Witch's Bell Book One Read online

  Chapter 9

  Ebony woke up slowly. She slowly climbed up into consciousness like a person scrambling from a deep well.

  She started to notice the light on her face, then the feel of the soft sheets underneath her and, finally, the strange, vague fog filling her body like mist in a bottle.

  “You’re awake,” she heard Ben’s voice from somewhere by her feet.

  What was Ben doing in her bedroom? She wondered sleepily.

  “Finally,” Nate chuckled through a short cough, “We don’t have to listen to you snoring anymore.”

  What was Nate doing in her bedroom? She thought with rising alarm.

  It wasn’t until she managed to blink through the awful daze surrounding her that she realized she wasn’t even in her room.

  Ebony was in hospital.

  She tried to sit up, so she could get a better look at her surroundings, before leaving the building promptly. Witches, as a rule, didn’t like hospitals. They never needed to visit them. There was nothing magic, herbs, tinctures, candles, and a few blessings couldn’t cure. If the magic didn’t work, you could be darn sure ordinary human medicine wouldn’t either.

  Her arm would hardly move. So she just tried harder, until a dull, overpowering ache erupted through it. “Owww.” She blinked, trying to summon enough magic to damp down the hurt.

  The magic wouldn’t come.

  “Hey,” Nate put a hand on her arm, “You just got stabbed. You might want to take the time to lie down. I’ve had enough experience with heavy blood loss to know it’s never a good idea to do the marathon afterward. You’re in hospital for a reason, Ebony.”

  Ebony tried again, more desperate now. She tried to push the magic into her wound, tried to encompass it, tried to seal it off – but the magic wouldn’t come. It was useless, like pumping at a bone-dry well.

  Ebony Bell didn’t have any magic.

  “What the,” her voice wobbled like a thin sheet of unsupported metal, “Wh… what am I doing here?”

  Ben gave a barely reassuring smile. “You don’t remember? You went Rambo on that criminal in the crypt, dealt with Death, and then….”

  Got sucked into the earth to meet the Coven – Ebony finished in her mind.

  She jammed her eyes tightly shut. She didn’t want anyone to see her like this. And if she couldn’t hide from them, at least she could hide behind the thin wall of her eyelids.

  “You got, um,” Ben’s voice was more uncomfortable than usual, his brash joy gone, “Punished.”

  Ebony remembered, alright, and blimey it hurt. She could feel the bracelets around her wrists and the choker about her neck. These things were going to be with her for the next twenty-eight days, come rain, shine, or magical storm. No matter what happened to her, they would ensure she couldn’t fall back on her magic. She would have to, as the Coven told her, spend the next lunar month like a non-magical human.

  Oh no. How do they do it? How do humans—

  “Don’t you go beating yourself up, Eb,” Ben chuckled tenderly. “You’re already pretty injured, kid.”

  Ben hardly ever called her kid. He’d stopped just after she started working for the police department – just after she’d saved him from a cursed rubbish bin. Ebony fancied that at that point, Ben had realized she was old enough and powerful enough to look after herself.

  Now the word stuck out like a bloodied sword in a patch of pansies. She was a kid again in his eyes – small, vulnerable, and not to be trusted with sharp things and responsibilities.

  She had to change the subject. “Do you have your new witch yet?” she made her voice as strong as possible, but it came out harsh and cutting.

  “Yeah. Name’s Chalcedony, I think.” Ben smiled awkwardly. “She’s nice, I guess. But Eb, we don’t blame you for what happened. I mean, I don’t even understand it. You didn’t do anything wrong. You took that guy down, that lady was fine—”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Ebony said sharply and then simply fell silent.

  Chalcedony, why had the Coven picked her? If Ebony was flamboyant but likeable, Chalcedony was everything but. The woman was direct, efficient, powerful, and to the point – like a sacred knife to the throat. She was tall, like Ebony, and slender too. But her eyes were a brilliant green and her hair a shocking blond.

  Ebony didn’t usually feel jealous of other women’s looks because there was much more to beauty than attractiveness. But Chalcedony… she was different.

  With a thought that boiled unbidden from her unconscious, Ebony realized Chalcedony was just what a certain Nate would like. Finally, a witch who did her job, did it quickly, and did it right. The long legs and bright smile would help too.

  “But, I don’t know, Eb – what’s going to happen to you?” Ben patted the end of her hospital bed, his smile making him look more and more like a comforting teddy bear.

  “It will only last for a month. And then, well, I have a contract with the police department. So unless you terminate it, I’ll go back to work,” Ebony kept her voice even, but it had as much force as a baby punching a wall.

  She’d go back to work, that was, if the police didn’t realize Chalcedony was everything Ebony wasn’t – a witch who showed up to work, didn’t steal coffee, and liked to work long, unreasonable hours.

  For the first time in her life, she was starting to feel vulnerable. Not just that fleeting feeling of displacement she sometimes got when she’d take the long-view of her life and look at all the things she should have achieved by now. No, this was deeper. This was real. This shook up her insides like an earthquake, leaving her unsure she’d ever find her feet again.

  Was this what humans felt all the time? Was this how Ben would react if the same thing had happened to him? Not that he would have quite the same worries at being replaced by a leggy blonde, but would he be feeling just as lost in the face of this uncertainty?

  As a witch, Ebony had always been able to call on rites, blessings, spells, magic. If something went wrong, she knew ways of righting it – usually by writing it, or rite-ing it. Now she didn’t have such tools, she felt like a child floundering in the ocean. How did ordinary people do it?!

  “What happens now?” she asked her life, more than the two men in the room.

  Nate actually smiled. “That’s up to you.” He had that curious, unreadable expression on his face – the one that was starting to make Ebony suspect there was far more to him than met the eye.

  “You can stay on, still be a consultant.” Ben smiled. “But it will have to be in the office. I mean, I can always use another trained eye looking over the files. You still know more of the magical criminals than I do.”

  Ebony raised her uninjured arm and looked at the bracelet. “But you won’t let me outside, right?”

  “Eb,” Ben sighed, “Look, it’s more for your protection than anything else. I don’t want you getting injured. It’s just for a month. It’ll be like a holiday. You’ll be in the office, stealing doughnuts and coffee, and getting on my nerves.”

  She couldn’t stop from chuckling. “You have a strange idea of what counts as a holiday.”

  “Twenty-eight days,” Nate said from beside her. “The time will fly.”

  “It better not.” she settled into her pillow. “I’m too injured to chase after it.”

  She was surprised to hear Nate give a chuckle.

  Could she do it, could she actually live for a lunar month without any magic at all? How would she decide what to wear, for one thing?

  Just as Ebony allowed herself to fantasize about the month that might be, the image of the cowering woman from the crypt leaped into her mind. “The woman – the one from the cemetery – what happened to her?”

  “She’s fine.” Nate shrugged, receding back from Ebony slightly. “We took her home, and she’s sleeping it off, as far as I can tell.”

  “Will she get counseling, reparations—” her voice felt stiffer than usual.

  Ben laughed, though it sounded more like a hiccup. �
�Oh, she doesn’t need reparations, Eb. That was Cecilia Grimshore – of the Grimshore legacy – the same family that owns half of Vale.”

  “Oh, right,” Ebony conceded, her voice quiet. “But, she… ah… it would have been stressful for her,” she said blankly, not able to think of a better way to put it. Stressful? Being kidnapped while a madman performed a magical rite on the grave of your dead father? Yeah, traditionally quite stressful, that. She kept trying to search for a way to say what she had to. “I – look, she would have seen some stuff, she probably needs to be watched over, or something.”

  “She was debriefed by the Magical Counseling Unit,” Ben reassured her. “She understands what has happened to her. And we’ll keep an eye on her – it’s department policy after something like this – you know that.”

  Yes, she did know standard procedure, but it didn’t matter. She was trying to tell Ben, without actually telling him, that she had the strangest feeling about that woman… about the whole situation, in fact. It was the way the woman had screamed just as the book with the lion crest had been kicked out of the man’s hands. The more Ebony thought about it, the stranger it seemed. That scream – it hadn’t been one of fright… it had been one of loss, of shock.

  She tried to run after the memory in her mind, tried desperately to recreate the scene from the crypt so she could remember the exact pitch and timing of the woman’s scream. “It was strange,” she said in a crackling voice, “Really strange. You need to look into it.”

  “It’s all been dealt with, Eb,” Ben tried for a smile. “The guy’s in prison, Cecilia is fine, and everything is sorted out. The Coven has assured us it is all done and dusted.”

  Ebony didn’t reply to that.

  Silence began to stretch between them. Usually she was skilled enough to read the different levels of silence – hearing all the sounds that filtered from the in-between. Now she just heard the lack of conversation, as if that was all there really was.

  “When do I get out of here?” she asked, realizing the only way to break a silence of voices was to speak yourself.

  “Depends on how many bench presses you try and do,” Nate quipped. Though his usual sarcasm was there, it had a warmer, friendlier, lighter edge to it.

  It wouldn’t last, she assured herself. She couldn’t see the arrogant detective leaving her alone for too long. But for now, Ebony didn’t mind so much. “How about I promise to do zero bench presses and only a couple of sit-ups?”

  Nate shrugged. “Just as long as you don’t take up boxing in the interim, you should be out by tomorrow morning.”

  Ebony glanced at the clock on the wall behind Ben. She usually instinctively knew the time, but without her magic, she was finding it hard to know where she was, let alone when she was.

  According to the clock, it was eleven. Judging by the light filtering in from outside, it was morning, which meant she had been knocked-out most of the night.

  She put her good hand up to her head. “How long was I out?”

  “You lost a lot of blood.” Ben patted the edge of her bed again.

  “And you were sucked through the ground, which didn’t help,” Nate assured her with a grin.

  “But, tomorrow morning? I can’t get out till tomorrow morning? I feel fine!” she lied.

  “No you don’t.” Nate picked up on the lie immediately. “You feel terrible and you look worse.”

  “But what am I meant to do? Just lie here?” Ebony’s mind couldn’t begin to adjust to the zero possibilities that presented themselves to her. Lying in bed all day without any magic sounded like a death sentence.

  “Yeah, you lie there.” Nate crossed his arms and looked down at her, as if daring her to jump out of bed. “You need to recover. Now, I know you’re new to this whole non-magical world, but when us humans are knocked down, we need to rest for a bit.”

  She shook her head petulantly. “No way. I know that saying. When you’re knocked down, you get back up again.”

  Nate smiled through his teeth. “Yep, but it doesn’t tell you when to get back up again. Don’t worry, Ebony. You will get up and then race around in your usual sugar-filled craze. But it’s just going to take time.”

  She felt a pang at the way Nate had said her name, but she dismissed it with a loud, obvious sniff. “I don’t know how you humans manage it.”

  “We humans,” Nate corrected her, “For the next twenty-eight days, you’re going to be just like me and Ben.”

  “You mean I have to wear a tie and scratch my crotch when I think no one’s looking?” she asked, a cheeky smile spreading across her lips, despite the cutting pain from her shoulder.

  Ben snorted. Nate just shook his head.

  “Okay, fine,” Ebony adjusted her hair, making sure its length tapered off the pillow to one side, “I accept the challenge. I’ll be a human for a lunar month. But I’m warning you, I’ll do a better job than you do.”

  “You’re on.” Nate uncrossed his arms and nodded his head.

  At that moment, Ben got a call. He snapped his phone open, answering it as he walked from the room.

  It left just the two of them.

  That silence came back, but it was different now. Without her magic, she couldn’t tell why or how it was different – all she knew was that for some reason, it was… important.

  “Whose desk am I going to sit at?” she asked, arching an eyebrow and trying to sound as sassy as possible. Whether it was due to her new non-magical status, or something else, Ebony couldn’t manage her usual aloof tone.

  “It depends if you want to sit on anyone’s lap,” Nate said, face blank.

  Ebony sucked in her lips and looked at him askance. “I think the police department would frown upon that.”

  “Oh it wouldn’t be mine.” Nate kept his easy, blank expression going.

  She was starting to wonder whether he’d trained as an actor, judging by the impossible cool he’d assume while teasing her. Yet at other times, the frustration would break through the surface, furrowing his brow and drawing in his lips. The only possible analogy Ebony could come up with was that Detective Nate had a lot of masks, all for just one face.

  “It would probably be Frank’s lap,” Nate continued.

  She rolled her eyes. Frank was as old and brittle as bone left out in the desert. He was still on the force because he was a juggernaut when it came to filing and could remember the criminal history of Vale better than any one of Ebony’s books. Still, the reason Frank could remember so much about Vale was he’d been there for most of it. The guy was pushing eighty. “If I sat on Frank’s lap, I’d break it,” she said coldly, trying to lift her chin, even though she was lying down.

  “Your words, not mine. But are you calling yourself fat?”

  “I would curse you, you little—” Ebony said through gritted teeth.

  “But you can’t.” Nate shrugged. “That’s the thing about being human – no hexes.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll just remember.” She used her good hand to tap the side of her temple. “And as for whose desk I’ll sit at, well, I’ll sit wherever I want when all you detectives are out of the office.” She stretched her good arm and smiled.

  His jaw dropped.

  “I wouldn’t leave any doughnuts, coffee, or anything else at all sitting on your desk, if I were you.” She kept up her smile. “I’ve heard Frank gets peckish these days.”

  Before Nate could reply, Ben walked back into the room. “The color is back in your cheeks, Eb,” he announced happily. “You’re looking more and more like yourself with every moment.”

  More and more like herself? Ebony tried to suppress a shudder. She’d never been less like herself – she had no magic, no purpose, and no power – and yet, somehow, she still managed to look like Ebony. How did that work?

  “We’ve got to go now.” Ben motioned to Nate. “We’ve had something come up down-town – another bust up between the Maldini brothers.”

  Nate unfolded his arms and nodded automatic
ally.

  “As for you, Eb,” Ben’s usual smile was now back in force, “I want you to promise me two things. Number one – don’t check yourself out of hospital until you’re allowed to leave. If you do, I’m going to send Nate here to track you down and drag you back, even if he has to arrest you.”

  This brought an enormous grin to Nate’s face, one Ebony couldn’t share. “What—” she began to protest.

  “Two,” Ben rolled on, “I want you at work on Monday, 9 A.M. sharp.”

  “Nine in the morning,” she repeated, incredulous at the very suggestion.

  “Yeah, regular hours for you now. And you have to stay at work till five-thirty. No ducking off because you’d rather have a nap.”

  Nate chuckled.

  Once again, Ebony didn’t join in. “But—” she began.

  “No buts, Eb. You’re human now – and this is how we do it. Now we’ve got to go. You know what you’ve got to do, and you know what will happen if you don’t do it.” Ben waved a short goodbye and ducked out of the room.

  Nate followed, but not before peaking his eyebrows at Ebony and smiling sardonically.

  Just as she was looking around for something to throw at the departing detectives, Ben ducked his head back around the door. “One more thing, Eb.”

  “What?” she spat back.

  “I’m glad you’re okay.”

  Slightly disarmed, Ebony nodded at him. She listened to their departing footsteps echoing through the corridor.

  They had answered some of her questions, but posed others. She now knew what she was going to do for the next twenty-eight days: look through old files while stealing what scraps of food she could off the desks of others. She knew what she was supposed to do, alright, but how she was supposed to do it still baffled her.

  Do humans really just throw on their clothes in the morning and go out to meet the day with no idea what it would bring them and no real way of changing what they didn’t like?

  Another thing bothered her. Just what was she supposed to do being beholden to the confusing Nate for so long? She knew he would hold her currently magicless state over her – like a child ogling at the once proud butterfly trapped in a glass jar.

  Just how was she supposed to deal with him? And how – Ebony gave an involuntary shiver – was she meant to deal with Chalcedony?

  Though Ebony wouldn’t admit this to Nate, or even Ben, she had history with Chalcedony. And that was putting it mildly. They’d once been best friends.

  And when witches are best friends, they tend to form the types of ties that can moor a relationship through even the most tempestuous emotional storms. Yet Ebony and Chalcedony were no longer on speaking terms.

  It was do with a silly plastic toy.

  She forced her eyes closed. It would be alright, she tried to assure herself as she surrendered to the weakness at the edge of her consciousness. She would make it through this month.

  But would she be the same at the end of it?

  …

  Ebony checked out of hospital when she was permitted to leave.

  She sighed, trying not to look too sheepish as her father pulled the car up in front of the hospital doors. His face had worn precisely the same expression since he’d come to see her yesterday. It was the same look he’d given her when she’d wandered off into the city as a child; the same look as when she’d fallen off her bike and broken her leg; and the very same look as when she’d been magically mugged on her very first day of police work.

  He hadn’t said a great deal. He was a man of few words – great words, when he spoke them, but he never said anything needlessly.

  When she piled into the car, accidentally banging her shoulder on the door mirror, he hissed. He sounded like a steam-pipe ready to burst. Sure enough, as he started the engine and drove the car slowly out of the hospital grounds, the pipe began to rupture, “You should have been more careful,” he said off-hand, as if he was lecturing the traffic ahead.

  She grinned, lips pressing into her teeth. Unlike her mother, Ebony’s father always meant well. Not to say that Avery Bell was malicious, but you couldn’t be sure what she was thinking, let alone planning. Reading her was like reading the weather a year in advance – a pointless exercise that always underestimated just how much rain would come.

  Ebony’s father was obvious – he said what he meant, and he meant what he said. He was plain and open in his intentions. And right now, he intended to give Ebony a piece of his mind. “I don’t get it. I’ve taught you about combat. What were you thinking letting that guy get a hold of his knife?”

  “I wasn’t thinking, Dad,” she said in a small, somehow cheerful voice. There was something truly amazing about parents – no matter how old you were, they would always still be older than you – and thus fully capable of showing you the rashness of youth. Putting you in your place was the perennial right of all parents everywhere. “It all happened too fast, in the dark and with Death in the room.”

  “No excuse,” he said briskly, as if he were talking to a recruit. “If the guy has a weapon, you get the weapon off him. None of this letting it fall to the floor – you hurl it across the room, if you have to, but you get it out of their reach.”

  “I know, I know. Things just happened too quickly. I’ll do better next time.”

  “Yes, you will,” he agreed.

  That was the great thing about her dad – yes, he had rules; yes, he had standards; but he never set them at a height you couldn’t reach. What’s more, he never once doubted you had the courage to leap that high. He believed in Ebony with the type of strong, hard, well-learned belief that only an ex-detective-inspector could muster.

  She waited for the question she knew was coming.

  “So, you want to go home? You know… your mother would like to see you.”

  She stared ahead, pretending she was more interested in the traffic. It was a curious thing, for sure, but her parents still lived together and were still happily married, despite the fact Avery Bell was a witch of the Coven. You make choices, her mother always told her, and sometimes they seem ridiculous to other people – but you still make them, and they’re still yours.

  Her mother had made her choice. Even though she was on call for the duties of the Coven, she always came home to Ebony’s father. They didn’t go out to the movies, to restaurants, or take short walks in the park any more though. Avery Bell was far too powerful a witch, with too much magic coursing through her veins, to be able to walk down an ordinary street. Avery’s skin, eyes, expression – the lot of it – reflected the magic within. Symbols were etched into her skin with magical, glowing runes. Her once-dark hair now shone as if each strand was made of a pure string of light. Her eyes glinted – sometimes blue, sometimes red, sometimes white.

  There was no way Avery Bell would not be recognized for what she was – a witch – and as such, she just didn’t go out much. That didn’t matter to Ebony’s father. He’d go out to do his shopping in the morning and come back to Avery’s stories at night.

  They were happy, and somehow it worked out. But as for whether Ebony would like to go home now? There wasn’t a chance.

  “No. I’m busy,” she said, her voice stiff.

  “Busy?” Her dad looked over at her with the same piercing gaze that had cut through more criminal lies than Ebony had sucked down sweets. “You got great plans to sit on your couch and mope for the next month?”

  “Look,” she didn’t fancy having her intentions pried apart by the ex-detective, “She almost let me bleed to death,” her voice peaked. “And she shackled me.” Ebony brought up both her wrists. “I can’t say I’m looking forward to having a cup of tea with her.”

  “Now, Eb, don’t you be that way. You know the rules of the Coven good enough. Your mother did what she had to—”

  “Had to? I didn’t get a chance to defend myself, Dad. There wasn’t any due process. They convicted me well before they dragged me underneath the earth.” She turned away to stare at a pa
ssing building, as if it offered far more interest for her than the current conversation.

  “Look, I ain’t saying you shouldn’t be angry. But be smart and angry. Your mother did what she had to – I know you know that. But I also think you know that there is no point shutting her out. She’s your mother. That doesn’t change just because you have some more jewelry to wear for the next month.”

  “More jewelry?” her voice was high. “These are powerful charms that prevent me from summoning any magic. And she didn’t even try and hear my side of things.” The emotion started to crack through Ebony like heat over ice. “There was something up with that woman in the crypt, Dad, something really weird.”

  “Okay, Eb, that’s a place to start from. And I always taught my daughter to go by her instincts. You think there was something up – then you find out just what that is, and when the time comes, you tell your story—”

  She flung up her good hand. “I was ready to tell them, but they wouldn’t listen.”

  “Because you didn’t have any evidence,” her father said flatly. “It’s all about evidence, Ebony. You think I haven’t been dragged up before the Commissioner, or before a judge, and been raked over the coals for a mistake I knew I didn’t make?”

  She flicked her hair over a shoulder, pulling it out from behind her to play with it sullenly.

  “Because I have. And now you have. But there’s only one way to go from here. You get your evidence, and then you make your case again. You think there’s something up with this woman, Eb? You think you’ve been unfairly punished? Alright then, you prove it. Now, Ben’s already called me, and I know you’ll be working down at the department for the month—”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “Okay,” her father kept on going, “You’ve got an opportunity. You have a month to find out what really happened. You stay late if you have to, but you do it. Now,” he turned to her as he drew up at a set of lights, “You do not, under any circumstances, go looking for trouble.”

  Ebony huffed, but still kept quiet.

  “But you use the opportunities that present themselves to you, and you find your case.”

  “How am I going to do that if I’m locked up inside that department all day long?”

  “During the day, you use what’s at your disposal. Start with Frank, start with the files – and then move on. Most police don’t realize this, but most crime repeats itself. In those files, somewhere, will be what you need. Trust me. Then there’s the phone, Eb, and it’s a great invention.”

  “Hardy ha,” she intoned dryly. “But surely I can only get so much done by sitting around and staring at paper.”

  “Well, you knock off at 5:30. What you do after that is up to you.”

  She suddenly turned to face her father, surprised at what he’d said. “You aren’t suggesting I go and investigate this woman at night—”

  “No, I am not suggesting you break any police rules, any Coven rules, or in any way put yourself in danger. What I’m suggesting is that you use your imagination to find another way. There’s always another way. You just have to find your way.”

  She took a breath, turning back to the window. Shocked, she realized her father had just turned down the street that would take Ebony to her childhood home – and right to her waiting mother. “Dad!” she protested loudly. “I told you not to take me home!”

  “You’ve got to find your way. But right now, we’re going my way.”