15. Sigil

fifteen

Natje ceded her chair to Darkly, raising gracefully to lean against the bookshelf, arms crossed in an impossibly casual pose. Milla hugged her Banker’s Box, leaning away from Darkly as he sat beside her.

“From the car, I think,” Dina instructed. “I’d like to revisit your conversation without the sound obstruction.”

Lou took her position behind Darkly, squeezing his shoulder in a show of sibling support as Maddox cast a longing look at the door before sighing and stepping between the chairs. Milla was grateful for the wall of their body, whippet-thin as they were. She didn’t trust herself not to tear off the lid of her box and start lobbing wads of paper at the asshole Dark Witch as he prepared to tell the Third Head of the Tribunal that, yes, Milla was a Death Witch, and yes, she had worked magick Forbidden and Foule as easily as breathing.

A lie.

It hadn’t been easy, but how would they know that? She had been desperate and terrified and hurt . She had fed that raw- head every day for two years, keeping the mortals safe and the desecrant alive. Dusting the awful thing had taken all Milla had, and no Soul-bound memory would show the pain it caused her to take a life. No Soul Projection could offer the color of emotion and depths of regret. How she had hated herself in the moment and how she had drawn from the very dregs of her Soul and Shade because she wanted to live.

No. All they would see is a witch dusting a desecrant in full view of the human population of St. Augustine, and Milla would be cleaved.

“Do you need any help recalling the day?” Lou asked her brother. He shook his head, eyes firmly pinned on the mirror across the room. Gripping both armrests, he closed his eyes and breathed deeply. Lou pressed the tips of her fingers to his head. He tensed, shoulders hitching, and almost immediately, the faint glow of a Soul-bound memory pulsed beneath her touch.

She pulled her hand away, and the gleaming strands danced along her fingers and palm like static electricity in a plasma ball. Unlike before, where she gathered the memory into a palm, this time, she plucked and pinched the strands with her other hand like a harpist playing their instrument. When the bulk of the glowing strands had been gathered, she again pressed her fingers to Darkly’s scalp and lowered her hand, laying it flat in the air, palm up, for Maddox to project the memory.

The image bled across the mirror, revealing the tablet in Darkly’s hands and the rising and falling arcs of the signatures dancing across his E.R.I.E.

“She’s running the bridge.” His voice held the same slight echo Lou’s had in her memory. The image winked out, and Milla remembered that he’d closed his eyes. “There’s a raw-head that lives underneath.”

“Ah yes, this is the part.” Dina sat back in her chair and summoned a bag of candy to hand. She tossed a few brightly colored pieces into her mouth, chewing loudly.

“I can bait it with the Shades, and you’ll see.” His attention slid from the tablet to the car floor between his booted feet. “Even if she’s a—”

Tires screeched, and the dashboard rushed toward his face. Darkly whipped his head to the side, revealing a wide-eyed, startled Lou pressed back against her seat. She gripped the wheel, staring back at Darkly as if he’d just sprouted wings.

“She’s nae wicked,” he growled.

“But to use her as bait…”

“Wait.” The image dimmed and slowed. Maddox flexed their fingers and massaged their wrist, brows drawn together in confusion. “Sorry, I think I messed it up.”

“Perhaps.” Dina tossed another handful of candy into her mouth. Hard sugar cracked beneath her teeth as she chewed. “Hard to hear over those tires.”

“But what did he say?” Rhett stepped into view beside Milla. “He knows what she is; what did he say?”

“You heard him as well as we did,” said Constance. “She’s not wicked.”

“No, no, before that.” He jogged a finger at the wall, then twisted around to look at the reverse image in the mirror. “Even if she’s a what?” He appealed to the Elder Witch; his voice tight and frantic. “Ask him what he said.”

“I thought you said we should not hear the testimony of a Dark Witch.” Dina smiled back at him, the expression pasted on. “At least, that is what I heard. Connie?” She rolled her head along her neck to look at Constance, tossing another handful of candy in her mouth.

“I heard the same.” Constance pressed both hands on the desk, leaning forward to seethe at her assistant. “Any more of these outbursts, Rhett, and I’ll be submitting a requisition for a new assistant. Am I understood?”

The blood rushed from his cheeks, leaving Rhett’s complexion sallow and pale. “Y-yes, ma’am.” He nodded tersely and backed away.

“Maddox?” Constance gestured to the svítilna. “If you’re good to continue?”

“I am.” Maddox rolled their wrist. Bones crackled and popped; they shook out their hand and pressed it again to Lou’s palm.

Darkly’s memory shot onto the mirror and resumed. Every witch watched them bait Milla. Watched her run, watched his Shade catch her, watched her fall and wrestle with the raw-head. But Milla watched Darkly, searching his face for any show of remorse or regret. Anything resembling the pain she’d heard in his voice when he admitted his involvement to her in that Tallahassee motel. When he’d told Milla he was trying to save her and she’d thrown herself at him like a sad, desperate witchling.

He sat straight and tall in the chair, hands gripping the armrests, jaw clenched, without an ounce of emotion playing out over a face she had once thought to be cartoonishly expressive. He was a stranger to her, in his suit with his ill-advised haircut. An Enforcer, and not her Dark Witch.

Never her Dark Witch.

He was a lie.

“Hold that.” Dina stood.

Constance let out a heavy breath, sagging into her chair as the image froze. “Goddess, it’s worse the second time.”

Milla frowned at the mirror and the image of Darkly’s fisted hand frozen mid-pound against Lou’s barrier. Beyond him and slightly out-of-focus, she saw herself on her back, fingers clawed into the raw-head’s side. Her face was turned away, her neck arched as the raw-head scraped jagged nails down her throat.

“Reverse, please,” Dina said, intent on the memory.

“How far?” Lou asked. Her voice trembled, and she swayed in her heels, cheeks an ashen gray. A fine sweat dotted her brow, and the foglamp gleam in her eyes dimmed.

“Two or three—no, I’ll do it.” Dina shook out her arms and pinched the air, twisting her fingers like a radio technician adjusting dials. The projection on the wall wobbled and reversed, and every hair on Milla’s arms rose.

Chronomantic .

She flexed her fingers, wiggled her toes, and fought against the scream rising in her throat as the Third Head of the Tribunal reversed an isolated pocket of time within a memory as easily as she’d breezed into the room.

“Can you zoom in?” Dina asked Maddox. The svítilna nodded, bringing their thumb and ring finger together in a pinch and then spreading them. The image zoomed in, a little blurry. “On her hand, if you please.”

Maddox repeated the motion, this time turning their wrist slightly, adjusting the position of the Soul Bound memory. Darkly’s fist blurred at the edge of the screen, and all eyes were guided to Milla pinned beneath the raw-head, her left hand forming a weak chronomantic return.

“Did you know she did this?” Dina asked Lou.

“During my brother’s interrogation of the accused the following day, it was assessed that she had been instructed in the formation of chronomantic hexes by the Morgenhexe.”

“Why was this not in the report?”

“Must have slipped my mind,” said Darkly.

Milla couldn’t believe what she was hearing. No one lied to an agent of C.R.O.W., and here was Darkly omitting scraps of memory in front of an Elder Witch and a Head of the Tribunal.

What is happening?

“Well.” Dina relaxed into her chair, her expression close to relief. “It looks to me as though the guilty deployed a standard chronomantic hex. Continue the Projection, please.” Lou nodded and flicked her fingers.

On the wall, Milla watched herself wrap her legs around the raw-head and roll the desecrant onto its back. The shield Lou had thrown distorted the image, a little piece of luck Milla hadn’t considered—it hid the ash spewing from her lips as she cursed the creature.

Her left hand never left the raw-head’s side. It writhed beneath her, pawing at her arms, her legs. Clawing at her wrist and tearing the skin. Its movements grew sluggish, and then it stopped altogether, crumbling like sand as it succumbed to a necrotic hex disguised by years of careful training and lies.

The office was silent as the final images of the memory played out. Darkly approached the pile of marlstone dust, scooping the remains of the raw-head into his hand. He jerked his face up, briefly catching sight of Milla as she stumbled into the Colonial Quarter and disappeared. The image jogged, Lou yelled his name, and the wall went blank.

After a long, stressful moment, Dina exhaled and leaned back in her chair, releasing every witch from the chokehold of Darkly’s memory.

Lou sagged forward, catching herself on the back of Darkly’s chair, making him jump in his seat. He twisted around, grabbing her elbow and peering worriedly up at his sister. She murmured something too low to hear, and he nodded, the worry easing, but he did not let go of her arm until Dina spoke.

“Well,” said the Third Head. She took in the Simmons siblings, scanning Milla with a pensive look before letting her gaze drift to the empty air over her head. “Well,” she said again, “while we do not have an answer as to what the guilty’s Way is, we can at least determine that the desecrant in question was hexed with a textbook chronomantic reversal, which rules out the use of magick Forbidden and Foule. It’s the readings I can’t figure.”

“As this is not a trial, and I cannot be accused of conjecture,” Natje called from where she still leaned against the bookcase, “it might bear considering the amount of magick deployed by the younger Agent Simmons during my client’s run-in with the desecrant.”

“My team’s technical witch posited a similar theory,” Lou added. “Keir’s Way, paired with the intent of the evening, would test the reporting capabilities of our devices. According to Cyrus, the E.R.I.E. has rarely been attuned to a Dark Witch, and certainly never a Dark Witch operating under the magick of Valentine’s Day.”

Dina tapped her lips, eyes slitting as she considered the suggestion. She shook her head and covered her face, dragging at the skin under her eyes as she pulled her hands away and peered at her over her fingertips. “I am sorry, dear girl.”

“I—” Milla glanced over her shoulder, then back to Dina. “Me?”

“I can argue the use of a chronomantic hex, we all saw it and your rearing by Morgen’s hand, but the E.R.I.E. readings are going to be a point of contention.”

“I don’t—”

“She’s a vestic,” Rhett grumbled in a low voice that was absolutely meant to be heard. “No vestic has ever been capable of working chronomancy.”

“Rhett,” Constance snarled, rising from her chair and thrusting her arm at the door, finger pointed. “Out.”

“Goddess, this generation. Let him stay.” Dina waved her hand, dismissing both Constance’s demand and Rhett’s outburst. “Tell me, witchling, what is vesticism if not the magick of glimpsing the future and reading the intent of the past? Soothsayers cast their bones and favomancers their beans, but each is traveling through time to gain answers. To read history and predict the future.” The vague amusement softening her features vanished, and Dina hit Rhett dead-on with a cold, imperious stare. “Better you learn this lesson now than several more years into what will assuredly amount to a failed career in C.R.O.W.: the Ways are not as disparate as your textbooks would have you believe. Magick comes from one of two sources. As a vestic, yours is a gift from the Triple Goddess, and the Mother, Maiden, and Crone contain multitudes. Am I clear?”

Rhett swallowed and rasped, “Yes, ma’am.”

“Good. Now kindly shut up and let the adults work.” She pursed her lips, clearly about to say something else when Maddox blurted:

“But it was her left hand.”

“Oh for—” Constance drooped forward, thudding her forehead against the desk.

Dina slowly faced Maddox, a disbelieving little smile displaying the top row of her teeth. “And what might that have to do with anything?” she said, her lips barely moving, eyes unblinking.

“I prepared her file.” Their eyes darted to Milla, then the floor. “Her record states she’s right-handed, but that chronomantic hex was worked with her left.”

“You were watching the mirror, Maddox,” said Constance. “An easy mistake.”

“I’m sorry, Elder Witch, but this is my Way,” they argued. “I know my Way better than I know myself most days, and she used her left hand.”

“ Fine ,” Dina snapped in an arctic voice. “Agent Simmons, again.”

And Lou went again, withdrawing the memory from a tense and pale Darkly. Maddox held the projection on Milla’s hand, an argument broke out between Natje, Dina, and Constance, and Maddox played it again, and again.

Rhett’s glare bored into her back, and the Banker’s Box was heavy on her thighs. Milla shrank into herself, wishing she could disappear from the room, from the Horned God-awful memory being played for a sixth time and the pained little grunts of the Dark Witch who supplied it.

When the scene had played out, and Milla had once again disappeared into the heart of the Colonial Quarter, Lou released the memory with a gasp, staggering back and bumping into the desk. Darkly slid lower in the chair, chin dropped against his chest and panting as if he’d just sprinted a mile. Even Maddox sagged where they stood, running a shaking hand through their neon pink pompadour.

“Are we satisfied with the guilty’s ambidexterity?” Constance finally asked. “Or shall we call another svítilna?”

“And draw out this charade further?” Dina retorted. “Horned God forbid.”

“If any question remains,” Darkly suggested. He pushed himself from the chair and loomed over the desk. “Project her memory. I’m finished.”

“Finished,” Dina repeated.

“You’ve seen all I can offer and nearly burnt my sister out. Grant the guilty her testimony,” he said. “See the events of the day from her own eyes if you’re still nae convinced, or order me to cleave her here and now. You’ll get no more from me.”

“Oh.” The sound left Milla unwanted, but Horned God, she really ought to have known. Of course, Lou would be involved with this. Of course , Darkly would be summoned to attend and show up wearing his funeral best. A cleaving was the final severing of a witch’s body from her Soul and Shade, and of all the known Ways, only two were known to be capable of the task without requiring a full coven casting their support. “That is fucked up.”

“Ludmilla,” warned Natje.

Dina twerked her gaze to Milla, and the corner of her mouth gave the tiniest, amused little twitch. She flitted a shrewd gaze over Darkly and nodded in agreement. “Natje,” she said, not bothering to seek out the advoccultant. “Any objection to your client giving her testimony?”

Natje shrugged one shoulder. “I was under the impression this was not a trial.”

Dina rolled her eyes and wagged a finger. “Consider my petard hoisted. You, witchling.” She snapped at Milla. “Call up the day.”