Midnight Curse (Disrupted Magic Book 1)

by Melissa F. Olson

  Katia just glared at us some more. It was a pretty good glare, and if she were capable of standing or even sitting up by herself, I might have been a little scared of her. “Come on,” Jesse urged. “If you really care about this guy, how could it hurt to prove that he didn’t pimp out our friend?”

  “Oskar was turned at around age thirty-five,” she said stiffly. “This was in the late 1930s. I have seen an old passport; I know this to be true.” She held up Molly’s necklace. “Your girl was already free by then. I doubt they even knew each other.” She gave us a look of great triumph and tossed the medallion at me. Well, she tried to toss it at me. She was so weak that it went about as far as her own chest.

  “Then how come you have the same necklace?” Jesse asked.

  She twitched her shoulders in a shrug-like manner. “They are similar, yes. But not the same. Mine was never a coin.” She hesitated for just a second, then picked up her own necklace. “It is spelled so it cannot be removed, but you are a disruptor, yes?” She looked at me.

  I nodded. I hadn’t felt a tiny spell short out when we’d first met Katia, but it was the middle of a gunfight. “No active magic around me,” I said.

  “Then here, look.” She tried to lift it over her head, but I had to help her get it free. When I got it untangled from her hair and sat back she had the oddest look on her face, a combination of fear, vulnerability, and jubilation. I handed it to Jesse, who held up both necklaces, comparing them. Sure enough, Katia’s pendant was smooth on both sides, except for a single inscribed date: February 8th, 1997.

  “Why does he make you wear these?” Jesse asked. “Just to identify you as his?”

  She bristled a little, but answered him. “All the medallions are poured from the same vein of gold. Oskar has a gold coin from it, too. There is a trades witch who can use the connection to find all of us.”

  So it was a tracking device that the wearer couldn’t remove themselves. Smart. I would have shorted out the removal spell, but not the tracker. That kind of like-for-like spell wouldn’t require active magic, so being near a null would only negate it until the necklace moved out of my radius.

  “Wait,” Jesse said. “If that’s true, why hasn’t Oskar already come for you here?”

  Oh. Shit.

  But Katia just twitched her shoulders in a tired parody of a shrug. “Most likely, he could not find a trades witch here who could help him. We do not have witch connections in Los Angeles yet, and he keeps his coin on him at all times. When he awoke at sunset and I had not yet returned, he would have needed to fly someone here to find me.”

  “Or,” I said, “he decided to go after Molly instead of trying to rescue you. He abandoned you, Katia.”

  She gave me an impatient look. “He is not my husband, my boyfriend. To him, I am a useful tool. He will recover me when he is able.”

  Jesse and I locked eyes. “Talk to you in the hall for a second?” I asked. He nodded, and I stuffed Katia’s necklace into the pocket of my top. As long as it was close to me, no witch would be able to use it to find us.

  There was nothing in the room that Katia could use as a weapon, but I didn’t want to take any chances. “Shadow,” I said, and the bargest’s eyes snapped to me. “Watch and defend.” Her massive hindquarters rose as she padded over to Katia, sitting down with about a foot between her front paws and the witch’s cot. Shadow bared her teeth, and Katia instinctively shrunk back on the cot, just a tiny bit. Her eyes were wide. “If I were you,” I advised, “I wouldn’t move.”

  We left the cell and went into the kitchen, just a few feet away. I didn’t think there was anything Katia could do magically to a bargest, but I expanded my radius, just in case.

  Jesse closed the door to the kitchen, and we said at more or less the same time, “We need to move her.”

  “Jinx,” I said smugly. “I prefer my Coke diet.”

  Jesse opened the fridge, right behind me, and handed me a can before pulling out another for himself. We both needed the caffeine.

  “So we move her,” Jesse said, “but where? There aren’t a whole lot of places where we can hold someone against their will.”

  True. I considered that for a moment. “Unless it’s not against her will.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Interesting. Do you have a plan for getting her to defect to Team Scarlett?”

  “No,” I admitted. “I was really just thinking out loud. But I’m super glad that name is catching on.” He held up his can in a toast.

  “Anyway,” I went on, “she said herself that they’re not involved romantically. If she doesn’t love him, we’ve got to be able to offer her a better deal than she’s getting from Count Oskar.”

  “Unless she’s just evil,” he pointed out. “Maybe she’s really into kidnapping and pimping strangers. Lex aside, aren’t all boundary witches supposed to be evil?”

  I raised an eyebrow. “You mean like how all Mexicans are lazy and all Asians are bad drivers?”

  “Hmm. Good point.”

  “I suppose it’s possible that she’s full dark side, but then why wouldn’t Oskar have told her his reasons for going after Molly?”

  “She could be lying about that,” he reminded me.

  “True . . . but I don’t know. I guess Katia just seems more pragmatic. Like working for Oskar is the only survival option she thinks she has. So how about we give her a better one?”

  “Hmm.” He took a sip of the soda, and said, “What if we offered her a lot of money? Dashiell has plenty, and it doesn’t look like Katia’s exactly rolling in it. Those clothes maybe came from Target, and she looks like she cut her hair herself.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Okay, Snob McDouchery. If this were a human with human problems, maybe money would fix them. But there’s a reason why Katia has stayed as long as she has, and it’s obviously not the great pay. He’s offered her something she can’t find anywhere else. Unless . . .” I trailed off, thinking.

  Jesse checked his watch. “If you’ve got an idea, now’s the time,” he said. “Every minute we stay here is another minute that Oskar could be getting closer.”

  “Okay.” I went to the fridge and got out a bottle of water, which we keep on hand for guests. I grabbed a beef stick and my own drink, too. Then, hands full, I headed for the kitchen door. “Come on,” I said over my shoulder. “Follow my lead, okay?”

  We went back into the little cell, where neither Katia nor Shadow seemed to have moved. “Shadow, relax,” I said, and tossed her the beef stick. The bargest snatched it out of the air greedily, her tail wagging. Jesse and Katia both jumped at the sound of her teeth snapping together, which never failed to amuse me. “Good girl.”

  I held up the Arrowhead water in front of Katia’s face so she could see that the seal was unbroken. Then I twisted off the cap and handed it to her, backing away to give her space. She shot me a confused look. “I didn’t poison it,” I promised her. “And I figure you must be thirsty.”

  Her face and body language were wary, but she carefully raised her head and shoulders, tilting to the side so she could take a sip of the water. A little bit dripped onto the sheet. “Let me guess,” she said when she’d finished. “This is where you do the good cop thing, yes? Water, maybe some food, and you hope I’ll spill my guts?”

  “Nah. I mean, if you want to spill your guts, that’s cool, but I thought we could just chat for a minute. Not about Oskar,” I added quickly. “I don’t know much about boundary magic, is all.”

  Her eyes narrowed just a tiny bit. She hadn’t expected me to sound so friendly about it. Most people in the Old World hate boundary witches, especially all other types of witches. The way Kirsten tells it, boundary witches were responsible for a decent chunk of the Inquisition. That still didn’t make them inherently evil.

  “Jesse knows a little more, though,” I went on, pointing my soda in his direction. “He’s friends with a super powerful boundary witch.”

  Katia snorted so hard that Shadow’s ears pricked up suspicio
usly. I kept my face absolutely even, and after a moment Katia’s expression settled into skepticism. “Sure he is,” she said sarcastically, eyeing Jesse. “This human is what, a catalog model? And he knows a boundary witch. The rarest of all witch breeds.”

  “Hey,” I protested on Jesse’s behalf. “That’s not nice. He could definitely go runway.”

  Jesse shot me a look that said we don’t have time for dicking around, Scarlett. Okay, that was fair. “Anyway, he knows a null,” I said, pointing at myself. “Jesse’s pretty connected. Right?” I looked at him.

  Jesse, who had probably figured out where I was going with this, nodded. “She lives in Colorado,” he said to Katia. “I’ve known her about . . . mmm . . . four years? Five? Funny thing, though, she hasn’t aged a bit.”

  Katia’s jaw clenched, so subtly that I probably would have missed the reaction if I hadn’t been watching for it. She was fighting an internal battle, wanting to ask a dozen questions, but also not wanting to give us anything we could use against her. “There have been rumors,” she said finally, grudgingly, “of a power rising in Colorado. But you may have heard those same rumors. This means nothing.”

  It was too late. I’d seen the hope in her eyes, and I knew I was right. Katia was working for Oskar because she didn’t have anyone else. No family, no other boundary witches. I could understand that. I had, after all, worked for Olivia for a long time. I put down my soda and stood up. “Let’s go for a ride,” I said to both of them. To Katia, I added, “and on the way, Jesse’s going to make a phone call.”

  Katia’s expression was reluctant, but we didn’t give her much of a choice. Jesse picked up one end of the cot and I hefted the other. It was just narrow enough to make it through the doorway. Shadow walked just behind us, growling a little at Katia.

  At the van, I opened the back doors and we loaded the cot straight in, urine bag and everything. Katia didn’t protest, but her eyes rolled around wildly, watching for one of us to pull out a gun or a machete or something. I had a couple of bungee cords in the back, and I used them to secure the head side of the cot to the back of the driver’s seat, so at least she wouldn’t be sliding around back there.

  Jesse got behind the wheel, and I rode sideways in the passenger seat so I could keep an eye on her, but I didn’t really think she would try anything. She was too weak, for one thing, and there was also a hundred and eighty pounds of twitchy bargest drooling about fourteen inches away from her lap.

  Before we pulled out of the driveway, Jesse called Lex and explained the situation. I wanted to tell him to make sure Lex knew we hadn’t given Katia any private information or anything, because I was deeply afraid of Lex, but I managed to bite my tongue.

  The Colorado witch readily agreed to talk to Katia. Jesse passed her the phone—not on Bluetooth or speaker, which I think got him points from our hostage. I told him to head north on PCH, and the van started to move.

  For a moment, Katia held the phone like she was expecting it to explode, but after a few seconds, she sort of curled her body toward the window and spoke quickly in a low tone, asking questions. The first few were about boundary magic—making sure Lex was who she said she was. After that, though, there was a lot of listening. I heard Oskar’s name and a weird phrase in Latin. And then there was more listening. I was occupied for a few minutes with giving Jesse directions, and when I glanced back again, Katia was crying.

  Finally, she reached out—Shadow growled, and Katia moved more slowly—and handed me the phone. “She wants to talk to you,” Katia said, her voice shaky. If anything, she looked a little sicker. Had Lex threatened her? I could see why that would scare her. Hell, I’d been there.

  I held the phone to my ear. “Lex?”

  “I want her,” came the boundary witch’s brusque voice. For a moment I was preoccupied with relief that she didn’t seem mad at me.

  “What do you mean, you want her? We’re not choosing kickball teams.”

  “I mean,” Lex said with fake patience, “I’m getting in the car now, and I’m driving to you. When I leave, I want to bring Katia with me. Oskar has her passport, so she can’t fly.”

  “Oh. Um, that’s not my decision to make,” I said, glancing at Jesse. “She’s done some bad things here, Lex. I can’t guarantee she won’t need to face punishment for them.”

  “You’re going to have to,” Lex insisted, “if you want her to testify in your friend’s trial. Which she’s willing to do.”

  I rubbed my eyes with the heel of my hand. Was I willing to let Katia get away with her part in this? She’d helped set up Molly. At the same time, she was probably the only one who could save Molly.

  I didn’t like it, but I didn’t have a lot of choices, not if I wanted to save my friend. “Okay, look,” I said to Lex. “Let me get my cardinal vampire to call your cardinal vampire and approve all this, and you’ve got a deal. Does that sound fair?”

  Lex didn’t even pause. She’d expected me to say that. “Fair. And Scarlett?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Keep her safe, get her to me, and you and I are square. In fact, I’ll owe you one.” And she hung up the phone.

  I held it away from my ear so I could stare at it. Seriously? Just like that? I had been pretty sure that somewhere in Lex’s gloomy castle, which was where I figured she lived, was a dartboard that had my picture on it. And a lot of bullet holes driven through it.

  I turned in my seat to look at Katia. “She seems to really care about your well-being.”

  Katia’s tears had stopped, but she was still sniffling a little. “That is because,” she said with a tiny hiccup, “she is my niece.”

  Chapter 36

  See, it was good that Jesse was driving. I would probably have wrenched the steering wheel sideways so I could stare at her. As it was, the van stayed on the road, and Jesse and I both blurted “What?” at the same time. There was no mention of jinxes or Cokes.

  Katia was still sniffling, so I grabbed a few fast-food napkins out of the glove compartment and passed them back. Trying to keep my voice level, I said, “Can you please explain that?”

  “When I heard about boundary magic being used in the West,” she said, “I should have guessed that we were related. There are so few of us left. But I just never thought . . .” She took a moment to clear her throat, swiping at her eyes with the wadded-up napkins. I wanted to go back there and do it myself, so I could get her talking again, but I managed to wait.

  Finally she was ready to speak again. “In my family, I was the . . . mmm . . . ‘surprise’ baby. Change of life baby, it’s sometimes called here. I had a sister who was fifteen years older, Valerya. She was like a second mother to me.”

  Her voice was warm when she said that, but then it hardened. “When I was five and she was almost twenty, she was taken.”

  “By whom?” Jesse prompted. I could see him fighting the urge to turn around in his seat and look at her.

  “There is a group of boundary witches who have dedicated themselves to the cultivation of boundary magic,” Katia said darkly. “This group hunts down the few families who are still strong with boundary magic, and they take the young women. For . . . breeding purposes.” Her fists clenched, crumpling the napkins. “My parents knew of this group, but they thought we were well hidden in our little village. They were wrong.” She paused again, fidgeting. The story was hard for her.

  “When they came,” she went on, “my mother was too old to bear more children, but they took Valerya. They would have taken me too, most likely, but my father and I were on an overnight visit to my grandparents. When we returned the next morning, my sister was gone, and my mother had been killed trying to save her.” Her voice turned bitter. “They beat my brothers badly, but left them alive, in hopes they might grow up and have children with witchblood.”

  “Until a few minutes ago,” she continued, “I did not know what happened to Valerya. I did not think I ever would know. But Lex has informed me that they forced my sister to get pregn
ant, and she had twin girls. Valerya died in childbirth, and one sister died as an adult. Your friend Lex is the surviving twin.”

  Jesse and I exchanged a look. We knew the other part of the story. The two of us had stopped the nova werewolf who had killed Lex’s sister Samantha—just not soon enough. But I didn’t see how telling Katia I had incinerated her niece’s body would help at this point.

  “How did Lex know you were her aunt?” Jesse asked, quite reasonably.

  Katia gave us a tiny smile. “Valerya told her.”

  When I processed that, my mouth was suddenly dry. This is part of why the whole Old World still hates boundary witches. They creep everybody out. “What happened to you?” Jesse asked.

  “To make sure this group did not find me later, I was sent to the United States, to be adopted anonymously,” she said. She shifted on the cot, clearing her throat. When she spoke again, it was in a rush, like she was getting something out of the way. “The man who was supposed to be my new father was a pedophile. I will not talk about that time. All you need to know is that I ran away when I was thirteen, and Oskar found me a year later. You can probably figure out the rest.”

  “You worked for him,” I said quietly, “in exchange for him keeping you safe.”

  She nodded. “I am—I was—his daytime contact. I helped him manipulate the girls, it is true. But I helped them as well. By pressing them, I could make them forget any pain. And the men who visit vampire brothels, they like pain.” Her voice cracked, and she looked out the window for a few minutes. We were getting close to our destination.

  “You think Oskar is a monster, and you are correct,” she said softly, not turning to look at me. “But I did make it easier for them to survive. I did not feel like I was working for him. I felt like I was helping them.”

  Jesse and I were silent for another mile. The weight of this woman’s story had kind of crushed anything we could have said. Finally, Jesse gathered his thoughts enough to say, “One thing I still don’t understand. Oskar does this thing with the necklaces, as a way to take ownership of you. But Molly had a similar necklace, presumably from her maker.”