Charmed (The Witch Hunter #2)
Michelle Krys
Prologue
“You have one new message, left yesterday at nine-forty-five p.m.”
Static plays through the speaker, and then…
“Hello, Indigo.”
Leo.
I gasp.
“I’m here with your friend Paige, and you know, even though you and I have had our problems in the past, I can agree with you on this one thing: she is an absolute doll.”
There are muffled moans in the background. Someone grunts, and the sound of china shattering pierces through the phone. When Leo speaks again, his cool confidence is gone, and his voice is cut with an edge of hostility. “I was really hoping you’d come by and join us, but since you’re not answering your phone, I think we’ll just have to come to you.”
1
Two Weeks Later
In medieval times, people were tortured with head crushers and limb-stretching devices. More recently, my ex-friend Bianca Cavanaugh tortured the fifteen members of our cheerleading squad with her brutal drills. And now? My aunt Penny is torturing me. Forcing me to have “a nice family dinner” with her—the very person who betrayed me—while my best friend, Paige, is missing, possibly dead.
I think I’d prefer the limb stretcher.
Aunt Penny sits across the dining room table from me, sawing into her dry pork chop. Cutlery scrapes against china. The grandfather clock ticks away the seconds, and I stare at her through eyes narrowed to slits, clutching my fork so hard my hand trembles in my effort not to leap across the table and go zombie-apocalypse on her.
She sighs heavily. “Indie—”
“It’s Indigo,” I interrupt.
She tenses at the venom in my voice.
Good.
“Okay…Indigo,” she corrects herself. “I know you’re very mad at me right now, but as your legal guardian, I couldn’t let you keep living at your boyfriend’s house.”
I bark a laugh. “You really think I’m mad about that?”
Okay, so I am mad about that—after what my aunt did to me, she’s the last person who should be telling me what to do, legal guardian status or no. But her barging into Bishop’s house and demanding I come home or she’ll call the cops to haul me back doesn’t even crack the top ten list of the reasons I hate her. (Yes, I said hate. And yes, I know it’s a strong word.)
“Oh,” she replies.
And then it’s back to the soul-sucking silence. It used to be that whenever Aunt Penny and I got together, we’d talk for hours about everything from boys to nail polish to our favorite movies. There was never a moment of quiet, and if there was, it was never awkward. But right now a conversation with a gynecologist while in stirrups seems comfortable by comparison.
“So what are you mad about, then?” she finally asks.
The heat grows in my core quickly, swirling and spitting like a ball of lava. Before I know what’s happened, it’s surged up and spread down my arms, stinging my fingertips like I’ve just come inside from the cold.
My magic.
I lay my fork down and draw my hands into my lap.
Aunt Penny knows exactly what I’m mad about. But as completely frustrating as her fake ignorance is, unleashing magic right now will just make everything worse. And so I close my eyes and take measured breaths until the heat sucks back into my core.
“You know who had to tell me?” I raise my eyebrows, challenging her to answer. “The Priory—one of the sorcerers who kidnapped Mom was the one to tell me my own aunt is a witch.”
For a second it seems like Penny’s going to cry, but then she closes her eyes, and when she opens them again, she levels me with a look more mom than aunt. “Listen, Indie, you don’t know everything. Yes, I’m a witch.”
My stomach does a little flip at hearing her admit the truth, but I try not to let it show on my face.
“But I can’t use my magic,” she adds.
I blink at her, trying to make sense of her words. In the sixteen days I’ve spent living at Bishop’s house, I must have run through every possible reason, every possible scenario that could have led to my aunt’s failure to help me when she knew my life was in danger. Every single one of them re-suited in me cheerfully beating her to death. But this? This, I didn’t think of.
She gets up and starts pacing behind her chair, twining her hands together. “See, a long time ago, when I was maybe a year older than you are now, I was well on my way to being a very, very powerful witch. I’d advanced so quickly with your grandma’s training that I’d caught the Family’s attention.”
“You?” I blurt out.
“Yes, me,” she says.
I can’t hide my surprise. You’d have to be pretty damn great at magic to catch the attention of the leaders of witches and warlocks everywhere, and the only thing I’ve known Aunt Penny to be damn great at is body shots and being known by her first name at every club in Los Angeles County.
“They wanted me to work for them,” she says. “Which was, like, this huge honor.”
Honor, my ass. If the Family hadn’t created fake copies of The Witch Hunter’s Bible to divert the Priory’s attention from the location of the real Bible—which contains a spell that allows a sorcerer to kill a witch without draining them of their powers—then Mom would be here right now, instead of six feet under. And Paige wouldn’t be missing.
“I was the youngest witch ever to have an offer like that,” she continues. “So I went to work for them. I started out doing small jobs, but I moved up quickly. And it was great for a while. I mean, there were some people who didn’t like me, but Damien—he was the leader—he said it was natural, that they were just jealous of my talent. Truthfully, I think they were jealous that Damien treated me like his little pet.”
“And then?” I prompt impatiently. Because I know how Aunt Penny’s stories go, and they usually involve a lot of superfluous details and a lot of people having crushes on her. To think I used to love her stories.