War Witch

by Layla Nash

  “We can’t.” She hesitated, on the verge of saying more, then shook her head. “That is, we won’t. It’s not your concern, Lilith, and if you insist on poking your nose into our business, we’ll cut it off for you. Although,” and she gestured at my face, her eyebrow raised. “You seem to be having that kind of trouble already.”

  “Anne Marie.” I kept my voice quiet, bracing my hands on the counter. Not because I had to, certainly not. “Please believe me.”

  “You are a liar and a murderer,” she said, gathering up the pile of coins and bills with shaking hands. “Why should I?”

  “Because we were friends.” It hurt to say. Hurt to remember. Hurt to beg.

  She handed me a receipt. “You’re three dollars short, but consider it a going-away present. If I see you again, Lilith, anywhere near my coven or our work, I will have you arrested and collared for dark magic.”

  “You wouldn’t dare.” I shook my head, tempted to leave the bag on the counter and walk away. But then I’d be out my money and the cure. So I shoved it in my purse, concentrating on that instead of how much I wanted to strangle her. “You’ll implicate yourself, and I will absolutely tell Leif what you—”

  “It would be worth it,” she said, eyes cold. Expressionless. “To see you collared for dark magic. Worth every minute.”

  I wondered where along our journey we’d become enemies. I’d trained her, rescued her, given her a safe place in the early years of the war. Believed her a friend, second only to Tracy. But Anne Marie was always ambitious, anxious for power after a childhood spent with none, and she turned against me. Jealousy and ambition were a terrible combination. It destroyed our coven, and it got Sam killed.

  So instead I addressed the take-a-penny tray. “If you need my help, Anne Marie—”

  “We don’t. Please leave.”

  I pursed my lips. Nodded. I felt defeated but angry—unable to convince her, unwilling to fight it anymore. “Fine. I hope you live long enough for me to say I told you so. Thanks for the three dollars. I’ll pay you back.”

  She called something after me as I left, maybe warning me she’d turn the wards up after I left, but it didn’t matter. There was no reason to go back.

  Chapter 13

  I knew Anne Marie well enough to know she and the coven would finish the spell that night, regardless of what I told them. The head-cure and poultice did enough to ease the pain that I could almost see straight by the time I got back to my apartment to prepare. A new door secured Chompers’ and Amber’s apartment; I held my breath as I paused outside it, wanting to knock to see if she was okay. Rosa hadn’t called to mention any additional trouble, so I consigned Chompers to his fate and made a mental note to drop some food off with Amber the next morning. If he’d provided her some sort of magical help, maybe I could fill the gap until she got her future figured out. It was the least I could do.

  I didn’t spend long at home before heading out again, though I gathered enough supplies to hopefully avert disaster before Anne Marie’s pride got all of us killed. The bag of salt weighed heavily on my shoulder as I ran for the bus, cursing my lack of vehicle with every step. The bus didn’t get close enough to Anne Marie’s house, even though I didn’t know where exactly she lived, and I had to change routes three times before my magical senses picked up her trail. She’d always been a creature of habit, and the silver-blue wake of her magic through a neighborhood led me directly to her front door.

  Most powerful witches left strong signatures of their personal aura where they lived and cast. It grew stronger over time, particularly if they didn’t want the inconvenience of relocating every few years. I’d moved every month after the war, afraid of the coven and older enemies tracking me down, but after a few years, I forgot to be afraid. I struggled against the chaos in my memory and my thoughts half the time, so consistency in my surroundings helped. It was a tradeoff, but I never worked powerful magic where I lived to avoid the distinct beacon that developed as a result. Anne Marie wasn’t so stringent.

  She lived in a nice neighborhood—not as nice as the gated communities outside the city—but solidly middle class, in a house that could have fit a family of four. I paused near the mailbox to evaluate the security, and frowned as I searched the perimeter. Reinforced windows, a solid metal door, but no wards around the property.

  I had to have missed something. I remained on the sidewalk in the lingering dusk, staring at her house and straining to see the wards or curses that no doubt protected her home. No sane witch would live in an unwarded house.

  Something rustled in the bushes and I tensed. But only a house cat appeared, a mouse dangling from its jaws, and it slanted a disdainful look at me as it prowled through the flowerbeds and disappeared under Anne Marie’s porch. I edged my foot forward to the walkway leading to her door, wincing as I braced for the backlash of whatever wards she might have hidden, but nothing happened. Nothing.

  I stepped onto the walkway and looked around, wanting to stomp my feet in disgust at her sloppy security, but maybe a neighborhood as nice as hers didn’t allow wards. It looked too nice to be an Other neighborhood, so maybe most of the homeowners were human. Most witches couldn’t differentiate wards between human and animal forms, and wards that liquefied a couple of pets—or delivery guys—wouldn’t go over well with the neighbors. Shredded golden retriever was the first ingredient for a witch-hunt.

  She was at least a little more careful with her home, although not by much—a few wards protected the door and the front windows, though they hadn’t been activated. They detected dark magic, not intruders, so it was easy enough to fiddle the lock open with a touch of magic.

  I stood in the foyer for a long moment after shutting the door behind me, waiting for the other shoe to drop. I needed to find enough evidence of what Anne Marie planned to do that I could prove to Leif she was the cause of all the trouble. If things went badly when the coven cast a few hours later, then I wanted all the blame to land on Anne Marie. The grandfather clock against the wall reminded me there wasn’t much time, if I hoped to still make it to the Skein and disrupt their spell.

  When nothing moved in the house and the air remained undisturbed, I strolled through the foyer into the living room. My eyebrows rose as I looked around; it was as obsessively neat as her living quarters during the war. My fingers trailed over a shelf of knickknacks, all squared at right angles. Tracy and I had often unorganized Anne Marie’s workspace, mixing pens and pencils, turning things upside down, shuffling papers, setting everything just slightly askew.

  Occasionally war was very boring. We had a lot of time to come up with ways to amuse ourselves, and watching Anne Marie line her pencils up in precise order was enough some days.

  My nose wrinkled at the forced perfection of the living room, though. The place looked like something out of a magazine—posed, staged, fake. Like Anne Marie and her glamour.

  I took a deep breath and let my senses open, and a blaze of magic called me up the stairs to a nondescript guest room over the kitchen. I tossed a handful of salt from my bag across the threshold, and the glamour wobbled. Just leaning through the doorway cracked the wards, so the lightning shivers of magic didn’t run through me as I worked on disassembling the glamour that obscured the room’s true contents. Eventually I stood in her workroom, the space lined with tables, low shelves, and tools hanging from nails in the walls.

  “What are you planning, Anne Marie?” I frowned as I looked around the immaculate room, a little impressed in spite of my dislike for her. There had to be a clue somewhere. She’d mentioned a Calling, a summoning, and I’d seen enough demon magic in their spell to know she’d need a book for reference. She hadn’t known enough about dark magic to be able to wing something like that.

  I poked around, studying labels on the neat jars of herbs and dried flowers and other ingredients for her potions, and smeared lavender oil across the surface of an ornate mirror hanging over her work table. Mirrors served as gateways for demons, and if Anne
Marie had been summoning them or even just thinking about them, there was a chance one might pop out of the mirror when I wasn’t looking. I shivered just thinking about it, and banished all thoughts of dark magic as I paused in front of the open bay that had been a walk-in closet. With the doors removed, it was the perfect spot for a carved wooden cathedral lectern to support a dusty book: calfskin with a Tree of Life on the cover and talcum on the spine, and a curious heaviness around it.

  No wards protected it, not even from dust or moisture. No traps or hexes prevented me from edging into the closet, and nothing hid it from view once inside the workroom. I didn’t want to believe that Anne Marie’s complacency included relying on a single glamour to protect a very dangerous book.

  I didn’t dare touch it, instead letting my fingertips glide just over the surface of the darkened calfskin. It was a true grimoire, copied by a real witch using magic to adhere the spells to the pages. Power and age gave it weight. It was a valuable book indeed, copied many years before the Breaking, but it wasn’t one I’d ever seen or owned. My parents’ library had been extensive, but as I flipped the cover open, I didn’t recognize the handiwork of the witch who’d copied the book or most of the spells inside. I checked my bag to make sure I had enough room to take it with me. No witch would blame me for borrowing it for a bit.

  I turned the pages carefully, deliberate in where I touched the surface to avoid any markings or text, and searched for a hint of what Anne Marie plotted. A Calling. Summoning something she didn’t want anyone to know about, since she cleared the area of witches before casting. Except for two dark witches she hadn’t known about, apparently.

  The section on summoning spells opened and something fluttered to the floor. I picked up the scrap of paper, thin rice tissue with a few ink strokes on it, but immediately dropped it as my fingers burned.

  A beeswax candlestick from her work table helped nudge the paper to reveal a symbol used to call someone—or something—against its will. Dark witches often used it as an anchor when summoning demons, most of which didn’t show up willingly. Usually they etched it on a mirror. I glanced at the one over her work table again, just in case, and debated using more oil to completely obscure the glass.

  I covered the tissue in salt for a little peace of mind while I examined the pages it fell from. They contained a normal summoning ritual, although one strong enough to Call a war witch or an Ancient—one of the old shifters, pure of blood and likely more animal than human. A piece of unassuming notebook paper, covered in Anne Marie’s neat, rounded letters, was wedged in the same pages.

  My heart sank as I read and re-read what she’d written: Lion family, from Barbary. Lavi the Younger, 1796. Algiers. Ibn Aurelius.

  An Ancient. I shook my head as I closed the book on the note, tucking it into my bag. A Lion Ancient, born centuries before the Breaking and raised in a foreign land. Possibly crazy, and certainly not pleased about being Called by a circle of pushy war witches. Stupid, Anne Marie.

  I left the demon sign on the floor, covered in salt. Even touching it could have invited the evil eye to follow me home. I paused by the mirror, studying the room behind me through the oil-smeared glass, and wondered how Rosa and Joanne and Tracy could possibly have missed what Anne Marie intended. Something wasn’t right. As I hesitated, the clock downstairs clicked and then started to toll the hours—just ten o’clock. Plenty of time to get to the Skein, and maybe enough time to call Leif on the way so half the Alliance would meet me there to observe Anne Marie’s dangerous slide down the slippery slope toward dark magic.

  I pulled out my cell phone and turned to the door, convinced the book and the demon sign would be enough to get the Alliance on board. The air moved downstairs, and the front door creaked as it opened. Then shut. The unmistakable hush of breathing echoed in the silent house, and I held my breath. My hands went cold. Anne Marie wouldn’t have come home early. Unless, of course, she knew I was in her house and riffling through her stuff. The Alliance cops wouldn’t move so quietly, though.

  I retreated to crouch behind the work table and braced against the wall, sliding the bag down my shoulder so I could maneuver. I hated feeling trapped, but there wasn’t time to run when the stairs creaked and fabric rustled, getting closer. My heart accelerated and lightning raced through my veins in anticipation. Danger. Getting closer.

  The breathing moved through the house, searching. Floorboards groaned under the footsteps, and my heart pounded against my ribs, desperate to break free. I concentrated on the first hex to use as I clenched my jaw to silence my chattering teeth as my vision sharpened, focused into a soda straw on the door. It was difficult to imagine which enemy would be worse: Stefan and the Externals, searching for Anne Marie’s guilt just as I had, or Leif and the Styrma.

  My gaze went to the curled calligraphy buried under salt. All things considered, a demon trumped them both.

  Chapter 14

  The carpet hush-hushed with footsteps in the hall outside her workroom. I forced my eyes open wide to face the threat. Couldn’t hide. Strike first, as soon as they showed themselves, and then run. Just as I tensed and started to reach for magic, the front door opened and closed again.

  Not just one of them, whoever or whatever they were.

  “She’s in here,” someone in the hall said, and a hex crashed through the room and destroyed the work table I crouched behind.

  Shit.

  I bolted, rolling across the floor to the closet, and flung a few hexes back at the witch who stood in the doorway. She grunted and fell back as the blue magic swirled up and tangled around her, pinning her to the door. My feet slid in the salt spilled over the demon sign, and I scrambled to get up and out of the small room. Being trapped upstairs as more feet ran up from the foyer sent my heart into overdrive, and I could hardly draw breath as the world closed in around me.

  They tried to help their friend, who croaked and coughed against the hexes that froze her, and one of the witches bashed a spell into the wall until drywall crumbled. My hands shook as I pressed my back against the closet door and forced myself to stand. The infinite ocean of power waited for me, beckoning. It promised calm indifference and protection from the helicopters echoed in my thoughts, mimicking my racing pulse and taking me back to a faraway battlefield.

  One of the witches sent Anne Marie’s carefully arranged shelves flying across the room, smashing to pieces against the wall where I crouched, and she snapped, “You bitch, get out here and fight like a real witch. You killed Cara and Danielle, and now you’re going to pay for it.”

  That did it. If this was the dark coven, tracking me down to punish me for sending their covenmates into a demon realm, I wasn’t going down without a fight.

  I shoved to my feet and surrendered to the magic. It rose through me in a freezing tide, painful for only a moment until it numbed away everything else. I felt buoyant and free, untethered to any earthly concerned. I was above it all. I was a war witch. The War Witch.

  Power gathered in my hands as I stepped out of the closet, already forming a mobile ward around me in a protective dome, and I flicked my fingers in the direction of the four witches gathered outside the door. Debris from Anne Marie’s workshop exploded out, knocking them back, but I didn’t stop. The strongest, a summoner, crashed blue magic hexes against my wards and only succeeded in sending a cascade of sparks through the air.

  One of them hurled powerful breaking hexes and managed to crack the wards, sending a backlash through the magic that almost disturbed my equilibrium. I took a breath and concentrated on getting out of that fucking room. I drove them back as they dragged their injured friend, and as I lurched into the hallway, one of the witches looked up at me and froze. “Who the fuck are you?”

  “You attacked me. Who the fuck are you?” I didn’t really care, though, not with the comforting buffer of magic. They’d attacked me, and I was well within my rights to kill all four of them.

  “We’re here for Anne Marie,” she said, breathing hard as
she struggled to hold up the injured witch. “She did something with two of my coven members. Are you a friend of hers?”

  “A friend? Definitely not.” Something small and silver on the floor caught the light, and I bent to pick it up, no longer so concerned with what they might do to me. From the looks on their faces, they’d figured out from the wards that things probably wouldn’t go their way. The basher still looked mad as hell, though, so I kept an eye on her as I examined what I’d found on the floor.

  An alignment ring made of silver, set with a purple stone for basher and the Alliance crest on one of the panels. I frowned as I studied the other, and my heart stuttered even with the cold disdain of magic as I saw the other panel. Rowanwood. Those damn dark witches.

  The talkative one straightened, her eyes narrowing as she looked at me. “That’s Wendy’s. Give it back.”

  It wasn’t just the Externals who collected alignment rings. I considered pocketing it, but something moved downstairs, near the door, and I didn’t want to have anything associated with demon magic on me. I tossed it at the four witches and held my hands up. “You should leave. Fast.”

  I’d be able to find them again and deal with whatever dark magic they worked. Having a knockdown brawl in Anne Marie’s house, as time ticked away from my chance to interrupt their spell, wasn’t a good idea.

  “Who the hell are you? You’re not in the First Coven.” The other witches didn’t release their magic, and they didn’t budge, still blocking me from the stairs and the way out as more noise and some flashing lights disrupted the quiet night outside. The chatty one straightened her shoulders and drew herself up, more magic gathering around her. “And you don’t have a ring, which means you’re nonaligned. You attacked us.”