witch. But if Birdie’s confidence was misplaced, releasing my power would make me completely vulnerable to the blast that was already causing my organs to fail.

  While I continued to hesitate, I felt Birdie paw at my neck, claw her fingers around my beaded necklace, and tear it off. Then her hands fumbled at my wrists, where I’d wrapped more of my beads, and tore those off too. She was removing the amplifiers of my power, lowering the magic blazing through me.

  My next breath came more easily. I was able to focus my gaze on Flor and watch her furious gaze land on Birdie. “How—?”

  Each beat of my heart brought my strength back to me. I rolled over, scrambled to my feet, and put an arm around Birdie to join our forces. “We have to get her to talk,” I said. “It’s not enough to fight her off.”

  “She almost killed you,” Birdie said, gasping. “Who cares if she talks?” She turned back to Flor, and I felt power rush into her.

  Of all the times for Birdie to discover her deep, personal well of magic, this could be a good one—I was very glad to be alive—but only if she could control it.

  “She has to confess,” I said. “For justice.” The word felt right in my mouth. Yes, that’s what I wanted.

  Birdie hesitated, plainly conflicted, but then she nodded and turned to Flor. “Do it,” she said. “Now.”

  I didn’t have my beads, but I had my own natural, inborn power. Linking it with Birdie’s untamed energy, I pointed at Flor. “Were you responsible for Bosko’s death?” The granite pebbles in the driveway had left a residue on my skin, enough to enhance my spell. “Answer me!”

  Flor’s eyes bugged out. Her mouth opened and closed like a baby bird. Then she broke. “Yes,” she gasped. “He’s dead because of”—she whimpered—“me. I did it. Me. I killed him.”

  “Why?” I asked. Demanding she tell me how, which would blame the genie, would only cause her to collapse the way I had.

  “The opal ring was going to… expose me as…” She snapped her teeth together, but another combined blast from me and Birdie broke them apart. “De… de… demon stained. It would’ve ruined everything.”

  The next question was for my satisfaction, not the Protectorate’s; what she’d admitted already should be enough to convict her. “Why did you take the job if you knew he might get the ring again?”

  “I’m not a demon!” she cried, still trying to fight the spell commanding her to speak. She writhed in place, her shoulders rising and falling, her hips swaying. “I thought the ring only exposed demons, like your father’s bride! I’m a human being, a witch. It’s not my fault my ancestor was possessed!”

  If I goaded her, she’d keep talking, and the more I got her to say, the more convincing her confession would be. “He would’ve fired you,” I said. “Or worse. You never would’ve gotten what you’d always wanted. Power and prestige. What you think you deserve.”

  Her writhing became more violent. “I do deserve it! I do!” Her furious glare was hard to look at. “I deserve it more than you!”

  As she spat the last word, a beam of energy shot out of her wrists and struck me in the foot. My leg immediately lost sensation, and agonizing pain shot up my spine. Next my neck locked into a spasm, and a blistering headache spread from the base of my skull over my ears to my eyes.

  Again, I lost my sight. I began to collapse.

  Birdie’s arm around my waist broke my fall, but then she released me.

  “No,” I said. “Don’t let go. You need me. You need my power.”

  But she didn’t seem to hear me. Had I even spoken aloud? The pain in my head was building, putting unbearable pressure on my eye sockets. I lifted my hands to my face and held them over my closed eyes as if that would prevent them from exploding.

  An electric storm crackled near Flor, then an explosion. What kind of power did that witch have anyway? As impaired as I was, I could feel magic throbbing in the air between us.

  Then I heard Birdie’s voice. “Stop it,” she said. “Leave Alma alone.”

  Flor screamed. The electric crackling rose in pitch, increasing painful to hear and then silent as it rose up into registers beyond human hearing.

  Silence. My headache faded away. I heard a thud, a woman crying, and my own ragged breath.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  My cheek was pressed against the driveway again. I cracked one eyelid open, afraid of bringing on more pain, but the pressure behind them had ceased. I opened them all the way and saw Flor’s body in a crumpled heap in front of me. Her arms were flung apart, her face gazing at the sky. It was similar to the posture Bosko had taken in his own death.

  Death?

  I scrambled to my feet. My body was weak, but nothing serious. The crying I’d heard was Birdie. She was squatting down, arms around her knees, rocking back and forth on her heels.

  “I killed her,” she was muttering. “I killed her. I killed her. I killed somebody. I’m a killer. I killed her…”

  I touched her shoulder soothingly before hurrying over to Flor’s body. The eyes were open. Lifeless. The bow was a sloping pile of cinders in her hair. Like my beads, her bow had focused her power.

  Just to be sure, I touched the skin beneath her ear. No pulse.

  “I killed her,” Birdie continued to moan. “I killed her. I’m a killer.”

  I hurried back to her and put my arms around her. “We both did. It’s not your fault. She had some kind of mirroring spell that made all the magic too hard to control. It reflected back on her. She’d tried to kill me, and it killed her instead.”

  “I told her to stop and used magic to make it really, really work,” Birdie said. “I put everything I had into it. It was like there was this really deep thing inside me that just popped open and blasted her.”

  “It’s not your fault,” I said. “She almost killed me. She would’ve killed you too. It was self-defense.”

  “I didn’t think I could kill her,” she said. “How could I have the power to kill her?”

  I hadn’t felt enough power coming off Birdie to have seriously hurt Flor, but she’d found it somewhere. There was enough magic centralized around the winery to disrupt the normal rules of balance, restrictions, and order. The
fae had gathered nearby, though Flor seemed to have driven them off, and the Protectorate witches had gathered to set fire to the town. The amount of energy swirling around had made a passionate duel between witches very dangerous.

  Poor Birdie. She’d worked up the courage to look at the body and was now crying again silently, covering her mouth with both hands.

  “It’s not your fault,” I repeated. “You saved us. Thank you. You saved my life.”

  I looked over at Flor, who had stiffed a genie. That debt was now paid. Had Jen Bardak intervened? Was she watching us now, quietly content with the deal’s closure?

  “She hated you,” Birdie said. “Why?”

  “I don’t think she really—” I began.

  “No, I felt it,” Birdie said. “She wanted you to hurt. It annoyed me.”

  “Me too.” Shuddering, I brushed a piece of dirt off my cheek. “We’re going to have to go to San Francisco for questioning. It’ll take a long time, maybe overnight. I guess it’s a good thing Random is with Seth.”

  Scratching her neck, she turned to look behind us. “Somebody’s coming.”

  A black SUV was coming up the drive. Behind the wheel, Darius saw the two of us and scowled. He was driving as if he’d love to run over something.

  “Let me do the talking,” I told Birdie quietly.

  She said nothing, which I appreciated.

  He parked, got out, and came over to us, his face reflecting the moment he noticed Flor lying on the ground near the arbor. He’d looked irritated before; now he looked enraged. Pointing at me, he pulled out his phone and hit a button without looking at it.

  “Talk,” he said, holding my gaze.

  “Déjà vu,” I muttered.

  “I’m in no mood for jokes,” he said. He typed something quickly into his phone, then put it away. “Your gnome friend held me captive for over an hour. Seemed to think I’d been the one to set the forest on fire.”

  “Did you?” I asked. “Following orders?”

  Ignoring me, he crouched next to Flor’s body. “What killed her?”

  “I did,” Birdie said.

  In the middle of pulling steel disks out of his pocket to place around the body—an investigation boundary spell—he stopped and slowly turned to look at Birdie. “You?”

  She nodded, starting to cry again. “I’m really sorry. I don’t know how it happened.”

  “Flor was trying to kill us,” I said. “We defended ourselves.”

  “Successfully, it looks like,” Darius said.

  “I’ve got a bit of a headache,” I replied. “Thanks for asking.”

  Darius shot me a look and walked over to Birdie. His tone softened. “Hi, Birdie. We’re going to have to take you to our office in San Francisco.”

  Birdie sniffed. “That’s what Alma said.”

  “If it was self-defense, you’ll be able to come back home fairly quickly,” he said. “If not…”

  “It was,” I said. “Don’t scare her.”

  “Why would she attack you?” he asked. “Old high school grudge?”

  “She killed Bosko and I made her confess,” I said.

  To Darius’ credit, his expression barely changed. “I see.”

  “Birdie witnessed it,” I added.

  Darius looked at Birdie again. “You might be in San Francisco for a while, then.”

  She nodded. “Will it hurt?”

  “Of course not,” I said.

  Darius looked at me, raising an eyebrow.

  “I won’t let it,” I said firmly.

  Birdie adjusted her sweater and turned toward Darius’ SUV. “As long as you leave Alma alone, I don’t mind. Is that your car?”

  Darius thrust out a hand. “Wait for Raynor. He’ll be here in a few minutes.”

  I bent over to pick up my staff.

  “Leave it,” Darius said. “We’ll need that as evidence.”

  I thought of Helen, who’d hoped to own it someday. Well, she’d have to settle for springwater. Which reminded me—I didn’t have the torc anymore to give her that either. Like Flor, I’d acquired a debt I couldn’t pay. But Helen would be more reasonable than Jen Bardak. Probably.

  “The Protectorate has no reason to bury the wellspring or close the town now,” I told Darius. “You’ve got to tell everybody that. Tell the other agents or anyone out there trying to set the fire again.”

  Darius nodded, and I wondered if this was this how the genie would grant my wish. Through the fruits of my own labor.

  Darius picked up my staff and studied it for a moment, hefting it up and down, probing its magic, tapping it with his fingers. Then he looked at me. “Your gnome won’t let fire come within miles of this town. Didn’t you know?”

  Willy? I shook my head, hoping I looked as bewildered as I felt.

  “How did you think the fire just disappeared?” he asked. “With all the smoke, too? Even if Cal Fire had flown in on helicopters and doused it with chemicals, the air would be smoky for hours at least.”

  The genie’s hold on me froze my jaw shut. I shook my head again, adding a shrug.

  “I saw him do it. He had me pinned to the ground like Gulliver, lecturing me about the crimes of my kind, how he ‘wouldn’t be tolerating it.’” Darius tapped my staff on the ground. “When the sky cleared, he danced around me to gloat.”

  If it weren’t for the genie’s power over me, I would’ve laughed. But because she must’ve wanted Willy to get credit for extinguishing the wildfire, my face was frozen in a serious, even apologetic expression.

  “I’m sorry if he hurt you,” I said. “I’ll talk to him.”

  Mollified, he shook his head and put the staff down near the body. “It’s not your fault,” he said. “He was defending himself.”

  “Just like we were,” Birdie said.

  At that moment, a caravan of black SUVs came up the drive.

  “Tell it to them,” Darius said, returning to the body to finish the boundary spell.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  We were interrogated at the Diamond Street office in San Francisco for sixteen hours. Me in one room, Birdie in another. An Emerald mage from New York supervised the questioning while Raynor looked on.

  I told them what I knew. Flor hadn’t known the opal ring might expose her demon mark until she was stuck in Silverpool with the one man who was driven to destroy anyone like her. Her history of impatient ambition was well-known among the hiring team at the Protectorate—they had years of job applications, letters, and personal entreaties for promotions and apprentice opportunities—and it was easy for everyone to believe she’d kill to protect herself. Among the lofty, powerful witches who questioned her were the same priorities. They would’ve done the same thing, although nobody could say so.

  But they couldn’t figure out how she’d killed him. Most of the hours of questioning I went through were about Flor’s powers—could she levitate? Apparate? When we’d been in school, had there been a visiting teacher who had taught her something Shadowed, illegal, foreign?

  I said no. I had no idea how she’d done it. But when I’d confronted her, she’d attacked me with powers I didn’t know she’d had and almost killed me. With Birdie’s help, we fought back, and she died. We hadn’t meant to kill her, but she’d been using reflection spells of some kind. They noticed the four tattooed arcs around my left wrist but dismissed them as youthful vanity. They didn’t realize that one of them had only appeared within the past day.

  The genie’s magic hid my secrets, made my lies effortless, and the mages’ ability to detect them, impossible. They believed me completely.

  Near dawn on Saturday, they reunited me with Birdie in the downstairs lobby, originally a living room and now a reception area. She looked tired but cheerful, and rushed over to greet me with a hug.

  “That wasn’t so bad,” she said. “I didn’t like the drink they gave me, though. It tasted like ashes, but spicy. Nasty.”

  “That’s a truth potion,” I said, giving the Flint watch
ing us a hostile glare. He wore all gray and was in charge of making visitors feel small and powerless. Until he got the word, we wouldn’t be able to leave. “How much of it did they give you?”

  “Just one glass. That was bad enough.”

  They’d given me three. “I’d kill for a chocolate milkshake right now,” I said.

  The Flint’s eyebrows went up.

  “I’d kill and kill and kill,” I said, showing him my incisors.

  “Should you be doing that?” Birdie asked. “They seem kind of jumpy around here.”

  I sighed and sat on the maroon velvet sofa, which reminded me of the genie, the hair bow she’d taken from Flor, and the recently emptied position of Protector in my beloved home town.

  “They’re done with us for now,” I said. “Somebody is going to get stuck with driving us home. They’re just arguing about who that’s going to be.”

  I was hoping for Darius, who had given Raynor and the mages his report about my interfering gnome. I was afraid they were going to overreact as they did to all nonhuman beings who had the audacity to interfere in Protectorate affairs, especially near a wellspring, but I’d been unable to offer an alternative explanation for how the fire had been extinguished.

  Percy walked into the living room and handed the Flint a piece of paper. “They’re being released to me,” he said. Then he waved a hand at us and walked to the front door. “Let’s go. It’s a long drive.”

  We jumped up and followed him outside. Next door on her stoop stood Helen, who pretended to be busy pruning the vining roses. It reminded me that although they’d given me my beaded necklace and bracelet, they still hadn’t returned my staff, and I’d have to begin complaining to Raynor about it—after I was safely home and the town was officially off the chopping block.

  Percy led us up around a corner and up a steep hill to his car, parked perpendicular to the road like the other vehicles. I got in the front seat, Birdie in the back.

  “I’m going to sleep the whole way home,” she said. “Hope you don’t mind. I’m dead on my feet.”