Dead Witch Walking (10 page)

“We’re all pulling for you,” Megan whispered. “The odds are running two hundred to one you make it through the week. Personally, I give you a hundred to one.”

I felt ill. Her gaze jumped behind me, and she stiffened. “Someone’s behind me, aren’t they?” I said, and she winced. I sighed, swinging my bag to rest against my back and out of the way before I turned on a slow heel.

He was in a tidy black suit, starched white shirt, and thin black tie. His arms were confidently laced behind his back. He didn’t take his sunglasses off. I caught the faint scent of musk, and by the soft reddish beard, I guessed he was a werefox.

Another man joined him, standing between me and the front door. He didn’t take his shades off, either. I eyed them, sizing them up. There would be a third somewhere, probably behind me. Assassins always worked in threes.
No more. No less. Always three,
I thought dryly, feeling my stomach tighten. Three against one wasn’t fair. I looked down at the hall to the vault. “See you at home, Jenks,” I whispered, knowing he couldn’t hear me.

The two shades stood straighter. One unbuttoned his jacket coat to show a holster. My brow rose. They wouldn’t gun me down in cold blood in front of a witness. Denon might be ticked, but he wasn’t stupid. They were waiting for me to run.

I stood with my hands on my hips and my feet spread for balance. Attitude is everything. “Don’t suppose we could talk about this boys?” I said tartly, my heart hammering.

The one who had unbuttoned his coat grinned. His teeth were small and sharp. A mat of fine red hair covered the back of his hand. Yup. A werefox. Great. I had my knife, but the point was to stay far enough away that I wouldn’t have to use it.

From behind me came Megan’s irate shout, “Not in my lobby. Take it outside.”

My pulse leapt. Meg would help?
Maybe,
I thought as I vaulted over her counter in a smooth move,
she just didn’t want a stain on her carpet.

“That way.” Megan pointed behind her to the archway to the back offices.

There was no time for thanks. I darted through the doorway, finding myself in an open office area. Behind me were muffled thumps and shouted curses. The warehouse-sized room was divided with corporate’s favorite four-foot walls, a maze of biblical proportions.

I smiled and waved at the startled faces of the few people working, my bag whacking into the partitions as I ran. I shoved the water cooler over in passing, shouting an insincere “Sorry” as it tipped. It didn’t shatter but did come apart. The heavy glugging of water was soon overpowered by the cries of dismay and calls for a mop.

I glanced behind me. One of the shades was entangled with three office workers struggling to gain control of the heavy bottle. His weapon was hidden. So far, so good. The back door beckoned. I ran to the far wall, flinging open the fire door, relishing the colder air.

Someone was waiting. She was pointing a wide-mouth weapon at me.

“Crap!” I exclaimed, backpedaling to slam the door shut. Before it closed, a wet splat hit the partition behind me, leaving a gelatinous stain. The back of my neck burned. I reached up, crying out when I found a blister the size of silver dollar. My fingers touching it burned.

“Swell,” I whispered as I wiped the clear goo off on the hem of my jacket. “I don’t have time for this.” Kicking the emergency lock into place, I darted back into the maze. They weren’t using delayed spells anymore. These were primed and loaded into splat balls. Just freaking great. My guess was it had been a spontaneous combustion spell. Had I gotten more than a back splash, I’d be dead. Nice little pile of ash on the Berber carpet. There was no way Jenks could have smelled this coming, even if he had been with me.

Personally, I’d rather be killed by a bullet. That, at least, was romantic. But it was harder to track down the maker of a lethal spell than it was to identify the manufacturer of a bullet or conventional gun. Not to mention that a good charm left no evidence. Or in the case of spontaneous combustion spells, not much of a body. No body. No crime. No need to do time.

“There!” someone shouted. I dove under a desk. Pain jolted my elbow as I landed on it. My neck felt like it was on fire. I had to get some salt on it, neutralize the spell before it spread.

My heart pounded as I shimmied out of my jacket. Splatters of goo decorated it. If I hadn’t been wearing it, I’d probably be dead. I jammed it into someone’s trashcan.

The calls for a mop were loud as I dug a vial of saltwater out of my bag. My fingers were burning and my neck was in agony. Hands shaking, I bit off the tube’s plastic top. Breath held, I dumped the vial across my fingers and then my bowed neck. My breath hissed out at the sudden sting and whiff of sulfur as the black spell broke. Saltwater dripped from me to the floor. I spent one glorious moment relishing the cessation of pain.

Shaking, I dabbed at my neck with the hem of my sleeve. The blister under my careful fingers hurt, but the throb from the saltwater was soothing compared to the burn. I stayed where I was, feeling like an idiot as I tried to figure out how I was going to get out of there. I was a good witch. All my charms were defensive, not offensive. Slap ’em up and keep them off their feet until you subdue them was the name of the game. I’d always been the hunter, never the hunted. My brow furrowed as I realized I had nothing for this.

Megan’s overloud fussing told me exactly where everyone was. I felt my blister again. It wasn’t spreading. I was lucky. My breath caught at the soft pacing a few cubicles over. I wished I wasn’t sweating so much. Weres have excellent noses, but one-track minds. It was probably only the lingering scent of sulfur that had kept him from finding me already. I couldn’t stay here. A faint pounding on the back door told me it was time to go.

Tension throbbed in my head as I cautiously peeked over the walls to see shade number one padding through the cubicles to let shade number three in. Taking a soft breath, I moved the opposite way in a crouched run. I was betting my life that the assassins had kept one of their number at the front door and that I wouldn’t bump into him halfway there.

Thanks to Megan’s nonstop harangue about the water on the floor, I made it to the archway to the lobby with no one the wiser. Face cold, I looked around the doorframe to find the reception desk deserted. Papers littered the floor. Pens rolled under my feet. Megan’s keyboard hung from its cord, still swaying. Hardly breathing, I skulked my way to the opening in the counter where it flipped up. Still at ground level, I shot a quick glance past the front desk.

My heart gave a quick pound. There was a shade fidgeting by the door, looking surly at having been left behind. But getting past one was better odds than getting past two.

Francis’s whiny voice came faint from the vault. “Here? Denon set them on her here? He must be pissed. Nah, I’ll be right back. I gotta see this. It ought to be worth a laugh.”

His voice was getting closer.
Maybe Francis would like to go for a stroll with me,
I thought, hope bringing my muscles tight. One thing you could count on with Francis was that he was curious
and
stupid, a dangerous combination in our profession. I waited, adrenaline singing through me, until he lifted the counter panel and came behind the desk.

“What a mess,” he said, more interested in the clutter on the floor than me rising behind him. He never saw me coming, too busy scratching. Like clockwork, I slipped an arm about his neck, wrenching one of his arms back behind him, nearly lifting him off his feet.

“Ow! Damn it, Rachel!” he shouted, too cowed to know how easy it would be to elbow me in the gut and get away. “Lemme go! This isn’t funny.”

Swallowing, I sent my frightened eyes to the shade by the door, his weapon pulled and aimed. “No it isn’t, cookie,” I breathed in Francis’s ear, painfully aware how close to death we were. Francis didn’t have a clue, and the thought he might do something stupid scared me more than the gun. My heart pounded and I felt my knees go loose. “Hold still,” I told him. “If he thinks he can get a shot off on me, he might take it.”

“Why should I care?” he snarled back.

“You see anyone else out here but you, me, and the gun?” I said softly. “Wouldn’t be hard to get rid of one witness, now would it?”

Francis stiffened. I heard a small gasp as Megan appeared in the doorway to the back offices. More people peered over and around her, whispering loudly. I sent my gaze darting over them, feeling the pinch of panic. There were too many people. Too many opportunities for something to go wrong.

I felt better when the shade eased from his crouch and tucked his pistol away. He put his arms to his side, palms out in an insincere gesture of acquiescence. Tagging me before so many witnesses would be too costly. Stalemate.

I kept Francis before me as an unwilling shield. There was a whisper of sound as the other two shades ghosted out of the office area. They held themselves against the back wall of Megan’s office. One had a drawn weapon. He took in the situation and holstered it.

“Okay, Francis,” I said. “It’s time for your afternoon constitutional. Nice and slow.”

“Shove it, Rachel,” he said, his voice shaking and sweat beading his forehead.

We edged out from behind the desk, me struggling to keep Francis upright as he slipped on the rolling pens. The Were by the door obligingly stepped aside. His attitude was clear enough. They were in no hurry. They had time. Under their watchful eyes, Francis and I backed out the door and into the sun.

“Lemme go,” Francis said, beginning to struggle. Pedestrians gave us a wide birth, and the passing cars slowed to watch. I hate rubberneckers, but maybe it would work for me. “Go on, run,” Francis said. “That’s what you do best, Rachel.”

I tightened my grip until he grunted. “You got that right. I’m a better runner than you’ll ever be.” The surrounding people were starting to scatter, realizing this was more than a lover’s quarrel. “You might want to start running, too,” I said, hoping to add to the confusion.

“What the hell are you talking about?” His sweat stank over his cologne.

I dragged Francis across the street, weaving between the slowed cars. The three shades had come out to watch. They stood with taut alertness by the door in their dark glasses and black suits. “I imagine they think you’re helping me. I mean really,” I taunted, “a big, strong witch like you not able to get away from a frail wisp of a girl like me?” I heard his quick intake of breath in understanding. “Good boy,” I said. “Now run.”

With the traffic between me and the shades, I dropped Francis and ran, losing myself in the pedestrian traffic. Francis took off the other way. I knew if I got enough distance between us, they wouldn’t follow me home. Weres were superstitious and wouldn’t violate the sanctuary of holy ground. I’d be safe—until Denon sent something else after me.

“S
omething else,” I mused as I turned a brittle yellow page that smelled of gardenias and ether. A spell of inconspicuousness would be great, but it called for fern seed. Not only didn’t I have time to gather enough, but also it wasn’t the right season. Findlay Market would have it, but I didn’t have the time. “Get real, Rachel,” I breathed, shutting the book and straightening my back painfully. “You can’t stir anything that difficult.”

Ivy was lounging across from me at the kitchen table, filling out the change of address forms she had picked up and crunching through the last of her celery and dip. It was all the supper I had time to make. She didn’t seem to care. Maybe she was going out later and pick up a snack. Tomorrow, if I lived to see it, I’d make a real supper. Maybe pizza. The kitchen was not conducive to food preparation tonight.

I was spelling; I’d made a mess. Half-chopped plants, dirt, green-stained bowls with strained gratings left to cool, and dirty copper pots overflowed the sink. It looked like Yoda’s kitchen meets the
Galloping Gourmet.
But I had my detection amulets, sleep inducers, even some new disguise charms to make me look old instead of younger. I couldn’t help a wash of satisfaction for having made them myself. As soon as I found a strong enough spell to break into the I.S. records vault, Jenks and I were out of here.

Jenks had come in that afternoon with a slow, shaggy Were of a man trailing after him, his friend who had my stuff. I bought the musty-smelling cot he had with him, thanking him for bringing over the few articles of clothing that hadn’t been spelled: my winter coat and a pair of pink sweats that were stuck in a box in the back of my closet. I had told the man not to bother with anything else right now but my clothes, music, and kitchen stuff, and he shuffled away with a hundred clutched in his grip, promising to at least have my clothes by tomorrow.

Sighing, I looked up from my book, past Mr. Fish on the windowsill and into the black garden. My hand cupped over the blister on my neck, and I pushed the book away to make room for the next. Denon must have been seriously ticked to set the Weres after me in broad daylight, when they were at a severe disadvantage. If it had been night, I’d probably be dead—new moon or not. That he was wasting money told me he must have been taken apart for letting Ivy go.

After eluding the Weres, I had splurged for a cab home. I justified it by saying it was to avoid the possible hit men on the bus, but the reality was, I didn’t want anyone to see me with the shakes. They started three blocks after I got in the cab and didn’t quit until I was in the shower long enough to have drained all the hot water from the water heater. I had never been on the hunted end of the game. I didn’t like it. But what scared me almost as much was the thought that I might have to make and use a black spell to keep myself alive.

Much of my job had entailed bringing in “gray spell” crafters—witches who took a perfectly good spell like a love charm and turned it to a bad use. But the serious black magic users were out there, and I’d brought them in, too: the ones specializing in the darker forms of entrapment, the people who could make you go missing—and for a few dollars more, spell your relatives into not remembering you even existed—the handful of Inderlanders driving Cincinnati’s underground power struggles. Sometimes the best I had been able to do was to cover up the ugly reality so that humanity never knew how difficult it was to rein in the Inderlanders who thought of humans as free-range cattle. But never had I had anyone come at me like that before. I wasn’t sure how to keep myself safe and my karma clean at the same time.

The last of my daylight hours had been spent in the garden. Messing about in the dirt with pixy children getting in the way is a great way to ground oneself, and I found I owed Jenks a very large thank-you—in more ways than one. It wasn’t until I went inside with my spell-crafting materials and a sunburnt nose that I found out what their cheerful shouts and calls had been about. They hadn’t been playing hide and seek; they were intercepting splat balls.

The small pyramid of splat balls neatly stacked by the back door had shocked the peas out of me. Each one held my death. I hadn’t known. Not a freaking clue. Seeing them there ticked me off, making me angry instead of afraid. Next time the hunters found me, I vowed, I’d be ready.

After my whirlwind of spell crafting, my bag was full of my usual charms. The dowel of redwood from work had been a lifesaver. Any wood can store spells, but redwood lasts the longest. The amulets not in my bag hung from the cup hooks in the otherwise empty cupboard. They were all great spells, but I needed something stronger. Sighing, I opened the next book.

“Transmutation?” Ivy said, setting the forms aside and pulling her keyboard closer. “You’re that good?”

I ran a thumbnail under a fingernail to get the dirt out from under it. “Necessity is the mother of courage,” I mumbled. Not meeting her eyes, I scanned the index. I needed something small, preferably that could defend itself.

Ivy returned to her surfing with a loud crunch of celery. I had been watching her closely since sundown. She was the model roommate, clearly making an effort to keep her normal vampy reactions to a minimum. It probably helped that I had rewashed my clothes. The moment she started looking seductive, I was asking her to leave.

“Here’s one,” I said softly. “A cat. I need an ounce of rosemary, half a cup of mint, one teaspoon of milkweed extract gathered after the first frost…Well, that’s out. I don’t have any extract, and I’m not about to go to the store now.”

Ivy seemed to swallow back a chuckle, and I flipped to the index. Not a bat; I didn’t have an ash tree in the garden, and I’d probably need some of the inner bark. Besides, I wasn’t going to spend the rest of the night learning to fly by echolocation. The same went for birds. Most of those listed didn’t fly at night. A fish was just silly. But maybe…

“A mouse,” I said, turning to the proper page and looking over the list of ingredients. Nothing was exotic. Almost everything I needed was already in the kitchen. There was a handwritten note at the bottom, and I squinted to read a faded, masculine-looking script:
Can be safely adapted for any rodent.
I glanced at the clock. This would do.

“A mouse?” Ivy said. “You’re going to spell yourself into a mouse?”

I stood, went to the stainless steel island in the center of the kitchen, and propped the book up. “Sure. I’ve got everything but the mouse hair.” My eyebrows rose. “Do you think I could have one of your owl’s pellets? I need to strain the milk past some fur.”

Ivy tossed her wave of black hair over her shoulder, her thin eyebrows high. “Sure. I’ll get you one.” Shaking her head, she closed the site she was looking at and rose with a stretch tall enough to show her bare midriff. I blinked at the red jewel piercing her belly button, then looked away. “I need to let them out anyway,” she said as she collapsed in on herself.

“Thanks.” I turned back to my recipe, going over exactly what I needed and gathering it on the kitchen island. By the time Ivy padded down from the belfry, everything was measured and waiting. All that was left was the stirring.

“It’s all yours,” she said, setting a pellet on the counter and going to wash her hands.

“Thank you,” I whispered. I took a fork and teased the felt mass apart, pulling three hairs from among the tiny bones. I made a face, reminding myself that it hadn’t gone all the way through the owl, just been regurgitated.

Grabbing a fistful of salt, I turned to her. “I’m going to make a salt circle. Don’t try to cross it, okay?” She stared, and I added, “It’s a potentially dangerous spell. I don’t want anything to get into the pot by accident. You can stay in the kitchen, just don’t cross the circle.”

Looking unsure, she nodded. “Okay.”

I kind of liked seeing her off balance, and I made the circle bigger than usual, enclosing the entirety of the center island with all my paraphernalia. Ivy levered herself up to sit on a corner of the counter. Her eyes were wide with curiosity. If I was going to do this a lot, I might want to blow off the security deposit and etch a groove in the linoleum. What good is a security deposit if you’re dead from a misaligned spell?

My heart beat fast. It had been a while since I’d closed a circle, and Ivy watching made me nervous. “All right, then…” I murmured. I took a slow breath, willing my mind to empty and my eyes to close. Slowly, my second sight wavered into focus.

I didn’t do this often, as it was confusing as all get-out. A wind that wasn’t from this side of reality lifted the lighter strands of my hair. My nose wrinkled at the smell of burnt amber. Immediately I felt like I was outside as the surrounding walls vanished to silvery hints. Ivy, even more transitory than the church, was gone. Only the landscape and plants remained, their outlines quavering with the same reddish glow that thickened the air. It was as if I stood in the same spot before mankind found it. My skin crawled when I realized the gravestones existed in both worlds, as white and solid looking as the moon would be if it were up.

Eyes still closed, I reached out with my second sight, searching for the nearest ley line. “Holy crap,” I murmured in surprise, finding a reddish smear of power running right through the graveyard. “Did you know there’s a ley line running through the cemetery?”

“Yes,” Ivy said softly, her voice coming from nowhere.

I stretched out my will and touched it. My nostrils flared as force surged into me, backwashing at my theoretical extremities until the power equalized. The university was built on a ley line so big that it could be drawn upon almost anywhere in Cincinnati. Most cities are built on at least one. Manhattan has three of considerable size. The largest ley line on the East Coast runs through a farm outside of Woodstock. Coincidence? I think not.

The ley line in my backyard was tiny, but it was so close and underused that it gave me more strength than the university’s ever had. Though no real breeze touched me, my skin prickled from the wind blowing in the ever-after.

Tapping into a ley line was a rush, albeit a dangerous one. I didn’t like it. Its power ran through me like water, seeming to leave an ever-growing residue. I couldn’t keep my eyes closed any longer, and they flew open.

The surreal red vision of the ever-after was replaced by my humdrum kitchen. I stared at Ivy perched on the counter, seeing her with the earth’s wisdom. Sometimes a person looks totally different. I was relieved to see Ivy looked the same. Her aura—her real aura, not her vamp aura—was streaked with sparkles. How very odd. She was looking for something.

“Why didn’t you tell me there was a ley line so close?” I asked.

Ivy’s eyes flicked over me. Shrugging, she crossed her legs and kicked off her shoes to land them under the table. “Would it have made any difference?”

No. It didn’t make any difference. I shut my eyes to strengthen my fading second sight while I closed the circle. The heady flood of latent power made me uncomfortable. With my will, I moved the narrow band of salt from this dimension into the ever-after. It was replaced with an equal ring of ever-after reality.

The circle snapped shut with a skin-tingling jolt, and I jumped. “Cripes,” I whispered. “Maybe I used too much salt.” Most of the force I had pulled from the ever-after now flowed through my circle. What little remained eddying through me still made my skin crawl. The residue would continue to grow until I broke the circle and disconnected from the ley line.

I could feel the barrier of ever-after reality surrounding me as a faint pressure. Nothing could cross the quickly shifting bands of alternate realities. With my second sight, I could see the shimmering wave of smudged red rising up from the floor to arch to a close just over my head. The half sphere went the same distance beneath me. I would do a closer inspection later to be sure I wasn’t bisecting any pipes or electrical lines, making the circle vulnerable to breakage should anything actively try to get through that way.

Ivy was watching me when I opened my eyes. I gave her a mirthless smile and turned away. Slowly my second sight diminished to nothing, overwhelmed by my usual vision. “Locked down tight,” I said as her aura seemed to vanish. “Don’t try to cross it. It’ll hurt.”

She nodded, her placid face solemn. “You’re—witchier,” she said slowly.

I smiled, pleased. Why not let the vamp see the witch had teeth, too? Taking the smallest copper mixing bowl, about the size of my cupped hands, I set it over the lit campfire-in-a-can that Ivy had bought for me earlier. I had used the stove for crafting my lesser spells, but again, a working gas line would have left an opening in the circle. “Water…” I murmured, filling my graduated cylinder with spring water and squinting to make sure I read it properly. The vat sizzled as I added it, and I raised the bowl up from the flame. “Mouse, mouse, mouse,” I mused, trying not to show how nervous I was. This was the hardest spell I had tried outside of class.

Ivy slipped from the counter, and I stiffened. The hair on the back of my neck rose as she came to stand behind my shoulder but still out of the circle. I stopped what I was doing and gave her a look. Her smile went sheepish and she moved to the table.

“I didn’t know you tapped into the ever-after,” she said, settling before her monitor.

I looked up from the recipe. “As an earth witch, I don’t very often. But this spell will physically change me, not just give the illusion I’m a mouse. If something gets in the pot by accident, I might not be able to break it, or end up only halfway changed…or something.”

She made a noncommittal noise, and I set the mouse hair into a sieve to pour milk over. There is an entire branch of witchcraft that uses ley lines instead of potions, and I had spent two semesters cleaning up after one of my professor’s labs so I wouldn’t have to take more than the basic course. I had told everyone it was because I didn’t have a familiar yet—which was a safety requirement—but the truth of it was, I simply didn’t like them. I’d lost a good friend when he decided to major in ley lines and drifted into a bad crowd. Not to mention my dad’s death had been linked to them. And it didn’t help that the ley lines were gateways to the ever-after.