Witch On The Run: A New Adult Urban Fantasy (Red Witch Chronicles 4)

by Sami Valentine

  “I know how I want in the ingredients. This particular potion is very finicky. The last batch of enthymema draught mysteriously disappeared. It is a neurotropic, but you wouldn’t know about that?” Perenelle raised an eyebrow.

  “Guilty as implied. I thought it would help me remember.” Red tensed, realizing that her honesty affected someone else. Her teenage accomplice was already in enough trouble. “I did it alone.”

  Perenelle nodded, amused by the lie. “Did your unguided trance illuminate anything?”

  “Before I get into that, put barfing and weird acid flashbacks on the list of side effects.” Red chewed the side of her cheek, thinking. She couldn’t remember more than impressions of her trance, but it felt like her brain was leaving her a bread crumb trail in a dark forest.

  Red tried to explain. “It was supposed to unlock my unconscious. It just stirred up random bits. Some of it was just dream nonsense. The other stuff like my mother’s face… I think that was just wishful thinking.” Her lips expelled the harsh confession before she could stop herself. “I’m never going to find her. I don’t know why I bother.”

  “I won’t claim to understand the inner workings of your mind, but there is value in even our illusions. Those subconscious desires drive our conscious actions.”

  Red sighed. That made some of her visions more concerning. “The only thing that keeps coming up is this diner. I astral projected there in the Dreamland once, I’m sure. I don’t know what the connection is, but its real. Doesn’t help me much. Not with what I really want.”

  “There are other ways to find what you seek.” Perenelle guided Red into another attached room—a laboratory. Walled in stone for a classic alchemist look, modernity snuck in like the laptop computer in the corner. Florescent lights buzzed overhead. Heavy armoires and counters were crammed with vial sets, scrolls, a golden microscope, and models of the planets.

  Perenelle put the bottle on a worktable and pulled out a beaker from a fridge under a counter. “Much like I will be able to scry for the werewolf using that hair. I can use yours to find your mother. It’s a matter of splitting hairs. The DNA in the strands that is. Alchemy is the bridge between science and magic.”

  Vic had drilled the importance of not leaving a hair or a trace for a spell into her for nearly two years. It took fighting against that conditioning to trust Perenelle. She broke off a strand to hand over.

  The Immortal Alchemist dropped the hair into the beaker; the green potion turned black on impact. She poured it over a globe on the counter behind her. She waved her hand over the globe, tracing quick sigils into the air. “I need to make a few modifications. Some of this is based on guesswork, I must warn.”

  The liquid oozed over the surface before it was sucked into the globe leaving only a splotch that spiraled on the Pacific Northwest coast between Oregon and Washington state. Perenelle poked at the globe. “Only a moment. It will pinpoint the exact location.”

  Red waited, leaning in. The splotch disappeared. She released a breath she didn’t know that she was holding.

  “As impressed as I can be with myself, I’m not utterly surprised. Your mother must be a powerful witch. She could obscure herself if she desired it.”

  “Then why can’t she find me? Why do I have to look for her?” Red said. It was a question that gnawed at her in the middle of the night. She blushed when she realized she’d said it out loud. “Sorry. I should be thanking you for using what looked like a complicated potion on me. That probably had to be brewed on a solstice by a Tibetan nun.”

  “Full moon by a pregnant woman inducted into the rites of Hekate. But we have one on staff.” Perenelle smiled her reassurance. She flipped open a book and sprinkled a green power on the blank page, revealing text. “I could also try…”

  “You made the text visible!” Red pointed. “I received a blank journal. I had it scanned for magic, but nothing came up. If the writing were disguised like this, would it come up in a scan?”

  Perenelle nodded, intrigue curving her mouth. “It would be slight. The average mage wouldn’t be able to feel the energy, but the scanners would.”

  Red’s shoulders sagged. “Back to the drawing board, then.” She shook her head. “If my mom is so powerful, why aren’t I? I study beside Hannah, and I can’t do what she does. I couldn’t even scry for myself, let alone her.”

  “I can’t say for certain yet about your mother, but I know why you can’t scry for yourself.” Perenelle tapped her own shoulder, bell sleeve falling to reveal the swirling network of tattoos on her forearm. “That fascinating ink of yours conceals your location from divination.”

  Red tried to look over her left shoulder to her own lyre-shaped tattoo. That fact resolved a few mysteries from past hunts against magic users who couldn’t get a bead on her. It also answered why Selene’s vision sounded secondhand, as if accidentally spotting Red in a vision about Hannah. A thought bloomed in her mind like fervent hope. “Maybe my mom has one like this too!”

  Perenelle’s expression stilled to somber contemplation. “I can’t provide answers, but I can tell you what I sense. I need more information about your energy.” She held out her hand.

  Red rested her palm on Perenelle’s. Something about the elastic texture felt off, as if the skin had been constructed of something like her own but smoother. She had been too nervous to notice the first time they met.

  Perenelle clasped their hands. Sweat popped from her flawless skin. Her mouth twisted into grimace. She stepped back, hand on her heart. Rapid French poured out of her mouth.

  “Perenelle? Madam?”

  Perenelle straightened her shoulders. “Pardon. I briefly forgot English. That was… Your energy…”

  “What is it?”

  “Yes, your family line has to be strong. You have the capacity for great magic. It has confounded me since I met you, Red. I could sense this lack. Then the results when I scanned your aura. I consider myself a serious observer of the mystical. I do not tolerate hyperbole or exaggeration in my experiment notes.” Her genteel voice faltered.

  Red spurred the alchemist on. “What is it?”

  “I can only describe it as an abomination.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  The chill of the Immortal Alchemist’s laboratory conjured gooseflesh on her arms. Red hadn’t known what to expect when she let Perenelle take her hand and read her magic. It wasn’t to be called an abomination. She pointed at herself. “Me?”

  “No. What was done to you.” The horrified shock on Perenelle’s face faded to curiosity. Posture perfect in her purple gown, she stroked her chin and scrutinized Red. “Imagine a mage’s energy source like a garden with perennial blooms that come back every spring. The magic regrows after being harvested for spells like taking cuttings from a plant. You are different.”

  Red’s face pinched in confusion. “Is this like a witch bloom thing?”

  “No. Despite the garden metaphor, it has nothing to do with your magic’s maturity. Patches of your magic have been pulled out—roots and all.”

  Bracing her palm on the worktable, Red hung her head. The Immortal Alchemist made her think of another famous spellcaster—the Bell Witch. Kate Batts had been kinder than the legends claimed. She had told Red something curious at the time. Ominous now. You have this well of magic within, the deepest well that I have seen in a witch of your age. The capacity is there but the magic is gone.

  Perenelle continued, “You have but a fraction left. And what is there feels bent and stunted. It may be why your witch bloom paused.”

  Still lost in memories, Red echoed the Bell Witch’s old question. “Where did it go?”

  “A worthy question. But the more disturbing one is: What could take it? I have heard of such forbidden rituals, but those are not studied in my halls. Only a very skilled practitioner of the arcane, demon or mortal, could have done such a thing and kept you alive,” Perenelle said. “This isn’t a mere hex siphoning your magic. Pieces of your very connection to the unive
rse were removed like transplanted seedlings. That would require an intricate configuration of spells and rituals at each stage of the energy transference. No one incantation can do this.”

  Red touched her belly, third eye staring at the humble glow behind her solar plexus. It was her magic. Someone had violated it. “Could something like this have taken out my memories?”

  “Not on its own, but I imagine it would be expedient for the perpetrator to shield themselves from detection. Not only from you but from any coven.” Perenelle clasped Red’s shoulder and guided her from the gloom of the laboratory into the sunny sitting room. Perhaps hoping that a cozy environment would soften her diagnoses. “This act would be considered a crime most foul in my academies.”

  “Whoever did it left me for dead from a vamp bite. Waking up by Coyote Creek is my first memory.” Red stared hard in the distance, bile burning the back of her throat. Maybe it was better that way. The Bell Witch had told her that the memory block was a kindness. Basil seemed to agree.

  Red already figured that horrible things had happened in that dead zone in her memories. It was written on her body. Offing the King of the Prairie Dead had paid for laser scar removal. It had taken nearly all of her cut of the bounty to erase the old bullet scar on her torso, the lacy web of marks on her wrists, and the constellation of fang bites on her skin. Her mind had sealed up more than her mother’s face.

  “I cannot say yet what kind of mage did this. I can run tests on you, but those details are beyond my equipment. Yet.” She narrowed her eye as if envisioning a challenge. “A magic user of this strength and dark means will have attracted some notice. I am showing my age because I can only think of fiends of yore. Long since vanquished. Your brotherhood may have more information than I can provide.”

  The front door glowed, and an urgent chime rang through the room.

  “Apologies.” Perenelle put up her hand. “Enter, friend.”

  A robed man entered and pushed back his hood to reveal himself as the First Alchemist. “Madam, I must ask a word.”

  Heavy emotion chilling her like a blanket of snow, Red grabbed her purse. She nodded her goodbyes as she left through the sitting room. The door deposited her in a marble corridor off Pyramid Hall. She barely noticed as she walked. Her mind whirled with what she had learned from Perenelle in the laboratory.

  This quest for her origins felt like a cruel joke. The firmest clues were a blank book, a silver chain necklace, a mysterious witch mother with an equally mysterious pedigree, a tattoo that protected her from divination spells, and her own ransacked magic. Tattered images from peyote visions clouded the path more than they illuminated it. She once thought it pointed north to Oregon, but the compass arrow now seemed to swivel toward hell.

  She needed real answers.

  Jerking her phone out of her purse, nearly tossing the contents to the ground in frustration, she found Fat Crispin in her contacts. She was sick of emailing him about reinstating Vic to no reply. She didn’t care if he hated phone calls. She had discovered something huge about her magic. The clues kept pointing to the northwest. How many mages on the West Coast could do this? She didn’t have access to Bard Net through Vic anymore. Fat Crispin would have to pony up something. He owed her.

  The phone rang for what felt like ages as she power walked without direction. She trotted over the fresh cobbles covering the crater that Hannah had made. The line clicked to life.

  “Oh, bother—er, Hello?” A weary and unfamiliar English voice answered.

  “Hi, I’m a hunter and I need to talk to Jacob Crispin,” she said, remembering his real first name at the last moment.

  “Dad’s in the hospital. If it’s urgent, find another Bard. He won’t be back at work for weeks.” The phone line went dead.

  Red stopped in the middle of the hallway, staring at the phone screen. That didn’t sound good. Fat Crispin was a rail thin pale older man, contrary to his nickname. She texted a quick message to Vic to let him know. That cut off one source of information. This mysterious mage who stole her magic was a real clue. What if this had been a rival of her mother’s? There had to be a connection.

  “Are you going into the library or what?” An annoyed adept asked behind her.

  Blinking up at the roses carved into the grand entrance, Red nodded and headed inside. Her feet had picked the right direction. The library wasn’t an elder Bard that she could interrogate, but there had to be something here. She wanted to get closure on who she had been to move on fully as who she was now. It wasn’t as simple as finding her hometown. Maybe it was naïve all along to have thought so.

  Something had captured her, plucked her magic like eyebrows, and left her to bleed out from a vampire’s bite. The magic used was beyond her comprehension. An unknown enemy had stolen her life, weaving ritual and incantation into an abomination that had shocked an immortal. Red could float a feather on a good day. When she came home, there could be a reckoning when she finally met whoever—or whatever—held her stolen magic.

  She wasn’t ready.

  Red caught Lee the librarian by the endcap of a bookshelf. “I have an obscure topic, and I can’t answer any clarifying questions. Don’t even have the name for what I want.”

  “You and every other patron.” Crisp bowtie on, Lee pushed up their glasses, smiling at the challenge.

  Red walked out of the library with a stack of tomes- When Wendy’s Witch Bloom Came Early, a how-to guide to paper magic, and an encyclopedia of strange legends in Oregon.

  Ezra waved to her from the empty swan pond and walked over. “Red… My mom told me.” He paused as he studied her neck. “That looks nasty. Are you okay?”

  “It’s got a magic band-aid on it. I’m going home anyway before they change their minds about putting me in a cage. It puts my little room into perspective.”

  “Let me take those,” he offered, motioning at the books. “That dorm staircase might as well be Mount Everest.”

  “Thanks,” Red said. She walked with him through the Pyramid. The quiet grew between them before she spotted a peacock perched on a table picking at a forgotten plate of French fries. The kickstarted conversation drifted from alchemists being strange bird people to which of the old paintings creeped them out the most as they climbed the stairs. Their conversation held the easy desperate breeze of two people trying their best to enjoy each other despite the spectacle swirling around them.

  “I know it’s kinda weird to say that I had a good time with you tonight after everything that happened, but I did.” Ezra shot her a crooked smile, shoulders lifting.

  “Me too.” Red grinned as they reached the landing for the tenth floor and made it to her front door. “I still stand firm that skee ball is better than pinball.”

  “It’s not a deal-breaker.” Ezra chuckled. He adjusted the books under his arm, leaving dust on his shirt as he leaned past her to turn the knob. The door swung open.

  Meeting his gaze, Red bit her lip and idled at the doorsill, realizing how close together they were.

  Ezra kissed her softly, a hand cupping her cheek.

  Eyes slipping closed, Red kissed him back. Her heartbeat picked up. Lips curving, she realized she did get a goodnight kiss in the end.

  A crash exploded from the dorm suite.

  Pouting, Red broke from the kiss to lean back, looking inside.

  Hannah crouched with the standing lamp in her arms. “Sorry! I tried to be quiet since you guys were sucking face.”

  Red rubbed her forehead. “Good job.”

  “Hi Hannah.” Ezra said dryly. Eyes twinkling, he smiled at Red as he handed over the books. “I’ll see you later.”

  “Bye.” After mooning a little over his very nice backside as he walked to the brass staircase, Red closed the door with her hip. She walked to her room, ignoring Hannah’s stare, to put the books down on her bed.

  “Did you guys just restart your date after we got back?” Hannah asked, then gasped and pointed. “Your neck!”

  “Make me
some tea and I’ll tell you about it,” Red said as she ducked into her room to change into pajamas. After explaining her death ride back to the academy and refusing to give any details on her date with Ezra, Red left Hannah to brush her teeth and then retreated into her room, closing the double doors behind her.

  She’d had a date with Ezra, and now she had a date with her hunter’s journal.

  Opening the first blank page, she jotted down the fresh memories of her encounter with Perenelle before writing out her first question: What happened to my magic?

  She flipped open the children’s book first, hoping that poor Wendy’s story might get her up to speed on how normal witches developed. Her notes from the thin colorful pages were as serious as the ones made from the introductory magic textbook she cross-referenced. Her notes turned into personal observations before research dissolved into releasing her pent-up emotions.

  Red remembered checking her phone at 3 a.m., but otherwise the night was a blur of papercuts and hand cramps. She woke with her face pressed against the leather of her journal. The questions that had tormented her in the night poked her awake and into the shower. She hadn’t even been distracted by an intriguing text message from Kristoff.

  The rumor from the underworld pits is that Sancha Constanza had put the hit out on the Proctor witch. Consider this a peace offering.

  After deliberating too long over whether to include an emoji, Red replied. Accepted. Feeling a little flushed and stupid, she regretted adding a belated smiley face in another message.

  Red mulled over the olive branch instead of the giver. The vampire queen had hired Red and Vic to kill the last of the Oklahoma City pack, so it made sense that she would hire out for the murder of the last Proctor. Since she died the final death last month, the vampiress was out of reach of justice. The situation was unusual, to say the least. Most jobs ended if the client died, but Sancha was a stone-cold schemer. She would have had the forethought and reach to set up a contingency trust for her final assassination order. Red passed the undead gossip on to Vic.