Witch Craft

by Caitlin Kittredge

  “Back off of me,” I warned it. “I’ll use this.”

  The troll’s face crumpled in rage and it let out a bellow, charging straight for me. The ground jumped and I felt myself fall, one round discharging and impacting with the troll’s shoulder.

  I was right—a small dimple appeared in its skin, and that was it. It slapped at itself like it had been stung by a bee, and then ran at me again.

  Crap. I was going to be a grease spot on the wall in three more seconds. I could try to get out of the way, risk being trampled underfoot …

  The troll raised its fists and gave a war cry, high-pitched and earsplitting. Watching it bear down on me like a runaway Sherman tank, I got an idea that most days I would classify as insane and even now seemed a little improbable.

  I stayed rooted to the spot as the troll closed the distance—three steps, two steps, one. As it barreled forward, lowering its shoulder and lunging at me, I went low and to the side, curling myself into a ball, covering my head and my vital bits.

  The troll windmilled, trying to stop, skidded on the wet pavement, and went crashing through the alley wall raining plaster and insulation around it. It fell, tangled in wire and pipe like a huntsman’s net, screaming in fury.

  I sprang up from my crouch. The troll was facedown and I planted one foot in the crook of its knee, the second on where its kidneys would be, and my last step on its neck, before I jumped down in front of its smushed-up face and took off running again, through trailing plastic and moldy furniture and the wrecked walls of the old tenement.

  A stitch was developing in my side, from the running and the adrenaline, and the were howled in my head, begging to be let free to dance with the biggest predator it had ever encountered.

  I saw the front door, half off its hinges, leading me out onto Cannery a few blocks down from the cordon. I practically fell through it as the earth began to shake again, the troll in hot pursuit. It was a tough bastard—I had to give it that.

  A spotlight from the SWAT helicopter picked me up and I kept running, because my life depended on it. The troll burst through the front of the tenement and out onto the sidewalk, yelling and gesticulating.

  “Kelly!” I screamed. “It’s coming!”

  The cordon was a hundred yards away, seventy, thirty. I saw Kelly standing in the center of an intricate chalk drawing, unlike the working circles I was familiar with. Power shimmered around him and the circle grew three dimensions, an extension of his power.

  He was yelling something at me, which turned out to be, “Get out of the way!” I cut right, rolling over the hood of a squad car and landing hard on my shoulder, as the troll powered down on Kelly.

  Kelly raised his hands and the troll stopped dead as the tendrils of the working flowed outward, wrapping the troll like a spider wraps a bug. It wavered for a moment, and then fell over with a crash, eyes rolling up in its head. Kelly stayed where he was, the lines of power from his working snapping and dancing as he manipulated them to tighten even further around the troll’s prone figure.

  I stood up, the adrenaline running out of me. Now I just hurt. Everywhere.

  “What do you suggest?” Captain Delahunt said, as his team trained their M4 rifles on the troll.

  “Tranquilizers,” I said. “Lots of them.”

  The troll was groaning, mumbling to itself. It almost sounded like it was saying, “Stupid, stupid, stupid,” which is probably exactly what I would have said, were I in its position.

  Kelly firmed up the trailing ends of his working and then lowered his hands, a few beads of sweat gleaming on his forehead. “It’ll hold for now.”

  “You did good,” I said, clapping him on the shoulder. Bryson and Batista were watching the troll warily, but with the excitement of small boys looking at race cars.

  “That is the biggest goddamn thing I’ve ever seen walking under its own power,” Bryson said. “It would make a hell of a linebacker.”

  Batista just shook his head. “What did it want, Lieutenant?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, looking at the troll. It was quivering now, with cold or fear. Seeing it so humbled, I felt sort of bad for it. I would have felt worse if it hadn’t tried to eat me, though.

  Bryson pointed. “Looks like your boyfriends came through okay.”

  Lucas and Will appeared from out of the wreckage, Will limping heavily and Lucas looking like he always did, with only a few streaks of dust to indicate he’d been anywhere near Trollapalooza.

  I jogged over to them, slowing to a walk when pain stabbed me hard in the side. Lucas’s stare was fixed on the troll. “What will you do with Big Ugly?”

  I pursed my lips at the troll. “We can’t leave it here.”

  “Kill it,” said Will without hesitation. “It’s dangerous.”

  “Will, it was terrified and hungry. I’m not killing it for doing what comes naturally. If it came to that I’d have to kill you.”

  “Nah, that’s extreme,” said Lucas. “Maybe one of those shock collars and a couple of training classes for the agent here.”

  “Kid, you do not want to start down that road with me,” Fagin warned.

  “Good gods, will the two of you knock it off?” I demanded. “You’re worse than tigers in the zoo. The female of the species is not impressed.”

  I left them and went to Kelly. “Thank you,” I said, hesitantly.

  He shrugged. “It’s what I was trained to do.”

  “So, any opinion on what happens to it?”

  Kelly looked at the troll, its chest rising and falling fast with panic. “Nope,” he said.

  I pressed my fingers into the point between my eyes. “Can we get it out of here, for starters? I think there’s been enough of a scene for one night.”

  “I can go with it and keep the binding in place,” Kelly said. “But it won’t hold forever. It’s going to get loose again, sooner or later.”

  “All right,” I said. “For now, we need some open space where it can’t wreck anything, and something for it to eat. The rest …” The rest I would figure out after we’d gotten the heartstone back and stopped the devil’s doorway from tearing a wound in the fabric that held my city together.

  “Barrow Park,” Kelly said. “Big, mostly empty at night. We could take it there until you figure out a permanent solution.” The way he said “you” conveyed clearly that the troll was my problem.

  “Can you handle it?” I said to Kelly. Get him on my side by giving him the big manly job.

  “Sure,” Kelly said. “I’ll get it over there in one piece and make sure it doesn’t chow down on any more of our fine citizens. Ma’am.”

  “Kelly,” I said, as he stepped away, the bindings curling back from him and clustering around the troll.

  He stopped. “You got something to say to me, Lieutenant?”

  “I was wrong about you,” I said. “I thought some things of you that you didn’t deserve, and I’m sorry for that.”

  He snorted. “Hell, ma’am, I knew I wasn’t your favorite. Don’t have to get sentimental.”

  “You could have mentioned you were a warlock instead of being a son of a bitch,” I admitted.

  That earned a tiny smile. “I’ll remember that.”

  “Do. Good luck, Detective.”

  “And you, ma’am.”

  I walked back to Will, who was on his phone, and Lucas, who was standing and glaring at every cop in sight.

  “It’s that squirrelly Zacharias kid,” Will said, handing his phone to me. “Says he can’t get through to you. Sounds upset, like someone just stole his lunch money.”

  I felt in my pockets. I’d lost my BlackBerry during the troll fight. “One thing after another,” I muttered.

  “Luna?” Andy said. “Luna, is that you?”

  “I’m here, Andy. Since when are we on a first-name basis, anyway?”

  “I’ve been thinking,” he said in a rush. “The heartstone is massive and how would they get it out of the building?”

  “Ma
gick?” I suggested.

  “But why call that much attention to themselves?” Andy sounded pained. “I think … I think the heartstone didn’t go anywhere,” he said. “It’s a holiday and the building is deserted. Floors and floors to disappear in. I don’t think the heartstone got any further than the elevator.”

  Leave it to the egghead to point out the obvious. It was so simple, I was pissed off that I hadn’t thought of it.

  “Luna?”

  “That’s not bad, Andy,” I whispered.

  “Luna, I—” He cut off.

  “Andy?” I said. “Andy, are you all right?”

  There was a hiss of static on the line and a new voice spoke. “If you want to see Detective Zacharias in one piece, then you and your team stay far away from the Justice Plaza until dawn.”

  I knew those clipped tones, that snooty delivery. “If you’ve hurt Andy, I’m going to fucking rip you to shreds, Grace,” I growled into the phone.

  “You stay away,” she said again. “Otherwise, dear Andy is going to be one of those poor unfortunates so overcome with despair that they fling themselves from high places. Do we understand one another?”

  My heart was beating so hard I felt it would break my sternum. Not Andy. Andy was innocent. He was a bystander, collateral damage.

  “No deal,” I said.

  Grace sucked in a breath. “You’re playing a very inadvisable game with your detective’s life, Miss Wilder.”

  “You have something I want,” I said. “And I have something you want.”

  A moment of silence. I willed Hartley not to hang up on me. “I’m listening,” she said finally.

  “The codex that I took from your little group of live nude cultists,” I said. “I mean, losing that thing has got to suck. No way to call more critters to do your bidding, no way to control Cerberus … what’s a good Thelemite to do?”

  “I suppose you want a bargain,” she cut me off.

  “You get the codex back, and I get Andy,” I said. “Simple.”

  “It had better be,” said Hartley. “No tricks and no cleverness from you, because I know that you are capable of it. You’re outclassed, Detective. We are on the rooftop of the Plaza. Come alone.” The call clicked off and I slowly lowered the phone from my ear.

  Outclassed? “Worst thing you could have said to me,” I murmured, and handed the phone back to Will.

  He scanned my face, his brows drawing together. “What happened?”

  “They have Andy,” I said, numb. Fatigue had hit me, shock, and everything else that comes with a heaping of trauma.

  “Who’s Andy?” said Lucas.

  “He’s my friend,” I said. “He trusted me. Now he’s in harm’s way. I have to go get him.”

  “You don’t have to be a hero,” said Lucas, taking my shoulders. “It’s not your job.”

  “I know,” I said. “But taking care of my detectives is my job. Dealing with supernatural threats is my job. And making sure that these Thelemite bitches don’t open a devil’s doorway is most definitely my fucking job.”

  Lucas sighed, and moved his hands off of me. “I wish you didn’t feel that way, sometimes.”

  “But I do,” I said. I gestured to Fagin.

  Lucas stepped away from me, his eyes silver in the sheen of the scene lights. “You do,” he agreed, finally. “I understand, Luna. Will I see you around sometime?”

  “Not if I see you first,” I said, and turned to Will. “Let’s go. I’m done fucking around with these people.”

  Twenty-Six

  Sunny opened her door before I had a chance to knock. “I saw the news,” she said. “Was that thing really a … ?”

  “Troll?” I said. “Yeah. Big, fugly, smelled like a tide flat at high noon.”

  Sunny wrinkled her nose. “Ew.”

  “But we’ve got a bigger problem now,” I said. “I need the codex back.”

  Her face closed up, got cagey. “Why?”

  “I just need it, Sunflower! Go get it!”

  “I will not, not until you tell me why you want it.”

  “Look,” I gritted. “You said yourself that it’s practically worthless.”

  “In the right hands, Luna, anything can be a weapon. It’s still dangerous enough. You saw the Thelemites summon a daemon with it.”

  “Yes, and now they’re holding one of my friends hostage unless I give it back, so get your ass in gear, Sunny, and get it!” I shouted.

  Will laid a hand on my shoulder and I growled at him, “Back off.”

  “Maybe we should think this over,” he said. “Do you really want to chance Hartley getting her hands on this thing again?”

  “It’s not a question of negotiation,” I said. “They’re going to kill Andy unless I bring it to them, so that’s what we’re going to do.”

  “I don’t like it,” said Fagin. “You’re giving them exactly what they want, and the Maiden gets more daemons on her side, and it’ll go hard for us when we try and take them down.”

  “Will, this isn’t your decision!” I threw up my hands. “I made my choice!”

  “I’m going to have to stop you,” he said, almost regretful. “This can’t happen.”

  “It can,” Sunny said. She went to the bookcase and took down the battered ledger, tucked between a road atlas and a Greek cookbook. “My cousin isn’t going to let someone die for the greater good, Agent Fagin. If you think she will, you don’t know her at all.”

  “All due respect,” he said, “you don’t know what we’re dealing with. You’re a sheltered little caster witch.”

  “All due respect,” Sunny shot back, her eyes hot, “but you ever condescend to me like that again and you’ll spend the rest of your life thinking you’re a pretty princess.”

  “This isn’t up for debate,” I told Will. “You can either come with me or walk away. I’m going to get Andy out of there.”

  He paced away from me, paced back, spots of color on his cheeks.

  “Which is it?” I asked quietly. Sunny stood at my shoulder and I felt prickles along the back of my neck.

  “You’re too damn stubborn for your own good,” Will said finally.

  I lifted a shoulder. “Not news to me.”

  He went to the window and looked down at the ocean, moon-sheened, hitting the rocks far below. “I’ve waited too long for this,” he sighed. “I’m tired, Luna. I just want it to end.”

  “Me, too,” I said. “With everyone alive.”

  “You have to know that’s not how the Maiden will let it go,” he said.

  “She’s not letting me do anything,” I said. “I take my own path. Now if you’re through having a tantrum, come on. We’re wasting time.”

  Will banged out the door without another word. I made to follow him, but Sunny caught me.

  “What will you do when they have the codex?”

  I ran a hand over my face. “I have no Hexed idea, Sunny.”

  She grabbed her jacket off the hook. “Then I’m going to come with you.”

  “It’s too—” I started, but she cut me off.

  “Don’t tell me it’s too dangerous, because I know that’s BS. How can it be more dangerous than Alistair Duncan, than that state’s attorney who was making doppelgangers with blood magick, than Wiskachee? I was there for all of that, Luna, and if you want any hope of keeping that devil’s doorway shut you’re going to need my help. So just take it, and stop trying to soothe your pride, okay?”

  “All right,” I agreed. “But you hang back and stay with Will. Enough people I care about have been hurt over this.”

  Sunny squeezed my hand. “I won’t be. I’m with you.”

  At least one of us had faith. As Will drove us back to the city, the knots in my gut grew tighter, and larger. The Thelemites had odds overwhelmingly on their side, and I was walking into what had to be a trap, willingly.

  Memories flew on fleet wings across my vision—Wiskachee, Lucas’s twisted face as his possessed mind fought with his soul, the awf
ul, overwhelming tide of power that flowed from the rift between realms.

  What could I do to stop such power? Pathing it would kill me, fry my brain like an egg inside my skull. Allowing the doorway to open would mean the end of my life as I knew it, and most of the city overrun. And stopping it would probably get me killed, too, if I even knew how.

  This was my job, I thought. This was what, ultimately, I was built for. I was the front line between the people of my city and the things that scurried through the dark, showing their eyes and teeth, waiting for the campfires to go out.

  I caught a flash of gold out of the corner of my eye, but when I whipped my gaze in the direction, it was gone, a brightly lit jack-o’-lantern on the front steps of someone’s town house the only light.

  “You okay?” said Will.

  “No,” I said. “Park here.”

  Will pulled into the load zone at the front of the Plaza, and I got out. I felt like I was moving through a dream, all of my limbs weighted and weightless in the same moment, like I was floating a few inches off the ground. Before, when I’d gone toward things like this, I was resolute, fired with rage and righteousness, determined.

  Now, I just wanted to turn away and let someone else be the hero, just once. But I walked anyway, after I told Sunny and Will, “Stay in the lobby and wait for me. They told me to come alone.”

  I mounted the steps, the gray granite edifice of the Plaza glaring down at me, the black hollows of the relief carvings of valkyries and mortals along the face of the building swirling like snakes. The handle of the brass doors was cold under my hand, and I stepped into the marble lobby that I so rarely walked through, preferring to come through the service entrance where things were smaller and human.

  The great scales worked into the floor were surrounded with Latin, designed to soothe or intimidate, depending on if you were guilty or innocent: Vero justicia argo. In truth, justice lies.

  It would be nice if things were that simple.

  There was one elevator working, brass-bound and ornate like the rest of the public part of the Plaza, and I called it. Sunny didn’t look happy to be stuck with Will, but she waited all the same.

  “We’ll give you five minutes,” he said. “And then we’re coming up after you, hostage or no.”