The Cursed Fae (Accessory to Magic Book 2)

by Kathrin Hutson

  He studied the stuffed shelves behind her and shrugged. “How did you get your sentence shortened by so much?”

  She shook her head. “I’m not telling you shit.”

  “No. I guess you wouldn’t want to anyway, huh?” Mickey sniffed and unfastened the top two buttons of his jacket with one hand.

  Jessica swallowed automatically when she saw it. That was just one of his silent messages he’d trained each and every one of them to respond to like a bunch of fucking magical dogs. Two buttons, and the guy was already on the verge of losing his shit. Three buttons meant someone was about to get hit, and it wasn’t always with a hand, either.

  ‘Damn. He is a piece of shit.’

  She ignored the bank and tried to push her own emotions back down under control. A year and a half. She’d been out from under Mickey’s brutal thumb for a year and a half, and she wasn’t about to roll over and slide back under it again now. Or ever.

  When he noticed her still glaring at him, the Matahg sighed and tilted his head. “You know, I can’t help but think you made some kind of deal, Jess. That’s what you’re good at, isn’t it? Well, just one of many things. Come on. You can tell me.”

  Her hand jerked up toward him when he winked at her, but she forced it back down at her side. “I’m assuming you came here for a reason.”

  “Oh, sure. I have my reasons. And you have Winthrop & Dirledge now.” He finally closed the distance between them and pressed his hands slowly down on the top of the desk, leaning forward with a sneer and widening his eyes. “It’s more than you deserve. You have to know that.”

  ‘Let me take the wheel, Jessica,’ the bank whispered. A flash of cold energy raced down her spine and spread through her arms—just a taste of what she could do with the bank’s help. ‘I already want to see him lying on the floor. Hell, beneath it. Come on.’

  No.

  Jessica shook her head and finally managed to blink. If things came to a head with her old boss standing here in her bank, she’d handle it herself. Full magic or half. She wasn’t taking any handouts.

  Mickey must have realized she wasn’t backing down. He straightened and took one step away from the desk, tugging on the cuffs of his jacket sleeves. “I can tell you aren’t all that excited to catch up.”

  “You’re fucking right, I’m not.”

  “Fine. Then it’s business as usual. Though I have to say, Jess, I like the sight of you behind that desk a hell of a lot more than that old bird who couldn’t even remember what day it was, let alone how to do her job.”

  “Show a little respect,” Jessica seethed.

  “Why? Because she’s dead?” Mickey sniggered. “That happens a lot around you, doesn’t it?”

  Without waiting for a reply, he pulled the inkwell and pad of paper toward him and got to work setting down his fingerprint signature for the box in the witching vault with his name on it. When he finished, he ripped off the top sheet himself and handed it to her. “I’m cashing out.”

  ‘Shit. He is a client.’ The bank groaned. ‘So much for killing him.’

  Jessica glared at her old boss. “Only took you this long, huh?”

  “You’re cute, Jess.” He tossed the paper at her, and neither one of them looked away from each other as the square sheet fluttered down onto the desk between them. “Not that cute. Looks like you have a job to do.”

  It took everything Jessica had not to rip up his fingerprint slip right then and there, light it on fire, and throw it in his face. Somehow, she managed to pinch it between her thumb and forefinger and mutter, “Withdrawal?”

  Mickey clicked his tongue, and that goddamn smirk returned. “Listen to you. Where was all this professionalism when you were working for me?”

  She swallowed the rage bubbling up her throat and turned toward the hallway without a word. For a brief moment, she thought the guy had enough sense not to push it any further or say anything else. But then Mickey’s snorting, irredeemably disgusting laughter echoed behind her.

  “This is too good, Jess. I know you and I are officially done, but even after everything we’ve been through, you’re still working for me. Just change the setting!”

  The second she knew she’d disappeared from his view within the hallway, Jessica booked it toward the shimmering door to the witching vault and wrenched it open. The ripples of green light bursting away from her footsteps were larger this time, more erratic, maybe even fueled by her anger as she stomped across the vault toward the center of the curving wall on her right. Maybe not.

  ‘Maybe you need to cool it.’

  “Don’t even think about taking his side, asshole.” She thrust Mickey’s fingerprint into the air and hardly noticed the witching vault spinning and whirring and sliding into place around her.

  ‘Hey, look. I know I said I’m only on my own side here, but there are a lot of really awful memories floating up from the cloudy muck in your head—’

  “No shit.”

  ‘—and I’m with you all the way. I mean it. We get that shitcake’s stuff out of his box, and then you do what you gotta do, witch. If you need backup, I’m here.’

  Jessica slowly lowered her raised arm and blinked as the deposit boxes slowed and the one that belonged to Mickey Hargraves stopped in front of her with an echoing click. “Thanks.”

  ‘Yeah, well, when I see a scumbag like that in a place like…me, I can’t help getting a little itchy. If I could technically get itchy, but you know what I mean. Did he really try to make you—’

  “I’m not talking about any of it, okay? I appreciate the backup. Really. But please, let’s just do this and get it over with.” The sooner she got that asshole out of her bank, the better.

  The witching vault fell into a heavy silence, and the bank let out a soft sigh.

  ‘Whatever you need. Might wanna open the drawer first, though.’

  Right.

  Jessica flashed the Matahg’s fingerprint in front of the deposit box’s oval window, which flashed green around the edges but didn’t move. Frowning, she leaned down to press the paper against the black box, and even with the second flash of light, nothing happened. “You gotta be kidding me.”

  ‘Huh. Okay, now that I didn’t expect.’

  She stepped away from the wall, fervently scanning the ripples of sparkling green light spreading out around her feet as she moved. “This better not be a repeat of Monday, bank. I’m done being thrown around.”

  ‘Yeah, and I’m done being fucked with.’

  “I’m not—”

  ‘Not you, Jessica. Them. Him. Everyone who got a whiff of what’s about to happen here and decided they were above the rules. If they were stupid enough to put things they shouldn’t have in this room, they don’t deserve to walk away with it all in their grimy little hands.’

  She glanced down at the paper pinched between her fingers. “You know what he’s keeping in there?”

  ‘Doesn’t matter. The magic running the show in this vault doesn’t want him to have it. And I don’t want him to have it.’

  “Then why’d you tell me to hurry up and open his—”

  ‘Because I needed a little affirmation, okay?’ the bank shouted.

  A section of the black marble floor three feet to Jessica’s left buckled and swelled before racing toward her like a cresting ocean wave. “What—”

  ‘No, you won’t get thrown across the room this time, but we’re not sticking around to try to fight his dumb box open either.’

  The rolling granite floor caught Jessica’s feet and propelled her back toward the door. She threw her hands out in a desperate attempt to maintain her balance, her feet kicking out from under her and still somehow keeping her upright. Then she slammed against the door with a thud, grimacing at the hollow ache of having the wind knocked out of her.

  ‘Sorry. I think your homicidal rage might be a little contagious.’

  “Well don’t aim it back at me,” she croaked, reaching for the doorknob.

  The door flew
open on its own, and Jessica stumbled into the hallway with a short gasp just to fill her lungs again.

  ‘Do you wanna go tell this douchebag to get the fuck out of your bank, or should I?’

  Wow. Now the bank sounded just like her. Maybe her thoughts and emotions were contagious…

  ‘I said—’

  “I got it,” she replied through clenched teeth. But thanks.

  ‘Yeah, that’s me, all right. Just your friendly psychotic bank, right?’

  She would have laughed under different circumstances. Instead, she crumpled Mickey’s fingerprint slip in one fist and charged back toward the lobby.

  “Oh, good,” Mickey snapped as she emerged from the hall. “Looks like prison drilled into you what I couldn’t after four—”

  Jessica tossed the crumpled paper at his face and hit him squarely in the forehead. “Get out.”

  With a snort, he stepped back and glared at the wad of paper bouncing to a stop at his feet. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Exercising my right as owner of this bank.” She pointed at the door again. “Which doesn’t want you here either.”

  “You’re completely insane!” Mickey kicked the wad of paper at her and gestured roughly toward the hallway. “This is your job. Get back in there and empty my fucking box.”

  “No.”

  “No?” His eyes blazed with fury as he locked onto Jessica’s gaze.

  Even without the flash of luminous red lined in silver showing through his human illusion, she knew he’d finally had enough. So had she. If he wanted to do this right here, fine. Jessica had had plenty of time to daydream about how she’d pay him back for everything he’d destroyed—everything he’d taken not just from her but from the rest of Corpus. The closest thing to family she ever remembered having.

  “You heard me,” she muttered.

  A brilliant aura of flickering red light burst away from Mickey’s skin, erupting like a contained explosion that still rocked the chandelier above them with its shockwave. The lights in the sconces between shelves flickered.

  “I want my things, Jessica.” His voice was a growling, rumbling hiss, fueled by a second flash of red brilliance like pale fire bursting away from him. Mickey’s eyes flashed again, and when he pointed at her, more cracks in his human illusion now exposed the long blood-red claw at the end of his awkwardly long, bony finger. “Get them.”

  “I can’t. And I don’t answer to you anymore, you fucking bastard. Get out!”

  Mickey growled, his eyes permanently red now as the rest of his true form materialized in front of her. It looked ridiculous in his stupid peacoat and clean, pressed khakis—the abnormally wide split of his jaw racing from literally one side of his amorphous face to the other, lined with razor-sharp teeth; the twin prongs of horns emerging from what had just been a human man’s receding hairline, curving inward like claws; the extra pair of arms bulging from a second set of shoulders on his hunched back rippling constantly with a combination of shifting bones and endlessly morphing flesh.

  ‘Fuck. You never said he could do that,’ the bank whispered.

  Full access to my head, bank. If you didn’t see it yourself, that’s on you.

  “I should’ve put you down for good the first time,” Mickey roared. Another corona burst of red light exploded around him. This time, it carried enough force to rock the desk off its front legs before the thing settled back to the floor again with a crash. “Now I get to rip your fucking head off.”

  Jessica stepped back toward the shelves behind the desk, just to buy herself some more time. Traces of the dark magic she still held inside her body burned in her chest and raced down her arms, throwing black sparks from her fingertips between intermittent bursts of coiling black tendrils. “You can try.”

  Her old boss screamed in fury and let out the largest burst of searing, insanely powerful magic yet. The lights flickered violently, and the walls of the bank groaned and shuddered around the pressure building within them.

  Jessica flexed her fingers and let what little remained of her own magic course freely through her.

  This was it. She’d finally get her chance to take down the worst magical who’d ever stepped into her life. And after everything, it was only too clear now that there was no love lost between Mickey Hargraves the Matahg and the insanely powerful witch who’d been his greatest weapon. His pride and joy.

  Bullshit.

  ‘Wait.’ The bank cleared its nonexistent throat again. ‘When he said he took you down the first time…’

  She gritted her teeth. Yeah. He’s the only one who could do that back when I was still slinging my full magic for the wrong team.

  ‘And you’re gonna try to take him on half a tank?’ the bank shrieked.

  Yeah. That was the plan.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  ‘Jessica, you can’t fight this guy!’ the bank shouted. ‘Not by yourself—’

  Mickey snarled and thrust his clawed hand toward Jessica. The brilliant bolts of red and silver bursting from his fingers seemed to suck all the light out of the room.

  She darted to the side, evading the crackling streams of deadly magic not a second too soon before blasting her old boss with an orb of black smoke. Sparks fizzled within her attack, and if she’d launched it at anyone else, it would have thrown them across the room.

  But her power crashed against the blazing red shield around Mickey’s body and shattered into thousands of fragments. Stray slivers of her magic darted into the shelves, knocking down heavy boxes and cloth-wrapped parcels. The geographically incorrect globe beside the front door shattered. A glass box exploded and rained a handful of old, rusted costume jewelry across the floor. The warped, crunched cash register pinged beneath the onslaught of Jessica’s splintered magic and wobbled dangerously on the shelf but didn’t fall. Yet.

  She didn’t have time to check; she was already darting across the back of the room behind the desk.

  “You can’t keep this up, Jessica!” Mickey bellowed. “Defy me once, and I gave you a second chance. But now you’ve taken it too far!”

  Another blast of red light and energy pulsed through the lobby. As she spun around to take aim again at the Matahg trying to take her down, the heat blazing through the room quickly became unbearable. Her breath caught in her throat and wouldn’t move in or out. But she launched another attack at Mickey anyway, this time from her knees as she peered around the side of the desk.

  A string of black sludge shot from her outstretched hand. If the bastard had been just two feet closer, she would have made contact. Instead, her magic splattered against the floor with a hissing sizzle.

  ‘Hey, you can’t keep this up—’

  “This isn’t your fight!” she snarled.

  Mickey’s laughter thundered across the lobby. “You’ve always been such a stupid bitch.”

  ‘Just let me—’

  No! Despite the thickness in the air growing tighter around her by the second, Jessica pushed herself to her feet. Then she stood there against the far wall of the bank and spread her arms. Let him try. I can handle it.

  ‘You really can’t. Sure, you put a dent in the merchandise, but I don’t even think you’ve managed to tickle him so far.’

  Mickey whirled around to face her and crooked a red-clawed finger. “Come here.”

  She knew it was coming, even before his disgustingly bony finger twitched menacingly and drew her across the floor toward him. But she wasn’t backing down. Not from this asshole. Not again.

  ‘Seriously, Jessica. You need the rest of your magic!’

  Her Converses scuffed and squeaked across the floor as Mickey’s power over her jerked her forward. She only stopped when his Matahg hand closed around her throat and squeezed.

  A blaze of agony washed through her neck and up into her head. Instead of screaming or trying to get away, she clamped both hands down around Mickey’s wrist and squeezed back.

  “Yeah…” A dark, hungry, vengeful laugh burst
through the glinting rows of Mickey’s razor-sharp teeth splitting his inhuman face practically ear to ear. “You can try. It didn’t get you far last time. And something’s…different about you.”

  Jessica gritted her teeth and pulled up every ounce of power she still had left. Dark coils burst to life around her wrists and her hands, racing up along Mickey’s grip and eating away at the blazing red aura around him. Even as he crushed her throat in his steady grip, she couldn’t give in now. If she died here in the bank, if this was the end…

  At least she’d gone down fighting the piece of shit like she should have eighteen months ago.

  ‘That’s it. Lack of oxygen to your brain, witch. I’m taking over.’

  Don’t—

  Maybe she’d meant to shout it out loud, but a strangled croak rose from her own lips and ripped her right back to reality.

  Holy shit. She couldn’t breathe.

  Mickey cocked his head, studying her face with his glowing red eyes lined in silver. “What did you do to yourself, Jessica? I thought prison would’ve made you stronger. But you’re…just a shell.”

  His amorphous face loomed over hers, and he took a long sniff against the length of her cheek before letting out a shuddering breath.

  “What did you do with it?”

  Jessica struggled in his grip, her strength weakening now that she realized how insanely stupid she’d been. She hadn’t been able to stand against him the first time. Why the fuck had she thought this time would be different? She’d put her magic in a goddamn box upstairs, and she couldn’t even make the guy wince for all her effort.

  “I want it,” Mickey hissed. “If you tell me what you did with the rest of it, I’ll let you live. Maybe.”

  “I—” It hardly sounded like a word at all. And even as she tried to stare her old boss down with as much defiance as she could muster, her vision blurred with dark spots. She thought her hands were slipping from around his wrist. Mickey’s hand only tightened around her throat.

  “You fucked up,” he snarled. “Looks like I have to pick up the pieces for you all over again.”