The frame tried to contain my magic and turn it back on me, but it just hadn’t been designed to handle the volume of magic I’d thrown all at once. I didn’t know if that was because the makers had underestimated, or if they’d just been sloppy, and I didn’t care. Every rune on the frame snapped with a sound like gunfire and the whole contraption just came apart at the seams. Unfortunately for me, I was still attached to it. So, when it tore itself apart, it nearly tore me in half before sending me hurtling across the room in a shower of warped metal. There was a lot of screaming and confusion. I tried to get up or even move, but I’d been through too much. I managed to open my eyes and move my head a bit. The Raven’s Council was scattered across the room. The guy who’d been punching me right at first was pinned to the wall by a chunk of the frame. He looked to be extremely dead. I wasn’t sorry.

Victoria Ambrosia was still alive. I was sorry about that. She pressed a hand against her cheek, and I could see red welling around her fingers. I hoped it would leave a nasty scar. She looked around the room and spotted me. Rarely has such a look of pure hatred been directed at me. She dropped her hand away from her face, reached into a pocket, and pulled out a small gun. She pointed the gun at me, seemed to decide she wasn’t close enough, and stalked toward me. In all the excitement of my little escape attempt, she’d apparently forgotten there’d been something else going on. There was a noise like a giant kicking the world’s biggest soccer ball if the ball was made of steel. A pair of heavy security doors, the frame that attached them to the wall, and a fair chunk of the walls around the frame crashed to the floor. Everyone looked.

A figure stumped into the room, looked around, and sniffed with utter disdain. We all stared. The newcomer was maybe five feet tall, sporting a pair of well-used combat boots, frayed jeans, and a brown leather jacket that had survived at least one apocalypse. She wore thick-rimmed hipster glasses flecked with neon pink that matched her hair. Her face was round and plain, but her dark eyes burned with terrible intelligence and power. She moved a little farther into the room. The woman absently kicked a chunk of the metal frame out of her way before settling her hands on her wide hips. She rolled her eyes and addressed the entire room.

“Sup, bitches?”

Victoria sputtered for a moment before she managed to get the words out. “How dare you intrude on us this way! Who are you?”

The newcomer sighed theatrically. “If it wasn’t too much effort, I’d walk my fat ass over there and slap you silly for asking me that. Since it is too much effort, I’ll just tell you. I’m Jessie Wood.”

The four remaining members of the Raven’s Council traded blank looks. I’d have traded blank looks with them if any of them had bothered to look my way. None of them did. Punks. Jessie eyed them all in turn.

“Really? Nothing. How about this? I’m the Wormwood Witch.”

I continued to stare blankly. The members of the Raven’s Council, on the other hand, all went very still and looked very, very wary. I took that to mean that this was someone I should know. I’d have to talk to her, assuming she wasn’t there to kill me too.

“Oh good,” said the Wormwood Witch, “now we’re on the same page.”

“What do you want?” Victoria demanded.

“I’ve been hired to retrieve one Jericho Lott. I assume it’s that much battered and abused young man over there.”

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

She looked my way, and I managed something like a nod. Victoria drew herself up and shook her head.

“No. He is ours by right, to do with as we please.”

Jessie Wood snorted. “Only if you could hold him. Looks like he was halfway to escaping on his own. No, he’s coming with me. Let’s go, Lott.”

Crazy bitch that she was, I had to give Victoria Ambrosia credit. She knew how to commit. She raised the gun in her hand and shot Jessie Wood. Well, she tried very hard to shoot Jessie at any rate. Victoria fired until the gun was empty. Jessie gave a little yawn. I didn’t know where the bullets had gone and, apparently, neither did Victoria. She lowered the gun, but I could see her hand shaking. Jessie flicked a finger and the vengeful blonde careened across the room. She hit a wall and slumped to the floor with a pained groan. Jessie waited patiently as Victoria gathered herself up. The leader of the Raven’s Council, who had so casually tortured me, rose to her feet with a look of barely controlled fear on her face.

“Fine,” she said. “Take him, but I want your word that you’ll never return here again, witch.”

Jessie seemed to consider the proposition and then shrugged. “I could just kill you all and take him anyway.”

Someone in the room made a noise that a petty person might have called a squeak. The Court of Unkindness, I thought, brought to heel by one, bored-looking woman. There just had to be a lesson in that, if only my brain would function properly enough to tell me what it was.

Jessie frowned and continued. “Lucky for you, I’m hungry and there’s a taco joint that’s going to close if I don’t get a move on. So, fine, word given. I won’t come back here again.”

The tension went out of Victoria Ambrosia, and she seemed to lose two full inches of height. The Wormwood Witch walked over and offered me a hand. I blinked up at her.

She gave me withering look. “I’m short and fat. I’m not carrying your sorry, naked ass out of here. Walk or stay.”

I took her hand, and she helped me to stand. I wavered there, on the brink of collapsing, but I really wanted to leave. Full credit goes to naked terror for giving me the strength to stay on my feet. Jessie looked me over and shook her head again. She turned her fearsome glower on one of the Raven’s Council, a dark, slender woman.

“You! For God’s sake, find his pants.”

I managed to get into my pants without falling down too many times. I pushed my feet into my boots when someone tentatively dropped them near me. Jessie walked toward the door with me stumbling after her. She stopped at the door and shot a look over her shoulder. There was something gleeful and somehow bloody in her expression. She fixed her gaze on Victoria.

“Food for thought. I said I wouldn’t come back here. The boy didn’t agree to anything.”

The words made Victoria go pale.

“And,” said Jessie, stretching the word out, “William Brace sends his regards. I imagine he’ll have some thoughts about how you treated his protégé. Think about that as you go to sleep tonight. Toodles, bitches.”

Jessie led me through the awe-inspiring trail of wreckage and carnage she’d made on her way into what I realized was a huge house. She took me out the front door to where an old Nissan Pathfinder waited in patient, rusty silence. She opened the back door. I obediently crawled onto the back seat. She settled a blanket over me with a far gentler hand than I’d have expected. I heard her get into the front seat and, however terrible the Pathfinder looked, the engine kicked over on the first try and rumbled gamely. She put the vehicle in gear and drove me away from the Raven’s Council. I’d like to say that I swore vengeance, but I didn’t. I was just grateful to have survived the experience. I didn’t have anything left in me to sit up, but I thought I should say something.

“Thanks,” I mumbled.

“Don’t thank me. Thank Brace. I owed him a favor. Idiot thing to do, going into the Raven’s Council the way you did. You get that, don’t you?”

“Torture drove that home,” I garbled at her.

“Good,” she said, stern and implacable, before she turned merry. “If Brace doesn’t murder them all in appalling ways, which he should, do you want some help doing it yourself? I love a good revenge killing.”

I was so shocked at her words that I couldn’t think of anything to say at first. Before I managed to come up with anything even vaguely appropriate, the pain, fatigue, and accumulated injuries caught up with me. The last things I heard were wheels on pavement and the Wormwood Witch singing along remarkably well to an Alice in Chains song.