6. Chronomantic

six

The marble hall stretched before them, impossibly long and vanishing to a dark point meters or miles away. Milla squinted and rubbed an eye with her knuckle, hissing as the abraded skin sizzled in pain.

“I can request a lotion,” Agent Sterne said. Milla glanced at him, dropping her eyes quickly to the floor. It was bad enough that he’d chased her through the woods and tried to set her on fire, but did he have to be her appointed guard?

“No, thanks.” She dropped her arm, skin tight and tender from the scouring she had undergone, and stepped into the hallway.

Iridescent specks in the checkered flooring winked and strobed beneath humming fluorescent lights, and odd, angular shadows peeled from the puce-green doors dotting the walls. Sinuous gray veins crawled in the marble, up the walls, and across the ceiling, pulsing in the flickering light and turning Milla’s already upset stomach.

She closed her eyes, took a long, strained breath, and exhaled through her teeth. The scouring left her shaky and disoriented— salt had that effect on a witch—and whatever fight she still had was scrubbed away in a sterile room. Agent Sterne pressed his hand between her shoulder blades, half steadying Milla and half urging her onward.

One shaking step, two, keeping her head down and counting. Ten, twelve, fifteen.

Agent Sterne grabbed her shoulder, stopping Milla inches away from running into a nondescript iron door. She jerked her head up and around, jaw falling open at the dingy hallway. Brown carpet, brown walls, flickering fluorescents. Three doors lining the walls on either side.

“What?” she croaked.

“Obfuscari illusion,” he said.

“I didn’t notice any illusion.”

“You would not.” He flicked two fingers at her wrists. “You are Waybound.”

A chill swept down Milla’s spine at how defenseless and trapped she was. Arrested for Actes Forbidden and Foule, she had no magick to call on. She couldn’t even sense an illusion that should have been as obvious as a neon sign at midnight.

“They increase in strength the further we go,” he added.

Milla didn’t say anything. What was there to say? She was in the heart of the Panhandle Coven being escorted to Horned God knew where. Why even bother explaining the layers of defenses C.R.O.W. used when she would never leave this place? No coven meant no trial, which meant Milla was going to be tucked away and forgotten—or cleaved.

The iron door opened with a groan and he led her down a winding stair, through another pulsing, stretching hall, and down again. Milla lost count of the floors and hallways. Her head spun from the winding descent, and a cold sweat broke out over her skin, made sticky by the muffled heat deep in her arms and chest.

Even Agent Sterne was affected by the hexes and illusions. He grunted in the third hallway, and muttered a curse under his breath in one of the stairwells, finally hissing out a sigh as they entered a hallway identical to the illusion above, save for the lights.

No fluorescents flickered or hummed in this hallway. Instead, it was illuminated by softly glowing orbs floating in glass sconces; each hung on the wall beside a door with a narrow window set near the top.

Milla trailed one of the orbs with her eyes as they passed, recognizing the svítilna cast light. Like spalování flame witches, svítilna could conjure energy from nothing, but where a flame witch like her Enforcer dealt in combustion, a svítilna dealt in light across the spectrum. Fun for birthday parties and holidays, but as far as C.R.O.W. was concerned, they were as useful as a stitch witch in a nudist colony.

As in the hallways, iridescent specks on the walls shimmered in the magick light, begging Milla to touch them.

So she did, sweeping her fingers over the marble. They came away wet, and she had just processed that the walls were coated with a thin sheen of water when the singe of a saltburn had her shaking her hand and cursing.

“Estuary salts?” she asked, though she knew the answer: salt water disrupts magick, and marble deflects it.

“We are deep beneath the St. John’s River.” He nodded. “Preventative measures, should any witch feel like taking a long walk through enchanted hallways.”

“Noted.” Milla dried her fingers on her thigh. Maybe she hated herself or felt like spitting in the face of fate because she said, “Building a basement this deep in Jacksonville feels a bit excessive.”

“The cells at ?esky-Krumlov are carved into an ancient salt mine,” he replied. “Would that suit you?”

“I’m just saying”—she shrugged—“there’s a witch queen in New Orleans with a basement like this.”

“Then perhaps you would prefer her hospitality.”

He cocked his head, and Milla could have sworn she saw a tiny smile flicker at the corner of his mouth, there and gone again. Or maybe it was a trick of the low light because his face was a stern, cold mask as he pressed his palm beside the darkened window near the top of the door. Metal churned and ground, heavy clanking rumbled within the marble, and the door swung open, revealing a tiny cell half-lit by the svítilna-cast light.

An iron bed frame with a pillow and a sagging mattress was shoved against the far wall, and a sink, a warped, beat metal mirror, and a toilet hugged the corner to the left of the door. She should probably be grateful there was a toilet. It was better than having a bucket, and considering the spotty history between witches and buckets, a crapper on full display was an infinitely better option.

“In here.”

With another gentle press between her shoulders, Milla stepped in, ignoring the shadowed half of the cell to turn and glimpse Agent Sterne’s frown as he pushed the door closed. The river of light that had bled in from the hallway shrank to a slanted rectangle on the floor, dropping the cell into darkness as a loud metallic clang echoed throughout her cell.

It felt final. Damning.

A faint crackle of magick skittered around the walls, and she shivered as the hairs along the back of her neck rose. She approached the door, and the stern-faced witch watching her through the window.

“So what happens next?”

He did not respond, not that she expected him to. Agent Sterne was her personal guard. Befriending Milla was obviously not part of the job description. Still, a witch had to try .

“Fine, then at least tell me what’s happening in my demesne.”

He did not move, did not blink. Only stared back at Milla with blue eyes made bright by the burn of his Way. She slammed her fist against the glass, seeking a reaction, but he remained unnaturally still. Not a twitch, not a flutter of muscle in his clenched jaw. Even the spalování flame licking his eyes remained still.

The crackle of magick in her cell rose, the only warning before a sickening swoop in her belly had Milla staggering back from the door. She bent forward, arms wrapped around her waist as she hissed through her teeth to stem the sudden rise of nausea. Another static wave rolled over her back and shoulders, and Milla jerked her face up, meeting Agent Sterne’s unseeing blue eyes. A scream swelled in her throat, surging up from the deepest parts of her only to be caught in the static hold.

“No,” she strangled out, the rest of her protest frozen as a thought. No, no, no, not again .

From the darkest corner of her cell came a whisper of fabric and the release of a quiet sigh. “Did you forget about me, magissa?”

Another static wave rushed from the shadows, enveloping Milla and gripping her entirely. As in the woods at the state park, she was held, suffocating beneath the weight of a magick she couldn’t dispell. Bent at the waist, hands gripping her knees, and her panicked gaze stuck on Agent Sterne looming in the window. The furthest edges of her vision went hazy, blurring as the chronomantic stepped out of the shadows. His vague shape was briefly visible before the empty air warbled and blurred, erasing the witch from view.

Gone and not gone. Lurking in the periphery and standing directly beside her. Goosebumps rose, Milla’s body reacting to his nearness. Every nerve screamed in anticipation of his touch, and when he spoke again, his breath puffed against her ear.

“I did not forget about you.”