I yawned, my arms suddenly heavy as lead.
“Now go,” she ushered. “Sleep in Mikayla’s bed if you must.”
And with that her bedroom door swung shut.
Still empty and hollow, yet now filled with emotion that wasn’t mine, I headed to my sister’s room. Mikayla wordlessly lifted her bedsheets for me to climb beneath and rocked me to sleep.
When I come back from my memory, I’m choking on a sob. Angel’s hands are a comfort on my shoulders. I flinch. It takes a moment for me to realize I’m no longer that little girl. I’m safe.
“Oh honey,” he says, his voice laced with sympathy. “That was rough. But, sorry, we need one more. As they say, third time’s the charm. Literally. You know that saying comes from Mages, right?”
I didn’t, but this time I don’t bother to argue. After a few steadying breaths, I’m ready and he starts the incantation again.
“Dig as deep as you can,” Angel says.
I dive in. I’m back in the cold living room of our Marbella home. I’m back in my mother’s reach.
Her cooling touch was draining my anxieties. Numbness spread through me as I looked at the body she just claimed — the dead politician, bleeding out from where she sliced him. When his blood hit my sandals, I screamed and screamed until I felt my mother’s arms close around me. An alien calm wrapped its fist around my heart, squeezing with each beat. I whimpered.
I wanted to feel shock, pain and fear, I needed to – just like I did when my father died. Instead, as I stared at the man bleeding out before us, feeling exactly what my mother always wanted me to feel.
Angel completes his incantation, and my eyes flicker open. I watch as a tendril of lilac energy expands from my chest and into the cauldron.
The Warlock smiles. “We’re done.” He pours the now light blue liquid into a small glass vial. “Five drops once a day, sweet cheeks. No skipping. Pretend it’s birth control.”
When Jackson returns, I’m curled up on Angel’s comfortable sofa with a chai tea where he’s already added some drops of the mixture. Even though revisiting the trauma was exhausting, feeling the release of the energy was euphoric. An emotional exorcism. I feel way more confident about my trip to Barcelona now.
“You really are very good at what you do,” I say to the Warlock when he walks us to the door.
“Oh. darling, I know,” he answers, winking at Jackson. “Don’t forget to Venmo.”
Jackson nods as I halt by the door. “I’m sorry I said those shitty things about Warlocks.”
“Used to it,” Angel replies. “My skin is so thick by now I’m probably bullet-proof. But do me a favor, honey cakes, don’t judge a Mage by their spellbook in the future.”
He smiles and I grin back, then he hands me a vial of something clear and viscose. He already gave me the protection brew, so what’s this?
“For your lashes, darling. They are too short and stubby,” Angel coos. “Just like my ex!”
Cackling with delight, he swings the door shut and leaves me looking at the vial, dumbfounded.
Rude.
I huff past Jackson, but he puts his arm out, grabbing my hand. His golden eyes bore into mine, deep and earnest. “Saskia. Sorry, I couldn’t help overhearing. I had no idea your mother was so cruel. You don’t have to go to Spain, you know. I’ll get someone else to cover the story.”
Jackson… worries about me?
“I’ll be fine.”
“I don’t want you to get hurt.”
There’s a noticeable absence of pings.
“I can handle it, Jackson.”
I need more info on Mikayla’s life, and I’m going to find that in Barcelona. Maybe whoever is behind the disappearance of Maribel is also behind Mikayla’s.
Jackson nods. He knows he can’t change my mind.
“Come to think of it,” he says, following me down the stairs. “Your lashes are rather stubby.”
“Shut up, or I’ll maim you!”
Chapter Two
“This level of turbulence is completely normal,” the prim Delta stewardess says with her red-slick smile. She’s lying straight through her perfectly lined lips.
Her tin cart rocks against her leg as her fingers close far too tightly around the orange juice carton she’s serving the woman nearby. She must be new to this if a gusty day is making her nervous.
“I’m really afraid of flying,” I lie in return, plastering my face with all the childlike innocence I can muster.
“Is there anything I can get for you, darling?”
“Perhaps a double gin tonic would help calm my nerves?”
“Of course.”
Score! The orange juice lady across the aisle has worked out my con and gives me the side-eye. I’ve already had two gin tonics from two other flight attendants, plus a raspberry Absolut sneaky shot from my backpack.
I check my phone, even though I know very well there’s no cell reception in the sky. Force of habit. Ever since Maribel, my mother’s best friend and boss, went missing, she has been texting me more often than a grandmother who just discovered WhatsApp.
When are you getting here?
I need you!
I’m sorry for all the trauma I caused.
OK, the last text is a product of my imagination.
Basically, my mother asked for my help before Jackson even assigned me the piece, no doubt needing my meager truth-telling abilities to snoop around. I was frazzled at the time and said yes. That was ten minutes after I thought I saw my missing sister on the train platform. Which was a few weeks after returning from Moscow after killing a polar bear bouncer Shifter with the heel of a stiletto and falling for a crazy Vampire who looks like a Russian version of Vanilla Ice.
So, excuuuse me if I need to stay drunk
