Chapter Nine
Asecrecy spell worked especially well on honest people. And I believed that, deep down, Bronwyn was an honest person.
However, on the surface, the witch was lying like a rug.
There was only one way to strong-arm a truth spell, and it wasn’t pleasant. The TL;DR version was that you had to make the person believe they were in mortal danger unless they told whatever secret was being protected. And even then, it might not work.
What would the backlash be if Bronwyn broke her word?
The last time I’d cast a similar spell, the word liar was supposed to appear in angry red letters on the person’s face. Something told me the repercussions from this one would be far more severe.
“How deadly is this organization?” I said loudly, so Margaux would hear me. She stood in the doorway to the back room, knotting her fingers together.
“We don’t kill. We protect people from—” Bronwyn’s mouth clamped shut. She scrubbed viciously at the side of her neck then jerked her head to one side.
The spell was kicking in.
Margaux said, “Mason hinted that he and Bronwyn were connected somehow. That’s all he said, and I didn’t push the man.”
“So, he’s spelled to secrecy, too?”
“Who knows? He isn’t the sort to tell you anything outright, spelled or not.”
That tracked. I’d had several encounters with him, and each one had left me scratching my head. He was either trying to kill me, trying to help me, or trying to figure me out. Nothing he did felt sincere.
No, that wasn’t true. There was one thing he was sincere about. One person.
And she was standing right in front of me, twitching like a woman on her ninth cup of coffee.
“He only gave me scraps of information, and that was on the back of a violent threat,” Margaux continued. “He said that if I protected Bronwyn, he’d owe me. But if she died on my watch, he’d kill me.”
Goddess damn you, Bronwyn Jonas, what are you hiding?
Magic blasted from my pores in an electric, buzzing rush. I thrust out my hand, and it exploded from my fingertips and wrapped around Bronwyn like an invisible rope, pinning her arms to her sides and restraining the movement of her legs.
I didn’t say a word—didn’t think a spell or otherwise call on my magic. One moment my power was silent and the next it roared.
Maya let out a fearful yip. Margaux’s face lost all emotion.
“This is when you start talking, Bronwyn—if that’s your real name.” I squeezed my hand into a fist, and she groaned.
“Betty, what are you doing? What’s going on?” Maya ran out from behind the counter, babbling furiously. “I don’t believe you would hurt Bronwyn—not after everything we all went through. This isn’t like you. Please, stop.”
I ignored her and focused on the witch in front of me. “Is Bronwyn Jonas your real name?”
“Of course it is,” Maya said, “Betty, this is ridiculous—”
“No,” Bronwyn huffed out. “It’s not.”
“What?” I’d never before seen the word crestfallen acted out in real life. Maya’s shoulders drooped and she shook her head reflexively. “No. No. That can’t be true.”
“Sure it can,” I said. “People lie all the time.”
“No.” Maya kept shaking her head. “Not to friends.”
Bronwyn’s body slumped. Sorrow exuded from her. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t tell you.”
Maya sniffed, obviously on the verge of tears. She looked like a kicked dog. “It was all a lie? Our friendship? Everything you told me about yourself?”
“No. Not everything. Most of it was true.”
“Most of it,” Maya said dully.
“The important parts. Only the names were changed, I swear.”
Ouch. I was the most flippantly obtuse person I knew, and even I could see that was a step too far. Maya had been repeatedly lied to by her jackass of a husband. She wasn’t going to take being lied to lightly.
“Jokes? Really, Bronwyn—or whatever your name is?” Maya turned her back on Bronwyn and went behind the counter. She picked up her phone and purse and brushed past Margaux on her way into the storeroom. “Thank you both for saving my life. Goodbye.”
“Maya. I’m sorry.” Bronwyn’s breath hitched.
The back door slammed so hard the front windows shuddered in their panes. Bronwyn cursed, her eyes dampening.
I let a couple of seconds tick by so her pain could really soak in. Normally, I wasn’t one to revel in the misery of others. Then again, I wasn’t normally being betrayed by someone I considered a friend.
“Two friends down,” I said. “One to go.”
She glared at me, her irises rimmed in pink, the color of her magic. She chanted under her breath, lips barely moving.
“How are you connected to Mason Hartman and my current misery?”
Her eyes glowed, and the air between us charged with magic.
As a learned witch, Bronwyn hadn’t been born with magic. It didn’t make her any less of a witch—it often made her more resourceful than those of us who leaned primarily on our element—but right now, with the full weight of my power gripping her by the throat, she was at a severe disadvantage.
“Are you doing this on purpose, or is this the secrecy spell?” I asked.
Her lips picked up speed; the chant grew louder.
Margaux watched attentively but didn’t offer any help to either of us. That suited me fine. I’d rather she stayed out of it.
“I’m guessing it’s the latter,” I said. “Look, I don’t want to kill you, but if you cast that spell—I don’t care if it’s something as benign as you conjuring the scent of a rose garden to hide the smell of a fart—I will hurt you. You need to believe that I’m not screwing around here, Bronwyn.”
She stopped chanting. Swallowed. “I believe.”
“You’ve been lying to me since the second we met. Now’s your chance to tell me everything. If you hold back, even a little, I’ll kill you. I’ll have to. The lives of my people are at stake.”
“I believe you might hurt me.” Bronwyn gave me a hard look. “But you won’t kill me.”
I twirled my fingers and yanked. She flew forward, her arms still pinned to her sides, feet hovering inches off the ground. I pushed magic at her, turning up the heat, so that it felt like hot oil splashed on her skin.
She hissed in pain. “Still … don’t believe … you’ll kill me.”
Anger swelled, slamming against a wall of frustration.
Damn her, she was right—I couldn’t kill her.
She was lying, and those lies were preventing me from protecting my people.
All the same, killing her—even if she deserved it—was a step too far.
Which made sense, because I thought of her as one of my people.
For this to work the way I needed it to, I was going to have to stop feeling that way. Stop feeling that she was my friend.
Stop feeling.
As if it had been waiting for an opening, an unnatural, icy calm spiked into my bloodstream. The emotion slid over me like a hungry snake—focused and purposeful and serpent-belly cold. I was equal parts grateful for the numbness and terrified that it had come upon me so quickly.
Terror pushed at the numbness—Control it, Betty. Don’t lose yourself, Betty. Not again, Betty—but the dark magic possessing me took that terror and subverted it. It filled my mind with blood-soaked visions of Ida with a blade buried in her chest and Bronwyn’s delicate hand twisting the hilt.
Ida.
My frustration disintegrated, and the terror trickled away. With them went every scrap of moral resistance. My belief that I not only could kill Bronwyn but would kill her if she didn’t cooperate cemented in an instant. I squeezed my fist a little tighter.
“Dios, Betty.” Margaux drew in a sharp breath that sounded like a slow-motion wind. Everything was slower, drawn out, off-key.
I stared at my hands, focusing on the one controlling the spell holding Bronwyn. They were dusty gray, the nails black and pointed.
Bronwyn cried out, pled with me to stop. Her voice gurgled and buzzed and churned, like a chainsaw plunged under water. I was hurting her, and it looked like she was finally starting to believe that I’d watch her die if she didn’t start talking.
She was right. The way I felt now, I wouldn’t lose a single, peaceful Z over it, either.
“Steady, Betty,” Margaux said. She sounded like a drunk old man to my ears, her words slurred. “If you kill her too soon, we won’t be able to protect the others.”
“I’m not the enemy here,” Bronwyn choked out. “I can help you.”
Margaux jerked away from the storeroom doorway and strode up to her—jaw set, voice strident. “Then do it, because it’s evident to me that Betty’s holding onto herself by the thinnest of threads. If that thread snaps, I can’t protect you—and even if I could, I wouldn’t.”
“You’d let her kill me?” Bronwyn gasped, not in shock, but because my hold on her was cutting off her oxygen.
“People we all care about are going to die. We need the truth.”
“You think … my secrets will help. They won’t. I don’t have those kinds of … truths.”
Her skin was as gray as my own now. She was still conscious, but her head lolled to one side.
I squeezed until my stiletto nails drove into my palm, bringing four droplets of blood bubbling to the surface. With a casual flick of my wrist, I spattered her with the droplets. They were hot with my magic and made a hissing sound when they hit her skin.
She screamed. The sound was like water trickling over stones in a stream.
“Such a beautiful song.” I smiled and flicked more of my blood on her. “Do it again.”
“Stop shrieking and start talking,” Margaux said, fishing her cell from her pocket. “The only way to make her stop is to cooperate. Start by telling us your real name.”
“Rachel Hill,” she gasped. “Haven’t used it. Years. Bronwyn Jonas is my name now. Never use the other one. Never again.”
“Why not?” Margaux asked.
I let up on my hold so she could speak without gasping. I was content to let Margaux question Rachel/Bronwyn. It was taking all my focus to keep myself from hurting her again just to hear the melody of her screams.
“Because it’s my ex-husband’s name, and he was an abusive bastard. He’s the reason I joined the organization. They offered me a fresh start away from him and my old life, and I took it.”