Chapter 4
FOUR
This was, maybe, the worst-case scenario.
“I’d rather you’d killed someone,” Joan said, pacing the floor.
“Hey,” Mik said weakly, a bag of wrapped ice on their forehead as they reclined on the couch.
CZ stood protectively over Mik with his arms crossed. “Trust me, I also would rather I killed someone.”
“Hey,” Mik said, louder this time.
“Of all the people in New York to bring home, you chose someone witches are desperately searching for?” Joan said, pointing viciously in Mik’s direction. “My family wants them bad; they want to know how to replicate the spell.”
“My family is also looking for Mik, as are the fae, most likely,” CZ said.
“Maybe even people beyond the regular Sun and Moon Creature split are looking for Mik. I don’t know!
Maybe the fucking dryads are looking for them!
I am well aware of how hunted they are. Witches aren’t the only ones interested in the ability to grant casting magic to another species. ”
Fuck. That made sense.
“It’s my fault,” Mik said. “I begged CZ for help. I was… very disoriented. I don’t remember anything that’s happened in the last week.
My name is Mik, I’m from New Jersey, I come into the city regularly.
I work in book publishing. I heard about a magic market that happens in Owl’s Head Park at night, which was a total joke, but my coworker managed to score us an in, so I thought—okay, maybe it’s a really cool market, I wonder what sort of tricks they’re playing to make people think it’s magic.
I went a week ago and then”—Mik made some exploding gestures with their hands—“poof. Gone.”
“Until tonight,” Joan prompted.
“Until last night. I woke up in a strange tent, no coworker to be seen, stumbled outside, and just kind of took off running. I didn’t know who was after me or whatever?
But I had a feeling someone wanted me, and I had to get out.
And I freaked out, and it had been so dark in the tent, and, like, a bunch of light burst out of my skin and everyone was looking at me, so I ran and hid.
I moved every time someone got close. For like a day, but then I was getting hungry from all the throwing up, so I was looking for food and trying to figure out how to get out of the damn market because maybe my parents could help? And I ran right into CZ.”
“Casting magic is nullified within the Night Market,” Joan said. “How did you cast a light spell inside the borders?”
“It’s not totally nullified for them,” CZ countered. “But whatever they were doing was pretty tame, until I got them out of the market bounds and things kind of exploded.”
That was its own question, tacked onto an increasingly long list of them.
Mik went on, their tone growing in urgency. “Do you think my friend is dead? She wasn’t even really a friend, more an acquaintance. But I got out, and one moment I was shoplifting some food—”
“Fae food,” CZ muttered. “I thought I was rescuing some hapless human from dancing all night. I’ll never be merciful again.”
“You save humans from the market all the time,” Joan muttered back.
“And then CZ was showing me out of the market,” Mik continued, a worryingly frantic gleam in their eye.
“And telling me to go home. But as soon as we crossed the boundary, I got scared and… I don’t know, reached for something, and it felt like a tornado was funneling into my body, but I had no idea what to do with all the energy, and then I passed out, and when I woke up, CZ was carrying me. I threw up on myself.”
“Nightmare, by the way,” CZ said, wrinkling his nose. “I guessed that they were indeed casting based on the way Mik described it as funneling energy. Then the nausea—that happens to you too!”
It was true, when Joan attempted to cast, she usually felt a great gust of energy flowing through her before her spell broke and she got nauseous. And now that Joan focused, she could see the way magic was curling curiously around Mik, attracted to them.
“It’s not necessarily casting,” Joan murmured.
“You’re going to be pedantic right now?” CZ said.
“I’m just saying. Casting is the part where you manipulate magic into changing the world, through spells typically. Mik is mostly just channeling, like what I do. Do you know spells, Mik?”
“Maybe some rhyming stuff from books. Is that real?”
“No.” Joan hesitated. “Mostly no. How did you make the lights burst from your skin?”
“I said, ‘I wish it wasn’t so fucking dark,’ and then something happened—ah!” Mik slapped at their arm, where a tiny orb of light was emerging. Joan’s gaze snapped up to where an unsteady tide of magic shifted toward Mik.
“That’s ridiculous as fuck, is that a spell?” CZ asked.
“Mik, say never mind,” Joan instructed, watching magic wind through Mik. This was actually rather fascinating, and for just a second, Joan wondered if a spell like the one on Mik could grant her the ability to cast properly.
Another orb emerged; Mik scratched at their skin. “Never mind, never mind! I really don’t want this—oh, I’m gonna be sick again.” They gagged, but the light snuffed out.
“Spells are containers for our desires,” Joan said.
“Words, gestures, they create an impression of our will, and witches have found that certain words, in certain orders, under certain conditions, can produce consistent results with magic. Hence learned spells. But usually any witch will have a special affinity to a type of magic, and magic will respond to your simple desires without having to use a formal, preestablished spell.”
“So Mik has a light spell affinity, probably,” CZ said. “Mik! Congrats!”
“Can we get back to the story?” Joan said. “All this happened, and you decided to bring Mik here. Here, of all places.”
“The fuck else was I supposed to do, leave them half dead on the ground, throwing up, while magic swirled around us like a homing beacon?” CZ protested, looking meaningfully at Mik.
I was saving my own ass was the implication, and that was probably true, though Joan was suspicious.
CZ did regularly save humans from a prowling vampire or teasing fae.
But she couldn’t believe he was silly enough to save this human while knowing they were also now a witch. Probably. Maybe.
He was such a softie.
Joan sighed, scrutinizing them both. “Mik, setting you loose in the world seems like a bad idea. Going to my family isn’t an option.”
“Or mine.” CZ paused a beat too long, dredged his next words up from the bottom of some deep well.
“We need to figure out how to reverse it; it’s clearly making them sick, and it was against their will,” he said miserably.
“We should figure out who did this to them, before they do it to some other human.”
Help them. CZ wanted to keep helping them. Keep harboring them. Protect them from several of the most powerful magic factions in the city. Find out who made them a witch.
“Cane,” Joan said warningly.
CZ threw his hands up, helpless, flustered. “Well, now that they’re here, how am I supposed to kick them back out? They are seriously unwell.”
“I am,” Mik said. “I am so unwell.” Their eyes were big and beseeching. “I’m unwell and I can’t go home to my parents like this. Right? I can’t, right?”
Joan searched desperately for a way out.
Helping Mik would be throwing their lot in with a sinking ship, and Joan and CZ weren’t particularly capable people, something they’d spent many an evening lamenting, Joan drunk and CZ regrettably sober.
They were second children, and though CZ did his best to help his family where he could, it was his brother who would be in charge one day.
But what were they supposed to do with Mik? Pack them a lunchbox and put them on the street corner to wait for a bus that would never come? Little more than blood in the predatory water of New York City? They were sick. They were sick and—and Joan didn’t want her family to be the one to find them.
Against her better judgment, Joan was feeling curious herself about what this spell could do.
So maybe it was empathy here, and maybe it was because CZ already seemed rather implicated, and maybe, just maybe, it was selfishness too.
“Cane,” she groaned.
CZ, clearly having gone through all five stages of grief before Joan even arrived, and having landed on helping Mik, sensed her crumbling resolve and latched on.
“It’s fine, it’ll be breezy. We find out how to undo it and never tell anyone about this ever. You’re unemployed, you’ve got time,” CZ pointed out. “And my apartment is warded.”
Joan’s glare could melt steel beams. “Uncalled for. I’m between jobs.”
“Unemployed with a trust fund,” CZ said.
“So, you’re helping? I’d really like you to help me, because the more we talk about it, the more certain I am that I can’t throw them out onto the street at this point, pesky morals and all, but I also really don’t know what the fuck to do here.
At least you managed to help them when they did the light thing. ”
Mik moved the bag of ice back over their eyes. “I’ve probably been fired by now for missing a week of work. Maybe it’s not that bad? Could I go home and grab some clothes and stuff, buy a plane ticket? Disappear off the face of the earth? I don’t know.”
“Mik, I really don’t mean to scare you, but you will be more than fired if the people after you get their hands on you.
They will dissect you,” Joan said, and saying it out loud was the final nail in her coffin.
Her family wasn’t touching a hair on Mik’s shaved head. Not one tiny little stub of hair.
“Tell me you don’t mean that literally,” Mik said, sitting up. They hugged their arms to themself, fingers digging into the flesh of their biceps. “What the actual fuck are witches doing?”