Mind Over Magic by Lindsay Buroker
24
The glowfrom the amulet gave out halfway down the shaft.
Morgen was about to repeat the illumination command that Amar had used, but clatters, snarls, growls, and yips of pain echoed down from above with such noise and ferocity that she felt safer in the dark. She wanted to believe that Amar would be victorious, but if the other werewolf won… she didn’t want light seeping up through the cracks, letting him know where she’d gone.
Though she was tempted to go back up and stand by Amar’s side. He didn’t want her assistance, didn’t want her “conniving” witch magic, but she’d helped him in the restaurant parking lot. Surely, she could do something.
Morgen was about to turn around and go back up when her feet clunked down onto cement. A snap-thud sounded above her as a breeze whispered across her cheeks. Frowning, she tried to climb back up only to find that something barred the way. Some kind of door or hatch had dropped down, leaving the sounds of the fight distant and muffled.
When she pushed against it, nothing happened. Had she climbed down into some pit where nosy intruders were locked up?
“Hell.” Morgen groped around, hoping for a door.
Stone wall, stone wall, stone wall, and… stone wall. She shoved against them. The third one moved, grinding loudly as she pushed it outward. She winced at the noise and also the light that slashed into her shaft.
Afraid of attack dogs, and wishing she still had the staff, she held up her arm and squinted at the brightness. Had she descended to the first floor? Or deeper into the castle-mansion?
As her eyes adjusted, a cement floor and walls came into focus. They were nothing like the marble foyer she’d seen, so this had to be a basement or garage. Or dungeon.
No, as soon as she crept out, she spotted a strange contraption that looked like a miniature helicopter with a single seat. The term gyrocopter came to mind, but she’d never seen one and wasn’t sure if this qualified. This had to be an underground garage, though she didn’t see a door large enough to let the contraption out. She didn’t see a door at all, save for a dark corridor on the far side.
As she walked warily around the quirky vehicle toward what she hoped was the exit, Morgen eyed workbenches, cabinets, and counters along two of the walls in the windowless room. She wanted to hurry and find a way out, in case she had to go back up to help Amar, but one of the workbenches made her pause. It was full of carvings and tools for cutting ivory. Tusks.
She held her breath as she crept closer. Several short pieces of tusk lay on the bench, carvings in progress. One was shaping up into a clip similar to the one from Grandma’s motorcycle. A saber-toothed tiger tusk ready to curse another vehicle?
A rack on a wall above the workbench held straight sticks about eighteen inches long. Wands?
Jars of powders rested in shelves above another workbench. The surface was scattered with dried bits of moss. Vibrant moss that Morgen wagered glowed in the dark when the lights went out. And had been stolen from Wolf Wood.
Maybe even using that gyrocopter. That could explain why Amar had never been able to track the owner’s scent.
With shaking hands, Morgen pulled out her phone and took pictures of the gyrocopter and the ivory carvings. She’d found all the evidence she could ever want.
But was this Arbuckle’s lair? Or someone else’s? Amar had mentioned smelling another woman’s scent in the mansion. And he’d said the person he’d struggled to track from the spring in Wolf Wood had been a woman.
“Does Arbuckle have a witch lover?” Morgen whispered, slipping her phone back into her pocket.
It was time to get out of there.
“He had a witch lover,” a woman spoke from the mouth of the corridor.
Morgen spun toward the speaker.
A brunette in her forties or fifties stood with a wand in one hand and the other propped on her hip. She wore an ankle-length black dress with mesh sleeves and had black polish on her artificial nails, though she had no piercings or black lipstick to match the Goth girls from the Crystal Parlor. She radiated confidence and power, and Morgen doubted this was a pretend witch in the market for hexing powder.
“I admit,” the woman said, strolling forward to lean against the nose of the gyrocopter, her wand pointing loosely in Morgen’s direction, “when I sent that imploring message for help, I was worried the strapping werewolf would barge down here to find me, not Gwen’s daughter, but my faithful lover already caught him, so you’re my only guest. Perfect.”
“I’m her granddaughter,” Morgen said, though her mind almost stuck on the words caught him. Did that mean Amar had lost the battle?
“Really? I hadn’t realized she was that old.” The woman sniffed—why did her face seem familiar? “Though she did always swear by that water. The tests on it, however, were inconclusive. The real gem is the moss.”
“Which you’ve been flying over and stealing for Arbuckle since my grandmother stopped selling it to him, right? Who are you?” Morgen glanced ceiling-ward, worried for Amar and wondering if she could get past the woman to run back up to find him. What exactly could that wand do?
“An entrepreneur.” She smiled cryptically.
“I thought that was Arbuckle.” Why did Morgen get the feeling that this woman—this witch—was trying to stall her?
A distant thump came from somewhere above them. Maybe the woman had lied and the battle was still going on upstairs.
“My name is Calista, and Mason was nothing until he met me. A pity he was so poor at acknowledging that.”
“You know how men are.” Morgen took a few steps sideways, toward the corridor she hoped led to a way out.
“You’re not going anywhere.” Calista—if that truly was her name—lifted her arm, pointing the wand at Morgen’s chest. “Not until you sign the documents.”
“Documents?”
“The agreement to sell your grandmother’s property.”
“What’s the matter? You’re afraid you won’t be able to sneak in anymore to steal moss from the trees if there’s a new owner? I saw how much you charge for the powder, but it’s not really worth millions of dollars, is it?”
“You fool.” Calista lost her smug smile, and her fingers tightened around the wand. “You’ll kill the golden goose if you sell that land to someone else. The developers will cut down those trees. They’ll cut down everything, destroy the spring, and destroy the magic of that place.”
“I wasn’t planning on selling it. I just wanted to draw out the very eager buyer.” Morgen squinted at her. “Are you the one who killed my grandmother? Or was it Arbuckle? Or were you working together?”
“Oh, you will sell the property. To me.”
“I don’t think so.” Morgen wanted to run, to rush into the corridor and find Amar, but if that wand was like a gun and could shoot her in the back, she dared not.
She took a couple more steps to the side, as if she meant to flee, but when Calista shifted the wand to track her, Morgen changed direction. She rushed the woman, hoping to surprise her and knock the tool out of her hand.
Calista muttered a few words under her breath. Terrified she wouldn’t reach her in time, Morgen crouched to duck an attack and dive at her legs, to tackle her to the ground.
“…and be my loyal servant!” Calista finished with a flourish, stabbing her wand in the air like a fencer’s foil.
Nothing so deadly as a blast of power or a fireball slammed into Morgen, but between one step and the next, she forgot what she was doing and stumbled, barely keeping from falling.
She peered around the basement blearily. Where was she? What was she doing here?
“Are you ready to obey me?” The woman smirked at her.
“I…” Morgen struggled to wave away the dense fog that had descended on her mind. “That sounds reasonable,” some power compelled her to say.
Wait. No, it didn’t sound reasonable. That wasn’t her speaking. This was… a control spell. Yes, that was it. This woman—who was she?—was using magic to control her. Magic that took over her mind. Control spells seemed familiar, but Morgen didn’t know how to fight them.
“Good,” the woman said. “I’ve got something for you to sign.”
She reached into the cockpit of the gyrocopter and pulled out a tablet, tapping the screen to bring it to life. A form glowed on it, an online documents service showing a real-estate agreement with Morgen’s name and personal details already entered.
Had Christian typed that up before he’d met his end? An agreement to everything without a counter of any kind? He shouldn’t have done that before Morgen had even seen the offer. Before she’d signed anything. Maybe someone else in his office was on Arbuckle’s payroll. Or had been willing to take a one-time bribe.
If the witch—Calista, she remembered—had managed all that, Morgen was surprised she hadn’t been able to forge the electronic signatures. Ah, but it required her to click an email verification link to sign in. One that was, she wagered, sitting in her phone’s inbox. She hadn’t looked at her email all day.
“Log in and sign it,” Calista ordered.
Sign away Grandma’s house? And Wolf Wood? No, that wasn’t right.
“It’s more than a fair payment. More money than you’ve ever seen.”
“Arbuckle’s name is on it,” Morgen murmured. “Not yours.”
Calista smiled. “I’m taking care of things for him. Open your email, click the link, and start signing.”
Morgen’s hand twitched toward her phone. Her amulet lay against her chest, its weight noticeable.
“Under the moon’s magic,” she blurted, “allow me to sleuth and reveal thy silvery truth.”
Calista didn’t stop her from uttering the incantation, but she didn’t look worried either. Morgen stared at Calista, hoping an illusion would form, revealing a secret weakness that she could exploit. But for the first time since Morgen had tried the spell, nothing happened.
“That won’t work on a good witch,” Calista said dryly. “Now quit screwing around and sign the documents.”
Damn it. Why didn’t Morgen know an incantation that would allow her to take back her mind?
This time, Morgen couldn’t keep her hand from delving into her pocket, from pulling out her phone. The prompt for the passcode came up. She willed her thumb to enter the wrong numbers or not do anything at all, but it wouldn’t obey her. She gained access, tapped open her inbox, and found an email from the documents service with Christian’s address listed. It had been sent after his death.
Morgen’s thumb twitched toward the email to open it, but once she clicked on the link and started signing, Calista would have won. If only Morgen could trick her mind into ignoring the woman’s orders. Or forgetting what to do.
She tried uttering the incantation that would supposedly allow her to control werewolves, even though she doubted it would work on witches. Though Calista again didn’t look worried, Morgen noticed that her thumb stopped moving when she was focused on reciting the words. Maybe if her mind was busy working on something else, it kept her body from following the commands.
An urge built in her to open the email. Her thumb trembled as she tried to resist.
She muttered the incantation again.
“Knock it off.” Calista rapped her wand against Morgen’s knuckles, eliciting a sharp stab of pain. “That’s for werewolves. It won’t work on me either. Even if you knew something useful, it wouldn’t work on someone with my power.”
Morgen shook her head. Saying the incantation over and over wasn’t enough, especially since it didn’t do anything. Who was she fooling? She wasn’t a real witch. She was a database programmer from Seattle. When other kids had been playing fairies and magic at recess, she’d been in the school’s computer lab, learning to code silly programs in BASIC.
She thought of one of those early programs, of using recursive loops to make a ball bounce down a set of steps over and over again.
That was what she needed now. To get her mind stuck in a loop so she never got to the mental line of code that involved opening her email and signing the digital papers.
“Check for spam before opening important email,” she muttered, managing to get her thumb to delete another message instead of opening the one from the documents service. But that was the only junk message in her inbox.
She hit the refresh button. There was always more spam on the way, right?
“If there’s no spam, then check for new spam,” she said.
“What are you doing? That’s not an incantation.”
“If there’s no spam, then check for new spam,” Morgen repeated, hitting the refresh button. Nothing like a good old IF-THEN statement to set up a loop…
Calista smacked her knuckles again.
Morgen grimaced but hit the refresh button on her inbox. “If there’s no spam, then check for new spam.”
“Stop that.” Calista’s wand shifted away from Morgen as the woman grabbed her arm and tried to open the email herself.
Morgen reacted without thought, lashing out with her other hand. Her palm connected with Calista’s chin, sending her reeling away.
“You’re under my control,” the witch snapped before Morgen could lunge after her and press the attack.
The will to strike her again faded, but Morgen went back to repeating her mantra to herself, and that tricked her mind into believing she couldn’t open the important email until she’d completed that task. She couldn’t obey, even if the witch controlled her.
Calista snarled and brought her wand to bear again. “If you won’t sign these documents, then I’ll get rid of you, and whoever inherits the property after you can sign them.”
Her sister. Would Sian care enough to honor Grandma’s wishes? Or would she simply sign away Wolf Wood from halfway across the world, not wanting to deal with the hassle of coming up here and getting involved in the Bellrock craziness? She might never meet Amar or learn that witches were picking on werewolves.
“Get in,” the witch said, then pointed at the gyrocopter.
“Uh.” Morgen didn’t want to, but her legs moved her toward the one-man vehicle.
Calista pulled something out of a fold in her dress. A garage-door opener? But there wasn’t a garage door. Was there?
Calista clicked it. One of the cement walls—what Morgen had thought was only a wall—tilted outward, rising like an old one-piece garage door.
Cool misty night air wafted in as an opening wide enough and tall enough for the gyrocopter to fly through appeared. Outside, it had started raining, and heavy droplets splashed down on a cement driveway. The poor weather would make it dangerous for flying, but somehow, Morgen suspected that was what Calista wanted.
“You’re going to take it for a flight, having stolen it while illegally trespassing on the Arbuckle estate.” Calista drew another compact device. A remote for the gyrocopter? “Alas, you’re going to crash in a canyon and won’t live to see morning.”
“The way my grandmother crashed? Why did you kill her?” Morgen watched Calista’s face, wanting to hear the confession, wanting to know for certain that this woman had been the murderer. Did Arbuckle even exist? “She wasn’t planning to sell the property. You could have kept stealing the moss from her for years.”
Calista sneered. “That damn werewolf was there every time. Even flying in to take samples was dangerous, and the moss wouldn’t grow anywhere else. Trust me, I tried to get it to.”
“Why did you have to kill Grandma?”
“She was even nosier than you. She figured it all out and was threatening to put a halt to my operation. Get into the gyrocopter.” Calista recited the incantation again, reestablishing control.
The urge to obey compelled Morgen to lift a foot to climb in, but she made another loop in her mind. If the weather is too dangerous for flying, then wait for the sky to clear.
She lowered her foot. For whatever reason, the simple commands, the simple logic loops, let her resist the compulsion.
“You don’t have to be conscious for your flight,” Calista growled, stepping over to a workbench and opening a drawer.
Morgen turned, but her body was too slow to obey. She couldn’t keep Calista from drawing a gun.
A bang sounded in the corridor before she could point it at Morgen, and a door slammed open.
A great furry gray wolf charged into the garage.
It wasn’t Amar.