Saturday began with my new boyfriend disappearing in front of my eyes, right after our first night together. The bed hadn’t even cooled yet. Not a good start for the day, to be honest. What could I do but panic?
I wasn’t prone to losing my head. I was twenty-six years of composed English coolness in a nice package, a level-headed assistant to an arts and antiques dealer who could handle anything. My heart might miss a beat for a great piece of antique. The sight of my boss, Archibald Kane, made it miss two. Several more since we started dating. Our first night together had made it race like it was about to win the Grand National and not solely for the vigorous bedroom activities. I was in love like never before.
Admittedly, my ability to keep my cool had been thoroughly tested the past few months. First, I’d learned that Kane, the gentlemanly antiques dealer in a dapper suit—and now my boyfriend—was a mage, and a powerful one too. That there were more people like him around who were born with the ability to manipulate the elements with spells hadn’t been any easier to accept.
Learning about vampires and werewolves existing too, among other special humans and non-humans like demons, had stretched my composure a bit more. You try maintaining your cool when you come face to face with a huge wolf outside your bedroom, even if you know she’s your housemate, Ashley, when she’s not that hairy.
But I’d very nearly lost it when I learned that I was a mage too.
Ever since August I’d been repeatedly tested, in a series of hair-raising escapades, to the point of breaking. I’d been chased by hellhounds and demons, attacked by warlocks and black mages. I witnessed Kane being rendered unconscious by a powerful spell, and found a dead body of a person killed by a vampire. I’d been cursed twice, almost sacrificed by a black mage, and imprisoned inside a book. I think I could be excused for not always keeping it together.
But nothing, absolutely nothing, made me lose my cool as thoroughly as Kane disappearing into thin air right in front of my eyes.
One moment everything was perfect and sexy. I was contemplating skipping the breakfast Kane was making and dragging him back to the bedroom and stripping him out of his T-shirt and boxer briefs. The next, he went to answer the door— and was gone in a blink of an eye. Or rather in a bright flash of light that left me briefly blind.
We’d faced so many magical attacks recently that I feared the worst as I rushed down the stairs to the door, but there was no sign of him or the person who took him. The open courtyard of the Mews, the erstwhile stables converted to rowhouses, offered no hiding places. I even looked up, in case he’d been secreted away by a ninja, but my eyes only met the tasteful wreaths and fairy lights that had been hung on the walls the moment the clock struck December.
They didn’t make me feel at all Christmassy. A wave of panic flooded my system, wiping away my ability for rational thought.
Barefoot and in Kane’s bathrobe that was far too large for me, I rushed across the courtyard to the street. The cold dampness that constituted winter in London didn’t even register as I stood at the gate, my head turning left and right like watching a tennis match as I tried to look everywhere at once.
Only when a man walking his dog gave me a puzzled look and a polite nod did I notice my outfit and surroundings: a posh neighbourhood in Belgravia where people didn’t step out of their front door without being perfectly put-together, and certainly not in bathrobes. My good sense returned, and I knew there was no way Kane had disappeared by natural means.
There was only one explanation: he’d been abducted through a portal. And that meant he’d been attacked by a warlock, because only warlocks were capable of creating them. And I only knew one warlock.
Well, only one that I could reach. But she would definitely abduct Kane.
I rushed back indoors, frantically rummaged in my bag for a phone, and placed the call. The moment it connected, I screamed into the phone: “Where did you take him?”
Turned out, I wasn’t as calm and rational yet as I’d thought.
The obvious target of my ire was Danielle Mercer, Kane’s ex-wife and warlock in training. She’d been his ex-wife far longer than an actual wife, but that didn’t mean she was out of his life. She’d caused him plenty of trouble these past months and I had no reason to believe she’d given up. And her current partner, Laurent Dufort, was a very powerful warlock.
“Huh…?” Danielle sounded bleary, like she’d been woken up by the call. “Who is this?”
“Don’t act innocent. Bring Kane back immediately!”
There was a brief pause while she checked the screen of her phone. “Phoebe? Why are you calling me at this ungodly hour?”
“It’s ten in the morning in France!” Laurent was French, and they currently lived in France. That didn’t mean she couldn’t have abducted Kane, because you could cross distances in a blink with portals.
“We’re in London.”
Oh, right. She had a house here too. Nevertheless, it was only an hour earlier here and even Kane and I were already up.
I gritted my teeth. “Where. Is. Kane?”
“How should I know?” She sounded more awake now, and also more annoyed.
“You’re lying. He was abducted through a portal by a woman, and you’re the only woman he knows that can make those.”
“Are you sure he didn’t leave voluntarily?” she drawled, her tone suggesting she found it self-evident. I growled and she snickered. “I can’t make portals, you know.”
She wasn’t a proper warlock yet, but not for lack of trying. It required a human sacrifice, and either she was reluctant to do it or Laurent was holding her back.
“Laurent can.”
Her sigh sounded fed-up. “Hang on.”
She didn’t block the microphone, and I heard her ask in French if he’d created a portal to abduct Kane. His answer didn’t sound any more awake than she was, and I had a notion they were still in bed, an image I didn’t want in my head. He asked for the phone and she gave it to him.
“Where are you?” he asked in his charmingly accented English. I spoke good French, but I guess that had never come up with him, because he always used English.
“At Kane’s house.”
“Give me … fifteen minutes.”
“Fifteen?” I screeched in dismay. “You can be here in a heartbeat with your portal.” Didn’t he understand that time was of the essence?
“Well, if you want me to come naked…”
“Eww.”
“Hey! Most women find me attractive.”
He was attractive, in an intimidating way, thanks to the evil energy he exuded: tall and powerfully built, with dark colours, a starkly handsome face and an elegantly aquiline nose that I deemed very French.
“That doesn’t mean they want to see it all.”
He snorted a laugh and hung up.
I used the fifteen minutes to get dressed too, which had to be a record, but I didn’t exactly have anything at Kane’s house to make me presentable. Just a quick washup and dressing up in the previous night’s clothes. I didn’t have any makeup save a lipstick, or a brush, so I ran fingers through my shoulder-length cinnamon hair and pulled it on a ponytail.
I was by the stove at the island that separated the kitchen from the living room, picking cold bacon straight from the pan with my fingers, when a portal formed in the middle of the living room and Laurent and Danielle stepped out.
Laurent was in his early forties—outwardly, anyway. I suspected he was at least a century older, as warlocks could prolong their lives and they became more powerful as they aged. He was wearing a black turtleneck cable knit jumper with black jeans, Italian leather ankle boots, and a black, knee-length woollen winter coat, which he’d left open. His hair was black and damp, with a hint of grey at the temples. He looked wealthy, French, and intimidating.
Danielle was dressed much alike, except she wore high-heeled brown knee-length leather boots and blue jeans, but she looked more annoyed than intimidating. She was thirty-six, a year older than Kane, five-foot seven like me, and dainty like a willow, which I wouldn’t be able to achieve even if I stopped eating and lost my curves, my bone structure more robust. Her rich brown hair was in a short, asymmetrical cut and her eyes were green and slightly downturned at outer corners.
Currently her eyes were studying me with amused mockery. “Walk of shame?” She gestured at the black cocktail dress that I’d worn to the nice restaurant for my date with Kane the previous evening, as if I needed clarification.
“What is ‘walk of shame?’” Laurent asked, curious. “She looks very nice.”
“Thank you,” I said with a dignified nod. “It’s when a person returns home in the same clothes the next morning after a date night, indicating she spent the night in someone else’s bed.”
He tilted his head, puzzled. “And that is shameful? English…” he huffed.
“Whereas your night in someone else’s bed seems to have ended with him running away,” Danielle mocked me.
“He didn’t run away, he was abducted,” I said, picking another piece of bacon and munching it furiously. I eyed the already cooled pieces of toast on the rack, wondering if they’d hardened beyond edible.
“Is that breakfast?” Laurent asked, crossing the floor to the kitchen island. He picked a piece of toast from the rack and bit into it with a crunch. Definitely not for my teeth. “Is there any bacon left?”
I stared at the frying pan as if seeing it for the first time. I was surprised to see it almost empty. “Not really. I was stress eating.”
He shook his head, disappointed, then lifted the pan and poured what was left of the bacon and scrambled eggs on a plate waiting by the stove. He took a fork and began to eat.
“So where was he taken from?” he asked, looking around. His brows shot up as he took in the elegant interior of the living room, the mid-century modern Danish furniture and the art that filled the walls: a very elegant space as befitted an art and antique dealer. He nodded in approval, as if Kane needed the good opinion of a warlock.
“Right outside the front door. There was a knock, he went to answer the door and disappeared,” I told him.
“Was it a man or a woman who called?” he asked. He put the now empty plate on the island and headed down the stairs.
“A woman.” I glared at Danielle.
“It wasn’t me,” she huffed. “And I don’t know of any woman warlocks in England.”
“She didn’t necessarily open the portal herself,” Laurent reminded us, opening the front door and stepping out.
Danielle sneered at me. “I guess the warlock knew how to lure him…”
I wanted to throw the last piece of bacon at her, but it would’ve been a waste of good bacon, so I put it in my mouth instead to avoid answering her, licking my fingers for a further measure—and to make sure I didn’t miss any bacon. Then I had to wash my hands because eww.
“She doesn’t have to be an English warlock,” I said when I’d chewed my mouth empty, heading down to the front door too. “Maybe she’s someone connected with Giovanni Battisti.”
Battisti was an Italian warlock who had been around since the seventeenth century. We’d recently ran afoul of him when we’d come into a possession of a book that belonged to him, inside which he’d imprisoned a demon. And me. That it was Laurent and Danielle who had helped me out didn’t mean they weren’t evil too. One didn’t choose to become a warlock unless they were prepared to walk the walk.
“Battisti won’t cause problems anymore,” Laurent stated, slightly distracted as he studied the area outside the door. He traced a sigil in the air, where it hung, warped and pulsing, like it was evil too. Then he narrowed his eyes and shook his head. That wasn’t promising.
“Is Battisti still where you banished him?” I asked. “Or did the demon eat him?” Not as good an option, because that meant a demon would be roaming free somewhere, angry after centuries of imprisonment.
He shot me an amused look. “No, he went home after we’d dealt with the demon together.”
“Home?” I screeched, dismayed.
“He gave his word he won’t cause any trouble for us.”
I stared at him, disbelieving. “His word? And you took it? He’s evil.”
“As am I,” he said with a small shrug. “However, the same courtesy doesn’t apply to the pair who stole his book. He’s furious with them.”
I wasn’t entirely sorry to hear that. Not because they’d stolen the book, but what they’d done with it. I hoped it wasn’t an indication I was a little evil too.
I was getting cold standing at the doorway in my cocktail dress, but I stayed put, watching him work. Fortunately, he returned indoors before I was completely frozen.
“A portal was definitely cast outside the door. But from where and by whom, I can’t tell.”
My shoulders slumped. “Meaning, we have no way of knowing where to start looking?”
His lips tightened. “There aren’t all that many warlocks in the world, and even fewer of those who have a reason to abduct Archibald.”
If it wasn’t Battisti or someone connected to him, there was only one possibility. “Blackhart.”
Julius Blackhart was an archmage-level black mage on the verge of becoming a warlock. He had tried to take over the Mages’ Council in London in September, but thanks to the combined efforts of Kane, Rupert Barnet, the archmage of London, and Amber Boyle, the head of the council and my landlady, he hadn’t succeeded. He hadn’t been able to complete the human sacrifice that would’ve turned him into a warlock either—which was fortunate, as I had been the intended sacrifice—but he’d been able to open portals nevertheless. Who was to say how powerful he’d become since then, because he had disappeared.
The mere thought of him turned my bones to ice. “I need to warn Amber,” I said, taking out my phone and placing the call. There was no answer, even though she was an early riser.
I was about to lose my cool again, but then I remembered that she and her wife, Giselle Lynn, had gone to their cottage outside London for the weekend to fetch some herbs and other ingredients they grew and stored there to sell in their magic shop, the House of Magic. Also, my home. They were probably doing garden work and didn’t have phones with them. There was only one solution.
“I need to go to Esher.”
Return to top Return to booksSeason to Be Witched is published on October 26. You can preorder it on Amazon, Smashwords, Apple Books, B&N and Kobo.