Dangerous Hexes

by A. L. Tyler

  “It’s not too late,” she said through gritted teeth. “Let me go, and we can still do this together. We can take down Alex. We can free your father. I will help you to give the Bleak exactly what they deserve for what they did to us and everyone else.”

  I looked down at her. She was desperate.

  “Everything you’ve ever wanted, Jette. I can walk through walls to free him. Neither of us has to be alone anymore, and you can see your father again.”

  I closed my eyes. My heart ached.

  The forest floor bit back as I buried my hand in the dirt, buffering the concussive force I used to knock Millie unconscious.

  I pulled my jacket around my shoulders, relaxing into the familiar warmth.

  Millie’s phone rang. I jumped like a snake was hiding in my pocket before pulling it out.

  Unknown number.

  My blood ran cold. “Hello?”

  He didn’t say anything. His breathing was enough to send goosebumps shooting down my neck. The line went dead, but I knew it was him.

  I dialed Nick.

  Chapter 34

  CHARLENE STOOD AT THE front of the break room, her bright yellow dress clashing marvelously with her red nails and pink lipstick as she led a round of “For She’s a Jolly Good Fellow”. Marge stood next to her, not making eye contact with anyone as she clutched a root beer float in a plastic cup.

  She waited for Charlene, and the minimal sarcastic clapping afterward, to finish. “Thanks, Charlene...”

  Marge tried to leave the impromptu stage, but Charlene threw an arm around her shoulders. “On this day, we celebrate Marge finally—finally—getting a damn raise after more than a decade on the job.”

  Marge took a long drink of her float.

  “Honey, you’ve deserved this for a long time.”

  Marge nodded, finally looking up at me and the collection of officer colleagues waiting to dive in to the celebratory cupcakes laid out on the counter. She patted Charlene on the shoulder. “I’ve never felt more appreciated. Or old. Thanks, everyone.”

  A light rumble of laughter rolled through the room and I smiled. Charlene grinned to herself and started to work the crowd.

  Marge walked over to me, grabbing a plastic spoon on the way and using it to fish a bite of ice cream from her drink. “I take it I’ll be seeing less of you now that you’ve got a new position under Nick.”

  I gave her a long side look. She smirked, mouth still full.

  She swallowed. “I mean, your new position working under Agent Warren.”

  “I won’t be around as much,” I crossed my arms. Keeping my job with the Department was going to be nearly impossible with the patchy caseloads handlers worked. But I did like my job, and I didn’t intend to give it up completely. “But I’ll be around.”

  “I hope so.”

  I looked up at Sergeant Beech. He beamed at Marge, and then at me. “You’ve both done excellent work. Thank you for staying on, Janet. You and Jones make quite a team.”

  He offered his hand. I shook it, looking him in the eye. “Thank you, sir.”

  He pointed at me and then at Marge. “Drinks later, at Crazy A’s. Are you coming?”

  “Absolutely, Sergeant.” Marge nodded.

  I stayed at the party long enough to be seen and know that Marge was having a good time. Then I excused myself, because the Bleak waited for no one.

  When I got back to Nick’s apartment, he was waiting for me in the hallway.

  He blocked my path to his door, and I stared up at him, confident and unblinking.

  He crossed his arms. His voice was quiet. “You’re ready for this?”

  “I’m ready,” I said.

  He took a step back and reached for the door. I lunged, brushing up against him as I grabbed the door handle first.

  He smirked.

  I let myself in and walked over to the chair opposite Whent. He was as creepy and pale as ever.

  I dropped my bag and sat down, crossing my legs. “You have more questions.”

  “I do.” He had brought Judith Platt with him again, but it was disconcerting how reserved she was. Whent noticed my lingering gaze. “You’ll have to excuse my partner. She’s been feeling under the weather.” Whent smiled as Judith swallowed and brushed a hand up to tug at a lock of hair covering her neck. “Working with Warren, I’m sure you understand.”

  Nick circled close behind me. He didn’t like the insinuation.

  “I don’t suffer those kinds of ailments,” I replied. I should have tried harder to keep the attitude out of my voice.

  Whent turned his judgmental gaze on Nick. “Pity. You waste an opportunity, Warren.” He looked back to me, and I saw his eyes flash as the hypnosis overtook me. “An opportunity that we shall hope hasn’t come and gone. Why did you steal the cache of magic in the Jarvais Topaz, Ms. Driftwood?”

  “To keep it away from Alex Mordley,” I replied.

  He turned his head with a sly smile. “You wanted to keep it for yourself?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your father was taken from you at a young age, Ms. Driftwood?”

  My stomach turned to knots. He was going to ask. “Yes.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “Did it upset you?”

  “Yes,” I said quietly.

  Whent leaned in. Nick took a step closer to me.

  “You would like to see your father free again, wouldn’t you?” Whent’s eyes held a terrifying focus, like I was an ant beneath a magnifying glass.

  The word came slowly from my mouth. “Yes.”

  “I fail to see what this has to do with her loyalty or the Topaz,” Nick growled. “Move on, Whent.”

  Whent didn’t respond to him, but he did give him a long, lingering look before fixing his eyes on me again. “Ms. Driftwood, do you want to break your father out of his prison?”

  I closed my eyes, feeling the veil of doom fall on my shoulders like a blanket made of lead. My answer came as a croaked whisper.

  “I want him to be innocent.”

  The words shocked me. When I opened my eyes, Whent looked more surprised than I felt. Nick laid a hand on my shoulder, and I reached up to grab it.

  “Are we finished?” Nick asked humorlessly.

  Whent stood up. “I’ll deliver my formal findings within the week.”

  He moved toward the door. Judith followed. He stopped in the kitchen, turning back to me, and Judith swung her path wide to avoid standing in front of him.

  “Nothing will be final until my report is filed, Ms. Driftwood, but I was asked to deliver a privilege in the case of your preliminary approval.” He reached into his pocket and set a ring on the counter. “You’ve been granted transportation privileges. I was also asked to give the personal thanks of the Order for your services to the Roosts.” He looked at Nick as he set the ring down. Transportation privileges meant that I could go wherever magic could take me, whenever I needed to go—and I could take Nick with me. Very few were granted that privilege, but George Roost had paid my way. “Congratulations.”

  Nick went over and picked up the ring. He tossed it to me and I caught it. A square-cut yellow and purple ametrine was set into a heavy copper ring. The archaic runes tracking my destinations wrapped around the band inside and out. Its notes played slow and low, like a piano’s keys tapped almost at random. I slipped it into my jacket pocket.

  “You had quite a windfall, Warren.”

  I looked back at Whent. Nick widened his stance and set his shoulders, turning his back to me. “Excuse me?”

  “Go wait in the car, Judith.”

  She looked only too pleased to be excused from the apartment.

  Whent crossed his arms and smiled darkly at Nick. “Vampires don’t usually get assigned partners, let alone one with actual ability to assist a handler. My sources tell me you have access to her at all hours, too. I assume she’s seeing to your needs. What does that much power taste like?”

  “You’re d
one here. Get out.”

  Whent shifted to the side. His hypnotic gaze gripped me again. “Or perhaps you haven’t tried it yet. She seems to like you enough. Would she give herself willingly...?”

  Nick put himself between us again, and I caught the words on the tip of my tongue. I turned toward the windows, gripping the arms of my chair.

  “Out!” Nick growled low.

  Whent’s voice was so quiet I almost lost his words. “Until next time, Warren.”

  The door shut. I wiped my sweaty palms on my jeans before glancing back over my shoulder.

  Nick hung back in the kitchen. He avoided my gaze and turned toward the refrigerator.

  But the question had been asked, and however quietly, I felt a compulsion to answer it. I stared at the floor.

  “I would do it. If you really needed me to, I would do it.”

  Gentleman that he was, Nick pretended he didn’t hear. “Ametrine stone. George must have put in a very good word for you.”

  I smiled weakly. “For both of us, I suspect. Daywalkers aren’t allowed to have nice things, though. That ring is half yours.”

  He raised an eyebrow at me. “You’d better not let them hear that attitude, Driftwood. They’ll take it back.”

  He walked back over, taking the chair opposite me and looking contemplative. “How did you manage to lie to him?”

  “Lie?”

  “You said you don’t want to free your father.” He lowered his chin, eyes dark beneath his brow. “We both know—”

  “I meant what I said.” It hardly surprised me that he knew. Nick was good at his job, after all.

  “You meant it.”

  I nodded, taking a deep breath. “No more secrets. I still want to get him out. I just want to do it the right way.”

  He leaned back, arching his fingers. Then he got up, grabbing his jacket from the hook by the door. “We should celebrate.”

  “Celebrate? What?”

  His eyes were playful. “Your official declaration. Now I won’t have to kill you someday.”

  I rolled my eyes, but smiled all the same.

  “Let’s go somewhere. Anywhere. Use the ring.”

  I stood up and pulled it from my pocket. “I don’t actually know how.”

  Nick gestured me over. He took the ring and put it on my finger. “I use a spell, but I suspect it’s a matter of willing it for born witches.” He stood behind me, using his hand to hold mine out in front of us, fingers splayed open. He guided my hand to draw a small circle. “Like this. Just think of the place you want to go. Anywhere you want, as long as it isn’t forbidden by the Bleak.”

  Anywhere. I felt like I’d been reborn. The old Jette, she wanted things so black and white that it was hard for me to believe I had ever been that person. She believed in secret ramblings of old men and feeling guilty for souls already long lost. Where did one go to mark an occasion like this?

  I smiled. I knew where I needed to be.

  Chapter 35

  THE WEATHER VANE WAS gone. The new family had repainted the old shutters and put a vegetable garden in front of the house. Children’s toys and a bike littered the crushed shell path that led up to the porch.

  It looked like a nice place.

  “This is the house where you grew up,” Nick said in surprise.

  Somehow, it warmed my heart to think of another family living there. They were filling that house with joy, and while I never would have believed it before, I thought it might be enough to fill the void that place had left in my soul.

  That was the porch the agent had left me on the day they’d taken my father away. It was covered in potted flowers and small, sandy shoes now.

  “This is where it started,” I said. “It looks a lot smaller than I remember it.”

  I stared up at the house. Then I realized how creepy I was probably being, because I hadn’t lived there in going on a decade. I smiled sheepishly and nodded toward the rear of the house. Nick followed me down toward the water.

  Children were laughing and running along the beach. A guy was flying a big blue box kite, and an older couple sat in folding chairs reading books. The wind tugged at my hair and I looked down the long shore to the dock in the distance.

  Gods. It was all still there.

  The gray-brown water tumbled against the sand and I turned back to Nick, shoving my hands in my pockets. He was watching me.

  Trying to divine my thoughts.

  “I always thought I might want to live here again someday,” I said.

  Nick took a step forward, shrugging. “You still could. You’ve got a transport ring.”

  I breathed in the salty air. For a moment, I was tempted. I could find my own little house on the shore, maybe somewhere with a lighthouse on the horizon.

  “No,” I said, turning back to Nick. “This is someone else’s home now. It’s a nice place to visit, but I live in Sargasso. For now, at least.”

  “I find it hard to believe that you like Sargasso more than this,” Nick said.

  “I have a job,” I said definitively. “And a cat. It would be unfair to uproot Bobby right after he settled in.”

  We stared out at the endlessly smooth horizon where the sea met the sky.

  “Bobby’s a much better name for that cat.”

  “Don’t rub it in.”

  Nick nodded. He hesitated, and then didn’t speak.

  I looked up at him, suspicious.

  “I’m going out of town for a while,” he said.

  His careful tone made me turn to face him frankly. “How long is a while? You’re leaving me?”

  “Just a couple of weeks,” he clarified.

  I shrugged. I didn’t see what the big deal was. “Okay.”

  “I’m taking a personal trip,” he said. “A former client invited me to a birthday party. He’s wealthy, and he’s holding his get-together on a private island.” He hesitated again. “He offered that I could bring a guest. Would you like to come with me?”

  “Oh.” I brushed my hair away from my face. My mind raced. “I know I said I didn’t want to be alone after the thing with Millie, because of Alex, but I didn’t mean to crash your vacation.”

  Nick’s hesitation evaporated as he held my gaze and raised an eyebrow. “I’m not asking because there’s a potential hit out on you. I’m not even asking you as a partner. I’m asking as a friend. More than a friend. Potentially.”

  I lowered my chin. “And now you’re making it awkward.”

  He cocked his head, taking a slow breath and nodding. “I like transparency in these situations. Honesty, as Angel calls it.”

  “This is a very weird way to ask someone out.”

  “Like you have any frame of reference,” he said with a smirk. “I did my homework.”

  “That’s not helping your case.”

  Nick turned back to the horizon, still smirking. He waited.

  I continued to face him, thinking. I’d spent so many years intently focused on something outside of myself. I told myself that I didn’t want relationships, because they got in the way. I didn’t want to hurt people when I went down as a criminal.

  But that was the old me.

  “Yes.” I shoved my hands back in my pockets. “Yes, thank you. I would love to go.”

  We both stared out at the water. In the distance, a large cargo ship sat on the ocean.

  “Is this trip a single room situation, or...?”

  “Now who’s making it awkward? Separate rooms, of course. I don’t want a repeat of the last hotel.”

  Nick cast me a long look. His uncertain frown made me wonder if what we were doing—or going to do—was really wise.

  He turned back to the house, clearing his throat. “We should go. Before they find out you’re here and infer something that isn’t true.”

  He started back for the privacy of the side yard. I followed quickly in his footsteps, wondering how so much transparency had left our working relationship as clear as mud.

  As we passed by t
he back yard, we walked by a flower bed. When I was a child, we planted sunflowers in it, and they grew so tall that they could be seen from the beach.

  They could be seen in pictures taken from the beach. Like the one Robert mentioned where I was building sandcastles.

  There’s a flower bed in the back yard, and you must never dig it up.

  Five minutes, and things were already more complicated than I cared to admit.

  There’s a box buried there. You can’t open it.

  Nick looked back at me as we stopped in the solitude of the side yard, hidden from view by several large smoke bushes. This time, when he stood behind me and guided my hand, the feel of him next to me was different. The sound of his wards, and the smell of his aftershave and the brush of his jacket against my side drew me in. It meant something.

  He was so close. If I turned my head just a little, we would be an inch away from kissing and wherever that left us. My heart started to race.

  Nick moved his hand away, stopping when he detected the change in my pulse. “Jette?”

  “It’s nothing,” I said with an embarrassed smile. “I’m fine.”

  His fingers returned, lingering on mine.

  I liked it. It was less complicated when I stood with him, and all I had to do was leave my nagging doubts behind.

  He guided my gesture as the spell built, we stepped back into the living room in his apartment, and I left the past behind me.

  For now, at least.

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  About the Author

  I GREW UP IN BROOMFIELD, Colorado, reading and creating art. (But mostly reading.) I am a second generation trekkie, a fan of obscure anime and most science fiction and fantasy on television today, and I have dressed up to attend the conventions. I proudly have a time turner and a tribble sitting next to the VHS copies of Star Wars on my shelf at home—still seeking a sonic screwdriver to add to the mix.

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