No Rest for the Witches

by Karina Cooper

  “What the fuck was the point?”

  “West,” Silas snapped. He crossed the small bedroom, stepping over a small pile of stacked wooden boxes lacquered with pretty designs. Junk, all of it junk. And she was surrounded by it.

  She spun as his fingers closed on her shoulder, disengaging as smoothly as if he’d never even touched her. Her chest heaved with every breath, and with mounting horror, she realized the pounding rhythm of her own heart wasn’t all from anger. Her lungs constricted.

  Another panic attack. An echo of the hysteria she’d suffered before leaving the Mission. And she’d be damned if she lost her shit in front of either of them. Her chest closed, fighting for air.

  “No,” Joel said, shaking his head. “She’s right. I dropped the ball. Miss West, I’m so sorry. I met Mr. Clarke at the usual rendezvous. Everything seemed all right, but when we drove in—” His voice broke.

  “Take it easy,” Silas rumbled.

  “A big black van was parked right outside the condo,” Joel said tightly. “They forced Mrs. Clarke inside, and next thing I knew, Mr. Clarke jumped out. Charged them.”

  Oh, God. The idiot.

  “I didn’t check the alarm,” Joel said, tormented gaze settling on Naomi. Pleading with her. “I always check the alarm, but I . . . I didn’t, this time. I didn’t realize Mrs. Clarke had flipped it. I got careless.”

  Her shoulders rigid, she opened her mouth to let fly all the pent up anxiety, the panic she’d been carrying since Jessie had dropped into that vision; to sink her blame, unfair as she knew it was, into Joel’s grave, guilt-ridden face.

  And then hesitated.

  Shitfuck. What was this going to do?

  She closed her eyes, swallowed back every poisonous barb. “Get out,” she whispered.

  She didn’t dare look at Joel. Didn’t even look at Silas as she heard footsteps cross the room, navigating the pre-quake furniture and junk. The door creaked open, paused. “I’m sorry,” Joel whispered again, and the door closed.

  Her knees trembled. She fisted her hands tightly against her stomach.

  “What is wrong with you?”

  It didn’t surprise her that Silas didn’t go. She’d never been able to order him around, at least not outside the line of duty. Duty they didn’t have any more. She raked shaking fingers through her shaggy hair, yanking it back from her face. “I don’t know.”

  She opened her eyes as Silas caught her arm, glaring at it as if she could break his fingers with the force of her stare. He pulled her away from the bed and its sleeping occupant. “Bullshit.”

  She’d clearly touched a nerve. She jerked her arm free.

  He slashed a hand in the air, cutting her off. “Save the attitude, West. That man is a fucking civilian. What do you expect him to do against missionaries like you?”

  Nothing. She knew that. Every word slapped her in the face, and she half-turned to stare at Phin. To take him in, memorize every sleeping line of his at-ease body beneath the sheets.

  She’d known it would be like this going in. She’d warned Phin it would happen.

  They couldn’t work like this. Never seeing each other. Never waking up together. Only stealing moments.

  It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough for her, and it wasn’t fair to him.

  This time, he’d been near death. Next time, would it be his corpse that brought them together again?

  Or her own?

  “Have some common sense,” Silas growled. “Or do everyone a favor and stay out of the way.”

  The sheets rustled, and Phin’s breath eased out on a low, inquisitive sound. He was waking. Finally.

  Her chest squeezed. “Fine.”

  “Nai—”

  She brushed off his hand, turning for the door. “I’ll be out of your way,” she told him.

  “Nai, that’s not what you want.”

  “Yeah?” She glanced over her shoulder, met Silas’s confused study. Beyond him, Phin raised one hand to rub at his eyes. “You have no idea what I want,” she whispered, and slipped out before Phin completely woke.

  This wasn’t going to work, she told herself as tears burned in her eyes. She needed more.

  He deserved more.

  And she was, despite everything else she’d been through, still enough of a coward to avoid the subject entirely.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Jessie carried a tray full of mismatched glasses to the back yard patio, setting it down on the plastic table situated in the middle of the smooth, glassy surface. The volcanic rock decorated much of the crescent-shaped sanctuary.

  Matilda had built her small house out of whatever she’d managed to cobble together, and the splash of green paint she’d coated it all with provided an eye-catching contrast to the bower of violet flowers swaying over the pitched roof. Around them, the heady fragrance of hothouse flowers mingled with the constant and subtler scent of sulfur.

  The old witch had built her sanctuary in a natural hot spring, which provided a steady, balmy warmth and the strange mixed fragrance. Jessie had gotten used to it a long time ago, but Joel stared in bemusement.

  At the table, Matilda leaned back in one of the plastic chairs, a lit pipe in one hand and her dark brown eyes on Joel. Her long hair was waist-length, kept in a thick braid and more gray than red these days. She favored faded overalls and yellow galoshes, and while her face still bore the striking structure of aristocratic lines, there were too many creases in her weathered skin to discount her age.

  Only it wasn’t her face that really did it. It was her eyes. Every time the witch looked at her, Jessie could swear she was looking back into a bottomless well of time and experience. As if she’d seen more years than her body had.

  The woman had an old soul.

  “Thank you, my dear,” Matilda said around the pipe stem she clamped between her teeth. “Joel, repeat what you just told me, won’t you?”

  Jessie set a full glass of murky tea in front of the man whose expression still made her want to hug him and assure him everything would be okay. Joel Evans had never been anything but kind to her—she’d known him at Timeless when he thought she was just a helpless witch trying to escape the city—and it bothered Jessie to see him looking so wrecked now.

  He loved Phin Clarke. The bonds of family were readily apparent, even without her magical sight to tell her.

  “What’s up?” she asked, setting the second glass in front of Matilda.

  The woman gave her a warm smile, but her gaze was unreadable. It usually was.

  “Thanks, Cally—” Joel caught himself, wincing. “I mean Jessie.”

  “It’s okay.” She waved his mistake away. She’d been in disguise the first time he’d met her. “Drink it, it’s Matilda’s not-so-secret recipe.”

  The witch’s smile deepened into a grin.

  He cupped his fingers around the cool glass obediently, but his shoulders remained slouched, like a beaten dog. Jessie’s heart hurt for him. She slid into an empty chair.

  She’d been on the go since she’d woken up to find Matilda preparing for company. How the witch knew Silas and Naomi would be coming back with injured, Jessie couldn’t figure out.

  “You remember Michael Rook, right?” Joel asked.

  Jessie shook her head to clear it, then added quickly, “One of the guests at Timeless. Old guy, mouthy.”

  “Yeah, kind of bossy. His company ran one of the major import lanes.”

  “Ran?” Jessie repeated, raising her eyebrows.

  “Maybe it still does,” Joel amended, “but not with him anymore. He died of a heart attack three days ago.”

  Jessie glanced at Matilda, who said nothing. Only exhaled a cloud of fragrant, spicy smoke.

  “But that’s not all,” he continued, setting his glass down without drinking. “Two of our contacts are missing.”

  “Maybe they just went into hiding?”

  “They were already in hiding,” Joel countered, mouth set in a grim line. “They’re gone. Poof, into thin air.
Jordana’s been put into the Magdalene, but we’re not sure that isn’t legit. The girl was messed up, especially after she woke up from that coma.”

  The London-born singer had been at Timeless when everything happened. She’d been nothing more than a pest, but like Rook, Jordana had been caught up in the hostage situation that had killed Phin’s mother. A bullet had creased the singer’s scalp, and last Jessie had heard, she’d been sent to the hospital to recover. If she was in the Magdalene Asylum, it meant her recovery had gone badly.

  Or she was in rehabilitation.

  Jessie sipped her tea, only half aware of the sweet tang as it slid over her tongue. The tea was one of her favorites, the kind Matilda made from the things she grew in the garden behind Jessie’s chair. Even as she mulled Joel’s words, she fancied that she could feel the restorative brew working its culinary magic.

  Finally, she sighed. “Okay, I agree with you about Jordana. That’s probably not out of the ordinary.”

  “She wouldn’t be the first songbird to wind up in a facility,” Matilda pointed out.

  Joel shrugged.

  “And Rook was old.”

  “Not that old,” he said, frowning at Jessie. “The reports say he just dropped. They don’t even have the coroner’s report yet, but they’re talking natural causes already.”

  She could sense the argument brewing, and waylaid it as gently as she could. “Joel, everyone had a pretty rough shock at Timeless. Rook and Jordana just couldn’t cope.”

  He looked away, his fingers tightening on the glass. “You know they caught Hep?”

  “Who did?”

  “Missionaries.” Joel spat the word with so much anger, so much grief, that she flinched. “They executed him before anyone even knew they’d officially caught a witch. They bypassed protocol, Jessie. It’s the only time I’ve ever seen them execute a witch that fast.”

  She remembered Hep. A small, dark-skinned boy whose family had been slaughtered by missionaries months before she’d met him at Timeless. He’d been on the run so long, it had taken him weeks before he’d been able to sleep in a bed instead of the closet.

  He’d been a serious, kind teenager.

  And a witch. But he’d gone into hiding with the rest of the remaining witches that day. The Mission could have just caught him. That was their job.

  But what if it was something more serious than that? “Damn,” she muttered.

  “Hep’s dead. Rook’s dead. Jordana is in rehab—okay, maybe a coincidence,” he allowed as Jessie frowned. “But a civics employee and a route driver who both worked for Mr. Clarke’s evacuation ring are both missing and now Mrs. Clarke’s been taken. They would have gotten us all, too.”

  “It could all be coincidence,” Matilda said thoughtfully. But her dark brown eyes remained steady on Jessie.

  She fought the urge to squirm. “Do you know which police station they took Lillian to?”

  “To the Mission cells, probably.”

  “Wait.” Jessie straightened, leaning against the table edge so fast it dug into her chest. “Witch hunters came after you? Not the police?” He nodded, and she pushed her glass away with a sharp curse. One that had Matilda’s gray-tinged eyebrows rising.

  “We knew the investigation was continuing, but we didn’t know they’d found out about the fountain,” Joel explained. He braced his elbows on the table.

  “Maybe they didn’t.” Jessie knuckled her eyes. “Hep might have told them about the ring.”

  “Why would—” Joel cut himself off, his dark emerald eyes flashing. “No way. He’d never give us up.”

  “He was a kid,” Jessie replied wearily. “I doubt he would have lasted long under interrogation.”

  Joel’s mouth flattened to a hard, painful line. “Christ. If Hep did . . . break,” he said slowly, flinching at the word, “then the fact that they sent missionaries means we’ve been branded as accessories, or worse.”

  That meant Phin and Joel were officially on the run, just like her and Silas and Naomi. That was fine for them; she and Silas had made their choice, and Naomi had a bounty on her head worth killing over. But she didn’t know if the Clarkes would take to it. They were topsiders, wealthy, not used to going without.

  But the Church didn’t distinguish. Rich or poor, a witch was a witch. A man, a woman. A child. All heretics.

  “I can find her.” Her own voice startled her, and she winced as Joel’s gaze snapped up to meet hers. “I mean, I can try. I’ve been to a topside Mission meeting place before, so if you tell me where they keep the cells from there, I can locate Lillian.”

  Matilda stirred, setting her smoking pipe down by her untouched glass. “Think carefully, Jessie. You’ve only just surfaced from a spell.”

  A spell. That’s what Matilda called her migraines. A harmless word.

  Jessie forced a smile. “Just don’t tell Silas.”

  “Tell Silas what?” The baritone behind her was unmistakably challenging.

  Joel and Matilda’s eyes raised to a point above Jessie’s head, and she sighed silently. Matilda’s thin lips twitched. “Too late.”

  “Thanks,” she muttered, and turned.

  As always, the sight of him took her breath away. Raw muscle and easy strength. His skin was losing the tan he’d come back to the city with, but like Naomi, he didn’t waste a day without forcing himself to keep his body in shape. A hell of a rock to hold onto.

  And an obstacle the rest of the time.

  She gathered her shoulder-length hair into a ponytail. “How’s Phin?”

  He held his breath for a thoughtful moment. Then, letting it out on a long sigh, he admitted, “He’s in some pain, but Naomi took care of the worst. He’s awake, functional, knows who he is, what happened, and doesn’t believe the where.”

  Joel snorted. “No kidding.”

  “When I left, he was getting up to talk to Naomi. Now,” Silas added, his eyes pinned on Jessie. “Tell me what?”

  No use lying here. “I’m going to try and find Lillian,” she admitted, bracing her arm along the back of the plastic chair.

  His gray-green eyes clouded. “Like hell you are.”

  There it was. Her spine tightened, braced for the fight she saw mounting in his implacable features. “Think about it,” she told him. “As soon as I find out where she is, I can get all the requisite data needed to spring her. We can inform Phin, he and Joel won’t have to worry anymore, and we’ll make a plan to evacuate her from—from the jail,” she amended, so fast she was sure he hadn’t heard the vocal stumble.

  If she mentioned the Mission had her, Silas wouldn’t let her near the situation with a satellite camera and a wish.

  “If I can pinpoint her location and get security details, we’ll know exactly where to go and what’s going on,” she pressed on. “I can get their plans, hear what they intend. See if it’s a trap.”

  She watched him work it through with narrowed eyes. And then he shook his head. “No.”

  On the other side of the table, Joel appeared extremely interested in his tea. Matilda stared up at the cloudy sky, tobacco smoke arcing in short puffs through the air.

  Jessie wouldn’t find any help there. She rose, the plastic chair scraping against rock. “Silas—”

  “No,” he repeated again, closing the distance. He caught her face between his large palms, held it still as he scowled down at her. “You already wiped out on one vision today. I’m not going to let you do it again.”

  “I didn’t have a choice,” she pointed out. “And we still don’t.”

  “Naomi and I can find her.”

  Jessie’s stomach pitched. She grabbed his wrists. “This is what I do,” she pointed out. His thumb caressed her cheek, a silken rasp of skin she wasn’t sure he was even aware of.

  “This is what we do,” he countered, “and we’re trained for it. Naomi’s got my back, sunshine, it’ll be fine.”

  Anger spiked behind pride. His eyes searched hers as she pulled her face out of his hands. “You
don’t know where to look,” she said, forcing herself not to sound as hurt as she felt. This was dumb. Of course it was dumb. “You could search for days.”

  “We don’t have days,” Joel added behind her. “They burned Hep within twenty-four hours.”

  Silas’s teeth locked. “They?” She saw the muscle leap in his jaw, heard his teeth grind as he put two and two together. “The Mission has her?”

  She held his gaze, chin high. Dodged the question. “I can do this,” she said. “It’s fast, it’s easy, and if you try to stop me, I’ll just do it without you.”

  Silence filled the patio, a quiet scored by tension. Jessie stared fiercely up at him, fingers tight around the back of her chair.

  He took his time, but she knew she’d won when his shoulders eased. Not relaxation, she knew that. Defeat.

  And worry.

  He didn’t have to worry. She had this. She spun. “Okay, I don’t think it’ll take long, so I’ll just sit here—”

  Hard, firm fingers closed over her shoulders and she paused. “When this is done,” he said to the back of her head, ignoring Joel and Matilda, “we’re going to talk.”

  Matilda nodded. “Settle in, then. Silas, my dear, stay close.”

  He grunted a wordless affirmation.

  Jessie sat, glancing sidelong at him as he crouched by her chair. He filled her space, he always did.

  And she loved him.

  But sometimes, she really wanted to kick him.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Jessie got as comfortable as she could and closed her eyes, reaching for the easy well of power inside her.

  A small voice in the rational part of her brain, a worried voice that sounded too much like Silas, wondered why she wasn’t more tapped. Why she reached so eagerly for the visions that had laid her out not three hours before.

  She didn’t have time to wonder. She felt fine. She could do this.

  It’s what she did. What she was good at.

  And the magic simmered under her skin. Eager to be used. To get out, to soar. Like a living thing; an insistent, nagging pressure.