by Elle Adams
“You have to ask nicely,” Lizzie said, barely looking up from her keyboard. She, and thankfully Blythe, had returned to work once it was clear I was staying, and Blythe hadn’t made any more derogatory remarks.
Bethan flipped the paper over in one hand. “It doesn’t like any of us except you. You know that.”
Lizzie shrugged. “You never gave it a chance.”
Bethan threw the paper down. “Okay… let’s try this.” She waved the wand, and a fire leapt up on the desk.
I wheeled the chair back so fast I nearly fell off it. “Oh… my god. The desk is on fire.” Way to state the obvious, Blair. I braced myself for sprinklers and fire alarms, but nobody else even looked up from their desks.
“It’s contained.” Bethan held the paper over the simmering candle-sized fire. The flame leaped higher, devouring every inch of the page until nothing remained.
Bethan leaned over, brow furrowed, reading something in the flames that I couldn’t see. The smell of burning cloves filled the room. Then she looked up at me.
“You’re right.” She waved a hand and the flames vanished. “He’s a werewolf, all right.”
“And… what does that make me?”
“Talented. Ask Alissa, and she’ll find you a tutor right away. I get the feeling you’ll need it.”
Yeah. Maybe I will. Now my curiosity couldn’t be tamed. I could tell if someone was paranormal without looking at them?
“Is that normal, for a witch?” I asked.
“Normal? No such thing here,” she said breezily. “Your powers must have been dormant for your whole life. I’ve never met anyone else in your position, but it’s definitely unique—not in a bad way. You haven’t done anything wrong. You might just have helped us, actually.”
I rested my head against the back of the desk chair. “Maybe. Is it a common talent, though?”
“No, but it depends on your bloodline. That determines the nature of your dominant gift.”
Blythe made another dismissive noise. Mind-reading must be her gift. Veronica had implied Bethan’s had to do with being able to track people down… or possibly do the jobs of twelve people at the same time. Lizzie could make sentient printers. And me?
“Wow,” I said. “To think I thought I’d be answering phone calls, not accidentally identifying murderers.”
Maybe I’d gone too far. But she laughed. None of them seemed bothered that at some point in my fourth call centre job, I’d completely lost the ability to switch on an effective filter at work and not return the customers’ rudeness with the sarcastic response it deserved.
“What about the werewolf, then?” I asked. “Do we send the police in? Or—” I nearly said monster hunter security guards, but held my tongue.
“Not yet. I’ll ask Callie to speak to the leader of the local pack and see if there are any possible strays.”
“Wait,” I said. “I mean—what if he’s the killer? It seems a pretty big thing to lie about. He’s supposed to be coming in for an interview tomorrow anyway… maybe I can slide in some probing questions concerning his last interview. I might be able to pick up anything else from him in person, too. I mean, if I can tell someone’s a werewolf over the phone…”
She nodded slowly. “Good thinking. I’ll tell Callie and the boss in case he is dangerous, but I’ll ask them not to spread it around. There are a dozen innocent reasons someone might hide their identity. If you’re sure.”
No, I wasn’t sure. What in the world was I doing? I needed to settle down before trying to catch rogue werewolves. Maybe that’s a job for the resident retired monster hunter.
“You look a little tired. Want me to get you a coffee? We have a special brand for motivation. Not that caffeine isn’t motivational enough on its own.”
“Motivational coffee?” I raised an eyebrow. “Sure, why not.”
She walked to a machine in the corner, all shiny black chrome and covered in dials. Her wand appeared in her hand, and she tapped the dial with a picture of a coffee cup on it. Immediately, two coffees appeared on the desk.
“Wow.” I walked around the machine, but I couldn’t see where the coffee had been conjured up from. Attempting to figure out magic would probably just give me a headache.
“Perks of the job—we each get one motivational coffee a day. Any more tends to have adverse side effects.”
“Do I even want to ask?” I took the coffee and sipped it. It had an odd aftertaste, weirdly sweet.
“Luck is worse,” she said. “You get one day of life being perfect and then every client flakes on you for the rest of the week.”
“Fun.” I took another sip. A jolt of optimism straightened shoulders I hadn’t realised were slouching and banished every scrap of doubt from my mind. “Wow. I should have started the day with this.”
The voice telling me to run for the hills had already been growing quieter by the second. But I couldn’t leave now, could I? Someone was dead. And somehow, I knew one of the potential killers was hiding a secret. “Do you have background info on the other interviewees, too?” I asked Bethan. “There are a couple more names on the call list for today which match the ones who were interviewed to work for Mr Bayer. Unless it’s too much of a risk?”
“Not at all. You have an ironclad excuse, and the police are the arrest-first-ask-questions-later sort. Veronica put enough defensive spells on the building that nobody will be able to harm you in here.”
“Excellent.” I loaded up my computer, which thankfully seemed to work more or less the same as a standard one, aside from the weird vampire logo and a couple of odd additions to the keyboard that looked suspiciously like arcane symbols.
“Are you slacking off over there?” Blythe asked. I instinctively moved the files to cover the incriminating one.
“No, I’m giving her some pointers,” said Bethan. “She’s new, and you can’t expect her to know everything right away.”
Blythe gave me a piercing look and I resisted the impulse to shrink back. They’d clearly had some kind of dispute before I’d arrived. Maybe to do with hiring an outsider, or hiring someone new so soon after their last colleague had been terrified into running. Whatever the reason, I had zero patience for her attitude. “Is there a problem?”
“You have some nerve barging into an active police investigation when you haven’t even been here a day.”
So she’d been eavesdropping. “I’m not barging in anywhere.”
“You can’t pull that one on me. I can read thoughts.” She smiled. “You found out how specialist talents work, right? That’s mine.”
Great. No privacy from someone who hated my guts for no apparent reason. Though I couldn’t think what thoughts she’d picked up on that might have caused her to hate me on sight. I’d met my fair share of petty bullies in my life. They said ‘they’ll grow out of it’, but that was a lie. Petty bullies at school grew up to be petty bullying adults and passed on the same habits to their children. If you ignored them, they decided they were more entitled to act like they had a licence to treat people like dirt. Best to confront them head-on.
“And I know what you think yours is,” she added. “I wouldn’t get involved in werewolf pack business.”
“I’m not getting involved in anything,” I said. “I’d just like to know if the candidates I’m speaking to on the phone are criminals or not before I get them a job.”
“Maybe I’ll call the police myself,” she said. “Steve will set them right.”
That shouldn’t have sounded as threatening as it did. They couldn’t arrest me as an outsider, could they?
“The candidate might be innocent,” said Bethan. “I’m still pulling together the information, besides. Blythe, you’re outnumbered. Go back to work.”
She hissed out a breath. “You’re clueless, aren’t you?” she said to me.
“I’m learning. And Bethan is capable of making her own decisions. I didn’t tell her to help me.”
Blythe said in acid tones, “She doesn’
t even belong here. She’s a fairy, not a witch.”
“Excuse me?”
“What I said.” Her eyes narrowed. “Pity the boss has yet to find out you’re here to destabilise the balance.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
There was a flash from behind the computer, and Blythe ducked her head. “Don’t you think about zapping me again,” she said to Lizzie.
“Then get back to work,” Lizzie retaliated.
Blythe rolled her eyes, but got the message and thankfully returned her attention to her own client list.
“Don’t pay her any attention,” said Bethan.
“Was she right?” I said, more confused than ever. “I thought—you said I was a witch.”
“Your file did,” she said. “I have no idea where she picked that up.”
“Not from my thoughts, that’s for sure.” My mind whirled. The motivational coffee had worn off pretty fast. I was well and truly exhausted. And if I apparently had to go to meet the leading witch later, I might need a power nap first.
Or a ticket home. To my not-home.
No. I’m not going back there. Witch… fairy… I could be the Loch Ness Monster and I still wouldn’t want to go back to my old life, not now I’d experienced this. Whatever came next, depended on how I handled myself at Dritch—Eldritch—and Co.
5
As my first day drew to a close, it was time to go and meet my flatmate. The good news: I wasn’t living with a lunatic or cultist. The bad news: there would be no taking a break from the madness, because my next task was to introduce myself to the local coven leader and hope I wouldn’t be ousted as an impostor and tossed into the lake.
It sounded like this Meadowsweet Coven—along with its leader—was highly influential. Hot Security Guy—Nathan—had said this Madame Grey person owned the whole town. At least I thought he did. Our whole conversation seemed like an embarrassing hallucination from the same place as my showing-up-for-work-in-my-underwear dream collection.
While I had the address to my new flat from the email I’d saved to my phone before my internet connection had cut out, it seemed to point to an old manor house on the corner of one cobbled street, way too fancy for the price range I’d been given. I kept walking, but found no modern-looking apartment blocks. They’d look out of place here. Even the air smelled different. Cleaner. I knew why. I hadn’t seen a single car here, or bus. Did they all ride broomsticks or magic carpets? I hadn’t seen any of those either, but the town was bigger than it’d seemed from the map, and they must get around somehow.
My phone signal had come back, but seemed to be hooked up to a line called Paramobile, and none of the messages I tried to send to my friends at home went through. They did have working computers here, so maybe there was a special Wi-Fi for paranormals, too. I hoped so, because I needed a hint that the world outside still existed.
“Hey, Blair,” said Alissa, opening the door of the manor house from the inside as I walked past it for the fourth time. “Thought I recognised you standing out there.”
“I did get the right house?” I looked up at the balconied windows. “Wow.”
“We only have half the bottom floor,” she said. “I brought your suitcase in. You have the window facing the garden, but we can swap if you’d prefer. We also have a kobold—house cleaner. He comes once a week. Otherwise, it’s just us. Sounds good?”
Better than good. “I didn’t think… I expected a tower block or something.”
“We’re not quite that modern here,” she said. “We make do with what we have.”
Make do? I could have fitted my old house in here three times over, and there’d been six people living in it.
“No, I love it,” I said honestly. “I used to live in a house of teenage undergraduates who never did the dishes and hung dirty underwear out the window. Anything else is paradise.”
She smiled. “I’ve lived here all my life, but I’ve always wanted to go to a human city or town. I’m looking forward to hearing all about it later.”
Hmm. I have my doubts it’ll be as fun as you think.
The interior of the house was even more spectacular. High ceilings, wooden floors so polished that I could see our reflections in them, and a carved staircase at the end.
Alissa pushed open a door on the right, revealing a wide living room. I’d have said the place belonged to a fussy old lady, witch or not. Velvet drapes framed the wide, arched windows. A fluffy black cat lay sleeping on the sofa. All the furniture was made of dark wood, old and expensive-looking.
True to her word, Alissa had moved my suitcase into the bedroom. It was three times the size of my last one, with oak furniture and wide windows open onto the lush green garden. I gaped at it for a few seconds. “Oh, wow.”
At my last place, the doors frequently fell off the cupboards, the heating broke every winter, and almost everything had questionable stains and signs of wear and tear. I backed out of the bedroom, my gaze drinking in every unnoticed inch of the living room—the ornate fireplace, the surprisingly modern kitchenette at the side, the plush chairs which somehow didn’t have cat hair on them despite their fluffy occupant.
Witchcraft. It was the only explanation.
“I should be paying ten times the rent on this place,” I said, shaking my head.
“Don’t tell the landlord.” She winked. “Madame Grey is my grandmother. She’s the leader of the Meadowsweet Coven and owns half a dozen properties in the village, including this one.”
“The Meadowsweet Coven? I’ve heard that name before.”
“It’s my coven,” she said. “Since its members founded the town, they own most of it. Or rather, my grandmother does. She’s offered to meet with you at the witches’ main headquarters in an hour, to help you figure out which type of dominant magic you have. Then you choose how to proceed from there.”
“What, you mean learn magic?” My inner thirteen-year-old vibrated with excitement. While any kind of magic would be awesome, my first step would be to figure out how to cast that frog spell on Blythe.
“You can sign up to evening classes,” she said. “If you want actual qualifications in witchcraft, it’ll take a little longer. Each witch or wizard has a natural proficiency in a certain area, but almost anything can be done with a few props.”
If I took on extra classes on top of full-time work, I’d have my hands full. But I had the distinct impression it wouldn’t be anything like school. And I hadn’t moved to a paranormal town only to end up doing the same boring job I did in NormalsVille. Magic. Yes, please.
“Bethan implied there were a few covens here,” I said. “You all seem to know one another pretty well.”
“Madame Grey knows everyone,” said Alissa. “As for the rest of us, some covens are larger than others. Anyone can join a coven, but there are usually conditions to entry. But I think that’s probably too much information for you to absorb right now.”
“Honestly, the part I’m having the most trouble with is the idea of me being magical,” I admitted. “I’ve been told I couldn’t have known since I spent my whole life living with normal humans—but you’d think someone would have noticed.”
“Not if you didn’t know your family. Bethan told me about that, too. I’m sorry.” Her eyes shone with sympathy.
I’d had that a lot. At school, anyway. Everyone knew I was the adopted kid. But knowing what I did now, my old life looked different through the lens that had slid into place in the last few hours. As though I was looking at someone else’s history. A stranger’s.
“No worries.” I cracked a smile. “Guess I’ll get to be as surprised as everyone else when you find out what my talent is.”
“Yeah. Madame Grey’s doubtless looking into it,” she said. “I’m—to be honest, I’m intrigued to know which bloodline you came from. It didn’t show up on your file.”
“Which is why I was so weirded out that my boss knew I was a witch.”
“She probably used a spel
l to find you.”
Like the divining spell they used to find out that guy was a werewolf. Which I’d been able to tell just from hearing his voice. What would this Madame Grey make of that?
“What do you think of Veronica, anyway? I’ve heard she’s eccentric.”
“She seems nice. Her office is a little strange, though.”
“I heard she changed her surname to ‘Eldritch’ on a whim after a divorce, but nobody really knows the details there. She’s a daughter of nomads who met on a paranormal cruise ship—an English witch and an Irish shifter. She mostly got the witch genes and passed those on to Bethan.”
“Is that how it works? Magic is passed on through bloodlines?”
“Generally it is. Even in cases like yours, your real parents were almost certainly magical. Anyway, I’ll give you some peace to unpack. We can explore the town afterwards if the session finishes early. I’m not sure how much she wants to go through with you on your first day.”
“Sure.” I laid my suitcase down on its side. Was there any point in unpacking if I might have to grab my bags and leave at any moment? I hadn’t even arranged for the rest of my possessions to be moved here, since the whole thing had happened in such a hurry. I’d been intending to call a moving company, but I somehow doubted the phone signal situation extended to normal towns.
I sank onto the bed. What a day. And it wasn’t even over yet.
I was too wired to nap, so I changed from my work clothes into a fresh outfit. I had no idea what I was expected to wear. This Madame Grey seemed to be highly respected, and I doubted jeans would cut it. I settled for a longish skirt and my fanciest top—not the one I’d worn on my ill-advised wine-fuelled night out on Saturday. How had that only been two days ago?
I hung my work clothes within easy reach, checked my phone again, and sent another text message to Rebecca. Message failed. I thought so. Did the witches here have delivery companies? I supposed I could buy crockery from town, and the room was already furnished at least. And then there was the garden. I’d bounced between locations so much that I never stayed anywhere long enough for it to look like home, but I’d never had a proper garden before. Let alone one with extensive grounds and strange, exotic-looking plants.
