2. A.I.I.

two

“When will you be home?” Diego’s voice crackled over the line, sounding far more distant than he actually was.

“I don’t know,” said Milla. “Darkly says they’re almost done at the Fountain of Youth, but even if C.R.O.W. left tomorrow, my Way is still being weird.”

“That ha—ot gotten—er?”

Milla pulled the phone from her ear, squinting through the cracked screen at the bars—or rather, the lack thereof. “Diego, can you hear me? You’re cutting out.”

“It is th—ower,” he answered. “The serv—rrible.”

“Same here.” Milla kicked off her checkered slip-ons and scanned the tiny beach, perched on a narrow peninsula at the furthest edge of Tomoka State Park. Once the site of a Timucuan village, the land now hosted several miles of multi-use trails, campgrounds, a complex of ten ancient shell mounds and a web of smaller middens, the remains of a plantation, and two witches in self-imposed exile. None of which had the makings of decent cell service. “Hop on the wifi.”

“She turned it off,” Diego answered, voice still faint, but no longer cutting out. “When you left for college.”

“Of course she did,” she grumbled. Setting her phone on the warped armrest, she shoved someone’s damp towel to the ground and unrolled her own, gritting her teeth as the cotton loops brittled beneath her hand. “Try heading up A1A toward New Town. The service on Duval can be tricky, but there’s an Irish Pub on Flagler. Shanna something, they’ll have wifi you can use.”

“Bruja, you realize everything you just said to me was nonsense, ?sí?”

“Just borrow a bike and head north.” She eased into the beach chair. One of the back slats bowed and Milla glanced back, frowning at the rotting wood.

“If it is so easy, why do you not do it?”

“I told you, St. Augustine is crawling with Enforcers. I’ve barely even seen Darkly. When he is here, he looks like he’s about to keel over from exhaustion, and then he’s gone again before dawn.”

“And where is here , ?exactamente?”

“In my own private Idaho,” Milla stated.

Diego chuckled, and in that warm, comforting sound she felt every mile of the distance between them. He should be here, with her, instead of stuck down in Key West with her foster mother. Not that Milla begrudged Morgen for whisking him away to the Keys. The Morgenhexe had heard the rumblings of a witch Forbidden and Foule in the Panhandle, and her first thought had been to grab Diego and get him to the safety of her demesne in Key West while Milla was chasing down rumors in New Orleans.

“One of these days, pequena bruja, I will understand these references. But today, we have just discovered Annie Lennox.”

“Into the Ls!” Milla pumped her fist, even though he could not see her. “Nice. You’re going to love her early 90s stuff.”

“Whatever you say,” Diego laughed, and Goddess, did she wish he was here. “Are you alright, Milla?”

“As good as I can be,” she admitted. Though they had only known each other for a little over a year, having Diego was a balm. Even on her worst days, she accepted his disapproval and adhered to his guidance, knowing what he had endured, both in his first life and accidental resurrection, were ten-fold her troubles. If any witch could understand her desire to hide and heal, it would be him. “I just need to accept that this is going to take more time than I anticipated, as much as that sucks.”

“I can see how that would be frustrating.” Goddess bless this witch and his patience. “The key is in control; you own your Way, bruja, it does not own you.”

“Oh my Goddess , you sound just like Darkly.”

“Good,” he said. “That means two of us are talking sense.”

“Okay, sure, fine.” Milla adjusted her seat, careful of the rotted slat. “I’ll just forget years of highly specialized training in hiding my Way and master absolute control overnight.” She snapped her fingers. “Easy peasy.”

“That is not what I meant, Milla.”

“I know, tío.” She dropped her head back and sighed. “I just want to go home.”

“Entiendo,” he said. “I want to come home as well but it is up to Morgen. She says we must wait until, and I stress this is quote, ‘the crooked noses of C.R.O.W. stop sniffing around your demesne’.”

“She sounds like Darkly,” Milla said, “but with ten times the anti-semitism.” That earned a half-hearted chuckle, so she doubled down, more to convince herself than Diego. “It’ll all blow over.” She had to believe that, because the alternative was too depressing to consider—that she might never get back to St. Augustine. That she might have to live her life in hiding avoiding mortals and witches alike. Becoming a Baba Yaga bog witch of legend hiding in the swamp. A thing of local folklore and fairy tales.

“I hope so, sobrina.” Her heart warmed at his calling her niece as easily as she called him uncle. “Keep working at it, it will come,” he added. “I recall the lessons with my sister. I was so afraid, working so carefully to remove infection for fear of causing further damage. Have faith in your Way, it will come.”

“Thanks, D,” she said, doing her best to pack away the panic and shove it down, down, down to focus on what she could do in the here and now.

Which was abso-fucking-lutely nothing.

So she did just that, ending their call with a stilted goodbye and a promise to chat once he got somewhere with better service. Diego was safe in Key West. Morgen was looking out for him and, by extension, her, which freed Milla to worry about herself.

She slathered on sunscreen, adjusted her sunglasses and floppy black sunhat, and tried desperately not to think about the mess she’d made of things. Darkly promised it was only a matter of time, Diego swore she’d acclimate to the new bounds of her Way. She had to believe them, with their years of experience both within and without C.R.O.W., or else she’d burn herself out trying to bludgeon her Way into submission.

Humid, midday warmth blanketed her skin, and the easy, slow waves of the Halifax River lapped at the pebbled shore, lulling Milla into a not-quite sleep. That space of soft awareness where dreams crept along the fringes of consciousness, teasing her with whispers of a voice she left in the dark.

Millapet .

Birds called from the trees, and a rabbit or a lizard rustled the undergrowth. Out on the river, a boat motored by as kayakers called to each other.

Millapet .

A cool shadow fell over her legs and Milla smiled. “You’re back early.” Eyes still closed, she rolled her head along the creaking chair back to face the source of the shadow. “Sun’s still up.”

“Excuse me?” The voice that replied was deep and crisply accented. With the wrong accent. She opened her eyes, heart racing as she fought to keep her body still, relaxed, and took in the stranger.

Tall, tanned, and trim, he was close to Darkly’s height, though where the Dark Witch boasted muscled shoulders and defined arms, this stranger wore the long-armed build of a rower or swimmer, trimmer all around but no less athletic. Water beaded down his chest and stomach, dripping toward a pair of deep red swim trunks that clung to his thighs. Sun-bleached blonde hair was swept away from his forehead, and he stared down at Milla with glacier blue eyes and a faintly amused expression.

“Can I help you?”

“Ja,” he said. “You are sitting in my chair.”

Milla blinked, startled anew by his accent and how he formed the words. Clipped and brusque, clean like a mountain spring. Like Morgen.

She scrounged her brain for any German she knew, coming up with ‘gesundheit’, ‘wo ist der Hauptbahnhof?’, and “‘ein Bier, bitte’, so she settled on, “And?”

“My chair.” He crossed his arms, glaring down at her with all the clinical cool of a man who thinks he’s in the right. “You have taken it.”

Milla curled her lip, glancing around with over-exaggerated awareness. “I didn’t know this abandoned beach took reservations.”

“Was it not obvious from the towel?”

“The towel.” She glanced around genuinely this time, stilling when she spotted the damp towel she had shoved off of the chair. “Ah,” she shrugged and sat back, watching him out of the corner of her eye. “Sorry.”

“Tch.” A muscle in his cheek twitched in annoyance. “I placed my towel there earlier to reserve my place, and now I find that you have stolen my chair and ruined my towel.”

“In what world does abandoning your towel on a chair mean you’ve staked a claim?” Milla scoffed. “And even if it did, how do I even know that is your towel?”

“I assure you it is my towel, and by right of property, you are sitting on my chair.”

Milla stared at him, awed. Just awed by the presumption. A needle-like headache pinched the side of her head, and her palms tingled, her Way itching to rot the chair and see how this audacious German liked that turn of events. Instead, she grabbed the sodden towel, stood—“Here, fine, take your stupid towel.”—and tossed it at him.

It smacked him in the face with a damp squelch. The stranger backed up, grunting in surprise as he pulled it away. She dropped heavily in the chair, tugging on the rim of her sunhat and crossing her arms over her bare stomach.

“And the chair?” he prompted with a whisper.

“Are you for real?” Milla glared at him. “I’m not giving up my chair.”

“But … I reserved it.”

She dropped her gaze to the towel in his hand and scoffed. “What are you going to do, Baywatch? Arrest me?”

The stranger’s mouth twitched upwards, bright eyes flaring with interest.

No, not with interest.

An icy chill raced down Milla’s spine, and she sat up, transfixed by the twists of blue flame in his eyes, recognizing the tell-tale burn of a spalování fire witch and realizing that she may have made a very, very huge mistake.

“Funny you should say that.” He grinned, his hands burst into flame, and Milla lurched from the chair and ran.