10. Big Torch Key

ten

Look at me, Millapet.

Milla entered her cell alone. She sat on the edge of her bed as the door was closed and barred. Alone.

No voices in her head, no ghostly whispers. Only Milla alone for the first time in ages.

Only at me, understand?

And then a meal came—vegetable biryani topped with crisped onions that tasted like the biryani from her favorite Indian restaurant in St. Augustine, albeit reheated.

Right?

And what next?

She did yoga and jogged in place, bathed in the sink, and changed into fresh scrubs. Then she slept. Alone.

And then, Milla? Keep going.

Her back ached. Her eyes burned. Every finger and every toe prickled, her limbs full of static, and she was alone.

She had to be because if she was not alone, he had been here the entire time. Her eyes focused on the space in front of her face. The empty, blurred air. She sucked in a staccato breath, her heart pounding wildly.

But she had entered the cell alone .

Look at me, not at him , he demanded, panic straining each word.

“What are you thinking about?”

Don’t think about him, don’t look at him.

He was close. If she could reach out, she could touch him, but she could not move, could not blink and he was right there .

I’m what’s here, Millapet. I’m real and I’m right where you left me. LOOK AT ME.

It was only a matter of time. Natje was here, and it was only a matter of time. She just had to hold on.

Just a little bit longer. It was only a matter of—

“You’re doing so well, magissa,” the witch whispered. Warm breath caught in the curve of her ear and filled the air with the stale reek of garlic and lemon. “Better than we expected.” The edge of the mattress dipped beside her hip and again on the other side. A scream lodged itself in her throat, straining against the tendons she could not move, the muscles she could not flex. Another dip in the mattress beside her head. She wanted to blink, to cry, to bury her head and hide from the blurred air in front of her face. Three points on the mattress. Two knees, a hand, oh Goddess, he was right over her. Leering down at Milla with a face she could not see.

“Perhaps we misjudged you.”

It was not supposed to be like this. Milla had been raised on stories of C.R.O.W.’s cells. Tales of thumb screws and witch prickers, repeated drownings, and scalding iron shoes. Obnubilari would cast hallucinations and figments of an imagined hellscape while chronomantics messed with time. Meteomantics would attack with a blinding cold until her toes were frostbitten, the hippocromantics would be called in to heal the damage, and the witch trials would begin again.

Every Enforcer endured time in the cells as part of their training. They trained on Big Torch Key or Grim Ness or any of the Enforcer bases until deemed ready for the field, and then they were entombed in the salt and marble until they broke.

One of the instructors, a meteomantic, had told her about his time in the salt and marble. Waybound and forced to endure blizzards, sand storms, drownings, and gale-force winds. The witch had nine fingers, claiming he lost one to frostbite in the cells.

An audiomantic once told her about the two weeks they spent in a soundless chamber, unable to manipulate their voice after being rendered mute by a corpomantic hex. Upon their release, they gave themselves tinnitus for the sole purpose of never again being left in silence.

Even Morgen had shared her own experience in the cells, lulling Milla to sleep by telling her of the witches slipping their intent into the mundane, altering tiny facets of each day until Morgen doubted any change had occurred at all, trapping her in one grand obscuration of reality. She theorized no less than three obnubilari and five obfuscari went to work on her, along with a mixed coven of audiomantics and chronomantics weaving their Ways in a mass ritual with the sole intent of breaking the mind of the Morgenhexe.

“They succeeded, of course,” she told Milla over a breakfast of black coffee, a semolina pudding called griessbrei, and fresh fruit. “But that is the purpose of the witch trials: to break the witches and make them confess to their weaknesses so they may build themselves back up again.”

“What could they possibly do to me?” Milla had scoffed, scooping a spoonful of brown sugar from a bowl and dumping it onto her griessbrei. “Put me in a room full of living things?”

Morgen had narrowed eyes at her foster daughter. “That is something you must ask yourself, Millam?uschen . ”

Milla scowled, hating the nickname. Darling Little Milla Mouse. It made her sound like the weeping eight-year-old girl Morgen had escorted across the ocean.

“The mass illusion worked because I could not manipulate the scene. It was untouchable and, therefore, untenable to my mind. You must consider what makes you you. What is it the trials could use, with their knowledge of Ludmilla Probuditna and her supposed Way, to strip away the very essence of self?” Derision dripped from her words, souring the clipped accent. “What confession could they steal to leave you a quivering mass of clay ready to be molded by the Senior Enforcers of C.R.O.W.?”

Milla stirred her griessbrei, fishing out a strawberry and chewing it before pointing her spoon at the Morgenhexe. “It sounds like you don’t think too much of the witch trials.”

“I do not.” Morgen closed her eyes. Sniffed. “Though I recognize the utility of the exercise. An Enforcer must be unwavering. They must be tested and tried and unable to be swayed by a witch that has strayed towards the wicked and weird.”

“Not the Forbidden and Foule?”

Morgen smiled, a tight-lipped, patient thing. “To be faced with that which you cannot control, that which you cannot manipulate or beat in the usual traveling of your Way, Millam?uschen, is to be defenseless in the face of true adversity. The exercise comes in stretching beyond your known ability, in overcoming that which should make you fall but instead forces you to rise higher.”

“If Enforcers need to rise higher, why doesn’t C.R.O.W. issue them brooms?” Milla had snickered.

“Do not be absurd.” She crossed the kitchen and flicked on the electric kettle. “You are correct, however. I do not approve of the weight C.R.O.W. places on breaking their witches before promoting them to the role of Enforcer. I find it needless torment bordering on torture. If the exercise were coupled with proper care for the surviving witches rather than throwing them right into the field, I might find the trials less distasteful. Consider yourself lucky you will never have to endure said abuse.”

“But what if I wanted to? Be an Enforcer, I mean.”

Morgen pursed her lips, her stern features softening just a little. Just enough. “You know that is impossible, Ludmilla, being what you are.”

As always, whenever this topic arose, she slumped down in her chair, dropping her head back to stare at the ceiling. “I know. I just—is this what I’m supposed to do for the rest of my life? Haunt Big Torch and watch other witches come and go?”

“Your father placed his trust in me, Ludmilla. To keep you safe. Alive. C.R.O.W. must not know the truth of your Way.”

“So I only use the vesticism from my mom. Or present as a chronomantic, a green witch, nine rings, I could even be passable as a vinefica. Actually”—Milla straightened and smiled—“I think I’d make a damn fine poison witch.” Morgen clicked her tongue. “Ugh, then what is the point? Why teach me how to siphon and use other witches’ Ways against them if not to become an Enforcer?”

“Millam?uschen, always asking too many questions,” Morgen muttered, more to herself than Milla. “Sehr dramatisch, even knowing you are leaving for Flagler in the fall.”

“Yeah, where I’ll just have a new babysitter.”

“Your new mentor is skilled in the deception of the Ways. He will improve upon the groundwork I’ve laid in ensuring your survival and secrecy from C.R.O.W.”

Milla? Where did you go?

The memory shattered, edges falling away like glass to reveal the dark hell of her cell. The weight near her head moved, and a low, gravelly chuckle echoed off the walls of her cell.

“Almost done, magissa. Only a few more moments.”

A whimper wheezed free from Milla’s lips. Goddess, it was not supposed to be like this. The cells were supposed to be torture and pain and all the things Milla had spent a lifetime conjuring up ways to resist and survive. But it wasn’t supposed to be like this.