I dropped the blade to her wrists and cut the bindings restraining her.
Air hissed between her teeth as she slowly moved her hands around in front of her and began rubbing at them.
“One chance. That’s all you get with me.” I stepped around to the front of her chair and knelt down, cutting the rope holding each of her legs to the wooden pegs.
“I won’t waste it,” she vowed. Raising her bloodshot eyes to meet my own.
“We’ll see.” I shrugged, stepping back.
Whoever this witch was, her life meant little to me. It was only because of my own shit situation and her intriguing honesty that I was even entertaining this.
“What happens at the end of the three days if we fail?” she asked.
My expression didn’t chance as I said, “Every bounty hunter in the city will be after me, and if you’ve lived that long—you too.”
She swallowed hard and nodded. “I guess we should get to work, then.”
A smile threatened to break through because part of me was starting to like her. Despite her heritage. Despite our differences. If we were both human, we would have made good friends.
But neither of us were.
“There are towels in the bathroom. Get yourself cleaned up. I’ll find you clean clothes and medicine.”
I was already moving toward my bedroom once more when the witch said, “I’m Nathalie, but my friends call me Nat. What’s your name?”
I didn’t pause in my stride. My hand reached for the bedroom doorknob and twisted it open. “Piper,” I said. “Piper Fallon.”
9
Twenty minutes later, she stood in my living room, dripping water from her shoulder-length brown hair. A ratty yellow towel was tucked under both her arms, and while her eyes looked clearer, her nose was still red.
I held out a stack of clothes. “You’re shorter than me, but these should be a close fit.”
She took them, muttering her thanks, and returned to the bathroom. What I didn’t tell her was that the clothes weren’t mine. I’d gone into the second bedroom of my apartment while she was showering and rummaged through the drawers until I’d found something that looked both warm enough and the right size.
Several minutes later she stepped back out. A long olive-green shirt hugged tightly to the curve of her breasts but fit loose in the waist. The dark skinny jeans from an era long gone were snug, but not enough to make me go look for a different pair. Underneath the sickness, she was a pretty girl, not that she seemed to notice. I didn’t comment as I stepped around the counter that separated the living room from the kitchen. I gathered all the fruit on the counter and pulled out a cutting board. Nowadays, anything fresh was hard to come by. When I did get it, it was so expensive I could only afford it after it was past its prime, and the rich people no longer wanted it.
“What type of magic do you have?” I asked, cutting the inedible pieces away from the fruit. Nathalie came around the edge of the counter and crossed her arms over her chest, then leaned her hip against it.
There were three types of magic that witches and warlocks possessed.
White. Black. Gray.
None of them were better or worse than others, contrary to what some white magic users may have claimed. They didn’t decide your power level, it merely guided in the realm of what you were good at.
White magic excelled in healing, potions, and most nature magic. In short, they specialized at harmony. Their magic naturally gravitated toward it. They worked well with others. Their magic played ‘nice’.
Black did not. It was explosive. Aggressive. True black magic witches were rarer than white. They were inclined to attempt summonings and necromancy because their magic was more of a parasite than anything. It sought control.
Gray was somewhere in the middle.
In truth, it didn’t matter what she was, but if I was going to be working with her, I needed to have some concept of what she was capable of, beyond the information she could provide about the Antares Coven.
“Gray,” she answered. “But it’s weak.”
“Define weak.” I tossed the fruit in a blender and added a splash of water. The grinding took all of thirty seconds. She waited patiently, only speaking once I turned it off.
“Le Fay is largely a black magic line. One of the few still around. Because I’m gray, that was viewed as flexible. My family thought I had the potential to be good at both, if not great—and that was acceptable.” As she spoke, I pulled two plastic cups out and topped them both with the fruit smoothie. I slid one across the counter and took a rather large gulp of the other. “At least until I proved abysmal at all of it. I can’t draw on nature. I’m a terrible healer. When I partook in a summoning to raise an aunt that died in the Magic Wars, I managed to raise her body and banish her spirit . . .” She shook her head at the memory. “My magic doesn’t play nicely with others, but spells still go awry when I work alone.”
I took another long swallow from my smoothie and then lifted my eyes to her.
“You managed to bind me in the alley,” I pointed out.
She sniffed. “That was mostly Nathan, he was my mentor in the Antares Coven. My parents had me paired with him because he was good with fighting incantations, and they hoped he’d grow to like me.”
“Hoping to pawn you off for marriage?”
“Yup.”
“He’s probably dead, you know,” I said, then took another long drink of liquid fruit. “And if he’s not, I have to hunt him down. You can’t stop me.”
“I won’t,” she said solemnly. “I know you might find this hard to believe, but I don’t care if they die. Maybe that makes me a traitor. Maybe I deserve to be excommunicated over it . . .” She ran her long nails over the plastic countertop. “But it’s a dog-eat-dog world, you know? Everyone for themselves. As long as you have my back, I don’t really give a damn what happens to the rest of Antares. The world’s probably better off without them, anyway.”
I dipped my head in acknowledgement.
“So, if you suck at all magic, what are you good at?”
“Remembering things. I have an eidetic memory, and thanks to my family’s interesting version of an education, I do know most spells, curses, hexes, potions—you name it.”
“So, knowledge, in essence?” I asked. No judgement in my voice, though she clearly expected it.
“Yes . . .” Her voice trailed. “I know it’s probably not what you were hoping for.”
“Yes and no,” I replied, turning away to rummage through my cabinets for food. “You having some sort of magic could be useful. More than dead weight. That said, I don’t trust magic, or magic users. You start flinging around curses like a dick in a locker room and I’m bound to get a little twitchy.”
“I may not be kickass in a fight, but I am crafty. I know how to hold my own around witches and warlocks,” she said, slightly defensive.
“That’s good, because if you expect me to save you from everything, you won’t last long.” When all I could find was stale crackers and moldy bread, I let out a sigh. Giving up on my search for food, I pulled one of my kitchen drawers open and rummaged through it.