Chapter Two
Senán
If I ever had a “type,” which I’m fairly certain I never have, the underdressed mome letching at me from the other side of the swimming pool is most definitely not it.
Not that there’s anything wrong with the young man.
I might even say there are rather more than a few things very right about him.
He radiates confidence and vigor, his skin has a lovely warm glow, and whatever sport it is that he most certainly plays has benefited his arms and shoulders graciously.
But he slouches in his seat like a neanderthal, and his hair is unkempt, and I don’t make a habit of lusting after men who can’t be bothered to button a shirt when they go out in public.
He’s also (arguably) too young for me. Then again, almost anyone could be considered too young for someone over three hundred years old.
Alright, so perhaps the messy hair is a little charming. And the slipshod clothing choices could be forgiven, given our current locale. And his smile is really quite…
But he’s still too young. And he’s still most certainly not the sort of man I find attractive.
Which makes it all the more frustrating each time I catch myself staring.
Damnit, I have work to do. I didn’t travel all the way from Boston to bat my eyelashes at some handsome plebe in a swimsuit.
I have potion recipes to study. Local flora and fauna to research.
Incantations to write. Really, I ought to leave and find somewhere to work in peace.
Of course, knowing my luck, if I do get up from my chaise longue , the sloppily-dressed rake would surely see that as some sort of an invitation and follow me.
With his broad shoulders and his tousled curls and his damned beguiling smile.
But I can’t seem to help myself; I glance up from my book again. My ponytailed admirer is talking into his phone now and has stopped looking my way. Has he lost interest? Is he on the phone with his beau? Good, maybe I’ll finally be able to get some work done.
I rearrange myself on my lounge chair, adjusting my lace robe. If a little more skin is exposed in the process, it’s certainly no fault of mine. I look back to my (maybe, slightly) handsome new friend.
Eye contact—lots of it. Enough to be an invitation, and one I ought to refuse. I glance at my book again, then back at the raffish youth drawing me in with some kind of magnetism that feels like it’s been pulled straight out of one of my grimoires.
I close my book. To hell with it. I’ve been working very hard, for many weeks. I can flirt a little.
Striding across the courtyard, black lace blooming around my ankles with each step, I try to plan for how far I’m willing to take this.
Dinner? Drinks? A romantic walk to one of our hotel rooms?
I’m in the midst of wondering whether “Shall we go someplace a bit more private?” is too forward at 11 o’clock in the morning on a Monday when I see it, glinting up at me from the wallet lying open on the lout’s lap as he pays for a drink.
The badge.
I’ve become very familiar with those badges over the years. Shoved in my face by Bureau Agents during raids of my home. Waved under my nose as an excuse to ask me invasive and condescending questions. The presence of that badge in my life is never a good thing.
Given what I’m working on, given the real reason I’m at this remote Oregon resort in the first place… the presence of that badge is, in fact, a very bad thing.
I look up at the same time the Agent does, our eyes locking as I pass in front of him.
His expression is stony and hiemal, his dark eyes unreadable over the rim of his sunglasses.
I can’t tell if the flirtatious glimmer has left, or if I’d only ever imagined it was there in the first place—either way, the energy charging the air between us at this moment is far from inviting.
A shiver threatens my spine as I feel hot tendrils of anxiety creeping up my throat, but I hold myself together and keep walking steadily into the interior of the hotel.
I keep my head high and my pace casual, but when I glance over my shoulder and through the window, I see the Agent getting out of his lawn chair, phone to his ear…
There’s no doubt left now—I’m about to be followed.
And after all the care I’ve taken; I made my reservation under a pseudonym, and I instructed my familiar, Gretchyn, to stay in the woods and far away from the resort.
There’s too much at stake to let any evidence of my work come to light, and now that I’ve found myself caught off-guard by a Bureau tail, I do something I very rarely, almost never do: I panic.
All of the staff passages and facilities in the hotel are accessible only by scanning employee badges, which means, of course, that employees often leave those entrances propped open for their own convenience.
Their carelessness is my golden opportunity as I slip into a cracked-ajar door labeled “Resort Staff Only.” I immediately hear voices—I’m inside an employee break room, with lockers lining one wall for the staff to securely store their belongings while they work.
Taking a deep, calming breath, I place one hand over my sternum and the other on my forehead, whisper the incantation I’ve used for centuries, and focus all thought and feeling on my most-practiced spell.
It isn’t a comfortable sensation, the feeling of cells and bones reshaping themselves into different yet familiar locations.
The closest I’m sure I could come to describing it in words is a cross between a shiver, a hiccup, and a sneeze—not that anyone’s ever asked.
I turn to look in a nearby mirror. Softer features, broader hips, and longer hair—a perfect and practiced combination of changes that make me unrecognizable. Changes that make the rest of the world see me as a woman. Which, in all fairness, is how I occasionally—perhaps often—wish to be seen.
Glamour spells. Many people seem to think of them as a sort of mask, but they’re really so much more than that.
They can change skin, hair, and bone structure.
They can heal scars and lesions. They can do anything a surgeon can do, and more.
They’ve helped countless Witches in countless ways, and although I’m not a fan of bragging, I’ll say what no one else will: I’ve grown particularly adept at glamour spells over the years. Better than any Witch I know, in fact.
The specific spell I use to create my softer form was originally an experiment, a test to see whether the discomfort I felt could be absolved by existing in the body of a woman rather than the body of a man.
But after months of testing the waters in both options, I was terribly fascinated to find that what truly brought me solace was the ability to switch between the two.
Sometimes one feels more natural than the other, and the ability to shift my body to suit my fluid state of mind gives me more peace than any single form ever could.
It’s never occurred to me, until very recently, to use either body as a form of disguise.
And, for the record, I don’t particularly like doing it—inhabiting a woman’s shape when one doesn’t have a woman’s mind is unsettling at best, but the unfortunate truth is that my female form, for whatever reason, draws less attention than my male form does, and the relative invisibility is advantageous to my current pursuit.
I turn away from my reflection with a sigh and face the lockers, wondering if there are any other clothes I might—
“Hey, what are you doing back here?”
I nearly leap from my own skin at the words, turning around quickly to address the source.
He’s looking at me curiously. “You never work Mondays.”
I relax slightly. “Nadim, you scared the bloody daylights out of me!”
Nadim opens his locker and takes out his staff uniform. “Sorry,” he laughs. “Just didn’t expect to see you here today, is all.”
I turn to face my own locker and dial in my combination code, just to have something to do. “I… left my uniform here,” I explain. “Had to come back in so I could wash it.”
“Ugh, I hate when that happens. So, what have you got planned later? A date or something?”
“What?”
Nadim nods toward my outfit. “You’re all dressed up.”
I look down at the layers of black lace and jewelry adorning my body from neck to ankle. It’s true—this is very different from what Nadim is used to seeing me in. “I’m about to have brunch with some friends,” I tell him, giving the first excuse I can think of.
“Ah! Good call. Mondays could use more mimosas, am I right?”
I force a laugh. Nadim is nice enough, but his Corporate Culture jokes were already old on my first day here. Six weeks in and I’m ready to hex him the next time he asks someone whether they’re “working hard or hardly working.”
“Well, have fun,” he says cheerfully as he heads towards the changing rooms with his uniform. “See you Wednesday!”
“Yeah, see you.” I watch him go, then slump into a nearby folding chair, heart still hammering away in my chest as I try to will my parasympathetic nervous system back to a neutral state.
The Bureau of Supernatural and Cryptozoological Oversight has sent an agent.
An agent who didn’t openly identify himself.
There’s no denying it: I’m being watched. Closely. Covertly.
Shit.
The centuries of animosity and distrust between Witches and The Bureau began with a misunderstanding, and only got worse over time, as misunderstandings often do.
The origins of The BSCO weren’t especially well-documented at the time of their inception, and details varied greatly depending on who told the story—the only known written account outside of the Witch community existed solely in the pages of BSCO Field Agent training texts.