War Witch

by Layla Nash

  “Sure, whatever you say. But knowing this makes you invaluable. You’re the only other person in the city who knows how to undo this. So pay attention.”

  He grumbled but focused on Leif, and I fed more power into the hex as the wild magic bubbled in my veins. The muscles in Leif’s jaw jumped as the purple glitter covered him from head to toe once more. “You said—”

  “Oh, calm down. He has to see what he’s working with. Keep complaining and I’ll leave it like that.” I ignored Leif’s sour expression as I glanced at Kyle. “Look at the hex. Someone snarled it up quite a bit, but a good spell can always be undone. It’s only when witches get sloppy or lazy that real damage is done. And cannot be undone.”

  For a moment I thought of Sam.

  “It’s really complex.” Kyle leaned close and peered at Leif’s shoulder while the Warder grumbled about being a “blasted science project.”

  “That design makes it spread. I could show you a contagious variant, so anyone he touched becomes contaminated.”

  “Neat,” the mender said, nodding eagerly, and Leif pulled away, his eyes dark.

  “Damn it, would you just—”

  “Hush,” I said, and absently stroked the back of his forearm. For a giddy heartbeat, my magic tangled with his, cascading through his aura in a swirl of sparks.

  I folded my hands together so I wouldn’t do it again, and focused on the witch. “Look here, toward the top. Where those two knots are formed, there is a trailing end. Do you see it?”

  Leif tensed as I guided the witch’s hand. “Right here.”

  The kid beamed as he twined part of the hex around his fingers, oblivious to the Warder’s grimace. I chewed my lip to keep from laughing at him. “Take the end you have and pull gently to his elbow, no less than ten counts.”

  Both Leif and Kyle held their breath; the witch even leaned back, as if the hex would transfer when it popped loose. Kyle pulled a face and Leif scowled at both of us as the tension grew, then an audible crack caught Soren’s attention.

  Leif looked down at his glitter-free body, said, “Flippin’ miraculous,” and stormed out, flinging the door open with such force it slammed shut in my face.

  Kyle blinked, dazzled as he studied the fading hex, tangled in his fingers. “Can you show me how to build that?”

  “Maybe.” I edged toward the door, uncomfortable with the hero-worship in his eyes—between that and the magic sharing, I was in trouble.

  Chapter 33

  Leif waited at the passenger door of another black SUV outside the mansion. Tracing his path through the halls had not been difficult: he left behind a wake of cowering shifters and air blued with cursing. I eyed him as he jerked the door open, aware of the tension rippling through him but uncertain of the cause.

  “Get in,” he said.

  I hesitated, but did as he said. Leif slammed the door and stalked to the driver’s side. I studied his profile as he got in and started the car, waiting until the rumble of the engine concealed our words from outsiders to say, “What’s wrong? I got rid of the hex.”

  “I have no reason to be angry.” But he gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles went white, then exhaled and pried his hands free.

  As the tension simmered and he pulled out of the long driveway, past a few groups of guards, I debated reaching for the door handle and freedom. I could run or even fly, I had so much nervous energy. I could get to Tracy’s house on my own. My hand twitched closer to the handle once we passed the gates.

  Leif didn’t seem to notice until a soul-deep sigh made his shoulders slump. “If you run, I’ll chase you. I won’t be able to stop myself. Please wait.”

  I leaned back, forcing my hands to relax in my lap. “Okay.”

  He grimaced and fiddled with the heater controls, warm air blasting into the car, then abruptly swung the car to the side of the road and shoved it into park.

  But still the silence stretched, so I took a gamble. “Was it Brandr? Something he said?”

  Leif scowled at the distant hint of dawn beyond the city. “I’m not the wolf. I’m not the guy who can’t control himself.”

  “Spit it out, Leif. Help me understand.”

  “He looked at you and I wanted to kill him. He said he planned to turn you and make you his, and I almost tore his throat out. If Soren hadn’t held me back, I would have. He swore that oath, and...” Leif growled, nails tearing into the leather-wrapped steering wheel.

  He hit the steering wheel and the blare of the horn made me jump. I raised an eyebrow. “Leif, maybe—”

  “And he touched you. He held onto you, he—” Leif stopped, gathered himself, and took a deep breath, scrubbing his hands over his face. “I have no justification to feel this way, you have given me no indication that you’d welcome these feelings from me. And you’re still a suspect, or at least a witness, and this is the kind of unprofessional behavior I’d fire someone for. I just…I ask your tolerance. Sometimes our animal nature is not entirely flexible when it comes to something it wants.”

  Something it wants. He wanted me. At least some part of him did. And admitting such a thing must have cost him a great deal. I nodded as I studied the car’s spotless interior. It was insanity to broach the subject as we headed to a house where witches died, but my stomach squirmed in anticipation at the possibility that he might like me. Might really, honestly, like me. My voice came out so low I thought he might not even hear it. “What would be an indication?”

  Leif stilled, halfway to switching off the heat again. “An indication of what?”

  My heart pounded against my ribs and I could hardly breathe. “An indication that I might not be entirely opposed to maybe one day eventually welcoming that. From you.”

  For a dozen heartbeats he only breathed, hands braced on the steering wheel, then he seized my hands in his, crushing my fingers. “Break into my house and leave something. To mark your territory.”

  I swallowed a laugh despite the thrum of magic through my muscles, his touch sparking a connection. “You’ve got to be kidding. The Chief Investigator encouraging me to break more laws?”

  “You didn’t seem to mind before.”

  The familiar fog tugged at me, and I pulled free. Succumbing to pack magic while alone in a car with him was not a good idea. We’d never make it to Tracy’s. “Okay. But you could just ask me to dinner. That’s how people normally do it, I think.”

  “Maybe.” He sported a rather goofy smile as he pulled the car onto the street and navigated through the early morning traffic. He caught my hand as he drove, and it felt natural. Easy.

  My thoughts drifted to what we’d face at Tracy’s, and I tried to prepare myself by rehearsing useful spells. It had to be done right. For all of them. But the easy slide of his palm and the pressure of his fingers distracted me.

  The spells distracted me, or maybe I just dozed off, because the next thing I knew, the SUV rolled to a stop in a middle-class neighborhood and Leif sad, “We’re here.”

  Tracy’s house. No Externals lurked outside with ominous black vans, no crime scene tape marked the door. The house looked normal.

  Except for a patch of dead grass shaped like a body, the head and heart singed black. That was never a good sign.

  He tapped the dash but didn’t move, scanning the empty street. “We should get moving, the Externals are probably on their way, or at least watching the place.”

  I fumbled with my seatbelt. “What?”

  He leaned to unlatch it for me, smiling, then walked around to open my door. “They drive by to check on what we’re doing. But I’m here, and we have Styrma nearby just in case. Soren is prepared to call the Judge if anything happens. We’ll be fine.”

  I slid out of the SUV, a little flustered to find myself chest-to-chest with him. “Easy for you to say—they don’t have a warrant out for your arrest.”

  He snorted. “They have a bounty on me instead—if they thought they could kill me and get away with it, I’d be a dead wolf with my h
ead over someone’s mantle.”

  I surveyed the surroundings, wondering whose body left the mark on the lawn. I dreaded what waited behind the solid oak door. “This isn’t a good idea.”

  His mouth quirked in a smile as he flipped the car keys around his finger. “What other choice do we have, if we want to figure out what happened? And if you want to clear your name once and for all?”

  “You’re right.” I took a deep breath and forced my feet to move up the driveway to the front porch. “Then let’s get this over with.”

  Leif and I both gagged on the stench of old blood spilled in anger the moment he opened the door. I tried to be thankful no one had cleaned up, since it preserved the distinct signatures of the participants and an echo of their actions. But that didn’t make it easy to step inside onto the stained tile and squishy carpet.

  Her place wasn’t fancy—at least, it hadn’t been even before demonspawn redecorated. But it had been a home, and it retained memories of Tracy. I hesitated in the foyer. A few clean patches of carpet revealed the original beige fibers, but the majority of it was black and still with blood. Leif waited, silent, at my elbow as I struggled to breathe.

  I dragged my gaze from the gory scene. “The rest of the house?”

  He pointed through the living room to an open doorway. “The kitchen…it’s not this bad. We found Rosa in the bedroom to the left.”

  I nodded, rubbing my hands together so I could summon power—more power than I really needed, wrapping it around myself as magical insulation. Smell barely registered, but the lingering magical signatures in the house became a heightened bouquet of old friends and new mysteries. I trod on the stiff but soggy carpet, fingers drifting over a clean end table. “Let’s see what we can find, shall we?”

  Leif remained near the door, his mouth twisted. “I’ll wait here.”

  “I need you to be a witness.” I paused to study Tracy’s bookshelf, frowning as I noted a few gaps in the otherwise packed shelves. Perhaps someone stole her books, too. “To remember what happens.”

  “No one doubts—”

  “The testimony of one nonaligned witch is insufficient to convict an aligned witch of any major crime,” I said, considering the pristine carpet on the stairs before continuing my tour of the living room. I avoided the path to the bedroom where Rosa died. I wasn’t ready to see it yet. “Your testimony is necessary, if there is someone to answer for these crimes.”

  I peered into the kitchen, wrapping the magic tighter around me so I wouldn’t care about the blood on my shoes or a bloody handprint on the wall, like someone tried to drag themselves up but failed.

  No defensive wards clung to the walls in the kitchen or anywhere else in the house that I’d found. Whoever caused the mess entered without a fight. Been invited, maybe. Expected and welcomed. Part of the coven.

  “What do you expect to find?”

  “Salt,” I said. “I need salt to clean up.”

  “Lily,” he said, exasperation making his voice rough. “An entire crew couldn’t—”

  “Not the blood,” I said, shivering as my name rippled through what remained of the spells. “The magic. It’s dangerous to leave it like this.”

  I climbed on the counter and began searching the tops of the cupboards. My shoes slid, slick with blood on the stained granite, but Leif stood behind me to catch me if I fell. I sidestepped down the counter, and came up empty at the end of it. Dishes, spices, a few cans of soup—but no salt. I studied the neat breakfast nook and cafe table, the baker’s shelf with copper pots and pans, and braced my hands on my hips as I balanced. Nothing out of place, but nothing where I expected.

  Leif stepped back to look up at me. “What do you need?”

  I needed my life back. I needed to get away from that house, and those memories. I needed the Externals and Eric to disappear forever. I needed Rosa and Joanne back, and Anne Marie gone. “Sea salt. She has to have a bag around here somewhere.”

  His head tilted back and he breathed in, mouth open to taste the air, and I arched an eyebrow—smelling anything through the reek of blood and death was quite a trick. But he held out his hand and said, “Hop down,” then led me to the far end of the kitchen. He didn’t release my hand, and our fingers laced together easily. Naturally.

  Soren’s pack magic surged through the duller layer of Kyle’s, reaching out when it felt the connection to Leif. I braced for the inevitable fog of lust. But instead of reacting, Leif dropped my hand.

  His shoulders tensed as he stared at a framed painting of the sea hanging on the wall. “You feel like Soren. Like you’re his.”

  “So it was not just about Brandr, hmm?”

  Leif stared at the wall as if he could set it on fire with his eyes alone. “I tried to take Kyle’s place when the witch fell. But I cannot defy Soren, so he helped you.”

  I made a thoughtful noise as magic shimmered across the wall. Leif gestured at the painting, ignoring the issue of Soren’s interference and the fact that his magic marked me. “It smells like salt over here.”

  I lifted the painting down to examine the wall, running my fingers over the stiff paper and probing what turned out to be elaborate wards, and I sighed. “But if it had been you, Leif, would either of us have survived? We don’t have the best track record under magical influence, you and I.”

  “I never said this was logical.”

  My touch triggered the ward and it started glowing. It was well-done, a sophisticated thing. I would not have noticed it without Leif’s nose. Tracy had gotten a lot better.

  I took a deep breath, glancing over at Leif as I pressed my left hand into the ward. “You didn’t see me do this.”

  A tingle built as the ward resisted for five heartbeats, then ten, and the fizz in my fingers built into a burn. Leif’s expectant expression faded. “What’s supposed to—”

  The pressure wave of the breaking ward knocked him into the table, collapsing it into a pile of kindling, and the released power rolled through me as a sneeze built in my nose. The cleaner magic from Tracy’s spell boosted what remained of Kyle’s magic, and felt almost refreshing after the cloying darkness of the spells in the living room.

  Leif clambered to his feet, brushing himself off, as I studied the wall. A small recessed panel hid behind the ward; I stroked the edge until a latch caught. The panel slid back to reveal a cupboard about a foot deep and two feet high. I retrieved a cheesecloth sack of sea salt, handing it to Leif so I could poke through the rest of what hid in the cupboard.

  More than just salt and sage and copper spoons and parchment, more than ink and talcum and all the normal trappings that the experienced witch needed. I stepped back and put my hands in my pockets, as Mother always made me do when I was tempted to touch something I shouldn’t.

  I felt like a naughty kid all over again, even if I wasn’t the one keeping secrets in my wall.

  Leif leaned around me to peer into the recess. “What’s in there?”

  “Some things I did not expect,” I said under my breath, not taking my eyes off the cupboards. Sometimes things disappeared if you looked away from them. “We need a bag.”

  “A bag?” Leif retrieved a large canvas tote from the pantry. One of her grocery bags, most likely—it had Recycle printed on the side in cheerful rainbow letters.

  He held it out so I could transfer the contents out of the wall and into the bag, holding my breath as I took a mental inventory. A glass jar of grave-dirt. Half a dozen finger bones. Three ivory combs. Several rocks—smooth volcanic glass, rose-red sandstone, crystals, a piece of meteor. Three circular mirrors, set in tarnished silver, made Leif’s hands recoil as I set them in the bag, until I tucked a cloud of aged white fabric—a christening gown—around them.

  “What the hell is that?”

  The christening gown’s removal revealed a deeper shelf with three books. I paused as I peered at them. Dark leather bindings, stiff with age and hate, titles stenciled on with talcum and sealed with minor wards. “You remember
what kind of magic I said I did?”

  “All of it,” he said. “Black, white, gray.”

  I reached for one of the books, keeping my voice low so I wouldn’t disturb the spirits of the grimoires. “This is where the road turns gray.”

  The second book was heavy with knowledge, but it was only a copy of the real book, which sat in my parents’ house. I handled the third book with more caution: it was a darker book, an original primer for dark witches from before the Inquisition. I couldn’t judge Tracy for owning it, since my own shelves held far worse.

  I wiped my hands on a towel as I closed the cupboard up again, and Leif held the bag at arm’s length as he grimaced. “This is not good stuff. Fenrir protect us.”

  “It depends on how you use it.” There were certainly legitimate reasons for owning those things, or so I tried to convince myself. The fingerbones were a bit odd. But knowing your enemy, as I’d so often said, meant knowing your enemy’s capabilities and weapons. “But we should cover it with something innocuous.”

  He pulled open a couple of drawers until he found some dish towels to stuff on top of the books, hiding even the delicate, yellowed lace of the christening gown. Leif frowned at the doorway. “Is it possible the coven did this to themselves, by accident?”

  I very much doubted it. But I hefted the bag of sea salt and strode past him to the living room. “Only one way to find out.”

  “Find out what?”

  I tripped in the doorway as Stefan, bundled up in a dark trench coat, raised an imperious eyebrow. A smirk made him even uglier. “Bureau of External Affairs, witch. You’re under arrest for compromising a crime scene, resisting arrest, and interfering in an official investigation. Release the magic immediately or I will shoot you.”

  I believed him, despite the dubious protection of the lapis ring on my necklace, and I believed the gun aimed at my chest despite the way his hand trembled. A low growl from the kitchen told me the Warder believed him, too.

  Chapter 34