Too Hexy For Her Hat by Susan Hayes
6
Chad teleported straightinto his room at the hotel. That turned out to be a serious mistake.
The moment he arrived, he knew he wasn’t alone. He’d left the bedside light on, but now the room was enveloped in complete darkness. It was cold, too. Not the crisp bite of air conditioning but the dank chill of mist-shrouded graveyards and forgotten crypts.
Something slithered to his left, and then a pale orb of gangrenous green light appeared near the ceiling. Part of the shadows coalesced into a solid figure cloaked in a black robe with the hood drawn up to hide his visitor’s face.
“Hello, Father. I thought we’d agreed I was handling this mission on my own?”
“Hello, Shade. I’ve been trying to get an update. You haven’t answered my messages. I’m here to get a report. Once I know what you’ve accomplished, I’ll make a decision.” His dad’s tone was as dry as a mummy’s kiss and it rasped like dead leaves tumbled together.
“I was busy putting the plan into action.” Chad made a show of checking his messages. He had a single text asking for an update that was several hours old. No voicemails or any other contact. “You sent one message a few hours ago. If I stop working the plan to update you every time you inquire, this isn’t going to work.”
“All you have to do is kill her before that meddling Baba-Bitch makes an appearance and gives the girl back her memories. Boom. Zap. Plan complete.”
Chad conjured up his robe and a couple of shadow serpents. The robe was real. The snakes were pure illusion, but his father only saw what he wanted to see. When that differed from the reality of any given situation? He ignored it.
Once properly attired to deal with his mega-maniacal sperm donor, Chad pulled up the hood and addressed the shadow-shrouded figure. “That won’t work. She’s still got her memories. And her magic.” He hated giving his father any information about Luna, but this would protect her from the Father of Shadows, aka the master of dramatic entrances and overreactions.
“Inconceivable!”
“It’s true,” Chad replied.
“Not possible,” his father said stubbornly.
“I think Baba Yaga’s spell failed.” It was a theory his father wouldn’t be able to resist.
“Oh, yes! Yes! Of course! Her weak magic fell apart. It was inevitable.”
Chad had long ago learned how to handle his father. What he hadn’t figured out until recently was how to get away from him completely. Luna was his way out. All he had to do was keep her away from the final battle for Wyrding Way, and he was free to make his own way in the world.
“Luna has all her powers and her familiar is with her.” Chad scowled as a thought popped into his head. “But you knew her familiar was with her. That’s how you tracked her to this city.”
“I determined it was likely the creature went off on its own to find her, yes. But I’d assumed it was watching from a distance.”
It was rare for his father to admit he was wrong. His ego wouldn’t allow it. In fact, the only times it happened were when things had gone spectacularly wrong.
Curious, Chad nudged his pocket. Hissy stirred and then poked her head out to look at their visitor. She had thermal vision and could give him a report on his father’s condition once this meeting ended.
“You should have mentioned that. It might have affected my plans.”
“You wanted to do this on your own. If your plan failed because of a feather duster of a familiar, that would indicate you’d made a bad plan.”
Another fucking test. Goddess doused in gumbo, he was so done with this shit. “The mission is going well.”
And it was, despite the fact his first plan hadn’t survived contact with reality. He had another one now, and this one would work.
It had to.
“It better. Our future depends on it.”
“Our?” Chad didn’t like the sound of that.
“Ours, Shade. Yours and mine. Soon, I’ll have everything I need to make this world better than it’s ever been. Then our real work begins.”
Chad’s hopes and dreams stampeded toward the fire exit, desperate to escape before the doors slammed shut. “That’s not what we agreed to.”
After this mission, he’d stop working for his father. That was the deal… or it had been.
The shadowy figure shrugged. “Oh yes. You requested some time off after this mission. Three months will be sufficient. Then you will report to me and we’ll start the next phase.”
Fury tore through him, loosening Chad’s tongue to a dangerous degree. “No.”
“Don’t take that tone with me, boy. Three months is more than generous. Surely by then you’ll be tired of banging that Wyrding witch?”
Chad’s brain froze. His mouth didn’t. “I’m not banging anyone.”
How the hell did his father know about him and Luna? This was bad. Naked on a sailboard heading to open sea during a shark-nado bad.
“Then you are as talentless at seduction as you are with everything else. You’re running out of time, Shade. I assumed you were using sex to get close enough to kill her. If you have another plan in mind, I suggest you move fast. Get her out of the way or I will.”
Anything he said would just give his froot-loop father more information. “As I said earlier, things are going well.”
“In your opinion.” Years of disdain and judgment were piled on top of those three little words.
“Yes. If you are running your own game, I need to know what it is. Otherwise, we’re working at cross purposes.”
Silence. Then more silence.
Finally, his father sighed. The raspy, unhealthy sound made the older warlock’s chest rattle. “Things have not been going according to plan of late. I had to be certain of your success. If you fail, I have someone else in place.”
“You’ve got someone watching her.”
“As do you. However, I put my faith in someone more capable and discreet than your flock of sea-goof Shifters.”
“Whoever you hired, they aren’t needed.”
“She stays in place until this is over. And if I hear another word, I’ll have her end this tonight.”
“That won’t be necessary. Everything is unfolding as I intended. When the battle comes, Wyrding Way will be short one witch.”
“It better be.”
Chad went on as if his asshole sperm donor hadn’t said anything. “Now that you’re up to date on my progress, I assume you’ll be leaving? I have work to do, and to do it, I need lights.”
Frank hissed in displeasure and the shadows got darker… which shouldn’t have been possible, but magic didn’t play by the same rules as the rest of existence.
“I will go and leave you to work. Don’t disappoint me again, Shade. You won’t enjoy the consequences.”
Two seconds later, the room was empty, the lamp was back on, and the only shadows left were the ones Chad had conjured. He dismissed them with a wave of his hand.
His robe fluttered back to the closet and put itself away. It was part of the charade he played day after day. Shade was a persona he’d adopted to appease his father. It wasn’t who he wanted to be… though sometimes it was necessary.
He paced the length of his room over and over, sorting through possibilities and plans. He’d bet his warlock card that the spy was the snail Shifter he’d met earlier tonight. It was the only way his father could have known he was romancing Luna.
If that oozing, obnoxious Shifter was some kind of elderly assassin, he needed to remove her from the field of play.
“Hissy, what did you see?” he asked his familiar.
“Nothing. He was so wrapped in shadow I couldn’t sense any heat from him at all. That’s new and not a good thing.”
“Not good at all,” Chad agreed. Frank had sacrificed so much of his soul to dark forces, almost nothing was left of the man he’d been. If Hissy Fitz couldn’t even sense body heat anymore? That meant whatever his father was becoming, the transformation was almost complete.
Every dark act came at a price. Chad knew that firsthand.
He prowled past the full-length mirror that seemed to be standard décor in every hotel room he’d ever stayed in, stopping to stare at his reflection. If he had to kill again, what would the cost be? Would his remaining blue eye darken to black? Would he sprout claws or scales? He had no way to know. Maybe nothing would happen, but the odds got worse every time he stepped onto the dark path.
“You’re going after the snail?” Hissy asked.
“Maybe. I need to be sure it’s her first. Then I’ll decide. Luna’s got some time off. I could suggest we zap ourselves somewhere sunny and private on a romantic getaway.”
“If Luna vanishes, the slimy spy will inform Frank.” The rare times she mentioned him, Hissy never called his father by anything other than his first name.
“I know.” And once his dad knew they were gone, the odds were good he’d come unglued and deviate from his current plan.
Chad couldn’t save Wyrding Way or the people there. In fact, given he’d attacked the town once already, they’d likely clap him in spell-proof irons the second they figured out who he was. He had no way to protect the town, but he could save Luna.
Chad looked in the mirror again. It might be the last time he saw himself this way, but if it kept Luna safe? Then it was a chance he was willing to take.
He kept his eyes on his reflection as he made the change from Chad to Shade. Serpents hissed and writhed at his feet, shadows clung to him like cobwebs, and his robe popped back out of the closet with an agitated flutter that made it clear it wasn’t happy to be disturbed.
He pulled the hood up, hiding his face in the shadows and shaking out his arms so his hands were covered by the over-long sleeves.
Hissy slithered out of his pocket, growing in size as she poked her head out of the neck of the robe and draped herself over his shoulders. In this form she was almost as long as he was tall, with gleaming black scales and a mottled silver hood she could expand when annoyed.
“You ready?” he asked.
“No. I’d rather be napping, but since this needs to happen, the sooner we get it done, the sooner I can get back to sleep.”
“Glad you’ve got your priorities straight,” Chad muttered and then teleported himself back to Luna’s building.
He was in the mood to make some escargot… extra crispy.
It wasn’t hard to find the spy. He tracked the freshest slime trail into the elevator and then grimaced when he scanned the buttons and found one still dripping with snail snot. He zapped it with just enough juice to dry it out and then tried not to gag as a stench like burning wet dog hair dipped in sewage filled the elevator.
When the door opened, he managed to step out with decorum and style instead of choking and retching like he wanted to.
What he saw confirmed everything he suspected. A snail the size of a labradoodle was perched on the ceiling above Luna’s front door.
Fury tore through him, and the shadows thickened. His voice dropped to a low growl as Hissy lifted her head to flare her hood and hiss at the snail.
“Ms. Frankenfuut. I’d like a word.”
Big, weepy eyes on stalks twisted around to stare at him.
“Now.”
Dotty the spy-snail detached from the wall, flipped over backward and landed deftly on her feet in human form. The wig, robe, and fuzzy snail slippers were gone, which meant she was naked and lightly coated in slime.
Ugh.
“We agreed to never meet in person!” she exclaimed in a whispered hiss.
She thought he was his father? He sent up a small prayer of thanks to the Goddess for the old snail’s failing eyesight.
“It was necessary.”
“You think I can’t do it? Is that why you’re here? We’ve worked together for a hundred and thirty years and you still don’t trust me?”
“I don’t trust anyone.” It was one of his father’s favourite phrases, and Chad delivered it in exactly the same tone and cadence.
“Not even that boy of yours. Does he know about the change in plan?”
Dread did a tap dance across his heart in stiletto heels made of ice. “He does not.”
“Then why are you here? You want to see the corpse. Don’t you? Confirm the kill?”
Son of a poxy pixie. Dear dad had ordered Luna’s death after their meeting.
“I changed my mind. That’s why I’m here. I’m going to give Shade a chance to prove he’s not completely incompetent.”
Disbelief flashed over Dotty’s features, and she moved a few steps closer while narrowing her eyes. “You’ve never changed your mind. Not once in all the time I’ve known you.”
Her mouth opened and a long, needle-like something suddenly appeared between her lips. She gave a strange cry, leaped into the air like a wire-fighting Kung-fu actor, and attacked.
He captured her in a force bubble identical to the one he’d used to catch Cupid, only this time he left it hanging in mid-air. Her obscene tongue-thing poked and prodded at the inside of the bubble.
“He sent you to kill her.” It wasn’t a question.
“Shade? Is that you?”
He bounced the bubble off the floor, both walls, and the ceiling before bringing it back to a halt in midair. “Answer the question.”
The snail groaned. “Yes. But you know that already or you wouldn’t be here.”
Dotty blinked at him several times and then sighed in resignation. “If this is it, boy, then do it already. I’ve been waiting for the Next Adventure long enough.”
“You want to die?”
“I’m an assassin. Death doesn’t scare me. Getting old does. And if you let me out of here, I still have a job to do. I won’t stop until the witch is dead or I am.”
She was goading him. He knew it. He also knew she was telling the truth. He couldn’t let her go.
“Any last requests?”
“Make it quick. I never made any of my targets suffer. They never even knew what hit them. Oh, and one thing I don’t get… why now? What changed?”
“She’s my one true love. Cupid whammy and all.”
The old biddy started to laugh. The wet, gurgling sound made his stomach curdle.
She was still laughing when he whispered a spell under his breath and threw it at her.
“Don’t mess with my witch,
You slimy bitch.
Tit for tat,
This snail goes splat.”
The bubble contained the messy aftermath nicely, and he teleported it several kilometers offshore before ending the spell.
He blew out a breath. Shades and shadows, he hated doing that. It didn’t matter that the Shifter hadn’t given him any other choice. She’d basically granted him permission to kill her, but that didn’t change what he’d done.
“May the Next Adventure be a good one for you,” he murmured.
“Indeed,” Hissy chimed in. “Though it’s better than she deserves.”
His familiar shrank back to her usual form and dropped into the palm of his upturned hand as he banished the shadows and robe once more.
He held his hand up to his face and then moved it away so she could get a good look at him. “What’s the damage?”
Hissy was quiet for several long, uncomfortable seconds before making her pronouncement. “No change.”
“Good. Then I think it’s time we woke up a certain witch and made her an offer so tempting she can’t say no.”
“Frank’s going to be pissed.”
“I know. But it’s not long until her birthday. I can hide us both until this is over.”
“If he wins, it will never be over.”
That was Chad’s greatest fear. If Frank had access to one of the sources of Fate’s power, he wouldn’t just change the world. He’d eventually destroy it and everyone living there. If there was only a way to stop him… but he knew how powerful his father had become. Rage at his loss had made him even more dangerous. The witches didn’t stand a chance against him.
Hissy flicked her tongue at him but didn’t say anything more. She didn’t have to. He was fucked seven ways from Saturn, and they both knew it. If he told Luna the truth, she’d never trust him again. If he didn’t, he’d have to find another way to keep her safe from his father’s wrath for the foreseeable future. And no matter what he did, he had to keep her away from Wyrding Way until after the final battle. It was the only way he could keep her safe.
