With the lead gone, my magic trickled back and so did my anger toward Nicholas. He’d taken away the only thing I had to buy more time. I gave him the finger and a few choice words. “Whose fucking side are you on anyway?” I gestured toward his uncle. “His?”
I felt him open his third eye, the witch's eye—and only eye he could fully open for that matter considering the swelling in his face—and tap into the connection he'd forged between us when he’d healed me on the side of the road. Through that bond he made his intentions and feelings known and left me shaken to my core.
Nicholas wasn't the enemy. That position was held solely by Harold Winslow. The expelled candidate gave me my magic back, yes, but to prevent further torture, and it was a slow process. My lead exposure had reached levels high enough to drain most of my energy. It would take hours to regain my full strength, in which time we could work together to escape.
It wasn't much of a plan, more like the beginnings of one. But it was all we had, and it would have to do.
Chapter Twenty-Two
"THIS IS GOING TO HURT me more than it's going to hurt you." People say that a lot, and it's hardly ever true. Unfortunately for me, this time it was.
Reversing a ward is rarely easy and never painless. Especially for the Warder.
We pulled the magic we'd imbued in the skin of another witch out. Sounds simple enough, and in my weakened state, I could use all of the magic I could get. Except it didn't work that way. The magic coursed through our bodies like a lightning strike, and instead of fueling the Warder, it returned to the earth. The Warder essentially became a grounding rod for the magic and was often left weaker than when they started.
In my condition, that meant death was a real possibility. Even without Winslow's proverbial gun to my head, I would have approached the reversal process with caution, taking my time so I walked away intact.
Karen sat in front of me facing the opposite direction. Straddling the seat, she wrapped one arm around the back of the chair and held on tight while she extended her other arm toward me. The sleeve of her dress had been sliced from wrist to shoulder to expose her tattoo. Less than a week had passed since I’d warded the phoenix on her arm, and it hadn't finished healing.
"Okay, I was wrong. This is going to hurt. A lot." I checked the needles and fired up the machine again, the familiar hum of my liner a balm to my frazzled nerves.
Karen sucked in a breath, the air hissing across her teeth, as I retraced my first line. Wards healed the same way as the tattoos I did at the shop. There was no magic trick to heal it any faster than a Mundane. Not if you wanted it to stick. Karen was still in the scabbing stage, and while she'd taken great care of her piece, running a liner over the entire tattoo was going to be painful.
Not to brag or anything, but Karen's ward was a thing of beauty. Quite possibly my best work. Given her particular brand of magic, I’d wanted to make sure the ward took. And it certainly had. Like a parasite in a host, my magic had burrowed deep inside her, latching itself to anything resembling an Angel of Mercy. Underneath the binding, Karen's death magic still flowed, but she couldn't feel it, couldn't tap it. All that remained of her was a small amount of hearth magic. I'd left her weaker than a newborn kitchen witch.
Under different circumstances—and a different brand of magic—had I bound someone that tightly, a reversal would have been mandatory under the Warder's code. Some within the Magistrate, like Winslow for example, would use what I'd done to Karen Brown as proof that Warders needed to be eradicated. And then others, like myself, would say Karen's type of magic was precisely why you needed them.
It was an age-old philosophical debate that was not going to be solved while under threat of death in Winslow's home office.
The Councilman grew impatient, but he'd played his ace by confirming I'd be in a lead cell after I finished my job. His threats were empty, and I wasn't in a hurry. Winslow's henchman, on the other hand, apparently believed anyone would do anything with the right motivation. My life experience to date proved that theory to be true, and had my magical stores been full, I may have broken and worked faster when he began beating Nicholas.
"Enough." I set my liner down on the tray, and Karen slumped against the back of the chair. "Under normal circumstances, your torture techniques might actually work, but you poisoned me with lead, remember? This is as good as it gets, folks."
"You expect me to just take the word of a Warder?" Winslow was brimming with disgust. “Especially an outlier like yourself?"
"Hey, I pay my tithes just like everybody else." Being called an outlier wasn't an insult if you wanted to be one.
And I did.
When I was a kid in foster care, I sometimes dreamed of a life where I was a candidate, but then Grim found me and I learned what I was and what a Warder could do. I never wanted any part of the Magistrate after that.
The feeling obviously wasn't mutual. At least not for Winslow.
"Mr. Winslow decides when it's been enough." The guard turned his attention from making mincemeat out of Nicholas and marched over to me. With a fistful of my hair, he yanked my head back. "Now get back to work, bitch."
For once, I was all too happy to do as I was told. I picked up the liner and pressed down on the foot pedal. The guard still held my hair in his fist, tugging harder. His knuckles pressed into my scalp until I pressed the needles against Karen's skin. My magic came to life as I went to work with the liner on Karen. Weak as it was, it produced enough of a current to run through my body and into the guard's before discharging into the ground.
He dropped to the floor and clutched his chest.
"What did you do?" Winslow hopped up from his seat to get a better look at his guard. He took two steps out from behind his desk before the logical part of his brain got a handle on his rage. Rather than risk ending up like his henchman, Winslow pushed a button on the intercom sitting on his desk. "Bring him in."
"I thought we just established physical contact was a bad idea." I didn't bother looking up at him, just kept retracing my lines along the outline of the phoenix, all the while cursing the size of the piece Karen had selected for her ward. I imagined her thoughts on the subject were similar. "I'm doing the best that I can."
I wasn't, of course, but Winslow didn't need to know that. More of my magic returned with each stroke of the liner. At some point, my body's survival instinct kicked in, siphoning enough of the magic running from the ward through me to bolster my strength. It shouldn't have been possible, but I wasn't complaining.
Karen whimpered, the pain probably becoming too much, and rested her head against the back of the chair. Her muscles were tense, but without circumstances improving, I didn't expect her to relax. It made the reversal that much more uncomfortable, but apart from whispering false reassurances, there wasn't anything I could do.
Around my fourth or fifth lie that it would all be over soon and we were almost done, the door to Winslow's office opened, and another of his security guards joined the party. It wasn't until he cleared the doorway that I noticed he was dragging something behind him. My mind raced with possibilities, none of them good.
The guard dropped a large black sack next to Winslow's desk before retrieving his associate still lying on the floor in the throes of residual aftershocks from my magic. A sliver of hope ignited. We were weak, beaten down, exhausted, one of us barely conscious, but we still outnumbered Winslow three to one.
I'd take those odds. They were the best we'd had yet.
My brain scrambled to come up with a successful plan. My magic was less than half its usual capacity. We were a little more than a third of the way done with Karen's reversal. Nicholas, the smartest of the three of us, was blacking in and out. That limited our options. Overwhelmed by our list of handicaps, I opted instead for trying a list of our strengths in the hopes that an idea would strike.
My list was entirely too short.
Whatever was inside the bag beside Winslow's desk started to stir. Fear and hope foug
ht for dominance within me. Was another opportunity for distraction and potential delay presenting itself? Was this something Karen, Nicholas, and I could use to our advantage?
The Councilman noticed and responded to the movement with a hard kick. The pointed tip of his leather loafer made impact with a meaty thud, eliciting a muffled groan in response. It wasn't a ‘what’ inside the black burlap bag but a ‘who.’ Realization dawned, pumping the brakes on any plans of escape. Normally one would need more than a brief and barely audible cry of pain to recognize someone but I knew. Without a shadow of a doubt, I knew who was inside that bag.
Lars.
Winslow smiled but he didn't stop there. The horror of knowing Lars hadn't died but instead had been overpowered, beaten, and stuffed inside a large burlap sack because of me wasn't enough. The Councilman turned to a display case on the wall filled with antique athames in varying sizes and styles. Opening its hinged glass cover, he removed one from the small hooks supporting it and gripped the pommel in his right hand.
My heart stopped. I was on the verge of passing out or throwing up all over Karen Brown. Neither were productive, but my body chose that moment to go to war with the rational part of my brain. I'd been wrong, foolish to assume Lars was dead. He'd been left to Winslow's men, suffering hours of torture because it hadn't occurred to me he’d survived.
Or that they'd taken him.
I should have used a scrying mirror. I should have asked Nicholas to help me with a tracking spell. There were a million things I should have done and didn't. Lars's death, presumed or not, took something from me. A part of me had died along with him. The sound of his voice, weak and filled with pain as it was, was enough to fill some of the cracks inside my shattered heart. He was alive. Lars was alive but entirely at Winslow's pleasure.
The Councilman drew the athame above his head, the fluorescent lighting glinting off the small double-edged blade. The small sword was intended for use in magical ceremony or spell work, but it was still a sword. I clamped a hand over my mouth to stop from crying out as Winslow slashed at the bag until Lars spilled out onto the floor. Beaten within an inch of his life, his face was swollen and bruised to the point I almost didn't recognize him.
The majority of his injuries looked hours old. They'd been interrogating him, and Lars hadn't given anything up. Rather than take us, Winslow was forced to wait for us to come to him. Not that it mattered. Either way, the Councilman got what he wanted.
"Is this motivation enough for you?" Winslow gripped Lars's face with one hand, tilting his head back and pressing the athame against his neck with the other. "I know all about you, Adeline Severance, and I know you're holding back. Finish the reversal. I'll spare your friend and tell you who you are. Perhaps the knowledge will comfort you in prison." Winslow's mouth turned up in a wicked grin. "For as long as your memory holds, anyway."
"Your word he lives." Painful decay and ultimately death weren't the best motivators, but Lars's survival was all Winslow needed to kick me into high gear. "Nicholas, too."
There was no need to argue for Karen's survival. She was the only one guaranteed to walk out of this nightmare alive.
Nicholas stirred from his spot on the floor, trying to sit up and failing. He needed the wall for support. "Del, no. Give him what he wants, and he'll still kill us. Just like he killed my father."
"That again?" Winslow rolled his eyes, chuckling at his nephew's expense. "I've moved past that. You should have done the same." It wasn't hard to pick up on the Councilman's double meaning. "Finish it, Adeline. No one has to die tonight. Not even you."
"Maybe not tonight, but I'll still die." So would everyone else. Eventually. The question was could I prevent that from happening in Winslow's office by unraveling my ward and surrendering myself to the Magistrate?
I wished more than anything the answer had been no.
Chapter Twenty-Three
KAREN BROWN MUST HAVE come to the same conclusion. While I spent precious seconds assessing the risks and rewards of giving Winslow what he wanted, the Angel of Mercy spent her time igniting a spark of witch fire. The tiny flame erupted, engulfing her chair before any of us realized what she'd done.
I kicked at the floor, trying to scoot my chair back and put distance between myself and Karen before the witch fire jumped its source and found other things in the room to burn. Like me, since I was the closest.
Winslow's shouts brought a handful of guards to his aid, all of them trying to extinguish the flames that swallowed Karen. She was braver than me, standing stoically on her makeshift pyre as she sacrificed herself for the rest of us, never crying out in pain or fear. I doubted my ability to do the same. Had I been willing to sacrifice myself for Lars or even Nicholas? Yes. But all of New England would have heard about it before the witch fire took me.
The Councilman and his men rushed to put out the flames. Swatting them with a heavy blanket, dousing Karen with saltwater, but the witch fire was out of control. The office and ultimately the Winslow family summer house would be engulfed.
Witch fire didn't discriminate. It consumed whatever its creator incorporated into its casting. Lars and I used it all the time in our security systems at various warding locations to remove evidence, but those had been very specific castings—contents, not structures.
Karen's witch fire was another animal altogether.
In her haste to cast the spell, she’d skipped the minor details like not burning anyone or anything other than herself. It had one purpose and one purpose only—consume everything and anything in its path.
Not that I blamed her under the circumstances, but eliminating Lars, Nicholas, and me from the equation would have been nice.
I scrambled to the couch, kicking at the leg my shackle was attached to until it broke away. The sofa hit the floor with a thud, but no one, not Winslow or his men, paid me any attention. Lars and Nicholas went unnoticed as well. Nothing mattered except saving Karen and Winslow's hopes of controlling her.
"Del?" Lars called my name in between fits of coughing.
"I'm here." I kept low to the floor to avoid as much of the smoke as possible as I crawled toward Lars. Nicholas met me at his side, the three of us huddled together as Karen's chanting picked up speed and the witch fire intensified.
I wanted to look away, to turn from the horror of her charred body, but I pulled my shirt up over my mouth and nose to filter the smoke and smell and forced myself to bear witness to her sacrifice. Rather than be held captive and forced to use her gifts to cause harm at Winslow's bidding, she’d reduced herself and her magic to a pile of ash.
The Magistrate had failed her. Our society had failed her. But worst of all, I’d failed her. My ward was meant to keep her and the rest of the magical community safe from the dangerous and deadly magic of an Angel of Mercy and it hadn't. The blame for Karen's demise could be laid at Winslow's feet, but I still felt responsible for the part I had to play in it. Had I turned her mother away, would she have been found? Would she be dead? I didn't know but the ‘what ifs’ would plague me forever. The sight of Karen Brown alight in witch fire would be a nightly feature in my dreams.
That was, of course, assuming we escaped Winslow's clutches and made it off the island alive.
Without the witch who’d called it to control it, the fire's intensity increased. The flames licked at every available surface. Including us. Nicholas, Lars, and I pressed ourselves against the smoldering floor which looked more like alligator skin than wooden planks. Smoke and ash filled our lungs while the heat blistered our skin. Winslow's men blocked the doorway as they continued to battle the flames—a battle they were losing.
There was shouting, people running, as chaos ensued and the men started to abandon their posts, refusing to die by witch fire for a man like Winslow.
“Where are going? It’s not all witch fire you fools.” He ordered them to stop, to continue to fight the flames. “Over there! Get some water. Idiots! I need to work the counter spell.” He pulled herbs and
stones out of his desk but it was too late. It had burned too long, taking on a life of its own after Karen's life ceased to fuel it. There was no stopping it. Winslow was left with no choice but to evacuate and cede the family home to the witch fire. He chased after his men, barking more orders and threats.
But not before he locked the door to his office, trapping us inside with the heart of the fire.
"Okay, boys, if either of you have an idea of how to get out of here, now's the time to share it." My great escape plan consisted of breaking the window, climbing out onto the porch, jumping off, and hoping we could still run afterward. "I gave you option A. An option B would be nice."
"If you add more oxygen to the natural fire, you'll turn this office into a crematorium." Lars pushed himself up on his knees, grappling for a surface that wasn't on fire to help support him as he tried to stand.
"You've lost a lot of blood and no doubt taken several blows to the head, so I'm going to let it slide that you missed the part where we already are in a crematorium." I crawled to the window.
"Good to see you still have your sarcasm in a crisis," Lars shot back.
"It's a defense mechanism." I shrugged and pushed up on the window sash. It was jammed shut.
Nicholas scrambled on hands and knees to the center of the room to Karen's ash pile. "I have an idea." He pricked the tip of his finger on an exposed nail from one of the warped floorboards.
"If it involves trying to raise Karen from the dead, I'm not sure we can be friends anymore."
Lars let out a burst of laugher, but it was cut short. Wincing, he wrapped an arm around his middle. "The Magistrate went after the Necromancers before the Warders. They've been extinct for centuries."
"Yeah, well, Warders are supposed to be all but extinct." I coughed several times to clear the smoke and ash from my throat. "I'm living, breathing proof the Magistrate makes mistakes. Now shut up and help me find something to break the window."
'Ink It Over: A Touch Of Ink Novel Page 15
