The Companion Witch, page 19
She took a sip of her wine. “You’re wasting time.”
“What was your most interesting case?”
“Besides this one?”
“I’d never assume for a lady.”
“A fairy,” she said coolly. “A fairy escaping her arranged marriage.”
“The fae are much more than mischief then?” he asked with a raised brow.
“They spill more blood than you think,” she said and leaned forward. “She was promised to another fairy for his father’s debts. Isn’t that awful? I don’t know how she smuggled herself out of her mystical realm, but she did. She hid in my dirty clothes hamper in my dressing room and used her engagement ring for payment. I nearly peed myself when she popped out of the hamper, crying.”
“You’re a noble witch.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I want those who seek freedom to have it.”
“Like you?”
She stared back defiantly without answering. The waiter had stepped away from his bar post to approach their table but took two steps away from them. The English tourists glanced over. Their table was a bonfire of energy. She cleared her throat. He smirked, but it was kind. She could sense that.
“Always curious about my witch,” he explained with a sweep of his hands. “How else am I to brag about you at the next vampire conference to all my ex-lovers?”
She snorted, covering her hand as she almost spit out her wine. “I doubt they’ll be intimidated by a witch and something tells me that you probably don’t leave behind the best reputation with women.”
“Depends on who you ask,” he said. “Actually, I’ve had little experience with women of my kind. Vampire women are notoriously hard to please, in bed and out. They’d much rather have handsome human servants to feed off of.”
“Can’t say I blame them,” she replied over the rim of her glass.
“The fairy. Did she make it out okay?”
“Of course,” she said. Of course, because when Lulu made a promise, she was loyal to it. Always. “I smashed her fiancé’s face in and sent him off with a notch in his wing. I had a bit of help with one of my werewolf colleagues. Fairies don’t get along much with the werefolk in fights. Anyways, we got her a nice place to go to in South America. She sent me an e-mail last year. She’s happily living down there with an assorted band of supernatural beings. I believe she’s engaged to a human woman.” He smiled into his hand and began to chuckle. She narrowed her eyes. “What?”
“For someone who keeps everyone out, you sure do manage to help everyone.”
The waiter finally worked up enough nerve to approach and take away their plates. He topped off their wine glasses. Magnus ordered dessert for her and coffees for them. The caffeine would be nice for their midnight adventure.
“I do my job,” she said. “Mostly for money.”
“And for me?”
“Mostly for money.”
He nodded and rubbed his chest with a painful grimace. “I understand.”
“And,” she said, not looking at him but at the flickering candle on their table, “I suppose…in a way, we are the same.”
“Fate has never made a better pair,” he said and raised his glass. She clinked her own glass against his before they broke away to make way for coffee and dessert. The waiter set down a platter of five small desserts arranged beautifully on a plate. “It’s called a café gourmand.”
“Call it whatever you want,” she said and grabbed her fork. “I’ll eat it.” As she tried to the first small bowl of chocolate mousse, a rattling sound struck the door next to the bar. The waiter said something to Magnus, who looked up, as he locked the door.
“He said the wind’s been wild tonight,” Magnus reported. “A storm might be coming.”
She hoped not.
Chapter 28
Magnus
Magnus loathed curfews and the feeling of being followed. He relayed the last sentiment to Lulu as they carefully made their way along the sidewalk. She elbowed him hard.
“You’re messing me up,” she said, out of breath.
He was pushing overgrown ivy out of their faces on the skinny path. The witch had taken his large overcoat. It was ideal for concealing the enchantments and hand movements that she was performing at, frankly, an alarming rate.
“Son of a bitch,” she muttered next to him. He adored hearing her curse, wished it was under different circumstances. It was like poetry. “I’ll fucking light this guy on fire.”
He understood. The lurking menace was bold, barely twenty feet behind them. Worrisome, since that meant their pursuer felt powerful enough to take them both. It wasn’t a lonely Frenchman out for a stroll. They’d taken too many corners for that, on purpose. People could be paranoid, but not when they were being hunted.
Up ahead, Magnus saw a small intersection of tight alleyways, each branching off into a slim line of old towering apartments. Children could be heard yelling. A soccer ball bounced off bricks somewhere. “I have an idea,” he told her. “Count to ten and hold your breath.” She finished drawing strange symbols in the air and tucked a knife into her shirt. He tried not to be excited by the flash of her black lace bra. Not the time, he told himself. He’d like to continue living well into the apocalypse. Ravishing his witch could only be made possible by survival.
That’s one reason to continue living, he thought.
And then when they stepped into the shadowy intersection, he dove forward down one street, yanking her along. Out of the corner of his eyes, she could see her smashing her lips down. Don’t breathe. Don’t breathe. They were wisps of smoke. He grabbed her and sank through the brick, a terrible squelching feeling popping his own lungs. And then they were tumbling backwards, headed back the way they came, their pursuer’s footsteps presumably dashing down the lane.
“Don’t make me vomit up dinner,” she begged after a greedy intake of air. “What the hell was that?” He glanced sympathetically at her green face and took her hand in his claw.
“Brief phasing,” he said as they hurried down the path. “We’ll go the long way around.”
“Do you think it was him?” she asked. Her voice sounded less vomit-ready.
“Hard to say,” he muttered. “If he’s a Root, then he could easily dispatch an assistant. I think it would be unlike an ancient vampire to do his own dirty work.”
“Whoever it was, I hope he goes near an open flame,” she said with a sniff. “I’ve made him a walking matchstick. There’s not much else I could without actually seeing him.”
“Hopefully he’ll come across a gang of teenagers lighting up joints then,” he muttered. With a swift movement, he pulled them into an alley. It reeked of piss, but they had no choice. He could hear her still whispering things under her breath. Ancient spells and words that he couldn’t wrap his mind around. They darted down the stone path, shoes kicking cigarette butts and avoiding the occasional scurrying rat.
They needed to make it to the tomb. There were worse things than rodents in these shadowy streets. She snaked her other hand out before they turned a corner and shoved it against his chest. He felt her rip her hand from his grasp and then her fingers dove around his collar as she yanked him down to her face. Her eyes were hard. He shivered as her warm fingertips brushed his cold skin. Like tiny pricks of fire on his flesh.
“My magic is slipping off you,” she told him. Her breathless voice tickled his lips. He could lean forward and brush their noses together. He could do a lot more. “I need you to calm down.” His eyes darted to the red skin of her right hand. There were fiery nail marks pressed into her skin. His marks. He'd been throttling her without realizing. “Shut up,” she said when he opened his mouth. “Shut up and breathe, Magnus.” And then, in a desperate voice, “We can’t lose our heads in this.”
He nodded, pressing her hand into his face and inhaling her scent. Peppermint. Always peppermint. His body grounded. The fiery worry within him faded. She began whispering the same spells before they left the hotel. He felt the wave of pinpricks, oddly comforting, come over him. An image of Alphonse casting him into an icy pool arose in his mind. Control.
“Better,” he promised. “Thank you.”
She grinned, half-hearted with mischief, up at him. “You can let go of my hands.”
“Right,” he said, releasing them. “Right.” The second was a reminder to himself.
“The grave.”
“The grave,” he said, and his claw wrapped around her hands, still warm from their magic. With a gentle pull, he tugged her along the path again. They plunged into the Parisian night, their steps drumming against the stone road like promises.
Lulu
Lulu was afraid, but Magnus didn’t need to know that. She watched him from the corner of her eye as they settled into the cemetery. The church he’d led them to was small, a weathered structure that held little of the grace that she was imagining in her head. Sad beige turned gray from time. This was far from the usual trappings of Paris, he explained in a hushed tone, far from the grand structures that marked postcards. Her hand was still tingling, remembering the cold surface of his skin pressed against her own.
“Not much weekly Sunday devotees left in this country,” he muttered as he flicked a crumbling speck of stone. It gave way to a small stone avalanche on the corner of the grave. “I believe they used to have some of the guillotine victims from the revolution here.”
“And yet, they have the money for a security guard?” she asked. They were hovering behind an above-ground ground, a somber rectangular slab. A man dressed in black was nursing a cigarette and playing a game on his phone.
“Undecided if he’s a guard or a bored local,” Magnus admitted. “Do you want to take him out or shall I do the honors?”
“Depends, what’s your plan?”
“Usually a heavy blow to the head and dragging their body behind a tree works,” he muttered. She glared at him and he shrugged.
“We’re not giving him a concussion. Look,” she said and grabbed a handkerchief from her small waist-bag. “Grab him, cover his mouth and nose with this, and drag him backwards.” She flicked his shoulder. “Then we will gently lay him down behind a tree.”
“Gently or roughly. It’s all the same if you’re unconscious.” She didn’t have a chance to reply to his remark before realizing that the handkerchief was out of her hands and so was her vamp. In two seconds, he was a black blur hauling the man back into their hiding spot. The man’s closed eyes looked almost peaceful as Magnus placed the man’s head on a clump of raised grass. He glanced at her. “Why exactly did you come with a pre-made knockout napkin?”
“Have you heard yourself speak for more than an hour?” she asked.
“Most women find my company very enchanting,” he informed her and then dragged her to a standing position with him. “Ready?” He didn’t wait for her to answer. His icy grip had her hand again. They hurried over to the entrance of the church and she watched as he slipped out of a key, the same key that had unlocked Seymour’s liquor cabinet, into the ancient lock. The door groaned as it swung open. They slipped inside. She removed the small flashlight from her bag. When she clicked it on, she nearly let out a scream. The beam of light had landed on an anguished looking angel, who was staring down at them with a stony grimace.
“I hate churches,” she confessed. “They give me the creeps.”
“Can’t say they don’t make me itchy,” he said. She watched as he hauled over a large wooden prayer bench and propped it against the door to block any entry. A vampire’s eyesight was one thing she might be jealous of, she considered. He turned to her. “The crypt is beneath the church.” She shivered and followed him, keeping so close that she nearly tripped over his boots moving quietly through the church.
“How many graves have you broken into?”
“I can’t remember,” he said as they approached a heavy-looking wooden door. His clawed fingers went to examine the lock. “Lulu, I don’t think someone wants us here.”
She shuffled beside him and leaned down. Indeed, on the black iron lock, there was a distinctive shimmer of magic. She whistled lowly.
“It’s a lock-blocker. Utterly passable by a human with a regular key, but not meant for any magic user to go through,” she said. “Not even a magic mortal.” He leaned down, their heads nearly knocking together.
“Can you break it?”
“I have to talk to it to see what it wants. Oliver has this same bullshit on his things in his office. Jinx once tried to break into his diary,” she said and pressed a finger against the lock. “She lost half her eyebrow.” The contact sent a painful zap into her finger. Instead of pulling back, she began to whisper a torrid poem of spells into the lock. She leaned her ear against the lock and swore.
“It’s got a riddle,” she said, leaning in to hear the acidic replies of the magic lock. It sounded as if an old man was whispering bitterly from down a tunnel. “Find them softly in the moonlight, see them shine in the sun.” She yanked her head away from the lock to level a sour look at it. “What the fuck kind of riddle is that?”
“The coins of Provence,” Magnus whispered. A light-sounding click came from the other side of the door. They looked at one another with open mouths. “We have Margaret to thank for that one. I don’t think anyone, but our dear official was supposed to know that one.” With a quick movement, he inserted the magic key and the door gave way easily. When she walked in behind him, she felt a wave of a dry cool air fall over them. It smelled of nothing, worse than nothing, the absence of life. She held a hand over her mouth as she shone the flashlight ahead of their steps. The light showed a narrow stone hallway that immediately dropped down. She aimed the light downward. A terribly narrow set of stone stairs led into the darkness.
“I go first,” she said firmly.
“You can’t see in the dark,” he argued, nearly down the first step.
“I’m your bodyguard.”
“You can’t see in the dark.”
“Bodyguard,” she said and wiggled past him, brushing against his cold frame. They moved slowly. She craned her head to listen, but the sound of their feet against the gritty stone seemed to echo in the chamber. At the foot of the stairs, there was a skinny hallway that opened up into another chamber.
“The crypt,” he said.
“I can feel it,” she mumbled with a shudder. They stepped carefully.
“There are torches on the wall,” he whispered in her ear. “Can you light them?” She nodded, feeling his hair tickle her neck as she whispered a low incantation. A small flame appeared a few feet in front of them. It sparked and then zipped over to another place in the darkness and another until four torches lit up brilliantly. The darkness disappeared. She sucked in a breath.
There was nothing in the crypt but a stout rectangular grave, much like the ones they’d encountered in the graveyard above. She pressed her lips together, almost disappointed. The entire room felt less ominous in the warm glow of the torches.
“Sarcophagus style,” he said and walked up to the grave, sliding his claws along the stone. “Like the others.” His nails went underneath the cracking spaces beneath the lid. She watched as he easily hauled the stone off, only grunting when he’d finished. He glanced inside of it and then frowned. His mouth opened and closed.
“What?” she asked. “What is it?” She darted over to join him, shining her flashlight inside the stone box. They stared into the grave.
It was a chalk symbol. The skinny lines were drawn carefully, the symbols looped the same way she drew her sigils for witchcraft.
“It looks like—” She stopped herself as her breath caught in her throat. She knew exactly what it was, recognized the same skinny lines that she’d once drawn on her old house’s floor. Her hands began to shake. She dropped the flashlight. “We have to leave.”
It had already begun. The acidic smell rising. The sigil sparked to life, dimly glowing in the empty grave. She smeared her hands through the symbol, ruining it, and the light fell away.
“We have to leave,” she repeated in a desperate whisper. But he’d stepped away from her. She turned to him and realized that he was staring at her with an open mouth.
“Lulu,” he said. “Your skin.”
Lovingly, in narrow scrawl, the black marks had begun to snake around her skin. Whispers were coming out of them. Terrible, shadowy whispers. She grabbed him. “Please, the portal. We have to break contact with this location. It’s already called for them.”
“The hotel?”
“The safe house!” Her eyes pleaded with his. “Please, Magnus.” She could feel the marks burning into her skin. Bile rose into her throat. She grabbed him and then they fell, fell, fell into that tangerine light.
Chapter 29
Lulu
Lulu gasped for air when they tumbled onto the front porch. She slammed against the wooden planks which creaked in protest. Magnus stumbled into column holding up the porch overhang and swore. She opened the door with shaking hands and dove inside. He was right behind her.
His claws wrapped around her arm. The marks were beginning to fade. She could breathe, barely. The voices faded. She wasn’t sure if he’d been able to hear them.
“Lulu!”
She whirled around and felt the fiery rage pouring from her. Rage at everyone and nobody. At herself. At her stupid juvenile decisions.
“What?” Her tongue was sharper than any blade she’d ever wielded. He froze. Her heart sank low as his eyes widened.
“That sigil in the grave,” he breathed. “I recognized it.” She took a step back. They stared at one another as the tense silence rolled over. She crossed her arms finally and looked away.
“You must’ve suspected it,” she muttered bitterly. “After the graveyard.”
“You said it was a trick,” he said.
“Did you believe me?”
“No,” he replied softly. “But I hoped I was wrong.”
