Witch Interrupted (4 page)

Three hours later Marcus was still asleep, sprawled on her bed, shirtless and sexy. Katie didn’t want to cast eyebright to offset the sleep spell; that particular herb would interact poorly with the memory magic to come.

“I just figured he was a kinky little puppy with a tattoo fetish. I never expected him to be a scientist. How interesting.” Tonya, her handler, friend and the main reason Katie had security in her life, often joked about screwing a wolf so she could lose weight without cutting calories. She often joked about screwing wolves, period. She tried to get Katie to joke about it, telling her the levity would make her problem easier to bear. As would actually screwing some wolves, but Tonya was dead wrong about that. However, the minute Katie told Tonya what—who—was chained to the bed, her friend dropped onto the couch and into professional mode.

Shrewd blue eyes narrowed as Tonya studied the closed bedroom door. “What are the chances he’s led anyone here?”

“He thinks he’s outsmarted everyone, but it’s worth noting he didn’t outsmart us.” Nervous about Marcus, about everything, Katie had double-checked their go bags and packed extra belongings. Sudden relocations weren’t high on her list of favorite things, but they’d done it enough that they’d learned not to wander too deep into possessions and paperwork.

Tonya opened her massive handbag and started sorting through it. “You’re sure he’s a transformed wolf and not a coven pet? I wouldn’t put it past the California covens to try it just because someone else did. They’re always jumping on fads.”

“He was definitely one of us.”

“Is he one of mine?” Before going into hiding with Katie and Zhang Li, Tonya had been a sympathizer, part of the underground railroad for transformed wolves. Tonya and Katie had been on the exact opposite sides of the fence and had had to learn to laugh about it, or at least not discuss philosophy. “That could explain why he’s still cognizant. Of course, mine aren’t supposed to remain in the continental United States.”

“I don’t think so.” Katie scrubbed the hair that had dried into an awkward cowlick on the back of her neck. “He mentioned a recent transformation, and you haven’t been in that line of work for, what, twenty years?”

“Something like that.”

Tonya had had to let that vocation go, and unlike Katie, she’d loved her work. Katie often wondered how isolated her friend had remained from her former collaborators. But the sympathizers were the best at disappearing people from witch radar, which is why Vernon Harrower, the then-director of the keepers, had cut a deal with Tonya to save Katie. He would step down if Tonya would hide his protégée and her father.

It has been better for Katie to disappear than face the results of the inquest—and the wrath of the new council director, Hiram Lars, who’d intended to execute her.

Twenty years wasn’t long enough for Katie to be comfortable with a cognizant wolf, no matter how polite and handsome. “We’re going to alter his memories. Play it safe. I have everything ready. All we need to do is link up and cast the spell.”

“A life wipe, if we manage it, will suck us as dry as a drought. Tomorrow is patrol day,” Tonya said. “We can’t be power-drained on patrol day. Let’s wait.”

“And give you time to talk me out of it? No way. We’ll avoid the patrol old-style.” Without reserves, they’d use the primed disguises in their go bags to cover their DNA and travel in the opposite direction of the wolves. The Birmingham sentries were predictable, and their duty was to seek indies and claim jumpers, not witches. They didn’t know witches existed.

“He may have family. Children. A wife. What if he’s married to the wolf who loved him?”

“The wolf who loved him. He’s not James Bond, he’s just some guy.” Katie’s cheeks heated. “Anyway, he said he was single when I gave him the tat last month.”

“You asked if he was single?” Her handler smirked, the skin beside her eyes crinkling with amusement. “Why would you want to know that, Katie-kins?”

“No reason.” Katie ducked her head until her glasses slid down her nose, blurring her view. “He didn’t mention dependents or pets or anything time-sensitive when he let us handcuff him. That says alone to me. We’re wiping him.”

Depending on how old Marcus was, fine-tuning memories wasn’t simple. It required steady magic and surgical precision to coax and nudge the brain into accepting that it had always belonged to a wolf, that witches didn’t exist.

Katie was good at it. One of the best. She’d participated in countless wipes on the keeper council. But there had, indeed, been a full coven, thirteen per team. Eleven or twelve when they’d had a member down, but usually thirteen.

No one had ever suggested they manage a wipe with fewer, whether Katie was involved or not. She’d be testing the limits of her strength soon. It would have to suffice. The only other witch she could trust was Vern, but she’d rather stab herself with a fork than ask him for help. The cost would be too dear. Moreover, Tonya and Vern hated each other so much their animosity would negate the benefits.

Tonya crunched up a mint from her handbag before answering. “What if we just tweak the part where Marcus found out about us and let him go? That wouldn’t drain us.”

“Insufficient.” Short-term memories weren’t tough to mold, but a transformed wolf required a life wipe. “He could get ambushed by the Birmingham pack any day, and then what would happen?”

“Sounds like he’s got that under control. It’s not unheard of.”

“People brag.” Though Marcus hadn’t seemed like a braggart. “He’s not that clever, Tonya. He flubbed up in front of me.”

“I had to try.” Tonya shook her tin of mints like a maraca. “Tell you what. I’ll help modify his memories, as long as you agree we’re not turning him in to the elders or your old friends.”

“The keepers were never my friends.” They’d gotten their hooks into Katie as soon as she’d mastered the wolf and come out of it with convex magic. Over the next thirty years, they’d chewed her up and spit her out. Some days her soul still felt like a piece of old gum.

“That’s because you were on the wrong side. You’re a sympathizer at heart.”

“You know better than that.” Whichever way she might have leaned as a youth, after thirty years as a keeper, she’d seen and learned too much about wolves to be a sympathizer. Before the digital age and advances in forensics, wolves hadn’t been as inhibited. “But let’s not talk about me. Let’s talk about Marcus.”

“Have you thought about what we’ll do if we don’t have enough energy for the spell? I’m flush right now, but there are only three of us.”

“I’m flush too, and Ba’s always full of it.”

Tonya grinned. “Full of something.”

“Too true.” Her father’s confidence and magical muscle often made up for his lack of precision. “Anyway, I strengthened the memory mixture with cayenne.” Cayenne pepper stored magic but had no effect itself, beyond skin irritation. Katie liked to supercharge her cayenne far beyond the standard, a habit developed during her keeper days. Difficult to work with, but a little went a long way. “It should increase the impact when I do Marcus.”

Tonya’s eyes widened dramatically. “Do him? Oh, Katie, I’m so proud. I thought you’d never wise up.”

“Come on, Tonya.” Katie sighed. “Not now.”

“Would you prefer I be serious?” Tonya crossed her legs and leaned against the back of the couch, a sure sign she was digging in for an argument. The woman could nag the head off a horse. “Would you prefer I compare a memory wipe to rape?”

Katie gritted her teeth. “Don’t go there. It’s not the same.”

Tonya launched into her case, and Katie regretted fussing at her. “Marcus doesn’t want this done to him, and we’re going to do it anyway.”

“We’re not going to hurt him.” Marcus didn’t ooze the hostility Katie associated with the wolves she’d neutralized as a keeper. Yet that, in and of itself, made him more dangerous to her personally. He was pure temptation. “He just doesn’t get to keep any memories a wolf pack could use against witches.”

“It’s cruel. Inside, we’re all the same,” Tonya said, echoing Marcus.

“Agree to disagree. It won’t change what has to be done.”

“I know. But I don’t have to like it.” Tonya, to Katie’s surprise, acquiesced. They’d argued many times to impasse, but they’d never been faced with a situation where push had come to shove.

Katie risked some deeper honesty. “I don’t like it either. Thank you for helping.”

“I’m helping all of us. We’re in this together, we three.” Tonya held out the tin of candies. “Want a sweetie?”

Katie shook her head and checked her watch. “I’m worried about Marcus. I don’t know why he’s not awake yet. Hey, Ba? What did you put in that sleep spell?”

“It was your blend, not mine.” Dad clumped out of the stillroom with a mason jar so full of Katie’s simples it looked like sand art. She didn’t even
want
to know. “I can’t help it if I’m strong as an ox.”

“I didn’t know I had any sedative left.” Most of the time she used pure valerian out of laziness, but when she mixed a batch, it contained valerian, lavender and cinquefoil to instill good dreams—as well as cucumber to ensure they weren’t naughty ones.

No wonder Marcus was out cold; wolves were highly susceptible to lavender.

“I kept some for emergencies,” Dad said. “Good idea, huh?”

“We shouldn’t poppy him until he’s alert.” On one hand, she wanted to postpone the spell because it was fraught with peril. On the other hand, since Marcus couldn’t truly be
in
her bed, she wanted him out of it ASAP.

“Then we should definitely wait,” Tonya said. When Katie glared at her, she waggled a finger. “Waiting would give us a chance to find out more about him.”

“I’m not sure we need to know more.” Katie hadn’t told her about Dad’s snooping yet. Tonya wasn’t going to be happy he’d gone digging. “Let me just peek in the bedroom.” She headed for the door and turned the knob quietly.

Marcus, sound asleep, sprawled on her bed like a deep, dark fantasy of a man, his wrists handcuffed above his head and his face relaxed.

Supine. Harmless. Nothing stopping her from…

Shutting the door and vowing not to check on him again for ten whole minutes.

Katie turned and found Tonya right behind her. For a large, not-exactly-youthful woman, Tonya moved like a cat.

She winked. “What’s he look like? Is he hot?”

“Tall.”

“Everyone’s tall to you, honey.” Tonya bumped Katie out of the way and opened the door. Almost immediately, she whistled. “Good Goddess in heaven, do you suppose he looked like that when he was a witch?”

“Put your tongue back in your mouth,” Dad said.

Katie didn’t want to consider Marcus as a witch or it would make him too relatable. A dangerous path to tread. “I doubt it.”

Wolves, along with cracking good health, had two things going for them—high metabolism and the magic of the shift. Witches believed wolves subconsciously altered their forms when they changed. It was simplest way to explain why many were at the top end of the physically attractive scale while witches were not—or no more so than humans.

The last time Katie had skimmed a region newsletter, Millington coven had been putting Harry through his paces. Answers about wolfish mysteries might come out of Harry eventually. Tonya stayed abreast of goings-on in the coven network, but Katie was content to live quietly and try to forget her first pass-through had ever happened.

She counted herself lucky she’d escaped alive. Most keepers didn’t.

“He looks familiar.” Tonya, in addition to being big-hearted and cheery, had a mind like a steel trap—not a politically correct simile around wolves, but the only wolf here was unconscious. “What pass-through was he on?”

“He looks about thirty. Second, tops.” Their kind aged at the same rate as humans until they mastered the magic in their late teens, when the ageing process slowed down. Way down. For wolves, it slowed too, though not as markedly.

Tonya clucked her tongue. “I say we interrogate him.”

“He doesn’t get to talk,” Dad said.

“I suppose we could ask a few questions,” Katie agreed. “He wasn’t, ah, disobliging.” There had been a moment or four that she’d wished he’d drop the politeness and grab her. He hadn’t.

Damn, she should date more. It had been too long since she’d had sex. Was that why Marcus affected her twice as strongly as she remembered other wolves doing?

“I bet he wasn’t disobliging.” Tonya waggled her eyebrows at Katie and slipped the mints into a pants pocket. “How obliging were you?”

Dad held the pint jar up to the light. “I held a gun to his head. How obliging do you think we were?”

Katie wasn’t going to take Tonya’s bait…in front of Dad. “Marcus didn’t seem upset. He wanted to discuss his research.”

“Research he’s been doing since he changed or before he changed? Depending on what he studied, we could find out who he was. I swear he looks familiar.”

Katie fiddled with the hem of her T-shirt. Her tunic and Marcus’s shirt were soaking in cold water to remove the bloodstains. “Have you heard of any scientist witches going missing?”

“I can have Nathaniel ask around,” Tonya assured her. “The covens don’t always publicize their transformations, but we know who to ask.”

“Don’t bother. I already found out who he is.” Dad tightened the lid on the jar and started shaking it. “I think I put too much shit in here.”

“Zhang Li, you did not,” Tonya exclaimed.

“Definitely did,” Dad said. “I need a bigger jar. Maybe that pickle jar. Is it empty yet, Katie?”

“I recycled it, Ba. You can’t use just any container for simples. Your spell components can become tainted.” Recipe spells were tetchier than single-ingredient spells. Not many witches could work around impurities. That was why some spell-grade components were often so doggone expensive and hard to come by.

Tonya interrupted. “What I meant was, you’d better not have gone poking around. Hellfire, old man. That’s why we had to relocate last time. You and your big mouth.”

“I hadn’t decided how to tell you that part,” Katie said with a sigh. “I wanted to deal with the immediate situation first.”