Dead Witch on a Bridge

by Gretchen Galway

  With the lessons on detection had come other lessons. Reluctantly I used one now.

  Against his will, Seth left the safety of the sycamore and walked stiffly over to me. His face bore a tight smile, but I knew he was angry.

  “Sorry,” I whispered when he reached me beside the garage. “It’s an emergency. I need to know—is Random inside the house?”

  “Who?”

  “The dog. My dog. Have you seen him?”

  “You put me under a Compulsion to ask about an animal?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  He glared. “I suppose you just walked through the fairy rebellion on the way into town?”

  “I couldn’t drive. The bridge was on fire.”

  “But that didn’t stop you,” Seth said.

  “I’m worried about my dog.”

  Seth rubbed his face. “I saw him set the fire on the bridge.”

  “My dog?”

  Seth pointed at the house. “Launt.”

  “Where is he now?” All the forces were coming together. I was beginning to understand why.

  “On the doorstep. Waiting for his master.” He turned to me. “I’ve got to talk to him again.”

  His master. Confirming my suspicion. What witch wouldn’t care about sparking a fae war? Who might even find it interesting?

  “I don’t want Launt. I’m here for what’s inside the house.” Not only Random but Birdie was stuck inside with Phoebe, who wouldn’t hesitate to use power, however hurtful, to get what she wanted. “You take care of your brother, and I’ll deal with my kind.”

  The sound of a dog’s frantic barking came from the house. I began to rush forward, but Seth stopped me with a hand on my arm.

  “Not yet,” he said.

  Shaking him off, I reached for my necklace as I moved toward the front door.

  “Alma, please,” he said, getting in front of me. “I need to talk to him first. You might hurt him.”

  That didn’t sound too bad.

  Seeming to read my thoughts, he added, “And therefore me.”

  I liked him more than I wanted to admit, but I couldn’t leave Birdie and Random in danger. “You have teleportation powers of some kind?”

  He frowned, then nodded warily.

  “Get them out of there,” I said. “Birdie and the dog. Then we can deal with the others.”

  “It’s not that easy.”

  I pushed past him to move to the door.

  “All right! All right! Give me a minute!” He took a deep breath. And vanished.

  Five loud thumps of my heartbeat later, he appeared with a jet-black dog in his arms. Random appeared unharmed, cheerful as ever. He wriggled to the ground and began sniffing. After circling in place for a moment, he squatted to relieve himself.

  “I can’t get Birdie,” Seth said. “There’s too much power in there directed at her. And humans are more complicated.”

  When Random was done with his business, I knelt down and felt him for any bumps, lumps, possible incisions, finding nothing. My magic had been unable to detect anything sinister about him before, but I tried again, this time looking for foreign objects, silver, iron, concentrations of power, anything painful. To my relief and frustration, I found nothing.

  “Is there anything inside this dog?” I demanded of Seth. “Metal of any kind, hidden with magic?”

  Seth frowned, looked at Random for a long moment, and shook his head. “No. Nothing.”

  I let out my breath. If the torc wasn’t inside him, then it had to be…

  “Help! Somebody help!” Birdie cried, rushing out the front door.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Not seeing Launt, Birdie ran right past him, down the steps to the sidewalk, waving her arms and continuing to yell for help.

  She reached the driveway, perhaps headed for the Sauters’ house, when she saw me and Seth standing there in the shadows. Her mouth formed a grateful O and then—

  A rain barrel flew through the air and struck her from behind.

  It hit her left shoulder, knocking her to the ground. With a pained cry, she rolled over to see who had thrown it at her. But she wouldn’t be able to see Launt the way I could. She must’ve felt like her life had become an incomprehensible nightmare.

  I rushed forward, hands raised, already drawing from the well of angry power I’d refused to use on Seth those pivotal years ago. The monster had hurt Birdie, who deserved better than she’d gotten from life, from her father, from me.

  But Seth was ahead of me, moving with supernatural speed, and the next thing I saw was Launt flying into the air, spinning like a maple seedpod, the human slippers he’d been wearing knocked off his fairy feet.

  “Hear me, Launt,” Seth declared, standing over the tall fairy’s prone figure. And then he said something in a language I didn’t understand, something both cheerful and horrible, like carnival music in a horror movie.

  Any moment, Phoebe could appear and make things worse. Why was she staying inside?

  I continued running to Birdie, who hadn’t yet risen from the ground. Before I could reach Birdie, a fountain of blue, smoky liquid sprayed from the barrel. No! Another potion, another poisoned liquid.

  Always the liquids.

  It scorched the grass around it, setting one of Launt’s fallen shoes on fire, and then—

  Birdie screamed. I grabbed her under the arms, cringing at the heat, and dragged her away from the center of power.

  No fairy could have power like that. Not without help.

  I huddled with her on the driveway near Phoebe’s car. Her eyes were wide with terror, no awareness behind them. Her hair was singed on one side, her skin dusty. I could feel the Shadow snaking through her pores into her blood, racing for her heart. I tore off my necklace, pushed it under her T-shirt, and held the beads in a fist over her chest. A spell a teacher had taught me years ago came to my lips, ancient magic that needed to be spoken, and I repeated it over and over as I begged fate not to punish my neighbor for my slowness.

  Aya, baya, ayu, bayu, I whispered.

  I should’ve anticipated the threat to Birdie’s life. As soon as the will had become public, her life had been in danger. I’d thought her nonmag ignorance would protect her, but Tristan’s daughter would always be a threat to the witch who’d murdered him. A witch’s blood would seek justice.

  Her rain barrel. She’d been proud of collecting last winter’s rain in it for her small container garden where, inspired by Margaret next door, she’d grown a few vegetables. One way or another, sooner or later, she would have ingested whatever was inside. When had it been contaminated with potion? If it had been days ago, it might be too late for her.

  A glimmer of light grew stronger around Birdie’s heart and then spread to her lungs, her stomach, her abdomen. The latent power inside her was joining mine, fighting the threat. I spoke the words again, pressing harder on the beads, but the progress was slow; if I moved my hand, she wouldn’t be strong enough to fight it.

  “Birdie, you’re doing great,” I said. “You’re stronger than you know. Keep fighting. Hold on.”

  Random appeared from the shadows and began licking the soot and singed hair off Birdie’s face.

  Meanwhile, Seth was standing between us and Launt, offering a hand to the prone fairy. “I have a deal for you. But you’ve got to stop hurting people.”

  A bicycle appeared out of nowhere and came hurtling at Birdie and me. In the split second before I flung up a spell to push it aside, I noticed the front tire’s rim was inverted, its spokes jutting out to pierce flesh.

  Seth shouted and knocked Launt across the yard.

  I turned my attention back to Birdie, now trembling violently. During my momentary distraction, the poison inside her had regained its hold and was growing again. It would take more than me to free her from it. The beads were helping, but her own efforts were getting weaker, not stronger, with each moment. She had to find her own latent abilities, wherever they were, however weak they might be, to fight of
f the infection.

  “You’ve got power, Birdie,” I said. “You can feel it. Find that weird little thing inside you and grab on to it. Grab it!”

  Her eyes came into focus for a moment. “Weird.”

  I grabbed her hand and set it over the beads on her chest. “Do you feel that? It amplifies your power. Pull on it. Wrap it into a ball. Pretend you’re making bread. You want it to grow. You’re the boss.”

  “I’m cold,” Birdie said.

  I put my arms around her and cast a warming spell. “How’s that?”

  She closed her eyes, but after a moment she said, “Nice trick.”

  My own body began to shake. The warming spell drained all the heat from my own body. If I kept it up for too long, I would get hypothermic. Poor Random seemed to sense the danger, because he turned his head to me and began licking my face instead of Birdie’s.

  “Thanks.” Birdie’s voice was stronger. The poison inside her was wavering, drawing back.

  “You’re doing it,” I said. “You’re claiming your power.”

  “Cool,” she whispered, smiling.

  Across the yard, Seth was trying again with Launt. “Come back with me to Minnesota. Your human parents have left us a house. Land. There’s a lake. You can regain what you lost.”

  Launt spat at him. “I go nowhere with you.”

  “I can show you how to live as you were meant to live. You can have my life.”

  This time Launt laughed. “I take it now!”

  “Kill me now, and you’ll die as you are,” Seth said.

  “Kill you, and you die.”

  “There’s a wellspring there too,” Seth said. “You can see the ones who raised you—”

  A propane canister flew at Seth’s head, and he disappeared for a moment. He reappeared several feet to the left, holding something round and shiny in his hands. A crown?

  “With this, both human and fae will respect you. You’ll be welcomed. Powerful.”

  The object in Seth’s hand was a large, open ring of gold. It looked like a headband or a tiara and glowed with its own warm light.

  The torc.

  That lying, Shadow bastard, I thought.

  “You can find a wife, human or fae, and enjoy a long life,” Seth said. “Longer than most humans. I’ll give you the land of your ancestors and never return.”

  “Lies,” Launt said.

  “No,” Seth said. “I owe you. The debt is too great for me to bear.” He held out the torc, showing how the light caught it, hovered near it, called more light to it.

  All right, this time I was going to kill him.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  “No land, no lakes,” Launt said. “No humans.”

  A leaf blower spun through the air and struck Seth in the back of the head. He cried out and dropped the torc.

  Birdie was too weak for me to leave her, even for a moment. I had to hold her and watch as Seth stumbled forward, picked up the torc, and tucked it into a pocket.

  “You’re already dying,” Seth said. “The fairy form can’t hold the human spirit forever. Your lease is about up.”

  “Lies, lies, lies.” Launt inhaled as if drawing in power.

  This time Seth stopped him by blowing a kiss that knocked Launt onto his back. “Let me help you, brother.”

  But I could tell Seth was losing hope. He spoke quietly, almost to himself.

  Launt rolled onto one side and pointed at Phoebe’s BMW. As the hood ripped free, I grabbed Birdie’s arms and dragged her away, drawing on the beads in her hand to give me more strength, but not so much that it left her vulnerable again to the poison in her blood.

  The hood shaved past Birdie’s head, barely missing it, and clattered to the driveway. Eyes widening, she looked at me in terror, losing her hold on the beads. The grip she had over her own magic broke.

  “Hold on, Birdie, hold on.” I fumbled around her body and the ground for the beads, needing them as much for myself as for her, but I couldn’t find them.

  I reached down into my default self, the core I was born with, the small well that held magic like a cup held water. My Witchwell. It was weak, weaker than usual because I was injured and without my beads to focus.

  What was the fairy doing to me?

  No, not the fairy. It was the poison inside Birdie. Whatever it was had contaminated me as well, seeping into my own flesh, searching for another victim.

  Panic rose in my gut. If I fell, who would help Birdie? I had to fight. The sensation was similar to the pain I’d felt when I’d broken the Protectorate silence spell, the pain Jasper’s recovery potion had been so quick to dissipate.

  The car began to shake and give off heat. I thought of the fire on the bridge, the burning machinery, and staggered to my feet. I had to get Birdie away from her house, but she began to shake as well, arms and legs going stiff as she had some kind of seizure.

  “Seth! Dammit! Do something!” I cried. “Help her or I will put a silver stake through your eyes!”

  Flames flicked out from under the hood. Birdie and I were too close. I couldn’t leave her; I couldn’t move her. Random began to whine and nip at my elbows to pull me away from danger.

  Just as I heard the beginning of the explosion, I gave up on Seth and wrapped Birdie and Random in a protective sphere of bright, soft energy, heavier than air, hotter than fire, stronger than metal. It drew from my heart like a straw sips the last dregs of liquid from the bottom of a glass. I gave it the last drops of power from my personal well. I lost my sight, then my hearing. I forgot my name.

  And then I snapped awake. I was slumped on the ground, Birdie and Random in my arms, with the burning wreck of Phoebe’s car just outside the protective globe of my spell.

  Something was feeding me energy I didn’t have, enough for me to get to my feet and drag Birdie to safety, never releasing the shimmering sphere that protected us. I set her in the soft green grass of the Sauters’ yard and told Random to sit there with her. Both were awake, watching me with clear eyes. Whatever I’d created had cast out the poison as well.

  Movement in the shadows of Madge Sauter’s tomato planter caught my eye. A familiar red coat. A pale hand holding a pipe.

  And then he was gone.

  The strength of my magic seemed effortless now, but I didn’t trust it. I’d been far too trusting for far too long. I dissolved the sphere and turned to face Launt and Seth with renewed vigor.

  I found them both on the ground, arms wrapped around each other like lovers. Seth’s eyes were open, and his gaze turned wearily to mine. Coughing, he pulled away from Launt and sat up, not quite upright. His skin was ashen, hollow, a sheen of sweat on him.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, coughing again. “About the torc. Trying to protect you.”

  Apparently he was going to continue lying to me. “You were going to give it to your—” I looked at Launt, saw the stillness, the impossible angle of his neck, the glow on his skin. “He’s dead.”

  Seth jerked his head once in a rough nod.

  “But—what happens to you now?”

  He reached into his pocket and took out the torc. It glowed faintly. “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “Put it in a safe place, witch, or somebody might try to hurt you again.” With shaking hands, he held it out to me.

  “Ethan, fetch!”

  I spun around at the sound of my father’s voice. Malcolm was in the driveway, pointing at Random, my dog—his dog—who shifted into a small but glorious dragon and took flight. The black fur was now a rainbow of scales, shining and iridescent, and his canine jaws stretched open not with a long, pink tongue but with a cloud of fire.

  As his master had commanded him, the dragon flew directly at Seth.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  “No!” I lifted my hands to strike, but I was unwilling to hurt my dog, even now.

  Seth released the torc and clapped his hands together like he had at the river. Ethan—Random—hit the ground before the torc even reached Seth’s lap.

 
; Seth fell to one side, motionless, perhaps dead. He’d killed his twin, the body that was his true form—did that mean he was dead too? I felt for a pulse, but he was cold, so cold.

  I spun around and ran toward the dragon’s quivering figure, but Malcolm got there first, lifted the shiny body in his arms, and disappeared in a blast of white light.

  My talented father had teleported away with Random, who was Ethan, who deserved a more caring guardian—just as I had.

  Shaken, I returned to Seth and knelt down to search for his pulse again. This time I felt it, slow but steady. His skin seemed a little warmer. Maybe Launt’s death wouldn’t guarantee his own. Unbidden relief washed over me.

  But then I was reminded of Random in my father’s arms and of Seth hiding the torc, and I was furious again. So many selfish people, human and fae, taking and killing and lying and hurting.

  Seth’s eyes opened. “You let me live.”

  “Of course I did,” I said. “Kicked out of the Protectorate for being weak, remember?”

  He took a deep breath, nodded. “Thank you.” He rolled to one side and pushed himself up onto his feet. “I’m getting tired of saying that.”

  “I’m tired of hearing it.”

  He brushed the dirt off his pants with unsteady hands. “Don’t be mad at the dog. It’s not his fault.”

  “I know that. More than anyone, I know that.” My father must’ve been thrilled to find a minion who couldn’t talk or complain. I’d always annoyed him, saying no, being miserable, asking for friends, school, a permanent home.

  “I’m sorry I hurt him,” Seth said. “It was reflex. Self-defense.”

  “Was that why you took the torc out of my house where my father hid it?”

  He nodded, which seemed to make him dizzy. When he recovered, he took another deep breath and said, “I was trying to protect you.”