1 Witchy Business (6 page)

“Nice,” I said when I saw the bronze gargoyle door knocker. I lifted the knocker and let it go. An impressive boom sounded, one that reverberated throughout the neighborhood and shook under the soles of my shoes.

“Great special effect,” I said. “Did you do that or is the knocker actually designed like that?”

Rebecca didn’t answer. Without waiting for someone to come to the door, Rebecca opened it and we went right in as if she owned the place. Maybe she did. Maybe the coven did, at least.

Although if it did, it could have done a better job of furnishing it. I immediately surmised that this place was not really lived in, not in the traditional sense. Although it was probably cheaper to rent it unfurnished, inside, it was almost bare, down to floorboards under my feet, with no sign of any home comforts. No pictures on the walls, no furniture, no lamps, no television. No guy in a mask and a cape playing a huge pipe organ. Nothing but what was built into the house was in evidence.

“Oh, goody. Are we going camping?” I teased Rebecca and nodded at the dark, cold fireplace and the giant hearth in the living room as we trotted past it. “If this is where the coven has you staying now, they should have given you a decorating budget, or at least a sleeping bag, a flashlight and a S’mores kit,” I said, trying to defuse some of the tension. “I’ll bring the marshmallows and the graham crackers if you bring the chocolate candy bars.”

She grunted a reply that I couldn’t make out because it sounded like a strangled sob.

“Rebecca, please. None of this makes any sense to me. And you have your shields up so high, I don’t know which end of you is up.”

I thought about maybe using my emotion talents to make Rebecca calm down enough to stop holding my arm as if she would pull it off if I ran, but the first flicker of power I sent without thinking ran into her shields.

Rebecca looked round at me sharply. “Don’t even think about doing that. You’ve caused enough problems as it is.”

“Me? What problems have I caused?” I was getting a little sick of her attitude. Especially when earlier today she’d congratulated me on a job well done. “What’s going on, Rebecca? And why do you get to pull me through the streets like I’m some kind of misbehaving kid who is headed for the principal’s office for a stern talking-to?”

“Rebecca? You got her?” That deep voice coming from down the hall was innately, completely, male and the timbre of the throatiness sent his words clearly through the empty house.

“So, a giant lives here?” I said. “Fee-fi-foe-fum!” I called and it echoed back at me in the empty hallway she was propelling me through. It seemed like the only possible response when everyone else was being so serious.

“You are absolutely insufferable,” Rebecca said.

“Someone has to save you from your...Grimm…outlook on life.”

“Oh, do you never stop? Elle, you don’t seem to understand the gravity of this situation.”

“First of all, Becca, I don’t even know what the situation
is
. I figure that the situation is somewhere between you having a bad hair day and an asteroid heading straight for Loch Lomond. So, while I wait for you to tell me your problem, I figure if I can get you to laugh, then you won’t feed me to the giant at the end of the hallway.”

“Don’t call me Becca. I hate nicknames.”

“Fine. I didn’t know that.”
I did.
I figured it was probably the only revenge I was going to get for being dragged down the street.

“There’s a lot you don’t know,” she said ominously.

“Rebecca, do you have her?” the giant voice boomed again. “Is Elle here?”

“Yes. I have her now!” Rebecca shouted and looked hard at me. “Come on. He’s waiting.”

“You still haven’t told me what this is all about. And who is the guy with the theatrical voice? I mean, seriously, he could audition for movie trailer voiceovers. Who is he trying to impress?”

“Stop,” Rebecca ordered. “Just stop. This is about what you were doing in Niall Sampson’s house, and this is not the moment to argue.”

Really? Then when was? “I think this is
exactly
the moment to argue,” I insisted. “I was on an important insurance investigation job when you grabbed me. A rare artwork was stolen from the client’s home, and I don’t have the time right now to spend being pulled around the streets.”

 Rebecca sighed. “I don’t remember referring you to that job through the coven.”

Was that what this was about? Rebecca knew I had other sources of jobs besides her. I had even been under the impression that she approved of it. After all, I would often hear about things with a more…unusual angle to them before she did that way. Half the time, I could solve things before she even got involved.

 “Is this about the coven’s cut of my fee?” I asked. “Because if it is, they’ll still get their tithe, the same as always.”

 “You don’t understand, Elle. This isn’t about money.”

“So, what
is
this about? Enlighten me.”

She took a deep breath and let it out, holding back…a lot of her thoughts. I could feel the emotions there, half-occluded behind her shields, whirling.

“Rebecca? A little information, please?”

 “I’m trying to save you,” she choked out.

“Save me?” I looked hard at her. “From what?”

The man with the oh-so-threatening voice finally stepped out into the hall. I stared. But then again, he was worth staring at. He was well over six feet tall, probably approaching seven feet in stocking feet, more with the studded motorcycle boots he wore. He was dressed in black leather pants with chains hanging from them and a tight, sparkling white T-shirt that did nothing to disguise his muscles. Not that much could have. He was built like a bodybuilder, except that every muscle looked absolutely functional. His dark hair was cropped short, the center raised up high in a gelled rooster style, but it was the tattoos that caught my attention.

Oh, those tattoos!

They spiraled up his arms in interweaving patterns that might have looked vaguely Celtic or tribal to the casual observer, a mix of swirls and knots and spikes that seemed to shift with every movement, like Ray Bradbury’s
The Illustrated Man
. My curiosity was piqued. I had heard of living tattoos, of creatures and objects moving and trapped in the skin of a witch or warlock, of power worked directly into flesh, but had never seen them before. I was mesmerized by his tattoos and how they moved and writhed on his skin. I was pretty sure my mouth dropped open a bit. I slammed it shut so I wouldn’t look like a teenage witch.

I could feel the power there and I spotted some familiar shapes among the patterns, sigils that I’d been taught by my mother as a child. When I looked into his deep brown eyes, I knew I’d find the faintest hint of power there, held back. This man was a warlock. Through and through.

Male witches—warlocks—were rarer than female ones for reasons no one fully understood. The known ratio of witches to warlocks was about ten to one. Even the ones who did have power seemed to have less than most female witches. A lot of warlocks with just a trace of talent looked for ways to improve on it, whether it was building up their physical strength, acquiring powerful items—such as wands, talismans, amulets, and the like—or simply having a witch work designs of power tattooed into his skin, turning himself into a kind of living weapon…one covered with the symbols of our magic art.

I swallowed. The results of a well-developed warlock who had worked at the craft for years were most certainly impressive. This is the closest I had ever been to one. He was inches from me, closer than I liked to stand to anyone who was a stranger.

“Elle Chambers,” Rebecca said, “this is Evert Masterson. Evert works for the coven.”

“Charmed, I’m sure,” I quipped, but he didn’t laugh. That was a bad sign.

I offered him my hand to shake. That is, I offered him the hand Rebecca didn’t have a hold on. After a moment, he took it. His grip was strong, but not crushing, like he knew his own strength perfectly.

Up close, his voice was a gravelly rumble. “There are those who say that the very word warlock means
oath breaker
.”

Well, that was one way to start a conversation. I wasn’t about to let him scare me that easily. “Well, luckily, we’re in Scotland, where the old word for warlock just means
cunning man
. It’s not a slur, but a compliment.”

A low laugh rumbled out of his diaphragm, sounding rusty, as if he hardly ever laughed. Evert Masterson was obviously a man completely in control of his own strength, his own power, his own masculinity, and apparently, he had a small sense of humor. Very small.

“You are an interesting woman, Elle,” he said, his eyes flickering over me from head to toe appreciatively. He didn’t seem remotely embarrassed about doing it, either.

“I’ve been told that…very recently, in fact.”

His small outburst of humor receded back into a mask where everything was measured and careful. His gaze flicked over to Rebecca, and I wondered if they were sleeping together. Then I silently wrote off the speculation. There was no way that someone like Rebecca would ever sleep with a man like
him,
was there? There was a spark of something between them that was strange and unidentifiable. Even for me.

Rebecca wasn’t much help with that. Her shields were still laced tight.

“Hello, Evert Masterson,” I said cautiously.

“Hello, Elle Chambers.” Evert’s voice was deep and calm, but with a suggestion of far more somewhere beneath it. Like the ocean full of sharks, or a forest full of poison ivy sprites. “Wait a minute. Your surname is Chambers? Are you—”

“Elle is Annette Chambers’ daughter,” Rebecca explained.

Evert looked at her without saying anything for a moment. “You didn’t tell me that part when you roped me into this.”

“I didn’t think she would become involved,” Rebecca said.

“Actually, I suspect she was a little busy running after me to grab me,” I added. “Now, are the two of you going to tell me what’s going on yet? I don’t appreciate being grabbed on the street and dragged into an empty house.”

“Where do you appreciate being grabbed?” Evert shot back, with a smile that was anything but warm. It was that cold, calculating smile that stopped me from slapping him, because I had the good sense to have a small prickle of fear. The smile gave me pause, as did the part where he could probably have torn me in half one-handed, if he wanted. Something about that smile sent a shiver through my body and behind it came a shudder of revulsion. His chilling welcome transformed him from simply good looking to dangerously handsome. Dangerous being the operative word. This guy seemed like he would devour good little witches like me for breakfast. And then order up another for lunch.

“You’ll never find out where I like to be grabbed,” I assured him coolly.

He shrugged in a supple roll of muscles that seemed to contain a pretty clear
we’ll see
. “Come through. Then you can explain.”

“Wait just a minute. I can explain? You two are the ones with explaining to do. And some serious apologizing, too.”

Evert just walked off in the direction of one of the rooms leading off the hall. Even steaming with indignation, I silently followed him and Rebecca. This room wasn’t quite as bare as the rest of the house. It had a bed shoved into one corner, a couple of simple folding chairs, and a few bags of clothing tucked carefully away. Somehow, this looked more like squatting than renting and the more I looked around, the more I became certain of it.

A couple of spirits flitted about the ceiling, more collections of raw emotion than anything, left over from all the years the house had been standing. I had to admit, there was something comforting about their presence. Not that they could do anything, but it still seemed better than being alone in a room with Evert and Rebecca. Of course, almost as soon as I thought that, they floated up through the ceiling and away.