Null Witch: Secondhand Magic #1

by Lori Drake

  The sandwich went into the bathroom with me, because it had been a long day, the heat still wasn’t working, and I wanted nothing quite so much as a long, hot bath. My bathtub wasn’t anything fancy, but it was big enough that I could settle down into the water and be mostly covered. Being able to do that was a luxury I never took for granted; I learned how to numb myself with food at a young age. I’d been a chunky kid growing up—like my slim, gifted siblings needed anything else to tease me about. But during nursing school, I buckled down and lost the extra weight. I wish I could say I was one of those people who didn’t have to work at maintaining a healthy weight. If I wasn’t careful, the pounds would start creeping on again. But I watched what I ate most of the time and exercised, even though I’d never reached the point where I actually enjoyed it.

  Once I finished my sandwich and was down to simply soaking among the bubbles, I reached for my phone and called Matt, leaving the phone on speaker on the edge of the tub.

  “So, what was that all about?” he asked as soon as he picked up. Not even a hello. I’d called him on the way home to let him know I was safe, but he was expecting a bit more detail. So I filled him in on what happened with Jane Doe (aka Victoria Young) and the events of the evening right up to and including my little brother’s presence in Santa Fe and the coven’s suspicions about him being involved in the incidents that left two of their number burned out.

  Matt is the only person I’ve ever told the full truth about my family, though it ceased to be top secret when witches came out of the broom closet five years ago. My reluctance to share it was more instinct and self-defense than anything. I just wanted to be normal. That’s why I moved across the country to begin with, to live a normal life without all the baggage that came with being a Davenport, a woman without magic from a long line of witches with more than their share. Tonight was just an unpleasant reminder that I’d probably never be truly free of it.

  “Maybe I should change my name,” I said with a sigh, playing with a little pile of bubbles. I’d mound them up and then sweep them under the water, watching them float to the surface again.

  “You can’t hide forever. Things have a way of creeping up on you, regardless.” He was right. Tonight was certainly evidence of that.

  “Speaking of hiding, I need tech support.” Matt was a tech guru in addition to a culinary genius, one of those cute brainy guys that seemed to know everything about anything electronic. He worked in IT, so that was a good trait.

  “Oh, I can’t wait to hear this. Did you use your cd tray as a coffee holder?”

  “Ha. Ha. 1995 called. It wants its joke back.” I’ve never done that, I swear. My laptop doesn’t even have a cd tray. “But seriously, I need to know how to turn off caller ID on my phone, so I can make one of those calls that comes up as ‘unknown number’ on the other end.”

  “Oh, that’s easy. Dial star sixty-seven before you dial the number. Why? Gonna call Barry and heavy breathe at him?”

  I sat up suddenly, nearly sloshing water over the edge of the tub where my phone was sitting. “Oh, shit! He texted me today, and I was going to text him back, but then I was derailed by angry witches.”

  Matt laughed, and we chatted a few more minutes about inconsequential things before hanging up so I could make my next call.

  I didn’t have the hotline number for Jane Doe handy, so I looked up the non-emergency line for the police department and dialed it. Two rings later, a husky-voiced woman picked up.

  “Santa Fe Police Department, this is Darcy. How can I help?” Darcy sounded bored. I’ll bet the non-emergency line is a lot less exciting than 911.

  “I’d like to report some information about that woman, the Jane Doe whose picture has been on the news.”

  There was a flutter of keyboard tapping in the background, then, “May I have your name please?”

  “No,” I said, perhaps a little too quickly. “I’d like to remain anonymous.”

  “Okay, what would you like to report?”

  “Her name is Victoria Young, and she was an unregistered witch.” I could tell my words were being recorded verbatim by the rapid staccato of Darcy’s typing. There was a pause, to give me a chance to say more.

  “That’s it,” I said and hung up.

  My heart was thumping fast as I sat there trying to remember how long it took to trace a call. It was something like thirty seconds, right? I really should have set a timer or something. Hindsight.

  The water was starting to get tepid, but I had one more call to make. Or text to make. It’s better to call someone when you apparently ignored their text for eight-plus hours, right? But by then it was almost 10 p.m., so… text it was. But what to say? I didn’t want to seem too eager. Or too disinterested, especially after the long delay in answering. Therefore, I started off with “Sorry” but didn’t get any further because a sudden movement in the corner of my eye gave me a start—maybe I was still a little jumpy after all the magic that was thrown at me that night—and the phone slid from my hands to land with a plop in the water.

  “Shit!” I tried to prioritize the three immediate impulses that vied for my attention; sitting up, finding my phone with a quickness, and investigating what the movement was. My cat had suddenly materialized on the toilet seat—not via teleportation, but in the mundane but stealthy manner of an ordinary house cat. While I was flailing around in the tub trying to fish out my phone and generally get over my surprise and alarm, he sat there staring at me with his mismatched eyes like I was the strangest creature he’d ever encountered.

  Ah-ha! My fingers finally closed on the phone, and I rescued it from the drink, held it aloft and watched it drip with dismay. “Great, just great,” I muttered, climbing out of the tub and feeling no guilt at all about flicking water at Barrington to get him to move his furry ass off my towel. Predictably, he beat a hasty retreat.

  Despite the chill in the air, I dried the phone off first. Standing naked beside the tub, shivering and dripping onto the bathmat, I folded it in the towel and pressed from both sides, like that might somehow squeeze the water out of the innards. Once it was as dry as I could get it, I set it on the counter and dried myself off quickly before donning the sweatpants, tank top, and sweater that I’d brought in with me. I wasn’t sure if I should even touch a button to see if it was okay, or if trying to activate it right now might just make things worse.

  I drained the tub and brought the phone out into the living room, grabbed my laptop, and settled on the couch with both.

  The email I hastily fired off to Matt had one word in the subject line: HELP.

  Chapter 8

  I felt like an idiot walking into a ski resort holding a cell phone in a ziplock bag full of rice. I tried to think of it as penance for my idiocy the previous night. I wasn’t sure if Matt was just messing with me or what, but I did what he had instructed anyway. It couldn’t make anything worse, at that point. Fortunately, even as bare as my cupboards tended to be, I did have half a box of that quick-cooking rice. I’m pretty sure it’s law in New Mexico that all homes must contain rice and green chile. Rice, I can cook. Green chile? No idea. Hopefully, the compliance officer had a thing for blondes.

  The looks I received ranged from confused to amused as I walked through the well-appointed lobby with my head held high. I wasn’t exactly dressed for fun on the slopes, and I didn’t have any luggage with me, so I’m sure people were wondering what sort of business I had at the resort. Bypassing the front desk, I walked to the back of the lobby, past the elevators and down the hallway that terminated with a locked door sporting an “Employees Only” sign. Ordinarily, I’d text Matt to let him know I was there, and he’d let me in. Today, I had to use the callbox above the keycard reader. There was no answer to the first press of the button, so I leaned on it a little extra long the second time.

  “Yeah?” The voice over the speaker was male and sounded like it was spoken in a big empty box.

  “I’m here to see Matt Andrews. He’s expecting m
e.”

  “Name?”

  “Emily Davenport.”

  I waited while he did whatever it was he needed to do to verify me and pulled open the door when the buzzer sounded. The well-lit hallway beyond was lined with doors leading to various offices, but right inside the door was the security office with its big glass window. I waved to the man inside, who despite knowing he had just buzzed me in was in the process of taking a bite of a huge breakfast burrito.

  I stepped into the doorway and leaned casually against the doorframe, jiggling my bag of rice. “I know the way, I just need a temp badge,” I offered, helpfully. But protocol was protocol, and I had to jump through all the usual hoops to sign in formally before he walked me down the hall to Matt’s office. The door was open, and inside the room, Matt swiveled in his chair to greet me with a smile.

  “Hey Em! Thanks for walking her back, Brad.”

  The security guard nodded and, his due diligence done, headed back down the hall to finish his breakfast.

  Matt’s office wasn’t the dark cave of the stereotypical geek. It was an interior room, so obviously there were no windows. But the stark fluorescent lighting was a far cry from bioluminescent mushrooms. The room was spacious enough for a large desk as well as a workbench, the surface of both workspaces tidy with a place for everything and everything in its place. There wasn’t a notepad or post-it note to be seen anywhere—Matt was very much a digital guy. If it needed doing, he had an app for it.

  Instead of those annoying motivational posters corporate America is so fond of, he had a cheeky selection of framed “demotivational” posters on the walls. My personal favorite had always been “Cluelessness. There are no stupid questions, but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots.” I felt like one of those idiots walking into Matt’s office with my cell phone in a baggie of rice.

  “Your patient, doctor.” I couldn’t help the sheepishness that crept into my voice as I drifted farther into the room and held the baggie out to him.

  “Thank you, nurse,” he replied with a wink. “Let’s get it to the OR, stat.” It was funny because I really was a nurse, get it? Maybe you had to be there. Regardless, I laughed and followed him to the workbench, where he extracted my phone from the baggie and set it down on the anti-static mat. “Still in the case, eh?”

  “You didn’t tell me to take it out! Shit, is that bad?”

  “Not necessarily. It could have kept some of the water out. I keep telling you to get one of those life-proof ones. I can get you a good deal on one. I know a guy.”

  “Yeah, I know. They’re just so bulky. Part of the cool factor of having one of these things is that they’re so slim and light.” I leaned against the workbench and watched as he removed the phone from its case and studied the device from a few angles before grabbing a tiny screwdriver from where it hung with the rest of its set on the wall. I don’t know how he managed to get the right size on the first try. Maybe it was luck.

  “Do you do this a lot?” I wondered, still watching him work.

  “With phones? Not really. But you’d be surprised how much coffee gets spilled into keyboards around here.”

  I winced. “Man, and I thought bedpan duty was bad.”

  Laughing and shaking his head, he finished with the screws, lining them all up in a pattern on the mat that matched where he had taken them out of the phone. It took him a minute to figure out how the case itself opened, but he soon had it in two pieces so he could inspect the interior.

  “So,” I said, quickly growing bored of watching him poke around in the waterlogged guts of my cell phone, “I was thinking as long as I’m here maybe you could help me with something else.”

  “Hmm?”

  “Well, I need to find Dan and there aren’t a ton of places locally that I can imagine a rich playboy staying. It’s not like Santa Fe has a bunch of luxury hotels, so I figure he’s either staying here or at one of the casinos.”

  “He could have rented a house.”

  I snorted. “From what I’ve heard, that’s far too practical for my baby brother. Anyway, it seems like it wouldn’t be too hard for you to find out if he’s staying here…”

  Matt paused his work to glance over at me, eyeing me with a faint smirk. “What’s in it for me?”

  “Pleeeeeeease?” I batted my lashes and used my best wheedling tone. “I’ll love you forever.”

  “You’ll love me forever anyway.”

  “I’ll make you dinner.”

  “I’d do it if you promised not to make me dinner, maybe.”

  “I’ll buy you dinner?”

  He considered this offer, eyes dropping back down to the phone he was working on cleaning with some sort of alcohol-smelling solution from a tiny squeeze bottle and cotton swabs. “Dinner and dancing?” As counter-offers go, it wasn’t too shabby. I’d happily do both with him pretty much anytime.

  “Done.”

  In the end, I struck out on both fronts. The phone was a loss, and there weren’t any Davenports in the resort’s guest database at all. Matt walked me to the security desk, where Brad the security guard collected my temp badge and signed me out before sending me on my way.

  “Don’t forget!” Matt called down the hall to me as he walked backward in the direction of his office. I must have given him a confused look because he lifted his arms as if dancing with an invisible partner and boogied his way a few steps down the hall. I couldn’t help but laugh, nodding and waving to him on my way out the door.

  Walking across the snow-covered resort’s huge courtyard, I pondered the dilemma of tracking down my brother. For the first time in a decade, I came close to regretting cutting ties with my family when I left home. To say that I was estranged from my family might be an understatement. When I left for college, I may have said a few things that earned me the “ungrateful” tag as well as the “disappointing” one. My youthful rage has faded a bit since then, or maybe just matured into bitter spite. I can still be angry about it all if I let myself, but one of the things I’ve learned in life is that if you spend too much time focusing on what makes you angry, sad, or frustrated there’s no time left for anything else.

  The only family member I was still in contact with at all was my older brother, Liam. Liam, as it turned out, became a disappointment to our mother in a whole other way; he’s gay. Now, don’t get me wrong. My best friend is queer. I’ve got nothing against the gays. My parents weren’t homophobes either. But they had this thing about carrying on the bloodline, and they were old-fashioned enough to place a bit of pressure on their eldest to do it. Fortunately, science has progressed to the point that being straight—or at least willing to copulate with a member of the opposite sex—isn’t a prerequisite for fathering a child. Liam and his husband want kids, but they haven’t quite worked out the logistics of surrogacy just yet.

  In any case, Liam contacted me a few years back and apologized for being such an ass when he was younger. I think he came to understand a little bit of the alienation I felt, in his own way, when he came out. I’m not saying we became besties, but we did communicate a few times a year after that. He got in the habit of sending me updates on what’s going on in the family around the holidays, pictures of our sister’s growing brood, stuff like that. I didn’t really care, but it was a nice gesture.

  If anyone could get me in touch with Dan, it was Liam. But in order to get in touch with Liam, I had to get my phone situation resolved.

  I’m not sure how many times he called my name before it penetrated the fog of my distraction. Turning my head, I squinted into the midday sun reflecting off all the snow, shielding my eyes. A tall figure in a black and green ski suit was walking toward me, waving a hand. It took me a few moments to recognize Barry in his “work clothes.”

  This could be awkward.

  “Barry! Hey!” I waited while he finished his approach and flashed him a deeply apologetic look. “I’m so sorry I didn’t answer your text. I forgot to check my phone at the end of my shift and then…” I s
till had my phone, once more in the bag of rice. I held it up for him to see. “I had a little accident.”

  Wincing, he nodded. “Yeah, Matt mentioned it. That really sucks. I guess he wasn’t able to fix it?”

  Of course Matt mentioned it. Why couldn’t I find a nice mundane guy that at least didn’t start out in cahoots with my bestie?

  “Nope.” I shrugged. “Next stop, retail therapy. I’m going to have to get a new one. I know it’s not the end of the world, but I feel so naked without my phone.”

  “Yeah, I know how that is. Hey, my roommate’s band is playing a gig this weekend if you’re interested in coming out. I could give you a tour backstage, buy you a drink?”

  “When is it?” I asked, biting my lip.

  “Um, if you’ve got plans, that’s okay. I just thought I’d offer. It’s Friday night at eight.”

  Quick to smile, I shook my head. “No, it’s not that at all. I have to work Saturday, but tomorrow night should be fine as long as you don’t keep me out too late. I’d like that. Email me the info? I’ll give you my address.” He passed me his phone and I put my address into it for him before handing it back with a smile.

  “See you tomorrow, then?” he asked, grinning boyishly. It was charming, I have to admit.

  “See you then.”

  Chapter 9

  I went straight from the resort to the store to pick up a new phone. You don’t really think about how much you rely on something like that until you don’t have one anymore. I felt blind and deaf. It hadn’t even been twenty-four hours. It’s not like I’m a social butterfly, but it’s nice to be connected to the people you care about. And, sometimes, the ones you don’t. I hoped Hector hadn’t tried to reach me, or I was going to be eating some serious crow.