War Witch

by Layla Nash

  “You attacked first,” I said. The familiar unfairness of being a second-class citizen rose through me, just as strong as the dispassionate magic, and I clenched my fists. “Get the hell out of here.”

  She took a breath and raised her right hand, on the verge of hexing again, when the front door smashed in and chaos erupted downstairs. The witches looked away and I charged, shoving past them to jump down the stairs. Hexes and spells burst at my heels and the wards shivered, rippling out as I slammed into a wide male chest covered in tactical military gear and bounced right into the wall.

  Guns clicked and popped as men and women in solid helmets shouted orders and aimed at me and the witches upstairs. At least I wasn’t the main target. I didn’t move, not wanting to hold my hands up and risk getting shot for aggressive magic, and focused the magic into gnarly wards. Class IV wards. The kind that had knocked even the Chief Investigator on his ass. The Alliance’s stormtroopers, the Styrma, surrounded me in the foyer and flooded into the rest of the house, prepared to do battle.

  Alarms went off on the gear covering the dark figures, and more than one abandoned their weapons for what looked like killing hexes, tied to small objects so they could be thrown from a distance. One of the burlier guys said, “Release the magic now and identify yourself, witch.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” a familiar voice said, and I froze as Leif stepped through the open door. “Lily?”

  “Hey,” I said, trying to sound normal despite the weapons aimed at me and the furious witches upstairs. “So, this is a little...”

  “What are you doing in Anne Marie’s house?” His forehead creased as he studied me, and I didn’t know how to feel about the fact that he didn’t order his guys to lower their weapons immediately. Maybe whatever had been between us at the restaurant was already gone. I’d broken into Anne Marie’s house, after all, and he was the law for the Alliance.

  “It’s a little hard to explain,” I said. The demon sign upstairs, if it had survived all the hexes and spells thrown around, would finally prove what a bad witch Anne Marie was. I just needed to show him, then maybe take him to the Skein to show him that as well. Leif wouldn’t be able to see the magic, but he could smell the demons more strongly than witches could. I glanced back up the stairs, shivering as I thought of the oil-smeared mirror in the work room. “Especially here. I’d prefer to talk... somewhere else?”

  Leif looked at me for a long time before he glanced up the stairs at the four witches, then gestured at the Styrma team still ready for battle in the foyer. “Detain the ones upstairs. I’ll speak with Lily.”

  One of the guys, familiar as Leif’s right-hand man, straightened but didn’t lower his weapon from where it tracked me. “Boss, that’s a nonaligned summoner, you shouldn’t—”

  “It’s fine, Jake.” Leif’s blue eyes met mine in a hard stare. “Lily’s just about to let go of all that magic, and we’ll have a nice conversation outside while you deal with whatever the hell Rowanwood was planning.”

  I took the hint and slowly released the powerful magic that held me up. The world came back in a cruel rush—everything too sharp, too bright, too loud. The sensations slammed into me all at once and my knees weakened; I held onto the handrail as I concentrated on staying upright. The Styrma eyed me as they stomped up the stairs, crowding me out until I had to stumble down the last few stairs or risk getting trampled underfoot. Jake scowled at me and kept close to Leif as the Chief Investigator caught my arm and helped me stand.

  Leif kept a professional distance as I limped to the porch, and he pretended not to notice as I paused to catch my breath after only a few steps. Using magic was like a muscle, in some ways; though I had near-infinite power at my beck and call, I hadn’t used it in so long it took more out of me than I could stand. Which did not bode well for trying to stop Anne Marie at the Skein, if it came down to an epic battle with war witches.

  Leif propped me up against one of the columns and frowned out at the half dozen cars parked in front of Anne Marie’s house, some of them with flashing lights and others so unremarkable they made my nerves twitch. He took the metal case out of his coat pocket and selected one of the thin cigars, fiddling with it as he spoke. “Start talking, Lily. Last I knew, you were in the car with Mick and heading for the pack-house so we could finish talking about what happened with Stefan. Imagine my surprise to find out you escaped from Mick. And now you turn up at Anne Marie’s house in the middle of a burglary.”

  “I didn’t realize Mick detained me,” I said, taking refuge in a little bit of irritation. “I wasn’t in his custody, so when I left—because he threatened me if I didn’t join his pack—it wasn’t an escape.”

  “He threatened you?” Leif’s eyebrow arched.

  “I’m sure it was a misunderstanding,” I said. After what Leif said in the restaurant, I didn’t want him going after Mick. Moriah’s brother was a jerk, but he didn’t deserve the Chief Investigator’s hammer. “But after everything that happened at the restaurant, I didn’t want to stick around.”

  “So why did you come here, Lily?” Leif lit the cigar and studied the smoke curling around his fingers. “If you’re not in contact with the First Coven, like you said yesterday, then this doesn’t look good.”

  “Anne Marie borrowed a book from me,” I said. The lie escaped before I could think of a more plausible justification for being in Anne Marie’s house, but the heavy bag on my shoulder was the only thing working in my favor. “She refused to give it back, so I came here to... take it.”

  And I patted the bag for good measure.

  He didn’t believe it. It was clear from the way he watched me and didn’t speak. I remembered the watchfulness from the war, and it still made me nervous. Before he could speak or do more than tap the ash off his cigar, Jake leaned through the door and cleared his throat. “Nate just called. Two External response vans are on their way.”

  Leif shook his head, pinching the bridge of his nose, then carefully flicked the coal off the cigar and put it back in his fancy case. “Great. Take care of the witches here and figure out why they broke into Anne Marie’s house, and I’ll take this one back to the pack-house.”

  “Boss—”

  “Jake.” Leif’s blue eyes went diamond-hard, though his voice stayed perfectly mild. “Do you really want to finish that sentence?”

  The other shifter didn’t look at me, but irritation radiated from him strongly enough to give me a sunburn. “After what happened earlier today, people will talk.”

  “Let them.” Leif caught my arm and shepherded me down the two stairs and toward a sleek sedan in the driveway. “Call me if there’s a change.”

  Jake grumbled and went back into the house, and I heard him barking orders before Leif opened the passenger-side door and shooed me in. I kept a tight grip on my bag and Anne Marie’s book as he started the car and practically flew out of the driveway and down the street, almost colliding with an approaching van with blaring sirens. Leif evaded the van, as well as the one following it, and I stared out the window at the passenger in the second van: Stefan. His eyes narrowed when he saw me, and he reached through the open window as if he could grab me through sheer force of will. But by then Leif’s lead foot whisked us out of reach and left the Externals to deal with Jake and his crew.

  I felt like celebrating, though it only lasted until I glanced over and caught the expression on Leif’s face. I held my bag a little tighter and cleared my throat. “Where are we going, exactly?”

  “The pack-house. Soren is interested in some of the recent... happenings.”

  He sounded remarkably grim. And the Peacemaker didn’t get interested in happenings for just anything—the petty squabbles of witches were normally so far beneath Soren’s notice, I figured Anne Marie must have elevated the threat to his attention just to get me in trouble. I sank lower in the seat, trying to orient myself as he pulled onto a main road not far from my apartment. Out of the frying pan and into the fire, it seemed.


  Chapter 15

  Leif didn’t let the silence stretch for long. The car paused at a red light and he glanced over at me. “What happened with Mick?”

  “He told me to join his pack or Soren would arrest me. Something like that.” I stared straight ahead, debating whether I stood a chance of convincing him that Anne Marie was up to no good. The witching hour approached too quickly and magic gathered elsewhere in the city. “After what happened at the restaurant, and with the Externals harassing aligned witches, he seemed to think my only hope for survival was swearing allegiance to him and Soren.”

  “It’s not a bad idea.” Leif accelerated through the intersection and another block before suddenly pulling the car over to park on a side street. He half-turned in his seat to look at me, expression difficult to reach. “Why not?”

  “I have my reasons.” Even if it was tough to remember what they were, with the Chief Investigator watching me so closely. I remembered times during the war when I would have given anything for a conversation in close quarters with him, and other times when I did all I could to avoid him. The magical fatigue made my head ache and my bones hurt, and I wanted to curl up someplace to take a nap, not answer questions about my whereabouts and intentions. “And I’d rather save that conversation for another time, if you don’t mind.”

  “Fine. Let’s talk about why you’re avoiding answering any questions about the night of Moriah’s party. Are you aware that two witches disappeared near the Skein?”

  “I heard from someone at work.”

  “And are you aware that the witches at Anne Marie’s house belong to the same coven?”

  “I saw one of their rings, but I didn’t make the connection.” My heart started beating a little faster and the feeling of being chased, and cornered, returned.

  “I don’t believe in coincidence, Lilith.” He stressed my old name, and heat climbed my cheeks since I’d told him the same thing often enough. There was no such thing as coincidence in magic or war, or so it seemed at the time. Leif’s fingers drummed on the console between the seats. “So help me understand why, every time I turn around and find more trouble, you’re in the middle of everything.”

  “Bad luck.”

  He wasn’t amused. “Lilith—”

  “Please don’t call me that. It’s not who I am anymore.” It hurt to say, since I’d been Lilith the longest. A witch’s true name held unbelievable power over her, and so I kept my true name—the thrice-given name from my parents—close to my heart. I’d been Lilith throughout the war and into the peace, and though I tried to leave her, and all her crimes, behind, it felt like a chain around my ankles holding me back.

  “Lilith was a hero,” he said, a hint of sympathy in his eyes.

  “Not everyone remembers it that way,” I said under my breath. I couldn’t take his gentle tone, the understanding. We’d both suffered a great deal, and yet he seemed fine. Perfectly fine. I hated the creeping weakness that burned my sinuses and threatened to spill down my cheeks in rivers of tears. “So I’d really prefer Lily.”

  “Is that why you refuse to join the Alliance? Too many people remembering you as Lilith?”

  I shook my head, even if it was partial truth. The Alliance would have celebrated me for the worst parts of my past, the things I hated about myself. The things I’d done that haunted my dreams and occasionally sent me into panic attacks in the middle of the day, based only on a breeze or a hint of exhaust or the rat-a-tat-tat staccato of rainfall that sounded too much like automatic weapons. I tried to breathe normally despite the increasing tremble in my fingers. “No.”

  He waited, letting the silence stretch until the shivers moved up my hands and made it almost impossible to hold my bag. I felt the car shrinking around me and fumbled with the door handle, searching for the window control.

  “Breathe,” he said, and cracked the windows open. Cool air rushed into the car and I leaned toward the window, struggling to inhale. The Chief Investigator made a grumbly noise in his chest, one of those wolf sounds that sounded scary but was meant to be reassuring. “Just breathe.”

  It felt like an eternity before the pressure behind my eyes eased and the world stopped collapsing around me. I couldn’t face him, though, and instead told my secrets to the window. “Today Anne Marie called me a murderer. For what happened with the coven, at the end.”

  “You’re not a murderer, Lily. I remember that much.”

  “Cold comfort, I guess, from the Hellhound himself?” He made a face at the old nickname the humans gave him, but it was the least offensive among many. I rubbed my forehead, dismayed at the sweat slicking my brow, and wished he’d lowered the window more. “I killed people, Leif. It was war, but I still killed people. Anne Marie will never let me forget that, and I can’t live with her judgment.”

  Leif studied me in the dim light of the car’s dashboard, his expression hidden in shadows. “Then why are you still involved with the coven, Lily?”

  “Tracy asked me for a favor.” I wanted to tell him everything. I wanted to spill the beans on Anne Marie and the demon magic, and all the trouble that waited at the Skein. The words stuck in my throat.

  “I’m trying to give you the benefit of the doubt, Lily. Maybe I shouldn’t, but I suppose I can’t put aside what happened in the war either. I owe you. The Alliance owes you. But that only goes so far in the Truce, do you understand?” Leif tapped his fingers on the steering wheel, though his gaze never left mine. “I have two witches missing in what looks like dark magic, a human girl still in the hospital and contaminated with something we’ve never seen before, and suddenly a lot of issues with all the witches in the Alliance. The only common thread is you.”

  “That’s not entirely true.” I cleared my throat to get rid of the knot of tears, still lingering along with memories from the third year of war, when I was too young to know who to trust. Sometimes trusting anyone—anyone—was a leap into an abyss with no light. No hope. Bad news never got better with age. “Look, Tracy told me—”

  Before I could get any further, his phone rang and a radio beeped loudly enough to make me jump. Leif didn’t look surprised, only irritated, as he picked up the phone and turned off the volume on the handheld radio as it continued to blare warning noises. He didn’t look away from me as he held the phone up to his ear. “Yeah, boss?”

  Boss. The only boss in Leif’s life was Soren. The Warbringer and Peacemaker. Leader of the Alliance, alpha among alphas, and a first rate son of a bitch. I held my breath.

  Leif’s eyes narrowed as he continued studying me, and my heart sank. It could have been any number of things. Maybe Anne Marie went to Soren after I left her store. Maybe the girl in the hospital finally gave them enough information to identify me. Maybe the witches arrested at Anne Marie’s house blamed me for the attack. Maybe they’d found the demon sign in the workroom upstairs and attributed it to me.

  “You’re sure?” he said, unblinking, and hints of the old Leif—Scary Leif—started to leak through the calm, human features. “Who called it in? When?”

  Some of the background noise of his call snuck into the quiet car—shouting and sirens. Maybe it wasn’t to do with me, after all. I didn’t relax. Leif’s features sharpened and he gripped the steering wheel. “Okay. I’m on my way.”

  He hung up and put the car in gear, reaching for the radio. “Change of plans. I’m going to drop you at your apartment, and you’re going to stay there until I can send someone to pick you up.”

  “What happened?”

  “Another misunderstanding, I hope.” Leif’s expression turned grim as he accelerated through an intersection and flipped a switch so that red and white lights flashed in the front of the car, illuminating the empty streets as he drove.

  A misunderstanding didn’t usually get Leif that worked up. He honked the horn as a truck almost cut him off, avoiding the slow vehicle with an irritated growl, and then suddenly we were parked in front of my apartment complex. He cut the engine and got out, mutte
ring into the radio as he walked around the car, and I shoved my door open before he could get to it. A little chivalry had its appeal, but not in the middle of an emergency.

  I held onto my bag, thinking of the heavy book and all the new things I could learn from it before he came back to arrest me, and backed toward the sidewalk. “Thanks for the ride, I’ll—”

  “I’ll walk you up.” He still frowned at the radio and his phone as both chirped again, distracted.

  “It’s fine. You really don’t need to.”

  He gave me a sideways look and started toward the sidewalk, putting away the phone. “It’s late, Lily. I’ll walk you to the door.”

  The phone rang again, and Leif frowned down at it. I pointed to the noisy device. “Go. If something’s going on, you should just go.”

  “I’m walking you to your door. I’m a—”

  “A gentleman, I remember.” I retreated a few steps and flapped my hand at the closest apartment building. “But it’s twenty feet and a flight of stairs. Soren needs you. Go.”

  He hesitated, glancing at the phone again before scanning the surroundings, as if searching for any trouble lurking in the weeds and cracked concrete. Only a few streetlights flickered and went out, and not even stray dogs disturbed the night. Leif shook his head. “Fine. But I’m sending someone to pick you up and take you to the pack-house. I’ll call you when they’re close.”

  “I’ll be standing by.” I tried to smile, as if we could joke about things like that.

  Leif folded his arms over his chest. “Lily, do not run. Wait here until Nate picks you up. Running only makes it worse, do you hear me?”

  “I’ve got it.” I started backing up, not wanting to linger too long in the open with the Chief Investigator in case some of the nosy neighbors started paying attention. “I’ll be here.”