by Mary Hughes
Noah’s glare followed Rodolphe until he disappeared. “Bite me. Who was that?”
Sophia sighed. “Trouble. Let’s go inside. I have to call a tow truck. I can explain to you while I’m waiting.” Then she’d have to call the Witches’ Council and explain more thoroughly to their Enforcer.
“Mason can fix your car.” Noah followed her through the door, growl still in his voice. “Sophia, who was that?”
The wolf’s presence was a strange mix of comforting and dangerous. “The long story takes a while. The short story? That was the biggest ass you’ll ever meet—should’ve been liposuctioned years ago.”
“Given. But what’s his name?” Almost as an afterthought Noah added the words she’d hoped he hadn’t heard. “And what did he mean when he called you a witch?”
Her step faltered, heart stuttering. She didn’t know why, but she got the clear picture that he didn’t care for witches. Well, most shifters didn’t. And it was just as well if it killed the attraction between them. But it still made her sad. “Could you phone Mason for me?” She couldn’t look at him.
“Sophia—”
“Please?”
“Fine.” He stalked off.
She fled to the reading area and collapsed into one of her aunt’s chairs to try to pull herself together. Clasping her elbows, she gathered the tatters of her self-control. She’d thought Rodolphe was out of her life for good.
Why now? With her magic she’d have been more than a match for him. But without it she was in danger.
Worse, Noah was in danger, too.
He’d painted a big target on his back by not only challenging the witch, but beating him. Rodolphe didn’t take defeat well. Next time he wouldn’t stand within leaping distance of the wolf. Stars and moon, how could she stop Rodolphe then, how could she fight him without magic? Pepper spray and stern looks wouldn’t stop a wizard.
She could run. Hide. Throw up. None of that would help Noah. She grasped her pearls so tight she nearly crushed them.
“Sophia, what’s wrong?”
She opened her eyes to see Noah was off the phone, his silver gaze concerned. Bigger than big, stronger than strong.
But even an alpha couldn’t hope to defeat a wizard in the long run. Noah had to get out now, while he could. Protect his pack, maybe by getting them to take a vacation. South, like Illinois, or Texas, or Rio de Janeiro. She’d heard Brazil was nice.
“Who is that man?”
She’d love to go with him, but once he heard the full story, he’d never want to see her again. She hitched a breath.
He sat next to her. “Tell me.”
“Damn it.” She briefly clenched hot eyes. “Why do you have to be so persistent?”
“It’s a gift.” He gently gathered her hands from her pearls. “Let’s start slow. Who was that wizard?”
She blinked at him. A tear trickled down her cheek. “How do you know Rodolphe’s a wizard?”
Noah touched his nose. “Your aunt smells different. The hooded creep had the same scent, only nastier.” Before she could ask another question he gently thumbed the tear from her skin. “You don’t. You smell like running free through a meadow on a spring day.”
His deep tones gave the words a poetry. Sophia blushed. “That’s sweet.” But her gaze cut away. He wouldn’t say such sweet things once she told him the rest.
He took both her hands. “Sophia, please. I need to know if he’s a danger to my pack.”
“You do.” Her chest iced. She needed to come clean, but to see the warmth in his eyes wither and die… The ice melted into unshed tears. This would take fortification. “Well, I told you the long story was long, right? How about I tell it over some tea.”
She didn’t give him a choice, popping to her feet and leading the way to the beaded curtain.
In the kitchen, she silently busied herself filling the teakettle.
He leaned, arms folded, against the wall.
When the kettle was on the stove over a high flame she took a deep breath. “I was born a witch.” She glanced at him to see how he took it.
He flinched. “A witch?”
That hurt, but worse was coming. “Proud of it, at one time.” She paused getting the box of tea, shame pricking her nose and eyes. “I was strong, with ability across multiple elements. An, um…” She cleared her throat. “A witch princess.”
“You’re a what?” He stiffened like she’d sprouted a rash.
“Hereditary witch princess.” She winced. “Although I prefer gene-recruited. But yeah. Long silk robes, power wand, sparkly tiara, the whole deal. Noah, please. I’m not a witch anymore, and this is difficult enough. Sit?”
Silver eyes narrowed like she was going to turn him into a toad, he nonetheless nodded and took a chair at the kitchen table.
She got down mugs, pressed leaves into two diffuser balls, and settled them in the mugs with dual clinks. She stood a moment, her hands on the mugs, gathering her courage. “Once upon a time, I embraced everything being a witch meant. Like the kid who wants to grow up to be president or prime minister, everything I did was fueled by determination to reach the top—High Minister of the Witches’ Council.”
“The Council. Sweet running prey.”
“You know about the Council?”
“Stories.” He shuddered.
“At least it’s not a crime syndicate, right?” She tried to laugh and failed. The kettle whistled. She brought the mugs to the table then went back to turn off the stove, retrieve the kettle, and bring it back to the table, its whistle dying slowly. Her hand shook pouring steaming water over the tea diffusers. “I studied hard and practiced every talent I had and by the time I reached university I was the best damned freshman witch you ever saw. But even among mages, you can’t get to the top on talent and hard work alone. You need connections.”
“You’re a damned royal witch. What more connection do you need?”
The anger in his tone rippled unhappily up her spine. Her shoulders drew in as she returned the kettle to the stove. She couldn’t look at him when she returned to the table. Grabbing the ends of the diffusers, she tried to dunk them both at once. She fumbled it, sloshing tea onto the table.
With a small tch he took the mugs away from her, firmly but not unkindly. As he rose to get the dishcloth to wipe up, she sat with clasped hands. Without his burning silver gaze it was easier to say what needed to be said.
“My connections would have been my parents. But they died in an airplane. A midair explosion.”
“Oh, Sophia.” He returned to her, tossed the cloth, and took her clasped hands. “I’m so sorry.”
Her fingers relaxed under his. “I had my brother to help me through it. And Aunt Linda.”
“How old were you?”
“I was eighteen. My brother was twenty. The crash spurred Gabriel’s need to make tech work with magic.”
“You don’t have to tell me the rest.” Noah gave her fingers a squeeze then released her hands to retrieve a jar of honey. He dosed her mug with a couple generous dollops of gold.
“I really do. I don’t want to, but I need to.” She met his gaze.
He searched her eyes. Compassion touched his face. “Then let’s talk somewhere you’ll be more comfortable.” He lifted both mugs and took them into the store, where he sat on a couch.
Following, she sat beside him. He handed her her mug, barely cool enough to hold, but the heat—and the sympathy in his eyes—strengthened her to go on. “I enrolled in the Council’s page program, hoping for a recommendation. At first I was a general gofer, fetching coffee and mail. I moved up to data entry on the Persons of Magic census, not popular but high-profile.”
She paused to sip, fingers wrapped around the hot mug. “I caught the eye of a very powerful water wizard named Rodolphe.”
A low growl emanated from Noah’s chest.
“On the surface, he was everything I wanted to be. Successful. A sharp dresser. A sharp mind, or at least he had answers for everything
. A sharp smile. Everything about him was sharp, which should have been a big red warning. But I was nineteen years old and thought I knew every-damned-thing.” She blinked. A thread of wet heat ran down her cheek. “I knew just enough to hurt myself.”
Noah put an arm around her shoulders in silent support.
Something deep inside her eased at that. “The Council’s upper house is hereditary, but mages in the lower house rely on training, raw power, and connections. They work hard to get where they are, the best of the best. I was excited to come to Representative Rodolphe’s notice.” She shook her head. Such an idealistic idiot.
“You were nineteen and had no one to tell you better.”
“You’re being kind. Gabriel didn’t blunder like that. You wouldn’t have either.”
“I’ve made my own mistakes.” His flat, pained tone told her he had his own bitter history.
“I’m sorry.” She set a hand on his, to comfort him, but the simple touch eased her knotted shoulders too.
Their eyes connected briefly. The bright silver of his was more than she could bear. Her hand flew to her pearls and she looked away.
A beat. Then he prompted, “Rodolphe?”
“He said he’d known my parents. ‘My dear little witch,’ he said. ‘They’d want me to shepherd your career.’ That sold me. I was thrilled when he made me his assistant. But while he pretended to reinforce my training, he subtly skewed it. At first it was simply, ‘We work hard, so we make the hard decisions.’ I was all about hard work, so I lapped that up. Then he shifted to ‘People need us to make the hard decisions.’ Then, ‘People expect us to make the hard decisions. It’s our duty.’” She grabbed her pearls harder. “And then, ‘We make the decisions. It’s our right.’”
“Sophia, you were young.”
“Not so young by then.” She fisted her pearls so tight she bruised bones. “I haven’t even told Gabriel the full story. I was twenty-two, under Rodolphe’s influence for three years, when he came to me with a ‘special project’. ‘Terrorists,’ he said, ‘are planning a heinous attack on the mundane capital.’”
“Damn my paws.”
“Yes.” She laughed with no humor. “Blindly idealistic, I didn’t ask questions, or at least, not the right ones. I didn’t ask what kind of attack or where his information came from or even ask for proof. All I said was, ‘Yes sir. What can I do?’”
He set aside his mug and hers and enfolded her in his arms. Trembling, she went on.
“Rodolphe said the terrorists were storing cash and account information in a mundane safe. ‘We can cut off their funding, stop the attack before it ever gets started, if we rob that safe.’
“At that point I did show a little brains. ‘What about the mundane police?’ I said. ‘Can’t we tell them and let them handle it?’
“He said, ‘No, my dear little witch.’ He always called me that, my dear little witch. I thought it meant that he cared about me—I thought it was sweet. I never noticed he only used it when he didn’t want me asking questions.”
Noah growled, “I’ll kill him.”
She pulled from his arms, her eyes flying to his. He’d defend her, even now? “Thank you, but you may change your mind after you hear the rest. I remember that day so clearly. Rodolphe took my face in his hands. It was so sweet, and I thought he was going to…that he was…well. When I was most vulnerable, he hit me with ‘Sophia. People expect us to make the hard decisions. We need to do this.’
“And because I trusted him, because I believed in magic and my heritage, I said meekly, ‘All right.’”
Noah pulled her back into his arms. His warmth ate the shivers away.
Eventually she squeezed out a tear and straightened away from him, wiping a thumb under her eyes. “There’s not much left. Rodolphe said, ‘My dear little witch, you have the most important job of all. I am giving you your first mission. You must break into the terrorists’ bank and capture those funds.’
“A mission. It sounded so special. I was scared and proud. I thought he’d given me this mission because he respected my power, my training—my excellence.” She twisted her hands in her lap. “Of course, it was really because the safe had complex electronics, and my brother Gabriel had spelled my wand against tech misfires. Rodolphe knew that—I’d boasted of it, gullible little twit that I was. So I used my technology-proof magic to get into the bank, open the safe, and retrieve sixty thousand dollars in cash and account information for another two hundred thousand. A quarter of a million dollars. I gave it to Rodolphe and thought I was a hero.” She twisted her fingers so hard they were white, but she didn’t feel the pain, overpowered by the sword’s edge of memory.
Noah took her hands and gently untwisted her fingers. So gentle.
She gazed into his face, willing him to look at her, to really see her. To know the worst.
His silver eyes held no condemnation, only deep sympathy.
Hers were brimming and her throat thick as she said, “The money wasn’t for a terrorist attack. It was fundraising for a little girl’s kidney transplant. I’d stolen the money that was supposed to save a child’s life.”
“God.” The silver mirrored.
“You can’t hate me worse than I hate myself.” Her only comfort.
“I don’t hate you.”
She swallowed hard. And again. Only after a third dry swallow could she go on. “When I found out, I was horrified. I flew to Rodolphe’s office for an explanation—dope that I was, I was sure he had one, sure that it was all a horrible mistake—but he’d gone. It took me a while to realize that he’d fled. That he’d lied to me and had known what the money was for all along.
“I told the Council’s Enforcers everything. They set a tracer spell on him, pinged him in the next city over. Ready to come back. The jerk honestly thought I’d take the fall for him.
“The moment the tracer hit him, he threw up a blinding spell and ran, hopping onto an ocean ship before the Enforcers could catch him. They continued to try magical means to locate him, but he’d been on the enforcement committee. He knew their methods and countered every one.
“The possibility of catching him became slimmer and slimmer. So before it was too late for the child, I leaked the information to the mundane police.”
Noah sat straighter. “You told the cops about magic?”
“No, of course not.” She dashed the back of her hand against her wet cheeks. “Only that Rodolphe had raided the girl’s fund and fled. It was enough. The mundanes tracked him to Europe and recovered the money. A combination of fingerprints, passport tracking, and database searches saved that child.”
“Thank goodness.” Noah released her and sat straight. “I understand why you hid this from me. But as a witch, I’m begging you. Remove the hex. Help me to defend yo…my pack.” His eyes blazed with fierce protectiveness and practicality, better than condemnation, but perhaps that would come later.
“Noah, I want to, but…” She raised her gaze to him. He shimmered in her view. “I told you the whole sorry story so you’d understand exactly why I can’t help. I hurt that poor girl when I meant to help and…I couldn’t go through that again. So I…I…” She couldn’t say the words. Settled for, “I’m no longer a witch.”
“That’s not possible. Magic is born in.”
“How did you know that?”
“Reason,” he said quickly. “My shifting ability was born in, so I figured yours was too. Isn’t it?”
“It was. But when the horror of what I’d done crashed down on me, I took…steps.” She looked away. “My powers and my heritage, the things that had once made me so proud, now stood for stupidity. Gullibility. Guilt. I was shocked how deeply and unthinkingly I’d embraced Rodolphe’s message, how blindly I’d followed him, just because he was ‘one of us’.” She paused. “I sometimes wonder…would I have made the short, fatal step to assuming that superior ability meant a superior right?”
“No. Sophia, you care too much. You empathize.”
“You have no proof.”
“Oh, but I do. It’s all in how a person treats small animals. You honored and respected King. You’re nothing like Rodolphe, and you never will be.”
Her eyes found his, reading the deep surety in his face. Her heart made a lump in her throat. She swallowed, managed a hoarse, “Thanks.” A simple word for profound gratitude. Even though she’d admitted the worst, he still defended her. He was a natural protector to the end.
She backhanded her wet, swollen eyes. “I didn’t want to risk it. So I locked away my magic. A Head-Hands-Heart ritual.” She glossed over what she’d had to do to seal the locks.
“Noah, I smell mundane because I am.”
Chapter Eleven
Noah reeled. First because Sophia was a witch, the thing he hated and feared most. But then because somehow her magic—magic that was born into her—was gone, and she wasn’t a witch anymore.
Yet of all the shit going down, the most important takeaway was that, unless he found some way to reverse his hex, he couldn’t protect her from Rodolphe.
And his pack, although somehow that had become an afterthought to her safety.
She stood to take out her phone. “I’d better get this over with.”
“I already called Mason.”
“Not Mason. The Witches’ Council. They’ll send an Enforcer to deal with Rodolphe.”
“You can’t.” He put a hand on her wrist, stopping her. If an Enforcer came, Sophia would leave. How could he protect her from Rodolphe if she left? “What if the Enforcer finds out I’m hexed? It’ll just muddle things worse.”
“No, they won’t blame that on you. If anything, he’ll go after Aunt Linda.”
“Won’t there be a penalty for that?”
“Well…yes.” She nibbled the lush pillow of her lower lip in thought. Noah wanted to be her teeth. “If Auntie had hexed a mundane, the Council would slap her with a thousand-dollar fine and sixty days in lock up. For hexing a were, that’ll go up to five thousand and six months. But the hexing was unintentional. A good arcane lawyer can probably argue it down to just the fine.”
