Michele Hauf - This Wicked Magic

“I don’t think it works that way, man.”

“Just kidding. No one ever seems to get my jokes. So you in Paris for a while?”

“Parish and I have relocated here for the summer. I will be updating more hardware for the Council. Might even get a fancy scanner in here to scan books without breaking the spines. Bet that would make your day.”

“It would. The ancient grimoires are delicate. But I’ve no time to work on such a project. Now I’ve got the witch’s address, I’m on my way out.”

“All right, man, take it easy.”

“Say hi to Parish for me,” CJ said as he walked Cinder out of the office and headed for the fourth quarter.

Libby breezed into the bright, spotless spell room, swooshing a flutter of purple ruffles in eyesight, as Vika bent over a mortar of crushed lavender. The spider’s eyes listed in the ingredients she doled out carefully. Only needed half a dozen.

“Working on a sleeping draft?” Libby asked, leaning on the cool, white marble counter. She snapped her banana-scented gum. She cocked out a hip, hitting a pose as always. Rock star was Libby’s innate M.O., despite her lacking fame and the ability to carry a tune.

“For Becky. She’s been sleeping less than a hour a week lately.” The vampire, who was Vika’s best friend, had a lot to deal with, her dad being the devil’s fixer. Becky worried about him constantly. “I don’t need help. I know you had plans for today.”

Libby’s mood perked. On the other hand, when wasn’t her mood perky? The dress she wore was vintage, and the cinched skirt with wide white plastic belt reminded Vika of an old baking ad she’d once seen while paging through her grandmother’s magazines from the fifties. Always so spiffy, those pre-feminism women, when doing household chores.

“I figured I should stick around,” Libby said. “When do you want to head back to the crime scene to look around for the will-o’-the-wisp?”

Will-o’-the-wisp was another name for the corpse light or wandering soul that usually stayed firmly attached to Vika’s soul until the soul bringer arrived to scrub her clean.

“Soon as I’m done here. But I can do that myself. Really, Libby, go and have fun.”

“I wish you’d come along with me. The witches bazaar is always a riot.”

“I know. You’ve told me about all the eligible young witches.”

“I’m sure there’s a few to catch your eye. I know you like them tall, muscled and blond.”

“The opposite of your thick, brute and dark,” Vika answered with a grin. She tapped the last spider eye into the mortar and rolled the marble pestle over the contents with a satisfying crushing noise. “You think Reichardt liked the cookie?”

“Oh, Vika.” Libby sighed. “I dreamed about The Taking of the Cookie last night. You don’t want to know.”

“Yeah, you probably better keep that one to yourself. Would it matter if I said, once again, how wrong having a crush on a soul bringer is?”

“Nope. He’s the guy for me. I know it.”

Good luck with that. The guy was thousands of years old and hadn’t cracked a smile in a millennium, Vika felt sure. His life consisted of collecting souls, all day, all night, all the time. She imagined he did not have a social life, or even a concept of what socializing implied. And to consider love or romance? Forget about it.

“If they’ve any vetiver for sale today, would you pick me up a pint? I’m fresh out. Salamander got into the plant out in the garden and mowed that down smartly.”

“Will do.” Libby leaned in and kissed her on the brow. “Talk to you later, sis. Good luck tracking the soul. But if you can’t find it, I’ll put in a good word for you with Reichardt.”

Libby flounced out of the spell room, and Vika sighed. “If only that were possible.”

She knew well if she didn’t find the soul, Reichardt’s retaliation would be swift and just. She didn’t particularly favor the idea of having no soul, but she knew she could live without one. A soulless body grew cold and emotionless. Soulless would leave her open to all sorts of untold evils. She would not be the same witch of the Light, and she didn’t know if she could live with the consequences.

“Um, Vika?”

She looked up to see Libby peeking into the room, her smile gone. “You forget something?”

“There’s someone here to see you,” her sister whispered covertly. “The guy from last night.”

Vika dropped the heavy marble pestle in the mortar. “The derelict?”

“Derelict?” A tall man with coal hair and an easy stance walked around beside Libby and crossed his arms. He looked only one step up from derelict, with his black clothing hanging on his broad frame and his jeans hems scraping the hardwood floor. He gave the spell room a once-over, drawing his eyes from the walls of glass-fronted cupboards to the inset halogen lights that fashioned the space into the ultimate clean room for concocting and conjuring. “This is your spell room? It’s very...”

“Clean?” Vika offered hopefully.

“Sterile.”

“Thank you.” Pleased with the comment, she stood and gestured her sister to leave. “It’s okay, Libby. The problem may now be solved.”

Her sister winked and made a kissing gesture behind the man’s back before giggling and dashing off to spend the afternoon trading spells and herbs with the local covens at the weekly bazaar.

“Viktoria St. Charles?” he asked, stepping down into the room. His boots clicked the highly glossed marble floor.

The man inserted a void of darkness into the clean room with his presence. He wore black from head to toe, and the room was white upon gray marble. As much as black was her preferred color scheme, Vika always wore pale colors in this room to honor the pure atmosphere. Today, it was a soft heather, fitted to her body from shoulder to ankle in a corseted maxi dress that flared out from the knee.

“Viktorie,” she corrected. “As in successful. It’s an old Russian name.”

“Oh, yes, Viktorie. I’m sorry.”

“Why are you here, monsieur...?”

“I looked you up on the Council database. I’m Certainly Jones.” He offered his hand to shake, and she did so, quickly, finding his grip sure.

The man recoiled, shaking his hand as if he’d been stung. “What the hell was that?”

She had no idea what he’d felt. Pressing a hand to her throat—ah, yes. “My grandmother’s nail.” She lifted the leather cord she always wore about her neck. A centuries-old nail was twisted about it as a pendant. “It was taken from her grave after she’d been buried by the villagers.”

“Don’t tell me.” He winced as he studied the necklace. “Nails had been pounded around her clothing to keep the witch down so she would not rise from the grave?”

“Actually, this one, and the one my sister wears, were taken from her jaw.” The practice had been a cruel and unusual attribute of the witch-hunt madness of the eighteenth century. “Her magic is contained within this nail. It protects me from dark magic.” She lifted a defiant brow.

“It’s powerful. I felt it.”

“That means you practice dark magic.”

“It does.” At her silence, he added with a splay of his hands, which revealed his left was covered in a tight assortment of black tattoos, “Someone’s got to do it.”

Uh-huh. She’d never had a dark practitioner cross her threshold before, and she wasn’t sure she liked it now. Best to get rid of this one quickly.

“So, Certainly Jones,” she said. “I’ve heard of you. The Council’s resident librarian.”

“Archivist, actually. My job involves much more than cataloging books. And you are a cleaner who is also a witch? This spell room is so...”