A Lying Witch Book Two

by Odette C. Bell

  I felt the woman shift forward, felt her shove towards my arm.

  I moved. The vision flowed through me, controlling my every action. I didn’t just push myself out of the way. I threw the crowbar that was still in my hand. Before the faceless man’s sword could extend into a spear, the crowbar slammed right into the center of his forehead. He may not have had any features, but below his mask of flesh was still a head. And that skull suddenly cracked with a resounding thud.

  The moment zoomed past so quickly, when it was over, I found myself standing there, frozen.

  The witch, however, wasn’t frozen.

  As my blow sent the faceless man spiraling backward, she pounced forwards. She rounded both hands into fists, and the ring on her index finger pulsed into life and sent out a crackling charge of magic that covered her completely. Her body double did the same. Both women snapped forward and sent pulses of magic blasting into the prone man.

  They sunk into him, and his body twitched violently then lay still.

  And, just like that, it was over. I’d managed to stop a murder.

  Chapter 3

  As soon as it became clear that the faceless man wasn’t about to get up, the witch turned to me. As she did, the power lapping off her ring began to dim. A second later, her body double disappeared in a flicker of magic.

  The witch stood there and stared at me before reaching a hand out, grasping mine, and shaking it. “I don’t know who you are, but if you hadn’t come to my aid, that creep would have killed me. Did the coven send you? Are you a soul guard?”

  I had no clue what she was saying, and now the adrenaline of the moment was waning, all I could feel was my own terrified heart pumping away in my chest.

  Suddenly my mouth was dry, suddenly my throat felt as if someone had tried to choke me. I became woozy, too, and almost fell down.

  Obviously, the woman realized I was dizzy, and she punched out a hand, supporting my shoulder. “Whoa, there. Did you use up a lot of your power in the fight? What even is your power? How did you know what he would do?” She frowned through her words as she looped a supportive arm through mine and guided me towards the open mouth of the garage.

  It took me a long time to speak. “I… are you alright?”

  She offered me a muddled smile. “Yeah, I’m alive, which accounts for being alright. My name’s Bridgette Black. Yours?”

  “Chi McLane. But… what was that thing back there?” I jerked my head over my shoulder, staring in the direction of the open garage. “Oh my god, we should call the police,” I realized as I slapped a hand over my mouth.

  Things were happening way too quickly. Calling the police after a magical fiend had almost stabbed me through the heart with a spear should not have been an afterthought.

  I went to shove a hand into my pocket to draw my phone out.

  She ducked towards me and grabbed my wrist. She frowned right into my face. “Have you gone mad, sister?”

  I simply stared at her, blinking, still completely thrown.

  “You can’t call the police – don’t you think they are going to have some questions about the guy with flesh for a face? Questions we magical creatures would get into a lot of trouble for if we answered?”

  Aside from Max, I’d had precious little to do with other magical races. No, you couldn’t count Dimitri from this morning.

  Shit, Max!

  I suddenly paled. To him, it would have seemed that I’d disappeared for eight hours.

  Though the witch still had a hold of my hand, I tugged my phone up and tapped the on-button.

  There was missed call after missed call, all from Max.

  God, he was going to kill me.

  “Oh, god, I need to make a phone call,” I stuttered, taking a step back and breaking her grip.

  “Not the police,” she reminded, tone direct. It was clear that in her eyes, I was a broken, emotional mess.

  “No, not the police,” I agreed, “to my fairy bodyguard.”

  She frowned. “You have a fairy bodyguard?” She looked me up and down, almost as if she were reassessing me. “You come from old money or something? Just which coven do you belong to, anyway?”

  She was asking question after question, and I couldn’t answer a damn one.

  Wincing, I tapped Max’s contact, drew the phone up to my ear, closed my eyes, and clapped a hand over my face.

  It didn’t even have to ring once.

  He answered. “Where the hell have you been?”

  “Um, a car yard,” I said, voice shaking.

  “Wait there,” he snapped. He hung up. He didn’t ask where I was, and maybe he didn’t have to. Maybe Max had some kind of magical connection to me. That, or he’d shoved a tracker in my bag when I hadn’t been looking.

  As soon as he hung up, my attention returned to the fact that there was a faceless attacker still in the garage. I gulped as I tilted my head towards it.

  Obviously, Bridgette realized what I was thinking, because she shrugged her shoulders, crossing her arms and doing a fantastic job of looking just as defensive as Max. “There’s no way I’m gonna let him get away. Not after what he’s done to our other sisters.”

  She kept saying sisters, obviously thinking we were both ordinary witches.

  Fortunately, Max didn’t give us the opportunity for small talk. I heard a roaring bike, and a second later, it skidded to a stop right outside the dealership.

  Max jumped off the bike, and so did Sarah Anne.

  As soon as Sarah clapped eyes on Bridgette, she jolted forward, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Oh god, Bridgette, you’re okay. Thank heavens you’re okay.”

  “Heaven didn’t have anything to do with it.” Bridgette snorted as she crossed her arms. Then she leveled her gaze at me. She nodded, the move obviously full of deference. “I had a hand. Who are you, anyway?”

  I brought a hand up, latched it over the back of my head, and shrugged into it.

  I didn’t get the chance to answer. Max turned his deadly attention on me. “Who cares? Where have you been?”

  I could kid myself into thinking that was just anger flaring in Max’s gaze and twisting his tone. But it was more. He’d genuinely been worried for me, hadn’t he?

  When I didn’t answer immediately, he cleared his throat, sounding like a raging bull. “Chi?”

  I gulped. “I found a doorway. I got bored, I wandered off. The doorway opened out into some courtyard, and a gust of wind took the photo. By the time I exited into the courtyard, eight hours had passed. Eight hours! I don’t even know how that happened.” I spoke so quickly, I could barely understand myself.

  Max didn’t reply. He frowned as he held my gaze.

  “You mean you exited through a timed door?” Bridgette asked, shooting me the kind of frown that told me I was kind of an idiot for not knowing what one of those was.

  “I guess.”

  “It doesn’t matter. All that matters is she found Bridgette in time. Thank you so much. I’ll never be able to thank you enough,” Sarah said, gushing.

  Yes, this woman was super pretty, yes, Max obviously had feelings for her, but no, I couldn’t bring myself to hate her. She was just so genuine.

  She thrust forward, picked up my hand, and shook it passionately.

  Me? I just stood there and desperately tried to figure out what had just happened. Back in the city, my days had consisted of the occasional Internet fortune and nights at the Italian bistro down the road.

  Now, apparently, I would be dicing with death every other day.

  I put a hand up, trying to swipe my sweaty fringe out of my eyes. I felt like death. And hey, I probably looked worse.

  Sarah drew Bridgette away, and they began mumbling in low tones as they turned and walked towards the garage.

  Instantly, my hackles rose. I’d already noted that I wasn’t exactly brilliant when it came to morality. But I did have a sense of morality, even if it was a little warped. And right now that warped sense of morality didn’t like the w
itches’ expressions, not one little bit.

  It wasn’t as if I had any love lost for the faceless creep who’d attacked me, but that didn’t mean I could condone murder. Yet before I could push off, run after them, and figure out on the way how to stop two seriously pissed off witches, Max reached out, grabbed my arm, and held me in place. “They’re just going to question him,” he said in his always memorable brogue.

  That didn’t exactly put me at ease. In fact, I grimaced as I turned to face him. “Question him? You saw their expressions – I really don’t think they’re out to have a pleasant conversation.”

  “Just leave it,” Max snapped.

  Don’t get me wrong, I was touched by his concern. But I was also pissed off that I’d been put in this situation in the first place.

  Whatever control I’d had over my expression shattered. “Why? Why should I leave it? Should I trust you? Like I trusted you this morning? Like you set me up to talk to Sarah Anne?”

  He stiffened. I mean really stiffened. I swear I saw muscles in his cheeks I had never known had existed before.

  “Just leave it,” he snapped, expression so cold, his lips and eyes could have frozen clean off.

  Everything told me to drop it. From his countenance, to the tension climbing his jaw, to my own beating heart. Problem was, I couldn’t drop it.

  I stood there, curling my hands until it felt like my fingernails would perforate my palms. “Why? Because that would be easier? Because you wouldn’t have to answer any questions that way? You’re meant to be my magical bodyguard, right? So why do I sometimes feel that you’ll be the reason I die?”

  Snap. Something snapped in him. No, he didn’t suddenly thrust forward and hit me. It wasn’t anything like that. But I’d definitely struck a nerve, a serious one, for I had never seen Max like this. His cheeks were so stiff it looked as if I’d slapped him.

  He couldn’t say anything, either. Not a word. And his shadow? That long, dark shadow that sometimes looked more real than he did? It flickered, almost as if I’d delivered it some devastating blow.

  I didn’t get an opportunity to find out why Max was reacting so strangely – at that moment, Bridgette and Sarah came back.

  I was gratified to see there was no blood on their hands.

  They simply looked grim.

  Though Max didn’t thaw by the time they arrived, both women were too distracted to pick up on his epically icy mood.

  Sarah exchanged some mumbled words with Max, and when I tried to pick up what they were saying, Max simply lowered his tone. Doing it again, ha? He seemed obsessed with me doing the right thing, but apparently I didn’t need to know what was happening in order to do the right thing. Nope. All I had to do was follow and obey.

  Just when I got the idea that I could walk away, Max appeared to know what I was thinking. He growled at me to stay put.

  Reluctantly, I waited there, arms crossed, kicking a mark on the pavement as I waited for Max to finish with Sarah.

  Several minutes later, he was done. With a grim, judgmental, and yet somehow caring look, he shrugged me forward.

  Time to follow, ha?

  With no other option, I fell into step behind the ever mysterious Max.

  …

  Fagan

  He sat there in his suit, hands clamped on his lap, expensive shoe tapping against the desk before him.

  He stared at the security footage being played over the computer screen set up on the desk.

  The more he watched, the more he tapped his shoe against the desk. Swearing for the hundredth time, he pushed harder back into his seat and clenched a hand into a fist.

  He was on a deadline, here. A tight one. Either he produced the hearts for the Lonely King, or Fagan would find his magical protection canceled. Abruptly. And Fagan had enemies. He had a list of enemies as long as his arm.

  What made it worse, was he had to time his murders to the second. The Lonely King demanded it. Fagan hadn’t questioned, but he could bet the Lonely King was casting some kind of complex spell and time was important somehow.

  Fagan didn’t need to know the details – he just needed to kill. And thanks to that little bitch who’d interrupted the murder, he’d missed today’s target.

  He tapped his foot – tap, tap, tap – until it sounded like he was trying to hammer through the leg of the desk.

  He’d spent a week tracking down Bridgette Black – sifting her out from the other witches based on her unique skill set. She was a body doubler, and you didn’t see those every day.

  Now? Now he’d either have to find another or go up against the coven.

  “Fuck,” he spat once more as he balled up a hand and struck the desk. The blow was sharp enough, hard enough that it rattled the computer screen, threatening to topple it and send it crashing down to the ground.

  Though Fagan’s knuckles smarted and he even picked up several splinters from the rough edge of the wood, he didn’t care.

  He rested back and continued to watch the footage.

  It showed the masked assassin – a specific breed of magician who lost their facial features over time as they practiced magic – going after Bridgette, chasing her down to a car garage.

  Fagan always took footage of his acquisitions, as he liked to call them. Not only could he use them for training purposes, but the Lonely King required it. Fagan had made a mistake with Farley – that bastard had started acquiring hearts for himself. Now the Lonely King would not let Fagan make such a mistake again. He had to take footage of every murder to prove that none of the hearts went missing.

  He watched the footage, and everything went according to plan until suddenly, out of nowhere, a woman appeared. She shifted one of the cars, and what should have been a well-timed attack failed to hit home.

  “Fuck,” Fagan roared once more. His first assumption was that the woman was just some passing witch, a member of the same coven as Bridgette.

  In fact, he was about to ball up a fist, hit it on the keyboard, and stalk out of the room.

  He stopped.

  He turned. He stared at the screen.

  Wait.

  He’d seen that face before. The freckles, the porcelain skin. It was her. The seer.

  The frozen sneer of anger that had spread across his lips suddenly thawed. He relaxed, too, shifting back in his seat, letting his shoulders press against the leather as he let out a short, brief, but satisfied chuckle.

  The Lonely King required a range of powers. To do that, Fagan had to harvest a range of hearts from magical creatures. The Lonely King had been quite specific about the powers he wanted, but he hadn’t added seer to the list. Because seers were criminally rare. You could go your whole career without meeting one.

  But hey, there was now one close enough to touch. To prove that point, Fagan shifted forward, planted an elbow on the desk, reached his finger out, and tapped the screen, nail impacting right where the seer’s throat was.

  Fagan couldn’t even count how many points this would earn him. Dragging in a seer’s heart? Oh, the Lonely King would never forget that.

  Fagan pushed up from the seat, and it clattered behind him as he shoved his hands into his pockets, turned, and sat roughly on the edge of the desk.

  He stared over his shoulder, caught sight of the footage in his peripheral vision, and smiled.

  Then he pushed up from the desk, walked out, and figured out his next move.

  He’d have to be careful – seers were notorious for dodging bullets, after all. But he’d captured this one before, so he could damn well do it again.

  If he acted quickly enough, she wouldn’t see it coming.

  Chapter 4

  I didn’t get a chance to go home. Max found a car from somewhere across the side of the street. I’d seen him pull up in a motorbike, and yet he seemed to have the keys for a sedan, too. I didn’t question, just got in the front seat, determined to ignore him. Which proved a problem when I realized we weren’t headed home.

  “Hold on, whe
re are we going?”

  He didn’t bother to turn to me. “The police station.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because I said so. And, in case you’ve forgotten, you just saved a woman’s life.”

  I could tell he tried to keep his tone even, but it didn’t quite work. His voice became stressed in all the wrong places.

  I suddenly noticed he was pale, too.

  Was he scared for me? Or was it something else?

  And did it even matter? Because I was not going to the police station. I wanted to go home, have a bath, and jolly well go to bed.

  “I don’t see why we’re doing this. Can’t I just go home? Detective Coulson hasn’t even contacted me yet. You said this morning that we were meant to wait until he makes the first move,” I protested.

  Max, one hand on the steering wheel, the other permanently rested on the gear stick, turned to me. His expression wasn’t disdainful, but it wasn’t exactly full of cheer, either. “Because you’re in over your head, already,” he admonished.

  “Really? I’m in over my head already? And why do you think that’s the case? Could it be because you dragged me along by the ear without ever telling me anything?”

  “This is no time for bickering. We need to contact Coulson, figure out what he knows, and work with him to solve this case immediately. For the good of the witches in this town, and for your own safety, too.” His voice did it again – dropped to such a low, rumbling note I thought it would accidentally end up popping the tires.

  I pressed my lips together, winced, and swallowed, feeling like I wanted to throw up all over the dash.

  It was happening again, wasn’t it? I was being thrust headfirst into another ridiculous magical adventure. No reprieve, and – unless you counted the argumentative, frustrating Max – no help, either.

  I brought up a hand, planted it over my face and pressed against my eyes until I saw stars.

  “You can’t hide from this,” he snapped.

  “Thank you, I know that.”

  Rather than engage the big brute in any more conversation, I decided to completely ignore him until he finally pulled up outside of the police station. The familiar knot of nerves formed in my gut, and I had to cram a hand on my stomach not to throw up.