Chapter 16

SIXTEEN

Good thing I’d stuck around instead of forcing Brimstone to open and running off to do more investigating.

I gave the witch a bright smile and rubbed my sweaty palms on my apron as I moved behind the counter. “ Good morning. What can I get you?”

The woman gave the blackboard a cursory glance, then fixed me with those cool, eerily unblinking eyes. “ I’ll have a coffee to go, thank you.”

“ Coming right up.” I grabbed one of the paper cups and meticulously filled it with coffee. “ Cream ? Sugar ?”

“ Black .”

Like her soul? No . Just because she was from the Council —allegedly—it didn't make her a bad person. I was from the Council too, and look at me, pure like snow. After being slightly trampled over.

“ Were you able to make my potion ahead of time?” she asked as she brought out her wallet.

I accepted her bills and returned her change. Luckily , my hands didn’t shake.

Only a small delay, I reminded myself. That’s all.

“ It’s being made. You’ll have it by tomorrow, as agreed.”

“ All right,” she said, showing no hint of her actual thoughts. She took her coffee and left the shop.

The moment she disappeared from view, I sagged against the back shelf. Taking in a few deep breaths and centering myself, I checked on my crystal order. If I got lucky, it might get here in the afternoon.

Preparing for shipment.

I stared at the three blue words on the shipping status row. What did that mean? It was well after nine! Shouldn’t it have been shipped much earlier in the morning? The estimated arrival date still showed today, and that made me breathe easier. Perhaps their system hadn’t been updated yet, and my fully charged black jade was already happily on the way. Yes , that was it. Besides , as long as it arrived before tomorrow, it’d be okay, even if I had to wait until late into the night to get my crystal and do the potion.

I pushed the absolutely non-issue out of my mind and concentrated on the shop. Brimstone arrived for his shift about thirty minutes later, and then it was time to meet our possible UNSUB .

The streets around Ian’s cemetery were quiet, as usual. It was a peaceful kind of quiet, as if everyone was content to make as little noise as possible. The east side, where the shifters’ forest backed into the street, was especially silent. Powerful wards made sure humans didn’t want to linger for long and repelled their curiosity.

A small pang of disappointment hit me at the thought. I’d never manage such amazing wards, and it felt like I was letting down my community. That if they needed them, they’d have to go to another witch.

But teaming up made the world go round, and no one person could do everything by themselves, I reassured myself. “ A good witch knows when to delegate,” I told Fluffy and Rufus , who were trotting by my side.

Fluffy yipped in agreement. Rufus sent me a sidelong glance and remained silent.

“ Remember Rufus , if you get bad vibes, you woof twice, okay?”

Ian trusted Rufus’s instincts when it came to new people, so I would too. The dogs would also provide some protection if the caller meant ill intent. Just because the caller had been unwilling to meet in person, it didn't mean they didn’t want to kidnap me.

Rufus snorted and stopped to sniff at a few dead weeds sprouted by the fence.

I tugged at his leash, and we continued on.

A lone figure was standing by the cemetery fence in the distance. About my height, bundled in an oversized brown wool coat, a beanie pulled down to their eyes, a yellow scarf, and a black face mask. They kept darting furtive glances at the forest across the street, no doubt feeling unnerved by the power of the wards.

They stiffened when they saw me approach and clenched their gloved hands by their side. They didn’t appear ready to throw a potion at me, and if they wore gloves, it meant they couldn’t do direct witch spells on me—you needed direct touch for that. There were also no vehicles parked nearby ready to kidnap me.

I stopped a few paces away, waiting for Rufus’s judgment, when the familiarity of the stranger hit me.

I snapped my finger and pointed at him. “ Garlic Knots Guy !”

He took a shocked step back. “ What ? No !”

“ You totally are!”

“ No ! I … I …” He deflated under my eyes, his shoulders slumping in defeat. With a heavy sigh, he unrolled the heavy scarf and pulled the beanie upward. “ You were there yesterday.”

“ Yeah ,” I said happily, proud of recognizing him right away. “ You’re one of the director’s assistants, right?”

“ One of many,” he said morosely. He eyed the dogs, “ Are they dangerous?”

“ Only if you try to harm me, right, Fluffy ?”

Fluffy barked and tried to reach Garlic Knots Guy . I stopped her and studied Rufus . He had come to sit by my side but didn’t appear unduly bothered by Knots Guy’s presence—no growling, no show of teeth. The lack of animosity reassured me.

“ I don’t want to harm you,” he said, almost in a panic. “ I need your help.” His expression turned comically scared. “ You … You’re the witch, right?”

I tsked. “ If I weren’t, you’d be in a heap of trouble right now.”

He wrung his hands. “ I’m sorry, I’m a little nervous.”

“ Because you’ve never met a witch?”

“ I don’t want to get in trouble. I saw your shop recommended online. I — I can pay!”

He was so nervous, I felt bad for him. “ Is this about the filming incidents?”

“ Y -yes?”

I put up a hand. “ Say no more.” Turning , I brought up my phone and dialed Key .

“ Who are you calling?” he asked in a panicked shrill. “ I’ll deny everything!”

“ Shh ,” I warned. “ You wouldn’t want the shifters to notice you, would you? Not after you poisoned one of them.”

His eyes grew larger. “ That wasn’t me, I swear!”

He sounded scared enough to be truthful. Interesting .

Key chose that moment to pick up. “ Hey Key , I —” Rufus’s growl alerted me of movement. Instinctively , I reached out and grabbed Garlic Knots guy’s jacket before he could book it. I put down the phone. “ Not so fast. I know who you are and where you work, remember?” Rufus growled again for good measure, and Fluffy got his back with a couple of barks.

Garlic Knots guys jumped. “ I’ll stay!”

“ Good .” I brought the phone back up and asked her to rally up the troops. “ Group meeting.”

“ W -what?” Garlic Knots guys stammered.

I ended the call with Key and beckoned. “ C’mon , let’s get out of this cold.”

“ But you have to help me.”

“ All in good time. What’s your name?”

“ Ethan .”

Thirty minutes later, we were sitting at a group table on the open terrace of a local southern cuisine restaurant.

“ Can’t we go somewhere warmer?” Dru complained, rubbing her hands.

I gestured toward Fluffy and Rufus , who were lying down next to two bowls of water. “ Other places won’t let the dogs in.”

Dru sent them an accusatory glare. Rufus thumped his tail once, and Fluffy licked his nose. Adorable .

“ You were there yesterday too,” Garlic Knots Guy , aka Ethan , said belligerently, glaring at Key and Shane , the other two occupants of the table, with deep mistrust. He looked ready to bolt. I didn’t take it too seriously; he’d been looking ready to bolt since I’d dragged him here, but so far, had made no movement to leave after the first attempt.

I understood his internal conflict. It wasn’t as if he had many options left. If he contacted another witch, they might not be as nice as I was and sell him directly to the bounty hunters.

Better if he didn’t know we were all bounty-hunter-adjacent.

“ Key and Shane work for Fairy Circles Cakes ,” I explained.

“ Then why are they here?” Ethan muttered.

“ Brett , the person you put in the hospital, asked them to help when he noticed the sabotage.”

Ethan grew panicked again. “ It wasn’t me, I swear!”

There it was again. “ You told me you needed help to uncurse something.”

“ Yes , but I didn’t hurt the shifter.”

“ You better explain from the beginning.”

He took a big sip of his iced tea, making Dru shudder, then took a few moments to compose himself and get his story in order. From the unimpressed look in Shane’s one eye, his very fake story.

But I had a feeling we were about to hear the truth. Call it witch’s intuition.

Admittedly , not my best barometer, but this time I had a good feeling about it.

“ So there’s this guy in production,” Ethan began. “ He’s an ass and treats everyone like crap.” He waited, clearly expecting a show of sympathy.

I nodded and smiled encouragingly. Dru sipped some coffee. Key was trying hard to keep an open but blank expression and mostly succeeding. Shane was giving Rufus some of his chicken salad.

“ Go on,” I said.

“ Okay , so this guy, he’s the son of someone important, right?”

“ Right ,” I agreed.

“ And he keeps getting the good jobs. When he landed second director’s assistant, I was so fed up with it, you know?”

“ So you decided to take him out?”

Ethan squirmed. “ Maybe ?”

“ That’s not very nice,” I pointed out.

He scowled. “ He’s not very nice.”

Key leaned forward, no trace of judgment in her face. “ If you wanted to harm this person, why did you sabotage all this other stuff?”

Ethan rubbed his forehead. “ He was told to check electrical are doing their jobs. I thought if they started to get messed up, he’d get demoted.”

“ And you’d get his job?” It wasn’t much of a guess.

“ Well , yeah.”

“ What kind of spells did you do? Are you a witch?”

“ No , I’m a water mage.”

The most common of mages, along with air ones. Most had little to no magic and simply an affinity to the element. “ Then how…?”

“ I , ah, bought a spell online in the dark market,” he confessed guiltily.

“ From a seller you knew?” I asked like it didn’t matter that he had a usual dark magic supplier.

“ No !” he exclaimed, scandalized. “ It was the first time I bought anything there. I found the shop, and it looked good. Great reviews.”

Shane snorted. “ Dude , don’t try to act the victim.”

“ I’m not. I know what I did was bad, but it was just a small spell. I didn’t think things would get so bad.”

“ What was the spell supposed to do?” I asked.

“ First , I messed with the script notes so he’d get blamed because he was supposed to check them. But he blamed someone else.” Ethan hung his head. “ That’s when I used the spell. It was supposed to make others get a bad feeling around him, but it didn’t work. Like at all.”

“ What did you do, then?”

“ I told the witch their spell didn’t work, so they sent me another.”

My eyebrows rose. “ You spent more money on a shop that sent you a wonky spell?”

“ Oh , no,” he said, relieved. “ They sent a replacement for free.”

This time, it was Dru who snorted. “ Sure .”

“ I swear,” Ethan insisted.

“ And you didn’t think it was weird?” Shane asked dryly.

“ Why would it be weird? It was their fault the spell was bad.”

Clearly , Ethan was telling the truth about never having bought things in the dark market before. “ Let’s just say the dark marketplace isn’t known for giving away things for free. What happened next?”

“ Well , I used the new potion on Parker’s mug. Daniel was supposed to get zapped when he was about to give it to him so he’d splash it all over Parker and get yelled at. But he made Gina hold it and she got some burns on her hand.” He ran a hand over his face. “ She dropped the mug before she got seriously harmed, thankfully.”

I was almost scared to ask. “ Did you, um, ask for a third potion?”

Ethan shrunk into himself.

“ Dude !” Shane exclaimed.

“ The witch sounded very sorry! I believed them.”

“ So you used another potion?” This must be the one that made the lighting equipment go wonky. On principle, magic didn’t affect electronics quite that way, but there might be ways of going around it.

“ I did, but then I had second thoughts, so I cleaned it away.” He looked at us beseechingly.

“ The lights still acted up,” Key said.

Ethan took another big gulp of his iced tea.

“ Well ?” I prodded.

“ The potion I used was on Daniel’s earbuds,” he said, sounding thoroughly lost. “ It was supposed to make him hear voices.”

A spell wouldn’t interfere with the actual sound, but dark magic potions could induce hallucinations when they touched skin.

“ We didn’t hear about that,” Shane said.

“ Because I cleaned it up!”

“ And you got another potion to use on the lighting equipment?” Shane asked mercilessly.

“ No , that's what I’m trying to tell you.” Ethan rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands. “ I didn’t use any other potion. Didn’t talk to the witch or anything. I thought the lights thing was normal stuff going haywire. There’s always something malfunctioning. But then when I heard that crew member got sick… I think my spells cursed the production. I need to uncurse it.”

I leaned forward, patient but stern. “ What about the potion on the trunk?”

Ethan blinked in confusion. “ What trunk?”

“ Audio equipment trunk in one of the trucks,” Key said. “ There was potion on the latches.”

Ethan reeled back. “ That wasn’t me.” When none of us appeared convinced, he added with pure desperation, “ You have to believe me.”

I kind of did, and from the glances I exchanged with the others, they did too.

Which meant…

“ There are two saboteurs,” Key said.