by Dodge, Lola
“His father was.”
“Heir to a warlord?” Thurston tsked. “That’d explain why he was attacked. That old crow must think Wynn’s shirking his duty.”
“Which duty?” He’d done well enough protecting me.
“His duty to kill. He was born for battles but he’ll never fulfill his potential in this world. The crow must feel slighted he’s not off starting wars.”
So that was why he’d been attacked. Not that knowing helped now.
“What about you, Anise?” Vanessa passed the maple syrup to me. “How are you feeling?”
“I’m okay. Just a few bruises.” I took the bottle but could only stare at my bare French toast.
“And your magic?” She asked.
“I’ll have to find another way to fix it.” I hadn’t even thought about my death magic problem since yesterday. My problems didn’t as important when Wynn was the one lying upstairs, cut open.
When I sipped my orange juice, it had all the flavor of a glass of pond water. Now I had two sets of problems to fix. My death magic and Wynn’s contract.
With the battle crow flown away and no fresh ideas, helping Wynn seemed more manageable than helping myself. His problem was a money problem.
Not that I had any money, but Agatha was supposed to be the richest witch in town. If she helped, we could maybe buy his freedom.
It was worth asking her. Even begging her.
As long as Wynn’s life was tied to mine in such a disgusting way, I’d never be able to hold my head up high.
Thanks to magical healing, Wynn was stitched up and back on his feet by the afternoon. When Vanessa cleared him to go home, he wrenched himself out of bed almost ripped the IV out of his wrist like a soap opera character.
His steps were jerky on the way down to the car, and I thought for a dizzy moment he’d trip down the stairs.
When I reached out to hold him steady, he knocked away my hand.
He refused my help again going down the porch steps, but he couldn’t refuse when I held out the car keys. “I’m driving this time.”
“I’m—” He swiped for the keys, but I dodged. It said how hurt he was that I could duck him. “Fine.” He climbed in the back to lay across the seats on his belly.
Before I hopped in, Gabi squeezed me into a hug. “Come back when things aren’t so tense. I didn’t even get to show you around.”
From the echoing squawks and screeches, I wasn’t sure I wanted to meet any more of the clinic’s guests, but I was definitely more than grateful for Gabi’s support. “Thanks. And sorry for making such a mess. I’ll definitely come some other time.”
I drove as slowly as possible over the gravel but winced every time the car bottomed out in a pothole. “Sorry. I’m not doing it on purpose.”
Wynn grunted. Now he wasn’t even using words.
The drive went smoother after we hit blacktop. As the old blinking light came into view, my shoulders tightened.
Girrar was panhandling again.
He stood on the median in his lumpy trench coat, holding an ANYTHING HELPS sign even though there wasn’t another car in sight. As soon as I slowed, he tossed the sign and darted in front of the car, blocking my lane.
Stupid purple car. Of course he recognized me.
He cupped both palms and offered them out. Sparkling gold and gemstones materialized in a growing pile. A glittering, growing pile. One of the clear blue stones plunked onto the pavement.
“Go around him.” Wynn popped up in the back seat.
With no other cars nearby, I backed up, trying to make enough space. Unbothered, Girrar stepped forward and followed.
“Make a deal.” His voice was muffled through the windows, but it still gave me the shivers.
When the back window rolled down, my pulse spiked. Wynn had lowered the glass just enough to stick out a gun barrel.
“Wynn!” I hit the brakes.
He barely swayed. His posture was straight and rigid, and he supported the gun with both hands. “Get out of here.”
Girrar lifted his palms in surrender and the treasure winked away, but he stayed planted in the center of the road. I threw the car in drive and veered into the grass to give the car room to escape. I didn’t want to spend the afternoon trying to talk my way out of vehicular manslaughter.
When Girrar was out of sight, Wynn holstered his gun and flopped back onto his stomach.
“You can’t solve problems by threatening to shoot people.” I held a hand to my neck, trying to get my pulse to calm.
“Problem’s solved.” His voice was muffled by his arms. “And that? Not a person.”
Technically. But still.
I’d bet Girrar bled like a human, and all he’d done was act like a creep. Not enough offense to qualify for the firing squad. “Could you just try not killing as a go-to? At least in the name of protecting me?”
“No.”
My shoulders jacked back up to my ears. Wynn was so ready to kill in my name when he didn’t even want to protect me. I couldn’t handle blood on my hands any more than I could swallow him being forced to serve me until he paid off his shadowy debt.
When we made it back to Agatha’s, he tried to take up his normal position behind me, but no way was I letting him shadow me around the house in this condition.
“Go rest.” I folded my arms.
He mirrored my stance, folding his arms and trying to stare me down, but if he wanted to have an endurance match, today wasn’t his day.
Time stretched. I held my ground.
“Do you want to stand here all day?” Because I could do that. He’d fall over if he kept forcing himself to stand.
Maybe he sensed that I had the winning willpower this time because Wynn headed for the stairs. I followed just in case he fell. He clutched the railing, totally ignoring the banister roses, and a few of their thorns turned up bloody.
That made me even angrier.
Did he care about himself at all?
After Wynn settled on his bed without trying to follow me, I beelined to the shop kitchen and opened the door an inch—just wide enough to peek through the gap. Agatha gripped the round end of a spoon between her knuckles, using its long handle as a wand. Soft purple light glowed the length of the wood while she traced shapes over the sheet of dough rolled out on her countertop. I held my breath, eager to see the rest of the spell.
She was 100% focused on the work until her whole face pinched. The spoon lowered and her head swiveled.
Crap. I jumped back, but either the swinging door gave me away or she’d already spotted me.
“Anise.” Her voice stabbed through the door.
Swallowing a gulp, I peeked through again, opening the door as wide as two inches this time. “Agatha?”
She wiped her hands on the towel that stuck out of her apron pocket and headed my way. I took a few steps down the hall so the swinging door wouldn’t nail me in the face.
“Is your magic back to normal?” The door swung hard behind her, and the way she set her hands on her hips, I was pretty sure she already knew the answer to that question.
“It’s not.”
“And yet, here you are. Again.”
“I wanted to ask you for advice.” And possibly a bit of a loan?
“Then text me. Leave a note on my desk. Don’t come dragging your underworld energy into my kitchen while I’m trying to bless the puff pastry.”
“Sorry.” I winced. “I thought if I didn’t cross the threshold—”
“It’s done.” She waved a dismissive hand. “What kind of advice are we looking at? How to land a man? How to land a woman? Or a non-binary elemental spirit? I wondered why that nymph was lurking around our sage bushes.”
“Um. None of those?” And I was mystified why she thought I’d be trying to land anyone while my magic was this messed up. “It’s about Wynn.”
“That counts as landing a man.”
“He just got attacked.”
“And Jane healed him, ye
s? He’ll be flexing his muscles again in no time.”
“That’s not—” I cut myself off. Agatha’s weird tangents weren’t going to help either of us. “I mean about his contract. He finally told me some of the terms, and I was hoping we could help him.”
Agatha let out a heavy breath. “I am helping. Why do you think I hired that boy?”
“You knew how messed up his contract was? Why didn’t you tell me?” Flames of anger flared inside me.
“I have no idea what Zed put on his side of the contract, but he set the rate to hire Wynn five times higher than he charges for any other Shield. He had no intention of letting that boy earn his way free. I’d guess Wynn’s debt is seven or eight digits. If he can’t earn out…” Agatha traced a finger across her throat.
“Eight digits?” I tried to swallow, but my throat was ash-dry. “But why would he have to die?”
And why was the Syndicate allowing this?
“There’s magic and there’s magic,” Agatha said. “Wynn is a bit less than he would’ve been in whatever homeworld he stumbled out of, but that boy has the blood of a war sorcerer. Fibers from his heartstrings could fuel the wildest alchemy. His toenails—”
“I get it.” My head spun, and I pressed cold fingers to my flushed cheeks. Who knew there was a black market for sorcerer parts? “But there has to be something I can do to help him.”
“Zed’s a rotten egg the Syndicate has been trying to crack for decades. There’s only so much I can do if he won’t let the boy go.”
“A fundraiser…” Even I knew how weak that sounded.
“Sorry, cupcake. You could save your salary for a few centuries and never earn that much.”
“I don’t get a salary.” Zero times zero would always be zero.
Which sounded like the exact amount of hope I had of freeing Wynn.
“Didn’t Lonnie set you up?”
I blinked. “Set me up with what?”
“Talk to her. She’ll get you sorted out with bank accounts and whatnot.” Agatha straightened her apron. “But why the sudden worry about Wynn? You’ve got enough trouble of your own.”
She wasn’t wrong.
It was just easier to worry about him because no matter how much I didn’t want to screw with death magic, I was running out of options.
Nine
I did what I always did when I felt lost. Grabbed a bowl of ice cream, doused it in chocolate syrup, and called Mom.
She answered after two rings. “Hi, sweetie.”
“Hi.”
“What’s wrong?”
The line was quiet—no jackhammers or bar noise in the background for once—and I was about to spill my troubles. “Are you home?”
“I don’t go back in until tonight.” Worry crept into her voice. “Anise?”
I set my ice cream on the sitting room table and hugged my knees to my chest. “There’s been stuff going on.”
“Stuff? Bad stuff? Do you need me to fly to Albuquerque?”
“No. It’s not that bad. I just…” I shivered, not from the ice cream. “It started a few weeks ago.”
She already knew about everything with Seth, but I walked her through the days and weeks after. How my magic twisted until I was baking sludge cakes and thinking fondly of dead rats. Everything from being semi-stalked by a creepy mannikin and finally learning the truth about Wynn.
“Oh, sweetie. You’ve had a time over there.” Just hearing her voice comforted the stress simmering under my skin. “Do you want to come home?”
“No,” I answered in an instant.
No matter what, that wasn’t an option.
If a warlock couldn’t chase me out of town, I wouldn’t run because of a hiccup with my powers. Agatha had cookbooks and notebooks and spellbooks galore, packed with crazy recipes she might actually teach me someday.
Running away would mean abandoning my dream. Losing my chance to ever be a legit, licensed baking witch. Without Agatha’s Bakeshop, my future looked like a hard dead-end.
When I spoke again, my voice shifted from a half-set, wobbly panna cotta to a rock-solid biscotti. “No. I wouldn’t leave Taos for anything.”
“That’s more like my girl.” Mom’s smile carried through the line, boosting my newfound resolve.
“What do you think I should do I about Wynn?”
“I think you should ask him what he wants. Sounds like the people he cared about made some bad calls in his name. I’m guessing he won’t appreciate you forcing your decision on him.”
“Right.” I should’ve thought of that, but asking Wynn anything was so much like clawing at a brick wall that I hadn’t thought of it as making the decision myself. “I’ll talk to him before I do something crazy.”
“But don’t do anything crazy.”
I dug fingernails into my forearms. “Would it be crazy if I baked more macarons?”
“What do you think?”
“Wynn almost died and my first instinct was to help him cross over. Not using my power isn’t helping. I either have to bake the death magic out of my system or learn how to control it. Probably both.” Even if death magic creeped me out like a stray baby doll in an abandoned basement. I needed this power out. No matter how.
“Sounds like you already found your answer.”
“I’ll see what Agatha says.” My guess was she’d encourage more death spells as long as they didn’t muck up her kitchen. Nothing mattered more than the shop. Which reminded me. “She said I’m supposed to be earning a salary. However little it is, I’ll send money home.”
“Absolutely not,” she said in full-on mom voice. “That’s your money. You spend it on fancy baking pans and offset spatulas and whatever your heart desires. I’ll take care of myself.”
“But—”
“Who’s the adult?”
“You are.” Like I’d forget.
“Exactly. Buy yourself a new outfit or go see a movie with your friends. Get popcorn with extra butter and live your life like Peggy told you to. Don’t waste so much time worrying about your mother.”
That was a little more than I could promise, but a movie sounded doable. “I’ll try.”
“Good. And don’t bottle this ‘stuff’ up anymore. You call me with your troubles whenever you need.”
“Okay.” My voice caught in my throat, but I wasn’t crying. Totally not crying. Just choked up. “Thanks, Mom.”
“That’s why I’m here, baby.”
We talked so long my ice cream melted into soup. As my heart recharged, my appetite restarted and I dug into the melty but still-delicious treat. Nothing couldn’t be fixed by ice cream and a heart-to-heart.
My problems were far from solved, but I’d at least figured out the first two steps I needed to take. Talk to Wynn and practice with death magic.
Simple.
Just not easy.
Upstairs, I stood staring at Wynn’s closed door. Talking with Wynn was always a problem because I hated talking and he hated me.
I held my fist up in the same position it had been stuck in for at least a couple minutes, poised halfway to his door.
I couldn’t bring myself to knock.
“Come in already,” Wynn said through the door.
Him and his bat ears.
Cracking the door, I peered carefully inside. Wynn lay on his stomach, no shirt, but his back covered in gauze. His bed was narrow as a cot and the floor was even narrower because his “room” was meant to be my walk-in closet. Knives, guns, and bullets scattered the little aisle of carpet, but my gaze snagged on the jar balanced next to his pillow. “Do you need help with your ointment?”
“I can get it.”
Seriously? “At least let me help.” I tiptoed over a sword and then a rifle to get to the bed.
“If you want.” He turned his head away.
Off to another great start.
Perching on the edge of his bed, I unstoppered the ointment. It smelled like sage and sparkled with magic. But I was getting ahead of myself.
His gauze had to come off first. “I’ll try to be fast,” I said, starting to unwind the strips.
Wynn’s back vibrated, rigid with tension. As if having me in his space was more than he could bear.
I’d earned that. Wynn was supposed to be some kind of sorcerer/warlord, leading armies and uniting kingdoms.
Instead, he lived in my closet.
With him facing the wall, it was easier to work my words through the guilt clog in my throat. “I was hoping I could help you do something about your contract.”
“How?”
“I don’t know yet. But now that I know what I know, I don’t want to let it go.” I’d worked up the edge of the first piece of gauze, but I wouldn’t be able to get it off unless he lifted his ribs from the bed. “Um. Could you…?”
Wynn pushed up onto his forearms and held himself there without one single muscle shake. Working fast, I unwrapped and unwound until the last piece of gauze was left on his skin. “Okay. You can lower down.”
Blood crusted the last layer of gauze to Wynn’s stitches. “This part might sting.”
No response.
Setting one hand on Wynn’s back to steady myself, I gripped the edge of the bandage. Slow would be torture.
Giving him no warning, I tore the gauze.
It came off in one long strip. For a second. Wynn’s muscles bunched.
“Sorry.” I would’ve been a teary-eyed baby if I were him, but all he’d done was clench his jaw.
I pushed the dirty bandages to the floor to clean up later and grabbed the ointment. Its magic tingled against my fingers as I scooped a dollop onto Wynn’s back. Four lines of stitches bridged cuts that had mostly closed. His skin was still red and raw.
I spread the cold, thick goo as gently as possible, trying to rub it in without pressing too hard. When the stitches and surrounding skin were slick and shiny and sparkling, I wiped my fingers on a clean length of bandage. “If you sit up, I’ll rewrap you.”
He rolled back his shoulder blades and wrenched himself up, maneuvering until he was sitting next to me on the edge of the bed.
Huh.
I hadn’t really expected him to let me help. He lifted his arms and I worked fast to mummy-wrap his chest. After tying off the last bandage, I scooted away from him. “All done.”
