Spellbound (6 page)

 

 

I was screwed.

My father assured me that my mother was on the case, and so was he and this would all be resolved. Of course they'd say that. Of course they'd mean that. But if the Fates didn't know who'd zapped my powers, I was screwed.

Even if my parents found the demon responsible, I couldn't negotiate with it the way I could with the Fates. I'd have to reverse the whole deal, give up what I'd gotten in exchange for my powers.

That didn't matter to my father. Yes, he agreed it was terribly tragic for this little girl and her grandmother, but Lucas could help with the court case and Paige could make sure Kayla had a good foster home until it was resolved. What was important here was me. My mother felt the same way. Both my parents were fiercely loyal to friends and family. The rest of the world? Not their concern. It was a view I'd thought I shared until, given the choice between saving myself and putting Leah back in hell, I'd chosen to spare her future victims.

My father mentioned that, too. Nothing overt, just a reference to “that business in the warehouse,” telling me it was very brave, and under no circumstances was I ever to do it again. Pretty much the same message Mom had passed on. Terribly noble, but there'd be no more of that, thank you very much.

As for my situation, I let my father assure me it would be resolved. I let him advise me to lie low in the meantime. I let him ask Adam to take care of me while I was vulnerable. I discussed it all very calmly and maturely, and I did the same with Jaime when she returned.

After that I said I needed a few minutes alone, and left the theater. Then I lost it. Started shaking uncontrollably, panic choking me until I gasped for breath. I vented my rage and frustration on the nearest wall, and I wouldn't have stopped if Adam hadn't appeared. He pulled me away and held me tight, letting me pummel his back instead until I realized what I was doing and threw my arms around his neck and cried. Sobbed like I hadn't since the day I'd finally accepted that my mother was gone and she wasn't coming back.

Now my powers were gone. And they weren't coming back either. I was as lost without them as I'd been without her.

I cried until I realized I was crying. Me. Savannah Levine. Breaking down like a little girl. I pulled back from Adam, my cheeks burning, my heart thudding against my ribs, the walls of the alley closing in, Adam standing too close, watching me too carefully.

I took a step away.

“Don't, Savannah,” he said softly. “Please don't run.”

“What am I going to do?” I whispered. “Without my powers, I'm—”

“Exactly the same person you are with them. Just a whole lot less dangerous.”

He was trying to make me smile. Instead, fresh tears filled my eyes.

I was Savannah Levine, ultrapowerful spellcaster. Daughter of a Cabal sorcerer and a dark witch. Without my powers, I'd be a human PI working for an agency specializing in supernatural cases. As useful as an ashtray on a motorcycle.

It wasn't just that I needed my powers to investigate cases. I had a contact list filled with the names of unsavory supernaturals that Paige and Lucas couldn't get near. Unsavory but well-connected supernaturals who'd reached out to me because I was the daughter of Eve Levine. If they realized I was spell-free, they'd stop taking my calls. Then I'd have nothing to offer the agency. Nothing to offer Paige, Lucas, Adam . . .

My gut clenched and I staggered forward. Adam grabbed for me, but I pushed him away and ran.

Another theater down the road had just gotten out, and the sidewalk was jammed with strolling patrons, in no rush, just chatting about the show. I weaved past little old ladies with walkers and shuffling old men.

My head started to throb as I slowed to a walk. I squeezed my eyes shut. Just what I needed. More headaches. I'd been having them for days, and I'd assumed they'd been part of the poison Leah fed me, but—

I stopped, ignoring the curses of a middle-aged couple that crashed into me.

Headaches. They'd started when I first went to the commune, then seemed to come and go at random. Only it wasn't random. It happened every time the witch-hunter was near me.

I looked out over the sea of faces—

A hard blow to the back of my knees made my legs buckle. I fell against an old woman and she tumbled off the curb with a shriek.

Headlights flashed. Someone screamed. I wheeled to yank the woman back. The headlights veered out of the way as the truck driver swerved for the middle of the road. Metal crunched. Glass shattered. Hands grabbed onto me. Adam dragging me onto the sidewalk, the old lady, too.

He released the old woman and kept tugging me along. I wrenched out of his grasp and looked around for the witch-hunter. But the crowded sidewalk was a mob now, pressing in from all sides. People shouted. Cameras flashed. The stink of burning rubber filled the air.

I pushed my way back to the curb. The old woman sat on it, another woman crouched before her, asking questions. She seemed fine. In swerving to avoid her, though, the truck had hit a delivery van. The van driver lay across his steering wheel. One man yanked on the jammed driver's door as a woman cleared glass from the broken windshield so they could pull him out.

I started forward.

Adam caught my arm. “Nothing you can do,” he whispered. “We need to go.”

M
y parents might want me to lie low, but I was old enough to make decisions for myself. The accident outside the theater told me I had to get this witch-hunter bitch. I had enough deaths on my conscience already.

To my relief, Adam agreed. He also agreed that we shouldn't tell Paige and Lucas yet. They'd be back from Hawaii in two days, and I had to warn Paige first, but until then, they should continue enjoying their vacation.

We got a hotel room for the night. A good hotel this time, on a floor requiring elevator card access. Far from perfect security, but it would slow down the hunter if she came for me.

We shared a room. Hardly the first time we'd done that. I used to wish it was a problem, suggesting that Adam found the situation a little too tempting. He didn't. That night, I was glad of it. I didn't want to be alone.

It was past midnight by the time we got the room. I took a shower to clear my head while Adam called for takeout pizza. By one thirty, we were stretched out on one of the double beds, each working on our laptops, eating pizza, and drinking beer from the mini bar.

While Adam researched witch-hunters, I checked out the information “Amy” had put on her cookie-cult application. We talked as we searched. Neither of us is good at doing anything in silence, a fact that drives Paige and Lucas to distraction in the office, as we call out our finds between the reception desk and Adam's office.

“She's not Amy Lynn Tucker from Phoenix,” I said, turning the laptop to face him. “Surprise, surprise.”

He glanced at the Facebook photo on the screen. “Looks similar, though.”

The girl who was hunting me was about the same age as Amy Lynn—nineteen—and had the same mousy brown hair, sallow skin, and thin build.

“Could be related,” Adam said. “I'm going through the information my dad sent”—he'd asked his father for everything he knew on witch-hunters, without suggesting we'd found proof they existed—“and there were a couple of old reports of incidents in Arizona. Did the girl have an accent?”

“I don't think I ever heard her talk.”

I pulled up a list of Tuckers from the Arizona DMV—Paige has us hacked into most DMVs in the country. There were no more Tuckers at the address given on the application. None with a driver's license, at least. There were hundreds in Phoenix, though. Way too much work to survey without proof that our witch-hunter was a Tucker.

The application also listed a high school and references. The school was in Mesa, Arizona, meaning it was probably Amy Lynn's alma mater. As for the references, I supposed they could be connected to the actual witch-hunter, but a preliminary search didn't turn up anything and it was far too late to phone. So I started surfing for something else in our office database.

After I'd been quiet for a few minutes, Adam glanced over.

“Case files?” he said. “I'm sure if we'd had witch-hunter investigations, we'd remember them.” He looked closer. “Oh.”

My search was for all cases where we'd helped someone who'd been screwed over by demons. Not surprisingly, they comprised a healthy portion of our business.

“You want to talk about it?” he asked.

“No.”

He paused, then said, “All right.”

“I'm oka—” I inhaled. “No, I'm not okay and you know it. But if I think about it too much, I'm going to really not be okay. I just want to concentrate on the case and try not to stress out until I'm sure there's something to stress over.”

“Agreed. So focus on the witch-hunter.”

He shot a pointed look at my laptop. He was right. My parents had much more experience with demonic pacts, and they were on the best side of the veil to investigate them. Let them handle it. Concentrate on the immediate threat.

I shut my laptop.

“It's going to be okay,” he said. “Whatever happens,
you'll
be okay.”

I nodded, chugged the rest of my beer, and headed to the bathroom to get ready for bed.

 

 

The next morning, I called one of my black-book contacts. Molly Crane, a dark witch. Molly always had time for me. Not because she was a good friend. Not even because she'd been good friends with my mother. No, Molly had time for me for the same reason I had time for her. I was useful. She was useful. Sometimes, in our world, that's what it comes down to.

When I asked whether she'd ever heard of witch-hunters, her sigh was so loud, I swore my phone vibrated.

“Not that bugaboo,” she said. “Let me guess. Paige told you about them. Typical Coven witch bullshit. She may think she's above that, but let me tell you—”

“It wasn't Paige.”

“Oh. A client, then? A witch claiming someone wants her dead just because she's a witch. Dig deeper, Savannah, and you'll find that she's crying racial profiling to cover up the fact that she's done something to deserve being on a hit list.”

“That's what Paige thinks, too.”

That was all the incentive Molly needed to give her opinion a oneeighty spin. Molly was the type of person who'd never moved far from a high school mentality. To her, Paige was one of “those” kids—the cute, smart, popular ones that girls like Molly hated. Whatever Paige said was wrong. Dead wrong because that Harvard degree she'd earned didn't mean she was actually clever, just school smart.

Molly didn't go so far as to say she believed in witch-hunters. But she trotted out every scrap of information she'd ever heard, and promised to canvass her contacts and send me anything she found because, you know, the legend of the witch-hunter has been around a very long time, and there could be something to it.

“All Molly has is the same basic folklore we heard,” I said to Adam when I got off the phone. “A line of women, raised to kill witches, go on a murderous walkabout when they reach adulthood, then return to live normal lives and raise their daughters to do the same. They have no supernatural abilities. It's all training. Ideally, they never even face their victims, just kill them in a way that looks like an accidental or natural death.”

“Such as injecting them with poison while they nap. Or pushing them in front of a truck.”

“That last one was lame. It wasn't even a very big truck. I think someone just wants to get a second notch on her belt and go home. Maybe if we see her again, we can make a deal. I'll play dead. She can snap photos. Everyone's happy.”

“She may have decided you're more work than it's worth.”

“I've heard that before,” I said. “Usually from guys. I'm high maintenance.”

“Nah. I've had high maintenance. You're just stubborn. And opinionated.”

“Don't forget difficult.”

“That goes without saying.”

I smiled. “Well, as tempting as it is to hope this girl will give up on me, it only means she'll latch onto another witch, one who won't see her coming. Which is why we need to stop her.”

 

 

Before we left, I downloaded the office general in-box. With everything else going on, it'd been a few days since I'd retrieved it.

“Seventy-eight e-mails?” I said. “I think our spam blocker is broken.”

It wasn't. Either a well-connected supernatural had been at Jaime's show or the sorcerer was spreading the story himself. Over half of our in-box was notes from supernaturals wanting to know what the agency was doing about this exposure threat. Or what the interracial council was doing about it. Or what the Cortez Cabal was doing. We were one-stop shopping for all three.

“You start at the top and I'll take it from the bottom,” Adam said. “File the ones just asking for news and we'll mass e-mail them a chill-out note. Hopefully some have news themselves.”

E-mail after e-mail asked “what's going on?” and “what's being done?” Damned few offered to help, that's for sure.

In the human world, I could understand that. When threats emerge, you turn to the police and military and expect them to fix it because that's what your taxes pay for.

But the council is strictly a volunteer organization. It's an interracial policing and mediation body made up of delegates from the major races—Paige for witches, Adam for half-demons, Jaime for necromancers, Elena Michaels for werewolves, Cassandra DuCharme for vampires—plus a handful of others who help out, like me and Hope. We'd attracted cash donors as we'd become more effective, but they weren't the ones demanding to know what we were doing about this mess.