To Love A Witch (A Novel Nibbles title)

by Debora Geary

Copyright 2011 Debora Geary

Fireweed Publishing

Smashwords Edition

Jake stood in front of the sign for the Franklin
County Youth Detention Center and sighed. How come he got all the
juvenile delinquent witches?

Being a monitor for the Witch Sentinel System
was supposed to be a life of excitement and reward. At least that’s
what his recruiter Duncan had said when he signed on the dotted
line. Of course, Duncan was monitor for zone eleven, which meant he
mostly got to sit around on Maui beaches.

Lots of sand in New Mexico, but that was about
where the similarities ended. And this was the second time in three
months a Sentinel alert had led him to a kid in lock-up.

It probably made sense. Uncontrolled magical
powers tended to get you in trouble.

In extreme circumstances, you grabbed the witch
and asked questions later, but since there were no signs of
impending magical disaster, Jake preferred to do surveillance
first. He was going to have to get inside.

He reached for power, and reveled in the flow of
magic. One of the good things about the New Mexico zone was an
ample power supply.

“
I ask the power of earth and land,

Come on out, give me a hand.

I need a way into this dive,

Peel away years, ten and five.

Gotta do what must be done,

Make it so, Number One.”

He hoped Jean Luc didn’t mind the line rip-off.
Some witches could get away with spellwork that didn’t rhyme, but
he wasn’t one of them. And he’d gotten past the “as I will, so mote
it be” crap a long time ago.

The bit of his face he could see in his
motorbike mirror looked fourteen. Excellent. It was always easiest
to cast an illusion that was fairly close to reality. Peel fifteen
years off his looks and passing for a delinquent wasn’t going to be
a problem.

Franklin County juvie wasn’t one of the hardcore
lock-ups, so sneaking in shouldn’t be too difficult. Sneaking out
with a rescued witch in tow might be a bigger issue, but he’d cross
that bridge later.

Jake walked in the front door and muttered a
standard “don’t notice me” spell under his breath. He’d needed that
one a lot lately.

Moving to a chair in the corner, he sat down and
tried to get a read on the place. Three doors—one for staff only,
one into the detention wing, and the front door. Damn, that wasn’t
a lot of escape routes.

It was an entirely depressing space. Puke-green
walls, grunge floors, and a bunch of bureaucratic paperwork and
preachy signs blanketed over the walls. A colorful poster
advertising rehearsals for Delinquent Drama’s production of West
Side Story was the only thing that kept his eyes from squeezing
closed in self-defense.

A hand clamped down on his shoulder. Damn. The
hand belonged to a skinny black woman dressed in a guard uniform.
Her nametag said Darlene.

“Where are you supposed to be, kid?”

It took Jake a moment to remember he looked
fourteen. And delinquent. “Dunno.”

“Well, who left you out here?” Darlene looked
very grumpy. He couldn’t blame her. Puke-green walls could cause an
epidemic of cranky.

Jake tried his best tough-guy face and
shrugged.

Darlene scowled. “You’re never going to be as
tough as me, kid. Don’t even try. Where are you supposed to
be?”

The wall poster caught his eye. “Stupid drama
rehearsal.”

“You one of Romy’s kids? You must be new; I
thought I had all her kids pegged. Come on, I’ll take you in.” The
hand on his arm was a lot gentler than he’d expected.

Romy must be the do-gooder that ran the drama
program. No way the state funded anything that touchy-feely.

Darlene escorted him through the door into the
detention wing. The puke-green theme continued, with no windows to
see the desert outside. Sadly, he was no longer shocked by where
society chose to stash some of their kids. Five years ago, as a
green recruit, he’d been horrified.

He suspected his power-detection spell wasn’t
going to work very well through concrete walls, but he tried
anyhow. Nope. All he knew for sure now was that Darlene wasn’t a
witch. Of the magic-wielding variety, anyhow.

She ushered him into a big room and pointed at a
row of chairs at the back. “Sit there. Watch. Don’t move.”

Jake sprawled on a chair and got his first look
at a Delinquent Drama rehearsal. A kid with tattoos over every
visible inch of skin was currently running everyone through a dance
sequence.

He tried to think back to the time he’d flown
his sister to New York for her birthday, and they’d caught West
Side Story. Rival gangs, soppy teen love story, lots of dancing.
Tattoo Boy must be one of the gang members. If he wasn’t, casting
had totally screwed up.

Except for Darlene sitting in the corner, there
didn’t appear to be any adults present. Maybe do-gooder Romy had to
pee or something.

Time to give the power-detection spell another
crack. You only set off the Sentinel alarms if you had pretty
decent power. If his target witch was one of the kids currently
learning how to dance in formation, this was plenty close enough to
tell.

Jake muttered under his breath. A slight,
redheaded girl in the back row of dancers lit up like a Christmas
tree, to witch-sight at least. Check. Witch located.

Then the glow abruptly disappeared. Crap. One,
the girl had noticed his power-detection spell. And two, she had
enough control over her magic to lock it down and go stealth.

Normally, he was a fan of people who could
control their magic, but anyone with that kind of skill was going
to be a little trickier to rescue.

She hadn’t found him yet. However, judging from
the way she was ping-ponging off other dancers, Tattoo Boy’s
choreography wasn’t her current focus.

He’d learned a few things in his five years with
Sentinel. If you were trying to snatch a witch and run, speed was
your friend.

Grabbing power through concrete sucked, but he
did it anyhow. No way he got the two of them out of here without a
fairly jazzy piece of spellwork.

“
I ask the power of earth and land,

Come on out, give me a hand.

Freeze the people in this room,

Long enough for us to zoom.

Lock down the magic of the red-haired witch,

And leave these folks with a memory switch.

Gotta do what must be done,

Make it so, Number One.”

Everyone in the room went stone-still. Awesome.
Jake jumped up from his chair, threw the immobilized girl over his
shoulder, and ran.

The freeze part of the spell would give him a
couple of minutes, but he didn’t trust the lock-down on the redhead
to hold for that long.

Tossing out a quick “don’t notice me” spell, he
ran through the front room. The clerk at the front desk never
looked up.

He felt the bundle over his shoulder start to
wiggle and cursed. Any witch who could go stealth could also
uncloak with a vengeance, and just like the Romulans, they could be
mean once weapons were online.

Throwing an ignition spell at his motorbike, he
tried to climb on and dump the girl behind him. It wasn’t the most
graceful of maneuvers, and he lost his grip.

She was out of reach in a split second and
rounded on him from several feet away. “Hands up, you bastard. What
the hell are you trying to do?”

When you were facing a monumentally pissed-off
teenage witch with sparks flying out of her fingers, and you were
straddling a gas tank, there was only one smart thing to do.

Jake was no dummy. He cut the ignition and
dropped his illusion spell. Time for an adult to take charge.

Romy was trying not to freak. She’d hallucinated
a time or two in her life, but this wasn’t one of them. Her teenage
assailant had just aged a whole bunch.

“Who are you, and what do you want?”

The wanna-be kidnapper held his hands up. “Take
it easy. I’m here to help you.”

Romy waved her sparks closer to the gas tank.
“Try again.”

“I’m Jake. To make a long story really short,
you set off an alert with all that firepower of yours. I’m here to
take you to a better place.”

Romy took a couple more steps backward and
wished with all her heart she could get the magic to calm down. It
had been at least ten years since she’d sparked with anyone around
to see, and she needed better control if it was going to be a
potential weapon.

She tried again to focus on the stranger. “What
do you mean I set off an alert?”

“I work for the Witch Sentinel System. It’s my
job to find kids with magic in this zone and check things out—make
sure you’re in a good situation. Juvie qualifies you for immediate
rescue. I can take you someplace better.”

He didn’t look like a dirty old man or a serial
killer, but she was well aware that evil came in many shapes. She
was incredibly lucky he hadn’t grabbed one of her kids instead.
“Kidnapping’s a felony. Swiping screwed-up kids earns you a special
place in hell.”

Jake just raised an eyebrow. “You want to stay
in lock-up?”

Romy could feel the sparks flaring again. She
tried desperately to tamp them down. Surely someone inside would
notice she was missing soon. “No one wants to stay in lock-up. I’d
have left with any guy who promised me a way out. How many girls
have you taken?”

She kept inching backward. A few feet more and
she just might risk blowing him up. People who preyed on kids got
no chances in her world.

She saw Jake’s temper fire up, and then abruptly
die. “I’m not taking you for any of those reasons you’re thinking.”
His voice was suddenly very gentle. “No kid your age should even
know about stuff like that.”

“I know plenty.” Her certainty was wavering.
She’d met a few girl-snatching perverts in her time, and he wasn’t
sticking to the script.