Badlands Witch: A Cormac and Amelia Story

by Carrie Vaughn

  In the middle of the day, when only her Subaru and another SUV were parked there, a tan CR-V pulled into the edge of the surveillance range. A woman got out, glanced around, and marched with purpose to Aubrey’s Subaru. Her features were obscured; she wore a coat and wide-brimmed hat even in the summer heat. But she was tall, svelte, and moved with confidence. Quickly, methodically, she popped the lock—she must have had some kind of tool to help her—and opened the driver’s side door.

  The woman reached in and slipped something into an envelope she’d had in the pocket of her coat. She didn’t waste any time looking around, just closed the car door and walked away. The whole thing took no more than ten or twenty seconds. If no one had had a reason to review the footage, she might never have been discovered.

  “What’s she doing?” Aubrey asked, leaning in, fascinated.

  “She’s taking a hair off the headrest,” Cormac said. And with that hair. . .it would be a powerful, complex spell, using a hair to form the basis of a disguise. But it would also be a really good disguise when it was done.

  Aubrey sat back in her chair, nonplussed. “A hair? That’s it? Why?” It wasn’t like she’d sabotaged the car or tried to steal artifacts. It must have seemed so harmless.

  “She’s a witch,” Cormac said simply.

  “Huh. Like, for real? Like eye of newt and magic wands and the rest?”

  “Yeah, afraid so.”

  He expected her to laugh, to express disbelief. A witch, for real? But she merely looked thoughtful. “And why me?”

  “Credibility. She came after me. You just happened to be someone around here I’d listen to, so she used you. Sorry you got wrapped up in it.”

  In the video, the woman looked around briefly before climbing back into her car. Cormac leaned in suddenly. He recognized her.

  “Can we freeze that, blow it up?” he asked, and Aubrey slid the computer mouse to him. He backed up the footage, zoomed in. She had on sunglasses. Her dark hair was in a braid. The features were fuzzy in the low-res footage, but there was something about the tilt of her head, the way she moved, and the bright red lipstick she wore. “I’ll be damned.”

  Amelia wanted to know how many people from his past might be holding grudges. He wasn’t expecting this one.

  “You know her?” Aubrey asked. “Who is she?”

  Maybe Cormac was wrong. This was a mistake. Maybe. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Is. . .is this going to be a problem?”

  For him or for her? Best she not get involved. “You see her around here again, call me.” He wrote his number on a notepad tucked under one of the stacks of paper.

  She never stopped with the skeptical sidewise glances, but she pinned the number to a nearby corkboard, next to diagrams of excavations and photos of broken pottery in dirt.

  She walked him back to the Jeep, maybe to make sure he really left. She also studied him in a way that seemed academic. What sort of sense would an archeologist make of his T-shirt and jacket, brown mustache, sunglasses, and constant frown?

  “What exactly is it you do, Mr. Bennett?”

  “Travel. Look out for things.” He’d never been able to explain what he did, not since his days of hunting vampires and werewolves and everything in between. He’d gotten in the habit of delivering the vague and ready answer.

  “Ah,” she said. Then put a thoughtful hand on her chin. “Would. . .you like to go get a cup of coffee or something? We don’t really have much here, but there’s a good diner back on the highway to Rapid City. I’d like to hear more about witches.” Her interest might have been merely academic.

  The archeologist was cute, under the dust. Round face, bright eyes. She probably had some great stories. Maybe some other time. . . He shook his head. “I don’t really have time right now. Maybe later.”

  She smiled wryly. “Good luck. If you find anything out about this impersonator, let me know.”

  “Sure.” He walked out, ready to follow the next lead.

  Driving away he thought: Amelia would have told him he should have gone for the coffee.

  Clearly, he’d left too many threads hanging after that job in Chicago.

  Lord Edgar hadn’t been the Master of Chicago. Chicago technically didn’t have a Master, as far as Cormac knew, though how the vampires themselves decided these things seemed arcane to him. But Lord Edgar aspired. What he wasn’t was discreet, and while running a protection racket to make money he’d been leaving bodies. Vampires usually policed their own, but Chicago didn’t have enough of a presence to manage it. That was exactly where folks like Cormac came in. Cormac had been hired to finish him by a local cop who knew and believed. He’d taken up a collection to pay Cormac.

  Isabel Durant had been the primary human servant of Lord Edgar. She called herself a courtesan, but really, she was a human servant, which meant fetching and carrying in daylight hours and serving as a food source. Vampires didn’t really need or want sex. For them, physical desire was tied up with drinking blood. So she could claim to be his beloved mistress and sex object all she wanted, and that might be what she got out of the relationship. But really, a human servant had more in common with livestock.

  Ten years ago, she’d been stunning. Model-beautiful, aristocratic features, impeccable taste, and a stately manner. A trophy a would-be Master vampire would keep hanging on his arm, another pretty thing to go with all his other pretty things. She had seemed to enjoy being kept. Maybe Edgar had even promised to turn her, after a suitable apprenticeship. Well, so much for that.

  Once he got rid of Edgar, Cormac had left her alone. She hadn’t been a threat. That’d teach him.

  Isabel Durant, from what Cormac knew of her, wasn’t a witch. So what was she doing taking hairs from other people’s cars? She’d either learned some witchcraft in the last ten years, or she’d hired someone. But why? If she’d wanted to leave him for dead she could have just shot him. She’d knocked him out, hadn’t robbed him, but Amelia was gone. No way Durant could know about Amelia to target her. Something wasn’t fitting together.

  If Durant had been learning magic or had hired a magician, he ought to be able to track that. However, this was Amelia’s area of expertise. She was much better at it than he was. He had learned from her by watching, but not enough for this.

  Some quick searching revealed that Durant had no internet footprint to speak of. She might have been savvy at keeping her information offline, or she might have been one of those fringe freaks so suspicious of technology they never left an imprint. Not surprising, hanging out with vampires. So how did he find her?

  He went back to Rapid City, forced himself to eat another burger, downed a large coffee, and sat in his Jeep to make another call.

  “Manitou Wishing Well, may I help you?” A kindly voice answered, which meant this was Judi. Her partner, Frida, was more brusque. They owned a souvenir shop in Manitou Springs that served as cover for more occult dealings. Judi also ran a ghost tour in the historical town. First time he’d met them, they spotted Amelia right off—Cormac had two auras, Frida insisted—and hadn’t batted an eye. He wondered what Frida would see in his aura now.

  “Judi? This is Cormac Bennett. I could use some help.”

  “Cormac, how nice to hear from you!” A muffled shifting sounded, as if she tilted away the phone and said over her shoulder, “It’s that tough fellow who knows Amelia Parker.”

  “What’s he want?” Frida muttered back.

  Judi came back on the line. “If I can help, I’ll certainly try.”

  “You ever hear of someone named Isabelle Durant?”

  “No, should I have?”

  “Just thought I’d try. I think she’s either working some bad magic herself or hiring someone to do it for her. I spotted her in the Rapid City, South Dakota area. You know any witches out here who might be casting spells to impersonate someone using their hair?”

  After a pause, Judi answered, her voice gone from cheerful to somber. “That’s some very unplea
sant magic.”

  “Yeah, it is. I’ve got a whole lot of unpleasant going on up here.”

  “I see.”

  “I know it’s a long shot but I thought you might know someone or have heard something, given your contacts.” Judi played the part of an unassuming dabbler, but she had serious chops. “I was hoping you could maybe ask around.”

  He heard whispering—the two women in a hushed conference. He waited patiently.

  Judi returned and asked, “Are you still there?” He murmured that he was. “Rapid City is it?” Yes. . . “You’ll want to talk Gregory at Tea on the Range, in Deadwood.” Tea on the Range? In Deadwood? Seriously? “I’m not saying he has anything to do with whatever trouble you’re mixed up in, he’s much too sensible for that. But if there’s something fishy going on, he might have caught the scent.”

  He wasn’t quite able to keep the skepticism out of his tone. “Okay. I appreciate the tip.”

  “I promise you, you won’t regret meeting him,” she said cheerfully.

  “So do you guys have an organization of unassuming shop owners who are also magicians, or what?”

  Judi deftly ignored him. “And how is Lady Amelia?”

  Cormac hesitated, frowning. He wished he knew. “That’s part of my problem right now. I’m not really sure.”

  “Oh, dear.” He could sense her worry. But then, he suspected Judi liked Amelia better than him.

  “If. . .if you hear anything from her, can you let me know?” That was a long shot. He wasn’t even sure how that would work. But he would try anything at this point. He’d even ask for help.

  “We certainly will. Good hunting.”

  “Thanks,” he said, clicking off before she made him explain any more of what was happening, or worse, deliver any soothing platitudes.

  Could Amelia be out there. . .somewhere? If so, would she be able to contact him? How? This was her area of expertise. He was at a loss.

  A great deal of magic was imagination. Visualization. Picturing what one wished to accomplish. Ritual helped focus that intention; ingredients and symbols with inherent properties could be manipulated. But before any ritual could be enacted, one must know what one wanted to accomplish, specifically and with confidence.

  Amelia still had that tool, at least. But so much of her thoughts were currently occupied in just keeping herself whole. She had gotten out of the practice of doing this.

  Back at the Colorado Territorial Correctional Facility, when her physical body had been hanged for murder, she had transferred her mind, her consciousness, into the very foundation of the place and had stayed there for almost a century. She had learned to travel through brick and stone, to possess in a minimal way some of the people there. With practice, she could see and hear and feel, at least enough to plan. Finally, she had met Cormac, and he had let her in. He understood something of what she was, and they had been able to work together. When he left the prison, he took her with him.

  Now, though, she didn’t even have those rudimentary abilities. She could sense no foundation, no pathways through stone or wood that could help her. There was no one here at all. Then, she had been disembodied. Here, she was entirely trapped.

  Her mind would split apart if she kept screaming. So she stopped.

  First, she must find some way, however small and slim, to reach the outside world. Second, she must discover what had happened to Cormac, learn if he was still alive and what had uprooted her.

  He could not be dead. She refused to believe it.

  More than a hundred years ago she had known she was dealing with dark, powerful, unpredictable magic. Had it been even more powerful than she thought? Had she somehow removed her own soul from the possibility of death? No, that wasn’t it. She still had form, boundaries. She was restricted in some physical, concrete way. Trapped. Her soul hadn’t been set loose—it had been put somewhere.

  The clay pot. This had happened when Cormac picked up the artifact. Oh. . .this made sense. This was the anchor holding her in place. With this image firmly in mind she was able to collect herself and identify the boundaries trapping her, like some genie in a bottle. Her mind was contained, which meant she could use her thoughts for other things.

  The woman, the archeologist, Aubrey Walker. She had not seemed magical to Amelia. She wore no charms or talismans and had seemed exactly as she appeared. But she had done this. She must have lured them out, set a trap—and captured Amelia.

  But how could the woman have known about Amelia? Nothing about this made sense.

  Unlike her time in the prison, she could not reach out to try to touch some nearby mind. To communicate, however little she was able. There was no one here, and the walls of this prison were secure.

  Damn. Damn damn damn.

  Impossible to tell how much time passed, without the body to mark heartbeats and breath, or eyes to watch sunlight come and go. She could count seconds ticking by, if she wanted to do nothing else. Amelia had spent years counting the seconds, in prison.

  She had survived prison once and would do so again.

  As it happened, she had not been abandoned here. She had been made captive. It stood to reason that a captor existed, and Amelia had only to wait for her captor to make itself known. And it came as lightning. A bolt of pain, scattering the self she had worked so hard to keep whole. The strike came once, a streak and flash launching through her prison. The second time it came, she was ready for it and was able to watch. The third time, she stood fast against it.

  This was magic, it had to be magic. All that was left of Amelia was her magic, the soul of her that made magic possible. This was not physical torture; this was designed to tear at her soul. By the same token, one could not bind a soul as one could bind a body. She could resist in ways a tortured body could not. Magic was thought, was visualization, so she made herself a wall, a shield between herself and the torture. A prison within the prison, in a sense, but this one she controlled. The soul-blast came again, and Amelia was insulated. It did not touch her. Then it struck again, even more fiercely. Her shield held. Three more times, faster and harder, as if whoever cast the bolts was growing frustrated. As if they tried to shake Amelia out of her defenses.

  Then the attacks paused. Amelia counted this as a victory and waited for the next assault. Her captor was active and meant to punish her. She would be ready.

  The next attack came as heat, a slow simmering, as if she sat in a cook pot waiting for the water to boil. Clumsy and inelegant. The same defenses she had used before held.

  Then came nightmares, but they were mere illusion, black swarms of demons, showers of knives, as insubstantial as she herself was. Amelia was able to step aside, detach herself from the onslaught directed at her, and observe.

  Then came the voice. You can’t resist you can’t stop me how are you doing this how are you surviving. . .

  So this was what it was like, having a voice in the back of one’s mind, nagging.

  Her captor expected some reaction that Amelia was not delivering. This gave her satisfaction. But she knew nothing of her captor’s purpose, why the torture was happening at all. Her attacker expected her to be helpless, to have no experience of magic, of the occult practices that were required to stage such immaterial tortures.

  If only Amelia could reach out, find some way to discover what was outside her prison. Think, she had to think. But she felt like she was a small fox hiding in an even smaller cave while the hounds bayed outside. If she moved, she was finished.

  No, she was bigger than this, better. Whoever her torturer was, was clumsy, unskilled, using brute force instead of precision. Amelia represented a hundred years of magical experience. This was a duel, and she had the advantage, because her attacker didn’t know she had initiated a battle. That the lioness was unchained. Amelia rolled up metaphorical sleeves and got to work.

  She imagined sending a message. She imagined all the ways she might scry, looking for such a message from the beyond, and then thought of the process in
reverse, sending instead of receiving. Trying to control which way the runes turned up or how the tea leaves scattered at the bottom of the cup. If she could not reach any nearby minds, could she reach out to magic itself? Magic trapped her here; she was half magic herself. Surely she could use that. She must.

  Trying anything was better than trying nothing. She would start with a simple S.O.S. A cry, I am here, I am still here. She did not know if Cormac was still alive to hear it. But they had other friends, other magicians who might be receptive to her call. If they heard her, they might be able to help.

  For now, she only wanted to be heard. S.O.S., S.O.S., S.O.S.

  Cormac expected, maybe he hoped for, a classic Hollywood image of an Old West town with dusty storefronts and maybe a tumbleweed or two rolling down the street. But he drove around the curve and into the steep, wooded gulch where the town lay, and his heart sank. Casinos, everywhere. Too many shiny new buildings, tour buses with tinted windows, dozens of weekend motorcyclists. Another mountain town turned into a tourist gambling center, just like Black Hawk back home. Place like this wouldn’t have enough magical savvy to fill a shoe. What was Judi thinking, sending him here?

  A billboard hung on a corner of a building: Witness the Thrill of a Main Street Shootout! Realistic! Fun! Family Approved! Live shows three times a day recreating the murder of Wild Bill Hickok. Well, there was that, he supposed.

  The address Judi gave him was at the end of the old main street, several blocks away from where the bulk of the casinos and T-shirt shops and crowds gathered. He parked, which was a challenge in itself in a town like this. He tried not to get annoyed. Trouble was, he’d started annoyed and was edging into rage.

  Even though he knew exactly where it was, he walked past the place three times before realizing he’d arrived. The storefront was unassuming, weathered brown, with a closed door and dusty windows. A small sign hung above the front door, words painted in a touristy old-timey font: Tea on the Range.

  The tourists walking up and down the sidewalk didn’t seem to notice it. No one went inside. Frowning, Cormac pulled open the door and entered.