Chapter Two
Katherine cursed as another drop of blood dripped down her steering wheel and onto her jeans.
“If you let me go, I could get you a Band-Aid.”
Katherine gave a pointed glare to the witch in the passenger seat of her Beetle.
Joe had given her more trouble than she anticipated.
When she’d pulled out her caster and cut into her palm, she’d only planned on doing the invisibility spell she used to sneak behind him into the alley.
She’d watched as he sold a packet of powder to an ordinary who looked like a carbon copy of him, right down to the single AirPod in his left ear.
And then she’d winked back into view and told Joe he was under arrest. Her mistake was assuming he’d be smart enough to go down easy.
“Nice try.”
Joe huffed, hitting his head against the headrest behind him in frustration. That was about as much movement as he could manage given the body-locking spell that Katherine had used on him after his ill-fated decision to try to headbutt her and run off.
“I promise, I’m done fighting.”
Katherine tapped her fingers on the wheel, willing the light in front of her to turn green. It ignored her.
“I give in. Take the spell off.”
She could do a silencing spell, but the pounding in her head told her that was unwise. The body-locking spell was a doozy—if she didn’t give her magic time to recharge before using it again, she’d be in for the migraine from hell.
“Unless you’re threatened by me.” Joe attempted to clench his soft jaw into a threatening expression. “Don’t release me if you’re too scared.”
It might be worth it.
The light finally changed, and Katherine floored it—only to be stopped a few feet later at yet another red.
Katherine hadn’t realized how spectacularly annoying Joe was.
He’d been a member of Aestas for six years, but in that time, the only thing she’d had cause to learn about him was that he wasn’t someone she needed to know much about.
She’d been content to leave him to snicker in the corner of coven meetings with the rest of the desperate-to-relive-their-high-school-glory-days crew, but then he’d decided to go and become a drug dealer.
She’d first caught the telltale whiff of altum while trying to enjoy one of her few days off at Hermosa Beach four months earlier. The acrid, tart scent wafted around the ordinaries who had taken it, pouring from their mouths, their sweat, as they screamed, laughed, danced.
Powdered magic. Only a drop of what flowed through the veins of any witch, but it was enough to make someone without magic feel like a god. The high, they said, was somewhere between cocaine and ecstasy, but without the side effects.
The ordinaries had no idea what they were taking, but they wanted it. It was a lucrative—and very illegal—venture.
One that could have deadly consequences.
“Come on, Joe.” Katherine laid on her horn as a Tesla swerved out of a parking lot directly in front of her. “I know you were just selling the altum. Tell me who’s making it.”
Joe kept his gaze pointedly forward. Katherine knew he couldn’t have done this alone. Joe had the magical ability of an especially witless goldfish. Making altum required skill and resources that she knew Joe didn’t have.
Katherine had a theory about who did, but she needed evidence. Evidence she might be able to convince Joe to provide.
“Give me a name and you’ll get a shorter sentence.”
“Too bad there’s no name to give.”
Katherine’s grip tightened, the motion squeezing more blood out of the cuts she’d made on her palms while apprehending Joe.
It dripped over the plastic steering wheel cover she had for this very situation, falling onto the black jeans that she also had for this very situation.
The blood wouldn’t stain, but she hated the way it dried and crusted against her skin.
Katherine leaned her head back against the headrest as they waited at yet another light.
She sent an encouraging thought to Noctis’ spellmakers, who were always assuring the witch community in their monthly newsletters that they were getting closer to creating a teleportation spell that wouldn’t require a full body’s worth of blood to complete.
Katherine would believe it when she saw it.
“Why now?” Joe asked, after a few minutes of tense silence. “The drug thing—you have to have known about it for a while. Until I got that summons, I kind of figured you were fine with it.”
Katherine bit her lip. While it had taken her some time to find out Joe was dealing altum and to gather the evidence needed to try him for it, there was another reason why his arrest had waited until today.
“Noctis rep is coming tomorrow.”
Joe sighed. “Ah. So I’m a victim of circumstance.”
Katherine huffed a laugh. Yes, the timing of Joe’s arrest was tied in part to the upcoming visit from the representative of the New York–based coven that held the purse (and spell) strings of Aestas and all other covens in the United States.
Their Bookkeeper was sent to Aestas once a year to make sure they were following the laundry list of rules for Noctis affiliates.
Unfortunately for everyone involved, the man was so deeply annoying that his forty-eight hours in town felt like a month.
Throwing a flashy arrest like Joe’s in front of him would be a good sign to Noctis that Aestas was keeping its people in line.
But that didn’t mean Joe didn’t have it coming.
“You’re not a victim of circumstance,” she said. “Selling drugs is a crime, last time I checked.”
Joe shrugged. “I gave a few ordinaries a quick high so I could buy myself a vacation. I’m a witch. Why shouldn’t I use that?”
Katherine bit back her speech on magical privilege.
It wasn’t worth the breath—a guy like Joe was never going to understand that being born with magic didn’t make him inherently special, and that any advantage it gave him in life was stolen, not earned.
She’d given that speech many times before, and even with a sympathetic audience, it didn’t land.
Witches who were born into this world couldn’t understand.
And witches who were born to ordinaries, whose magic didn’t so much fall into their laps as get thrown at them like a ticking time bomb—witches like her—well, the wreckage of their previous lives was usually enough to make them see magic for the double-edged sword it was.
“You broke the law, and now you’re going to pay. Deal with it.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Joe sneered, his voice anything but respectful. “Happy to be your little Noctis whipping boy. I hope my sentencing brings Sylvia the glory and respect she’s been craving ever since her unsettled ass—”
Katherine grabbed a rag out of her door, then slammed her makeshift gag into Joe’s mouth, keeping him blessedly silent as they crawled their way east until, finally, they made it to Sunspot.