Chapter Twenty-Seven

Due to Thirteen’s report praising my performance in L.A., The Council deemed me ready for threat missions, not just acquisitions, and the rest of July was busy:

Banishing a vengeful ghost

Assisting with an exorcism

Hunting an Aswang—my first trip to Asia

And my first encounter with witches.

That was the first case Amelia worked in the field with me. I’m not talkin’ about hippies into Wicca and herbology—genuine magic users. The Agency required witches to be registered, gave them a strict limit on spells they could cast, and stripped the powers from any that didn’t comply. Witchcraft was considered dark and a gateway to demonology. Amelia had told me several stories during my training about sorcerers that got swept up in a power-trip.

Apparently, commanding unnatural forces was highly addictive.

My first witch was a man in violation of the rules. My suit was supposed to protect me from spells, so I arrived at the house in full ninja gear. Amelia wore a long hooded coat with the Alpha/Omega insignia on it and carried the special handcuffs.

Our job was to capture the witch.

The power-stripping happened at a facility equipped for such things back in England.

Stealth was my trade, so I didn’t knock on his door or invade the house. I glanced in all the windows until I spotted him and shot him with a tranq bullet.

Three, two, one—down.

“Subject subdued,” I said into my earpiece.

“We have to get these chains on him in sixty seconds.”

Yes, Amelia, you reminded me several times.

I picked the lock on the door nearest the room he went unconscious.

“Be mindful of booby traps!” she hissed as I turned the knob.

The door swung open. I heard tick…tick and yelled, “Duck!” There was a loud Pop and my ears pressurized.

I couldn’t hear. I turned around to Amelia and her lips were moving but I felt like every sound was very far away. She charged ahead into the house with the chains.

So that’s what I was here for…a shield to take the hit for the Guide. Yay.

I found her fastening his ankles. His eyes opened. I tossed a ball that opened into a bit of webbing that attached to his chest and flickered with a zap. The taser stunned him, his eyes rolled back, and I locked the smaller cuffs on his wrists.

The final piece was a face mask that held his mouth shut so he couldn’t cast with speech.

I looked up and Amelia’s lips were moving again. I still couldn’t hear her. Her hands went to her hips and I pointed at my ears. Understanding finally came into her eyes.

Then she boxed my ears.

I howled in sudden pain. “What did you do that for?

“Sorry. Only way to clear it. I had to pop it.”

I bit my tongue on the curses that wanted to spew forth.

“How did The Agency know he cast illegal spells?”

“We keep tabs. I called the cleanup crew. They’ll take custody while we clear the house.”

A Victorian house. Kind of cliché.

I glanced around the parlor filled with antiques—or at least lookalikes. Oil lamps. Brocade fabric. Walnut trim. Amelia stayed with the prisoner as I explored. The house had been kept original with several smaller rooms on this floor.

Then I reached the kitchen. And a big black cast iron cauldron. Heh.

Dried plants hung from the ceiling. Shelves held jars of preserved animal parts. Gross.

There really was eye of newt!

The cleanup crew would confiscate everything that was contraband.

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No spell book amongst the cookbooks.

A narrow stair headed upward, so I took it to the next floor. The doors were closed except for the bathroom. I opened the medicine cabinet and under-sink cupboard. None of the stuff a man would use on a daily basis, so this must be the guest bath.

Expecting a witch to protect his bedchamber, I wanted to leave the master for last.

Or Amelia.

“Seven!”

“What?”

“Cleanup is here.”

I went down the main staircase. They all wore plain gray coveralls, except the supervisor, and were all men. It was protocol to call them in whenever there was a subject to take into custody or a body to clean up. They kept the public from discovering what Agents did for a living—like it never happened.

I received celebratory slaps on the shoulders as they passed me into the parlor.

A mix of working-class accents from all places. Guys used to dirty jobs. This was my first time meeting one of the crews.

“What did you find?” Amelia asked.

“Not much before you interrupted me.”

“We need that spell book.”

“Lead on, ma’am.”

Amelia gave me some side-eye and charged up the stairs.

She opened the first door on the left, a wider door I had guessed to lead to the master. I reached for the knob for a different room and heard her scream.

“Get it off! Get it off!”

I grabbed the animated rope that had slithered onto her shoulder like a snake and it went limp in my glove. “Amelia’s, it’s rope.”

Her posture stiffened again and she pushed her glasses up her nose. “I knew that.” Right.

She avoided my gaze, turning on her heel to search the room for the book.

I left her there, and opened all the doors on the second level. The back stair went up one more, still – to a finished attic? This was the only locked door in the house. Thinking better of barging in, I called one of the cleanup guys up here.

“Got a magical door, miss?”

“Potentially.” An attic should be roasting hot in late July, but this stairwell was cool.

He—name tag Larry—brought out a thermal scanner first. Nothing alive behind the door and that room also showed up cool. He spoke into his earpiece, “Did we bring the portable x-ray?” Then shook his head. “Tube camera, then.”

There was a gap under the door and he used that to get a glimpse inside.

“Naught in there but a lectern, Agent Seven.”

Odd.

“Hold up. My boys have found the basement.” Larry turned and went back down the narrow stair. I followed.

“Amelia, they’ve found a basement,” I said into my comm.

Now I understood what dark witch meant. The basement could’ve been the perfect Halloween haunted house if you wanted to make the neighborhood kids wet their pants.

“What is that smell?” I tugged my balaclava up over my mouth and nose.

“Animal sacrifices,” said a crewmember taking photos of the scene for evidence. None of the men appeared to be gagging on the noxious gasses in here.

Testament to all they’d seen?

I shuddered.

Everything in the house above had represented the good witch. The basement had blood and voodoo dolls and creepy idols and way too many spiders.

Amelia hadn’t followed me in. Wuss.

An altar in the back corner held a human skull with an upside-down pentagram carved into the forehead with symbols I didn’t recognize surrounding the circle. In a brass bowl was a bloody heart with a knife stuck through it. I hoped it wasn’t human as well. Idols of creatures not of this world stood on shelves around the skull, finger-smears of blood on each of their heads. What had the witch been conjuring?

On a table below the altar sat a leather-bound book. I bent closer for a look but I didn’t want to touch it. No symbols or words on the binding. Just plain brown worn leather. Finger oils had lightly stained the edges where it had been opened again and again.

Anywhere else and no one would ever glance at that book.

But every hair on my body stood on end.

The back of my neck tingled like when a Creature was near.

“Think I found his grimoire,” I said to the crew.

One of the men made a cringe noise when he joined me. “Aye, lassie.” He made the sign of the cross on his chest. “Tig! Containment box!”

The men stopped their exploration of the room. A large steel lock box was brought in. Another man carried a claw gripper to pick up the book remotely.

“Everybody out who ain’t necessary,” Larry said.

Gray-suited bodies fled without complaint.

The lockbox was opened. The inside was covered in symbols. Ah. Containment.

“Steady hands, Luke,” Larry murmured to the man with the gripper.

We held our breath as the claw approached the book. The claw had fingers to pick up the book like a hand would lift it off the table. One corner broke contact with the tabletop. The book tilted as the claw was slid in to get its grip.

The claw had the book. Now to lift it. No one blinked as Luke gently lifted the book and slowly brought it to the box. Then it was slowly, gently set in the lockbox. He drew the gripper back out. Larry closed the lid and locked it with a carved brass padlock.

All the idols on the altar shook.

“Get out!” I yelled, grabbing one side handle of the box. Luke was already on his way out, so Larry grabbed the other and we ran for the door.

Power was coming my way. I shoved Larry and the box across the threshold and knelt behind my coat to take the brunt of the concussive force, my sword driven into the floor to steady me. It was like a sledgehammer slammed into my back.

Or a wall.

Then all was quiet.

Still.

I opened my eyes and saw Amelia’s boots, and glanced up.

“Everyone is safe,” she said, and left my sight.

I expected to feel like the wind had been knocked out of me, but no. I stretched my arms, my back popped, and that was it. Felt behind me and no hole in my coat.

I’d acted on instinct. I had to protect the crew.

“When you said this getup would protect me against magic, I didn’t know the extent to which you meant,” I said to Amelia.

The men had loaded the prisoner and his book into a large van.

I found her standing on the grass next to the driveway. “We’d never send you out unprepared.”

I was ready to head back to the safe-house.

“You did well tonight, Seven.”

“Thanks.”

We escorted the cleanup crew back to England—Newcastle, to be precise.

“Where are they taking the witch?” I asked Amelia.

“On a ship to the Faroe Islands.”

“That’s…remote.”

“Several of the islands are uninhabited, the people don’t ask questions, and it’s nearly impossible to escape. It’s the safest place to put people like him.”

A place where they’d throw you in a room and throw away the room. I shivered. The witch had received no trial, no chance to acquit himself.

To be sent somewhere so harsh, the goal was obviously not rehabilitation, either.

What had he done to put himself on The Agency’s radar?

“Using dark magic voids all your rights?”

“Yes. It does.” She turned to me from her place in the drivers’ seat. “They have no safe harbor in the world. We are not cruel. He will not be maltreated. But yes. Our mandate is to rid the planet of these evils by any means necessary. This is the job.”