9. Time Guy
Time Guy
Milo
For a fleeting second the man looks surprised to see me, then he calmly closes my broken door… sort of… somewhat… kind of… back into place. The hinges are clearly broken, and it now hangs all wonky.
We stare at each other in silence for a long moment.
He’s shorter than me, but that’s not unusual—most people are—and he’s at least three times heavier.
A prominent chin juts out over a patterned neck scarf, yet despite that striking combination, he lacks any jaw definition and his cheeks seem to just slip into his neck.
Maybe that’s the reason he’s wearing the odd garment.
His furrowed brow is low on his face, and its shadow obscures the colour of his eyes, but the fire in them is unmistakable.
Reddish-brown hair curls to frame a cherubic-looking face—except that he’s really angry. Are cherubs allowed to be angry? Regardless, this one is.
I take another step back.
His arms twitch by his sides, and that’s when I notice his coat…
cloak… thing. It reminds me of those Home & Country style magazines in the waiting room at the dentist, the ones with horse-riding people who look really posh on the covers.
Except this cloak is in a shade of purple that clashes horribly with his skin tone. Someone should tell him.
I open my mouth, and the man sneers. Instead of words, a strangled squeak escapes past my tongue that stubbornly refuses to move from the back of my throat.
In a strong Italian accent, he says, “You have trespassed in magic that belongs to the Office of Time, Warlock.”
As if that statement warrants him further access, his eyes leave me in favour of spreading his disgust and judgement over every nook and cranny of my home.
I can tell when he spots the grimoires, and something about the fact that he just looked at my entire Family Line with that level of undisguised repulsion heats my blood.
I find my voice. “The office of where?”
“Not where… Time.”
I scoff. “Never heard of them. Look, have you got a badge or something?”
He turns that dark gaze back my way, running it up and down my body. “A badge?”
“Yeah. ID? To show that you’re from this Office of Time?”
But something in the way he’s looking at me is making me doubt my confidence. The Witches Council is in town, Ray said so, and it’s painfully obvious that I cast a spell in here—the stuff is still on the floor between us. I knew I should have tidied that up.
“You, who trespassed in my magic, are demanding I prove myself to you?” He laughs then, but it’s a cold sound that drags an icy shiver up my spine.
“I didn’t trespass in your…” My tongue shrivels in my mouth and kills my words.
Okay, so everything to do with the Lost Colony and Sarah was real. I dry swallow my unease.
The Witches Council are very clear about the rules when it comes to one witch accessing another’s magic.
It’s like copyright. All spells—and creations from those spells—belong to the original caster, unless that caster signs away access rights.
And that’s a whole process. The only exception to this is when grimoires and heirlooms are passed down through Family Lines. Those have heritage rights.
This is also why witches are supposed to have caster’s insurance… “Okay, yeah. About that. I didn’t mean to. I was looking for—”
“You entered a fold in the fabric of time… accidentally?” His disbelief is obvious from his rising pitch.
“A fold in the what? Wait. Where did you say you’re from again?”
“The Office of Time.” He takes a step closer, toes on the edge of my chalked pentacle, and everything about him screams predator.
I can’t really move any further back, so I strafe sideways, keeping the pentacle between us.
If he were a witch, he wouldn’t have entered my casting circle, because then he’d be guilty of the same thing I’ve done—accessing another witch’s magic. “So, you’re not a witch, then?”
“No, not a witch,” he confirms, but his tone is strange. I can’t place it.
“Thank goddess for that.” Relief drags my shoulders away from my ears. Possibly, then, he won’t know about me needing caster’s insurance. “Allow me to apologise. I was experimenting a little with something… and it went wrong. I can guarantee it won’t happen again.”
“No.” There’s that strange tone again. He sounds like my ex. Arrogant.
“No?” I narrow my eyes.
“No, you can’t guarantee that. But I can.” The stranger in the purple cloak lunges for me, but I twirl out of the way. The jacket I’m half wearing acts like a cloak of my own and flares out wide, the leather sleeve whipping him across the cheek.
Alert, and breathing heavily, I hold my hands up. “Okay, wait. I’m sure we can come to an agreement.”
“I do not barter, Warlock.” He sneers that last word, like it’s an insult, but it isn’t.
I am a warlock, and despite the fact that I don’t have a coven and I’m not supposed to practice, I’m damn proud of it.
Sarah called me powerful. My anger gets the better of me.
“But you do trespass. You’re in my home when I didn’t invite you, so I’d say that makes us even. If you leave now, I’ll let it slide.”
The man whose clothes clash with his own skin laughs in mockery. “No. I do not think so. As you like to step inside my magic, perhaps you’d like your own fold in the fabric of time?”
“A fold in the what?” Then, as if he turned a key in the lock of my mind, everything falls into place. “It was you! You did it. That’s what you did to the settlement at Roanoke—you folded them away in time. Oh. My. Goddess. Ray’s never going to believe me.”
The more I speak, the more angry red blotches spread over the man’s cheeks, and a purple glow appears at his fingers where they curl menacingly at his sides.
He might not be a witch, but he most definitely has some kind of magic.
The more tense he gets, the more it condenses into sparks that wrap around his hands.
Who—or what—has the kind of magic that presents like that, almost like lightning? Not a human, that’s for sure. Too caught up in my mind, I miss when he lunges for me again, and this time he grabs my wrist.
Those purple sparks crackle and grow brighter at our contact. Erratic, they arc between us. I expect them to burn, so I scrunch my eyes shut… but they don’t. Instead, his clammy fingers pinch my shower-fresh skin, and that intense itching on my left hip—where my birthmark is—returns.
I’d forgotten about that, but it’s exactly like it was last night. Only, I’m not about to open my jeans and scratch at it right now. I try to tug my arm away, but he tightens his grip.
The man’s angry expression morphs into shock, and he seethes, “What?”
“What?” I’m so confused right now. And itchy.
When he loosens his grip to turn my wrist over, I shake him off and charge for the door. Pushing past him, I yank it wide open.
The stranger staggers, probably a mix of recovering his balance, spinning to follow me as I dart around him, and twisting to avoid getting hit with a door.
As I race out into the hallway, he makes to give chase, but he slips on all the spilled salt that covers the floor, flails, and then falls backward. His head collides with the hard wood. The wet cracking sound echoes through my skull.
Louder still is the pounding of my heart against my ribs.
Please don’t let him be dead.
I don’t stop praying as I run down the stairs.
Adrenaline pumping, I cross the street without looking.
Hands shaking, I call the number I swore I’d never dial—not even if the sky was falling.
“This is the Witches Council, please leave your name, rank, and coven number—along with a short message—after the tone.”
The Witches Council don’t operate like the human police do, with a live dispatcher, they have an answering service and screen all their calls before deciding if you’re urgent enough to connect to an agent.
Slowing from a run to more of a jog, I turn back to look over my shoulder.
Please don’t let him be dead.
“Hi, erm, this is Milo. Tobitt. I… I think I just killed a man. In Roanoke City. Erm, so, a little while ago, some Italian guy from the Office of Time broke into my room. In my home. He didn’t have an ID.
I thought he was looking for something, you know, maybe to rob me.
He, erm, accused me of some stuff. Magic stuff.
And I apologised for that, but then he threatened me.
Tried to grab me—did grab me—so then I pushed him, or I didn’t…
I don’t remember. I was running away, and then he fell.
He hit his head pretty hard. He’s still there, in my apartment. I think…”
Almost at the corner of the street, I risk another look back toward my building, but I still can’t see him.
Please don’t let him be dead.
“Oh, he also has the Lost Colony of Roanoke folded away in the fabric of time, so I don’t think he’s a good guy. He has a witch trapped there called Sarah. Sarah Blackwood.”
There’s a sudden clicking sound and some other distortion on the line, as if I’m being passed through a digital network to somewhere, and tears of relief build behind my lashes.
On the next street over now, still jogging, I look behind me again, but there’s no angry man in a purple cloak.
Please don’t let him be dead.
“Hello?” I ask when the line goes quiet. Wondering if maybe the call is still recording, I repeat my request. “So, yes, if you could—”
“Hello, Milo? This is the General’s Office. I’m going to give you an address, and I’ll need you to repeat it back to me.”
This is… not what I expected. And is that another Italian accent? Does the Witches Council even have a General? I thought we had a High Priest…
I stand still. “Erm… okay?”
“Eight-seven-three-nine-oh North East Kings Walk Drive. Do you have that?”
“Eight-seven-three-nine-oh North East Kings Walk Drive, yes. Where am I going?”
“To someone who can help. You’ll need a password. Tell whoever answers the door ‘neeps and tatties.’”
“What?”
“Neeps and tatties, Milo.”
The call disconnects, leaving me standing in the street wondering what a neep is?
Why are they important to the person who lives at this house?
And am I really going to walk across town to an unknown address?
Then I remember the sickening crunch of Time Guy’s head—and Sarah—and I pull up a map on my phone.