Everyone in the supernatural world knew never to mess with a witch. Everyone, apparently, aside from whoever had had the audacity to steal from the coven’s warehouse in broad daylight.
“Someone has a death wish,” I remarked, surveying the closed doors to the warehouse. The shimmering wards were back in place, but this time the thieves had even had the nerve to leave graffiti behind. The text, smudged by rainwater, stood out above my head in glittering ink. I tilted my head, trying to read the words, but the language was unfamiliar to me.
“Oh, they’ll wish for death when I’m done with them.” Isabel cracked her knuckles and placed a tracking spell on the ground. “Let’s see what we have here.”
At one time, I’d pretended to be a witch to hide the fact that I’d stolen my magic from a lord of Faerie. I didn’t need to lie any longer, but I was still more than happy to give Isabel a helping hand when it came to such matters as punishing thieves foolish enough to cross the Laurel Coven. That they’d done so three times in a week merited consequences on a level with one of Isabel’s high-grade itching spells.
“The thieves struck a couple of hours ago at most.” Isabel dropped to a crouch. “That means the tracks will be fresh.”
“Unless they covered their traces.” Stealing from the witches’ storeroom in the first place suggested they knew how to avoid detection, especially as a significant number of the spells inside the store were used to erase evidence. “Want me to try one, too?”
“Sure, go ahead.”
I pulled out a tracking spell of my own. Trackers were more precise when they locked onto a specific person, but the thieves hadn’t left any physical evidence behind, so we’d have to cast the spell on the area directly in front of the warehouse and hope that nobody else had walked past in the time that had elapsed since the robbery.
As green light swirled up both my arms, my vision tunnelled, and then the warehouse reappeared in monochrome. One disadvantage to tracking spells was that they played like old movies with no sound, so the thieves could be having a full-volume discussion of their nefarious plans in the background and I wouldn’t be any the wiser.
As I watched, four figures walked out of the open door. All four wore black, down to the masks beneath their hoods that concealed their features. I hadn’t expected them to come out wearing name tags, but come on.
Swearing under my breath, I withdrew my hands from the tracking spell, and the circle collapsed into fine powder.
Next to me, Isabel shook spell residue from her own hands. “See anything useful? I didn’t.”
“Nope.” I rose upright. “Just four hooded figures in black masks. Not faeries, and probably not shifters either. I’d say human.”
But why—and how—would non-supernaturals, humans without magic, steal supplies from the coven? They hadn’t even used magic openly, as far as I’d seen, though the trackers only afforded us a glimpse into a few recent moments of time. The further back you tried to reach, the fuzzier the results would be.
“Same here.” Isabel ran her heel over the remnants of the tracking spell, smudging the dust into the pavement. “I didn’t see how they broke in.”
“Lock pick?”
“We have booby traps.” Isabel pointed to the faint glyphs painted on the walls on either side of the door. “I found them disabled, just like the last two robberies. Whoever our thieves are, they know how to detect and negate spells.”
“Do they have a dispeller?” The device revealed and negated certain spells, but the only one I’d seen was Vance’s custom-made model, and they weren’t easy to come by.
“If they did, they likely stole that, too.” Isabel’s eyes gained a steely glint. “I’m going in to see what they took. Cover for me?”
“You sure?”
“Nobody’s inside. Shana and I already reset the wards.”
“All right.” My eyes followed the movement as she unlocked the door, and the dark, wide room lit up in a blaze of fluorescent light. One of my hands rested on the sword strapped to my waist and I unsheathed it a couple of inches, but no blue glow warned me of faerie magic.
Boxes and crates filled most of the space inside, packed with spell ingredients ranging from leaves and herbs to less pleasant items like dried insects and powdered bone. Their herbal scent wafted over me as I planted my feet in the doorway, watching Isabel search behind the boxes for attackers. If an aggressor waited inside a room full of deadly spells, they’d be in for a nasty surprise if they tried to jump Isabel, but robbing the coven three times was not an act of someone who feared retaliation. If anything, they were begging for a chat with my sword, Helena.
Once I’d verified there weren’t any hidden attackers behind the boxes and crates, my gaze panned over the wards at the entrance. Standard security wards, which detected threats and prevented anyone from passing by who wasn’t a witch. In fact, they’d gone one step further. When I rested my hand over the ward, I met an invisible barrier coating the wall beneath. When the wards were fully functional, nobody aside from a select few—presumably coven members—could walk through the door into the warehouse without meeting resistance. An iron barrier was also set in place to keep the faeries out, and there’d be more wards concealed around the immediate area beneath shadow spells.
That the thieves hadn’t used shadow spells themselves was another sign of their sheer boldness. Shadow spells reduced the person wearing the charm to, well, a shadow. Handy for thievery, at least for most people. Though my magic was only visible to those with the Sight—in other words, anyone with faerie blood—it blazed like a neon-blue beacon even when I employed a shadow spell to hide myself. I suppressed a groan when a passing piskie spotted me and zipped over, drawn by the low-level glow of my magic.
“Shoo,” I muttered, waving a hand.
The piskie ignored me, buzzing around my head like an oversized fly, and inadvertently flew straight into the invisible barrier on the warehouse door. There was a popping noise, and the small creature shot into the air like a cork from a champagne bottle. So much for not drawing attention.
Piskies were small fry, but I sometimes missed the days when I’d been able to slide under the radar. Until last year, I’d primarily made a living by killing any rogue faeries out to cause trouble but never acquired a reputation among the lesser fae. Now, though only a handful of people knew the story of how I’d acquired faerie magic as a regular old human, the newfound notoriety was a constant thorn in my side. Literally, in some cases.
Ugh. Don’t think about thorns, Ivy.
Though the piskie took the hint and didn’t come back, my sword continued to emit a faint blue halo warning of faeries somewhere nearby. The sword, which I’d christened Helena, was a replacement for Irene, my old iron blade. Forged in the faerie realm from one of their ancient trees, this blade was the physical manifestation of the magic I’d stolen from a Sidhe lord. In addition to boosting my speed to levels that rivalled the supernatural grace of a faerie, the talisman was stronger and sharper than any other blade I’d seen and had the extra bonus of being impervious to damage. I rested my hand on the hilt and drew the blade a couple of inches, revealing shimmering glyphs and a brightening glow that pointed to a shifting shadow behind me, hidden by glamour it thought I couldn’t see through.
“Nice try.” I spun around and fully drew the blade, decapitating the imp before it could conjure up a flame. Fire imps were fairly harmless as far as faerie pests went, but they travelled in packs. As I’d expected, the noise brought five more imps scurrying out. When they saw my glowing sword up close, they turned tail and legged it for the nearest alley.
“Oh no, you don’t.” Plenty of non-supernaturals lived nearby, and I knew from experience how fast an imp’s fire could spread. With a quick glance behind me to make sure none were in the warehouse, too, I ran in pursuit.
Entering the alleyway, I lifted a hand and sent a controlled burst of magic that slammed into all five of them at once. I’d toned the attack down, but the blast still sent them flying in all directions. One flung a fireball past my head, which I deflected, forming my magic into a shield between me and the miniature faeries. They might be small, but the buggers packed a hell of a magical punch, and on one memorable occasion, a group of the little shits had skipped past the wards on our flat and had set Isabel’s flowerbeds on fire.
Apparently not taking the hint, a fire imp leaped into the air, brandishing a knife the length of its arm. I used my shield to knock the blade from its hand and caught the imp on the end of my sword. Magic burst outward, sending the imp’s head flying into the air and spraying gore all over the alley wall. I took down the other imps in three swipes, my blade humming with both pleasure and impatience, wanting a real challenge. When there was only one imp left, surrounded by the bodies of its fallen companions, it let out a shriek and flung a last fireball.
I flicked my blade and deflected the flames right back at its owner. The imp howled, its papery skin caught afire, and I shook my head at it. “You’d think Faerie would have given you fireproof skin. Guess that place screws all of us over, huh.”
I finished the creature off with a quick stab to the throat and checked myself for injuries. None, aside from a shallow cut to the back of my hand, which I’d absently wiped on my leg and left a crimson smear behind. Might get some stares, but at this point, I’d perfected the denim-and-blood aesthetic. My lifestyle didn’t offer many chances to make fashion statements.
“Ivy?” Isabel approached me from behind, taking in my dishevelled state and the bloody mess smeared on the wall. “I left you for five minutes and now you’re bleeding in an alley surrounded by bits of dead faerie. Honestly, Ivy, I think you have issues.”
“You think?” I pulled a cleansing spell out of my pocket to get rid of the bloody smears on the alley wall. “Find anything in there?”
“No.” She threw in a cleansing spell of her own, while I picked up each decapitated imp’s body and deposited them into a dustbin. I’d call cleanup to come and collect them later. “I checked, and it doesn’t look as if they took anything dangerous. I keep all the experimental stuff at the flat anyway, but I’m pretty sure they stole nothing aside from a few trackers and cleansing spells. It’s bizarre.”
“You mean to say they robbed the witches’ most secure store and didn’t steal anything important?”
“Yeah.” Isabel’s lips pursed. “If I didn’t know better, I’d wonder if their only objective was to draw the coven’s attention. They left enough traces for us to know they were here, but not enough for us to follow them.”
“Yeah, that’s sketchy.” I thought. “Maybe they’re selling the spells for profit on the side and picked ones that wouldn’t be traced back to the coven.”
“That’s a possibility, but I can’t believe they’ve done this three times and not got caught.” Her tightening jaw betrayed her annoyance. It wasn’t every day that Isabel’s top-notch spells failed to turn up answers. “I’m still lost on who they even were. Only a witch would know how to get past our wards. Or a mage, but the mages’ headquarters is where half the deliveries are bound for in the first place.”
“It won’t be a mage.” They didn’t do petty thievery. “Any rival witches in the area?”
“No, and no coven member would have any reason to steal supplies. We’re allowed to take as many spells home as we want to, and we have keys to the storeroom anyway.” Her forehead creased. “I’m missing something.”
“The graffiti?”
“The what?”
I closed the dustbin lid on the fire imps’ corpses and strode back to the warehouse, pointing out the neon words shimmering before our eyes. “That.”
“What am I supposed to be looking at?”
“The words. I can’t read them, but… wait. You don’t see it?”
“No. I don’t see any writing.”
“Damn.” If she couldn’t see it, that meant the writing was glamoured. A faerie, somehow, had left that text. Did that mean the fae had been responsible for the thievery? Those hooded figures… they weren’t fae. Right?
Isabel met my gaze for a long moment, her expression reflecting a chain of thoughts that mirrored mine. Then she looked away. “It might not have been the thieves who left the message. There’d be no point if none of the witches can see it.”
Unless it was for me. I had more enemies than I could count, especially amid the fae, but my ability to see through glamour didn’t extend to reading whatever gibberish they’d scrawled on the wall. “I can’t read it either.”
“Fae language, do you think?” Isabel swivelled to the alleyway. “Did those faeries who attacked you…?”
“Nah, fire imps can’t read or write,” I said. “Not sure if they knew me or if they just wanted to cause trouble.”
No faerie would have any reason to steal from the witches. They had their own spells and human ones often flat-out didn’t work for them. As for the other supernatural groups, the mages and necromancers had arrangements with the local coven to receive the best spell supplies before they went on sale to the public, while shifters rarely bothered with spells at all unless in situations of dire need. Which left regular, mundane humans as the most likely suspects. Mercenaries, perhaps, though I’d assumed even they would have more sense. Most had no magical talent, either, and whoever had disabled the wards must have had at least some level of skill. Hmm.
I pulled out a small notebook to copy down the text scrawled on the wall. Then Isabel and I turned our backs on the warehouse and left for home.
My phone buzzed in my pocket as we reached our flat, located on the bottom floor of a two-storey semi-detached house at the street’s corner. By habit, Isabel and I checked on the wards etched onto the garden wall on either side of the gate and the tripwire spells on the inside, positioned to offer maximum discomfort to anyone who had the misfortune to enter the house intending harm. Potential clients didn’t fall into that category, but nobody lurked in the flowerbeds today. Our flat also doubled as the office for the freelance business we shared and we’d had to give Erwin a stern lecture about dropping glitter spells on our clients’ heads.
“Ivy!” The piskie flew out of the upstairs window to greet us, perching on the door frame. “No bad faeries today?”
“Good. And you didn’t drop glitter on anyone?”
“No, definitely not.”
Isabel grinned. “See, told you he’d remember.”
I made a sceptical noise. After years of reluctant cohabitation with our winged squatter, Isabel and I had long since given up on trying to evict him and it had been Isabel who’d suggested employing him as a security guardThe piskie might have less brains than a gnat, but I’d reluctantly conceded that it wasn’t a bad idea to have one of the faeries watching for trouble when Isabel was alone in the flat. Unlike me, she couldn’t see through glamour.
Which made me wonder, once again, who’d left that message at the warehouse. If I went with the paranoid conclusion that the person responsible wanted to find me, they didn’t need to go to that much trouble. Pretty much every faerie in the city knew our address already.
And our current immortal enemy made the witches’ highest-grade security wards look as flimsy as cobwebs.
True, I hadn’t seen Fionn, former commander of the Wild Hunt, since he’d disappeared after Calder had woken him up six months ago. Those of us who knew of his existence were working under the assumption he was enjoying freedom in the Grey Vale too much to come back and destroy humanity for kicks, but I of all people knew how tenuous human existence was compared to the callous immortals who saw us as little more than playthings. I also knew better than to assume he’d forgotten about me, the sole human who’d witnessed his rebirth.
My phone buzzed again, and I pulled it out, skimming through my messages.
“Vance?” Isabel said questioningly.
“Yep.” I read the text on the screen, a smile forming on my lips. “Date night.”
“Nice.” She unlocked the front door and looked me over. “You aren’t wearing those jeans, I hope.”
“Nope.” I entered the flat and headed to my room to change out of my bloodstained clothes and into something nice, which admittedly had a high chance of acquiring its own set of bloodstains by the night’s end. Even when I wasn’t on duty, being the faerie killer came with its fair share of hazards, and my skills had never been in higher demand.
Despite my ex-boss’s attempts at sabotage, Isabel and I had done just fine since I’d quit working for Larsen. Around half our jobs came from from the mages, thanks to Vance Colton, head mage and my long-term partner, and the rest from independent clients. We split jobs evenly between us most of the time, though I sometimes volunteered to go solo due to her being busy with her duties as the second-in-command of the Laurel Coven. I normally stayed out of coven business, but I was more than happy to lend my sword to help her with this current outbreak of thievery, and I had little doubt that Isabel and I would catch the sticky-fingered intruders whether they were fae or human.
Once I’d changed, I left the flat for my second home, the manor belonging to the local mage guild and the property of Lord Vance Colton.
