Living in a castle had its perks. Aesthetics aside, it gave me the chance to live out my childhood fantasies of running down echoing corridors and commanding an imaginary army to conquer my foes. As a kid who’d grown up in foster care, I could be forgiven for wanting to live alone in the middle of nowhere with a big, fancy castle of my own.
One thing that was definitely not a perk—spiders. I evicted the latest unwelcome guest from my bedroom by catching it in a glass and throwing it out the window. Not my preferred method, but since magic was forbidden inside the tower, and the others would object if I conjured a flamethrower, I had to use what I had available.
That was unfortunate, really, because I could have sworn that the castle’s spiders were finding ways to sneak back into my room on purpose. This was the fifth I’d found this morning alone. After closing the window, I tugged down a spiderweb dangling from the ceiling near the spot where it joined with the wall. If I had to guess, I would say they were coming from up in the attic.
If I dealt with the spiders at their source, it’d solve the problem, but that would involve setting foot in their territory. The idea was as appealing as gargling ectoplasm, but I’d fought monsters twice my size, and I’d never hear the end of it if my vampire housemate found out I’d let a few creatures smaller than my fingernails get the best of me.
A few creatures with eight limbs each. And eight eyes. Ugh.
Suppressing a shudder, I walked out of my room and then stared at the closed wooden door to the attic, trying to muster up the nerve to open it.
Footsteps sounded behind me. “Perry, are you okay?”
Tam, leader of our team, eyed me with a puzzled expression on his handsome face. What with his silky-smooth long hair, bright-green eyes, and tall, lean frame, I might have taken him for a vampire if I didn’t know better. Despite being as fast and stealthy as a vamp, he didn’t have the unfortunate blood-drinking habit or their nocturnal nature—the latter proven by the fact that we were both awake before everyone else in the tower. My brain short-circuited in an attempt to find an explanation that didn’t make me sound like a wimp who couldn’t handle a few harmless spiders. “Yes. I’m okay.”
“You looked a little spaced out.”
Heat crept up my neck. Had he caught me staring at him? “I’m trying to figure out how to spider-proof my room.”
“Another one?”
“Five. I think they’re coming from up there.” I gestured at the attic door. “If there’s a huge nest, I might need to visit the weapons room before I head up to face the carnage.”
“Spiders aren’t that bad. They kill flies.”
“No flies would dare go near my room,” I said. “Honestly, I’m doing the spiders a favour by kicking them out, but they don’t seem to have got the message yet.”
A hint of amusement entered his gaze. “I can’t imagine they have. They don’t tend to listen like people do.”
“Some people don’t listen either.” I was a prime example myself, though I was trying to get better now I was part of a team. There was only one member who I clashed with on a regular basis, and I was thankful he was asleep. I didn’t need the vampire to witness my ongoing battle with the castle’s spiders.
Tam indicated the attic door. “I can come with you to check it out, if you like.”
At his offer, my heart began to race. Oh boy. I’d been doing my level best to keep my attraction to him secret, so as not to jeopardise the trust developing between us as the team leader and the newbie, but at times like this, it was hard to ignore. Imagining being in the confined space of the attic alone with him sent heat rushing through me.
On the other hand, it would be kind of pathetic if I had to beg my team leader to get rid of the spiders when I’d gone head-to-head with an enraged demonic spirit less than a week ago. I had a reputation to uphold, after all.
“Never mind,” I said, hoping he didn’t see any signs of my internal struggle on my face. “I know a losing battle when I see one. I’ll just get some bug spray or something.”
“Fair enough.” Tam moved towards the stairs. “I’m heading down to the office for a bit. I have an inkling Kellen’s due to call in with our next assignment.”
“I wondered when that would be.” It hadn’t been long since our last—first, technically—mission together as a team, but the Wardens made the word ‘efficient’ look like an understatement. As a team leader, Tam got some leeway in which missions we took on, though the orders always came from the main office. Specialist teams who dealt with magical monsters were in higher demand than one might think.
“We’ll have to wait until everyone’s awake to give them the details.” He descended the wooden stairs to the floor below.
I took “everyone” to mean “Maurice.” I’d already heard Callum and Farley heading downstairs earlier while I’d been engaged in a silent battle of wills with my unwelcome spidery visitors, but that was Tam for you. He always wanted to be fair to everyone, even towards our most antisocial member—aside from me, of course. One might have thought the two of us would have bonded over that commonality, but my history with vampires had mostly involved hauling them away in handcuffs, and to say I’d never had good experiences working with others in the past would be an understatement. Part of it was a personality issue, which I’d freely acknowledge. The other more significant part was the fact that I was cursed.
“Curse” is a loaded word in the magical world. The tamest curses were used to play practical jokes, such as ones that caused someone’s hair to fall out or ants to show up in every pair of shoes someone owned. Nastier ones were slapped down with harsh punishments from the magical authorities, but the generic bad-luck curse placed upon me as an infant had flown under the radar until the first time I’d met the Warden’s office’s resident Seer. She’d fainted on the spot at the sight of me, and frankly, it was a miracle the Wardens had let me stick around after that debacle.
Granted, they could hardly throw a child out onto the street, even a cursed one, so they’d asked Kellen to keep an eye on me and kept me at arm’s length from then on. I’d proven myself to the Wardens enough times that they’d had to accept me as one of them, though a bit of me suspected my habit of being shunted between offices in different cities was partly due to superstition on the office’s part, as if curses were contagious. For the record, they weren’t, but since curses could usually only be removed by the person who’d used them, and nobody knew who was responsible for mine, there was nothing to be done.
My phone began to buzz in my pocket as I followed Tam downstairs. After I’d fished it out, I found that Kellen was calling me. My supervisor—and the one who’d assigned me to this team—would likely be setting our next assignment, so I guessed he wanted to have a quick chat with me beforehand. Upon reaching the foot of the stairs, I answered the call. “Hey, Kellen.”
“Perry,” he said. “Got a moment?”
“Sure.” I watched Tam descend the second staircase to the tower’s lowest floor from my position on the landing, hearing the murmur of Farley’s and Callum’s voices from inside the living room. “I don’t have anything going on, but I’m guessing you’re calling because that’s about to change.”
“You know me well.” I could imagine his green ogre’s face crinkling in a smile. It’d only been a couple of days since I’d gone to his office and told him I’d be sticking with my new team. The news hadn’t been a surprise to him, despite his taking a major gamble when he’d sent me here, but he’d known me for most of my life.
“So, what’s the assignment?”
I entered the kitchen, noting with disgust that Maurice had left a couple of dead rats on the wooden medieval-style table. The vampire was worse than a stray cat.
“That would be telling.”
I perched on one of the benches on either side of the table. “I thought that’s why you called.”
“Not exactly.” His tone became more serious. “I just wanted to let you know that this mission isn’t going to be like your first one.”
You don’t say. It wasn’t unheard of for him to give me a heads-up before difficult missions, despite his knowledge that I could handle pretty much anything, so I’d learned to humour him. Kellen had been the person who’d found me as a troubled child, and I owed him more than I could ever repay for getting me out of the regular human foster system. It had been hard enough being a witch living among humans, but when my curse was added in, it was a wonder I hadn’t turned out completely dysfunctional.
“I gathered that we’re going to be leaving Hexworth this time around,” I said to him. “Right?”
“Not just that.”
“Oh boy.” Given the lead-up, I thought he was about to dump an unwelcome surprise on my head. “Go on. Give me the news. Is the mission going to involve spiders?”
“Not to my knowledge,” he said. “No, the news is that the upper echelons of the Wardens have decided to turn the next mission into an opportunity to assess your entire team.”
“What does that mean?” I asked. “Assess us in what way?”
“To evaluate how well you’re working together … that kind of thing.”
My heart sank. “You mean they’re sending one of their poxy inspectors to tail us throughout our next mission.”
Great. I’d never got on well with the Wardens’ higher-ups—authority figures generally brought out my rebellious instincts—but having to deal with one of their inspectors when my relationship with my new team wasn’t quite settled yet was an obstacle I hadn’t seen coming. We’d come a long way in the aftermath of our first case being resolved, but the last thing we needed was a third party stepping in and making things difficult for all of us.
One didn’t argue with the upper echelons of the Wardens, though. Even I knew that.
“Sorry,” Kellen said. “Not my idea. The inspector was already in the area you’re being sent to, so it was an obvious choice for them to ask him to assess you.”
Assessments were nobody’s idea of a good time, but a certain vampire had better be on his best behaviour if we had to impress the head office.
“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Kellen said. “Just wanted to give you a heads-up so you can let the others know.”
“Cheers.”
This was going to go over well.
* * *
“We’re being assessed?” Maurice asked. “Seriously?”
As it turned out, Kellen’s plan had been to phone Tam right after our call, at which point Tam had called a meeting for the entire team and forgone his plan to let Maurice sleep in. Normally, the living room was my favourite room in the tower, packed with cosy armchairs clustered around the fireplace, but the fire had yet to warm up, and a chill seeped through the cold stone walls. Living in a castle that had been built in the twelfth century did have a few downsides, spiders aside, but I couldn’t deny it discomfited me a little to think of our next mission removing us from our base.
“We are,” Tam confirmed in response to the vampire’s question.
Maurice, the singular reason I was a little concerned that our team might fail the assessment before it even started, lounged in his seat with the elegance only a vampire could achieve. His pale face, as usual, was twisted in a scowl. “Just what we need.”
“It’s not that unusual,” Callum said in his soft Scottish accent, attempting to calm the prickly vampire down. The laid-back werewolf was Maurice’s polar opposite, which made it doubly surprising that they managed to live together without ending up as mortal enemies, let alone developing an amicable rapport. “It’s been a while since our last assessment.”
At his side, Farley lowered her head, her curly dark hair falling to either side of her face. “Yeah … that was before we were down a member.”
Oh. Right. My predecessor, who’d been a witch like Farley and me, had died in a tragic accident the previous year. The others didn’t yet know that Kellen had told me the details, and I was careful to avoid thinking too deeply about the subject while I was around Maurice. The vampire claimed to have stopped using his ability to read my inmost thoughts without my permission, but I didn’t want to take the risk.
“True,” Tam said. “It makes sense that they’d want to check everything’s going smoothly in here. I don’t like it either, but they’re being insistent.”
“Typical of them,” said Callum. “At least we’ll avoid any unpleasant surprises later down the line.”
We’d better. It was understandable that the inspectors would want to check up on the team, but they might have given us the chance to get through more than a single assignment first.
“I wouldn’t speak too soon. Unpleasant surprises are kind of our thing.” Maurice shot a brief look in my direction, as if to remind me of how my curse was also prone to rebounding upon the people around me. Coming from a guy who lived on blood and dead rats, it didn’t particularly bother me, though I had to wonder what an outsider would make of our team dynamic.
“So … what’s the assignment?” asked Farley.
All eyes turned expectantly towards Tam.
“Our assignment is a little unusual,” he said. “A couple of tourists were found dead near a small community of paranormals who live by the sea. Their village is very small, only a dozen or so houses, and the details of their connection to the deaths are unclear.”
“We’re staying with them?” asked Callum.
“No, they don’t have anywhere for tourists to stay, so the Wardens had to pick a nearby village as a base,” said Tam. “They found one within walking distance where paranormals can live openly, which also happens to be where the inspector is staying.”
“Lucky us,” Maurice muttered.
“How long will we leave the tower for?” Farley asked.
I’d been wondering the same thing. I hadn’t lived in the castle long enough to establish a new routine yet, and we’d spent the couple of days since our last mission playing Cluedo: Paranormal Edition or watching horror movies on the massive TV that sat next to the fireplace. I wouldn’t lie—I was going to miss the relative span of peace, however appealing it might be to have a change of scenery. While part of me relished the challenge of potentially fighting another monster, the prospect of dealing with an inspector was far less welcome.
“That depends on how long it takes for us to find the cause of the tourists’ deaths,” said Tam. “The local police department are stumped, but the details were suspicious enough to draw the attention of the Wardens.”
“You think it’s another monster that’s attacking tourists,” I surmised. “Right?”
“Correct,” he answered. “As to what kind of creature it is … you know as much as I do.”
“And in our line of work, anything is possible,” said Callum. “Even another possessed tree.”
“Pretty unlikely on the coast,” I commented. “Possessed seaweed, perhaps.”
“That actually sounds kinda horrifying,” Farley said.
Whatever form our target took, it was our job as Wardens to remove the threat and ensure the safety of the surrounding humans, magical or otherwise. The Wardens had a reputation in the magical world as mostly being devoted to joyless paperwork over action, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Except for people like Kellen who worked in the offices, but the weirdo actually enjoyed that kind of thing, and I had no doubt that this inspector would be the same.
“Is the inspector involved in the investigation?” I asked. “Will they be helping or just observing?”
“Yeah, are they going to be breathing down our necks for the entire mission?” asked Maurice. “Or are we allowed to do our own thing?”
“I’ll check,” said Tam, “but I get the impression we’ll be left to do the actual investigating alone. Certainly, the reason the Wardens called in a team is because they need our specific skills.”
Thought so. Unlike the inspector, we were more suited to the monster-hunting part of the job than the paperwork, so it made sense for an independent team to be assigned to hunt down the beast who’d killed those tourists. Provided we had the freedom to do our jobs without being tailed everywhere we went by someone who was likely to be as much of a pain in the neck as a vampire’s bite, then I’d go with it.
“Meaning they need us to hunt the monster while they put their feet up in their hotel room,” Maurice said. “Gotcha.”
“Hey, I’m not complaining,” I said. “Will we report back to the inspector whenever we have something to share, and they’ll leave us alone the rest of the time?”
“No, they’ll want to interview the team members too.” Tam looked at me. “Especially the newest recruit.”
Oh, wonderful.
