Chapter 24
TWENTY-FOUR
Her wrists were killing her.
Joan registered that first as the slow fog of sleep slithered off her. Her wrists hurt, badly. They were stretched too far behind her back, fingers awkwardly locked together. The previously broken fingers on her right hand had tipped so far into pain that they were nearly numb.
She was bound to a chair, and when she opened her eyes, her vision blurred. There were wards chalked on the floor in a circle around the chair. It took her a second to read them upside down.
Magic nullification.
Joan could read her own name in the runes—magic nullification for Joan Greenwood specifically.
“I hear you’ve left the Greenwoods,” Fiona said. Her voice was bouncing in from a hundred different directions. Joan squeezed her eyes shut. Shook her head, opened them again, and registered the other woman’s shoes in front of her.
Joan’s gaze climbed slowly to Fiona’s face.
She had shed the ball cap and sunglasses and looked like a perfectly normal middle-aged woman in a blouse and slacks. She looked perfectly nice.
“Oh, sorry, do you want some water?” Fiona asked, turning to step to the far side of the room, where a cot sat next to a bench covered in books and plastic water bottles.
Joan’s surroundings swam into focus. Construction lights lit up the space.
There was ornate street art on the walls, and turnstiles stood not a dozen feet away.
An abandoned subway station, though the tracks weren’t in sight.
Panic fought against the sticky lethargy of whatever spell Fiona had used on her, resulting in heaving breaths. Her neck felt empty. Abel’s mind-ward necklace was gone.
“Here, here,” Fiona said, tipping a water bottle into Joan’s mouth, flirting with the edge of drowning her. Joan was forced to gulp some down to avoid choking, and even then half of it spilled onto her chest.
“I haven’t quite figured out the grogginess side effect,” Fiona said, a little shaky as she screwed the cap back on.
“I made it for your aunt, that spell. An easy way to subdue someone. First, a paralytic, then a knockout, then they enter a dreamlike state so you can lead them anywhere you want to go and they retain no memory of it.” Fiona noisily pulled up a folding chair and sat in it.
“A piece of art. I thought it would finally get your aunt to show me at least a hint of gratitude.”
A drop of water dripped off Joan’s mouth and landed on the ground. “My hands,” she gasped. “I can’t think around it, please, free them.”
Fiona looked so pitying. Joan didn’t know how she could look so genuinely regretful after abducting her off the street. “I’m sorry, I’m so really very sorry, but I can’t risk you getting free. You’re never alone, you know that? I’ve been so hard-pressed to get you alone.”
“I won’t get free,” Joan babbled. She couldn’t think, she couldn’t think. “Please, loosen my fingers.”
She reached out, but magic was so thin around her, the wards flaring on the floor.
“Please stop doing that, Joan,” Fiona said frantically. “I’ll set you free soon, okay? I just need to finish up. You understand that, right? When this is done, you’ll understand it.”
She wasn’t particularly calm or calculating; she looked genuinely nervous about this. Unsteady, oscillating between some weird mix of guilt and excitement.
“This is… revenge against my aunt?” Joan asked. She wasn’t cool and suave like captured spies were in the movies. She was in pain; she would already do almost anything to make it stop. Both their pitches were skewing higher and higher.
“No, no, it’s nothing as mundane as a personal vendetta against your family,” Fiona said. She crossed her arms, tapped a finger against her bicep anxiously. “I’d have picked a more important Greenwood if it were about that.”
Joan, even now, flinched.
Fiona’s eyes gleamed in the dimness as she leaned in, a clear spark of interest transforming her demeanor. “It hurts? Being discarded? That’s good, because I know how it feels, Joan. You can help me make it better. You can help me reshape the New York magic world.”
Joan’d rather chop her hands off than keep feeling that pain.
It rolled up her arms like cannon fire. Someone would realize she was missing, right?
Not her family, but she’d been on the way to the hotel room.
Mik—Mik! Fiona had been right outside. She knew where they were.
“What do you want?” Joan croaked. “I won’t give you Mik. ”
Fiona waved a hand. “If I wanted your friend, I’d have them,” she said. “I’d have taken them when you were still in that poorly warded Hell’s Kitchen apartment, the moment I saw them in your little memories. I’d have never let them go in the first place.”
So it really had been Fiona in the market, but she… and yet—“You don’t want Mik? You want…”
Fiona waited expectantly. Joan didn’t know half as much about her as she seemed to know about Joan.
They were strangers, total strangers; Joan could only remember their one meeting.
Fiona didn’t have a lot of money, she wore nice clothes, she had helped Grace, been like a second mother to her.
None of that added up to a concrete personality.
None of that helped Joan make sense of her situation, the musty air and the dampness. The chill of cold stone around them.
“Me?” Joan said finally.
“I want your magic,” Fiona confirmed, steadying by the minute.
“Or to study it. If I can watch the way you process magic, I can duplicate it. Grace told me about it, and then I saw what the two of you did at the Night Market. When I replicate it, you could be the great equalizer of this world. Any given witch could channel incredible amounts of magic. Any witch could be powerful, no matter their family or natural-born abilities.”
She was a true believer, then. Some twisted version of Grace, whose passion never crossed lines. Grace, gods. How had Joan ever suspected her?
She scanned the room as best she could without making any obvious movements. Which way was out? Keep her talking, that would give the others time to find Joan. “Is that what you were after with Mik? Not making humans into witches, making witches stronger?”
“Both,” Fiona admitted. She stood up, and Joan couldn’t help but feel that was a bad sign.
“I couldn’t fully crack the human-to-witch transformation, humans are incompatible with magic by design.
The early version of my spell killed them outright, except Mik, who probably has some witch ancestry, but then we had the issue of magic poisoning. ”
If I wanted your friend, I’d have them. Fiona’s actions aligned with horrifying clarity.
“You set Mik free,” Joan said. “You wanted someone to find them and…” And what?
If Fiona was working on something, why would she share it early with the world?
Joan showed others her sketches only when she needed—help.
Fiona needed help.
“You wanted someone to find Mik and finish the spell for you. That’s why you insisted Grace be called before my family. You wanted her to study it and finish what you started.” How many people had she stolen from the market and killed before Mik survived?
“What the Greenwoods started,” Fiona corrected. “Don’t give me that look. You think no one’s tried to figure it out before? Your aunt has employed so many spellmakers to pen a way to transform humans, but they never panned out. She abandoned it, I didn’t. She wasn’t willing to go far enough.”
“Killing humans?”
“For a greater good. All great scientific leaps require sacrifice, Joan,” Fiona said. They had been so wrong to assume money was the motivator. Fiona’s mission was beyond wealth.
“Grace is a prodigy. No matter what scorn your aunt throws her way, that’s true,” Fiona murmured, putting her hands on her hips.
“I knew Grace would catch on to me eventually, but I hoped, prayed, she’d finish the spell before she did.
She’s not motivated, you see. We’ve been tinkering with this research for years, but her heart isn’t in it.
I know she could cure the magic poisoning if she really tried.
And then I could find humans with dormant witch genes and use the first part of my spell on them, allow them to channel.
“But Grace gave me you instead. The key to expanding the power of a witch. There’s still time to figure the puzzle out, make a name off turning humans into witches, build a family reputation and a following off them, sure.
” Fiona continued. “But the priority is you. Amplifying my own abilities to become undeniable. Creating something witches want for themselves.”
Fiona knelt in front of Joan, likely staining the knees of her nice pants. She was smiling a little, expectant. It disgusted Joan, so much so she felt her stomach heave.
“What do you need to gain more magic for?” Joan rasped, bile burning the back of her throat.
Fiona reached up, put a hand on Joan’s cheek. Joan twisted her head in outrage. Get off, get off. Fiona’s other hand rose, until she was holding Joan’s head firmly still, fingers digging hard into her jaw.
“I’m not sure you’ll live long enough to find out,” Fiona said apologetically.
“But do trust that we’re aligned in sticking it to your family.
Your legacy will be one of innovation and progress, rather than the staleness of tradition.
And though, in the early years, this can’t be tied to you and your death, I’ll find a way to credit you eventually.
I’ll be a villain to many, but a hero to even more. ”
She couldn’t be serious; she had her whole twisted logic and was prepared for people to condemn her for it, but she was rolling the dice anyways. Joan wouldn’t be able to get through to her on any moral or ethical basis. The more room Joan gave her to explain, the more confident Fiona became.
“Grace will find me, or—”
“Astoria Wardwell, or Wren Dahl-Min, or CZ LaMorte, or maybe even Molly Greenwood. Yes, Joan, you have an army behind you, and they will come eventually,” Fiona said. “But not fast enough.”
She lit up with magic. The wards burned to ash.
Fiona plunged into Joan’s mind, lodging in there like a rock splitting the flow of a river, and Joan was too slow, too stupid, too weak to stop her.
She tore open the gates to magic in Joan’s head by triggering memory after memory of Joan channeling, so her body reacted on instinct to that input. Though Joan kicked and screamed mentally, magic still poured in.
Fiona wiped a tear from Joan’s cheek, leaned in almost tenderly as Joan, paralyzed by the torrent of magic, felt it flow into her, filling her up, up, up until she thought she’d burst like a bloody, fleshy balloon.
One second, two, Fiona flipped through memories like a deck of cards, before finding the one of Joan at the market and shifting from channeling into cycling right before Joan grew ill.
“I’m really sorry,” Fiona whispered softly in her ear. “I’m only trying to right the scales. If not for me, then for the next spellmaker who comes along, someone like Grace, brilliant but born to the wrong family, who deserves a chance to succeed in this world your ancestors built.”
Joan slurred Fiona’s name; it was the best she could do.
How could this happen to her, again? How could she need rescuing, again?
Her gaze fixated on Fiona’s desk. There was a snow globe on it, being used like a paperweight.
New York City was capped with white inside.
It was so tacky and beautiful. Joan could see nothing else.
She wished she’d black out.
But she was awake for every moment.