The Witch's Quest

And, okay, for her peace of mind, as well.

* * *

The witch left a trail of sweet honey perfume in her wake. Kelyn had heard she was a beekeeper and had, more than a few times, almost gotten up the courage to visit her and ask about beekeeping. Before, that was.

Before was the only way to define his relationship with Valor now. Before he’d lost his wings, and before she’d hooked up with Trouble. Before was when he’d crushed on her and had wanted to ask her out. Now was, well, now everything was After. Which was a ridiculous way to go through life.

Why couldn’t he put the witch out of his brain and move forward?

He knew the answer to that. And it was probably scrawled on the piece of paper that she’d tucked in his jeans. He tugged it out and crumpled it into a ball. Raising his arm to make a toss toward the wastebasket, he suddenly curled his fingers about the crunchy paper.

The answer as to why he couldn’t move forward was that he wasn’t done with her yet. They’d been thrown together in the Darkwood by forces beyond their control. And ever since that day, he hadn’t been able to not think about her. He thought about that desperate kiss. A lot. It had been different from any other kiss he’d taken or had been given by a woman. Weirdly claiming. And achingly right.

He’d never felt that way about a kiss before. Of course, that was Before. Now, if he couldn’t accept himself, how could he possibly accept another person into his life, no matter if it was to help him find something lost or for something so simple as another kiss?

He wanted to be brave like his brothers. To be looked up to and admired by women, also like his brothers. He wanted to know his place in this world and walk it with confidence. While all his life he’d found himself standing to the side watching his brothers, until his wings had been stripped away, he’d never felt this heavy weakness and lack that he now did.

Stryke and Trouble were strong, virile werewolves. His brother Blade was a vampire who had a touch of faery in him. Blade even had a set of dark wings. But he hadn’t brought them out in Kelyn’s presence since he’d lost his wings. Even his sister, Daisy Blu, possessed a strength he admired.

What was he without wings? Self-acceptance was impossible without those very necessary parts of him. They were limbs. And a man who lost a limb truly did lose a part of himself.

Walking outside the café, he uncrumpled the blue paper ball and spread it open. On the top was written in red ink To Invoke a Portal Sidhe and below that an ingredient list. Werewolf’s claw, water from an unruly lake, a kiss from a mermaid, occipital dust from the Skull of Sidon and true love’s first teardrop.

Sounded like a whole lot of bullshit to him. What, exactly, was an unruly lake? But he knew witch magic was weird and steeped in millennia of practice and tradition. And while faeries in the know could access their homeland by opening a portal in a manner to which Kelyn was not privy, there probably did exist a spell to open a portal by other means. And his mother, while she had been born in Faery, had come to this realm decades earlier and could not return, so he hadn’t bothered to ask her help. No need to worry her uselessly.

But what, then? Just wander into Faery and collect his wings from the Wicked One to whom he’d freely given them? He’d made a deal: his wings for unpinning Valor. He wouldn’t renege on a deal.

As he’d said to Valor, it wasn’t her fault. He’d made the choice to make such a sacrifice all by himself.

Eyeing the steel mesh garbage can that stood before the café on the sidewalk, Kelyn held a corner of the blue paper. A soft wind fluttered it like...a wing.

Gulping down a swallow, he shoved the paper in a back pocket and strode toward his car.

A week later

Kelyn still hadn’t contacted her. Valor set aside the tin smoking can and leaned against the cinder block wall that edged the rooftop where she kept three stacked beehives. The smoke kept the bees docile so she could check that the queens were healthy and laying eggs. This fall she would have to separate the hives because they had expanded. She’d end up with five hives, which was awesome. And while bees that lived in the city tended to create a diverse and delicious honey, she was rapidly running out of space. She needed a country home, like her beekeeping mentor, Lars Gunderson, where she could manage a larger quantity of bees.

The sun was bright and she needed to cool off, so she left the smoker on the roof and skipped down the iron stairs to her loft. It was set on the third floor of an old factory building. The lower two levels were currently being refurbished and remodeled into apartments. When she’d moved in years earlier, the place was private and vast. But with neighbors soon to occupy the lower floors and the whole neighborhood turning yuppie, her desire to start looking at country real estate increased.

Tugging the heavy corrugated steel door, which was set on a rolling track like a barn door, she shut it behind her. She pulled off the white button-up shirt she’d pulled on over her fitted gray T-shirt. Dark colors attracted bees and angered them, so she always wore white to the roof.

She whistled. Mooshi popped his head up from behind the couch, moving ever so slowly on his adventure through the wild. Cats. So independent sometimes she had to wonder who owned who.

Running her fingers through her hair, she vacillated between bending over the spell books she had to search for a possible coercion spell and calling Sunday to see if she wanted help today with modifying the ’67 Corvette Stingray engine. Valor was on a two-week vacation from the brewery, which she appreciated but also always found hard to comply with.

How to get Kelyn to pay attention to her and at least give her a chance at the spell? And why couldn’t she simply let this go?

“Restitution,” she muttered. The word he’d used so cruelly against her.

Yes, she wanted to pay him back for the horrible thing that had happened because of her. No matter what kind of spin he put on it, if she had not been in that position in the Darkwood, he would never have been faced with having to sacrifice his wings.

“What should I do, Mooshi?”

A rap at her door decided for her. “That’s what I’ll do.” She would answer the door.

Maybe it was Sunday. Her best friend, a cat shifter, had promised to stop by one day this week with some red velvet Bundt cakes from the new café in town and a whole lot of car chatter. Sunday was one of her few female friends. Most often Valor got along with men because...she was just one of the guys.

She slapped a hand to her chest. No, she wasn’t going to recall that awful thing that had been said to her. The words that had sent her into the Darkwood on a desperate mission.

She was over that now. For good or for ill.

“Definitely not good,” she muttered, and tugged open the sliding door.

Kelyn stood before the threshold holding the blue half sheet of paper on which she’d scrawled the spell ingredients. He raked his fingers through his messy hair and met her gaze with his piercing violet eyes. “Let’s do this.”

Chapter 4 (#uc9ec58f7-7ea4-5fbb-8f31-ccdc70a0be2b)

Kelyn followed the witch into a familiar loft. She gestured for him to sit by the industrial steel kitchen counter that stretched a dozen feet and served as a divider between the cooking area and the rest of the vast, open space that made up half the upper floor of an old three-story business building. The businesses had vacated decades ago, and apartments were slowly taking over. Hipsters and yuppies and, apparently, witches, had moved in.

“This used to be my sister, Daisy Blu’s, place,” he remarked as he slid onto a wooden stool and crossed his arms. Looking over the loft, he recalled that Daisy’s decorating sense had been nil, and Valor’s wasn’t much more evident. Though she did have a motorcycle sitting in the corner before the eight-foot-high windows that overlooked the street. A street bike. Its back fender sat beside it on the floor, and a black metal toolbox sprawled tools beside that.

“Yep. When Daisy moved in with Beck a couple years ago, I grabbed this place. Love it. And the freight elevator fits my bike.”

“Nice. So you have no desire to live in Anoka, closer to the brewery?”

“Do you know that Anoka is infested with ghosts? And I have an affinity for seeing ghosts. So not cool. I prefer Tangle Lake. Just far enough away from the suburbs, but I can still get to work in half an hour.”

“What is that noise?”

“I’m vacuuming. You should see it swing around soon. It’s over behind the bed right now.”

“One of those robotic things?”

“Yes. I am allergic to housework, so I have my cat do it.”

“Uh-huh.” He wasn’t even sure where to start with that one, so decided to drop it for now. And a cat? Yeesh. Not his favorite domesticated animal.

Kelyn turned toward the counter to find Valor leaning on it with her elbows. If he were not mistaken, he should take that wide-eyed, dreamy gaze as somewhat smitten. But he probably was mistaken. Reading women was his forte. But reading witches? Not.

“So, this list.” He shoved the wrinkled blue paper he’d kept toward her. “That’s it?”

“And a few more essentials that are required for most spells. Herbs. Crystals. Rat skulls and angel dust. But I’ve got all that stuff.”

“You have angel dust?” He knew that was a precious commodity and hard to come by.

“Sure. Got some from Zen, your brother’s girlfriend. I used it for the spell in the—er...you want a beer?”

If he told the chick who worked at a brewery that beer—any kind of alcohol—wasn’t to his taste, and he much preferred water, would that annoy her?