Chapter 20

20

Chastity knew better than to warn me not to go, and I wouldn’t ask my best friend to walk into danger. Heading toward the market district, I had every kind of protection trinket Chasity could provide stowed in my pockets, but I took neither the eye nor the heart. I wrapped these in extra layers of silk and stuffed the stones under the loose floorboard beneath my bed, a secret vault where I stuffed any valuables.

“Moira will have sussed what you carry by the time you walk through her door. Don’t even think about the artifact you’re searching for.”

“With as powerful as her reputation is, she will figure out the object of my search.”

“Don’t go to Moira from a place of weakness.”

“I’m carrying a damned demon mark, Chas. She should be thrilled to see me.”

So, with Chastity’s best spells and protective crystals, I dressed for an audience with Moira—black jeans, a low-cut tank under a button-down shirt, and my favorite boots, complete with a butterfly knife nestled against my calf.

“Don’t go in like you are looking for a fight, Len. Show respect, but don’t appear weak.”

“Chas, I was raised by a wolf pack. I know about social hierarchy.”

“And how did that work out for you?”

I stared at her with a million rebuttals running through my head. But she’s right. I hated politics and refused to play the game. “Good point, but I survived, and that’s the point.”

“Maybe I should go, too?”

I shook my head and clasped one of her hands between mine. “No, that would be overly aggressive. If you were there, Moira would escalate.”

“Goddess. Please stay safe.”

I jumped the bus heading to the market district, winding through tourists to get to the quietest shop on the strip.

La Sorcière.

A silly, overblown name meant to entice the tourists and hide the fact that the proprietor is one of the most powerful practitioners in the country, if not the continent. Moira has cultivated a reputation that drives visitors to the overpriced knickknacks up front while the customers who know the craft head around back to the simple wooden door in the alley.

I knocked and waited. Moira has to know I’m here. The witch will answer when she’s ready.

But I don’t appreciate the waiting. I breathed and focused on seeking, reaching out for the artifact metaphysically, like pushing invisible fingers through the walls. I assumed the door would be too well protected for even my energy to get through, but people seldom think to shore up concrete walls’ protection, and Moira is no exception.

The final rune thrummed and pulled at me from somewhere inside the building.

At least I’m in the right place.

The instant that I locked onto the artifact, the door opened. “Can I help you?”

Moira wasn’t the one standing behind the door, but the stranger felt powerful. She knocked that power into me, a metaphysical slap to knock me into submission. But being raised in a pack, I know how to show who’s Alpha.

Tonight, I’m tired, frustrated, and over the idea of the power struggles in my town. Fed up with yielding, I pushed back harder than I intended, and the woman gasped and fell back from the door. “Sorry, I don’t like games,” I snarled.

She gaped at me as I strode past into the candlelit interior of the shop’s back rooms. I followed my nose, like every other find, through the narrow halls lined with many differently carved and decorated doors.

I turned a corner, and the hall widened, with one more door at the end, brighter than the rest. There’s only one reason this door would have so much protective magic woven through the wood that it’s visible to the naked eye.

It’s Moira’s office or the room where all the valuables are kept. Either way, what I want is on the other side of it. The woman from behind the door crossed her arms and glared at me.

“Well, what are you waiting for?”

I stepped toward the witch, and she jumped back. The power I felt in the alley had partially leaked away. No wonder she was worried. This witch had taken a swipe, and she couldn’t hold on to the tendrils of power she employed.

The fucking audacity of some witches.

The witch receptionist hugged the wall while scooting past and scurried to the door, giving it a sharp rap with her knuckles. The door swung silently open, and she waved me through.

Moira sat on an overstuffed easy chair in a large room decorated like a storybook grandmother’s house. It reminded me eerily of the safe house in which Thorn had stashed me. The decor is not what I expected from the self-proclaimed ‘baddest witch’ in Louisiana. I halted the moment as I spotted her.

With white hair drawn back into a bun and the Laura Ashley floral dress a half-century out-of-date, the baddest witch in Baton Rouge reminded me of a kindly grandmother.

As if.

“I wondered when I’d finally see you.”

I chuckled as I sat in the recliner Moira waved me toward.

“Sorry to have kept you waiting. No disrespect intended.”

She gave me a curt nod in acknowledgment of my faux apology.

“Sorry to have kept you waiting.”

“I’m curious about the nature of today’s visit. I understood you were trying to find a way back into the pack, but after Kye’s attack on Thorn’s warehouse, I assume that’s no longer an option?”

Moira made it a question, but she didn’t need the answer. This isn’t about getting to know me or finding out what I want. Just telling me that there’s nothing I do that she doesn’t already know.

“What can you tell me about this?” Improvising, I opened my button-down shirt to the navel, leaned forward, and pulled the neckline of my tank top down to show her the demon mark.

Moira pursed her lips. “Oh, you have been busy.”

I leaned back again. “Had a job go sideways. Now I need something from this shop to get back on track.”

“You don’t say. What do you need?” She spoke with grandmotherly concern —a total acting job that made me think Moira had missed her true calling.

“The sister to this artifact, to call it out of me.”

She looked shocked, and for the first time since I walked in, I believed she was sincere. “Most people would be glad for more power, not seek its removal.”

“I’m not most people. I was hired to do a job, and the job’s not done until the item I got hired to find is in my client’s hand.”

Moira stood and circled me, and I observed she was not walking like the granny she pretended to be. She leaned in to examine the mark closer. “You have so much untapped potential. It’s wasted on the Syndicates.”

“Well, I don’t observe faction biases when choosing my clients. It’s only one of the benefits of not belonging to one.” I smiled with an innocent butter-wouldn’t-melt expression.

Moira sighed, and I figured she was not buying my performance.

“That’s right, you don’t, do you?” Her tone was as sweet as mine, but her words were meant to cut. Pretty arrogant for a woman who didn’t even notice the power from the second mark I carry.

“Exactly. So, I have a job to do, and I suppose that means a trade if you have what I want.” I crossed my legs and rested my hands on my lap. “Do you have what I need?”

“I don’t know.” Her smile grew like the Cheshire Cat. “Can you describe what it is?”

Here we go. “It will be small enough to fit in your palm, a stone, perhaps with carved markings on it, and a sort of an inner glow.”

“Can’t say I’ve seen it.” The sweet smile faded from her grandmotherly face, leaving only cold blue eyes staring back at me. “And even if I did, what could you possibly have to trade that would be worth anything?”

I reached for the artifact with my mind, gently flexing my power that didn’t seem to hit her radar. Testing her wards, I push a little more, dialing up the volume on my power to find out what she would notice. It wasn’t until the air in the room buzzed like a plague of mosquitoes that she finally blinked and frowned at me.

“What is that?”

“I’m seeking. It’s what I do, remember?”

She shook her head and licked her lips, blinking rapidly. “No, seeking is passive. You’re not seeking anything.”

I flexed my hand, and the bookcase across the room rattled. “I suppose you’re right. It isn’t seeking so much as calling, if we’re being technical about it.”

She leaped toward the bookshelf rattling so hard now it looked like it would fly across the room. “Stop it. Whatever you’re doing, just stop it.”

My palms up in surrender, I pushed just a little harder. With an audible pop, the rune flew through a hole in the bookcase that must have been another little leather-bound hiding place. It flew to me and settled on my lap.

“You know, you’d think wealthy and powerful people would use like… safes for their valuables.” The rune sat in my lap, safely away from my skin, as Moira and I stared each other down.

“You have no right to take that from me without payment.”

“And I have taken nothing from you—yet. But I’m getting a little tired of every other creature treating me like I have no value because you don’t know what I am. So instead, how about we start over?”

She chewed the inside of her cheek, making her look much younger than the sixty years and change I’d guessed she was. “What do you want?”

“For starters, how about you tell me where you got this stone?” I turned my focus outward to the purple-painted door to the office. I push outward and call it like the stone until it closes.

I could get used to this.

The stone, a white obelisk, pulsed in my lap, radiating such happiness to be home it seemed alive. It’s not my favorite sensation, but I feel incredibly powerful.

“Why does it matter where I got it from?”

“It matters who you got it from and why it was worth taking on a little field trip to send me chasing echoes.” I sighed. “I’ve survived by being too unimportant to bother with for a long time. If someone’s decided that’s no longer the case, I’d like to find out who sooner rather than later.”