Chapter Three
I might have gone back to my shop then, if not for the arrival of a certain witch.
Indigo Hallewell looked like your ordinary witch: dark hair that fell to her mid-back. A full figure and a regal bearing that belied her somewhat small stature. There was a certain haughtiness that lingered around her eyes. And that was totally normal.
Except, she wasn’t.
The woman I was looking at had physically possessed the body of a distant cousin of mine, Lydia, after a spell gone awry.
Indigo’s enemies had rendered her little more than a disembodied spirit co-habitating with a gypsy bookkeeper she could barely stand.
One thing had led to another, and now the pair were separated, Indigo still riding around in Lydia’s body, while Lydia upgraded to what amounted to the body of a demonic supermodel-dom.
Sunlight pooled across the floorboards, catching the dust motes and sending them spinning. Indigo lingered near the threshold, coat still on as though she might turn and bolt before anyone noticed her. She carried the distinct air of a doe who’d been startled into stillness.
“Good morning, Indigo,” came Wanda’s voice from behind the counter, though not friendly, it was even.
But she didn’t look up from the dress form she was crowded around.
I got the impression there was more hostility in the motion than simply giving Indigo the cold shoulder.
Indigo seemed to realize it too, because she cleared her throat, hesitating another instant before daring to speak.
“I was just... hoping to hear if you’ve thought about what I asked the other day.”
Wanda finally glanced up, one eyebrow raised. “Which part?”
Indigo’s eyes flicked longingly toward the door, like she wished she could be anywhere but here.
Even though she’d done horrible things in her past and she was the reason Lydia’s life had been royally screwed up, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her.
Indigo hadn’t exactly received a warm welcome in Haven Hollow.
But back to her eyes that were still focused on the door, they were a vivid blue.
I’d heard that in her original body, they’d been darker.
Wanda’s tone made Indigo flinch. “About the probationary period I’m on.”
Wanda kept pinning the dress onto the form. “What about it?”
“I have duties toward the coven, but I don’t enjoy the full protection of Haven Hollow’s witches.”
“You haven’t earned it,” Wanda said frankly.
This time, Indigo actually recoiled, elbows knocking against Wanda’s front door. “Right. I’ll... I’ll come back later.” I didn’t imagine ‘submissive’ was a word used to describe Indigo ever, but that’s exactly as she appeared now.
“Oh, don’t be daft.” Wanda wiped her fingers on a cloth and gestured toward the small seating area tucked by the window. “Sit.” Indigo appeared surprised. So was I.
“You’re right,” Wanda continued as she put her pins on the side table and walked over to where Indigo was currently moving towards the window seat. “We should talk about it.”
Indigo hesitated as she sat, her boots soft on the worn wood floor, careful not to touch anything.
The shop always looked safe, but the air was heavy with living spells, and the new witch’s demon-grafted magic didn’t mix well with ambient enchantments.
I wasn’t even particularly sensitive, and I could sometimes feel the volatility of Indigo’s power.
“What do I have to do to convince you I don’t mean any harm to Haven Hollow?” Indigo asked.
“Favors,” Wanda answered like she’d been planning for this question. “Three favors at the time of my choosing.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you come to the coven’s aid three times without expecting anything in return, and then I’ll consider trusting you.”
Indigo nodded, eyes down. “I suppose that’s reasonable.”
“I’m inclined to want to like you,” Wanda continued, as she reached over and plucked a piece of lint from a dress on one of the mannequins. Then she squinted at it like it had personally offended her.
“You are?” Indigo asked.
Wanda looked up at her, as if just remembering she was still there. “You’re strong. You’ve proven you can fight. I value that. But I also value trust. So, now it’s up to you to prove that I can trust you.” She paused again. “That’s how I’ll know you really are one of us.”
A quiet pause followed, then, “Thanks. For calling me strong, because I definitely don’t feel strong.”
“Don’t thank me. Just prove me right.”
Indigo frowned. “I feel like I’m missing something.”
I jumped. So did Wanda. Clearly, we’d both forgotten that Violetta and Smith were in the back room.
The only reason we realized it now was the energy that had suddenly invaded the room—energy coming from Violetta.
Her presence as she walked into the main store made the air prickle faintly, as if her aura couldn’t decide whether to burn or to freeze.
“I... um...” I began, glancing between Indigo and Violetta, not sure what to say. Misty Hollow’s residents had turned up on our doorstep months after the Indigo saga had started, but I wasn’t sure how much they knew about Indigo, if anything at all.
I gave Indigo a hopeless glance as if to say: are you bothered by the fact that I’m pretty sure they just overheard everything?
She shrugged back in a rendition of: I’m tired of caring about anything.
“Indigo is a, um, new witch to Haven Hollow,” I explained, trying not to cast Indigo in a worse light than she already was. “And… well, she’s on a probation of sorts.”
Wanda raised an eyebrow. “That’s putting it mildly.”
“Probation?” Violetta repeated. Clearly, she hadn’t heard of witches being put on probation before. And as far as I knew, most weren’t. It was more that if you were a witch living in a city, you were part of that city’s coven. Or you were trying to start a coven yourself.
“Right,” I continued, casting around for the right words to explain this bizarre situation.
Indigo saved me the trouble. “I used to run with a bad crowd. They were terrorists,” she said flatly. “They called themselves the ‘Masked Lords’.”
“Never heard of them,” Violetta said but she crossed her arms against her chest and regarded Indigo the same way everyone else did—with suspicion.
“They were evil men of one flavor or another, banding together against humanity and integration,” Indigo continued, as if figuring this story was bound to come out sooner than later so she might as well get on with it.
“Anyway, I’d lost most of my family to the last Blood Skirmish, and I wanted revenge.
Working for the Masked Lords was the cost of the power I needed to get that revenge. ”
Violetta took an unthinking step back. Indigo caught the motion and smiled thinly as if she enjoyed making the other witch uncomfortable, which Violetta clearly was.
“I was mostly a spotter,” Indigo continued.
“I identified targets and reported their movements to the others. But then those in control started crossbreeding magic.”
“What does that mean?” Violetta asked.
Indigo shrugged. “Exactly what you would think it means. The lot of them thought they could make themselves stronger by… well, by stealing the abilities from other creatures.”
“What sorts of other creatures?”
“Vampires, fae, demons—the list goes on. If something bled power, they found a way to bottle it. They call it ‘rendering’. Like fat, except they were using magic.”
Violetta grimaced. “That’s not witchcraft. That’s butchery.”
“Exactly,” Wanda said. “And Indigo let them do it to her.”
Violetta looked at Indigo then with a new sense of dawning horror. Indigo just nodded.
“They took the essence of other monsters and fused it with my own magic,” she explained.
“It destabilized my soul.” There was a note of bitterness in her voice now.
“That’s how I ended up here.” She glanced down at herself as if to say she meant that’s how she’d ended up in Lydia’s body.
“A spell meant to kill me failed, but it did scatter my essence. I ended up bound to Poppy’s cousin for close to a year before she acquired a new body she could inhabit alone. ”
“So you did turn on them in the end?” Violetta asked, voice quiet and almost… awed. Well, shocked and disgusted as much as awed.
“She did,” I said quietly. “It was really dangerous but she did it, and we’re proud of her.”
“But not proud enough to lift the probation,” Wanda said warningly as she faced Indigo once more. “Three favors you owe me, at least.”
“Three,” Indigo said with a nod. “Got it.” Then she stood up. “May I go now?”
All the while, Smith just stood there, keeping his nose out of witch business. And that was a wise decision.
Wanda waved Indigo away with an airy hand. Indigo gave us all a suspicious look before ducking back out the way she’d come. There was silence for a minute before either newcomer dared to speak.
“So she really possessed your cousin?” Violetta asked me.
I laughed and rubbed my temples. “Oh, believe me, I’m still trying to digest the ins and outs of what happened.
As I understand it, Indigo wasn’t exactly planning on possessing Lydia.
One of the Masked Lords threw a curse at Indigo during a fight.
It was meant to tear her spirit apart, but instead it just…
yanked her clean out of her body and I guess she somehow just ended up grafted onto Lydia. ”
Wanda nodded grimly. “It was a nasty hex. One that tears you apart slowly, one mote of magic at a time. It had to have been torture.”
“But she just… took Lydia’s body?” Violetta asked, clearly not past that particular point.
“Well, Indigo wasn’t conscious of what she was doing,” Wanda explained. “At that point, I believe her spirit just grafted itself to the closest warm body, without weighing consequences, morals, or anything else.”
“For months, we couldn’t tell where Lydia ended and Indigo began,” I added.
Violetta blinked. “So you’re telling me—”
“—they shared a body,” Wanda said. “Two souls, one lease. And when we finally got them separated…” She gestured vaguely, hands fluttering in the air. “Now they look like twins. Albeit, Lydia’s now hotter due to some demon shenanigans of her own. Things got truly strange there for a while.”
Violetta gave a low whistle. “That’s… horrifying.”
“And confusing,” I said. Violetta gave me a questioning look. I shrugged. “You try running into your cousin and her accidental ex-possessor at the same family gathering. You don’t know whether to offer one of them tea or holy water.”
Violetta looked a little pale. “And you’re just… living with that?”
“More like coping,” I said. “It’s not every day you find out your cousin’s doppelg?nger used to work for the people trying to unravel the world. But I keep telling myself—it’s the Hollow. Weird is our normal.”
“Amen,” Smith muttered.