Chapter Eighteen
Katherine sat next to Silas on the bench outside of the police station and tried not to panic.
She knew she had no real reason to be anxious being here. There was no price on her head, no bounty out for her capture. Her case had become old news years ago. It hadn’t even warranted a Wikipedia entry.
Those, though, were logical thoughts, and if panic responded to logic, the world would be a much happier place.
So she remained locked in her one-sided fight not to flinch at each uniform that walked by. She was already sweating from the oppressive heat, and every cop who glanced in her direction sent another trickle of salt down her spine.
“I don’t have the rune right now, but we could go back to Sunspot and get an invisibility spell,” she said.
She’d imagined Silas had a plan when he suggested they come here, but considering they’d been sitting in silence for the last fifteen minutes, it seemed his brain was about as empty as she should’ve guessed it’d be. “We could do it, rush in, and then—”
“No,” Silas interrupted.
Katherine bristled. “Well, do you have a better idea?”
“Yep.” Silas stood. “We’re going to walk in.”
Silas started to strut toward the door. Katherine rushed after him.
“That’s your plan? Go to the front desk and ask nicely?”
“That’s what I was thinking.”
Katherine grabbed his arm, stopping him. “You can’t be serious. You’re pretty, but you’re not give-away-evidence-for-free pretty.”
Silas’ face split into a wide smile. “You think I’m pretty?”
Despite all efforts to the contrary, Katherine’s cheeks flushed. “I think you think you’re pretty.”
Silas winked at her. “You’re right on that front.” He pulled away, walking toward the door again. “I also happen to be, as you have clearly refrained from pointing out on several occasions, a spoiled rich boy. Why don’t we see if we can get in the old-fashioned way?”
“We’re not going to—” Katherine started, but Silas was already through the door. She cursed his hefty trust fund under her breath as she followed him in.
Silas was leaning against the front desk when she entered, and the sixtysomething receptionist was in the midst of being hit with the signature Silas Khatri charm.
“—Fancy jewelry doesn’t do it for her. She couldn’t care less about a Michelin-starred restaurant. She is so damn down-to-earth. Which is why I like her, obviously. But it does make her quite hard to impress.”
“Ugh, that is so hard,” the receptionist said, genuinely meaning it. It was Silas’ innocent face that did it—it was impossible for him to look like a dick. Even when he was very much being a dick.
“Oh look, here she is.” Silas gestured to Katherine, who tried (and failed) to keep her face from scowling as she stalked toward the desk.
As soon as she was within reach, Silas wrapped his arm around her waist, pulling her tight to his side.
His body was warm and solid against her.
She tried (and failed) not to admit that it felt good.
“Hi,” Katherine said. She meant to sound friendly, but it came out more as a grunt.
Silas cleared his throat, covering a laugh. “Isn’t she a peach?”
The receptionist—Joan, according to the nameplate on her desk—gave Katherine a once-over, the confusion about how that ended up with this very evident. “Uh, delightful,” she said. “So, how can I help you?”
“Well, Kat here”—Katherine stomped on Silas’ foot at the nickname, but he didn’t react—“is a true-crime fanatic. She was telling me how cool it would be to tour a real-life police station, and I thought, maybe I can make that dream come true for her. Since she’s such a dream come true for me.”
Gag.
Joan, though, practically swooned. “Oh, you are so sweet! But it’s such a busy day today, with everything going on. I’m not sure I’d be able to—”
Silas reached his hand out across the desk, and Joan slipped her hand into his. She looked like she was going to faint. “Please,” Silas interrupted. “It would mean so much to me.”
Joan paused for a moment, then smiled. “Why don’t you two lovebirds sit down for a minute and I’ll poke about to see if anyone has any free time to walk you around?”
Silas gave her hand a light squeeze. “Thank you so much, Joan.”
He let go as Joan Road Runner shot out of her seat to find someone for their tour.
“You are—” Katherine started, but the words dried up in her throat when Silas turned to her. There was a small swirl in the center of his pupils, and when she looked down, she saw him wiping the blood onto his black pants.
Compulsion. A very light version of it—just enough to make an ordinary do something that they were almost willing to do anyway—but it didn’t matter. That was a massively powerful Class 5 spell, and he’d carried it out without so much as a flinch.
He was a spoiled rich boy, but he was also an exceptionally talented witch.
Katherine’s one attempt at compulsion had been a spectacular failure, her efforts to get an ordinary to order a ham sandwich instead of turkey winding up with the ordinary storming out, ranting against the very concept of sandwiches in general.
After that, she’d been reluctant to try again—resources were limited, especially for high-powered spells, and she didn’t want to waste a cast when she had no chance of succeeding.
Still, though, she now itched to go back to Sunspot and give it another go. She bristled at the thought that Silas could do something she couldn’t. Her mind ran with juvenile thoughts of retribution. She wondered if she could find whatever fancy shampoo he used and replace it with Nair.
There was a small stutter to Silas’ walk as they moved to sit down, but that was the only evidence of the monumental spell he’d carried out.
He leaned his head back against the wall as one of his arms wrapped around the back of her chair—not touching her, but doing enough to keep up the appearance of them being a loving couple.
“What’s your plan now?” Katherine whispered.
“You’re not going to be able to compel anyone to give us the evidence if they don’t already want to.
” At least, she didn’t think so—a spell of that magnitude would require enough magic to knock Katherine out for a month, but who knew what kinds of spells Noctis was hiding.
They might have figured out a way for Silas to do it with just a prick of his finger.
“I know. I was thinking we get close to the evidence room, freeze everyone, then walk in and take it.”
This man kept pulling out wildly powerful spells like they were Tic Tacs. “You have a freeze spell that strong in you right now?”
“I have a spellbook.” Silas reached into his pocket and took out a small leather-bound book. Katherine’s jaw dropped.
Noctis claimed to have eleven spellbooks—each carrying every drop of a young witch’s magic, given as a sacrifice for the greater good—and that was enough to make them by far the most well-equipped coven in the country, if not the world.
The realization that they had more than that—that the Khatris had so much power flowing around that they could afford to gift one to their son—was staggering.
Katherine wondered how much more strength they were hoarding.
Vikrant and Nina could crush any witch in the world just with the power people knew about.
The thought of what they might be hiding …
“A pocket spellbook?” Katherine said, forcing her voice to sound light. “Do you also have a million dollars in small bills in your wallet?”
“Only five hundred K.”
“Ah.”
Silas shifted uncomfortably. “I know it’s a lot. I didn’t want it, but my parents insisted.”
“God forbid their precious baby boy have to use a regular spellbook like the rest of us.”
Silas turned to her, and this time, she was the one who flinched under the weight of the hurt that flashed through his eyes before he slammed the mask back down. “God forbid,” he muttered.
An apology rushed to the tip of her tongue, but she was stopped by the return of Joan, alongside a tall, gangly young officer.
Joan introduced the man as Officer Murray, but the man then introduced himself as Please, call me Luke and Mr. Khatri, I have stock in your parents’ company, it’s such an honor to meet you, do you think it’ll keep going up?
Katherine was happy to not have to talk as Silas regaled Luke with stories of the corporate world.
Katherine had always thought of Khatri International as a front for Noctis, but apparently they did something having to do with synergy and investments and Excel spreadsheets and synergy, did she mention synergy?
Katherine was very grateful she’d never had to have a real job.
The talk soon moved to the tour, but Katherine tuned that out as well.
Every corner they turned made her heart pound, every new person they saw another risk that she didn’t want to take.
Cameras blinked at her from the ceiling, and the thought that they might have facial recognition—that they might be scanning her right now, connecting her face with the yearbook photo that had the word suspect stamped on it in some police database, dialing up her family to tell them that they’d finally managed to track her down—almost stopped her in her tracks.
They were paused outside an interrogation room when Silas stopped talking to Luke long enough to notice her trembling hands.
His eyes swept over her, brow furrowing in concern.
She tried to calm herself down, but no amount of deep breathing could change the fact that she was three shades paler than normal, that there was a thin sheen of sweat covering her forehead.
Silas looked at her a moment longer, and her heart raged against her chest.
But he didn’t say anything. Just reached out and took her hand in his, giving it a light squeeze.