The Witch with No Name

I swear I saw a drop of sweat trickle down Cormel’s neck. He wasn’t breathing, terrified.

For three long seconds Trent thought about that. Head dropping for an instant, his eyes rose to find mine. The enormity of the past two days was on him, heavy and thick. “You’re right,” he said softly. “Do what you want.”

Cormel’s eyes closed to hide the fear and hope that I might shoot him dead and end it all.

Son of a bitch, this isn’t who I am. Crying out in frustration, I shoved Cormel away from me. I never saw him hit the floor as someone flew at me, tackling me around the waist and sending me down.

“It’s yours, it’s yours!” I shouted as one sat on me and spun my arm around behind my back and another wrenched my wrist until I let go of the handgun.

“Get her off the floor!” Cormel bellowed, and I was yanked to my feet again. Like a huge cat, the master vampire paced before the desk, his fear just under the surface. Landon was a hunched shadow gathering his precious paperwork as if it was diamonds in a mine. But I couldn’t look away from Trent, strapped and standing with a defiant gleam in his eye and a cut under his cheekbone. His suit was rumpled but the only fear in him was directed at me. He knew the mystics were working in me. I was a loaded gun.

“You going to kill me now?” I said. “And you wonder why you walk into the sun when you find your soul.” The soft sound of Landon shuffling papers almost made me sick, and I stared at Cormel defiantly when he jerked to a stop.

“Don’t harm her,” he said, pointing, and my arm was wrenched back until I saw stars. “Put her in a box. One that has holes so she can breathe. Kalamack . . .”

His voice whispered to nothing, and my breath caught when I realized Trent didn’t have the same value I did. My lip curled and I pulled the mystic energy together enough to make my hair begin to float. If he made one move to hurt Trent, it was going to start back up, and this time I wasn’t going to hold back.

Cormel’s lips were pressed tight as he looked from me to Trent and back again. “Put them both in a box,” he said. “Kill his horse, though.”

Trent didn’t move as two vampires literally lifted his feet from the floor.

“Which one is his?” one of them asked, and Cormel looked at me in disgust.

“I don’t know. Kill them all.”

“Cormel—” Trent said, his voice cutting off when one of the vampires hit him.

Cormel turned his spilled coffee cup upright. “I’ll get my soul, Morgan. One way or another.”

“Yeah?” I managed before we were pushed into the hallway, my boots and Trent’s dress shoes clinking among the shards of safety glass. We had two vampires each holding us, and though I could do magic, Trent would suffer if I did.

“Hey, Trent,” I said as we were shoved past the onlookers and to the elevators again. “Was this about what you wanted?”

“Apart from his killing my horses, yes. Cormel now realizes he needs me.”

We were at the elevators, and I looked at him, wondering how big this box was going to be. “Needs you? For what?”

His eye was beginning to swell, and he smiled as the doors opened and they muscled us in. “To keep you from killing him, of course.”

Chapter 21

As cells went, it was one of the more spacious lockups that I’d been in. I didn’t think it was one of the usual I.S. cells, though I could be wrong—it would be a mistake to lock the undead in a standard bar-and-cot five-by-eight. The fifteen-by-fifteen room had a toilet behind an opaque screen and a pedestal sink. There was even a mirror over it, cemented into the flat gray walls. I hadn’t decided yet if it was a two-way or not, and by now, I didn’t care.

There was one cot, which Trent was stretched out on with his hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling. One gray blanket and a thin, sad excuse for a pillow was all they had given us. I didn’t mind sharing such a tight space with Trent, but I was beginning to have issues with us being down here at all, even if it was nicer than that damp HAPA cell under the museum, or the soft gray nothing of the demon lockup, or even the rat cage Trent had kept me in for a few days.

Frustrated, I looked at him, his green eyes fixed on nothing as he took slow, careful breaths. He was irritatingly relaxed, with his shoes neatly arranged under the cot and his slim feet in their gray socks just begging for me to come over and run my finger up the arch of his foot to make him jump.

His jaw tightened when I sighed impatiently, and I put my ear to the door, listening. It was soundproof, but I tapped it anyway. I still hadn’t seen Jenks. Ivy was down here somewhere, too, and I hit a knuckle again, straining to hear an answering knock.

“What are you doing?”

I couldn’t tell if the irritation in his voice was real or me projecting. “If we’re in a cell block, then maybe Ivy’s next door.”

“Well, could you do it a little quieter?”