Chapter Four
Katherine walked down the hall of Sunspot, then paused outside the heavy wooden door of Sylvia’s office.
The wards here reeked, the magic warning both ordinaries and witches to stay away.
Among the coven, it was described as overkill, a paranoid remnant of Sylvia’s past, but Katherine knew the truth.
There was plenty in the present that Sylvia had reason to hide.
She knocked twice, the wards on the wood glowing as they recognized her. The door popped open slightly—a setting Sylvia had built for her, a sign of the trust between them. Katherine appreciated it, even if that trust came with the responsibility of keeping a secret she didn’t want to know.
A secret she was apparently going to have to deal with right now.
Katherine could make out the sound of two voices filtering from inside—Sylvia’s calm, lilting tones, and a gruff male voice that she didn’t recognize.
The haze of the wards still in place kept her from hearing what they were saying, but she didn’t need to—she could guess what was going on.
The door swung open the rest of the way, which Katherine knew was an invitation to enter. She slid in, pushing the door shut behind her.
Sylvia Page was sitting in the plush office chair she and Katherine had thrifted together a few years earlier, her hands resting on the mahogany surface of her desk.
Sitting across from her was an ordinary with too much facial hair, slumped in the chair that Katherine usually sat in.
The matching one to Sylvia’s, which Katherine had said was too fancy for her but which Sylvia had insisted on buying anyway.
Katherine could smell cigarettes wafting off the ordinary.
If the stench got into the fabric, she’d be furious.
Sylvia smiled widely at Katherine, her green eyes glinting as much as her white teeth.
Her long blond waves ran free down her back, resting perfectly against one of her many cashmere cardigans.
She’d been letting her hair go artfully gray since she hit fifty last January, the small streaks of silver dotting her temples so perfectly spaced that they looked like they had been placed there on purpose.
Katherine self-consciously ran a hand through her own brown hair, which was getting stringy.
When had she last washed it? Three—no, four—days ago.
That, plus the wrinkled cropped tee she’d thrown on that morning, did not speak of wealth, class, or even basic personal hygiene.
She had no idea how Sylvia managed all of it—Katherine’s desire to put any effort into her appearance was the first thing to go when coven duties got stressful, but Sylvia never let hers slip. She never let anything slip.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Sylvia said to Katherine. The ordinary introduced himself, but Katherine didn’t hear him over the swishing sound of his Ye Olde Prospector mustache bouncing as he spoke.
“He needs a pain-management spell,” Sylvia said. “Would you care to help me?” She turned to Mustache. “In magic and in life, it never hurts to have a few extra hands.”
Mustache stared at her, clearly smitten.
Sylvia had that effect on people. Even thirteen years in, Katherine still sometimes felt overwhelmed when Sylvia hit her with her full attention.
The force of it shot her right back to her sixteen-year-old self, in awe of the goddess who had snapped her up and showed her the way when she’d thought all was lost.
“Of course.” Katherine dragged over the spare chair from the corner, the one usually reserved for guests—nowhere near as comfortable as her chair, she thought bitterly.
“My daughter messed up her knee pretty bad,” Mustache explained.
“She’s a gymnast. Been doing it since she could walk.
Always flipping everywhere, until one day, boom.
Takes a bad fall and suddenly she’s twelve years old scheduling surgery for a torn ACL.
She’s miserable since the ex-wife won’t let her do gymnastics anymore, and then on top of that, she’s in pain every time she walks.
The doc prescribed meds, but I’ve seen firsthand how much those can fuck up your life.
I mentioned to a friend how desperately I wanted to help her and he suggested I come here. ”
Katherine shifted in her seat, feeling guilty for her earlier assessment of …
she really should remember his name. Judgmental was her default state, but Mustache had gotten the short end of the stick thanks to her anxiety over what Sylvia was doing.
Still, as uncomfortable as she felt with the legality and risk of Sylvia’s actions, she couldn’t deny that Sylvia helped people.
Sylvia reached into her desk and pulled out a necklace, a dainty heart locket on a gold chain. “Do you think this is something your daughter would wear?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
Sylvia laid the necklace on the table, the clack of it against the wood echoing through the air. “Perfect,” she said. “As long as she’s wearing this, her pain should be severely diminished.”
Sylvia pulled out her caster and cut into her palm, and Katherine did the same, once again reopening the barely healed cut. Sylvia grabbed the necklace, her hand shaking—the telltale sign that she needed this. That she had waited as long as she could.
The two women clasped hands, the metal cold in the center of their grip.
Mustache’s eyes lit up as Sylvia chanted in Latin, her words rushed and quiet: “Hic homo stultus est. Obsecro te hinc eum ut conquiescam.” It wasn’t a real spell—just gibberish Sylvia had memorized from a Latin for Dummies book—but ordinaries always appreciated a show.
It helped convince them that magic was real, that what they were about to give up was for something.
The light of the rune lit up their palms as Sylvia closed her eyes and began to actually perform the spell.
Katherine kept her gaze on Sylvia’s face, watching the magic flood up into her skin, giving her pale cheeks a pink flush.
It was like watching a dancer in their element—perfect, graceful, demure.
Katherine had seen Sylvia do magic thousands of times, but she never tired of it.
Their magics were kindred spirits, both born in the same chaos, both forced into a box that tamped them down into a shadow of what they once were, but Sylvia’s kept the fire it once had. Katherine’s had been put out.
The pain-management spell she was using was a Class 1, designed to help witches with headaches and turned ankles. Katherine’s job was to give Sylvia the raw magic she needed to take it up a few notches, to make it something that would have the staying power and depth to do what she promised.
Sylvia took her time doing the spell, building up the anticipation for a rapt Mustache.
After a few more moments, the necklace glowed white between them.
Sylvia let the chant build to a very official-sounding finish, then pulled her hand from Katherine’s, dropping the necklace onto the desk with a loud gasp. Mustache actually clapped.
He reached for the necklace, running his hand over the gold surface. “Damn,” he said. “I’ve had a twinge in my back for years, and now it’s totally gone. She’s gonna be thrilled.”
“Good. I’m glad to be able to help.”
“Really, thank you. Your guy mentioned payment?”
While all witches in a Noctis-signed coven were technically required to keep their magic a secret, most covens operated under the same terms. If their members heard of an ordinary with a problem that could be fixed by magic, they’d bring that information to their coven head.
If the leader agreed, the ordinary was brought into the fold and their problem was taken care of.
Selling select, non-harmful spells to ordinaries was something Noctis was willing to overlook, as it was a great way for a coven to bankroll itself without putting a massive financial burden on its members.
Plus, favors always came in handy—being able to bypass city restrictions, zoning laws, and all of the other red tape ordinaries thrived on made coven life significantly easier.
Sylvia, of course, didn’t bargain for money—at least not exclusively. But Noctis and the other witches didn’t know that. Only Katherine did.
Mustache held his hand out for Sylvia, his face apprehensive but not scared.
Sylvia, to her credit, was always up-front about what was going to happen: what her services would cost, how it would feel, how that price would be pulled from them bit by bit.
She gave them the terms, and they agreed to them. It was completely fair.
It still turned Katherine’s stomach inside out.
Sylvia cut into her unblemished palm, the trembling of her hands now even more pronounced. She made an identical cut on Mustache’s hand, then gripped him as she’d gripped Katherine. And just as she’d pulled magic from Katherine, she did the same to him. Except he didn’t actually have magic.
So she pulled his life force instead.
He knew what he was giving up—two weeks, taken off the end of his life.
For a witch, life force—even an ordinary’s—was magic.
Sylvia’s blood transformed his into something greater than it could ever be in him.
That power replenished the stores of magic Sylvia had to spend every day to keep the coven running.
For an ordinary, it was two weeks of their life; for Katherine and all of the other witches who relied on Aestas every day, it was salvation.
Katherine couldn’t blame Sylvia for taking the opportunity when it came.
She might make the same choice, someday.
When her power reserves were so low that she could only manage a fraction of the spells that she had once been able to.
When there were still people relying on her, needing her to stand for them when no one else would.
She wanted to believe she’d find another way, but she couldn’t say for certain.