Better 'Ink Twice

by Rachel Rawlings

  “There’s no way you pinched enough from Nicholas’s supplies to do this many glamours.” I rested my hands on my hips. “Where’d you get it.” I eyed the small spray bottle in his hands warily.

  “Amber.” He shushed me before I had a chance to say anything. “She’s helping us.”

  “Oh? And how did this partnership come about?” I didn’t bother waiting for an answer. “You were cozying up with Amber, while I was—”

  “Tattooing every day? Living off burgers and beer? Slipping mundanes the occasional magic ink?” Lars cut me a break and skipped over the part where I chose to run from my problems.

  “Touché.” One corner of my mouth quirked up in a half-smile. “It doesn’t sound half-bad when you put it like that. I might go back after we wrap this up.”

  “Which part?” Lars chuckled. “Busting Nicholas out or taking down Winslow?”

  “Meh,” I gave a casual shrug, “I’m good with either.

  Lars shook his head, an amused look on his face as he misted me from head to toe with the liquid glamour in the spray bottle. “Mirror, mirror on the wall. Show me a student who walks these halls.”

  “That’s the invocation?” I stifled a groan as the familiar tingles of a glamour skated along my skin.

  “Amber made it.” Lars snapped back as if the short limerick was an afront to his masculinity. “Not me.” He misted himself and the gruff, old biker was replaced with a twenty-something collegiate complete with vintage checkered Vans and a hoodie. “I look like a transfer student from SoCal.”

  “Um, do we need to review the list of glamours I’ve sported recently? Emo boy was a nice touch.” I raked my fingers through my new mousy brown locks. “We can always trade if you want?” I took in my knee-high socks, short pleated skirt, and white button-down tied off at the waist. “This is cute, in a Witch of the Month calendar sort of way. I call this look September. You could totally pull it off.”

  Lars seemed to consider it for a moment as he misted the motorcycle down, transforming it into a ten-speed before ultimately waving off the idea. “We don’t have time for a redo. We need to move.”

  I took point as planned and led the way through the delivery entrance. The guard on duty eyed us warily as we approached but caught sight of our uniforms and went back to reading his paper, complaining loud enough for us to hear about how tired he was of spoiled little rich kids acting like they owned the place. Keeping up appearances, I grabbed Lars’s hand, let out a mischievous giggle and sprinted to the rear door. Lars fell into character and kept up the pace. We slipped inside easily enough.

  It was almost too easy, but I didn’t question it.

  We crossed the loading bay, weaving through stacks of boxed goods, some marked for the dining hall and others for spelling labs, until we reached the other side and a door that led to the outer ring of classrooms. The campus’s layout was similar to a Victorian garden maze, twisting and turning until you reached the center— where Winslow and the other Magistrate officials had offices.

  Where Nicholas was held.

  I took a safety-pin from the folds of my waistband and gripped it tight as we moved down the stark white hall with rooms on either side. Plaques beside the doors were engraved with the room number and lab name. I slowed to a stop outside a door marked Wards and Witchfire, wondering if somewhere inside that room was information on who or what I was.

  Lars, in tune to my thoughts as ever, nudged me forward. “Perimeter wards. Trust me, the last thing the Magistrate wants is more of you running around out there.”

  He was right, as usual, but I couldn’t help wondering if somewhere inside these walls tomes containing the spells I’d yet to learn from Grim hadn’t been locked away. With a reluctant sigh, I pressed forward through another door and into another hall. We kept moving through the mazework of classrooms until we reached the inner ring and the last door that led to the Magistrate offices.

  “This is it,” I whispered, gripping the doorknob with a clammy hand. “How many guards did you say would be on the other side?”

  “I didn’t.” Lars rested a steady hand on my shoulder and counted to three. “Go.”

  I turned the knob and pulled, hooking a foot on the door to push it open so my hands were free. After popping the safety-pin open, I pricked my finger and readied myself for the first wave of guards. When none rushed out to stop us, a sickening feeling settled into my stomach.

  “Lars?” The quiver in my voice matched my wavering determination.

  “I don’t know, Del.” Lars moved around me to check the first office. He twisted the doorknob. It clicked but didn’t turn. Locked. “It’s not like either of us has ever stepped foot inside here before. Maybe they’re too cocky to think we’d break-in.”

  “Or maybe it’s a trap,” I said, squeezing my fingertip until a fat drop of blood welled to the surface.

  The whir of a printer coming to life drew our attention to an office at the end of the hall where a soft glow flickered through the crack at the bottom of the door. An elderly woman emerged, her dress rumpled and hair coming loose from the bun on top of her head. She held a stack of papers in one hand and a coffee cup in the other. A secretary, if I had to guess based on the late hour and her haggard appearance. The woman blinked several times, a surprised look on her face as she realized there were, in fact, two people standing in the hall.

  “What are you two doing in here?” she asked, clutching the papers to her chest. “Students aren’t allowed—” Her eyes widened as she realized something was wrong. We weren’t just two students sneaking around the campus halls at night.

  “I’m really sorry about this,” I said, rushing forward.

  I had to give it to her. The old woman was sprite for her age. Papers littered the floor as she dropped the stack and turned to run but she wasn’t fast enough to escape my mark. When her knees gave out, I wrapped an arm around her waist and tried to slow the fall, but her short, round stature gave her a lower center of gravity. My attempt to prevent her from hitting the floor like a sack of potatoes ended with me underneath her cushioning the impact from the marble tiles. Trapped beneath a soft mass of knit sweater and wool suit, the layered scents of talcum powder and strong perfume stung my nose and closed my throat.

  “A little help here?” I managed to ask, my vocal cords strung tight.

  Lars swooped in and lifted the secretary off me with tears in his eyes from holding in his laughter. “That was beautiful,” he grunted as he shifted the elderly woman’s weight and dragged her into the office. “Man, she’s heavy. Grab the papers.”

  After lowering her into an office chair behind her ornate wooden desk, Lars rested her head on the desk, her left arm positioned beside it. The papers were strewn about the floor beside the chair, right arm left dangling to make it appear at first glance she’d simply fallen asleep at her desk.

  I picked up the gold nameplate on her desk. “You picked the wrong night to work late.” With a sigh, I set it back down on its stand between two ballpoint pens. “I really am sorry, Edna.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, one of the papers we’d scattered on the floor caught my attention. The profile of the woman pictured looked familiar. I snatched one from the messy pile. It shouldn’t have come as a shock to see my face with the words ‘wanted for murder, bounty if brought in alive’ in bold typeface beneath it— but somehow it did.

  “Lars?” The paper shook as I held it out with unsteady hands.

  He took one look at it and dropped it on the floor with the rest. “We need to get Nicholas and get the hell out of here. Now.”

  “You think?” I quipped with an eye roll for good measure. “Like I was going to hang around and turn myself in afterward or something.” I followed Lars back out into the hall.

  We checked the remainder of the offices. No Nicholas. No other inhabitants, either. Silver linings, right? At the end of the hall was another door. This one labeled Subterranean Labs Level One, P.P.E. Required, Use Caution.


  “Nothing ominous about that.” Lars shook his head. “Come on.”

  The idea of going, not only further but deeper into the campus network raised hairs on the back of my neck. Once we went down those steps, our escape routes dramatically decreased— to one.

  “What’s P.P.E.?” One day, I’d learn not to ask questions I didn’t want the answer to. This was not that day.

  “Personal protection equipment.” Lars pushed the metal bar on the door which released the latch and allowed it to swing open.

  “Does that mean—”

  “Yes, Del. It means exactly what you think it means.” Lars crossed the threshold into the stairwell. “We have less than ten minutes to find him, free him, and get the fuck out of here.” He descended the stairs, taking them two at a time.

  “The cells are here?” Had I not been out of breath trying to catch up, I might have sounded more mortified.

  “Where else are they going to keep them?” Lars made a valid point.

  Rather than argue the safety and sensibility of keeping a prison beneath an academic institution, I conserved my breath for the cardio workout the stairs provided. Nicholas was in one of the cells on the lower level. We were already short on time to find him thanks to Edna, and exposure to lead only sped up the clock. Running up and down the corridors between cells increased our lead exposure and limited our magic. The longer it took, the weaker we’d be.

  We had to find Nicholas— and fast— or we’d find ourselves in an adjoining cell.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Lead poisoning was painful. The power drain started with flu symptoms, muscle fatigue, fever, chills until it eventually reached the marrow of your bones and sucked out the last bits of your essence, leaving you nothing more than a mundane. It took years for a witch’s cells to rebuild and their magic return. Normally, avoiding a lead cell was a top priority. Lars and I worked hard to avoid them, staying just out of the Magistrate’s reach.

  The dull ache already settling in my bones as we looked through the small window of the first cell served as a good reminder of why.

  How long had Nicholas been down here? Days, weeks? Since he was apprehended in his apartment? I’d been guzzling down beer and burgers, slinging tattoos on mundanes under the guise of regrouping— when in truth I’d been hiding. The realization that I’d left him to rot in one of those cells and not in his uncle’s cushy office spurred me on despite already suffering the effects of the lead.

  “You take the left,” I tapped Lars on the shoulder to get his attention, “I’ll take the right.”

  Lars’s grief-stricken expression was answer enough. We moved down the corridor, careful not to touch the cell door or walls as we peered into each glass windowpane no larger than a letter-sized piece of paper. Nausea welled up as the body aches increased once we reached the end of the hall. There was one cell left on either side.

  “Got him,” Lars called out in the midst of a coughing fit.

  Sweat beaded my brow as I joined Lars outside Nicholas’s cell. “Now what?”

  “Now, you stand back.” Lars fished out a small spool of thread the width of dental floss from his pocket and lined the door. Blisters formed on his fingertips before he reached the last hinge. “Fire, fire, burning bright—”

  “Is this another Amber special?” I asked, more than a little curious about what sort of trouble she’d gotten into to have spells like that in her arsenal.

  “Zip it.” Lars ignored my question about Amber. “I need to concentrate.” He finished the incantation but nothing happened. “I don’t get it. I followed her directions.” Lars pressed a hand against the door and gave it a light push. The frame creaked and moaned before it broke loose of its hinges and fell inward.

  Right in the direction of Nicholas.

  “Oh, my goddess.” I rushed forward to look inside the cell. “Did you crush him?”

  Lars walked over the downed door and stepped inside the cell. “He’s fine. See?” He waved over at Nicholas. “Well, maybe not fine but the door didn’t hit him.”

  “Just grab him and let’s get out of here.” I whipped my head back and forth, scanning each end of the corridor. “There’s probably alarm sensors on the cell doors. Security’s going to come busting through those doors any second.”

  Lars scooped Nicholas up. Once they were both out of the cell, he adjusted his hold, switching to a fireman’s carry. I noticed the slight wobble in his legs. The lead was taking its toll on all of us. Nicholas suffered from overexposure. There was no telling how much of his magic had been drained but based on the sores and discoloration of his skin, Nicholas had been in that cell since the Magistrate’s men took him into custody. He was in no condition to help us get off-campus. Good thing Lars and I always hoped for the best but planned for the worst.

  Because the worst was about to happen.

  The door on the left end of the hall blew open. Bits of concrete rained down and a cloud of dust rolled down the corridor from the explosion. Lars hitched Nicholas higher up on his shoulder. “We’re not getting out the way we came in. Come on.” He led the way to the door on our right.

  “That goes down, doesn’t it?” Taking a tour of the Magistrate’s prison wasn’t on my to-do list.

  Lars opened the door to level two of the prison just as three guards rushed in, magic crackling the air around them. “You have enough juice to drop all of them? We’re not going to be able to fight our way out of here, Adeline.” He was already halfway through the doorway. “You need to trust me.”

  “I do trust you.” As I said the words, I knew them to be true. Despite everything that led up to that moment, I trusted Lars with my life.

  And Nicholas’s.

  With what little energy I had left, I cast Witch Fire, setting a wall of flames between us and the three guards. One of them shot off a counterspell, dousing the fire and my hopes for a head start. Smoke billowed up, filling the hall with a toxic cloud.

  “He put it out?” As much as I was baffled by the guard’s ability to snuff out my Witch Fire— something that shouldn’t have been possible— I didn’t stick around to question him about it.

  One guard ordered the others to follow her. The sound of their shoes clomping against the floor echoed through the corridor as they charged toward us.

  “Go, go, go,” she shouted. “Winslow wants his nephew and the girl alive. The other one...” she trailed off for a moment, laughing before she finished her thought, “we can do whatever we want with him.”

  Lars hit the stairs and I was right behind him. Soft whimpers of pain and cries for help met us as we barged through the door onto lower level two. Twelve more cells. Twelve more unfortunate souls locked inside. Did their crime even fit the punishment? There wasn’t time to ask but if the torturous cells beneath the campus represented even a fraction of the atrocities the Magistrate committed in the name of witches, someone needed to put a stop to it.

  It was on my to-do list. Right after getting out of the prison alive. Oh, and stopping Winslow. My calendar was really filling up.

  Lars hooked a hard right and went through another door and down another set of stairs. Once again, I was right behind him. The plan for me to take point went to hell in a handbasket the second we hit the prison. It wasn’t ‘every witch for themselves’ but it wasn’t women and children first, either. We kept going down, deeper and deeper into the bowels of the prison system. We were nine floors below ground.

  We charged through the last door with nowhere else to go. Rectangular grates were evenly spaced across the floor, dank water flowing through the drainage line beneath them. I planted my feet firmly on the floor and used my body as a barricade to hold the door closed. Lars set Nicholas down and used what little strength he had left to rip one of the grates free. He shoved Nicholas into the hole feet first. The sound of a splash eased my fears about the water’s depth.

  “You next.” Lars crouched next to the drain. “Adeline!”

  Any hesitation I might have had abo
ut jumping down into an archaic sewer drain ended with Lars shouting my name and the sound of guards trudging down the steps outside the door. Water splashed up, drenching my clothes when I hit bottom. I trudged through the knee-deep water, clearing the way for Lars while catching up to Nicholas who floated several feet away on his back.

  Lars dropped down with a splash of his own and went to work setting perimeter wards on the grate. “It’s not much. I don’t have a lot of juice left.” The guards would break through eventually, but Lars’s quick work bought us some time.

  “You know where this goes, right?” Hunched over, I held Nicholas’s head in my hands to keep him from drowning and used it as a ruder, steering him through the drain.

  Lars snapped his fingers. Two small orbs of light, resembling fireflies, flickered around him. It was hardly enough light to see but something was better than nothing. “All drains lead to—”

  I stifled a groan. “Now is not the time to quote animated movies. I’m being serious, Lars.” I moved one hand from Nicholas’s head to his shoulder to steer him around a curve in the drain. “We’re going to get dysentery before we get out of here.”

  “Nothing some essential oils won’t fix. Thyme and oregano should do the trick.” Lars sloshed through the water to catch up.

  “Great. All Winslow will have to do is follow the smell of vinaigrette-covered poop. It’ll lead him right to us.” I couldn’t help myself, I broke out into fit of laughter.

  Lars took over steering Nicholas before I let him drown due to my hysteria. “We’re in a storm drain. It must be pouring outside for the water to be so deep.” Lars chuckled and gave me a nudge with his hip. “It lets out in the Providence River.”

  The guards’ voices echoed through the massive pipe. We were almost out of time. The wards didn’t give us the head start I hoped for.

  “How much further?” I asked as I quickened the pace.

  “A few hundred feet.” Lars broke into a jog.

  Nicholas bobbed on the surface of the water as we raced to the end of the drainpipe, his bare feet hitting the grate with a meaty thud.