by Jayne Hawke
“Is it the same magic?” Gideon asked as he crouched down next to me.
“I believe so,” I said softly.
He exhaled slowly through his nose.
“You’ll have to tell me everything about that night. Every little detail.”
AN OBSCENE NUMBER OF photos were taken along with samples while I told Gideon everything I remembered from that night. The grin hung in my mind, sending shivers down my spine. He asked me again and again if I knew more about the magic, exactly how it felt about my skin, if I’d felt any side-effects.
That hadn’t crossed my mind. It should have. I was a witch without a god, a prime target for malevolent magic to claim as its own. I’d been so busy worrying about my next paycheque and my upcoming wedding that I hadn’t thought about it. Now it was all I could think about.
Gideon pulled me into his arms and rested his chin on top of my head.
“I will not allow anything to happen to you.”
He said it so matter-of-factly, as though he would stop the world turning if that’s what was needed.
I leaned into him and breathed in the soothing scent of leather and fresh earth. The worries and concerns dissipated, and I felt my usual strength and determination return. I was still adjusting to being a solitary witch. There were moments when the anxiety threatened to overwhelm me. Standing against the world on my own was a very different experience.
Of course, I wasn’t alone anymore.
19
“We just received news that another possessed witch went on a killing spree on the far side of town. My team handled it. The evidence will be sent to my office.”
I closed my eyes and groaned. This was becoming a thing.
“Why now? What changed?”
“I don’t know. I’ll drop you back at the hotel. I have a business meeting I can’t get out of. I’ll pick you up later and take you to your apartment.”
His fingers wrapped around mine and he gave me a warm smile.
“You’re welcome to move into the coven house whenever you’re ready. I’m sure you’ll love my people.”
It was tempting, but I couldn’t. Not until I had my magic back, and I was beginning to feel like I was ready to make my decision. I just needed to gather the items for my new altar. My old coven had destroyed my old altar. An act of senseless destruction that ensured I knew I’d never be welcome amongst them again.
Gideon leaned in and brushed his lips over my temple.
“My number’s in your phone. Don’t hesitate to call if you need me.”
He handed me my phone.
“How...?”
Warrior witches weren’t supposed to be that subtle or light. He grinned at me and said nothing as he pulled up in front of the hotel.
I said nothing as I got out of the low-slung car and walked through the lobby where everyone paused to stare at me. Let them stare. I still had the penthouse suite.
Chewing on my bottom lip, I thought through everything we knew about the witches so far. Gideon seemed sure they were possessed, which was a terrifying thought. A witch possession was supposed to be something rare enough it was whispered about. It was something people doubted could even happen, and yet here we were with two corpses in one day.
I held out some hope that it wasn’t possession at all and it was some screwed up new drug or spell doing the rounds. Desperate witches got pulled into dangerous things. It was hard being without your support system.
Settling myself down on the couch, I opened my laptop and began hunting down the items I needed for my altar. Set pressed into my mind, and I tensed, pushing back against him.
“Everything you need is in the town.”
He was right. I’d be able to everything I needed within Wolf Ridge, but ordering it online gave me a few more days while I waited for it to arrive.
Set’s magic tingled in my veins, and I closed my mind, remembering the ecstasy he could provide me when I called down a storm or wielded lightning.
It was time.
AT FIRST GLANCE, THE New Moon was just another souvenir shop. The cramped space was full of trinkets, postcards, magnets, mugs, and pretty little pictures of the turning leaves and mountains. For supernaturals, it was a whole different experience.
I waited for the tourist couple to finish looking at the mugs before they finally left with a handful of magnets and a delicate pair of leaf earrings. The moment they stepped out of the door, I walked behind the heavy counter with the more expensive jewellery hidden within and entered the space I’d come there for.
Behind the thick black door covered in leaves, which were all bespelled to keep those who weren’t welcome out, lay the supernatural supply shop. It had everything a witch could possibly need, including items for their altars.
My stomach roiled at making a fresh altar to a new god. It felt wrong, and terrifying. I’d been a little girl when I made my first altar, and it had come together so naturally. Now I had to do it all over again, open myself up to a new god and begin fresh.
Steeling myself, I glanced around and allowed Set to quietly guide me.
He nudged me in the direction of the sand display. There, small vials of sand from all around the world in every imaginable colour sat. I ran my hand over the envelope of cash in my pocket courtesy of Ben. That needed to cover food as well as Set’s things.
I swear Set rolled his eyes at me as my jaw dropped at the price of some of the sands. The coal-coloured sand was a hundred bucks for a tiny little vial. Thankfully the red Egyptian sand was only fifteen. The sensation of Set calling me a cheap skate vibrated through my mind, but I didn’t hear him say it fully.
There was a floor-to-ceiling set of shelves dedicated to statuettes of all the larger gods. I paused looking over them to see if Set was present. Statuettes weren’t my thing, and as much as the gods pushed, an altar was a personal expression from the witch. There were things the god preferred, but at the end of the day it was the witch’s decision.
I bristled when I saw that the more well-known Egyptian gods were all present - Bast with her cats, Horus, Ra the sun god - but no Set. He had been vilified in the later centuries, and that reputation had stuck. Feeling him in my mind, I knew that he was the protector and warrior he had first been cast as.
Moving on from the statuettes, I squeezed past the table overflowing with bowls. Set tried to nudge me closer to the table. He would have liked a nice red ceramic bowl in which I could place offerings to him. Unfortunately for him, I just wasn’t that type of witch. I didn’t believe in bowing and scraping.
A twenty-sided die called to me. It was tucked in with the altar cloths, almost invisible as the deep red of the die blended in with the red of the cloth. Yes, that would do well. The die could represent Set’s chaos. Now I needed something for his storm and protector roles.
Looking around slowly, I allowed my eye to wander over everything before me. I found the red cloth in my hand when I looked down. Set had clearly taken a liking to it. A glance at the price tag told me it wasn’t too ridiculous, so I allowed him to have it.
Moving up the narrow rickety wooden stairs, I stepped into the upper level where the stones and blades sat. The third floor contained herbs, which I had no talent for. The table in the centre of the room had carefully arranged glass boxes with the finest jewels for those witches and gods who demanded only the most expensive. Thankfully, Set had no interest in any of those and instead pushed me towards the swath of red semi-precious stones on the far side of the room.
Large wooden trays were filled with tumbled stones with the larger and more refined versions of each stone sitting on the shelf behind them. I paused before the garnet and smiled. The deep red was stunning, and Set approved very much. The tumbled stones were only a dollar a piece, each the size of a fingernail. Slowing my breathing, I mentally committed and picked up a round tumbled stone that fit between my thumb and forefinger comfortably. That would remain in my pocket with me, a little gesture to Set.
Reaching over, I pi
cked up a larger polished garnet and winced at the price tag.
“I’m worth it,” Set whispered.
I held back a laugh. He was certainly confident in his value.
A simple blank ankh and a beautiful dagger finished my collection. The dagger was shorter with a broader, more rounded blade than I was used to dealing with. Gold inlaid the hilt and ran along the fuller at the centre of the blade. It was clearly purely ceremonial, but I would keep it sharp to honour the warrior Set was.
Looking over the items in my arms, I knew there was one last chance to turn back. I could abandon everything and run out of the shop. The Morrigan would open her great dusty wings and take me back to the familiar battlefield.
Closing my eyes, I rolled the garnet tumble stone around my palm and knew there was no going back.
I was a Set witch now.
20
The items for my Set altar sat in a plain brown paper bag in the middle of the coffee table, waiting. When I got back to my apartment, I’d set up my altar and claim Set as my god.
“You mean I’ll claim you.”
“Nope. I meant what I thought.”
Set and I were going to have a fun relationship.
The Morrigan had been easy. She didn’t want more to do with her witches than was absolutely necessary. When she was ready to demand something of you, there’d be a flutter of her feathers or a caw, and the message would come through. Set seemed far more hands on.
My phone rang. Gideon’s name flashed on the screen, and I debated for two rings whether to answer.
“Hey.”
“We have an interview arranged with Zoe’s sister.”
“The woman from earlier?”
“No. The woman who attacked you.”
My chest tightened. I’d never dealt with the victims of the crimes I put an end to. That was always left to far more diplomatic souls. I’d never had to look into the face of the victims’ family and give them polite fictions about what had happened to their loved one. It was something I’d been grateful for.
“Where and when?”
“I’m picking you up in ten minutes. I wanted to make sure you weren’t in the bath or something.”
How very thoughtful of him.
“I’ll see you down in the lobby.”
There was a satisfaction to hanging around in the fancy lobby where everyone could see me and feel the burning shame on my behalf. I shouldn’t have been there, and that made it so much more fun.
“HER NAME’S TALI. SHE’S a solitary witch like her sister was. It looks like Zoe was a healer witch under Apollo. Her sister’s with Artemis. We don’t have much more than that right now.”
It was somehow more tragic that the witch had been a healer. They were gentle souls and often protected by their fellow witches. She’d been let down by everyone around her.
“Tali knows we’re coming?”
“She does. She was happy to have someone finally look into her sister’s disappearance.”
Gideon stopped the car in front of a neat little suburban home. It blended in with those around it. The white siding was pristine, along with the bland black car and tidy lawn. It even came with a little white picket fence. You couldn’t imagine much of anything interesting happening there, let alone something as bloody as a witch possession.
I walked at Gideon’s side along the narrow path up to the white front door. This was completely out of my comfort zone. I had no idea how to handle a grieving sister, and Artemis witches came in many stripes. As was the way with the more complicated gods, they often gifted their witches with a particular facet of their magic.
A pretty young blonde woman opened the door. She kept her eyes down and stepped aside, allowing us into her home. The walls were adorned with nature photography depicting bears, wolves, cougars, and more out in their natural environments.
“Lady Artemis made me a protector of the wild,” Tali said in a soft voice.
We sat down at the small round table in the heart of the comfortable kitchen. Tali sat opposite us and poured out steaming black tea. There was a quiet strength to her. She sat tall while keeping her eyes down and her hands steady. Still, I saw the tears in the corners of her eyes and the downward tug to her mouth.
“Zoe was a beautiful soul. She was a healer with great potential. There was no one that she turned away. She worked with hunters, witches, whoever needed her.” Tali swallowed hard. “And then one day she vanished. We were close, we talked every day. She lived a few streets over, but we regularly met up for coffee and enjoyed movie nights.”
“I know this is difficult to talk about, but we need to know everything around her disappearance,” Gideon said gently.
“She was her normal vibrant bubbly self. There was someone new in her life, someone she said made her feel alive. There was an electricity about her the couple of days before she left. I thought that maybe she’d found someone really special,” Tali said before she sobbed.
I reached out and took her hands, a strange gesture that I’d seen other people make on TV.
“Do you know anything about this person?” I asked softly.
Tali shook her head.
“I know Zoe described him as beautiful. She said his soul was on fire and his smile lit up a room. That was all I could get from her. I didn’t want to push and seem like an overbearing sister. We lost our parents when hunters came for us. We started fresh here in Wolf Ridge when we were sixteen.”
‘Beautiful’ was a term that often described the fae. I gritted my teeth. This looked like another fae attack on the witches.
“Is there anything else at all you can remember? A place where she met this guy? A name?” Gideon pushed.
“No, nothing. I’m sorry. It was like she was living a dream whenever she talked about him. It was all pretty metaphors and nothing concrete. I should have known something was wrong. She was always a happy person, but this was something else. Did she suffer? I know there was dark magic involved, Zoe wouldn’t go anywhere near dark magic willingly. She was a healer, she lived to help people and work with the light.”
The tears were flowing freely down Zoe’s cheeks now and I was at a complete loss as to what to do. I wanted to help, but Morrigan witches weren’t big on displays of emotion.
“No. She went quickly,” I said.
It was a lie. She clearly suffered for a while before I met her, but I couldn’t tell Zoe that. No good came from adding to the poor woman’s pain.
21
The sky had opened, resulting in a downpour that dropped visibility down to arm’s length if you were lucky. We sat in traffic while we thought through this new information.
“It seems likely that this beautiful man lured her somewhere,” Gideon said.
“’Beautiful’ sounds like a fae.”
He pursed his lips.
“Fae aren’t capable of possession, though. They have many talents and magics, but possession isn’t one of them.”
“Can we be sure? They hide so much.”
Gideon drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, and we slipped back into our own thoughts. The rain pelted the car and slid down the windscreen, reducing the view to a blur of lights between the large patches of darkness. The music was moody, which fit the atmosphere in the car beautifully.
“So, what now?”
“We see if any of the others had any mention of a beautiful man in the lead up to their death.”
There was something satisfying about looking through paperwork for something like this. I enjoyed teasing apart the threads and figuring out the puzzle we were dealing with. It helped me keep some distance and stop myself from thinking too deeply on the pain and suffering involved.
Gideon stopped in front of my apartment building, and I found myself torn. On one hand, it was home. It didn’t much feel like it, but it was my little space that I had carved out for myself. On the other hand, it was a dismal little hole, and I was going to miss the luxurious hotel suite.
He got out of
the car first and stood by my door with his suit jacket held up to act as an umbrella. The gesture was incredibly sweet. Grabbing my paper bag of trinkets, I stepped out into the rain. My boots sprang a leak, and my toes were immediately swimming in icy cold water.
We ran to the front door of the building, which Gideon insisted on holding open for me. His magic played seductively along my skin and made sweet promises that were very tempting to take him up on. We rode the elevator up to my measly little apartment, and I wanted to hide it. To send him away to his world of luxury so he didn’t have to see my scruffy little place. Of course, he’d seen it before and had been a complete gentleman, but it felt different now I knew how he lived.
I opened the brand new door that I noted had a core of steel to make it far stronger should the hunters return. Walking inside, I saw that Gideon had taken the time to add in some soft furnishings.
“You really didn’t have to...”
He shrugged and tucked his hands in the pockets of his pants.
“I saw no reason for you to go without a little comfort.”
Opening the fridge, I found it packed with high quality foods from my favourite cheeses through to nice meats and fruit juices. Now he was just spoiling me.
“We’ll speak first thing in the morning. Try and get some sleep.”
He pulled me into his arms and brushed his lips behind my ear, forming goosebumps in his wake. A delightful shiver ran down my spine, and I instinctively held him close as I returned the gesture. He froze as his magic thrummed against me in an intense driving beat. It would have been so easy to continue.
Stepping back, he gave me a warm smile.
“If you need anything, just call. Any time. Day or night.”
Of course he was a complete gentleman. Part of me wished he wasn’t, but I was happy to have been given the opportunity to step back and think. He wasn’t putting any pressure on me.
