The Wrong Sort of Magic

Chapter 1

It was a perfect night for hunting demons.

Thin fog hung close to the damp pavement and grasped with flimsy fingers at anything that moved, while reflections of the thin, scythe-like moon glimmered in shattered windows and chips of glass lying on the concrete.

Abandoned warehouses languished up ahead, corpses of steel and rust and broken bricks.

Pippa Beverly shivered in delight.

Not that she couldn’t do this on a humid day with cottony clouds and an oncoming sunburn, but there was just something right about lurking through fog and gloom in pursuit of evil.

Pippa glanced at the blood trail in front of her and stepped over a puddle that still lingered from the day’s earlier rain. Moonlight glinted off the surface, blood swirling through the puddle like oil.

Though the blood itself wasn’t demonic—it belonged to the animal her quarry had taken as dinner—sourness squirmed in her gut as she passed through the remnants of foul energy hovering above the droplets.

She shivered again, though with much less delight.

When Pippa first began hunting demons, she’d been under the assumption that a demon’s aura was something she could grow used to.

Eventually, she wouldn’t feel the awful twisting sensation of her body reacting to what should not be.

Sure, the urge to vomit passed after a year or so, but the lingering discomfort never did.

Did the Ash Coven members still feel it?

Probably not. They likely had some ritual whenever a new witch was accepted: a little spell to calm the stomach against demon auras before the celebratory wine began to flow.

Pippa would bet it would be a classy affair.

There would be ties and lint-free dresses and cocktail napkins. And fancy cheese.

No Ash Coven protections for her, though. Pippa trudged through the night wearing old leggings, a loose sweatshirt with a hood pulled over her hair and a repurposed kitchen knife stuck in the pocket, and a pair of running shoes that tended to squeak at inopportune moments.

Everything was fantastic. Truly, just great.

If she weren’t trying to be sneaky, she would have given a snarling, frustrated shout to let some of the anger in her body exist elsewhere for a second.

The day had already taken a massive, steaming dump: a shitty day at a shitty job, and a terrible, pointless meeting with the Ash Coven. To top it all, she had to worry about her shoes cooperating with her intentions to be silent.

If she had been accepted by the Coven, then she wouldn’t have to think about said shitty job with equally shitty pay.

Legal assistants had to make do with old shoes.

Ash Coven members could buy themselves a new pair of non-squeaking shoes with excellent arch support and then take them out to the warehouse district on an inaugural hunt.

Being part of the Ash Coven would also mean that she wouldn’t have to worry about asshole coworkers who had recently transferred.

Well. Just one transfer. Just one asshole.

Maxim Fucking Sheppard.

Ugh.

That probably wasn’t the name on his license, but Pippa liked to pretend.

He’d been at the firm for four months after having transferred from a larger one in New York.

It must have been fancy, what with the wardrobe he hadn’t gone through the effort to modify.

Who had lapels that perfect? It was an affront to every single cardigan she’d thrifted and considered good enough for working a desk job.

Maxim. It was the sort of name that could perfectly accompany the question, “And which yacht would you like to take out today, sir?” The knot on his tie always looked like it had been arranged by a valet, which furthered the concept.

Every time he spoke to her, it was in sentences so brief and stilted they sounded like orders. She had never seen him smile. Never. When he asked for documents or paperwork to complete, he did it in a way that implied he was simply allowing her to fulfill her dream.

Pippa suppressed a wrathful yell again, instead strangling the cuff of her sweatshirt until the fabric creaked.

During today’s meeting, she’d made the horrific mistake of sitting in his typical chair in the conference room.

As far as she could tell, the foam didn’t have an impression of his ass that made it better than the rest of the identical black ergonomic chairs in the room, but still, he had scowled at her until she moved.

Not a single “Excuse me, but . . .” or “Sorry, do you mind if I . . .” He only stood glowering as if he had been given life by a mad scientist with overwhelming electricity bills.

It was a glower that implied she was beneath him. She was inferior, not worth his time.

Then, hot off the heels of a warm drive in her old car that didn’t even have a working radio she could blast to ease some of that anger, she’d met with the Ash Coven members and those exact same feelings of ineptitude returned with force.

She’d thought the interview with them this evening would be better than the last. Maybe they would have decided she had finally done enough to earn her place in their circle. Maybe they’d—

Movement along the top of one of the dilapidated warehouses caught Pippa’s eye and she snapped her head up.

She froze for long enough to realize it had just been a bit of moonlight shifting on a fire escape.

Nothing more than a reflection. Her heart was slower to understand this and continued to pound frantically.

She wrestled the bitter thoughts away, rolled her shoulders, and breathed in the damp smells of old rain, rotting wood, and rusted metal. The magic in the surrounding air tickled her fingertips and brushed against her cheeks, calming her in the exact way that her mind never really could.

Comforted, she continued along the splattered trail. As long as she could reach out to magic and it could reach back, all would be well.

Pippa paused at the corner of one warehouse.

Both the blood trail and the lingering energy stopped in the center of a derelict courtyard.

Dead trees twitched in the breeze, their gnarled branches dripping with condensed fog.

A soggy piece of cardboard, part of some long-gone distribution center, lay slumped against a bowed wall.

After a quick glance to make sure the courtyard was truly empty, Pippa stepped beneath the barren, twisted trees.

She breathed in again. This deep within the warehouse complex, the fog rolled over her tongue and brought with it the sharp tang of rust. She shoved her baggy sleeves to her elbows, held out her hands, and closed her eyes.

Awareness bloomed slowly through her body.

The moon dusted her skin with its pale light.

Birds nested in high rafters, their heads tucked beneath their wings until dawn.

A bat dodged between buildings as it picked off moths.

From the north, a breeze dipped along the river before meandering over to pluck at the wisps of curling hair that escaped from Pippa’s stubby braid.

Rust prickled at her just as it prickled at every joist and beam and corrugated panel.

Just like the sort of prickle she’d felt when she suffered the disgusted frown at her worn shoes not an hour earlier.

Pippa curled her hands into fists.

“What else?” she had asked, unable to hide the desperation in her voice. “What else do you want from me?”

Elder Ranna had given her the sort of smile someone would give to a toddler asking for dessert at noon.

“We see all that you’ve done, Philippa,” she’d said, “and we’re impressed.”

Pippa finished the elder’s thought. “But it’s not enough.”

The other witches on the Ash Coven council had given pitying nods.

Elder Ranna smiled her same smile, though she added a patronizing tip of her head. “Your acceptance is taking longer than most, since we must always consider the matter of your . . . family.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Pippa had snapped. “My father is long dead.”

“And yet alongside your Natural magic, you still have his power.”

“I— But I’ve suppressed it. I haven’t used it in almost two decades, and most of the time I forget it’s there.”

“It’s in your blood, child,” Elder Ranna said with a weary sigh. “Although you might forget it, we won’t.”

Pippa had actively forced herself not to scream. She’d put on a mask of indifference, crossed her legs, and leaned back in the stiff chair as if it were the plushest throne.

That was when Elder David had seen her footwear.

In the courtyard, Pippa clenched her jaw so hard that her teeth ached.

She’d hunted the streets every night since she was fifteen, chasing down monsters twice her size just to prove she was worthy of being part of the same coven who still saw her as a pair of bad shoes.

A sharp crackling pulled Pippa from her brooding. She opened her eyes. The dead branches of the courtyard trees were curling in on themselves, the smallest ones withering and twisting like they were being burned by some invisible flame. Bark burst into the air as one of the trunks split.

Shit.

Natural magic didn’t much care about appropriate timing; it only knew how to listen.

Pippa forced her anger from her mind even as she frantically looked around to see if the noise had drawn attention to her presence. She urged the magic to silence, pulling back on it as if she were reeling in a net.

The branches shuddered and fell still, though several remained kinked at their ends.

Pippa ducked down beside a concrete planter and waited for the growl of some monster as it barreled around a corner or leaped from a building. But she only heard the sounds of the night: the soft rustle of wind, low calls of night birds, the grumbling creak of old structures.

She rose from her crouch and straightened her baggy sleeves.