No Rest for the Witches

by Karina Cooper

  The kid dropped his hand lower.

  She slammed into the cement. Fists tight against the ground, she struggled to suck in air as the invisible weight compressed her back. Her chest.

  Her lungs.

  Heart pounding a heavy staccato in her ears, her skull, she struggled to get her hands under herself. Her cheek ground into the floor. The tattoo sparked and sizzled.

  Spots detonated at the corners of her vision.

  “Goddamn it, stop!”

  As if Silas’s guttural roar was the signal, the pressure eased. Just enough.

  Naomi sucked in a gasping breath.

  “Gorgeous!” the kid crowed. “Exactly what I would have expected from the great Naomi West.”

  Senses reeling, Naomi couldn’t stop to examine the statement. She sucked in gasp after gasp of dust-choked air, muscles shaking uncontrollably, fatigued beyond anything she’d felt in too long.

  She was out of shape.

  And Lillian was going to pay if she didn’t get. Her shit. Together.

  Silas was watching her as she finally raised her head. She dragged her dust-coated sleeve over her mouth. Jerked a nod.

  She was fine.

  Pissed, but fine.

  Son of a . . . witch.

  His jaw tightened, gaze snapping back to the witch hiding behind Lillian. “Who the hell are you?” Silas demanded, his hands loose at his sides.

  “And how do you know me?” Naomi added.

  The knife glinted as the end worked under Lillian’s collar. Pale, sweating, she gazed at the ceiling with the thousand-yard stare Naomi recognized from too many hostages. Disassociated. Scared.

  Trying hard not to think about the outcome of this.

  There would be blood.

  The beast in Naomi raged for it.

  She gritted her teeth.

  “Everyone knows you,” he was saying, jerking her attention back to those empty eyes. He was smiling again. Casual.

  What the hell was his angle?

  “I knew you’d show your pretty face again. The bounty on your head is at fifty thousand dollars, did you know that?”

  Naomi’s smile was made of teeth. “So I heard.”

  “Twice that if you’re alive,” he added. “I’m going to be a very rich man when this is done.”

  A scuffle across the circle forced him to tighten his hold on Lillian. She bit back a small cry, fear and loathing, as her back flattened against his chest.

  Silas struggled against the men holding him, muscles straining. “What the hell makes you think a witch’ll be able to collect?”

  “Oh, I have secrets that would give you nightmares.” He slid the knife out of Lillian’s collar, leaving a long, thin red line in its wake. Naomi’s teeth ground so hard, her jaw popped. “But there’s no bounty for you. Kill him. I have what I need.”

  “Who are you?” Silas growled, wrenching at the hands holding him back. “What’s your angle?” The black-clad man on his left unlatched the gun from his hip. The sleek, matte-black weapon leveled at Silas’s head.

  Tears spilled over Lillian’s lashes, tracking through the dust coating her cheeks.

  The platinum-blond witch’s eyes crinkled, cheeks turned up in a smile that somehow managed to make him look . . . boyishly endearing.

  Naomi’s fists clenched. Heart in her throat, skin crawling, she dug her feet into the ground. Every muscle clenched in anticipation.

  “What do you think I am?” he asked dryly. “A storybook villain? Want me to tell you everything before I kill you?” He pulled Lillian to the side, draped that arm on her shoulder as if she were just a buddy to lean against. The knife flashed as he pointed it at Silas. “I don’t think so. Just die.”

  Violet light flickered along the blade.

  Everything coalesced into a razor’s edge.

  As fury clambered in her ears, a cacophony of howls she didn’t know how to give voice to, Lillian moved. Suddenly, erratic, she jerked her arm back. Her thin elbow collided with the witch’s solar plexus, doubling him over.

  Naomi launched herself forward—screamed bloody, ragged murder as a hand closed on her shirt. Silas was no help; she was dimly aware of his curses as he rammed one of his operative guards into the other, tangling them into a flurry of arms and legs and intentions.

  Naomi whirled, raised her leg, and slammed a roundhouse kick to the side of her guard’s helmeted head. The man, broader than she was but no Silas in weight, staggered into the side of a crate. It gonged, sending echoes across the warehouse.

  The witch shouted something. Lillian shrieked, and obeying the primal instinct rooted deep in her awareness, Naomi folded to the floor. The air split above her head, sliced on a razored knife edge, and the man lunging at her drew up sharply as the point lodged itself in his chest.

  Naomi didn’t stop. As the operative collapsed, she grabbed his gun from his limp grasp and spun.

  The damn thing fit into her palm like it was made for her. Heavier than her usual Beretta, sleeker and sweet, it practically begged her to pull the trigger.

  Lillian stared at her, shock-white and trembling. Blood dotted her lip, but her chin firmed.

  Naomi’s hand wavered.

  This was how Gemma had died.

  Metal clanked against metal; the dull thud of plasteel meeting cement echoed from her left. The witch watched her from behind Lillian’s taller form, his eyes feverishly bright. “What’s it going to be?” he demanded.

  Shit.

  A gun fired, echoed back in mounting report, and Lillian blanched, sobbing at whatever it was she saw beyond Naomi’s field of vision.

  She could guess. Nobody died pretty by bullets.

  Or by witchcraft. Purple power gathered in the witch’s palm, outlined his fingers as he held them inches from Lillian’s chest. Her heart.

  She gasped. Her face reddened. Turned yellow around the edges.

  “How long until her heart explodes?” the witch asked, but there was nothing light about his voice now. His mouth thinned. “Wanna find out?”

  Fuck. Naomi lowered the weapon.

  “Drop it.”

  A jerk of her wrist, and the gun clattered to the side. She crossed the circle, arms held out by her sides as he stiffened. “Fine,” she bit out. The words filled her throat. Tore out of her chest on serrated edges. “I give up.”

  His mouth twisted. “Shame, too.” He pushed Lillian to the side. “Go get the rope. Or else I’ll kill you both.”

  Just a kid after all.

  Naomi shook her head. And without warning, without hope, she lunged.

  The witch’s mouth opened, hands coming up, wreathed in violet, but Naomi didn’t give him the chance. His face was a blur, purple light, flickering fluorescent casting the world into a wild dance of motion and sound; nerves and the feral pounding of her blood in her body.

  She collided with her target, bit down on a shriek of pain as her the tattoo lit up so brightly, blue fire spilled from the weave of her torn denim. Lillian collapsed, the world spun around and around.

  Pain shredded her body. Her chest, her fucking soul lit up like a nuclear holocaust. Naomi screamed.

  A gunshot cracked like thunder in the chaos.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Phin was pacing. He couldn’t help himself. Night had long since fallen, and with no word from Naomi or Silas, he didn’t have anything else to keep the anxiety at bay.

  At least his arm was out of the sling. Though still tender, the wound was already showing signs of scarring—and even then, it’d be minimal. As long as he didn’t tear it open, he’d have full use of his arm within the next few days.

  Little comfort. He’d trade his arm to have Naomi back, safe and sound. To have his mother beside her.

  Even to get Silas back, to ease the shadows from Jessie’s eyes.

  She sat on the porch, a blanket around her shoulders, staring over the dark water stretched out in front of the house. She hadn’t said much over the past hour, and Phin got the impression she was
only half present, anyway.

  He turned as his bare feet found the start of the glassy stepping stone path. Began his trek in front of the porch to the other side once more. How many times had he followed this same route?

  Too many.

  He’d do it until they came back. Or he dropped from exhaustion.

  He wouldn’t be able to sleep with all the jitters, anyway.

  God, please let them come home.

  “I’m sorry, sir.” Joel raised his head from his folded arms, his face tortured in the light of the lantern they’d set up on the porch. It wasn’t the first time he’d said it, and Phin flinched. “If I hadn’t have let you come—”

  “Come on, Joel,” Phin cut in, pausing in his pacing to sink to his haunches in front of his friend. Joel Evans had been his right-hand man for years, now. Not only had he been Timeless’s best masseuse, famous for hands Gemma liked to say should be dipped in gold, he’d personally handled aspects of the evacuation ring Phin couldn’t trust to anyone else.

  The man knew things about the Clarkes that could destroy them. He was, as far as Phin had ever cared to explore the subject, a member of the family. Close as blood, close as anyone could get.

  He clapped a hand on Joel’s shoulder, squeezed affectionately. “If I wasn’t with you, maybe I’d be dead. Or captured. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  Joel stared down at the porch steps beneath him. “I keep thinking.”

  “Don’t.” Phin rose, his gaze drifting upward. To the dark sky, clouded over with winter storms. It still seemed wrong, to be so warm in the middle of winter, but everything about the world seemed wrong right now. “Just keep hoping.”

  “God, I am.”

  Phin was, too. He smiled down at Joel in a way he hoped was reassuring. A cold pit had opened up in his stomach.

  Naomi hadn’t said goodbye. She hadn’t let him kiss her, or touch her.

  She was pulling away.

  If she didn’t come back—no. He couldn’t think like that.

  She loved him, and he knew it. Knew it in the same way he knew her steely exterior was a front for something soft and fragile underneath.

  God, he loved her.

  And she’d gone to save his mom. It meant something.

  Phin jammed his fingers through his hair, turning to begin his pace again.

  The rocking chair creaked as Jessie leapt to her feet, her eyes wild. “They’re here!” she cried, and practically flew down the steps. She staggered as she hit the bottom, collided with Phin, who steadied her only long enough for her to get her balance and sprint around the back of the house.

  Phin met Joel’s searching gaze.

  As one, they lurched into motion and followed her into the dark.

  Golden hair flying, Jessie put him in mind of a pixie as she darted between giant, leafy plants. “Silas!”

  A rumbling voice, deep and too intense to miss, caused something to catch in Phin’s heart.

  Three figures stepped through a fissure in the canyon wall, as eerily as if they stepped through the wall itself. A large silhouette disengaged itself, moved into the ambient light.

  Jessie threw herself into Silas’s arms; not just physically, Phin saw, feeling suddenly like an intruder. Body and soul. When they met, when Silas pulled her to him with a rough sound, buried his face into her hair, it was as if he could see the connection fuse between them. See the love, the hope. The future. She clung to his shoulders and sobbed something wordless and angry.

  He looked away as the other two figures came forward, and Phin nearly buckled in relief.

  Lillian, her hair tangled around her shoulders and pale with strain, met his eyes. Everything in him softened. “Mom,” he whispered hoarsely.

  She let go of Naomi’s shoulders as he cleared the distance, gathered Lillian into his arms, and inhaled her familiar fragrance. She was alive. His mom was alive. They’d done it. He whispered a prayer of thanks, his lips at her dusty cheek. Hugged her, squeezed her until he was positive she wasn’t just a dream.

  Thank God.

  Lillian disengaged first, smoothing one dirty hand over her hair. It didn’t help. “Joel,” she said, her gaze on the man over Phin’s shoulder. “Oh, my darling boys.”

  But where did Naomi go?

  A flash of movement at the corner of his eye caused him to spin, just in time to catch the leafy bank of lush foliage snap back into position.

  Lillian touched his shoulder. “She saved my life. But it . . . hurt her.”

  Anger flickered. And the first inklings of something blacker. More dangerous.

  Enough was enough.

  Silas carried Jessie back to the house, his head against hers, and Matilda waited on the back patio with a lantern held high. Her smile warm, she called, “Everyone inside. There is tea brewing and much to discuss.”

  “Who is that?” Lillian asked.

  “Matilda,” Joel replied, offering his arm. “This is her home.”

  “Interesting.” Lillian threaded her arm through Joel’s, leaning heavily on him. “Phin, my darling. Go after her.”

  His shoulders tightened. “Again?” He couldn’t help it. Couldn’t stop the venom in his voice as he clenched his fists at his sides.

  Lillian paused, turning a smile on him that broke what was left of his heart. One part sad. One part encouraging.

  Everything sympathetic.

  “As many times as it takes,” she said softly. “While you can.”

  She turned, leaving on Joel’s arm. Phin watched her as she offered a slim hand to Matilda. Watched as the two women, so similar in regal bearing for all they were so different in everything else, shook politely.

  Two queens, he thought. Two wise mothers.

  Had Matilda ever had children?

  She should have.

  Phin turned, digging thumb and forefinger into his eyes. Before he had even fully decided to do it, his feet took him deeper into the foliage. The earth turned to black sand, the leaves clung to him, sprayed faintly fragrant water on him as he pushed through the giant fronds.

  When he pushed out into open air again, he saw her.

  She sat on a black sand beach, somehow lonelier for the beauty of her surroundings. Steam rolled across the green water, another finger of the bay he’d never seen before. Cliffs rose beyond her, the other half of the crescent and tucked well out of sight. She huddled in on herself as if wounded, her shoes discarded beside her.

  Something in Phin’s heart spiked—panic, anger.

  Love, damn it.

  He didn’t hide his approach. And he knew Naomi sensed him as her shoulders straightened, back firming.

  Putting on that mask.

  He didn’t give her the chance.

  “I’m—” Her words ended on a gasp as Phin bent, grabbed her by the upper arms and pulled her roughly to her feet.

  “I’m sick of this,” he said, sliding a hand to the small of her back. Another into the sleek fall of her hair at her nape. The jewelry there was warm from her body, searing into his palm.

  Into his blood.

  Her eyes narrowed, thick black lashes shadowing them. There was no moon to paint her in ice and diamonds tonight, but she didn’t need it. She was beautiful—even filthy, bruised, and accessorized with silver.

  “I wondered when it’d come to that,” she said, her tone even. “I told you—”

  His gut clenched. As his pulse knocked in his crotch, he shook his head, flattened his palm against her lower back, and forced her hips against his.

  Her full lips parted as the hard length of his erection settled against her. Pressed firmly. Knowingly.

  Achingly familiar.

  “Shut up,” he told her. “For once in your life, just shut up and let things be.”

  She swallowed hard. The delicate bones of her throat moved with the action. “Phin.”

  “I love you.” Slowly, he walked her backward. She jerked as the warm water lapped at her toes. Her ankles. “I will love you forever, damn it, and I
don’t care how long it takes, but you’re going to have to learn to live with me.”

  Naomi’s eyes, beautiful and swimming in shades of blue and violet too deep for him to ever reach, filled with tears.

  That rocked him to his soul.

  “We aren’t living together,” she said. She grabbed at his arm, just above the elbow, but he didn’t let go. Refused to give in.

  And she could have knocked him on his ass if she wanted to.

  She didn’t.

  “We’re going to.” The water climbed to his knees. Lapped against his skin, hot and soothing. Soaked into his borrowed jeans.

  “Where?”

  “Anywhere,” he said, and framed her head between his palms. Held her still, waist-deep in water that reminded him of Timeless’s fragrant bathing pools. He never got to make love to her in the water.

  An oversight he intended to correct.

  “Stop running from me,” he said, his lips only millimeters from hers. Her breath shuddered out, warm against his mouth. “Stop fighting me. Stop hiding, Goddamn it.”

  Her eyes closed, fingers tangling in the front of his shirt. The water pushed her body closer to his; she fit in ways that stole his breath. “We’re both hiding. You up there, me down here. We don’t get to see each other,” she said, her voice low and taut. Strain. Anger.

  But she was talking. Finally.

  “It’s been a month, slick. I won’t do it. Not anymore. I don’t like halfway measures.”

  “Good,” Phin replied. His thumb brushed the corner of her lips. “Then stop throwing up walls.”

  “What do you want from me?” she said between clenched teeth.

  “Everything,” Phin breathed, and covered her mouth with his.

  Kissing her was always like playing with fire. With one touch, a spark, she lit up in his hands and stripped him bare. Her lips opened under his, full and soft and warm, edged where her lip ring pressed against his mouth. As a low, frustrated sound spilled from her throat, he swept his tongue against hers. Velvet and sweet, her tongue slid against his, matched his fervor—his need.

  Phin always tried to play it slow, especially where Naomi was concerned. He knew without asking that she’d always preferred it rough and fast; easy to get in, get the itch scratched and get the hell out.