The Frozen Witch Book One (17 page)

Though I was humbled by her admission, she
still hadn’t convinced me. Nothing could convince me. Deep down, I
knew Vali hadn’t indentured me because he thought I’d inadvertently
killed my grandmother. Nope. It was because of the symbols on my
hands. And though I suddenly burnt with the desire to point that
out, something held me back. The flickering look I’d seen in his
gaze when he’d told me that he was keeping me from the truth for my
own good.

I suddenly brought up my hands and ran a
finger slowly along one of my bangles.

It brought Cassidy’s attention to them.
“Holy crap, where did you get those?” Obviously having zero
personal space, she lurched forward, clutched my hand, and stared
at my bangle.

“I…” I quickly trailed off. Vali had given
me these bangles with the explicit order never to take them off.
And considering I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone about my true
magic, what exactly was I meant to say now?

“Drop it,” Alice suddenly snarled from the
front seat. “This is all very interesting, but our perp is getting
away. Get back to the part about how you know this guy – got any
ideas where he’s heading next?”

Seriously, I was gonna get whiplash from
this situation. If things didn’t start calming down, I’d probably
throw up.

I settled back further into the seat and
remembered that Larry was the one in that Porsche, breaking every
traffic rule as he sped through town.

I didn’t have any love lost for Larry. Larry
was my boss – a means to money. But I hadn’t been lying when I’d
said so many times that deep under his scaly exterior was a good
heart.

“I…” I began to say that I didn’t know
where Larry would be going. I stopped.

He would be heading to one of his shady
contacts in the underworld. Larry was precisely not the kind of guy
to give up. Sure, Vali the god of revenge may have told him to pack
up and leave town, but it wouldn’t be that easy for Larry – he owed
too many people too much.

“Fess up. This guy is a good driver, and
we’re losing him,” Alice snapped.

“Head to 32 Fifth Street. There’s a
pawnshop,” I began.

“Barney’s World,” Alice suddenly growled.
“I know it well. Strong link to the Chaplain Family. What’s this
Larry character into?” she mumbled under her breath as she swung a
hard right. Though Larry had been heading out of sight, Alice
suddenly turned down a completely different street, obviously
intending to head him off.

I felt sick – felt sick for 1 trillion
reasons.

“You better not be wrong about this.
Middle Manager Ben will not be happy if we lose him. Nor will Vali
be too pleased when you fail your first job. He’ll add a few more
weeks to your sentence.”

“Ha, you just called Ben middle manager,”
Cassidy pointed out as she chuckled into her hand.

“It fits. I’m just not stupid enough to
say it to his face,” Alice growled.

Alice continued to drive like a rally car
driver, the taxi achieving speeds impossible for a standard sedan.
I held onto the door with white knuckles, my other hand wrapped
tightly around my seatbelt. While the car may have been shooting
around like a jet plane, my thoughts were zooming faster.

Larry didn’t deserve to die. He just
didn’t. He deserved an opportunity for that kernel of goodness
lodged deep in his soul to grow. But Vali wasn’t going to give him
that opportunity. When ValI realized that Larry hadn’t skipped
town….

I suddenly did something stupid. I opened
my mouth, and wincing, I lied, “No. I changed my mind. I doubt
Larry is heading to Barney’s World. He’s probably going…” I trailed
off as I thought quickly, figuring out some random location on the
opposite side of town.

I didn’t get that opportunity.

“There he is,” Alice said, ignoring me as
she cut back into traffic, joining a main road right behind
Larry.

Because Larry was heading to Barney’s
World.

“Shit,” I said under my breath, palms
becoming sweaty as I locked them harder over the
seatbelt.

“It’s okay.” Cassidy suddenly leaned out,
rested a hand on my shoulder, and patted it tenderly. “You don’t
have to track him down. Just leave this one to us. Alice is right –
Middle Manager Ben should never have put you on a case where you
have to go after a friend.”

I tried to control my expression. I
couldn’t. All that muddled confusion, all that fear, and all that
twisting guilt – they played over my face with all the clarity of a
neon sign.

Several minutes later, we came to a
screeching stop outside Barney’s World.

I’d only been to Barney’s shop several
times, and even then under protest. For some reason Larry had
trusted me. Out of all the schmucks working for him, as he put it,
I was the least likely to tattle. Once or twice, he’d used me to
make deliveries to Barney’s. Though I’d always strenuously tried to
get out of it, a couple of times I’d caved. I’d always taken the
subway, stuck to the laneways, and never walked in front of a cop
car.

I frowned at that memory as I realized
what it meant. I’d been fencing stolen goods, hadn’t I? A part of
me had known that at the time, but I’d pushed it back. It had been
an inconvenient truth. I’d needed to keep Larry onside – he was a
good employer, and the rent was always going up, wasn’t
it?

In my head, I was a good girl. A good,
misunderstood girl. But do good girls really knowingly fence stolen
goods for their bosses?

It was a question I couldn’t answer.

Slowly, carefully, quietly, Alice undid
her seatbelt. Locking a hand on the back of the passenger seat, she
turned and faced us. “The file says Larry doesn’t have any magic.
But my gut is telling me he’ll know people who do. If he really is
connected to Chaplain, then there is every possibility that we’re
going to face a pissed off, charged warlock in there. Cass, you’re
with me. Lilly,” Alice paused. “Just stay in the car. If Larry
comes out, beep the horn. And if we don’t come out in the next half
hour,” she reached into her pocket, grabbed a phone, and threw it
at me, “you call Middle Manager Ben and tell him to get a proper
team down here, got it?”

No. I absolutely did not have it. I had no
training, no clue, and I couldn’t drive.

Alice didn’t give me the opportunity to
point out any of that. She smoothed down her jacket, checked
something on her wrist, then nodded at Cassidy. The two of them got
out of the car and walked calmly onto the pavement.

I twisted around in my seat, pressing a
sweaty hand against my window as I stared at them.

Barney’s shop was dilapidated. The
three-story, run down, tarnished, brown-brick block looked like it
should be earmarked for destruction. It had a chipped red sign that
read Barney’s World of Goods painted over the doorway. I always
chuckled at that – World of Goods? Barney had been in business for
well over 50 years, and he hadn’t been able to come up with a
business title any less shady than World of Goods? Why didn’t he
just call himself Stolen Objects Going Cheap?

Both Alice and Cassidy got out of the car.
Alice, at the lead, turned, checked on Cassidy once, then pushed
into the store. The shop bell above the door let out a quick tinkle
then the door closed.

Though Barney’s shop had windows, they were
covered in bars and tinted. I couldn’t see inside.

My heart began to hammer in my chest, my
stomach growling with nerves. “This is impossible. It can’t be
happening. Seriously, this has got to be some kind of bad dream,” I
began.

I stopped.

Pretending this was a dream wasn’t going to
change anything.

But what exactly could I do?

I cradled the phone Alice had given me. It
kind of looked like an ordinary smartphone, but when I turned it
over, I saw a blue symbol blazing on the back. I didn’t need to run
a finger over it and feel the charge of magic to realize it wasn’t
normal.

I kept swinging my gaze methodically from
the phone to the front door of Barney’s.

Not many genuine customers ever used the
front door of Barney’s. I’d overheard Larry telling that to one of
his suspicious friends before.

The front door was for those confused
members of the public who weren’t put off by the shady sign, even
shadier name, and shadier still location. The people desperate
enough to buy a watch with someone else’s name carved into it
because they couldn’t afford any better.

Nope. Barney’s “Genuine customers,” as
Larry put it, always used the back door. The back door, however,
wasn’t actually located at the back of the store.

Running alongside Barney’s on the left was
an old warehouse. It was technically a packing company. But I had
to use the word technically with a caveat, there. Barney owned a
controlling share in the business, and when he’d bought it a couple
of years back, he’d knocked down a door right into his back
room.

Alice and Cassidy wouldn’t know about the
door. Larry would.

“Oh no.” I locked both sweaty hands on the
window, letting Alice’s phone drop into my lap with a thump. “I
have to do something.”

But what?

I still hadn’t figured out my loyalties
yet. Right? Everything was too new, too frigging unbelievable. I
did know one thing, though – the side door to Smith Packing
Services suddenly opened, and a pale-face Larry suddenly walked
out.

In a snap, I came to a decision. Or at least
my body did. I found myself leaning between the seats of the taxi,
ramming a hand on the horn. I beeped twice. The noise must have
been sudden and unexpected, because Larry jumped and tried to peer
into the taxi.

I stared back at him, mouth agape. But when
he didn’t look surprised at seeing little old me, all pale-cheeked
and blotchy eyed in the back of the cab, he shrugged and moved
on.

…
He couldn’t see me,
right? It wasn’t such a stupid thing to assume. After all, this
taxi had driven itself up onto the curb before Alice had got
in.

“Come on, guys. He’s getting away,” I said
to no one in particular as I leaned forward and tooted the horn
once more.

I had no idea what it would look like to
Larry. Maybe the taxi was empty – maybe I’d been enchanted to look
like a pissed-off cab driver hustling for a ride.

I cast my now terrified gaze back to the
front of Barney’s store. No sign of either Alice or Cassidy. I
still didn’t know whether I could forgive them for what they’d
done. That didn’t stop me from snapping up Alice’s phone. As soon
as I unlocked the screen, I swore. There were plenty of icons, but
I didn’t recognize a single one of them and everything was written
in a language I couldn’t understand. “God,” I screamed again, “come
on!”

I started randomly pressing buttons, but
when that didn’t call in the cavalry, I realized I had to
act.

Stowing the phone in my pocket, curling a
hand into a fist, I got out of the taxi.

Larry was a second from wrenching the door
open to his Porsche and leaving.

Though I knew full well I wasn’t meant to
intervene, I couldn’t stop myself.

“Larry?” I asked.

He twisted, every muscle so tight he could
have twanged. He reached for something in his jacket pocket. Then
he saw me, and his features slackened. “Kid? What are you doing
here?” He swung his gaze accusingly to Barney’s World.

“Heading over to a friend on East side. I
just saw you,” I stuttered. “You all right? I barely saw you last
night.”

“You barely saw me? What happened to you?
You walked off the job,” Larry began, then he stopped. Larry, once
he got started, never stop complaining. You could chuck a chain
around his throat, gag him, and shut him in jail, but he would
still find some way of shouting at you.

Now his cheeks slackened. “Doesn’t matter.
I’ll see you around, kid.”

I took a nervous step towards him,
reaching a hand out, still unsure of what I was meant to do. “Where
are you heading? You look kind of…. Is everything okay?” I stumbled
over my words.

“Beat it, kid. I don’t have time for
this.”

I quickly jerked my head back to Barney’s
World, noting Alice and Cassidy still hadn’t appeared.

As my gut clenched, I took another step
forward. “What’s going on? You look like you’re in a hurry? Larry…
you in some kind of trouble?”

I wasn’t being subtle. Because I was never
subtle. Seriously, though, when it came to not blowing my cover, I
was doing a stupidly awful job. But I couldn’t help myself. Larry
just looked so desperate.

“It’s nothing, kid. Now get out of
here.”

I didn’t get the chance to get out of
here.

At that exact moment, the door to Barney’s
World opened. My heart lifted as I turned to it. I may have only
just met Alice and Cassidy, but that didn’t mean I wished them any
ill.

The only problem was, it wasn’t them.

My heart sank.

I saw two burly men in suits walk from the
shop, the door swinging behind them. I swore one of them had singe
marks playing up the side of his chest.

Larry baulked, jerking backwards. “Get out
of here, Lilly,” he snapped as he piled into the front seat of his
Porsche.

I just stood there, frozen on the spot,
staring back at Barney’s shop. “What the hell did you do to them?”
I spat.

At first both men seemed content to ignore
me, but at that comment, one shifted towards me. “Work for Vali,
then?”