The Binding Witch and the Bounty Hunter

by Laura Rich

  “You sent Madame Miri!” I said, finally putting the pieces together from my strange experience with the fortune teller a few months ago. My strange reaction to the power Mom said was just borrowed from Miri, from those talismans—it was actually the emergence of my power. That was what she was so afraid of. Afraid of . . . me?

  “To watch you anguish and suffer over this decision is part of your mother’s punishment,” he said. “Because she knows that you would never choose her, though she would gladly do this.”

  “You’re a real asshole, Li.” My mother shook her head. “You also realize you’re going to alienate your daughter by doing this, don’t you?”

  “She’ll forgive me when she realizes that the life I’m offering her will exceed her wildest ambitions,” he said.

  “I’m pretty sure her ambitions don’t tend towards world domination,” my mother said.

  “Well, I’m pretty sure, given the opportunity—” my father said.

  “You’re both talking about me like I’m not even here! Everyone just shut up! I need to think!” A scene formed in the back of my mind like an old-fashioned photo being developed. I could almost see it, but it needed more time.

  “Choose me, Kate,” Indira said. “I want to make a deal to kill your father.”

  “Nice try, but that won’t work. She carries my blood and can’t make deals that will harm me. And I thought I silenced you!” He raised his hand again to cast against her.

  “No, leave her alone!” I roared. “Indira, I’m not doing a deal with you.”

  He stayed his hand and gave me a thoughtful look.

  “Kate, you may be part demon,” my mother said, “but I don’t think you have this power. Just try it with me. I have something I want.”

  I shrank back in horror. “No! What if it works? You’ll die!”

  She drew in a deep breath. “I’ve lived a long life and achieved many things. If this is my time, then so be it. But I don’t think it is.”

  I stared at her face, which suddenly looked older in a way I couldn’t pinpoint.

  “No.” Not yet. This was not the answer. Panic bloomed in my gut. What was the solution? I willed the scene in my mind to process faster.

  “Choose me, Kate,” Leo said from his slumped position beside me. “It makes the most sense. You barely know me. I’m going to die anyway. Dad’s not going to help me, and he’s not going to let your mom help me either. I’m a failure to him.”

  I glared at my father.

  He shrugged. “It’s true.”

  “You’re such a jerk,” I said. I looked at Indira, my mother, my father, and Leo.

  “Me, Kate . . . choose me.” Leo gazed into my eyes in that same hypnotic way in which I’d accidentally made Luna my familiar—a magical gaze.

  I let him.

  I saw our lives in parallel, though where my experiences were with a loving mother, his were with our cold, distant father trying to teach him magical tasks that he mostly failed at. Even through punishment and eventual demotion to a common thug, Leo still tried to connect with our father and make him proud.

  Until he met me, that is—then everything seemed to change. Our paths converged as if we were to travel together now. That image finished the scene that had been developing in my mind. I relayed my idea to Luna, who shared it mentally with my brother.

  Leo’s eyes widened, and some of the sparkle that had been missing since the battle at Elsereach returned.

  “He wants to know if you’re sure, Kate,” Luna said. “Though we both think it’s a hell of an idea.”

  I nodded and smiled. “I choose you, Leo Vidra. What is your wish?”

  Leo grinned in complicity. “My wish is to bind my life to yours, that our fates are one.”

  24

  “Agreed,” I said, and a blaze of power surged through my chest and extended to him. I felt the link affix between us, and the reality of what we’d just done settled upon the barn. A tiny thud sounded in the dirt next to me. It was a small silver coin, intricately decorated with a colorful, jeweled inlay design. It depicted a flower with a purple center surrounded by five pointed petals in red, yellow, orange, green, and blue.

  “No!” my father roared. “That’s not . . . that’s not what I meant!”

  My mom’s tinkling laughter rose into the air and surrounded me like a warm hug. “I warned you, Li, she’s her own person with her own ideas. Not some mindless being you can control. Now you’ll never know if she can execute that deal and take his life, because if she does—”

  “—I’ll die too,” I finished for her, with a smile so hard it hurt my face.

  I was so emotionally drained from the last hour, I could barely enjoy the transitions my father’s face went through—from fury to anger to a resigned smile. But somehow I did.

  “I guess she’s smart, so that’s something,” he sneered.

  “And don’t forget it!” I said.

  He ignored me and gave my mother a stern look. “Go, and take your impudent child home. My lawyers will be in touch with a reasonable custody arrangement that even you can’t dispute. Don’t even try to go into hiding again. Geas or not, the Bindan will die this time.”

  He stalked out, and the barn doors slammed shut behind him. Our shackles fell to the ground.

  Indira sprang to her feet and shot out the barn door.

  Mom watched her go and shook her head. “He’s long gone by now. He won’t let Indira find him.”

  Leo stared at the coin on the ground between us.

  “What do I do with that?” I said.

  “Keep it somewhere safe,” he said. “If you want to execute on our deal, you give it to me.”

  I looked at him in horror. “I’m not going to kill you!”

  He chuckled. “Well, that’s good to hear. Because it would kill you too, and I’m just starting to like you.”

  “Oh, please,” I said. “You love me. I’m the best sister you ever had.”

  His eyes moistened and he sniffed. “Only sister.”

  I knew then I’d been handed something precious, something I wasn’t ready for, and that made me more than a little uncomfortable. My heart fluttered in panic.

  “I can release the burden from your bracelet and heal you, Leo,” Mom said, easing the tension. “Thank you for keeping my Kate safe.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” he said. “She mostly keeps herself safe. It’s when she tries to help others that it gets difficult to keep her alive.”

  Mom gave me a pained look. “Yes, she does like to be the heroine. Kate, I can release your charms too, but you’re going to need to study up on karmic evaluation. You may understand the academic side of magic, but you have very little practice in application. Then there’s your . . . father’s heritage to consider.”

  I nodded. “Yes to the study, but no to the bracelet.” I wasn’t sure why, but I wanted to wear these charms a while longer. They didn’t scare me, and maybe they should have, but they were mine. I wanted to keep them. Plus, I was still mad . . . or something . . . at Mom.

  She gave me another brief look, as if to argue with me, then stopped herself. “Leo, do you have somewhere to stay?”

  “No, ma’am,” he said. “I hadn’t thought that far. I suppose I’ll bunk in the house now that it’s empty and then maybe get a motel room until I figure out what’s next.”

  Mom pursed her lips and studied my brother. “You’re coming home with us. You can stay in the workshop.”

  My eyes grew wide. “Oh, yeah, um, about the trailer and the workshop . . .” I still needed to tell her about the damage Leo did to release Indira from the trailer and how it probably broke the connection to the workshop.

  Mom gave me the what-did-you-do look. “Kate . . .”

  “It’s fine—it’s still there and everything,” I said quickly. “We may just need to do some minor repairs. It’s fine.”

  “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” Mom rolled her eyes.

  I caught myself grinning and s
topped—I was still angry at her, wasn’t I? This was all so confusing, with my father, Leo, Indira, and my mother, but somehow I felt like the possibility of knitting everything back together might still be there. I just had to look for it. Maybe after some tacos and a nap, though.

  “Let’s go,” Mom said. “We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.”

  Leo let out a bark of laughter. “You two will be okay, I think. But I’m not going anywhere without help, I’m afraid.”

  Some kind of animal screamed in the darkness and I shivered. “Do you think we should call animal control tomorrow or something? They just left them here to eat each other!”

  Strange barking rang out and a few more animal screams, then silence.

  “Um, yeah,” Leo said. “If for no other reason than to stop that sound.”

  Mom and I slipped under each of Leo’s arms to help him stand, and we made our way slowly through the door left ajar by Indira’s hasty departure. The dark-blue night awaited, stars shining bright overhead and crickets going full force.

  Indira stood about twenty feet from us, watching. Her tight posture threw off tension in waves. Something was wrong.

  We stopped.

  “Indira, you coming?” I said.

  Even the crickets seemed to slow their chorus.

  “No, I’m going to track him,” she said. “I have unfinished business.”

  “You’re not going to find him, Indira,” my mother said. “Please come with us. We need to talk. I owe you an explanation and an apology.”

  “I can’t go with you. Kate, you’re the daughter of the man who took everyone away from me. And Clea knew this and kept it from me. And Leo . . .” Indira’s voice broke. She clenched and unclenched her fists. “I can’t go with you.”

  Mom sighed softly.

  “I’m still me, Indira. I’m your friend.” I pleaded with my eyes. I had so few people who meant something to me. Losing Indira would hurt, and I wanted everything to just go back to the way it was before. Returning to normal didn’t seem as close as it had just a few moments before.

  Indira shook her head. “It’s different now. I have to think. Like you, I have to think about this. About what it means to me. If we can still be friends.”

  My heart sank. “But—”

  “She’s right,” my mom said. “Let her go, Kate. She needs time.”

  “Okay,” I said slowly, trying to delay the moment. “Then it’s only goodbye for now, like when the festival season ends. We’ll see you next fall, right?” I wiped away tears with the back of my hand.

  Indira gulped. “Goodbye for now, Kate. You too, Clea. And Leo.”

  Leo lifted his head and winked weakly at her. “Stay safe, my small friend.”

  Indira turned and faded into the night.

  We eventually started the long walk home together through the woods. The night was slowly turning to dawn, and a few early birds tweeted their greetings. Their joy for the morning was at odds with our somber mood, for we’d won, but still lost.

  Epilogue

  “I expected it to feel different,” I said. “You know, being a witch.”

  None of us could sleep. After Mom performed the ritual to remove his charm bracelet, Leo pronounced himself mostly back to normal, had a quick breakfast of tacos, and decided to fix the hole in the floor. It was his breakfast choice that finally convinced me we were related.

  Mom and I sat at the kitchen table, bleary-eyed and drinking coffee just after dawn, while Leo took our truck to the hardware store in Magnolia to get supplies to repair our floor.

  “Having magic doesn’t change who we are—just what we can do,” Mom said, sipping her coffee.

  I either wasn’t ready or was too tired to tackle the big conversations like “Why did you lie to me my whole life about practically everything?” and I wanted to strike out at her, so I changed the topic to the Bindan.

  “I’ve been texting Lily and Ella for a few months,” I said.

  Mom choked a bit on her mouthful of coffee and started coughing.

  Bingo. “They want to start studying magic.”

  “Absolutely not!” Mom slammed her coffee mug down—the one I painted for her when I was a kid—and coffee sloshed on the table.

  “Why not?” I said. “It’s not like they can become unbound and use it.”

  Mom pushed herself back from the table and grabbed a dishrag and began to vigorously wipe up the spilled coffee. Her lips pressed together in the way that told me she was biting back some pretty serious anger.

  Even so, I pushed my point. “It’s just an academic interest. Totally benign.”

  She stopped wiping and stared at me. “For starters, the Bindan would never allow it. If they found out . . .” Her voice trailed off and she dropped her gaze.

  I narrowed mine, putting some stuff together. “The geas—the magical commitment they put on you to bind them—that doesn’t extend to me, does it?”

  She studied the frayed ends of the dishrag for a long moment. “No, but Kate—”

  “Then I could totally teach them what I know without repercussions for you!” I said.

  “The thing is—the binding can be broken,” she said. “But if that happened, the Bindan would be in great danger.”

  “What?” My mouth could not have dropped open farther. It was absolutely breaking news to me that the bindings weren’t permanent. “How? What kind of danger?”

  It was at that moment that my brother decided to make his grand entrance by banging open the front door.

  “A little help here!” Leo stuck his head inside. “I got a big sheet of marine plywood that ain’t gonna hold itself up while I rivet it to your floor from underneath.”

  I looked from Mom to Leo, then back to Mom. “This conversation is not over.” I pointed my finger at her.

  She smiled grimly. “Of that I have no doubt, Kate Roark.”

  The End

  Dive Deeper into the Kate Roark World…

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  Acknowledgments

  A whole host of wonderful individuals helped me create this book. First, I would like to thank my incredibly talented and diligent editor, Hilary Ritz, for removing all the extra commas and correcting my tense, among other heroic editing efforts.

  I wouldn’t be the writer I am today without the feedback and support from my critique group, the Gargoyles. Wayne Basta, Ian Everett, C.D. Lewis, Hilary Ritz and Shannon Winton - you are the best. Thanks for taking me and not kicking me out.

  My incredible Beta Reader Team this time around included Angela Austin, Lisa Amico, Kristin Shepherd and Craig Montgomery and, as usual, they provided valuable insights and much validation on what worked—and what didn’t. They’re part of the reason you’re reading a polished story that makes sense.

  My family is forever a great source of support. Thank you to my husband Glen (love you!), my boys, my mother, father and sister and aunt for giving me the space and encouragement to write.

  Finally, thank you, my readers, for reading. You are what makes this magic for me.

  About the Author

  Laura Rich loves stories about women and magic and lives in the Piney Woods of Texas with a dedicated Crossfitter, twin boys, two mutts, and a stray cat. She is a full-time project manager an
d after that, when not doing wifey or mothery things, she writes in the corner of her bedroom on her grandmother's old secretary.

  Grab a free short story about Indira on Laura’s website:

  www.laurarichwrites.com

  laura@laurarichwrites.com