Deadline

by Jennifer Blackstream

  I opened my eyes to see Peasblossom’s face pinched with worry. I forced a smile even as the shivers turned violent, making the world around me jerk up and down. “I-I’m ok-k-kay. T-t-told you I needed to p-p-practice without the w-words and m-m-m-m-materials.”

  With a grunt of effort, I lunged for the shore. Peasblossom stayed on top of my head, her calm a testament to her faith that I could make it out of the freezing river.

  “Shouldn’t have let your guard down.” She sniffed. “Lazy witching, that’s what that was.”

  It took me three tries to make my hand hold the edge of the river bank, and another two tries to hold myself out of the water enough to unzip the black nylon pouch around my waist. I held it out of the water as much as possible while I clung to the bank and dug around for a potion. “There sh-sh-shouldn’t have been one in the r-r-river, let alone t-two.”

  “Live and learn,” Peasblossom said, climbing up the wet tendrils of my hair. “If you’re lucky.”

  A handful of mint leaves, two grocery store receipts, and a pack of gum met my shaking hand before my fingers brushed the potion bottle I needed. The glass warmed my palm, making the water around me even colder by comparison. I pulled it out and popped the cork to take a drink. The orange peels mixed with chamomile soothed my throat as I swallowed, the magic of the potion flowing through my body. The antidote would neutralize the venom, but I was still bleeding, still needed a healing potion. First, get out of the river.

  “I’ll get it. You just hold on.” Peasblossom dove into the pouch in a zip of pink light, vanishing into the enchanted, bottomless depths.

  “H-hand me a h-hammer, w-would you?” I called out.

  After a few loud I-hope-you-appreciate-my-effort grunts, the handle of a hammer poked out of the pouch. I grabbed it, then set to work prying the claw open. It wasn’t easy with my arms shaking worse by the second, but my efforts had the added benefit of warming my muscles and getting my blood flowing again. By the time my ankle was free, I had the energy I needed to haul myself onto the bank.

  When I finally got the trunk of my body out of the water, an evil voice told me to rest, just lie on the bank and catch my breath. I’d killed not one, but two eurypterids, and survived neurotoxic venom, a vicious leg wound, and freezing to death in an icy river. Surely I deserved just a tiny rest. Just a little…

  I didn’t even realize I’d closed my eyes, until Peasblossom stepped on my throat.

  The pressure hit the cut on my windpipe from earlier, and a few drops of blood oozed down my throat. I gagged and blinked, the bright morning sky stabbing at my eyeballs. “What—”

  Peasblossom didn’t wait for me to finish. The pop of a cork was the only warning I had before the potion hit the back of my tongue. I swallowed quickly, automatically. The flavor of cherry blossom and elm bark coated my taste buds, and I let out a relieved breath as the dull ache in my thigh eased away. The next time I swallowed, there was no blood.

  “You’ll need to make more potions. You’ve been using too many of them this past week.”

  “Goddess, you’re feeling judgy today,” I grumbled. “I’ve been working overtime this past week. I’m tired.”

  Peasblossom snorted. “Lazy. Witching.”

  I opened my mouth to argue, then closed it. The pixie was right. Drawing magic from inside myself as I needed it required concentration and effort. Casting spells wasn’t unlike flexing a muscle, and like using a muscle, you had to keep working it to make it stronger. Of course, no matter how strong that muscle got, there came a point when exhaustion and exertion took their toll. I had enough magic to cast spells indefinitely, but casting after a certain point was like firing a gun while riding a Jet Ski through rough surf. Dangerous for everyone. Potions, on the other hand, could be made ahead of time and took only a few seconds to gulp down when the need arose. Easy peasy.

  Before I could defend myself, a new voice came from the path weaving through the forest around the park.

  “Mother Renard?”

  “Blood and bones,” I cursed. I shot to my feet, swaying with a brief bout of vertigo. I fumbled in the pouch for the wand I always kept there. Chewing gum, cough medicine, a single sock. “Come on, come on.”

  “You are so disorganized.” Peasblossom sighed.

  I ignored her, raising a slim wand of pale ash in triumph. With a so-there lift of my chin at the pixie, I flicked the wand toward my head.

  “Prestidigitation.” The spell broke over me in a rainbow of colors, washing the bloodstains and the river water from my clothes and hair, and blessedly lifting the eurypterid blood and guts from my leggings. They were still torn in the thigh where the stinger had stabbed me, and punctured at the ankle where it’d grabbed me with its claw, but there was no time for a mending spell. I looked at the rank remains of the first eurypterid and the grisly ice cube I’d made of the second. “Bugger.”

  Leaves crunched a few yards away, and a surge of adrenaline spun me around. I pinned a smile to my face to greet the approaching young couple, both wearing vibrant blue and green running clothes. The man was a stranger to me, but I recognized the girl. “Good morning, Amy. Please, call me Shade.”

  “Shade,” Amy said. The sun struck her brown hair, turning it almost blonde as it swung back and forth in its ponytail. “Are you all right? I—” Suddenly her gaze landed on the creature at my feet. Her eyes bugged out of her head and her jaw dropped. “Oh my God.”

  The brown-haired man at her side wrinkled his nose at the shattered eurypterid. “It’s amazing what some people throw in the woods. Like nature is their own personal garbage can. Is that a vacuum cleaner?” His hair was cut short at the sides and back, but the bangs were left long so they swung forward as he angled his head to see over the bank, looking directly at the second eurypterid-turned-monster-cube. “Man, they really unloaded all their trash. Is that thing shrink-wrapped?”

  “You’re not from Dresden, are you?” I mused.

  In my experience, humans fell into three categories. Those who believed in magic with all their hearts, those who were open to the idea, but hadn’t witnessed anything to cement the belief, and those who rejected the idea of magic so completely that they could come face to face with a eurypterid and see…well, a discarded vacuum cleaner. Or shrink-wrapped garbage.

  Amy had just moved from “magic is possible” to “oh, my God, magic is real.” The way she looked at me now made me think we had an interesting conversation in our future. When my mentor, Mother Hazel, had assigned me to Dresden, she’d been upfront about telling everyone I was a witch. But it was one thing for Amy to think I was a witch as in a New Age practitioner of Wicca, and quite another for her to realize Mother Hazel might have meant something completely different.

  “Amy, who’s your friend?” I prompted.

  “This is…Jeff. He’s…my boyfriend.” Amy gaped from one monster to the other. “What…?”

  I gave her a sympathetic pat on the shoulder. “It’s upsetting, I know. Perhaps you could come by later this week and we’ll have a chat over a nice cup of tea?” I turned to Jeff. “It’s a shame, isn’t it? Terrible how some people treat the earth, just tossing their garbage wherever they please.”

  “Yes it is. I love your accent, by the way. Where are you from?”

  If he couldn’t see the mess before him for the dead monsters they were, then he certainly wasn’t ready for the real answer to that question. I smiled. “London.”

  “I thought so.”

  Peasblossom snorted from her hiding place under my hair. I cleared my throat and planted my hands on my hips. “Well, I’ll call someone and have this hauled away, I suppose. I don’t want to keep you standing here in the cold. It’s important to keep the blood pumping when you take a constitutional in February.”

  Jeff smiled at me again and clapped his gloved hands together. “An excellent point. We should keep moving. It was nice to meet you, Shade.”

  “The pleasure was mine. Amy, perhaps I’ll see you later?”
>
  Amy blinked, still staring at the dead eurypterid as Jeff pulled her to continue their walk. When they were out of sight, I braced my foot on the monster’s remains and shoved it into the water. There were plenty of fish who would appreciate a free meal.

  Waste not.

  I scooped up my dagger and the stinger and tucked it into my pouch, already thinking of what I could use it for. A dagger, sure, but perhaps something more creative. A cup. If I removed the venom…

  “You’ll be late for your next appointment,” Peasblossom reminded me.

  I swore and ran to my car, creative thought process severed. “Bryan! I forgot.”

  “That’s why you have me.” Peasblossom grunted and tightened her grip on my hair. “Slow down, I’m falling off!”

  “You fly!”

  She sniffed at me as I climbed into the car and slammed the door behind me. “I know I can fly. But why expend unnecessary calories when you’re right there?” She tucked herself into the neck of my shirt, cuddling close to my skin to get warm. “I swear, sometimes I don’t think you appreciate my company.”

  I ignored her, all my attention on getting home as quickly as possible.

  It was never a good idea to be late to a meeting with the FBI.

  Chapter 2

  Dresden was only one square mile total, so it took less than two minutes to get back to my house. I pulled into the garage and headed inside, making a beeline for the refrigerator.

  “Didn’t you say you weren’t drinking soda anymore?”

  I popped the top on the can of Coke and took a defiant swig, more than a little satisfied at the squeak of dismay that came from my judgmental familiar as she wavered on her perch atop my head. “I earned this. I killed a eurypterid before breakfast. Two eurypterids. And I almost died. Not to mention, Mrs. Harvesty kept me on the phone for ten minutes talking about that cat.”

  “I hate cats.” Peasblossom clung to my head like a living barrette. “Nasty beasties, always try to eat me like I’m a flying snack. Barbaric.”

  “I love cats. I just don’t want to drop everything because Mrs. Harvesty claims her furry little child is having an emotional crisis.”

  “Emotional crisis?”

  “The kitten is refusing to come out of his mummy’s boot.” I held a sip of Coke in my mouth for a moment as if I were sampling fine wine.

  Peasblossom snickered. “Puss in Boots.”

  I snorted, then swore as carbonated soda shot up my nose, burning like fire. Peasblossom careened off my head in a fit of mad giggles as I ran to the stove and the faded blue hand towel hanging there.

  “Blood and bones, that burns,” I wheezed, squeezing my eyes shut as I pressed the towel to my nose.

  More laughter made me open my eyes in time to watch Peasblossom fly in a semi-drunken bobbing path to land on the counter beside the stove. Tears of mirth glittered in her pink eyes, matching the iridescent sparkles on her insect-like wings. “Serves you right for drinking a second soda.”

  I glared at her for a few minutes as I waited for the burning to stop. When I’d recovered, I replaced the wet towel with a clean one and deposited the soda-and-snot-spotted cloth in the hamper. “If you’re quite finished, perhaps you could run me through today’s to-do list? I want to make sure I didn’t forget anything.”

  Still giggling, Peasblossom flew to the large desk in the dining room and picked up a sheet of notebook paper tucked beside the laptop. “Settle dispute between the hamadryads over who’s the eldest,” she read.

  “Done. Once they realized the only way to age a tree is to lop off a piece of it, they were happy to call it a draw.”

  “Find out if a goblin ate the Roberts’ dog.”

  “No. Sgt. Pepper was hiding under the neighbor’s house again. Mrs. Barns just didn’t want to admit it because she didn’t want to hear Mr. Roberts accuse her of trying to steal his dog for the tenth time. Sgt. Pepper went home when he got hungry.”

  Peasblossom peered at me over the top of the list. “Find an office.”

  I took a long swig of the soda, avoiding eye contact. “Move it to tomorrow.”

  “Again,” Peasblossom said under her breath. She put the paper down and hefted a miniature pen she’d taken from a child’s art kit. Sticking out her tongue in concentration, she made a notation on the to-do list.

  Aluminum groaned as I tightened my grip. “I will do it.”

  “Of course you will. Because you’re going to be a real detective.”

  “Private investigator. And yes, I am.”

  “Mother Hazel won’t like it.”

  I clenched my teeth. No, my mentor wouldn’t like it. I could hear her voice now, telling me to leave the battling to the wizards—witches had more important things to do.

  Like play psychiatrist to a cat.

  I strode over to the desk, put the can of soda down with a determined thunk, then snatched up a stack of Post-its and a black fine-point marker. Peasblossom watched as I scrawled, “Find an office today,” and underlined today three times. I stuck the reminder to the frame of my computer screen.

  “You used a hot-pink Post-it. You must be serious now.”

  I ignored her sarcasm. I would find an office tomorrow. It was time.

  I didn’t know how long I’d been Mother Hazel’s apprentice. Her house existed betwixt and between, both here and there. Time didn’t know what to do with it. I’d never kept a calendar before moving here.

  Dresden—current population one thousand and some change—had always been a favorite place for Mother Hazel to take us, a fact that, in retrospect, should have warned me of her intentions. We’d often left the odd sanctuary of her house to visit the village, and I’d been there when she gifted the first tomato seeds to the town’s founder. I’d greeted the first of the Longabergers, who later made the village famous for their wicker baskets, and I’d watched Dresden along with the rest of the world say goodbye to horse and buggies and radios the size of furniture, and hello to automobiles and smart phones. I’d known this town long before I lived here. Long before I knew it would become my responsibility.

  “I tried it her way. She wanted me to be the village witch, and for three years, I’ve been exactly that. I’ve assisted with child rearing. I’ve provided medical care. I’ve helped with crops, protected my people from Otherworldly threats. I’ve been everything and anything my people need me to be.”

  Peasblossom landed on my shoulder. “And you’ve done an incredible job. But you still need this, this private investigator dream. Why?”

  To the best of my knowledge, there were no witches in my family. When whatever force had imbued me with my magic had done so—and they hadn’t held back—they’d left me drunk on power I had no control over, or understanding of. For years I’d been “sick” or “crazy.” I hadn’t learned the truth of what I was until after I’d made some terrible choices.

  “I have to balance the scales,” I said quietly.

  A tiny pink hand stroked my cheek. “The only person who hasn’t forgiven you yet is you.”

  I studied the tab on my soda, plucking at it with my short fingernail. “Then I’m doing it for me. This is what I need to…to…”

  Tears blurred my vision, catching me by surprise. Memories battered against the psychic wall I’d erected to protect myself, memories I’d promised myself I’d examine later, after I’d become the sort of person who could face them.

  I stared at the Post-it. “I’ve had such a late start.”

  “A very late start,” the pixie agreed. “But you’re a witch. You have centuries of life ahead of you.” She paused. “And, maybe, behind you. I wonder if Mother Hazel knows how old you are.”

  “I'd rather not know,” I muttered, heading to my bedroom for a change of clothes. “Bad enough she treats me like a teenager. If I find out I’m two hundred years old and still being treated like I’m sixteen, I’ll need a hundred-year lie-down.”

  I found a clean pair of leggings and a fresh shirt, and was just putti
ng on my boots when I heard a knock at the door. Peasblossom tucked herself under my hair, and I waited for her to get settled before going to greet my guest.

  Bryan Foundling stood on my doorstep, his five-foot-eleven frame forcing me to crane my neck to peer up at him from my five foot three. He’d combed his brown hair, and his light beard and mustache were trimmed until they were little more than a pale shadow over his jaw line and around his mouth. He wore dark blue jeans and a midnight-blue shirt, both of which were neatly pressed. A black leather jacket offered protection from the stiff February wind.

  “Hi, Bryan. Please, come in.” I stepped back and gestured for him to enter.

  “Your first real case,” Peasblossom whispered.

  I snuffed out the hint of excitement that rose at Peasblossom’s comment. Bryan worked at the FBI, yes, but he wasn’t an agent. His mom had mentioned something about working security, checking IDs at the door and such. Still…

  I led Bryan to the center of the living room. Like everyone who came into my house, it took Bryan a while to examine his surroundings, the little furrow between his eyebrows deepening as he did so. He took in the small windows in my living room, the bare beige walls, the single gray couch with its little side table. Then he swept his gaze over the kitchen-dining room area that held a desk where the table should be. It was a violent contrast to my mentor’s house, with its herb-covered walls and magic-item-strewn tables and chairs. There was scarcely room to breathe in Mother Hazel’s house for all the things she kept around, and by comparison, my house was downright Spartan.

  Exactly the way I wanted it.

  “Doesn’t look like a witch’s house, does it?”

  I’d meant to put him at ease, but he jerked like I’d smacked him. “No. I mean, yes.” He scratched his head. “Er, I mean—”

  “Bryan, please relax.” I offered a reassuring smile. “It’s not what the fairy tales led you to expect, but I promise, I’m a proper witch. And I can help you with…?”

  His eye twitched at the words “proper witch,” and I thought he would look down, stare at my magenta and black spattered leggings—the bane of my mentor’s existence. I wasn’t sure what bothered Mother Hazel more, the brightly colored leggings or the fuzzy, multi-hued, pink-faux-fur-lined slipper-boots. Bryan earned a lot of Brownie points when he nodded without commenting on either.