9. Advoccultant

nine

Natje Tage.

The Nachthexe.

She was the spitting image of her twin sister Morgen, minus the perfectly coiffed blonde hair. Natje wore hers in a blunt brunette bob that skimmed her jaw with bangs running in a straight line just above her eyebrows. Where the Morgen was daylight and warmth strapped beneath lace collars and pressed slacks, Natje was midnight and cool, gripped in black leggings and boots.

Milla had idolized Natje from the moment she laid eyes on her. From the calf-height boots to the sway of her hips and arrogant hold of her shoulders, Natje was every inch the witch Milla wished she was. Though her face was the wrong shape to wear a bob with such glamorous austerity, Milla’s bangs were proof enough of her adoration.

“Of course, my hourly rate is non-negotiable.” Natje rose from her chair and swept toward Milla, bringing a fresh midnight breeze. “A very interested third party handled the retainer, so we will not need to discuss that at any great length.” She nodded to Agent Sterne, ignoring how her client gawked at her like a codfish. “That will be all, Agent, and, for Horned God’s sake, Sterne, try to smile once in a while.”

Impossibly, the creases at the corner of his mouth deepened, and he stepped through the open door, leaving Milla with a living legend.

At least, a legend in her mind.

“Did Morgen send you?”

“No.” Natje slid into her seat, gesturing to the empty chair on Milla’s side of the table, and set a large, black, patent leather tote beside her. She withdrew a folio, tap-tap-tapping deep magenta fingernails on the edge.

Milla eased into her chair, sat on her hands, and eyed the folio. “So what do we do?”

“ We do nothing, girl. Horned God, you have done enough on your own. Walking them back from a cleaving will be the battle of a lifetime. I cannot wait to get started.”

“A cleaving?” Milla slammed back in her seat, stunned. “They haven’t cleaved anyone since McCarthyism ended.”

“Indeed.” Natje’s grin was a knife slash, her eyes flashing cold with starlight and far too amused by the prospect of a cleaving.

Killing a witch was no small thing, and cleaving was the highest corporal punishment allowed by C.R.O.W. One that had not occurred since Joseph McCarthy started up his nonsense in the middle of the twentieth century.

Yes, a witch could suffer a hanging or a burning at the stake. She could be tied in chains and tossed into a river, or buried alive, or flayed, or drawn and quartered. Bones could be salted, familiars could be stewed, but a witch could be resurrected from hanging and reborne from bone dust. Diego was proof enough of that.

A cleaving was final. The ultimate punishment in which the three separate pieces that made up a witch were torn apart—the Body, the Shade, and the Soul—leaving behind nothing but an empty husk for time to turn to mulch and dust.

She gripped the edge of her chair, focusing on a jagged mote lacquered into the table to keep from screaming. Of course, they would push for a cleaving. She was a Death Witch, Forbidden and Foule. She’d flung a blood-blade hex at Agent Sterne in front of an audience of Enforcers. She’d reduced a Loa to a pile of dust and banished Ezra beyond the reaches of even the strongest witches of C.R.O.W. She was anathema to all the coven stood for, kept hidden from the moment her Way reared its rotting head. Like that jagged mote on the table’s surface, Milla was a flaw, a taint ruining the otherwise glossy sheen of C.R.O.W.

Blood thrummed in her ears, drowning out whatever Natje was saying. She tapped her nails on the table, Milla’s name leaving her lips as a shout underwater. She blinked, biting her tongue to take her mind away from the horror of a cleaving.

“What?”

“I asked, ‘Have they allowed you a candle’?” Natje tapped the folio, sky-blue eyes intent on Milla. She shook her head. “Bell or book?” Another head shake. Natje flipped open the folio and summoned a Montblanc roller pen to hand, taking down Milla’s answers in a looping script. “Visitation?”

“Other than you?” Natje held Milla’s eye until she relented. “Agent Simmons,” she said. Natje straightened, and Milla felt a momentary rush of victory that she’d managed to surprise the Nachthexe. “Not that one.”

She nodded and flipped through the folio, stopping at the beginning of Milla’s charges. “As you can see, C.R.O.W. was more than willing to supply me with the discovery, cocky witches that they are.”

Milla caught hints and suggestions as to how incredibly fucked she was as Natje skimmed the file. A photo of herself and Diego taken through the front window of Southern Gothic, a grainy shot of her running through the Colonial Quarter, knees bleeding and the fingertips of one hand blackened and cradled against her chest. A pile of white dust on the ground and a report from Agent Simmons, though which one she could not tell.

There were a few photos taken by city security cameras showing Milla running with Darkly, the two of them grinning at each other at a stoplight, or Milla paces ahead of the Dark Witch as she flew across the bridge. One of Milla pacing in Toques Place with a phone to her ear as Diego and Darkly looked on.

Notes in a familiar hand peppered the file, and though Darkly’s handwriting was neat and concise, it was nearly impossible to read at a glance and upside down.

Natje picked up a form, and Milla caught the word “Incomplete” typed across the page. “The report from your arrest,” Natje explained, flipping the page over to scan the back before returning it to the file. “Considering the lack of scrutiny given to your arrest and processing, I might consider pursuing a line of Enforcer incompetence.”

“How so?”

“None of your aural scans are conclusive, and you were neither processed at the site of the arrest nor seen to by a hippocromantic in good standing. Without medical assessments to support A.I.I. claims, what aural readings and E.R.I.E.s Agent Simmons and her team did manage in that swamp are inadmissible.” Natje pressed the tip of her finger to her lips and winked. “A convenient coincidence.”

Milla lowered her gaze to the file, the half-completed form, and the empty medical form beside it, an idea percolating in the back of her head that she had no wish to acknowledge.

But how could she not? Lou had managed her arrest, and the Light Witch did not strike Milla as negligent. Beyond that, witches did not believe in coincidences. She looked up from the forms to find Natje watching her closely and nodded once to show she understood. The implications, at least. Horned God knew she had no idea what the rhyme or reason was for her botched arrest.

Natje smiled and sat back in her chair, adopting a more casual posture. Her magenta-tipped fingers folded together on the table, and her elbows rested on the edge. “The charges levied against you are severe, Ludmilla.”

“How bad are they?”

An eyebrow disappeared beneath the line of Natje’s bangs. “Apparently, someone performed an act of magick Forbidden and Foule involving a desecrant creature in your demesne, witnessed by two Aural Insurance Investigators.”

Milla shrank in her chair, uncertain to which act of magick Natje referred. There’d been the raw-head, whom she had reduced to a pile of dust, the summoning of a Shade into Darkly and the following exorcism, and then the whole thing with the Loa, more summoned Shades, and a banishment that had left Milla drunker than a skunk and her Way jacked-up on Dark Witch juice.

At least the Aural Insurance Investigators in question were obvious. Darkly had had a front-row seat for all of it and confirmed his sister was with him when Milla dusted the raw-head.

“Anything you care to add?’ Natje prompted.

“I’m an idiot?”

Natje smirked, cold blue eyes warming as she snorted quietly. “Anything useful?”

“I wouldn’t have dusted that raw-head if those two idiots hadn’t used me as bait.”

“Yes, well, the odds of that accusation sticking to C.R.O.W.’s darling Light Witch and her pet are slim to none.” Natje flipped the folio closed. “And that is the last time I want to hear anything resembling an admission of the Forbidden and Foule from you.”

“Aren’t you my advoccultant?” Milla asked, swallowing the rise of sudden dread. She thought back through their conversation, seeking out the moment Natje stated as such. She had asked after Milla’s care in the cells, and shown her the evidence gathered against her, but she could just as easily be here to prosecute Milla, and she, idiot that she was, had just admitted to using magick Forbidden and Foule.

“Milla, du musst die Kirche im Dorf lassen.” Natje tutted. “I can hear your mind running in circles.”

She startled, the rapid-fire German breaking her out of the doom spiral. “I must … what am I doing with the church?”

“Leaving it in the village,” said Natje. “You have always overthought things, even as a little girl. Getting so carried away that you forgot to pay attention to the little things.” She leaned forward and reached across the table, frowning when Milla flinched and pressed harder against her chair. Those cold eyes flitted over her face and body, and Natje straightened. “So I will speak plainly: I have been retained by a third party who wishes to remain anonymous to represent you before the Tribunal representative being sent to hear your case. As such, the knowledge you share with me must echo your behavior as a Fine and Faire Witch of the Demesne.”

It helped. Hearing Natje state she was here to represent her helped , but it did little to unravel the festering dread in her belly.

“I thought … I thought I was supposed to talk to my lawyer.”

“Yes, of course. Tell me how you tend the demesne and reign in the local desecrants. Tell me how the raw-head was a threat to the mortal populace but, Horned God, girl, do not tell me anything that can be used against you.”

“That doesn’t make any sense, you’re my advoccultant. I’m not supposed to lie to you.”

“Then do not.” Natje threw her hands up in defeat and sat back in the chair. “Paint for me a rosy picture of a Fine and Faire witch in good standing and omit the nasty details. Nobody lies to an agent of C.R.O.W., Ludmilla, least of all me.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense.”

“The Tribunal does not make sense. By the Triple Goddess, you are the daughter of the Advoccultant General. A witch suspected of the Forbidden and Foule is guilty until proven innocent. How do you not know how this works?”

Milla opened her mouth to argue, closed it, and picked at the dark mote on the table’s surface. “Your sister didn’t include witchy legal process in her lessons,” she said.

Natje scoffed, disgust flickering across her face. “Morgen’s idea of child-rearing and mine are vastly different.”

That earned Milla’s full attention. She had always sensed tension between Morgen and Natje. On those few visits, always around a lunar or solar eclipse, the sisters would bicker and argue over the tiniest things before retreating to opposite ends of Morgen’s tower or Big Torch Key. She had thought it odd that even when the sisters resided in the same place, she rarely ever saw them at the same time. “And what would the Nachthexe have taught me?”

Again, that cold, clear gaze pierced her from across the table, taking in the ragged line of Milla’s bangs to the hunched slope of her shoulders.

“How to use your Way, rather than hide from it.”

The weight of the accusation further compressed the already heavy dread in her stomach. She swallowed, her throat tight, and bit her lips even though no reply rose to her tongue.

Natje sighed, releasing Milla from the intensity of her gaze, and when she blinked, she was no longer the Nachthexe and every inch an advoccultant.

“Being a Witch of a Demesne earns you the right of expedition. As such, things will progress quickly from here. My arguments for a closed hearing with the Elder Witch of the Panhandle Coven were denied. However, the appeal for judgment by Tribunal Rite was successful. The old biddies agreed quite readily, considering the PR disaster you have created.”

“I’ll be sure to send them my condolences,” Milla muttered, trying to catch up to Natje’s train of thought. “So I won’t be tried by a jury of my peers?”

“How depressing it is that you were instructed in the ways of our prisons but not our legal system.” She sighed, shaking her head. “The Tribunal is sending one of their Heads to hear the charges against you, review the evidence, and make a ruling.”

It was not the worst outcome, all things considered. Prejudices, like gossip, ran deep among witches. Even if the Panhandle Coven could source a jury of Milla’s “peers,” the likelihood of them not bringing preconceived notions about a Death Witch was slim to none. A Tribunal Head was a different story altogether.

Founded after the Hundred Years’ War, the Tribunal consisted of three elder witches voted into position by the covens under C.R.O.W. jurisdiction. Morgen had served as the Second Head of the Tribunal for close to a century before retiring to run the Enforcer training base on Big Torch Key. Her replacement as the Second Head had been the only witch voted into the position in Milla’s lifetime. The seats were lifelong until the witch retired or left this earth to pass through the Gates, which, considering what Milla had done two years prior, was not something she wanted to devote much thought to.

“As their pet Light Witch is still skulking about your swamp,” Natje continued, “I imagine they will obtain the services of a svítilna to aid her in performing a Soul Projection.”

Milla replied with a flat stare.

“This is where you say ‘thank you’.”

“For what? ” she balked. “I’m not getting a fair trial, and my fate is subject to the whims of one old witch hearing a biased accusation? What is there to be thankful for?”

“That you have me.” Natje rose and glided around the table, stopping beside Milla’s shoulder. The cold of a starless sky embraced her, raising goosebumps along her arms and making her shiver. “That you are the foster daughter of the Morgenhexe and a problem the Tribunal would prefer was dealt with quietly.”

“Cleaved, you mean.”

Natje shrugged one shoulder, the corner of her mouth lifting as she did. “Who is to say?”

“That’s not helping.” The door at her back clanked and groaned before Natje could answer. She resumed her seat, gaze leveled on Agent Sterne as he entered the room.

“Nobody lies to an agent of C.R.O.W., Milla. It would be a pity to start now.” A cryptic smile joined her words, and Natje tipped her head in Agent Sterne’s direction. “Be careful with this one, Agent.” He glanced at her, face still and impassive as ever. One eyebrow twitched, and Natje’s smile became a smirk. “Patience, Milla,” she addressed her. “Now that the Tribunal Head has been summoned, it is only a matter of time.”