He started up the stairs with an easy loping grace that only slowed down as he hit my radius. I’d never really noticed Eli’s natural, non-lycanthropic athleticism, which is a shame, since I am the only one who really could.
He climbed the last few stairs and grinned at me, seawater still dripping from his damp hair. “What’s the occasion?” he said lightly. “Just here for another quickie?” His voice was teasing, but there was a flicker of hurt on his face, and I felt ashamed again.
Dammit
. Eli was the worst three-night stand ever.
“Actually, I’m wondering if I can borrow those handcuffs, the silver ones. They could be helpful for this case.”
He frowned at me. “Come in and tell me about it.”
I followed him into the small apartment, plopping down on his ancient threadbare sofa and curling my legs up around me. I’d never been there in the daytime—unless you count sneaking out with a hangover in the morning—and I’d never really paid much attention to Eli’s habitat. It was kind of messy, which was no surprise, but it was kind of nice, too. There was a lot of ocean stuff on the walls, shells and sand dollars and twists of driftwood. In one corner, a little card table was set up with some carving tools and a big chunk of driftwood. I stood up and wandered over. There was the beginning of a boat carved onto one side of the wood, and it made the wood itself look exactly like waves of the ocean.
“You did this?” I asked.
“Don’t sound so surprised, Scarlett,” he said wryly. “I can do more than pour drinks.”
“Yeah, I know,” I said lamely. I put the driftwood down.
“Okay, so explain to me why you want the handcuffs.”
I started to tell him about Ronnie and the silver chains. While I talked, Eli stowed his surfboard in the front closet and dried his hair with a towel.
“Ronnie?” he said incredulously, when I had finished. “That’s so crazy. Who would do something like that?” He unzipped the back of his wetsuit, pulling it down around his waist.
I tried not to stare. Jesse is prettier, but Eli is no slump, werewolf or not. Muscled chest, just enough hair to not be too much, strong back—
“Uh, Scarlett?”
My eyes flew back to his face, and I blushed like a teenager.
“I’m up here.” He touched his right eye, mockingly. “Besides, it’s nothing you haven’t seen before.”
“But now I’m sober,” I said without thinking. Then I shook my head to clear it. Jeez, Scarlett. Focus. “Anyway, I’m gonna have Kirsten do a tracking spell with the cuffs, if you just let me borrow them.”
“Sure,” he said easily, tossing the towel over his shoulder. “But I’m going with you.”
My irritation overpowered my fleeting lust, and I scowled up at him.
He just shrugged. “I know you think Kirsten’s trustworthy, but there is someone out there who wants to get to you, and what kind of assistant would I be if I let that happen?” I opened my mouth to argue with him, but he shook his head, suddenly serious. “I mean it, Scarlett. I’m coming, or you can’t have the handcuffs. Forget...whatever this thing is between you and me. Will would kill me if I let you get hurt.”
We stared at each other for a moment while I weighed my options, but it didn’t seem as if I had any. Finally, I sighed and nodded.
“Good. So I’m gonna jump in the shower quick, and then we can go,” he said, starting toward the bathroom. Then he stopped and looked back at me. Huge grin. “Unless you’d care to join me?”
Oops. My eyes may have wandered again. I turned red again and shook my head.
While Eli was showering, I did a quick search of the living room and kitchen, trying to find the damn cuffs so I could just go. When that didn’t work, I plopped back down on the couch and called Kirsten.
If Will is an alpha and Dashiell a king, Kirsten is more like a publicist. The witches used to be completely disorganized, for the simple reason that they’re all very different. As I’d told Jesse, witches, vampires, and werewolves are all descended from the same human conduits, but the witches are from a branch that used as little magic as possible, which varied from witch to witch. So some of them have just a little specific magic, and some, like Kirsten, are actually really powerful. With such different talents and personalities, I can guarantee that if you got every single witch in Los Angeles into one huge room, they would not be able to agree on anything, even something as basic as whether magic is good or evil. Of course, the biggest conflict between them is almost always the question of offensive magics. Olivia explained it to me like this: After the vampires, the werewolves, and the witches split off from the same line, they were scattered peacefully across the globe for centuries, each mostly disregarding the others. But in the Middle Ages, the witches, who by nature did the most interacting with normal humans, began to be discovered. And then persecuted, and tortured, and murdered.
Their leaders went to the vampires and the wolves and begged for help, but both groups turned away, the vampires from apathy and the wolves from fear of meeting the same fate. Wolves are pack animals, and look after their pack before anything else. So the witches did the only thing they could: they looked to strengthen their magic. They didn’t know about evolution and magical lines back then, but during their research, the witches managed to stumble upon a group of plants that magic had bonded itself to, just like the human conduits. They were known as nightshades: belladonna, mandragora,
Lycium barbarum
(which also became known
as wolfberry), tomatillo, cape gooseberry flower, capsicum, and solanum. The entire subspecies was rife with magic. The latter four plants could be used in hundreds of charms and potions, many of which helped the witches to deter the human persecutors. But the former three plants were unique; they interacted with the remaining magical beings in mystifying ways. Belladonna was poisonous to vampires—it took unbelievable amounts to actually kill them, but even a sprinkle of the plant would work as a paralytic. Proximity to wolfberry caused the shifters to lose control, painfully unable to stop from changing, again and again, which was very dangerous to anyone nearby. And mandragora, also called mandrake, was the key ingredient in a spell that could grant a very powerful witch the ability to communicate between living and dead. Which is how I ended up disposing of that naked guy’s body in Culver City, all those years ago.
This discovery was your classic Pandora’s box scenario. A small group of witches, furious that the vampires and the wolves had abandoned them during their darkest time, began to use wolfberry and belladonna against them—sometimes without much provocation. The balance of power shifted once again, and while the witches’ discovery didn’t cause a full-out war, it did spawn thousands of skirmishes, minor battles breaking out between the three major factions. Eventually, the use of those herbs was “outlawed” in the Old World, but it was done the way that marijuana has been outlawed in the US—basically, don’t get caught. The witches are always arguing about this among themselves; some of them think it should be open season, and others think the ban should be more strictly enforced.
But while they may not be able to pull together a majority vote, in Los Angeles Kirsten has organized the witches into sort of an informal union. I know it sounds crazy, but if actors and directors can have unions in this town, why not witches? As I understand it,
the real benefit to joining the union is access: to chat rooms, newsletters, support groups, spell sessions—and me.
The witches’ dues pay Kirsten a small salary, and she uses the rest to organize the network and pay me. There are plenty of “non-union” witches in LA, too, ones who either haven’t heard about the group or don’t want to be a part of it. Kirsten has to deal with their messes, too, because a public witch problem is every witch’s problem.
By night, Kirsten Harms-Dickerson is the most powerful known witch in Los Angeles, but by day, she’s a chirpy, polite-but-firm receptionist at one of the bigger talent agencies. Well, technically, she’s a receptionist, but really, she’s more of a gatekeeper, keeping the crazies out and the beautiful people in. She was out for a run when I called, but she picked up the phone anyway. Kirsten always answers. I explained the problem—without mentioning my impending execution—and she said she could easily go into work a few hours late.
Breathless and panting, she said, “Does this have anything to do with that La Brea Park...thing?” That was surprising. Someone was keeping Kirsten in the loop, for once.
“Actually, yeah.”
“No problem. I already told Dashiell I would help however I could. Give me half an hour, and come on over.”
Eli volunteered his truck, but we took my van, because you never know when you’re gonna get called to a crime scene, and because it has GPS. Kirsten’s neighborhood is beautiful, if you go for that charming fifties suburbia thing. The lawns are manicured, children run from house to house with a secure sense of joint ownership, and cute medium-sized dogs bark playfully from behind honest-to-goodness white picket fences. We drove with the windows down, and I could hear a sharp metallic
crack
coming from the community ballpark on the next street. It’s all very Kirsten, who makes Elizabeth Montgomery look like an evil hag.
When Eli and I arrived, I didn’t have to do ding-dong-ditch. (There’s a
Wizard of Oz
joke in there somewhere.) I only inhibit Kirsten when she’s actively opened her connection to magic, so if she’s not using it, being near me won’t bother her. Although, for whatever reason, I can still feel an inactive witch in my radius, like a soft white noise that’s always buzzing.
Kirsten opened the door still in her spotless Nike running clothes, her white-blonde hair pulled into a bun. “Hello, Scarlett. It’s nice to see you again, Mr. Glendon. I believe we met at one of the Trials two years ago, but of course, it’s been so long.”
She held out her hand, and Eli took it, glancing uncertainly at me. I smiled sweetly. Oh, this was going to be fun.
“Please come in, of course.” She led us through a Pottery Barn living room and into her spacious kitchen, which was probably the only place in the house that gave away Kirsten’s secret identity. Pots of every size and metal hung from a rack on the ceiling, more pots than any TV chef could dream of, and there was an enormous open pantry, a dozen feet high, that was devoted to herbs, preserved in identical spotless Tupperware jars with printed labels. I was tempted to look for the Big Three, but if Kirsten did have any, she wouldn’t put them right out in the open.
She did have not one, but two different stone mortar-and-pestle sets on the large granite counter, and there was a small bookshelf above the sink that was crammed with books that had no titles. “Paul, my husband, is playing golf this morning, which leaves the house open for us. May I see the object, please?”
Eli glanced at me and, at my nod, handed over the insulated lunch bag where he’d stashed the cuffs. Given his “allergy,” I’d offered to carry them, but he’d insisted on doing it himself. Probably thought I’d ditch him and go see Kirsten alone.
Probably right.
Kirsten peeked inside and bit her lip thoughtfully. “I see what you mean, Scarlett. I’ve certainly never seen anything like this, although you know we don’t have much contact with the wolves.” She smiled diplomatically at Eli, who looked as if he’d just taken a bite of a completely new and spicy food. I probably should have told him more about Kirsten, but come on, this was entertaining.
“Can you trace them?” I asked her. “Do you have a spell that will work?”
“I think so.” Her eyes drifted to the books above the sink. “It won’t go to the last owner, unfortunately, because Eli has had them for too long. But I can get you to their maker. It should take no more than a half hour, I believe, and of course, I’ll have to ask you to step outside. Will your friend be staying in here or joining you outside?”
Her eyes looked directly into mine, and I understood the weight behind the question. This was the moment when I had to decide whether or not there was a chance that Kirsten was involved in this mess somehow. If she were on the bad guys’ team, she couldn’t hit either of us with a spell, not while Eli was close to me, but she could do any number of other things—lie about the cuffs’ origins, pull out a gun and shoot us, call some co–bad guys to come kill us. If I said Eli would come with me, it was leaving us vulnerable. But if I left Eli with Kirsten, it was like saying that I didn’t trust her, that I thought she was involved. Kirsten would not take that lightly, and she would not forget it.
I hate Old World politics, but I depend on them for my livelihood, so either way, the wrong choice could be terrible. I thought about the crime, about the violence and the use of a null, and I made my decision. “He’ll come outside with me, thank you. We’ll just wait on the porch.”
She nodded as if nothing had happened and started to set out her spell things, which were still mystifying to me. In an effort to curb my ignorance, Kirsten once spent a whole afternoon talking
to me about contagion magic and sympathetic magics and hermeticism, and we both finally had to conclude that I have absolutely no aptitude for understanding even the most basic witchcraft. Which makes sense, I guess, since nulls couldn’t perform a spell if the
Fantasia
sorcerer himself jumped out of the TV and begged.
Eli and I declined her offer of soft drinks and trooped out to the porch. The only place to sit was the blue porch swing, so there was an awkward moment while I faked like I wanted to stand up, leaning against the side of the house. Eli rolled his eyes and sprawled out on the swing. “She’s not what I expected,” he said finally. “She’s so...”
“Wholesome?”
“Yeah, I guess. I was picturing like a hippie with dreadlocks, or maybe a goth girl with Wiccan tattoos or something.”
“I did, too, the first time I met her,” I admitted. “She’s probably the most powerful witch in the city, but she looks like, I don’t know, the exasperated wife on a sitcom.” I bit my lip.
Eli looked closely at my face. “Witches scare you a little, huh?”
I shrugged. “Kind of. I guess....Vampires I get, and werewolves. It’s transformative magic, it’s like a spell that changes you down to your cells, and it’s permanent. Okay. But witches, they’re human, with all the responsibilities of human society, but they have these powers at the same time. When a witch performs a spell in your presence, you’re basically trusting that they’re not willing your ears to fall off or your lungs to implode. It’s a leap of faith, for most people, to even know a witch. It’s not that I’m worried about my safety...But if I were human, I would be.”