War Witch

by Layla Nash

  Eric glanced around before leaning close and dropping his voice. “After we found the mess at your apartment and the witch’s house, Stefan believes their demon summoning went wrong and now the demon is on the loose.”

  As theories went, it wasn’t the worst. Demons had to go somewhere, after all. I studied his unlined face, and the expressionless second face underneath, searching for a hint of his motivation in either. “Who do they think trashed my place?”

  “Oh, Stefan thinks you did it yourself, you tricky witch. To divert attention from the other dark magic, and to hide your participation in the coven.”

  Also not a terrible theory. I put the fork down as swallowing became more difficult. Saints preserve me. “And they’re looking for me.”

  “Bet your ass, sweetheart.” His tone was cheerful, at odds with the gravity of the news. “Ostensibly to protect you from whatever destroyed your apartment, but really all they want is a baseline magical signature to pin everything on you. The Bureau is using the attacks as a convenient excuse to round up witches of basher class and above.”

  “And once they’re separated from their covens...” I trailed off, the queasiness growing in my stomach. Pancakes hadn’t been a good idea after all.

  “The Bureau will collect signature and biographic information. Work up full dossiers on all powerful witches. This is a prime opportunity to identify the Morrigan and her captains.” Eric glanced at his watch, tone turning bored. “So if you have any friends left, they should find a dark hole to hide in until this blows over.”

  I sat back, pushing away the plate before I accidentally ate more. “Why do you want to help me?”

  “We’re alike, you and I.”

  “You keep saying that,” I said, leaning forward across the table. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “We’re loki,” he said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

  A loud rushing noise filled my ears as I stared at him. Loki. “That’s b-bullshit,” I managed to say, shaking my head. I tried to get out of the sticky booth, wanting to get as far as possible from that lunatic. Loki were dangerous. Outlawed. More reviled even than the Morrigan.

  “Wait.” Eric caught my arm and kept me in the booth, expression on both his male and female faces hardening. “You didn’t know?”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” I tugged at his grip, cursing the weakness of the magical hangover and wishing I could have just hexed him in the middle of the human diner. “You’re going to get me killed, you psychopath. Don’t joke about shit like that.”

  “It’s not a joke.” Apparently assured I wasn’t going anywhere, Eric drummed his fingers on the table and talked faster, voice low and blurring into a whisper of insanity. “There aren’t many of us left, so I was surprised to find you. I’m astounded you survived this long.”

  I couldn’t breathe. Panic compressed my chest and the diner blacked out around me until all I could see was his face. His fake face and the real one underneath. Loki. Unrestrained shapeshifter. The only thing you could never trust, when it could be anything it wanted. And she thought I was one of them.

  It wasn’t possible. I shook my head and tried to shove back from the table, even trapped in the cramped booth and stuck to the plastic bench. “You’re insane. It’s not possible. It’s not fucking possible and how dare you accuse me of—”

  “It’s not an accusation, tutz. It’s reality.” Eric leaned forward and the pudgy male face faded away until the young woman’s face took over entirely, though oil rainbow swirls still floated around him. Her. It. Evil. “You can see me, can’t you? You knew something wasn’t right with my face, but I’m guessing you assumed it was regular old witch magic. It isn’t.”

  Someone passed near the table and her face returned to Eric’s doughy, unassuming countenance. She waited until we were alone again to go on. “You got away with it for a long time because of the witch stuff, but there’s always been unexplained things about you, right? Stuff normal witches didn’t do or have or survive.”

  My brain refused to consider the possibility. Magic had rules, but sometimes those rules were only internally consistent. Some things remained difficult to explain or understand. I shook my head and yanked the necklace she’d given me over my head, slapping it on the table. “I don’t need this. I have enough problems already.”

  “You’re about to have a lot more,” she said, unruffled. “More than you can handle alone. The Bureau is working on a way to find loki. If you survive this dark magic shit, it’s only a matter of time until they get you anyway. The only way we can survive is to work together.”

  My legs didn’t work, and I hovered, half-in and half-out of the booth, as I stared at her and clutched the lapis lazuli ring in my fist. The diner tilted around me. It was too much. Tracy missing, Rosa and Joanne dead, the Externals on my heels, and this guy—girl—telling me I was something terrible.

  Eric sighed as she sat back, then pulled a wallet from her back pocket. “Think about it. Sit with it. Call me when you’re ready to talk. But don’t wait too long, because shit’s about to get real. Stefan’s going to arrest you for the dark magic, regardless of whether you’re guilty. He’s got a divireader rigged to show opal when he wants. Leif embarrassed him, so Stefan is going after you to make a point. Imagine the Chief Investigator having a demon-handler as a friend of his pack. Scandal for the Alliance, promotion for Stefan. Death for Lily.”

  I couldn’t swallow around the knot in my throat. It just…couldn’t be true. It couldn’t be true. I stared at the pancakes, turning to mush in the syrup, and wondered if more coffee would help sort out the mush in my head.

  She tossed money on the table, more than enough to cover my pancakes and her coffee as well as a generous tip, and eased to her feet, still wearing Eric’s stocky form. She pointed at the ring. “Keep it close, by the way. Think of it as a get-out-of-jail-free card, at least for the time being. Don’t wait too long to call, Lily. Be careful.”

  Then she winked, tossed another business card on the table with a different phone number, and bounced away through the diner, all purpose and drive with a swing in her step. I slouched in the booth and signaled the waitress for more coffee as I waited for the world to return to sanity and stability. Saints save me from morning people.

  Chapter 20

  I hadn’t moved from the booth even after half a dozen more cups of coffee. The waitress finally just left a fresh pot on the table next to me. Luckily the stack of cash from Eric convinced her to just leave me be, so I struggled with my thoughts in solitude. Everything Eric said and did over the past few days ran through my mind over and over. None of it made sense. If she was loki, how the hell did she end up masquerading as an External? The Bureau of External Affairs was one of the organizations charged with identifying and destroying loki. She’d walked into the lion’s den and made herself one of the pride, all the while waiting for them to find her. She had to be crazy. Stark raving mad.

  And she thought I was like her. She thought I was one of them, one of the reviled and hated. Hated more even than the War Witch. I rubbed my forehead and covered my face, wondering where the hell I could go from the diner. I couldn’t sit there all day, regardless of how well I tipped the waitress with Eric’s money. Getting back to the Remnant would take more energy than I had to spare, and the cost of holding onto the glamour just to sit in the diner grew until it made me queasy to consider. If I didn’t have some place safe to land when I released the magic, it would be over before I had a chance to tell Eric she was full of shit.

  I forced myself to move to the edge of the booth, gathering the strength to stand, but paused as my phone rang. Moriah. I picked up and leaned against the table, my forehead resting against the stained Formica top. “Hey.”

  “You sound awful. What’s going on?”

  “It was a rough night.” I squeezed my eyes shut as another headache brewed behind my eyes, even through the cold magic.

  “Mick admitted what he sa
id to you,” Moriah said, the irritation in her voice well-concealed but still there. “He’s an ass. Don’t listen to him. You’re a friend of our pack as long as you need and want to be, and probably after that as well.”

  It took a long moment to remember what she referenced—the conversation with Mick in the car after I left the restaurant. So much else had happened that it seemed laughably petty. “It’s fine, Mo. Barely a blip.”

  “Then fill me in on what else is going on. Leif called half a dozen times looking for you. His guys are all over the city. Something big is going on.”

  I let the silence stretch as I debated what to tell her, how much to get her involved in what would no doubt be an ugly mess, and when I said nothing, Moriah sighed. “So it’s that kind of problem.”

  “Sorry.” I rubbed the back of my neck. “There’s—”

  “Get your ass over here,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Get over here. I don’t know where you’re at, but it’s not safe out in the city. You can come hang out with me and I…I won’t tell Mick. Or Leif.”

  I sat up, squinting as I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Mo, that’s—”

  “I know what it is.” Moriah wouldn’t say she’d break pack law outright, but that was what she promised. Not telling the Chief Investigator or her alpha my whereabouts, when they wanted to know, meant betraying her pack. “We’ll sort it out once things are a little clearer. So get over here, witch.”

  I wanted to refuse. I wanted to shelter her from the dark magic and demons and even the craziness that Eric promised to bring into my life. But I had nowhere else to go. I’d pay her back somehow. I’d protect her from the danger brewing in the city, and I’d make it up to her before she even knew I owed her. “Okay. I’ll be there in a bit.”

  She was a better friend than I deserved. It took me an eternity to make my way across the city to the neat suburb where she lived, and by the time I reached her doorstep, I felt myself fraying at the seams. Sleeping in the old clothes I’d borrowed from the wardrobe in the Remnant left me rumpled and uncomfortable, and just as my phone started ringing, the front door swung open and Moriah eyed me up and down. “You’re kidding, right?”

  I shoved the phone away. “What’s that?”

  “What the hell did you do to your hair?”

  “It’s been a long night. You going to let me in?”

  She surveyed behind me for potential threats before standing aside. “Park your broomstick on the tile before you get dirt on my floor. Did you walk through a barnyard on your way over?”

  “The buses aren’t running,” I said. I leaned back against the door, my eyes drooping already. The glamour faded away along with my hold on the magic as I stood in her foyer, and the buzz of reality ran through me like pins and needles. Everything hurt. “Sorry. I’ll leave the shoes here.”

  “And the pants.” She gestured at my knees and handed me a pair of sweatpants, taken from the basket of fresh, folded laundry right near the basement door. “You’ve got shit up to your calves.”

  I grumbled but did as she asked, kicking off the muddy shoes and stripping off the equally dirty jeans, and put on the sweatpants. Even the soft cotton grated against my unbearably sensitive skin.

  “You don’t look good, Lil,” she said, voice quiet. There wasn’t any judgment in her, but that didn’t make it easy to come up with a response. “Like five years ago.”

  I concentrated instead on using one of the clean towels to wipe up the muddy footprints I’d left on the clean tile. Moriah pointed at my jeans, crumpled on the floor, as the pocket started to ring. “I’m guessing that’s Leif. He’s looking for you, but he won’t say why. Mick asked me a bunch of questions about where you’d hide and who you’re friends with and if you ever used dark magic. If you were slipping again, back to... before. Ending with strict orders to call Leif the second I see or hear from you. Start talking, witch.”

  I silenced the phone and shuffled toward her living room. If I didn’t sit down in the next few minutes, I’d fall flat on my face and never get up. “Some witch business went sideways. Mick didn’t say anything about last night?”

  Mo couldn’t know about the mess at my apartment or she would have tackled me in relief the moment I knocked on her door. That Leif kept the incidents a secret from one of the most trusted wolves in the Alliance did not bode well for either of us.

  “Not a peep.” She followed me into the living room and folded her arms over her chest as she flopped onto the cushy overstuffed chair across from the couch where I collapsed. “Just…where’s Lily? Have you seen Lily? Call her, did she answer?”

  I winced. “Sorry.”

  Moriah put her feet up. “Is this about the bar the other night? The bet? Or did you do something else to get Leif all worked up? I haven’t seen him like this in a while.”

  “I hexed him yesterday.” I frowned, trying to remember through the fog of memory and magic. “Day before that, maybe.”

  She sat forward, eyebrows arched almost to her hairline. “Wait, what?”

  “He broke my wards and almost got himself killed, so I hexed him to save his life. Sort of.” I covered my face and flopped sideways. My chest ached with grief. It seemed so ridiculous compared to what happened to the coven. I shouldn’t have been hanging out on Moriah’s couch. I should have been tracking down the perpetrators that killed Rosa and Joanne. I should have been searching for Tracy. But nothing worked and I couldn’t explain that to Moriah. I couldn’t explain the coven to Moriah.

  “You destroyed his house, didn’t you? That’s why they’re looking for you. We can fix this if you didn’t draw blood, we—”

  I forced a smile and begged the coven’s forgiveness. “I appreciate that you think I’m that strong, but no, I didn’t destroy anything. We had a spirited conversation and agreed to disagree on a few things. That’s it.”

  She eyed me, still debating in her head, and eventually got up to wander toward the kitchen. “Well, you look like shit. Go upstairs and take a nap. Maybe take a shower first. Then we can figure out what the hell to do about all this when you’re feeling better. I’ve got Mimi’s party tonight, but you can hang for dinner with the girls when they get here.”

  “Thanks.” I rubbed my eyes and staggered to my feet. I’d forgotten about Mimi’s bachelorette party. Maybe that would be enough of a distraction for the Alliance that I could get to Tracy’s house or the Skein and start tracking down the next link in the chain to the people who killed Rosa and Joanne. Not even the pot of coffee I’d drunk was enough to keep me awake once I sprawled on the bed in the spare room, and some of the agony faded from my joints as the magic retreated further. I’d search for Tracy as soon as night fell. It was safer for us both.

  Chapter 21

  I woke after full dark with the same magical hangover, though it didn’t feel like my skin would peel itself off my body if I moved too fast. For a long moment, I peered around the dim room, trying to remember where I was, and the realization of Rosa and Joanne’s deaths hit my chest like a lead pipe. I curled up around a pillow and buried my face against the smooth fabric, muffling the scream I’d wanted to loose in the diner but hadn’t dared. Rosa. Joanne. Tracy.

  And at the heart of it all, Anne Marie.

  Tears burned as they escaped and tracked down my cheeks, disappearing into the pillow, and it wasn’t enough. It would never be enough.

  The weight of their loss pinned me down even as voices rose elsewhere in the house. I couldn’t afford to grieve. Just like in the war, that had to wait. Emotions had to wait until the luxury of time and safety allowed it. I said a prayer for them to the saints and rolled out of bed. Rosa and Joanne would have understood. They knew.

  I reached for a thread of magic, a bare whisper of power, to fend off the urge to crawl back into bed. At some point Moriah left my laundered jeans in the room with me, so I got dressed and ran a brush through my hair before I dared the landing outside and the stairs. I paused, though, as Moria
h’s voice echoed through the otherwise quiet house.

  “Goddamn it, just tell me what’s going on.”

  “I can’t,” her brother said. I froze where I was. Mick. He undoubtedly knew why Leif searched for me. But Mick didn’t blurt it out. “Leif’s orders. But you should cancel the party, Moriah. It’s not a good idea, and even in that part of the city, it’s not safe.”

  “Mimi will be crushed,” Moriah said. Her tone gained an edge as she went into protective big-sister mode. “We’ve already rescheduled it four times based on bullshit warnings like this. Is Soren ordering me to cancel this party?”

  “No, but—”

  “Then we’re not changing it.” Moriah growled in irritation. “Have you received any threats?”

  “No,” he said, and he wasn’t happy about it. “But there are other things going on in the city, Moriah, and—”

  “Tell me what they are and why I should give a fuck, then we can have a conversation. You’re the alpha, I get it—but don’t you fucking forget you wouldn’t be without me. You can’t do any of this shit without me. So if there’s something so dire going on, tell me. Otherwise get out of my way. I have our sister’s bachelorette party to manage.”

  Silence raced through the house and I debated escaping out the window before things got bloody. But Mick only growled at her, said something I couldn’t quite hear, then stormed out. The door slammed behind him, and the force of it shook the house. I eased down the stairs and peeked into the living room. Mo sat on the couch, face in her hands, and didn’t move as I walked in. I knew she knew I was there, but I didn’t press. Just folded myself into the love seat and waited.

  She didn’t move. “How much did you hear?”

  “Not all of it, but enough.” I picked at a loose thread on my jeans. “And thanks for washing my clothes.”