I frowned. “Light veils?”
“White clothes,” Dahlia called, exasperated. “He can see through white clothes. That’s why none of us wear them around him.”
I glanced down. My work shirt was white. As were the bra and panties I’d worn today.
I gasped and folded my arms over my chest and glared at Andersen, who grinned.
“Told you to wear the blue underwear,” Ryerson said, focused on something on the computer screen. It looked like building blueprints.
Andersen shrugged. “He’s right. Also, your bra has like three holes in it. Victoria was right to keep that underwear a secret.”
Well, that explained the nickname. My cheeks flamed. At least my pants were black and he couldn’t see the granny panties. “Isn’t there something you’re supposed to give me?” I asked a little desperately.
“Yeah.” He stretched across the table, grabbed a plastic water bottle, and tossed it to me. “That,” he said with a nod, “is your disguise.”
I gave the bottle a dubious look.
“Drink it two hours before you need to look like the ambassador’s wife. The spell will last twenty-four hours, and twenty of those you’ll be on a plane, so don’t take it until the last possible moment. What?”
I realized my jaw was hanging open, and I snapped it closed. “Sorry. I just didn’t know a spell like that was possible.”
“A lot is possible if you have the right ingredients. But those ingredients can be really hard to come by, which makes them crazy expensive. Take this spell. It requires the petals of a corpse flower, which only blooms every thirty to forty years, and then only in Indonesian rainforests. Well, and a few public botanical gardens, which is where this one was stolen from. And the spell itself is complicated so if you burn it, well, there goes a fifty-thousand-dollar secret op.”
I gripped the bottle tighter. “So don’t spill it.”
He grinned. “Now she gets it.”
I had more questions about the spell, but Andersen had hopped off the table and was pulling tiny bottles from cabinets. He tossed three of them to me. I yelped and hastily set the water bottle on the countertop, then did a weird little dance to catch all three.
Andersen gave me an odd look. “What exactly do you think I just tossed you?”
“I don’t know, magical grenades?”
He shook his head and pointed to a shelf filled with glass bottles marked with a runic branch: three curved lines intersecting one vertical line. “Those are grenades.” He pointed to the bottles in my hands. “Those are language spells. They’ll allow you to speak whatever language is written on the bottle. You won’t be able to understand the language, though. They last about three hours each. Whipped them up this morning. If you don’t use them within four days, just throw them out. They lose their potency after that.”
“Not a long shelf life,” I said.
He shrugged. “Haven’t found anything to make it last longer that doesn’t affect the potency of the spell. And it’s hard to experiment when the CIA is constantly threatening you for ‘wasting’ expensive product.”
He said that last bit loudly and at Ryerson, who ignored him. His back was still to us, focused on the screen. Ryerson muttered something I couldn’t hear, and Dahlia laughed and stroked a wrinkled hand up his arm. Ryerson ignored that too, but Andersen’s eyes narrowed.
Was she … flirting with Ryerson? And was Andersen … jealous?
Andersen was still glaring at them and it was weirding me out, so I said, “I’ve never met someone Dahlia’s age who’s so talented with computers.”
He glanced at me. “How old do you think she is?”
“I don’t know, seventy-five?” My real guess was closer to eighty-five, but somehow that felt rude.
Andersen grinned, but it faded into a scowl as his gaze drifted back to the wrinkled, bangled hand squeezing Ryerson’s forearm. “She’s twenty-two.”
“What?” Clearly I’d heard him wrong.
“She slept with the wrong witch’s boyfriend,” he said, his voice low. “The witch was crazy powerful and super pissed, so she cursed her to look like that. One year for every time they’d slept together. That was six months ago, and the witch still refuses to reverse the spell and I can’t figure out how she did it to know how to undo it.”
Hmm. I couldn’t help him there, but he looked so miserable that I said, “Have you tried yarrow root?”
He frowned. “How would that help Dahlia?”
“It won’t, but it might help with the shelf life of your language spells.”
He looked surprised, then thoughtful. “That … just might work. How’d you think of that? I thought you said you don’t work spells.”
I shrugged. “I usually don’t, but my aunt owns an herbal shop. She uses yarrow root to help the shelf life of some of her … erm, herbs.” Actually she used it to extend the shelf life of the charms and spells she kept in the basement for her actual magical customers, instead of the usual crowd looking for candles or new-age books. But she didn’t like to advertise that last part. Aunt Belinda has a strict policy of only selling her magic to people she knows and trusts to use it right.
Andersen looked like he didn’t believe me, but his curiosity was piqued and we fell into conversation about the uses of different herbs. The next time I looked up, Ryerson was gone and Dahlia had wandered back to our, I mean Andersen’s, side of the room.
Andersen was saying something about a new spell he’d tried using elderflowers and licorice root, but my attention had drifted to the door and the sullen man who had just walked out of it.
“What’s with Agent Ryerson?” I asked.
“Whatever do you mean?” said Andersen innocently.
“Is he always that … angry?”
Andersen and Dahlia exchanged a look, then Dahlia shrugged. “Ryerson came to the MPD six months ago. Before that he and his partner were the best team the CIA had. They had more successful missions under their belts than any team in the last ten years. Then he was transferred here and partnered with the MPD’s resident witch, and he fell for her, hard and fast.”
“Dahlia,” Andersen warned.
“What? Ryerson’s love life is not a state secret. Well, mostly. Anyway, she died two weeks ago, and he isn’t over it. Thinks it was his fault. The guy’s a ticking time bomb if you ask me.”
“That didn’t stop you from flirting with him,” Andersen accused.
She shrugged. “Being angry doesn’t stop him from being hot.”
Andersen looked ready to respond, but I remembered something. “What protection spell does Ryerson wear?”
Andersen and Dahlia looked at me strangely.
“He doesn’t wear any spell. Well, except the contacts I spelled to allow him to see magic.”
I shook my head. “He was wearing something last night. I felt it.”
They exchanged a look.
“He was here last night,” Andersen said, “right after he went to your place. That retinal scanner at the door? It’s also a magic scanner. It would have sensed a spell. Hell, I would have sensed a spell. And I’m telling you, he wasn’t wearing one.”
Strange. I could have sworn I felt something, but I was pretty stressed last night. Maybe I’d mistaken it for my own magic.
I opened my mouth to ask him more about it, but Ryerson walked back into the room, two overnight bags slung over his shoulder. One of them was mine.
“Ready?” Ryerson asked gruffly. “Plane leaves in an hour. We need to be on it.”
Right. We were really doing this. I squashed down the flutter of panic in my stomach, waved goodbye to Andersen and Dahlia, and followed Ryerson out the door.
7
“Are we there yet?”
From the airplane seat next to me, Ryerson sighed. “It’s been six hours. You can open your eyes now.”
Right. The last time I did that, the plane hit turbulence. Overhead-bin rattling, jerk you in your seat and smack your head into the rock-hard shoul
der of the scary CIA agent sitting next to you turbulence.
Sure, the two events probably weren’t related, but I wasn’t about to take that chance.
“We need to go over the mission specs before we reach Lisbon,” he said.
Lisbon. As in Portugal. I know, because I’d asked. Twice. Because when a CIA agent tells you he needs to make a “quick stop,” he apparently does not mean he wants to swing by the Gas-N-Go for taquitos.
Great. Now I was hungry.
“I’ll read them in the car once we’re safely on the ground,” I said.
“You’re really not going to open your eyes until we touch down?”
“If I did that, I couldn’t hold the plane in the air with sheer force of will, now could I?” I said through gritted teeth.
I couldn’t see him, but somehow I knew he was shaking his head.
“What if I said I have chocolate?” he asked.
I perked up. “What kind of chocolate?”
“Is there a difference?”
Clearly, he did not have chocolate.
“Of course there’s a difference. For example, if you had creamy white chocolate with little flakes of coconut, I’d consider it. Or maybe some Godiva dark chocolate with mint. No way am I opening these baby blues for some Hershey’s nonsense.”
Ryerson muttered something about me being “impossible,” and we ignored each other for the rest of the flight.
After the longest twelve hours of my life, we touched down at Lisbon International Airport. On shaky legs and with a queasy stomach, I followed Ryerson off the plane and into the terminal. He had wordlessly shouldered both our bags, and I needed something to focus on besides the way my stomach kept trying to crawl into my throat, so I watched the steady rhythm of his shoulders bunching and shifting beneath his blue polo shirt as he navigated us through customs.
I had to admit, with his khaki pants, tennis shoes, and the sunglasses clinging to the V in his shirt, he looked every bit the American tourist. Albeit an unnaturally handsome one.
By the time we stepped out of the airport and into the warm sunshine, I was feeling much better.
“I’m hungry,” I said.
Ryerson stopped just outside the automatic doors. His gaze swept the passenger pickup zone, so I let mine do the same. A taxi stand stood to our left, a line of people slowly forming. Half a dozen cars idled at the curb, their drivers’ attention divided between scanning the people trickling out the doors and the airport security guard glaring at each of them in turn and tapping her watch in warning.
“Maybe if you had opened your eyes on the plane, the stewardess would not have assumed you were sleeping when she passed out meals,” Ryerson said, pulling my attention back to him.
“They served food?” I had slept in fits and starts on the plane. Figures that would be one of them.
“It’s an international flight. Of course there was food.”
“You could have ordered me a sandwich,” I grumbled.
He grunted, and his gaze settled on a man leaning against a beige-colored sedan, dark arms folded over a muscled chest, legs crossed at the ankles, a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes.
Ryerson hitched our bags higher on his shoulder and strode toward the sedan, leaving me to catch up. It was kind of becoming our thing.
Ryerson nodded at Baseball Cap, who stepped behind the car and popped the trunk. Ryerson dropped our bags inside and then slid into the front seat. I climbed into the seat behind him. Baseball Cap started the car and maneuvered us into the traffic leaving the airport.
I gave Ryerson a full minute to make introductions before I gave up and introduced myself.
“Hi.” I gave Baseball Cap a little wave in the rearview mirror. “I’m Ainsley.”
“Tiago,” he said.
Tiago didn’t have an accent. Which I supposed meant his accent was American.
“Did you find everything I asked for?” Ryerson asked.
Tiago nodded.
“Good.” To me, he added, “Before we head into the city, we need to make a quick stop.”
Uh-oh. “Where? Spain?”
Tiago flicked me a glance in the rearview mirror, and Ryerson ignored the sarcasm. “No. A safe house just outside the city.”
I perked up. “Will there be food?”
Ryerson shook his head, and Tiago gave me a funny look in the rearview mirror. Like he hadn’t quite decided what to make of me. I met his gaze and raised an eyebrow. The feeling was mutual.
Ryerson and Tiago fell into a conversation about the layout of some part of Lisbon called Baixa. While they debated access points and escape routes and transportation, I watched Portugal pass us by. It was beautiful. Lots of colorful houses, arched doorways, and palm trees. I wished I could just spend days soaking up the city.
“What’s that?” I asked, pointing at an enormous white house surrounded by meticulously manicured lawns.
Ryerson glanced out the window. “Se Cathedral. Why?”
“It’s beautiful.”
“I guess.”
I stared out the window until it disappeared from view, then sighed and sank back into the leather seat. Ryerson was looking at me in the rearview mirror.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
I narrowed my eyes, but Tiago said something about the local police, shifting Ryerson’s attention to him.
Thirty minutes later, we pulled off the highway and into a neighborhood most notable for its gray palette in a city otherwise alive with color. We pulled up in front of a depressed-looking duplex with an SUV parked in the driveway and went inside. The front room held a few folding chairs and two card tables—one laden with sophisticated-looking surveillance equipment, the other stained with drink rings and empty except for a deck of cards.
Tiago grabbed a white shopping bag from one of the chairs and tossed it to me. “Put those on,” he said and then disappeared into a back bedroom.
I peeked inside the bag to find a pair of lace-up combat boots.
“Seriously?” I said to Ryerson.
“You’ll need them.” He gestured down the hall. “If you want to wash up, there’s a bathroom at the end of the hall, and there’s food in the fridge.”
That’s all I needed to hear. I slipped the boots on. The leather was supple and soft inside, but they felt bulky over my skinny jeans, so I laced them halfway and turned down the tops. Then I washed the long plane ride off my face, gathered my hair into a fresh ponytail, and beelined for the kitchen. I almost cried when I found sandwich meat and bread and even condiments. I officially loved Portugal.
I made myself a turkey and Havarti cheese sandwich and inhaled half of it before I went to work making another one, this time doubling the meat and cheese. Ryerson walked into the kitchen as I popped the last bite of sandwich into my mouth and swiped mayo across a fresh slice of rye bread. He was carrying a black duffel bag, which clanged noisily when he set it on the tile floor. I considered asking him what was in the bag, then decided I didn’t want to know.
“Hungry?” he asked.
I topped the second sandwich with the mayo-slathered bread and slid it across the island.
“This one’s for you,” I said.
He looked surprised, then eyed the sandwich with suspicion.
“I didn’t spell it.”
He didn’t look convinced. I rolled my eyes, grabbed the sandwich, and bit into it. And tried not to groan. I may not cook, but I make a darn good sandwich.
“See?” I said, handing the sandwich back to him reluctantly. “Magic-free.”
Satisfied that I wasn’t trying to magically poison him, he ate the sandwich.
“Ready?” he asked.
“That depends. What are we doing?”
Please say sightseeing. Please say sightseeing …
“We’re visiting the site of Merrick’s most recent attack. The agency wants to see if you can pick up his magical signature.”
“Why?”
“They wan
t you to be able to recognize him if we run into him in Korea.”
I was once again struck by the idea that the CIA had no other witches on retainer for something as important as this. Surely there were witches more qualified for this sort of thing, and way more powerful than me.
Whatever. The sooner we left, the sooner we’d get this over with.
I pulled in a deep breath. “Sure,” I said. “Let’s go.”
8
Ryerson, Tiago, and I drove through downtown Lisbon and into a bustling shopping district. Small, ornately carved black signs congratulated us on our arrival to the Baixa district. Tiago parked on a side street and we walked to the heart of Baixa. The whitewashed limestone buildings, ornate streetlamps, and mosaic-tiled streets lent the area an old-world, laid-back charm that seemed to permeate the city. The first few blocks were crowded with people and cars and street vendors plying their wares, but the streets emptied as we pushed deeper into the borough, until eventually we hit a quietly ominous block cordoned off with white-and-yellow-striped tape stamped with the word “policia.”
A strong sense of foreboding filled me.
Ryerson lifted the tape for me. I hesitated, then ducked under it. The sun bathed the whole boulevard in an indiscriminate, cheery glow, yet somehow the street felt darker with each step. Maybe it was the bits of rubble swept to the sides of the street or the char marks on the building facades that grew blacker and swallowed more and more of the structures as the street wore on.
It wasn’t hard to guess where we were headed. Windows of the shops on either side of the street had been blown out. Some of them were boarded up, others hadn’t bothered. But the damage to those stores was nothing compared to the café.
I’m not even sure how I knew it was a café. Maybe it was the strip of burned fabric blowing in the wind below the warped metal awning. Or the small café table lying on its side on the wrong side of a gaping maw in the bricks where I guessed a large front window used to be. The building itself was little more than a burned-out husk of brick and cement.
License to Spell: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Undercover Witch Book 1) Page 6
