Awakening (Birth of Magic #1) Read online

  She set aside her cup so that she could pat my shoulder. “You don’t have to worry about me, dear. It was just a spell. It’s over now.”

  “I’ll worry a lot less if you go stay with one of the others.”

  From the hard set of her face I thought she might keep the argument going. She might decide to pull rank; as the elder sister she was entitled to it. But then her face softened. “If you’re that worried about it, I suppose I could take a little vacation.”

  We shared a hug that was far too brief. Then I had to get up. “You get started on that suit. I’ll make the travel arrangements.”

  “Be careful, dear,” she said before I vanished from her bedroom.

  ***

  Like Alexis and I, every other witch except for Gretel had another occupation. In part it was to help maintain the illusion that we were normal people. Mostly it was to keep us busy; sitting around on your rear doing nothing gets old fast. So to pass the time we did things like styling hair, selling weapons, or sewing clothes.

  Rose Moulton ran a boarding school in Switzerland. The Moulton School for Girls had started in the mid-18th Century as a finishing school for girls of noble blood. After the Great War and the slaughter of the Romanovs in Russia, Rose decided to branch out and take in girls from “new money,” those whose parents became rich from industry instead of inherited wealth.

  I vanished myself to the edge of the athletic fields, where I figured none of the mortal students, teachers, or staff would see me. Rose was the only member of the coven who worked full-time at the school, with others showing up on occasion to teach a class or two. I’d done one semester of filling in for the athletics instructor; just long enough to know I didn’t want to come back for another semester.

  The problem wasn’t with the kids so much as with Rose. We got along about as well as oil and water. She was one of the three most senior witches along with Gretel and Naoko. Like a lot of old people she just plain didn’t like the younger generations, though she never considered the irony of this given that her profession was to educate the younger generations.

  Of all the younger witches, she hated my family most of all. She knew all about Alexis’s marriage to Marco and about my affair with him as well. If it had been up to her, Alexis and I would both have been drummed out of the coven, stripped of our powers to spend our last days as mortals.

  The look she gave me when I stepped into her office indicated that feeling hadn’t abated very much in the last century. She glared at me through spectacles that were purely for show, one hand drumming on her desk. “I suppose you’ve come here to find out about our investigation into the Chairwoman.”

  “That thought occurred to me,” I said, sitting down in an uncomfortable wooden chair across from her desk, “but I had something else in mind first.”

  “I would prefer if you didn’t ask to hide your new friend here. I don’t want any bawdy young men around my girls.”

  I barely held back a laugh at this. Ethan was about as far from bawdy as a young man could get. Despite that, I wouldn’t have wanted to hide him here anyway, not with the Nazis just over the Alps. “It’s not him I want to hide here. It’s Alexis.”

  “Your sister? Why does she need to hide?”

  I didn’t want to give the whole story to Rose; I didn’t like her any more than she liked me. She was a lot like Caroline had been when it came to books and studying, but Rose was far more snobbish about it. Anyone who couldn’t recite the complete works of Plato on cue she thought was a lower life form.

  She was cunning and devious enough to possibly be this Chairwoman we were looking for. It wasn’t much of a secret either that she thought she could run things better than Gretel. As quickly as the thought came, I cast it aside. Working with book-burning fascists would be beneath her.

  I forced myself to smile slightly. “She’s been a little under the weather lately. I thought it would be good if someone could look after her while I was gone.”

  “I’m sure she has mortal friends who could do that.”

  “This is more of a magical illness.”

  That got her attention. “Nothing like your mother’s, I hope?”

  According to Gretel, Rose and Mama had been friends for centuries. Mama had trained Rose as a novice and they had remained close throughout the Dark Ages. That was until Alexis came along. Their relationship had soured after that, getting almost adversarial by the time I was born.

  Despite that, Rose had worked as hard as anyone to try and save Mama. No one knew what had happened to her, only that one day she woke up and her magic was gone. Over the next nine months she withered away in bed, her body literally turning to dust now that she didn’t have magic to sustain herself. Rose had spent weeks in the archives and traveling to various libraries to try and find a cure. She had even volunteered to go with Caroline to America to search there, but Gretel had nixed that idea, saying two witches might be too conspicuous, not that it had mattered in the end.

  “It’s not that bad. She’s just been having bad dreams and such.”

  “What a pity.” Rose shuffled some papers on her desk. “I’m afraid I’m much too busy to look after her, though. I have two hundred girls to care for.”

  “I’m sure you do.”

  “And to be blunt, I don’t think your sister would be a good influence on them.”

  “Alexis isn’t a loose woman. You know that.”

  “Perhaps not loose with her body so much as loose with her morals.”

  “Why, because she fell in love once? Because she didn’t want to live vicariously through some fancy school for rich girls?” I shot out of the chair. It was fortunate for Rose I hadn’t brought my Colt or crossbow with me. “The hell with you.”

  She only shook her head at this. “Your mother was a good woman; it’s a pity you didn’t inherit her temperament.”

  “Yeah, it is,” I said and then vanished from the office.

  ***

  Most of us in the coven didn’t put much stock in religion. That didn’t mean we chalked it up entirely as bunk. Naoko Sato had embraced the principles of Buddhism. Then again, she might have been the one to help the Buddha achieve enlightenment in the first place.

  While a lot of us lived in close proximity to mortals, Naoko had her own little sanctuary in the Himalayas. She had come from Japan some millennia earlier, but had moved to Nepal because it was far more conducive to meditation. Which was fine for her; I always found the place too quiet. As I walked up the path to her house, I missed all the familiar noises of Rampart City, the honking cars and babbling people having become as soothing as birdsongs to me. Up here there was only the occasional rustling of the wind.

  Naoko didn’t have the same precognitive abilities as Alexis, but she was facing the door when I came inside. She sat cross-legged on a mat, a few candles providing the only illumination. My nose wrinkled at the tangy smell of incense in the air; I was far more accustomed to the stench of cars and factories by now.

  “Hello, Stephanie. I suppose you’ve come for a refresher course?”

  “I probably should,” I said, thinking of those Nazi girls at the castle. “At the moment, though, I have other business to attend to.”

  Naoko nodded. “Sit down then.”

  “Sure.” I made sure to take off my boots first so I wouldn’t track mud around her house. I did my best to imitate her position on the mat across from her, but I didn’t look nearly so comfortable doing it. I’d never really grown out of the fidgeting from that first portrait Mama had had painted of us.

  “Gretel was here yesterday. She said you fought an agent of the Chairwoman.”

  “That’s right. You know anything about her?”

  “I’m afraid not. I’ve been meditating on how best to proceed with the investigation.”

  “You might want to try going out and looking.”

  A faint smile crossed her face, which for her was like a belly laugh. “You’re still much too impatient.” She reached out to take a
handful of my hair. “This suits you. Your heart is still that of a young woman.”

  “I don’t know about that anymore.”

  “You still have the same impulsiveness as when you were a novice. You rely on instinct and emotion to guide you.”

  “I’m doing all right. I’m still alive, aren’t I?”

  “Alive but in pain. I can see the sadness you carry with you. It’s like a yoke around your neck. You must learn to let it go.”

  As much as I respected Naoko as a capable teacher and an honorable woman, talking to her felt like trying to debate with a box of fortune cookies. “I’ll have to learn that some other time. Right now I need to ask a favor of you.”

  “Of course you may, my sister.” When Naoko spoke of being sisters, she meant sisters in magic, of the coven. That meant a lot more to her than it usually meant to me.

  “Alexis needs some looking after. She had an episode earlier.” I told Naoko about Alexis’s dream and how she’d tried to choke me to death. “I thought it’d be best if she stayed with someone in case she has another, preferably someone who knows about magic.”

  “And Rose turned you away.”

  “She wasn’t my first choice anyway.”

  “You must understand that Rose doesn’t hate you or your sister. She loved your mother, perhaps too much.”

  “And she thinks we killed Mama.”

  “She knows you didn’t directly kill your mother.”

  “But if we hadn’t been born Mama would still be alive, right?” I clenched my fists; if Rose had been around I would have slugged her. At least I would have tried, though Naoko probably would have stopped me before the punch could get anywhere near Rose.

  “It is possible.”

  I sighed and shook my head. “Look, let’s get back to the point here. Can you watch Alexis for a few days? Or however long this takes.”

  “I would never deny one of my sisters sanctuary if she needs it.”

  “Thank you.” I wasn’t sure Alexis would thank me after a few days here.

  ***

  I didn’t go home straight away. I had some other things to do first. I stopped at the house in Edinburgh. It was still dusty, though a little less since Frau Bitterhauf’s visit. I wasn’t there to tidy up.

  Like anyone who operated an illegal business and conducted transactions in several different countries, I had a few spare passports tucked away. Some I had down in the basement in Rampart City, inside the vault. I couldn’t open the vault with Ethan around, so I went downstairs to the safe in my old study.

  I looked through the stack, finally settling on one for Elizabeth MacArthur. That had been the name of Connor MacArthur’s daughter. She had died in a fire thirty years before I met Connor on a coach from Edinburgh to the Orkney Islands. He told me about her during that trip and about his business selling arms to those he felt needed them. After he died, I took over his business, including this house, using the daughter’s name to make it all nice and legal. There had been a few questions about Elizabeth’s sudden return from the grave, questions easily dealt with by claiming mistaken identity and slipping a few hundred pounds to the right person.

  I kept a few male passports to loan to my employees should they need one. In the arms business anonymity was always a good thing. I selected one for Tim Cooper, an American citizen so we wouldn’t have to explain Ethan’s lack of an accent. That should be good enough to get us back here. After that we might have to work on a better disguise.

  With the passports in my pocket, I went out to buy Ethan some clothes and other items. I could have bought him a suit, but Alexis would work a lot faster than anyone around here and hers would fit better too. A man in an ill-fitting suit would be easy for any experienced professional to spot and I had to figure we were dealing with professionals here. Celia had certainly been a professional, a deep-cover agent so convincing she had fooled even me.

  Thinking of Celia, I stopped in my favorite watering hole. I’d been going there in one guise or another for three centuries. They even had a booth reserved for me in the back. The booth stood out from the others because it still had the original oak and green leather from when the bar opened. Both were a bit worn, but still comfortable as I nestled into the groove I’d worn into the seat after all these years.

  The barman didn’t waste any time coming up to me. “I’m sorry, ma’am, that booth is reserved.”

  “I’m Stephanie Joliet,” I said. I pulled out my identification to prove it.

  The barman’s eyes widened at this. The barmen changed over the years, but they all had standing orders to make sure no one but me used this booth. “Very good, ma’am. It’s a pleasure to see you at last.”

  “I’m sure it is. Bring me a whiskey, straight up.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  I knew that Naoko would tell me to let go of Celia’s death. She would probably remind me that I’d only done what I had to in order to save Ethan. Her blood wasn’t really on my hands. None of that did much to make me feel better. Celia had been my friend, if only for a short time, and now she was dead. Maybe I could let go of it eventually, but not right now.

  The whiskey didn’t help nearly enough. I ordered two more and then stopped. I would have liked to order a dozen more, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t do Ethan much good if I got myself too liquored up to spot trouble. I just needed enough to take some of the edge off, to dim Celia’s memory a bit.

  I gave the barman a bit extra for his trouble. Then I went about my shopping for Ethan. I didn’t buy a lot, just enough to last him on a trip across the Atlantic, plus a couple of suitcases for it all. It would have been cheaper and easier to go up to his apartment, but as I’d told him, someone would probably be watching the place. Even if I vanished in and used a Glow in the Dark spell to keep the lights off, someone might still spot me. It was best not to give them any idea about where we were.

  As I finished packing the suitcases, I sighed. There was nothing to do but go back now. I wasn’t crazy about the idea of going down there again. Seeing him would just be another reminder of what had happened on that train, of how I’d failed both of them by killing her.

  I took the coward’s way by not going to see him first. Once I vanished back to the house, I went upstairs to Alexis’s room. She looked a bit green around the gills, but she was healthy enough that she had Ethan’s suit ready for me. It was a charcoal suit with red pinstripes, not something I would have expected Ethan to wear by his own choice. That would probably be for the best at this point.

  “It looks great,” I said.

  “I hope he thinks so,” Alexis said. She settled onto her bed with a tired sigh. “How did your meetings go?”

  “Naoko said she’d love to have you over.” I figured it best not to mention my conversation with Rose; Alexis was the kind of girl who couldn’t believe anyone didn’t like her. She would be crushed if she knew Rose thought her to have “loose morals.”

  “I thought as much,” she said. “Is it very cold there?”

  “A bit, though I wouldn’t bring your furs.” As something of a Buddhist, Naoko didn’t look kindly on killing animals for clothes or food.

  “I know.”

  To avoid having to talk to Ethan, I helped Alexis pack her bags. We didn’t say much to each other, not wanting to get into that quite yet. I knew Alexis was going to cry, which would make me feel bad about asking her to stay with Naoko. Maybe Alexis could learn a bit of Naoko’s emotional control while she was there, not that it’d ever done much for me.

  As expected, she had tears in her eyes as she snapped her suitcase shut. “Come on, don’t start with that,” I said. “It’s not going to be that long.”

  “I’m so worried about the two of you alone. I wish I could do something to help.” She shook her head. “I’m just a burden to everyone.”

  “That’s not true,” I said, patting Alexis on the shoulder. “You’ve helped me already. Without you, the Nazis would probably have Ethan and his work by now.” />
  “Maybe.” She sniffled, but I could see she’d backed off a little bit.

  “You’re the one who got the ball rolling on this.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “We’ll be fine. I promise. And as soon as we get to Edinburgh and I get a chance, I’ll pop in on you and Naoko.”

  “Thank you, dear.”

  We hugged long enough that I had to pry Alexis off of me. She’d gone back to crying, looking on the verge of sobs again. I brushed hair away from her face and then looked her in the eye. “It’ll work out, Alexis. Trust me.”

  “I do,” she said. “Just promise you’ll be careful.”

  “I will. We both will.”

  “And if you get into trouble, ask Gretel or one of the others for help.”

  “I’m sure I won’t have to ask her. She’ll know.”

  “I hope so.” She looked down at her feet. “You’re all I have left, Stephanie. I don’t want to lose you.”

  “Don’t talk like that, Alexis. We’ll be fine. You’ll see.”

  “I hope so.” We hugged again, albeit shorter this time. Alexis broke it off, summoning the strength to wipe the tears from her eyes. She took hold of her suitcases and then backed away from me. “Goodbye, dear.”

  With that my sister was gone.

  Chapter 10

  When I went down to the basement, I didn’t see Ethan at first. Before I could call out, I heard something rattling around in the coal chute. I took a few steps and then saw Ethan’s legs dangling from the bottom of the chute.

  I let him bang around in there for a few minutes before clearing my throat. He continued to thrash around for another minute until he finally freed himself. His face was so smeared with coal that he might have been a vaudeville player wearing blackface. Beneath that, I was sure he was turning pale. He stammered, “Listen, I—”

  “Skip it,” I snapped. I held up his new passport. “We’re going on a trip.”