Magical Influence Book One (3 page)

Just a feeling.

Quick, sharp, and gone in a
second.

I knew what it was. Any witch would. A
beginning, of sorts. A subtle but perceptible change in energy, as
if the first dice had been cast in a new game.

Tugging the door open, I wasn't that
surprised to see somebody standing there, hand raised as if they
were ready to start knocking.

I wasn't surprised, but that didn't
stop me from quickly frowning. I cast my eyes over the man, and
instantly noted the badge neatly tucked into his belt.

A police badge.

Whoever he was, he was in a nice suit,
though it didn't quite fit over the shoulders. He had short, brown
hair, eyes to match, and a faint shadow of stubble over his chin.
He had a particularly piercing look about him. As if he weren't so
much a man but a scalpel, or a laser, or a particularly powerful
torch beam.

I wasn't the kind of girl
who
categorized people into attractive or unattractive; being a
witch, I understood that both were meaningless categories. There
were attractive qualities about every single person, just as there
were unattractive. Models might have a suitably fine appearance,
but you could draw up an extensive list of their behavioral faults.
No package contained complete perfection.

This man with his broad shoulders,
appealing build, and straight jaw would no doubt turn heads at any
bachelorette party, but from the exact look of concentrated
attention, and barely contained forcefulness, he was also a lot
more than just pretty.

“Can I help you?” I asked
warily.

We very, very rarely had people come
to the door. It was to do with the state of the house, the state of
the yard, and our particular reputations.

Okay, I doubted that any of
our
neighbors actually, genuinely thought we were witches; the
couple living to the left were dentists, and the couple to the
right wrote for a science magazine. They were what you would call
classically skeptical folk. But they would know, deep down, not to
knock on the door of the peculiar ladies in the peculiar house that
just so happened to be stereotypically witchy.

The police, of course, would have no
such compunction.

He cleared his throat. It was a
uniquely grating sound. It got my attention, hell, it would command
anyone's attention. It was the kind of move you could do in a
fantastically noisy bar and instantly get everybody to turn around,
quiet down, and stare your way.

“Mrs. Sinclair?”

My cheeks started to
pale
.
“Yes?”

“My name is Agent Fairweather,” he brought
his hand down to the badge that was lodged in his belt, and he
plucked it out neatly, bringing it up so I could see.

At that exact moment I swear the
clouds parted, and a ray of sunlight came down, making the damn
badge glint like the edge of a sword.

Agent Fairweather.

Christ. This wasn't going to be good,
was it?

“What's this about?” I still had my hand
on the door, and now my fingers dug into it for
purchase.

“We need you to come in for
questioning.”

“About what?”

“About the kilo of cocaine you tried to
import into the country,” he replied easily.

If I had paled before, it was nothing
compared to what my skin did now. I swear that every trickle of
blood drained from my peripheries. I felt cold in a snap, and
stopped breathing to boot.

Kilo of cocaine?

Dear God, what had my grandmother done
now?

The man looked at me steadily and
very, very harshly. It was the kind of look that told me that if I
chose to close the door and run, he would chase, and he would most
definitely succeed in catching me.

I finally had the presence of mind to
flick my gaze past the man, down the garden path, and out onto the
street.

There were several squad
cars.

Oh, this was fantastic, completely and
utterly fantastic.

“Right,” I said, trying to stall for time,
bringing a hand up, latching it onto my chin, and letting the
fingers dig somewhat into my cheeks.

My eyes probably grew wide in panic as
I tried to think.

A kilo of cocaine? There probably
wasn't going to be anyway I could talk my way out of this one. I
wouldn't be able to sit down with the customs official, let him
know that my grandmother was a little demented, and assure him that
I would never let her try to import any restricted goods into the
country again.

No, because cocaine wasn’t
restricted; it was bloody well illegal. And it was a
kilo
of the stuff. What
was my grandmother thinking? Had she decided we were so destitute
that she would start selling drugs on the street corner?

No, of course not; she would have
simply found one of her ridiculous new spells on the Internet, and
she would have thought that it would be fun to try it. She would
not have thought at any time that importing a kilo of cocaine was
illegal, would get her caught, and would land her in
prison.

“Come with me, you have the right to
remain silent,” he began.

I tuned out as he read me my rights.
My eyes growing wider with more and more fright as I
did.

There would be no reasoning with this
man. But I wasn't so far gone that I couldn't see it from his side.
To him this would have to be the easiest narcotics arrest in the
history of man. Somebody ordering a kilo of very illegal drugs over
the Internet and having them sent to their home address. No
smuggling it over the border sewn into bags, tucked into car
trunks, or squirrelled away in fresh produce.

No, just your home address, and
a completely
traceable purchase record.

“Oh Esme, what are you doing?”

The last person I wanted to see
trotted up behind me.

I turned to shoot Granny a very stony,
warning glance.

She didn't pick up on it. But
she did turn towards the Agent on my doorstep, and offered him a
toothy smile
. “Hello, handsome man. Are you here to take my
granddaughter on a date?”

I could have died at that moment. And
I did pitch forward, giving a painful wheeze of
embarrassment.

The man didn't move a muscle. He
didn't burst out into laughter, and neither did he decide it was
time to forgo the pleasantries, clap me in irons, and drag me off
to prison.

“My name is Agent Fairweather, I am here
because your granddaughter has illegally imported proximally 1 kg
of cocaine,” he began.

But my dear old grandmother
wouldn't let him finish. She clapped her hands
together
.
“It's here, fantastic, I've been waiting for it for almost a month
now. I have my paperwork, I can just go and get it. You can leave
it on the kitchen table if you'd like.”

I started to shake, I really did, but
not out of laughter. Though a part of me, a distant, entirely
dissociated part, could see the funny side here.

I watched Agent Fairweather and noted
his exact expression.

His eyebrows drew down, his
lips slightly opened, and his head turned to the side as he stared
at Mary askance
. “Madam, this is a serious,” he began.

“I know, the man I ordered it
from in Colombia said that it wouldn’t take more than two weeks.
This is
very
serious. It's been a month now. I've been waiting too long,
and I'm not entirely sure if I'm going to give him good reviews on
his website.”

This couldn't get any worse, it really
couldn't.

The man put up a
hand
. “Are
you,” he pointed to me, then turned around and pointed to my
grandmother, “or you, Mary Margaret Sinclair?”

My grandmother patted her
chest, shot up her hand, and waved it as if she had just won the
lottery
.
“That would be me, my handsome young man.”

I couldn't take any more of
this. Gritting my teeth together, I faced her
. “Stop calling him that.
And
shut
up
.”

It was probably the wrong thing to do.
It was probably showing that I was complicit in this crime or
something, but I couldn't take the pressure any longer.

“Fine, whatever, you're both coming in,”
he concluded, obviously dealing with his confusion by realizing he
could figure it out later, just as long as he had both criminals
under wraps.

Granny narrowed her
eyes
. “Don't
you want the paperwork? I mean, I was very attentive to my
granddaughter's wishes. She said, no she practically harassed me
over the fact that I must do my paperwork before I import
potentially restricted goods into the country. And I've done
it.”

I hid behind my hand, closing my eyes,
and enjoying every moment of it. If my eyes were closed, it were
almost as if everything was a dream.

Almost.

The man cleared his throat
again
. “I'm
going to have to take you into custody. You have the right,” he
began.

My grandmother waved a hand at
him
. “Are
you telling me you don't have my drugs?” her tone, which had
previously been quite pleasant, suddenly got an edge to it. It was
the edge that reminded me of the once powerful witch within. It
pitched higher, and she straightened up, her chest puffing out a
little, her eyes narrowing. And if you had been really attentive at
that moment, you might have seen a cloud pass over the
sun.

“No, madam, I do not have your drugs. Now
you have two options. You walk with me to the car, or I handcuff
you. Which one is it?”

“You don't have to handcuff her; we’re
going to come peacefully,” I jumped in quickly, waving my hands
around nervously.

So much for getting to work early. I
doubted I’d be getting to work for the rest of the day, if not the
rest of the week, and hey, maybe not for 10 to 20 years, depending
on what sentence the Judge handed us.

“We’re not going anywhere with this
terribly handsome young man, unless he’s taking you out on a date,”
my grandmother pointed out.

“Stop saying that,” I growled at
her.

“You have to go to work, and I'm busy; I'm
digging a hole in the backyard, six-foot deep, you know, takes a
while,” my grandmother waggled her eyebrows at the policeman as she
pointed that fact out.

Six-foot deep. Well great.
Fantastic.

That was just the right detail to add
whilst having a conversation with a Federal Agent about your
serious narcotics violation. Now he would think my grandmother was
a murderer to boot.

His eyes narrowed. Boy did they
narrow. And he looked right past my grandmother and me and into the
hall. His gaze latched onto the overturned pot plant, the one I
still hadn't bothered to clean up. Then they zoomed around, saw the
broken chair my grandmother had smashed with a mallet for one of
her spells, and all the while his expression became darker and
darker.

He reached into his pocket, brought
out his radio, and mumbled something into it.

I didn't exactly need to know the
specifics; I got the general gist.

In seconds the police in the squad
cars outside were making their way up the garden path, and more
than a few of them had their hands on their weapons.

Yesterday it had been mud pies in the
yard, today it was a narcotics violation and a potential allegation
of murder.

This was the life of a modern
witch.

No glamour, no glitz, no brooms, just
trouble.

Chapter 3

We were dragged down to the station,
but not the local one; the central depot in the middle of the city
that shared the building with the Federal Police.

Because Mister Agent
Fairweather wasn't just an ordinary boy in blue; he was a
Federal
Agent. My
grandmother had, after all, tried to import a ridiculously large
amount of cocaine into the country. And drug crimes of that stature
always skipped the local authorities and got the attention of the
big boys.

I was sitting on a chair, by a desk,
huddled into my coat, nursing a cup of lukewarm tea.

I didn't care that it tasted like
crap, and that the milk was too old and had formed curdled clumps
across the top, I still drank it with relish.

It was about my only comfort right
now.

They had taken her away to have a
chat, as they had put it, in one of the interrogation
rooms.

Thankfully they hadn’t handcuffed her,
and neither had they bothered to handcuff me, but I got the
distinct impression that at any point should either of us get out
of hand, they would have no trouble in tying us up.

I stared down glumly at the scant
steam rising off from my Styrofoam cup. Then I indulged in closing
my eyes for a moment.