The Cursed Fae (Accessory to Magic Book 2)

by Kathrin Hutson

  Like a dog needing to be let outside.

  Rolling her eyes, Jessica shuffled after him. “I haven’t had to let you out or feed you for two weeks, and nobody left instructions. What do you want?”

  As soon as she reached the hall, the giant lizard took off again in his zigzagging scrabble. He stopped at the door to the witching vault, his eyes glinting in the shimmering green light spilling from beneath the door.

  “You do not have your own box in there.”

  Staring at her, Confucius slowly lifted a foreleg and tapped one long black claw against the door.

  Seriously? The bank was trying to get the message across through a freakin’ immortal lizard?

  “Yeah, I know. Something’s up with the vault.” With a grimace, she rolled her shoulders back and rubbed gingerly at her aching lower spine. “Trust me, that one’s gonna be pretty hard to forget.”

  Confucius hissed at her and tapped the door with his claw again.

  First Tabitha’s indecipherable riddles, then the bank’s unexplained demands, and now a reptile was telling her what to do. Well at least things couldn’t get any weirder.

  “Fine.” Jessica stepped toward the door, and the lizard skittered out of the way. “I’m not trying to ignore the signs. Even if they’re completely nuts.”

  She grabbed the doorknob, gave it a quick twist, and froze. It wouldn’t budge.

  “No.” Jessica jiggled the doorknob, pulled it toward her, then tried again with the backing force of her shoulder pressed up against the door. “Seriously? We just got a groove going, and now I have to deal with this crap too?”

  Confucius let out another series of slow, drawn-out clicks, staring at the door with his mouth hanging wide open.

  “I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean.” She tried the door one more time, but nothing changed. “Okay, bank. If you can’t tell me right now what I’m supposed to figure out from all this, I’m just gonna go look for the answer myself. Out there in the real world. Is that what you want?”

  No reply. Which could literally have meant anything at this point.

  “Fine.” Jessica took off down the hall, stepping away from the wide-eyed Confucius standing perfectly still and staring at the witching vault with his mouth hanging open.

  No direction from the bank, but that didn’t matter. All the cold, icy shocks and hot-poker burns from this damn necklace couldn’t get her to just sit here and take the abuse. That was exactly what Jessica would get from every magical walking in here and wanting what was theirs. If the vault wouldn’t open, she couldn’t make any transactions. And no, she and the bank couldn’t just electrify everyone who wanted to start a fight in here.

  Knowing magicals and their precious things, that would probably be everyone.

  Jessica stormed up the stairs, grimacing against the ache in her lower back before she threw the bedroom door open just to snatch her jacket off the coat rack.

  Forget the stupid contract. She’d taken this on herself, and she wasn’t the kind of witch to step away from something before she’d finished what she’d started. Even with the recent realization that she’d removed who knew how many memories from her teenage head, she knew she wasn’t a quitter. Not back then and not now as an adult.

  The steps groaned beneath her as she jogged back down, shrugging into her brown leather jacket. She passed the motionless lizard in the hall and returned to the lobby.

  Now that she had the time to think about it, the last thing the bank had said to her sounded less like a warning and more like a plea. What had it actually said? Something was wrong. And she needed to fix it?

  “Of course I do. Perks of the job.” With a snort, Jessica pointed at the Open sign hanging in the window, and it flipped over to Closed with a soft clack. “And before you go all crazy-bank on me, I’m going out for answers on my own. Only one of us can leave, and the other one’s broken. So you’ll just have to—”

  A drawer in the desk rattled, stopping her in her tracks.

  She turned slowly toward the back of the lobby and stared at the desk. Even from the other side, she didn’t have any problem making out the soft golden glow coming from within the center drawer and growing brighter by the second.

  It had to be the center drawer. And that stupid coin or signet or whatever the Requiem had called it.

  Jessica didn’t want anything to do with that round hunk of metal in its damn white box.

  A large thump rose from inside the desk, making her jump. Why was it always thumping and banging with this place? Couldn’t anything just sit still?

  Looking up at the ceiling and walls, Jessica stepped slowly toward the desk again. “If you have any helpful tips, now would really be the time to share them.”

  The center drawer wobbled madly in its tracks, and the thumping grew more urgent. As soon as she reached the desk, the center drawer shot out with a blaze of golden light. Immediately, the huge gold coin she’d hidden from Leandras just to get the fae out of the bank rose in the air, spinning slowly as the golden light grew unbearably bright.

  Confucius scrambled down the hall, his claws scratching up the floor in a mad dash to reach the lobby and his tail thumping against the entryway.

  The lights flickered overhead and dimmed, their fading light seemingly drawn away from its place and into the energy powering the coin spinning in midair. And the walls and floor of Winthrop & Dirledge Security Banking trembled.

  Chapter Seven

  “No, no, no!” Jessica launched herself around the desk and reached for the coin.

  A devastating shudder rippled through the floorboards beneath her and sent her staggering against the bookshelf, missing the coin completely. Something fell from the shelf and shattered on the floor, but she ignored it and lunged for the coin one more time.

  “This is not happening again!” She swiped at the coin, felt the cold metal against her palm, and slapped her hand down on the desk.

  The bank groaned and shuddered, sending a rain of plaster down from the ceiling. Before she could pick up the coin, the wall on her right buckled inward. The stuffed shelves splintered with a deafening crack, sending shards of wood and magical paraphernalia spraying outward. And then they stopped, hanging there in suspension as the rest of the bank rocked again with another low, warning groan that almost sounded like a voice.

  Jessica stared at the floating artifacts and splintered bits of shelving and broken plaster chunks. The golden light growing brighter in front of her caught her attention again. She hissed at the huge coin that had somehow slipped out from under her hand and was now floating back up in front of her face.

  “No you don’t.” She slapped the coin down on the desk again and snatched the bottom of the open white box still inside the drawer. Her hands couldn’t move fast enough as she fumbled to get the coin back in the box, then it took forever to get the damn lid back on the thing because she was trying too hard to put it all away before the rest of the bank imploded and took her with it.

  “Get…on!”

  The light finally dimmed when she got the box’s lid to fit correctly. Then she slid the whole thing into the desk drawer and slammed that shut with both hands.

  The same pressure she’d felt around her when the vault had played Toss the Witch returned. This time, however, it focused not on Jessica but on the jagged fragments of wooden shelves and tossed magical artifacts suspended in the air.

  The lobby filled with a deafening hiss, followed by a roar like some giant engine before everything the bank had destroyed fixed itself. Like watching a recorded explosion played in reverse—shards of shelving zipped back into place, creaking like splitting wood; floating doodads and potion vials and elaborately painted boxes darted around each other to settle perfectly back on the shelves in their mostly disorganized positions. Plaster and dust whipped back up toward the ceiling. The overhead lights flickered once, twice, then resumed their regular bright glow.

  All the trembling and groaning within the lobby ceased, and J
essica was left standing there with her hand pressed painfully against the center drawer of the desk. On an impulse, she slipped her hand down over the brass lock on the drawer and summoned a fireball against it, letting it flare within her palm as the mechanism grew hot. Then she put a little extra juice into it, unleashing just enough of her truly unique magic to make the drawer spark with black light. A small explosion went off inside the lock, throwing real sparks from transformed metal into her hand and a puff of thick black smoke from the charred drawer.

  “Shit.” Jessica hissed and jerked her hand back to shake it out. Then she stepped away with a massive sigh and stared at the brass lock morphed into a red-glowing, half-melted glob. “That better do it, or we’re all screwed.”

  Confucius shuffled sideways, his eyes wide, and let out another series of harsh clicks.

  “You said it, lizard. Whatever that means.” She took another step back and stopped at the crunch of glass under her shoe.

  The framed picture of Tabitha and this younger guy named Ben lay on the floor beside her foot. She picked it up and brushed off the biggest shards before slipping the photo out of the frame. Seeing Tabitha’s easy, carefree laugh in that picture brought a lump to Jessica’s throat. And she hadn’t even known the scryer for a full two days.

  That didn’t really matter, though, did it? Tabitha had known what would happen the second her replacement stepped through that front door looking for a job. Any job. And Jessica had gotten this one for a reason.

  Too bad there was a shortage of available necromancers on hand, or Jessica would be paying one to ring up the scryer all the way on the other side and ask her what the hell was going on. Nobody on this side of the veil would give her any answers, and that included a sentient bank with a serious malfunction. One she almost hadn’t been able to hold off for who knew how much longer.

  How was she supposed to get anything done around here if this asshole of a coin didn’t even need a fae to take it out of the box anymore? Jessica couldn’t leave now, no matter how badly she wanted her answers.

  She grimaced at the photo and shook her head. Maybe this was why Tabitha hadn’t ever left the bank in the fifty years she’d been cursed with its ownership. Nothing worked the way it was supposed to—

  The lights shut off, then flickered back on again.

  “What?”

  A soft click from the front window made her look up at the Closed sign jiggling back and forth against the glass. Then the front door illuminated with a soft blue light.

  “I don’t know what you want—hey!”

  Jessica was jerked sideways, her Converses squeaking across the polished wooden floor. She nearly lost her footing, but she didn’t have the chance to fall or regain her balance before the same force shoved her forward across the lobby. “Hey, what the hell?”

  She tried to dig her feet into the floor, but it was no use. Her shoes scuffed and squeaked on the wood, then she lurched through the open door and staggered onto the sidewalk.

  When she spun around, she found Confucius in the same place beside the desk, staring at her. The lizard blinked, then turned back toward the desk and hissed.

  A wry chuckle burst from her lips. “Yeah. You keep an eye on that thing. Maybe there’s a treat in it for you.”

  The front door of Winthrop & Dirledge shut swiftly in her face, though it stopped just before it reached the frame, and finished the message with a soft click instead before the lock slid into place.

  No, slamming the door would’ve been more than a little rude, wouldn’t it?

  Jessica looked up at the faded, peeling marquee above the front door and shook her head. “I get it. Go find out what I can find out.”

  And they’d just have to call it an emergency closure. Hopefully, there wasn’t another onslaught of magicals vying to fill their safety deposit boxes today. Or empty them. Because Jessica wouldn’t be back until she found something to explain what was happening to her bank.

  “Or until I can’t keep my eyes open,” she muttered. Not like she had a bed waiting for her somewhere else either.

  With another wry laugh, she zipped up her jacket, shoved her hands into her pockets against the November chill, and took off down the sidewalk. The Denver Public Library was as good a first stop as any. She actually knew where that was, at the very least.

  It took her an hour on the RTD bus that made the stretch east down Colfax toward downtown Denver. The heart of the city wasn’t exactly her favorite place to be, but as far as she knew, the Golden Library didn’t have a magical section. The Denver Public Library on Fourteenth Avenue Parkway did.

  As long as it hadn’t caught the crazy like the rest of Jessica’s life.

  She didn’t prefer buses, either, though the RTD system was one of the best city bus systems she’d had the displeasure of using. And that list was long.

  Jessica got more stares than usual when the eastbound 16 bus made its stops and people piled on for their midday commute into the city. It was busier than she’d expected for the middle of the day on a Monday, but then again, she hadn’t made a habit of bus-hopping since her brief stint at a headshop in Lakewood four jobs ago.

  The first stranger to start the staring game was a high-school girl who sat across the aisle from Jessica, her arms wrapped around the round-pin-studded backpack in her lap. At first, Jessica thought the girl had taken an interest in the glass pendant peeking out from the unzipped top of her jacket. So she stuffed the pendant under her shirt, zipped up her jacket, and looked out the window.

  Halfway to her stop, the bus was almost completely full. A woman in a blue and brown crocheted beanie and a puffy nylon jacket that swished at every move ended up taking the seat beside Jessica. Her perfume in some overwhelming mixture of citrus and juniper made Jessica clear her throat and lean against the window.

  The woman’s gaze on her made Jessica squirm, and when the bus’s doors hissed and closed, the woman leaned toward her and whispered, “Are you supposed to be out right now?”

  “Huh?” Jessica blinked quickly and turned toward her neighbor.

  Beanie gave her a shy smile and shrugged. “I mean, you’ve got a pretty big job. I just assumed there was a lot of prep involved…”

  “Okay.” Jessica snorted a laugh and looked the woman up and down with a raised eyebrow. “I think you have me confused with someone else—”

  “No I don’t.” Beanie turned briefly to shoot a cautious glance around the bus, then cupped a hand to the side of her face like a little kid trying to whisper a secret.

  Jessica was about to tell the lady to back off and quit grinning at her like that, but the woman’s brown eyes flashed with a soft silver light, and she wiggled her eyebrows.

  Oh, good. Jessica was making friends with even more fae. On a public city bus.

  The woman lowered her hand and nodded. “We’re waiting.”

  “For what?”

  “Yeah, you’re right. Probably not a good place to talk about it. No pressure or anything. Just figured you could use a little encouragement.”

  Jessica stared at her, blinked quickly, then turned back toward the window. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Don’t worry. I won’t say anything else.” Beanie smirked and settled back into the seat, her jacket rustling obnoxiously and brushing up against Jessica’s sleeve.

  Either this fae was batshit nuts—which seemed highly possible after Jessica’s experiences with fae a week ago—or she knew exactly who Jessica was.

  But this witch wasn’t about to ask a complete stranger about the bank. Not with what was already riding on the line.

  The fae woman got off the bus two stops later and didn’t say another word, just as she’d promised. But a handful of new passengers between the stop at Kipling and the library made Jessica more than a little suspicious. Mostly because they stared in exactly the same way.

  She got off at the Colfax stop and walked the block down to the Denver Public Library, flipping up the collar of her
jacket against the midday chill in the air. If it weren’t for the Colorado sunshine blazing through the forty-degree air, Jessica would have been severely underdressed.

  The glass double doors opened easily enough as she stepped inside, then she headed for the front desk, rubbing her arms.

  A man with huge gauges in his ears and tattoos covering his skin from the backs of his hands all the way up his arms—and presumably past that beneath the rolled-up sleeves of his shirt—jerked his chin up at her when she approached the desk. “How’s it goin’?”

  “Fine. I’m trying to get into one of the…restricted sections.”

  “Yeah, sure.” The guy set his hands down on the counter and shot her a crooked smile. “Which one?”

  Shit. If she was talking to a dude librarian who had no idea about the hidden room of magical references in his own place of employment, she had to find someone who did. No matter how cute he was with that smile.

  Jessica stuck her hands in her jacket pockets and shrugged. “The one you only know about if you…already know about it. If you know what I mean.”

  And now she sounded just like one of the lost souls coming in off the street just to get out of the cold because they had nowhere else. The dumpster magical with a handful of precious gems might’ve been among them at one point.

  The guy gave her a confused chuckle. “Well, I’ve been working here for a few years. Long enough to know this library inside out. So whatever section you’re looking for, I can get you access. As long as you tell me which one.”

  “Look…” She glanced down at the guy’s nametag and cleared her throat. “…Danny. I’m getting the feeling you probably don’t know what I’m talking about. Nothing against you or anything.”

  Danny ran a hand through his hair and looked her up and down, that crooked smile never leaving his face. “And I’m getting the feeling you’re screwing with me.”

  Any other day, Jessica would’ve kept playing this game. Any other day, she might’ve screwed with him just to keep watching that smile. “Maybe I should talk to a manager instead.”