Chapter 4: There's Trouble Brewing

Beatrice POV.

Once, when I was a girl, I read a book about canaries.

It wasn’t a witches’ grimoire. There wasn't a list of charms that require their feathers or tips on how adding their blood will strengthen hexes.

Rather, it was just a book full of human facts about canaries. I’d dragged my cousin Lydia to Staten Island to see for myself the human libraries forbidden to us.

Then and now, my mother insists human libraries are among the most toxic places a witch can go. Books dabble in ideas and ideas, she warned, have power. If I read too many of them, I’d be in danger of thinking like a human.

‘Look around, kiddo, we’re there.’ My magic sing-songs.

Frustration wells in my chest and pushes outward. Fall leaves whip in a distinctly not natural whirlwind.

Central Park is never truly empty, but tonight the moon is high. It’s November. No one is near enough to witness my magic leaking out of me.

Instead, all one had to do is travel down to Midtown. There the consequences of not controlling my magic are on public display. Like everyone else, I don’t know when my magic will release them.

’Such exquisite rage,’ my magic says, ‘some of our best work.’

All magic is rooted in emotion. What I did at Canaries scares even me. The locket dulls my magic, but the staying power of the spell I cast belies that the rage I felt in those moments is a deep, endless well.

The canary’s song saves lives. That’s what I remember from the book.

Canaries were once used in mines, deep within the earth, to offer warning of impending danger. Miners carried the yellow bird into shafts because carbon monoxide buildup would kill the canary, cutting its song short, before it became noxious for men.

When the bird stops singing—that’s when you know to escape.

I escaped the covens last year after Yuletide because I thought that would solve the problem of my magic.

But for the last two days, I’ve been holed up in a hotel, hiding and walking circles in Central Park to avoid the obvious truth. The problem isn’t where I live, among humans or witches, that problem is me. My magic destroys.

After I deposited those men on the doorstep of KingsGuard, my magic flashed neon red in my mind's eye, and I remembered that book about canaries and their warnings.

Escape.

I compelled Bash to forget me. Lydia has always been better at compulsion than me, and I knew the spell wouldn’t hold up to any of the de-speller patches sold by KingsGuard. It was good enough, however, and Bash left with the mild bewilderment common to compulsion.

I’d felt a pang watching him leave, a sad what if, that steeped in my blood. He’d stayed when all the other humans left. That said something about the kind of human he is.

The three witches still clutched one another, trembling, as if even as witches, they weren't quite sure what just happened.

"Say nothing and we'll consider ourselves even," I'd snapped.

And then I ran.

Here I am two days later afraid to return to my apartment. Afraid that I’ve ruined the second chance I’ve spent the last year building.

Surely the strength of my magic will wear off by tomorrow? Then the news coverage will cease, KingsGuard will return to its normal corporate churning, and I can go back to my cubicle in the bowels of the IT department.

Maybe, just maybe, I will be safe.

‘What if safe isn't possible, not for a witch, not for you?’ My magic asks me.

For once the tone is gentle rather than sarcastic.

Certainly, all those humans living in cul-de-sacs, who choose their careers with college tuitions for future kids in mind, and who surround me at KingsGuard -- they chose safe because there’s got to be a goodness, a beauty, in the common?

My mother is correct about one thing. Spend enough time around humans, and you begin to think they have a few ideas right.

"I want to want babies and baseball games and backyards,” I say aloud.

‘I don't know what's worse,’ my magic sighs, ‘the fact that I'm your only friend to talk to or that you think wanting to want those things will solve anything.’

No, what’s worse is that I’m anchored to this god-forsaken city.

I’m caged.

The path ahead of me forks and I hesitate on which direction to go.

‘Left’ my magic nudges.

I don’t have the energy to argue so I listen, and I find myself curving toward the Bethesda Fountain. I hear the water before I see the landmark. My magic leans forward as if trying to make out something in the distance, and then…

Escape.

Just like at Canaries, my mind’s eye sees red, and I inhale sharply. Something isn’t right. My shoulder blades pinch at the sensation of something, eyes, trailing along my back.

Should I go forward or go back?

This time my magic is traitorously silent.

I continue forward because behind me are trees and shadows. There’s a higher chance of people near the fountain. Bad things don’t happen when there are witnesses, right?

This is a mistake.

I round the corner, the fountain gleams silver in the moonlight, and there she is.

A woman.

She is suspended in the air just like the men from the coffee shop. However, she doesn’t dance. She is eerily still. She hovers as if she is about to be dropped into the arms of the angel statue at the center of Bethesda Fountain.

The only part of her that moves is her hair. It is white like bleached wood and impossibly long. It trails down toward the water, and the downdraft of the spell causes it to swing like a pendulum.

Back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth.

I stare transfixed at the woman, but then a footstep behind me jerks me back to my surroundings. My hands fly out and inky black lightning crackles in sparks around me.

“Whoa! Easy there, Beatrice.”

I whirl around, and a man steps out onto the path.

He is tall and broad and looming with a red, wild beard and long hair. He steps toward me and my magic snakes out to snap at his feet. He raises his hands up palms out.

“I’m not a threat to you.” His voice is slow and tempered.

“How do you know my name?”

“Really? That’s your first question? Not will I hurt you?”

I push the fear and anger roiling in my stomach outward, and my magic cracks between us like a whip.

“You’re not going to hurt me,” I say.

He grins, “Fair enough.”

The man lowers one hand and points to his pocket.

“I’m going to pull out my ID. It’ll explain how I know your name.”

My eyes stay trained on each movement, but even then I’m not ready for the ID he presents to me. KingsGuard. It’s an employee one just like mine.

“I’m Lucas. Lucas Night. My boss,” one corner of his mouth turns up in a grin, “our boss, actually, would like to talk to you.”

Terror dances down my spine, but I imagine a steel box. The image in my mind’s eye prevents my magic taking from the emotion.

Terror has been the root of the worst destruction I’ve ever wrought. I can’t let it happen again. I won’t.

“I don’t know anything about those men,” I lie.

“Right, okay let’s go with that.”

Lucas nods in the direction of the fountain.

“He wants to talk to you about her. About all of them really.”

The woman hovering over the fountain. And…the other women.

The other…murdered women.

It’s only then that I see what I hadn’t truly seen the first time.

The impossibly long hair on the woman isn’t all hair. It’s the steady spill of blood along her neck, and skull, and then into the waters of the Bethesda Fountain where it blooms red as if it were oil in water.

The other murdered women.

Before my stunt at Canaries, the spree of unsolved murders had been the top headline in New York for weeks.

All women.

All with their blood drained by what is clearly magic.

Both human and witch victims.

That has been the most confounding fact for everyone. The existence of witches was made known to the world two generations ago, and since then violent criminals almost always target one group or the other.

Here, in Central Park, my magic nudged me in the direction of the latest victim. Why?

“I didn’t kill that woman,” I say, “or any of the others.”

Lucas Night has the audacity to actually laugh.

“Good to know. We can cross Barbie Witch off our suspect list.” He juts his chin toward me.

I feel the hot burn in my cheeks.

Yes, my hair is blond. Yes, I like dresses. Yes, I think a good manicure can make a bad day better. But too girly doesn’t mean I can’t inflict real damage.

Of course, it’s ridiculous to resent being dismissed as a murderer. Even more so as a serial killer. None—the—less, I can’t completely escape my witch upbringing. Any hint that being female categorically excludes me raises my hackles.

It’s such a human thing to say.

“He simply wants to talk to you. Mr. King that is.” Lucas says.

Mr. King. The man witches loath most because for generations his company has profited from human distrust of magic. Fear mongering has consequences, and that is why my magic instinctively deposited those men on the front steps of my workplace.

However, greater than my distaste for Sebastian King is my desperation to escape my coven. KingsGuard is the last place they would expect me to be so I applied for and accepted the job. Over the past year, there are days where walking through their front doors feels like a dereliction of my witchhood.

But like those canaries sent down into mines, I deserve better than to be trapped and used by anyone, witch or human.

In the distance, both Lucas and I hear the whine of sirens punctuate the night. Someone will call this in if it hasn’t happened already.

Escape isn’t always possible.

At least, not immediately.

“All right,” I exhale. “Take me to Sebastian King.”