Taken Read online

The pixie beamed and patted Andy’s shoulder. “I am. Thank you for asking. It’s so nice that someone cares if I’m mauled.”

  I braced my hands on my hips. “Majesty wouldn’t maul you. He’s proven it several times over the past few days. All he does is nibble on your flower-petal skirt.”

  “Yes, and see what he’s done to it.” She stomped to the edge of Andy’s shoulder and held up her dress for his inspection. “See those holes? Tooth marks! And who’s to say it won’t be my vulnerable flesh next time?”

  Concern drew a deep crease between Andy’s eyebrows as he studied the flower-petal skirt and the kitten in turn.

  I wagged a finger at Peasblossom. “You’re scaring Andy. Knock it off. You aren’t in danger.”

  “Make her get rid of the cat,” Peasblossom continued, ignoring me in favor of her new captive audience. “He’ll kill us all. He’s a magical time bomb, did she tell you that?”

  “Perhaps we should be on our way?” I suggested. “It’s never good to keep an oracle waiting.”

  Peasblossom threw her arms in the air. “You can’t keep an oracle waiting. She already knows what time you’ll be there.”

  “Is that true?” Andy asked.

  I shrugged and pulled on my red trench coat. “Sort of. If Andrea wanted to see exactly when we’d be there, she probably could. But mostly, she gets impressions, not detailed knowledge of the future.” I opened the front door and locked it. “I’ll explain on the way.”

  Andy followed me out, not panicking when Peasblossom seemed content to remain on his shoulder. For a man who’d only found out about the Otherworld less than two months ago, he was handling it well. His eye wasn’t even twitching.

  “I find it comforting that you drive a big black SUV,” I said, opening the passenger door.

  He circled the SUV to the driver’s side. “Why?”

  “I’ve found that television crime shows are rather misleading in most aspects of actual crime-solving. But you and your vehicle hold true. It’s nice.”

  Andy climbed behind the wheel then paused with his key halfway to the ignition. “Wait, me and my vehicle?”

  “Yes.” I hauled myself into the SUV with as much dignity as a five-foot-three person could when getting into a vehicle with a seat higher than their butt. “You’re the perfect FBI archetype, the spitting image of Agent Booth.”

  “Booth as in the FBI agent from Bones?”

  I grinned. “Indeed.”

  He seemed to consider that as he started the car and eased out of my driveway, ignoring the beeping sounds as Peasblossom duked it out with the buttons on the GPS. “You don’t have a TV. I wouldn’t have thought you watched much television.”

  “Not anymore,” I admitted. “I don’t have time anymore. But when I was Mother Hazel’s apprentice, her house used to put a TV in my room when I had a bad day.”

  “The house put a television in your bedroom?”

  “Yep.”

  Another pause while he considered that. “So I’m what you expected from an FBI agent, but you’re not what I expected from a witch.”

  To his credit, he didn’t glance down at my multihued leggings. Today the leggings were covered in abstract patterns in bright blue, red, yellow, black, and white. I’d chosen them because the oracle liked them, and I wanted her in a good mood when we visited her for help. Andy’s restraint in not commenting deserved a reward.

  I opened my trench coat so I could get to my waist pouch. “You’re right. Hold on.”

  I dug around in the pouch, discarding various objects that arose during my search. After the first minute, I caught him stealing peeks at me, but it wasn’t until I’d pulled out a squirt gun, a ball of rubber bands, and seven sets of chopsticks that he spoke up.

  “The bag is magic, right?”

  “Hmm?”

  He gestured at the pouch without taking his attention from the road. “You keep pulling things out of it that shouldn’t have fit in there to begin with. It’s like watching Mary Poppins.”

  “She had a carpet bag,” I said. “But it’s the same principle. The bag is bigger on the inside, and yes, it’s magic.” I found what I wanted. Smiling, I drew out a pointed black hat and pulled it on.

  Andy was not amused. “Hilarious.”

  I held up a finger. “Ah, but I’m not done.” I touched a finger to the hat. “Invisibilia.” The air shimmered with purple energy, and the hat disappeared.

  Andy frowned, his gaze bouncing between me and the road. I waited, smiling.

  “That’s…weird. I don’t see it, but it…feels like I see it.” The crease between his brows deepened. “That makes no sense.”

  “Actually, it does.” I paused. “This would make more sense if you’d read Terry Pratchett.” I tapped my thigh. “In a nutshell, it’s about belief. Faith. There’s power in belief, a magic all on its own. Symbols represent beliefs, and they provide a focus point for the belief of hundreds, thousands, or millions of people. That’s what makes symbols so powerful.”

  “And the hat is a symbol.”

  “Yes. Political correctness aside, at some point this hat became associated with witches. Right or wrong, it blended with everything people believed about them, and now this hat will never mean anything else.”

  “How does that relate to your disappearing hat?”

  “The symbol is so well known, so believed in, that it has its own power. I’m wearing the hat, and even when you can’t see it, part of your brain knows it’s there—your senses feel the magic.”

  He fell silent. I let him mull over what I’d said. Magic was a tricky subject, malleable and resistant to definition. Even those who were raised with it often took years to comprehend everything it meant.

  “Recalculating route.”

  “Peasblossom!” I snapped. “Stop that.”

  “What?” she demanded.

  “I saw you change the destination. Fix it.”

  “Fine,” she grumbled. “I only wanted a bit of honey before we went.” She flopped onto the dash, settling in for a good sulk. Then she paused. “Do you have honey in your pouch?”

  “You don’t need any more honey. You sucked down two tablespoons when I was making my tea.”

  “You had two sodas yesterday!”

  “About the oracle?” Andy interrupted. “You said you would explain in the car?”

  I shoved the hat and the rest of my things into the pouch and zipped it shut with a defiant glare at Peasblossom. “Yes, the oracle. She used to be a powerful prophet. Blind to the physical present, but all-seeing when it came to the future. She prophesied some of the most important events in history—both for this world and the Other.”

  “You said ‘used to be.’ She’s not anymore? How is she going to help us?”

  “Andrea isn’t a prophet anymore, but she’s still clairvoyant. She’ll be able to hold those cold cases and tell us which one to start with.”

  “And that will help us more than the system I came up with?” he asked. “I arranged them according to importance and amount of evidence.”

  “And that was helpful for choosing a stack to start with, but Andrea can tell which case we have the best chance of solving if we start now.”

  He flexed his fingers around the steering wheel, then sighed. “Anything to help.”

  We drove in silence for a while, Andy turning over everything I’d told him, and me fighting to hold the zipper of my pouch closed to keep Peasblossom from climbing inside in search of honey.

  “There is something we need to discuss,” Andy said finally.

  My stomach twisted. I’d been waiting for this. The proverbial other shoe. I turned my face to the window, staring out at the entrance ramp to the highway. “I know. Andy, I won’t use magic on you again. I—”

  “Not that.” He sat straighter in his seat, rolling his shoulders until the tendons popped, releasing some of the growing tension. “It’s about what happens after we catch the criminal.”

  I frowned. “What do you mean?”<
br />
  He gestured toward the back seat with his chin, indicating the locked box of files. “I chose these cases because I got the same strange feeling about them that I did with the Miller case. So, let’s say we investigate, and it turns out that the perpetrator is Other.”

  Understanding dawned. “You’re asking how to punish a non-human.”

  “Right. Last time, you told me our jails won’t hold someone Other. I need to know if we’re going after someone we can’t punish. I won’t watch someone else walk away. Or disappear.”

  I winced but didn’t argue. It was a fair question. “Justice in the Otherworld depends on who committed the crime and against whom they committed it.” I stopped. “No, wait. It will be easier with an example.” I rubbed my thighs, wiping off the sweat forming there and focusing on clarity and simplicity. “Let’s say a vampire commits a crime against a vampire. A vampire is expected to know and understand vampire laws. Thus, vampires will try the case and punish the criminal, all according to vampire law.”

  “Okay.”

  “Now, say a vampire commits a crime against a werewolf. A vampire isn’t expected to be as familiar with werewolf laws, so if he or she can make a reasonable case that they were unaware of the law before violating it, then that’s taken into account at trial.”

  “Taken into account how?”

  “Instead of using the punishment dictated by vampire law, or werewolf law, the punishment is set by the weregild system. Sort of a cultural default. Both parties get to argue the weregild until they reach an agreement that reasonably satisfies both parties.”

  “Weregild?”

  “Yes. Even humans practiced weregild at one point. Basically, every life and piece of property is set a monetary value. If someone takes that life, or damages that object, then they’re expected to pay the equivalent price to compensate the owner.”

  Andy drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, and I could see him organizing his thoughts. “So if a vampire killed a werewolf, he would have to pay the werewolf’s family however much money they agreed the life was worth?”

  “Yes. Although a weregild can be something besides money. Depending on what both parties put forward, it could be physical torture of a certain level or duration, a quest the vampire must satisfy, or even a period of slavery to the werewolf’s family. I knew one weregild that demanded a vampire smash an egg on his forehead once a week for ten years.”

  Andy blinked. “You’re joking.”

  Peasblossom snickered. “That was funny.”

  “It was,” I admitted. “Clever, too. This vampire had garnered himself a very frightening reputation. Now all anyone remembers about him is the eggs.”

  “You’re serious.”

  I grinned. “No one is scary when they’re smashing a raw egg on their forehead.”

  “Interesting. So, all these different creatures sit down amicably and discuss weregilds?”

  I barked out a laugh before I could stop myself. Peasblossom giggled too. “No. Which is why we have the Vanguard.”

  “The Vanguard?”

  “Yes. Think of it as an Otherworld Interpol. The Vanguard is made up of justice representatives from all the different cultures. If any crime involves more than one culture, regardless of where it was committed, all parties have a right to ask for a representative from the Vanguard to oversee the case. The representative determines things like, can the criminal be reasonably expected to have known they were breaking the law, does the punishment fit the crime in a way that’s fair to both cultures, etc.”

  “So a few weeks ago when my suspects disappeared from custody…you turned them in to the Vanguard?”

  I shut my mouth with an audible snap. Heat crept over my face, and my pulse skipped a few critical beats. Suddenly, I needed this conversation to be over.

  “Shade?”

  I bit the inside of my cheek and tried to take a deep, calming breath without being obvious about it. This was it. Time to choose. How badly did I want to earn his trust? If I wanted him to trust me, I had to be honest. Which meant I had to decide what was more important.

  Did I want him to trust me? Or respect me? If I answered him, it wouldn’t be both.

  “No,” I said quietly. “The Vanguard had nothing to do with it.”

  “Why? The victim was human, at least one of them. The culprit was not.”

  The gods chose that moment to show blessed kindness. The GPS interrupted the conversation with a loud, electronic “You have arrived.”

  I swallowed a sigh of relief as Andy’s attention shifted to pulling into the oracle’s driveway, then touched the zipper on my pouch to make sure it was fastened properly, and my fingers touched something sticky. I wrinkled my nose and looked down to see what I’d touched.

  Peasblossom lay in my lap, her face and most of her torso covered in a thick layer of tacky honey. She smacked her lips, licking off what she could reach with her tongue.

  “Peasblossom! I said no honey!”

  “No, you said I didn’t need any more honey. And you were wrong.”

  I slumped in my seat. Now that I’d seen her, I couldn’t think of anything besides the spot on my leggings glued to my thigh where the honey had seeped through the thin, colorful cotton.

  “Do you need a minute to clean up?” Andy asked, putting the SUV into park.

  I sighed. “No. I have another pair of leggings in my pouch. I’ll change inside.”

  “Use your Cinderella spell,” Peasblossom said.

  “You remember the rules. Magic isn’t for making life more convenient.”

  “More of a guideline, if you ask me.”

  I pried Peasblossom off my lap, glaring at her as I attempted to slide out of my seat without leaving a glittering golden residue in my wake.

  “You’re eating vegetables for dinner,” I told her. “This honey obsession has got to stop.”

  Peasblossom curled her body, holding on to her legs as I held her out in front of me. “I’ll give up honey when you give up Coke.”

  The sound of footsteps on a wooden porch drew my attention in time to see Andy on the front stoop, his hand raised to knock. I half fell out of the SUV, one arm flung out in an attempt to stop him before his knuckles struck the wood.

  “Don’t touch the door!”

  Chapter 2

  Andy jumped away from the door, and for a second I thought he’d fall into a full tuck-and-roll. I bit the inside of my cheek as I realized my panicked cry had meant something much different to an FBI agent than to a witch.

  I cleared my throat, ignoring the snickering pixie stuck to my palm. “Use the stick.”

  Andy stared at me from the bottom of the steps leading up to the porch, tension holding his shoulders stiff. He crouched low to the ground, ready to spring at an invisible attacker. “Excuse me?”

  I pointed at a stick lying on the porch beside the door. “You have to use the stick to push the doorbell.” He waited, and I shifted my weight to my other foot. “She’s clairvoyant. When she touches something that someone else has touched, she gets images of their timeline, past, present, future, in bits and pieces. It can be overwhelming, so she likes to limit how much of her things other people touch. It only applies to flesh—your shoes on the porch are fine.”

  He slipped off his sunglass and tucked them into his pocket, smoothing his hands down his lapels as he rose out of the crouch. “Any reason you didn’t mention this in the car?”

  I gave him a weak smile. “I was distracted?”

  He smoothed out a few more invisible wrinkles before looking up at me. “For my own clarification, touching the door would have meant an irritated clairvoyant. No physical danger?”

  “Spoken like someone who’s never dealt with an irritated clairvoyant,” Peasblossom scoffed. One of her wings clung to my finger, and she scowled. “Let me go! You’re pulling my wings off!”

  “I told you not to get into the honey.”

  “No, you didn’t! You said—”

  “Before y
ou ring the doorbell, I need your help.” I strode up to Andy, careful to support Peasblossom so she wouldn’t hurt herself trying to unglue her wing from my fingers. I stopped a foot away from him and gestured down at my pouch with my chin. “Reach inside and pull out the DVD.”

  Andy eyed the pouch as if I’d asked him to stick his fingers in a lion’s mouth. “DVD?”

  “Oh, this should be good.” Peasblossom grunted and planted her feet on my finger, preparing to tug herself free. “Tell him about oracle’s price for her services.”

  “Price?” Andy asked sharply. “You never mentioned a price.”

  I winced as Peasblossom dug her pointy toe into the meat between my index finger and thumb. “It’s only a DVD.”

  “What DVD?”

  I indicated the pouch again. “Get it for me, and I’ll explain.”

  Andy unzipped the pouch with the caution every man demonstrated when asked to fetch something from a woman’s purse, as though he might find a severed limb—or worse, a tampon. I chewed on my lip, trying to remember if I had anything in the pouch that might upset him.

  “Like I said, Andrea used to be a blind prophet,” I said. “The things she saw were projections from the past or future directly into her mind. Reality was nothing but darkness and shadow. When she lost her power of prophecy, she gained physical sight.”

  “I’ll bet that was emotional for her.” He frowned. “There’s something furry in there.”

  “That’s Peasblossom’s winter coat. Ignore it.”

  He stumbled, his arm sliding into the waist pouch up to his shoulder. The side of his face collided with my breast, and my cheeks flared with heat.

  “What the—?” he muttered, regaining his footing and pulling his arm out.

  “It’s bigger on the inside,” I mumbled. “Anyway, yes, it was an emotional experience for her, but not the way you might think. Andrea had spent a lifetime peering into the future and the past with her mind, with no memories of the physical world to serve as a reference. Think about that. She received visions from the gods themselves, with no constraints to limit the beauty or vibrancy of the inspiration. When she saw reality as it is… Well, it didn’t meet her expectations.”