Chapter Eighteen #2
It was for the ruse, she knew. They were supposed to be a couple in love, and her having a panic attack while her “boyfriend” ignored her would definitely undercut that.
But the fact that it actually helped to have his hand in hers—the fact that she wanted to grip it tighter, instead of shoving it away like she knew she should—was beyond this game they were playing.
And that was something she couldn’t afford to think about right now.
They walked like that, hand in hand, down the hall, Luke continuing to drone on. After a few moments, Silas leaned in, his breath hot against her neck. Katherine thought he might drop a kiss on her cheek, but instead, he whispered in her ear.
“We’re almost at Evidence. I’ll handle the brunt of the spell, but you’ll need to let me take magic from you to fuel it. Is that all right?”
Katherine was surprised he even asked—everything about his background suggested he’d be one to just take. “Yeah,” she said. “Just tell me when.”
Luke led them to a gridded metal door with EVIDENCE printed on a large sign and gestured to the lockers behind it. “These lockers are where we keep evidence,” he said. Katherine didn’t regret ignoring so much of the tour if this was the type of sparkling commentary he’d been offering.
Silas gave her a small nod, and she tuned Luke out again as she pulled her hand away from Silas and slipped it into her pocket. She tried not to miss his solid warmth against her, but her goddamn biological imperative made it impossible not to.
She pushed that thought away and fingered her caster in her pocket.
Years of doing spells in public had made this motion smooth and easy, the blade flicking open and against her palm without so much as a wrinkle in the fabric apparent to the outside observer.
Silas’ hand was in his pocket as well, clearly doing the same.
His other hand reached for that small spellbook again, a quick flash of gold lighting the air as he absorbed the rune for the freeze spell.
Then he reached for her again, and she joined her palm with his, and her magic started to sing.
It wasn’t like sharing magic with Sylvia or Fiona. They were both talented witches, but when she gave them magic, they had to pull. There was a pain associated with that tug, the feeling that something was wrong, that something was being taken, even though Katherine was freely giving it.
With Silas, there was no tug. There was an open river, her magic flowing down it like water, a current floating it safely away. It was so peaceful like this.
And that was a big problem.
When a power share came with pain, it was easy to remind herself that she needed to be careful, that she needed to stop it before it went too far. But when it was flowing like this, she could get lost in it. Let it go on forever. Until she had nothing left.
The panic hit her in a surge, and she reached for her magic, ready to clamp down on the stream—but then Silas pulled his hand away, cutting her off just as the rune glistened on his palm.
The air sparked around them, the bitter scent of magic spreading as the freeze spell flowed in gold sparks through the air.
Everyone it landed on stopped in their place, papers in hand, fingers half pressed to their keyboards. The spell was fast and efficient, leaving no time for any of the ordinaries to notice the extraordinary happening around them.
Silas glowed as he did it, his face relaxed, his dark brown eyes open and glistening. An enormously powerful witch carrying out an enormously powerful spell. It was … it was something Katherine wasn’t ready to admit to herself.
Instead, she reached for the frozen Luke’s keys, then unlocked the door and gestured inside.
“After you.”
The evidence from Hollywood and Highland was laid out for them.
It was on a long table along the wall of the room, in the midst of being investigated by a frozen pair of lab techs.
Silas was glad they wouldn’t have to search hard to find it—his head was pounding, tiny anvils hammering against his temples.
Doing the compulsion at the front desk had been a bad idea.
Noctis’ spellmakers had worked hard on that one, but it was still a Class 5, and he’d had to push himself to make it work.
But he couldn’t bring himself to admit to Katherine that yes, he had been planning to use plain old charm, and yes, that failed. His ego couldn’t take that.
The freeze spell, at least, had been a good cast. They should have three or four minutes before the world started to shift back into action—a pretty fantastic accomplishment, considering the sheer number of people he’d had to freeze.
It was the best he’d ever cast that spell, and he gave himself none of the credit.
All of that went to the witch who’d funneled him the power to do it.
His magic liked Katherine’s. If only Katherine liked him.
She’d gone to the far left of the table, so he moved to the right, scanning the evidence in front of him.
He had been steadfastly avoiding thinking of the human cost of what happened, but the layout here—phones, wallets, ripped-off pieces of Halloween costumes—made that impossible.
People died. Lives had been forever changed.
He couldn’t let his selfish desires make him forget that—he owed it to these people to investigate this to the full extent of his abilities.
He kept walking, moving down the line slowly, searching for anything out of the ordinary. It was all more of the same, bloody splatters of lives ended too soon, images that would haunt his nightmares, things that he—
He saw it just in time. Katherine was only a few inches away, her head turned, but if she moved just a little, she’d catch that glint too.
Sylvia’s caster, sitting with the blade out, a fleck of blood dried on its tip.
The second his brain made the connection between the knife in front of him and the caster he’d seen Sylvia use the night before, Silas was in action.
He reached for it with his left hand at the same time his right angled against the blade of his own caster.
He held in the hiss of pain as his hand gripped the handle of Sylvia’s caster, the rune glinting before the knife flickered out of view.
He slipped it into his pocket just as Katherine whirled on him.
Her eyes narrowed, and his heart skipped several beats. He needed her not to have seen that. He needed time to figure this out on his own, to find some way that this didn’t mean what it seemed to mean.
Sylvia had been at Hollywood and Highland during the attack. If she were somehow responsible …
He knew what would happen if he told his parents what he’d found.
Laws in the witching world were ostensibly enforced by courts and juries, but Vikrant and Nina’s hands were all over the verdicts.
With evidence like this, they’d be able to make it so Sylvia wouldn’t just lose her job—they’d take her magic forever.
And she wouldn’t be the only one to go down for this.
Katherine, her friends, everyone who his parents thought might be on Sylvia’s side would be out too.
Aestas would be fractured, and anyone left would turn their hate toward the man responsible.
There had to be a reasonable explanation, one that would absolve Sylvia of this so that she could her keep her magic and Katherine could keep her job. He just needed enough time to find it.
So he let his face split into a lazy smile, relaxed his posture. “Keep staring like that and it’ll go to my head.”
She stared at him a moment longer, then let out an annoyed huff and went back to her search. He did the same, continuing down the table, trying to stay calm.
All the while, Sylvia’s knife burned a hole in his pocket.