Chapter 9 #3
All right, time for triage. She couldn’t fight, and she definitely couldn’t outrun three witches who knew this town’s streets better than she did.
And she couldn’t use her healing magic offensively…
even though doing such a thing went against all her training and core beliefs…
without revealing what she was. Revealing her gift would tell the Gibsons far too much.
A healer of her caliber working alone in a warded house with massive amounts of shielding implied a warlock patient powerful enough to need that level of care.
That line of reasoning would probably lead them directly to Malachi.
So she couldn’t fight, and she couldn’t run, and she couldn’t tell the truth.
What she could do, however, was create a distraction.
The van. It was parked about four feet to her left, a white delivery van with the logo of a local bakery painted on the side.
The driver’s door was closed but probably not locked…
she knew from experience that delivery drivers in small towns rarely locked their vehicles during stops…
and even if it was locked, a basic lock-pop was something every witch could manage, no matter how minor their talents.
A locked door springing open unexpectedly wouldn’t cause any harm, but it would draw attention, and attention was what she needed right then.
She carefully set down her grocery bags, which had the secondary effect of making the three Gibsons focus on her hands, and then she reached out with the small, quiet thread of magic that every witch possessed alongside their primary gift.
The lock on the van’s driver-side door was a simple mechanism, barely a challenge, and she felt it give way with a soft click that was louder than it should have been.
The door swung open just enough for the movement to register in the tall woman’s peripheral vision, enough to make her glance sideways for half a second.
But half a second was enough.
Roslyn snapped a spark from her right hand.
It wasn’t aimed at anyone, was just a bright flare of orange that bloomed in the air between her and the stocky woman, startling enough to make all three Gibsons flinch.
In the moment of confusion that followed — the van door swinging, the spark flaring, the instinctive recoil that even experienced witches couldn’t suppress when fire appeared unexpectedly — Roslyn grabbed her bags and ran.
Not toward the house, of course. She wasn’t about to do anything that stupid, since she knew that leading three Gibson witches directly to the gap in Malachi’s wards would be the worst possible thing she could do.
Instead, she went left, around the front of the van, and cut down the first side street she found, a narrow residential lane lined with old houses whose overgrown hedges provided cover.
Behind her, she heard the man shout and the sound of footsteps on pavement, but she didn’t look back.
Instead, she took the next right, then a left, working her way through the neighborhood in a zigzag pattern that she hoped would make her harder to follow, moving fast enough to stay ahead but not so fast that she’d attract attention from civilians.
Her heart hammered against her ribs, and the grocery bags banged against her legs with every stride.
One of the apples fell out and rolled into the gutter, and she left it behind.
She wasn’t stopping for anything.
Three blocks later, when she was fairly sure she’d lost them — or at least put enough distance between herself and the trio of Gibson witches that they couldn’t follow her without making a scene — she circled back toward the house by a different route, approaching from the south rather than the west. The neighborhood was quiet.
A woman walking a small dog gave her a curious look, probably because Roslyn was red-faced and breathing hard while carrying groceries at a near-jog, but she didn’t stop.
She found the cedar tree with the broken branch, felt the gap in the wards recognize her signature, and stepped through. The ward sealed behind her with a soft pulse of pressure that felt almost like the house exhaling in relief.
Her legs were shaking, and her heart wouldn’t stop pounding, probably just as much from the adrenaline that kept zinging along her nerves than because of the exertion.
So she stood in the overgrown yard with the grocery bags clutched against her chest and breathed — in through the nose, out through the mouth, the way she’d taught dozens of anxious patients to breathe in her clinic back home — until her heartbeat slowed enough that she could think clearly.
Then she went inside to find Malachi.
He was in the study, and he obviously could tell something was wrong before she said a single word. She saw it in the way he straightened in the leather chair, his attention sharpening as she came through the door.
“The Gibsons stopped me on the way back,” she said.
She set the grocery bags on his desk without any ceremony, not caring that one of them was sitting on top of what was probably a very important piece of paper.
“There were three of them, two women and a man. They’ve been watching the house, and they know someone’s been doing heavy warding here. ”
His expression changed. He didn’t look exactly surprised, but the handsome, angular features tightened. She recognized the shift as the way he processed bad news he’d been expecting to hit at some point or another. “Did they identify you?”
“No,” she replied at once. “They don’t know who I am or what my gift is.
I didn’t use anything except basic stuff, just popping a lock and causing a spark.
But they know someone is living here, and they know the warding on the property isn’t normal.
” She paused so she could catch her breath, then added, “They also made it pretty clear that we’re operating in their territory without permission, and they’re not happy about it. ”
Malachi was quiet for a moment, his dark eyes unreadable. Then he said, “Describe them.”
She did as he requested, trying to relate every detail she could remember — the tall, dark-haired woman who’d led the conversation, the stockier woman with the silver streak, the man who’d hung back as backup.
Malachi listened without interrupting, which told her the information was useful rather than redundant.
“The woman with the dark hair may be Catherine Gibson,” he said once she was finished. “The prima’s eldest daughter…and also the clan’s prima-in-waiting. If she’s running scouting operations personally, then the Gibsons are taking this more seriously than I’d hoped.”
Roslyn nodded. “They seemed pretty damn serious to me.”
“They will escalate.” His voice was measured, but she could still hear the calculation running beneath it, the constant evaluation of threat levels that seemed to occupy about half of his conscious mind.
“Catherine’s involvement means the prima has authorized direct contact, which is the step before direct confrontation.
The Gibsons are methodical. They’ll try diplomacy once, and when diplomacy fails — because I have nothing to offer them that would satisfy their territorial claim — then they’ll move to enforcement. ”
Roslyn leaned against the edge of the desk.
Her pulse had finally returned to something approaching normal, but the adrenaline had left behind a residue of anger that was building rather than fading.
It wasn’t exactly anger at the Gibsons, although she wasn’t thrilled about being cornered in the street like a trespasser.
The anger was broader than that and felt aimed at the entire situation.
Not just the house and the wards and the collection, but also the isolation, the three weeks she’d spent trapped in a life that wasn’t hers, healing a man who needed her but also infuriated her, all while the world outside closed in from multiple directions.
“We can’t stay here,” she said flatly.