My Favorite Witch

by Lisa Plumley

  “Save the PR campaign for the media.” Annoyed, T.J. fixed Garmin with an impatient look. Then curiosity got the better of him. “It was one of the cusping witches who complained, wasn’t it?” He shook his head. “I knew it. Those tracing jobs were bureaucratic busywork. You should have sent a nice, compliant greenie on those grabs—someone with a clipboard and an IAB-approved bedside manner.”

  “A junior agent would not have succeeded.”

  T.J. scoffed.

  “You almost didn’t succeed.” Leo Garmin gave him a penetrating look. “You almost lost the Sterling witch during that storm of hers. You’re still pissed about it. I can tell.”

  “Oh yeah?” T.J. flipped him his middle finger. “How?”

  His boss only laughed. “You might not have had so much trouble if you hadn’t left your partner behind.” He gave an affable smile. “Why did you go for that snare unaided, Agent McAllister? You know it’s against procedure to work alone.”

  Jesus. Here it was. The real reason Garmin had sent those foragers after him. Garmin wanted to reprimand T.J., and he couldn’t wait a single goddamn day—until T.J.’s next scheduled shift at the IAB—to ream him. He knew how this had happened, too.

  “Freaking bug.” He’d thought he’d disabled it.

  “You did disable it.” With that annoying semiclairvoyance sometimes displayed by legacy witches who were in full command of their magical capacities, his boss raised his eyebrows. “You just didn’t disable it fast enough. Deuce Bailey might not be able, McAllister, but his capabilities as a turned human are valued by this agency. You should try trusting him sometime.”

  T.J. flexed his jaw. It ached where one of the foragers had punched him. Experimentally, he worked it from side to side.

  “Don’t make this into another Cobalt,” Garmin warned.

  Stubbornly, T.J. remained silent. He didn’t want to talk about Cobalt. That grab had gone disastrously wrong. At least his turned human partner hadn’t been implicated in the problems they’d encountered. Deuce’s record with the agency was clean.

  That mattered more to T.J. than covering his own ass. He could take the heat. He wasn’t as sure about Deuce’s capacities.

  Deuce was tough; there was no question about that. But he was still adjusting to being turned. Sometimes, when Deuce wasn’t putting on his aw-shucks, easygoing human act, he seemed downright dangerous—hell-bent on getting even with the magical world and the duplicitous witch who’d upended his life.

  “And don’t stonewall me either.” With a weary sigh, Garmin leaned back in his office chair. He gestured for T.J. to take a seat as well. T.J. refused. His boss seemed amused. “All right, have it your way. You know I have the authority to make you talk, if I decide it’s necessary to the organization.”

  “Yeah, thanks for the reminder.” T.J. frowned. He wiped a smear of blood from his forearm, then glanced up. “I’ll watch myself…in case you ever develop the nerve to try.”

  A long moment stretched between them, fraught with the tension that had existed ever since Garmin had recruited T.J. to the IAB…from a dank jail cell in the middle of the night.

  T.J. broke the silence first. “In the meantime, while we wait for you to grow a pair, try to keep your foragers in line.”

  He turned, stirring the air around him into restless currents, feeling more than ready to put this night behind him.

  His footsteps carried him silently across Garmin’s office, taking him past awards of merit, tokens of civic appreciation, and a row of confiscated elixir bottles that Garmin kept on display as reminders that disobedience would not be tolerated.

  It wasn’t the elixir bottles that spooked visitors as much as the former drug peddlers themselves, trapped in the bottles by a form of dark magic not many legacy witches knew.

  “Wait,” came his supervisor’s voice from behind him.

  Reluctantly, T.J. stopped. Fists clenched, he turned.

  Garmin glanced up from his coffee cup, his expression genial. “Fine. You’ve got it. I won’t send any more foragers.”

  Skeptically, T.J. raised his eyebrows.

  “I promise. Okay? But you’ll have to meet me halfway.”

  T.J. laughed. “With you, there’s always a catch.”

  “That’s why I’m the boss.” Garmin grinned. “Now that we have a deal…” He pinned T.J. with a look. “Explain your use of illegal bonding magic during the Sterling grab yesterday.”

  At first, T.J. was too shocked to react. By the time he’d recovered enough to enact a concealment spell, it was too late.

  His birthright mark already pulsed with guilty awareness.

  “It was a mistake.” He ignored the telltale warmth in his biceps. “I’ve taken measures to ensure it won’t happen again.”

  His supervisor nodded. “I appreciate your candor. However, that doesn’t change the fact that your actions were careless.”

  T.J. remained silent, knowing there was no point trying to figure out how Garmin had learned about his bonding magic or defending himself against an action he’d already taken. It was not the Patayan way. He’d examined his part in the situation, considered possible recovery scenarios, and acted on one. Period. The incident with his bonded witch was over with.

  As long as he stayed away from her.

  “Ancient magic—including bonding rituals—is banned for good reason,” Garmin went on. “By using prohibited magic, no matter your motive in doing so, you endangered yourself, your snare, your partner, and any vulnerable humans who were nearby.”

  “No one was nearby.” T.J. gritted his teeth. “My snare was safe, already in custody. Deuce was unaware of the situation until afterward. I was—” Most at risk, he started to say, then stopped himself. “I contained the situation. It’s done.”

  “Nevertheless, such recklessness is a warning sign.” Garmin appeared troubled. “It’s not what I’d expect from an agent of your experience and dedication. And it’s directly counter to our mission here at the IAB. Frankly, that’s what bothers me most. Have your loyalties to the agency changed, Agent McAllister?”

  “Have my—” T.J. broke off. “Screw you. I’m leaving.”

  “Is that a yes? Because these are dark times in Covenhaven. The Followers are rising in influence. Humans have died—”

  “Watch yourself. Henry Obijuwa was my friend.”

  “—and we can’t afford to take anything for granted.” Garmin pressed on relentlessly. “This ‘other’ mission of yours—”

  “Is none of your goddamn business.” Again, T.J. turned to leave. Light on his feet, he headed for the unpixilated door.

  Its knob came off in his hands. It melted away, falling to the carpet like the dried pods on the mesquite trees outside.

  “Oh come on.” T.J. smacked the door. It shuddered and turned even more opaque with self-protective magic. From the first, Garmin had been fond of sentient furnishings. Sometimes T.J. wondered if his supervisor’s attentive cradling chairs and solicitously self-moving tables were really transmogrified agents who had crossed him sometime during his rise at the IAB.

  “I wasn’t finished.” Garmin shrugged. “I have no choice but to put you on forced leave, Agent McAllister. You are stripped of your magic, forbidden to use it until further review.”

  “You can’t do that.” T.J. shoved the door. When it held steady, he turned to face his supervisor. “You wouldn’t.”

  “I just did. As of this moment, you are unlicensed.”

  Unlicensed. When word got out that he was stripped of magic, every miscreant he’d ever taken down for the IAB would want a piece of him. And he wouldn’t be able to legally defend himself, whether with Patayan skills or warlock defenses.

  Incredulously, T.J. stared at Garmin. Of everyone he knew, Garmin understood best how important the InterAllied Bureau was to him. He understood how the IAB had changed his life and pulled him from the shadows he’d fallen into. T.J. couldn’t afford to be cut loose from the agency’s discipline, its strictures…its
sense of good purpose. Especially now, in the wake of his unwanted bonding and all its temptations.

  Faced with this suspension, T.J.’s only choice would be to go against his better nature. To use magic without the IAB’s approval, as his Patayan instincts and his promise to his magus demanded. If he did that, he’d be one step away from giving in to his bonded witch, too, as his warlock instincts compelled him so strongly to do.

  Once he started rebelling, who knew where it would lead? Once he lost control, would he be able to find his way back?

  T.J. wasn’t sure. But he was sure that his instincts were not to be trusted. Not with innocents like Dayna Sterling, and not without the constraints he’d purposely leashed himself with.

  Somehow, he’d have to walk the line between illegally using magic…and surrendering to his compound nature completely.

  Unless he could change Garmin’s mind.

  “Christ, Leo.” T.J. forced a laugh. “I know you can be kind of an asshole these days, but come on. You know how important—”

  “Leave your talisman with me.”

  Disbelievingly, T.J. stared at Garmin’s outstretched palm. All at once, T.J.’s lanyarded silver talisman, identical to the one he’d snatched from the forager, felt like a dead weight around his neck. With a savage motion, he yanked it over his head.

  Or at least he tried to. Instead, it tangled with his leather-corded traditional Patayan amulets. The whole lot jerked against his skin, strangling him. A more fanciful warlock would have imagined they conspired to retain his magic for themselves.

  T.J. was more pragmatic than that.

  He freed his IAB talisman, then fisted it as he crossed Garmin’s office. With a wrenching motion, he released it. It fell to Garmin’s desk and landed beneath his uneasy gaze.

  The moment the separation was complete, a searing pain cut across T.J.’s chest. Caught by surprise, he doubled over.

  “T.J.?” Garmin hurried to his side. “Hey, what’s the—”

  Racked with pain, T.J. muttered the most vicious swearword that came to mind. Then his brain fogged. His whole body shook. Trying to stop it, he braced his hands on his thighs and panted.

  Nothing helped. He hadn’t experienced anything like this since he was a teenager—since the days after his parents had been killed. Was this part of his bond? If so, the legends had given him a truly fucked-up view of the wonder of being bonded.

  Maybe this was what he got for rejecting his bond.

  Or maybe this was just a brutal reminder—a reminder of how dangerous it would be to give over to his shadowed nature again.

  Dimly he heard Garmin pick up his phone. In a voice filled with concern, his supervisor called for emergency aid.

  Muffled voices came over the phone’s speaker, washing over T.J. in garbled waves. The whole world was coming in waves now, searing waves that threatened to tear him apart from the inside.

  “I don’t care what else is going on in the building,” Garmin snapped, swearing at the unlucky IAB agent on the other end of the line. “I want medical help in here right now.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Safely inside the apartment she’d been assigned by the IAB, Dayna threw down her backpack. “Honey? I’m home.”

  Nothing but silence met her greeting. With a shrug, she flicked on another light, examining the small space as she walked to the nearest of the two bedrooms. Apparently her roomies and their IAB chaperone were still no-shows. Everything appeared exactly as she’d left it before heading to cusping-witch class tonight.

  The sparsely furnished living room was still dominated by a huge flat-screen TV and a videogame console. In the kitchen, the refrigerator hummed, busily chilling the frozen burritos and lonely carton of vanilla soymilk inside it. Dayna remembered the box of Cap’n Crunch she’d spotted in the cupboards and promised herself a bowl after she took care of one minor detail.

  Her scorched jeans.

  The smell of burned fabric trailed her steps. With a disgusted sigh, Dayna reached the bedroom and peeled off her now-soggy jeans. Relieved, she threw them on the bed. They landed in an incongruously mocking pose, both legs akimbo as though ready to take flight. She was fortunate the situation hadn’t been worse.

  Clad now in her T-shirt and underwear, she lifted one bare leg. She peered cautiously at her shin. It looked fine. She checked the other leg. It appeared unharmed, too.

  She couldn’t say the same thing for her ego. At the sight of those flames, she’d thoroughly freaked out, flapping her arms in a mindless panic. The one thing Dayna feared most was fire. As a witch, she’d been born with an inherent dread of flames. Even Professor Reynolds, who should have been implacable in the face of any emergency, had turned white-faced and immobile when he’d glimpsed the sparks shooting up from her jeans hems.

  The witch who’d come to her rescue had, ironically, been Camille. Sweet, gentle, PTO-loving Camille was a dynamo in a crisis. Dayna’s former best friend had cut loose with a five-gallon bucket’s worth of water. Then with a conjured fire extinguisher. Then with a series of cold towels, wrung out in the privacy of the Covenhaven Academy’s girls’ bathroom and applied with placid thoroughness to forestall serious burns.

  “At least they weren’t brand-new jeans!” she’d assured Dayna with one of her Pollyanna smiles. “That’s a plus, right?”

  “Right,” Dayna had replied with a grimace. “I’m so lucky.”

  It had taken all her best assurances to convince Camille that she was really unhurt. It had taken all her courage to return to that classroom afterward. And it had leached away all her pride to endure Francesca Woodberry’s mocking whispers to her cadre of trendy cronies throughout the rest of the class.

  “I don’t know how she managed to set herself on fire,” the snobby witch had confided in a stage whisper to her friends, Lily and Sumner. “It was just…poof! Up in flames. I think she did it on purpose. Some people just can’t get enough attention, and when you’re not naturally gifted with magic…”

  Cutting short the humiliating memory, Dayna glanced down at her wrecked jeans. It occurred to her that she could probably fix them…and redeem herself in the process. Surely it wouldn’t be too difficult to conjure some new denim or enchant the existing fibers to weave a repair job on the burned fabric.

  Newly encouraged by the fact that she’d thought of a magical remedy at all, she sucked in a deep breath. She held out her hands—not because it would help, necessarily, but because it made her feel slightly more witchy. She focused on the blackened fabric, then closed her eyes and recited an approximate spell.

  The air went still—but crackly, the way it did before a thunderstorm. A whiff of sulfur drifted toward Dayna’s nostrils. Buoyed by that sign of progress, she repeated the spell.

  A sudden sighing sound made her snap open her eyes.

  Her formerly favorite jeans had dissolved on the bed.

  Which meant her spell hadn’t worked. Her ruined jeans weren’t repaired. And her magic was still useless.

  Dayna slumped. Even in private, her spells went awry. So much for the hope that it had only been the pressure that had made her hex boomerang onto her. But just when she was about to give up, the remnants of her jeans wavered. They lurched atop the coverlet, then split into hundreds of fluffy white pieces. In disbelief, Dayna identified them as…raw balls of cotton?

  Before she could congratulate herself on making partial progress, each piece popped. Or rather, each piece imploded. Shrunken but weirdly united, they levitated over the mattress, still roughly in the shape of a pair of jeans.

  Except they weren’t jeans anymore. They were seeds. Thousands of tiny brown seeds, all spinning in a vortex and getting faster all the time. The blowback from their spinning actually made her squint as her hair blew away from her face. A few of the seeds pinged outward. One caught her on the cheek.

  It stung. Dayna slapped her hand over the tiny wound, staring in bewilderment. The vortex of jeans seeds paused. They seemed to realize they’d found a
target. They spun faster.

  Too late, Dayna realized the truth: She’d created the world’s first killer pair of deconstructed jeans.

  Could she do nothing right? Shrieking, she covered her head with her arms as the jeans seeds revved up, obviously ready for a bigger attack. They were probably vitalized by her cowering, imbued—as all magical things were—with a bit of her emotions.

  They charged straight at her. Dayna ducked. They missed, whooshing past her head with an angry buzz.

  Whew. She was safe. The seeds were gone.

  Embarrassed to have recoiled from a bunch of tiny seeds, Dayna straightened. She would have liked to have been a little braver. Over these past few days, though, she’d used up a lot of her courage. Being dragged out of the research library by that scary tracer, causing that horrific rainstorm, finding herself in Covenhaven again, trying to practice magic at cusping-witch class…It was all too much for one witch to take, at least without losing a few degrees of cool.

  Down the hall, a scraping sound caught her attention. The seeds! They were still enchanted. She couldn’t let them get away.

  Turning, Dayna stared down the apartment’s short hallway. The jeans seeds careened down the center, then coalesced. They struck the brief ninety-degree turn that marked the bathroom and appeared to stop in blind confusion. This was her chance.

  Shouting out a new spell, Dayna chased them. The seeds appeared to gather strength from her incantation. They formed a new volcano of cottonseeds and veered sideways, hitting the wall. The paint scraped from it in wispy shards. Yikes.

  “Stop!” Dayna shouted. “Stop!”

  All she’d wanted to do was salvage her pride. Not sandblast the walls, peel the hallway paint, or give herself an unwanted microdermabrasion treatment. She doubted this was what Cosmo had in mind when it recommended regular exfoliation to its readers.

  She raised her arms and chanted a different spell. The seeds merged, ballooned upward, then hovered. As a unit, they swiveled. They split again and tried once more. Chilled, Dayna recognized their behavior. They were searching. For her.