4. Jezibaba

four

“Oh. My. Horned. God .” A drunken laugh bubbled up from her belly. “Of course, it’s you.”

“You are hereby—” Lou blinked down at Milla. “Sorry, did you just laugh at me?”

“Still am,” she managed between snorts. It was too rich. Too unbelievable to be anything but reality. “Holy shit, my life really sucks.”

“Is she laughing at you?” Cyrus stepped beside Lou.

“I have never seen one of them laugh at you before,” Donmar added, his rich voice steeped in mirth.

“Yes, well.” Lou swept a hand over her head, skimming white blonde hair pulled into a perfect bun. “I suppose there is a first time for everything, even if the initial impression is lacking.” Bright blue-green eyes fixed on Milla. A snort escaped, earning her a glower. “As I was saying, you are hereby placed under arrest and Waybound for the gross misuse of magicks both Forbidden and Foule.”

Lou motioned to Donmar. He re-adjusted his grip, and she brushed a finger along the inside of Milla’s wrists. A cold so deep it burned followed her touch, worming into and around bones and tendons to strangle her Way.

She grunted as her magick was stifled, refusing Lou the pleasure of hearing her cry. The tingle in her hands muted and snuffed out, and a shiver racked her body in the absence of the ever-present heat in her veins. A heat she had taken for granted. That boiling, painful energy she fought so hard to control, now dammed and restrained by an Enforcer of C.R.O.W.

“You have the right to remain silent; any hexes, allures, maledictions, or glamours you use can and will be used against you.” Lou crooked her fingers, and Donmar released Milla’s wrists, gripping her by the shoulders and lifting her from the ground. Blisters rose beneath his palms, and he muttered an apology at her pained hiss, releasing her arms to pull off his gloves. He tucked them into a pocket and set a palm at the center of her back, nudging her forward with a gentle press.

“In light of the serious charges against you,” Lou continued, “all rights to consult with your jezibaba are hereby waived by the power of the Tribunal.”

“Wait, are you serious?” Milla stumbled. Donmar grabbed her upper arm to keep her from faceplanting, and finally, finally , she struggled against him, twisting to jerk free. Revoking a witch’s right to speak to their jezibaba, their mentor, their protector was unheard of. Even for the Forbidden and Foule, it was not done.

“Careful,” Donmar murmured in a tone almost too low to hear. But Milla heard it, the subtle edge of care within the warning, startling enough to stop her from struggling. Lou, on the other hand, continued to read Milla her rights with the single-minded focus of a woman in a position of power who felt constantly threatened.

“If you cannot afford an advoccultant, one will be appointed for you before any questioning if you so desire. Should you decide to answer questions now without an advoccultant present, you have the right to stop answering at any time. We retain the right to pursue your confession to a full degree of satisfaction.” Lou brought her mouth close to Milla’s ear, hissing in a low voice, “So I suggest you play along.”

“I don’t—”

“Feigning ignorance is fine.” Lou dragged her forward. Loose sand, pebbles, and twigs thinned and leveled to the packed dirt of a parking lot crowded with Enforcers, a dozen official C.R.O.W. vehicles, and a silver Land Rover. Cyrus led them through the maze of vehicles and witches to an ambulance at the far edge of the lot, yanking the door open. Donmar lifted Milla from the ground and stepped inside, setting her gently on the gurney.

She barely had time to process the weirdness before a device buzzed somewhere in the ambulance. Donmar slid a beeping phone from his pocket.

“What is it?” Lou arched a brow as the screen lit up his frown.

“Incoming.”

“Shit.” She whirled around, seething at Cyrus. “Why didn’t you catch him?”

“I cannot isolate his signature.” He tapped his tablet, brows cinching together as he scanned the screen. “There is too much social distortion.”

“Life goes by so fast,” Milla offered, then broke into a peal of giggles.

“Come again?” Lou asked.

“Social Distortion.’” Milla swayed on the gurney, grinning like an idiot. “Like, the band .”

“No.” A muscle ticked in Lou’s jaw, and the gleam in her eyes cooled. “As in those wankers outside have clogged the air with too much magick. The E.R.I.E. cannot pick him out”—she shot a glare at Cyrus’s tablet—“and we never got a warning.”

“About what?”

“There he is,” Cyrus said. “Ninety meters.”

Lou grabbed Milla’s upper arm, hauling her off the gurney. “We need to get you—”

The ambulance rocked, metal groaning under an onslaught of wind. Donmar’s phone beeped again and again, faster and faster, and Cyrus clamored inside, struggling to close the heavy door against a cold, arctic gale.

“Right on time,” he grunted. “Are we ready?”

Lou jerked her chin at Milla. “Are you ready?”

“Ready for what ?”

Another fist of wind pommeled the door, ripping it out of Cyrus’s hand. Milla only caught a glimpse of the parking lot—Enforcers running in every direction, hands held out in defensive wards—before the sun blotted out. A blink-and-miss-it eclipse that had every Enforcer stopping in their tracks and scanning the lot.

Every Enforcer, except for Lou, who pursed her lips, the whites of her eyes glowing from within. “To play along.”

She hauled Milla from the ambulance, dragging her through the lot. Trees bowed and whipped, and all around them, E.R.I.E.s screeched in alarm over the howling wind. Stones jabbed the soles of Milla’s feet while more fine-grain bullets of sand blasted her bare skin. She stumbled, struggling to match Lou’s pace. Even Waybound, she suffered the effects of her magick, the world spinning and warping, her legs heavy and disjointed like she was darting across the deck of a ship in a storm.

“What’s happening?” Milla yelled over the gale.

“My brother,” Lou hollered back.

At her words, an arctic wind burst from the trees, tearing around the parking lot, battering against the witches and pommeling the vehicles. Palm trees thrashed, and cypress groaned while the Enforcers teetered off balance, lowering their arms to brace against the gale.

Milla shielded her eyes from the curtain of grit, sand, and leaves flying from the woods. Shadows followed, slithering out from between the trees and across the parking lot, aimed directly at Lou and Milla. Silken cold braced her ankles and coiled up her shins, steadying her against another punch of wind and then—a blanket of starless black sped across the sky, obliterating the midday sun.

The trees stopped thrashing, and the winds died away. As quickly as the storm rose, it vanished, and the darkened world fell still. Milla strained to hear leaves rustling in the wind, the muffled warning cry of a grackle, the scuffle of a boot, or a whispered curse, but there was nothing.

Nothing but the faintest whisper of a name singing through the trees.

“ Luminescence .”

“Shite.” Lou glanced over her shoulder, jerking her chin to someone behind them both. “I didn’t get a shield up in time. Hold her.”

A thick hand came down on Milla’s shoulder, and Lou let go, bracing her feet a shoulder’s width apart and facing the trees. Tiny orbs of light danced across her fingertips, the lines in her palm glowing pink. Milla watched, enthralled, as the memory of a chagrined, shirtless Darkly in a tiny hotel room surfaced.

“Fiona,” Darkly had explained using his sister’s alias, “she’s a Light Witch. ”

Between his confession and everything that followed, Milla had forgotten. It made sense then, just as it made sense now. A Light Witch as a handler for a Dark Witch, as his sister . Two sides of the same coin; though where Darkly’s Way dealt with Shades and emotion, Lou’s dealt with the Soul and the truth of things.

“ Luminescence ,” Darkly sang her name from the wood, his voice deep and resonant. Entirely his and something else. Something Other. Milla shivered as his voice ribboned into her ears and danced along her bones. “ Let her go, Luminescence. ”

“Ready wards and defenses!” Lou thrust her right arm to the sky, casting hand glowing like an LED. Static crackled and danced up Milla’s arms, raising the fine hairs as the shadows tightened their clutch on her legs. “Hex to hinder only. If any one of you hurts him, it’ll be the Tribunal you answer to.”

The Enforcers around them settled into defensive stances, arms held out in a vast array of wards and ready hexes. Spalování conjured their flames, illuminating the parking lot in a rainbow of varying hues. A trio of obnubilari ran to separate points, spinning their illusions to hide the witches from the world. Further out, the Green Witch threw down a handful of pods to conjure up ivy, kudzu, and thornbush, weaving them together in a formidable hedge.

A bank of fog rose around Milla and Lou, purling across the parking lot to hide the witches at its center. She dragged her gaze away from the treeline to Donmar, circling his free arm in a fluid motion. He twisted his wrist and curled his fingers, pulling condensation from the air.

“How in the nine rings did he find us so quickly?” Lou cursed.

“As you said, zhanym,” Donmar replied, “you did not get the shield up in time.”

She muttered under her breath, pulling light to hand and swooping her arm in a familiar motion, scooping and pulling at nothing until light coalesced into a gleaming ball. “One of these days, light of my life, you are going to learn what a rhetorical question is.”

“Not today, I am afraid,” Donmar chuckled, the fog thickened.

“ I’ll nae ask again, ” Darkly threatened from the shadows. A warning wind followed, teasing Milla’s hair and leaving a heavy silence in its wake.

The ball in Lou’s hand brightened and condensed into a blistering white. She muttered a rapid run of Irish, and the ball shot from her palm, bursting over the trees. Static crackled, and the ball stretched and thinned, curving over the parking lot like a film of glitter-imbued plastic wrap.

Black clouds billowed from the trees, pushed by Darkly’s winds. Indiscernible shapes writhed and whorled in the roiling fog, and Milla gasped, pressing against Donmar as she realized what she was seeing. It was not wind pushing a deep fog; it was—

“Shades,” she exhaled, caught somewhere between fear and wonder.

“I think we may have gone too far this time, Lou,” Donmar said in a low voice.

“Not yet,” she grunted, layering more of her Way onto the ward, thickening it to an opaque, sparkly mucous membrane reaching for the ground.

The Shades swallowed the Enforcers on the perimeter, dulling their cries. Lou’s arm shook. A bead of sweat escaped her hairline, trailing down her jaw. She let out something like a sob, gripping her elbow and widening her stance. Lean fingers trembled, and tendons strained along the back of her casting hand as the shimmering ward dribbled faster and faster down, racing the churning black.

A wisp of shadow slithered for Milla as the barrier connected, and the rest of Darkly’s Shades crashed uselessly against the near-invisible wall, sweeping up and over the rounded dome. The membrane bowed beneath his Way. Lou hissed, teeth bared and forehead dotted with sweat, but her ward held.

Thickening roils of black smoke, charcoal fog, and living Shade churned against the barrier, and through the teeming dark, a sliver of deeper black swelled to form shoulders, a trim waist, and the outline of the witch who held shadows in the palm of his hand. Clad in his Enforcer gear, Darkly’s black eyes glimmered, his hair glinting gold and scarlet in the multi-hued spalování firelight. Dancing flames cast long shadows beneath high cheekbones, sharpening the already cut line of his jaw. Milla’s heart did a little flip at the sight of him in all his wicked glory, stalking through the dark for her.

“ This has gone too far, Luminescence. ”

Donmar made a choked sound. “See?”

“Quiet,” Lou barked over her shoulder, eyes on Darkly.

Left hand working tirelessly to dispell Lou’s magick, he parted the gloom with his right, fog and shadow swirling into a dense curtain and swallowing the space behind him as he advanced.

“Bloody idiot.” Lou shook her head, following the path of the one Shade to breach her barrier. It wound up Milla’s leg and looped around her waist, tightening in a possessive, weirdly comforting manner, and a drunken giggle escaped.

“Bloody idiots, ” the Light Witch amended, wrenching her arm down and conjuring another caustic ball of light. “Stand down, Keir, Tribunal orders.” She aimed her hex at Darkly. “You don’t want to draw attention to yourself, now do you?”

“ Dinnae care, Luminescence. ”

“Oh, Goddess,” Donmar exhaled, shooting a worried look at Lou. Milla cocked her head. Why was he so worried? Darkly obviously didn’t care if he drew attention to himself. Why else would he wear rip-stop pants a size too small if not to show off his finer assets?

“Horned God-dammit.” The light in Lou’s hand winked out. She made a series of quick gestures to the Enforcers on the other side of the barrier. Two of them—the other weather witch and a spalování with flame gloving his hands—crept closer to Darkly.

He narrowed his eyes to onyx black slits and pinned his elbows to his waist, turning out his arms, hands palm up. A cruel grin slashed across his face, and he curled his fingers.

The Enforcers jerked ramrod straight, a gasp rattling from both. Their chests swelled toward Darkly as he closed his hands into fists, and then, as quickly as it began, he ended it.

The Dark Witch tugged.

Wisps of shadow drifted toward Darkly, and their bodies relaxed into a slump-shouldered posture, eyes dim and jaws hanging slack.

The witches within Lou’s barrier cried out, magick crackling and spitting, ready to be released, and Lou whispered, “No.”

One simple word crackling with a desperation not meant to be heard. But Milla heard it. She snapped her attention to Lou, taking in her wide, panicked eyes as the caustic ball in her hand sputtered out. “No, no, no, are you mad?”

“ Beyond .” Darkly paced the perimeter, black eyes locked on his sister. He traced a finger on her ward in a lazy whorl, testing the intent behind the Way. Shadow trailed his touch, a charcoal effluvium tainting Lou’s magick. She hissed through clenched teeth, and if Milla didn’t know any better, she’d think the witch was scared of her own brother. “ Give me back Ludmilla, Lou. ”

“You’re being a fool.” She jerked her chin at the Enforcers held in her brother’s grip.

“Lou,” Donmar warned in a low rumble. She ignored him.

“Look at the mess you’ve caused, Keir. Look at how far you’ve stepped. Go home, get yourself under control, or I will do it for you.” She clawed her casting hand and leveled it at him. “I say the word, and you are done .”

Something in the threat registered with Darkly. He winced, a slight twitch of the eye and tic of his mouth, but Milla saw it all the same. It was the same face he made when she laid out her plan to take down the Loa and again when they faced Marie Laveau in her foyer. The same tic Milla had noted when Belie Belcan possessed his body.

It was fear. But of what? He was a Horned God-damned Dark Witch. The Dark Witch. Outside of Milla, Darkly was the scariest thing in this parking lot.

She scanned the Enforcers, swaying where they stood and awaiting his command. She read Darkly with his black eyes and rich, resonant voice . Saw how Donmar tensed and glanced between Lou and her brother and felt the rise of power electrifying the air as every witch called on their Ways.

What in the nine rings was she missing?

“Go home, Keir,” Lou repeated, “I will meet you there, and we will talk.”

He stopped pacing, studying Lou for a beat before switching to Milla. A hand pressed against the barrier, long fingers stretched wide. Sinuous arcs of charcoal vapor spiraled out from his palm, poking and prodding the defensive ward. Habit had Milla reading the lines on his palm. Will ruled by logic, level-headed, and, above all else, emotionally driven as only a Dark Witch could be.

“Go home,” Lou stated for the third time, a plea from sister to brother. The tips of her fingers began to glow, stealing Darkly’s attention away from Milla. “Leave, Keir, before it’s too late.”

Darkly blinked, green flaring beneath the black of his eyes. He glanced at the enthralled Enforcers as if noticing them for the first time, and an anguished sound tore from his throat. Throwing his arms wide, he released their Shades, and their bodies fell like lifeless sacks of meat. “Horned God, Lou.” Darkly scrubbed his hands down his face, backing away from the ward. “I—”

“I know, wee yin,” Lou said. “I know you didn’t, but you need to leave.”

Figures formed in the deep fog, the remaining Enforcers surrounding Darkly, and at that, Milla knew.

“Oh, Goddess.” Her hands flew to her mouth as she understood. “They didn’t know.”

“No one knows,” Lou said, her eyes never leaving Darkly.

Goddess, he had stormed the arrest every inch a Dark Witch, seizing Shades and bending the will of two Enforcers to his own, and they did not know.

Milla searched the Enforcers trapped within the barrier, reading the fear, hate, and unease on every face. She saw flame rising and poisonous plants seething, and she knew. Horned Goddammit, she knew that Darkly would not stop until he had Milla safely away.

Tears blurred her drunken gaze, a lump rising in her throat as she was weighed down by dread.

A Dark Witch and a Death Witch, Forbidden and Foule.

“Oh, no, Darkly, no.”

He heard her. He must have heard her or felt her or assumed what she would realize because he turned that miserable gaze on her. She cowered back, wanting to yell at the fool of a witch, to scream at him to run, get as far away as he possibly could, knowing with one hundred percent certainty that he would not.

“It’s not too late, Keir.” Lou edged closer to the barrier. “Cyrus can still fix this; it’s not too late.”

“Milla.” Darkly pressed both palms against the barrier, nails digging in as if he would tear through the ward with his bare hands. “Milla, please.”

“Let me take her in, let the Tribunal handle this and you’ll get everything you wanted.”

“Everything he …” Milla angled her face at Lou.

“ Leannán ,” he begged in the voice . Smoke drifted over his eyes, and Milla knew even more. “ Believe me, Milla. I didnae mean for this to happen. ”

He said he needed her. Weeks ago, in a hideous flower-and-seashell office, with that stupid beanbag filling the corner, he said he needed her.

“Milla, I’m so sorry.”

Every long day he spent in St. Augustine and not with her, hiding in the swamp.

“Please, believe me.”

It had been too easy—she’d made sure it was easy. From the moment he knew what she was and asked her, “What do you need?” Milla had fallen for the lie.

From the instant she had shown her hand and let down her guard, this witch, this Enforcer, had kept close. Too close, seeing Milla as the Forbidden and Foule thing she was. Witnessing firsthand the desecration and decay she was capable of. Running his E.R.I.E. and taking calls from his sister. Disappearing to St. Augustine for hours and hours and hours, claiming he was keeping C.R.O.W. distracted and busy and Goddess she was a fool.

A tremble built in her arms, and her shoulders, dread gripping her throat tight even as she forced her words free. “What did he want?”

“He wanted out,” Lou said. “He struck a deal to earn himself freedom from the job.”

Her heart was a bass drum, thudding heavily in her chest. “What—” she croaked, eyes darting from Lou to Darkly and back. “What was the deal?”

“He didn’t tell you?” She tutted, shaking her head in mock dismay. “To surrender a Death Witch to C.R.O.W.”

“Milla, no.” He beat a fist against the barrier. The shimmering film rippled, casting a nauseating light on the witches within. “Dinnae listen to her, leannán . I promise I will fix this.”

“Fix this,” she repeated, twitching a startled gaze from brother to sister as the last pieces of the puzzle clicked into place. Still, she needed to hear it spoken aloud to be absolutely certain she understood because so much of this made no sense.

Stepping out from behind Lou, she stared down the Dark Witch, watching his face closely. “How did you find me?”

Her wards in the swamp were sound. Ezra’s wards on the hut were sound. Only a witch who knew it was there could find it. Only a witch with knowledge of the where, the how, and the who could have led these Enforcers here and Darkly …

He opened his mouth, but no excuse or denial came. The shadow around her waist tightened, an answer all its own. Bile pooled on her tongue, her stomach heaving as tiny white lights pulsed at the corners of her vision.

“How do you think?” Lou frowned at the errant Shade. With a slash of her fingernail, she sliced it clean through. Deep, gray smoke curled free, dissipating to nothing. “We got your location from Keir.”