Chapter 11 #2
They took a steadying breath. “From there, it’s just darkness, and then I wake up in a tent.
It looks lived in. I’m on a bed, and the walls are dark blue.
There’s another bed and lots of books, leather-bound journals.
Mice in cages. There are, like, strips of sheets tying me to the bed, but one of the knots has come loose, so I get out.
I get up and I stumble out and, well, the rest is history. ”
Breath cold enough to frost. That sounded familiar.
“Grace? What about you?” CZ asked.
Grace was staring through them all.
“Grace?” Joan said cautiously, moving closer to the woman. When she hesitantly touched Grace’s arm, it was cold. A line of frost burst across her skin under Joan’s fingers.
Grace moved the moment she was touched, grabbing her own arms to give herself a hug. Magic rose like a shield, settling on her skin in a layer that wiped away the frost.
“What? Oh, I saw the same. The rest of the memories have been stolen,” Grace murmured. “Erased entirely. I can’t recover them.”
“Are you alright?” Joan asked, looking around to see if there was a blanket or sweater or something to hand to Grace, but Grace shrugged her off, stepping away to grab her purse off the ground and sling it over her shoulder.
“I have to go to work,” Grace said. “Mik, my computer’s in my room, and there’s a sticky note on it with my password. Feel free to do what you want. We can try to figure out your magic further once I get back; I don’t want to be late.”
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Mik asked, clearly as uneasy as the rest of them at Grace’s strange behavior. “I won’t even comment on the terrible security system that is putting your password on paper right on your computer.”
“Peachy,” Grace said, yanked her door open, and left.
“We trust her, right?” Mik asked into the resulting quiet. “Because that was suspicious as hell.”
“I’m inclined to believe a brilliant criminal would have lied better than she did,” CZ mused. “And would not do the computer password thing. What is she, sixty-seven?”
Joan couldn’t help but agree with both sides. Something had clearly upset Grace, but this was too obvious to fully believe. The same person who had gotten Mik delivered right to her couldn’t be silly enough to blow it all because she couldn’t lie.
Joan was very thin on proof of Grace’s innocence other than her instinct though.
Her phone buzzed, and she pulled it out as Mik and CZ melted into a bickering match over the proper way to fold and hang a kitchen towel, cleaning up the rest of the kitchen. Joan, distracted by Mik’s frankly absurd assertion that it should be folded into a square, answered without thinking.
“Jo,” Molly said. “Can you come save my life?”
Joan blinked rapidly, focusing on her sister’s voice. “What happened to hello? Good morning? How are you?” People couldn’t keep calling her and saying stuff like this.
“I need you to come to my house right now, please,” Molly said. “I will owe you one trillion dollars and my firstborn.”
“I don’t know if now’s a good time,” Joan said, eyeing Mik, who was folding and refolding the towel with exaggerated movements. “And you already owe me your firstborn from the last deal we made.”
“Joan,” Molly groaned. “Uncle.”
Joan pulled the phone away from her ear as if she would be able to see Molly through it. Neither of them had cried uncle since Joan left for college. It had always been their tap-out move, less I give up and more please, I need you to help me, no questions asked.
They’d used it for help climbing out of the house in the dead of night (Joan).
To get everyone to leave them alone so they could listen to music in their closet instead of doing homework (Molly).
To rescue each other from conversations with their parents, one sister valiantly sacrificing herself to their parents’ ire to save the other.
At witch parties, funerals, and stuffy meetings.
And then they’d grown up, and it had felt silly to call on someone else to fix your problems. Molly had gone to college first, two years Joan’s senior, and left Joan behind.
“I’ll be there in half an hour or so,” Joan said, and hung up the call.
Mik was hitting CZ with the kitchen towel now in a fit of rage, but CZ caught it, looking at Joan, well versed enough in her tells to catch the simplest shifts in mood. “All good?”
“Molly needs me,” Joan said. I wish I knew what for. “I’m heading uptown, probably on the HERMES. You’re going to work? Mik, you’re going to be okay?”
Both of them nodded dutifully.
“Be careful,” Mik said.
“No more getting sucked into pocket dimensions,” CZ added.
“I will try my best. Do you think that’s a real risk?” Someone on the HERMES would notice if that happened, most likely. Joan would need to stay around witches who could save her until she reached her sister.
She couldn’t be scared of her own city. New York would devour her.
“Hopefully not,” Mik said. “But if so, run back here; Grace swears by her wards.”
“Great,” Joan said. She looked a mess, she smelled, her phone was almost out of charge, and she needed to brush her teeth, badly. But she’d worry about this after she made it to Tribeca.
“Be good, kids,” Joan called, and she fled as fast as Grace had.