Witch Interrupted Page 27

  “I refuse to accept conventional limits.” Marcus, goggles reflecting the light from the bare overhead bulb, strode to a side table and fired up a burner. After adjusting the flame, he began heating the test tube. “Muscles can be strengthened. Senses can be trained and sharpened. Reaction time can be improved. This is a biological—”

  “Unless it’s magical,” Katie suggested. “When you dissect a witch, there’s no unique area in our brains that’s different from humans. Wolves too, in either form.”

  “I didn’t know that.” Harry paced the perimeter of the shadowy, windowless room. “Is that true, Marcus?”

  Marcus briefly regarded Katie as if she were rattling the bars of her cage and throwing poop at his sparkly glass beakers.

  “Yes, it’s true.” He raised the test tube when the contents began to burble a noxious yellow, cooling it. “Nevertheless, a compulsion is our next experiment. You did say you wanted to try something new. If the compulsion works on me, June can place you under—”

  Harry interrupted rudely. “Fuck that. The last time my wife put me under a compulsion, she forced me to leave her at the mercy of a fucking psycho.”

  “It’s been five years, potty mouth,” June grumbled. “Let it gooooo.”

  Harry regarded his exhausted wife with concern and adoration, which Katie envied. Whenever Marcus looked at her, it was like the lab rat she was.

  If Katie were tired from the work Marcus had asked of them, June was practically comatose. She pretended to be fine, but everyone knew better. June wasn’t energized by rage and frustration, her heart and soul committed to her course of action.

  That being said, Katie suspected June did sleep during their limited time off. Katie huddled alone in the Airstream and worried about her family, wishing Marcus would talk to her, wondering if the time had come to slip away.

  Wondering if she could bear to leave him.

  Knowing she was going to do it soon, whether she wanted to or not. Her conscience would allow nothing else. Vern, Dad and Tonya had risked their lives to save her twenty years ago. Dad and Tonya had lost their futures, their friends, their dreams. All for her. A keeper. Chang Cai. The woman she used to be and would need to be one final time.

  She couldn’t afford to wait for Marcus’s miracle.

  “Look,” Harry said. “I respect what you’re trying to prove, but enough is enough. I’ve made up my mind. June is done with these tests. You’re not wearing her out anymore, and I don’t like that these people are after us.”

  That snatched Marcus’s attention away from his test tubes.

  “Why would you quit?” he asked, genuinely puzzled. “We haven’t achieved our goals. My ability to enter an abridged witch state is hardly going to sway the region elders to rethink their policy on transformed wolves.”

  “They’ve already rethought their policy.” Harry pointed a finger at himself. “I’m the evidence.”

  “Do you know how many witches transformed and had to be poppied in the past five years?” Marcus racked the test tube and shoved his goggles onto his head. “Do you know how many witches died of cancer?”

  “Uh, no.”

  “Your existence hasn’t changed policy. As I said, we haven’t achieved our goals.” It was impossible to argue with Marcus when he was in scientist mode. Katie had quit trying.

  “Maybe it would help if we weren’t running with our tails between our legs while the keepers have been doing who knows what to my family,” she interrupted, though it wasn’t an argument, just a statement of fact. “The experiments could happen just as easily after my family is safe.”

  Marcus met her gaze evenly. “We’re exercising caution,” he said, “not cowardice. With any experiments, results are never immediate.”

  “That’s the problem,” Harry said. “It’s taking too long. This is pointless.”

  Marcus blinked. “I disagree. I’ve overcome my urge to shift when I exit witch state. I’ve cast spells. Now I need a way to absorb and maintain more power. Cayenne has proven helpful but insufficient for permanent retention.”

  Harry pulled a face. His frustration with scientific method was no surprise. He was an act first, think later type of individual. However, he’d been much more easygoing than his wife about their relocations, double-backs and false trails.

  June pulled her notebook and pencil from under the cot. “The cayenne worked, Marcus? What was your dry volume yesterday? You made it through five spells before you switched back to wolf state.”

  He checked his smart phone. “I used two ounces of supplemental cayenne. For the amount of power I’m talking, I’d need to carry several pounds of cayenne at all times.”

  “That doesn’t sound practical.” Her pencil flew across the page. “We don’t have unlimited supplies. We’re low on a number of components.”

  “Cayenne can be made stronger,” Katie reminded them.

  “What if you eat it?” Harry asked. “You are what you eat, right?”

  June laughed. “You always think with your stomach.”

  Wolf logic indeed. Katie thought about her supercharged cayenne and a body’s digestive tract. “If you eat it, I guestimate it would kill you in three minutes.”

  Harry whistled. “I don’t think it would have time to cure cancer.”

  “What about heal-all?” June asked. “Would it be possible for Marcus to eat it while a witch was healing him?”

  “That’s hardly permanent,” Marcus said, scratching his chin. “Though taken orally, the cayenne would be integrated.”

  Some spells were more effective as pills, but Katie didn’t know anyone willing to touch, much less eat, primed cayenne longer than he had to. Even standard cayenne caused skin irritation. Layered cayenne like she created was much more damaging.

  “Marcus is right,” she said. “The healing would have to last as long as the cayenne was in contact with the digestive system. I don’t know any witch who can cast nonstop for, what, twelve to eighteen hours? The only way to obtain nonstop healing is to have about twelve witch friends who take turns or get a—”

  A wisp of possibility hovered in the outskirts of her mind. She placed a hand across her forehead like a visor, blocking out her companions, blocking out the factory, blocking out everything, and chased it down.

  Swallowing primed cayenne wasn’t the answer. The healing components needed to be applied with the cayenne, and oral healing mixes didn’t last eighteen hours.

  But there was an organ, an organ she knew well, that was integrated with the body and accessible to a witch’s healing touch.

  “Katie?” Marcus said, snapping her out of the spinning tops in her brain. “What are you thinking?”

  “Your skin,” she said. “We have to permabrand you with the cayenne.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  They finally hammered out the permabrand procedure, and Katie wished the others had let her make the ingredient purchases solo. She had her reasons, and she didn’t care to share them with people already inclined to be suspicious about her. However, when she’d suggested she make the trip alone, even June and Harry had agreed it was a bad idea.

  The closest individual who dealt in the supplies needed for the tattoo ink was in Kentucky. With Lars and who knew who else after them, mail-order wasn’t going to cut it.

  After a several hour drive in Tonya’s old station wagon, they arrived at the log cabin structure in Podunk, Kentucky. Katie had never been here personally, but Tonya had. The gardening shop, between a Dairy Dip and a used-car dealer, was in a shabby downtown area that had more closed storefronts than open ones. Witches tended to choose out of the way locations for their businesses. It cut down on drop-in traffic from humans, if not always wolves.

  The parking lot had seen better days, almost as much bare dirt as it was gravel. Two trucks and three cars occupied the lot, plus two bicycles and a motorcycle. Numerous flower towers, potted trees and concrete sculptures lurked at the sides of the cabin, in the outdoor section.

 
Harry told them to wait and slid out from behind the steering wheel. Katie, in back with Marcus, who’d pored over calculations on his smart phone almost the entire trip, could almost see Harry’s nose twitching. He stretched casually but exuded tension.

  He wasn’t fooling anyone. Not even with the heavy-duty mask he wore. The magic could only shroud his appearance and DNA, not his posture or actions.

  Harry, whose outward appearance now resembled a white-haired grandpa, trotted around the front and leaned through June’s window. “This seem like a lot of customers to you?”

  “There’s not another shop this extensive in Kentucky or Ohio.” June powdered her nose and dropped the compact into her purse. “It’s not like Millington, where we can get most of what we need from our local shop. Don’t forget you’re supposed to be an old man.”

  June’s mask disguised her as an elderly lady, and Harry kept calling her Sandie. Her acting was a lot more convincing.

  “Wish we were in Millington now.” He opened June’s door, casting Katie a dark look. Though this trip satisfied Harry’s definition of “trying something different,” it hadn’t eased the alpha wolf’s wariness.

  “If the keepers are as out of control as Marcus says, we’re doing the right thing.” June stood and straightened her skirts. She handed Harry the cane he was supposed to use and took his arm. Everyone who wasn’t Katie had decided June should head up the components transaction. June wasn’t persona non grata with the council, the elders, or anyone.

  With June in charge, Katie hadn’t quite decided how she was going to sneak in the other purchase she needed to make. Nobody would be happy to know she intended to buy monkshood.

  Having it as available in the days to come could prove regrettably necessary. While she wouldn’t be able to use it on convex witches, she didn’t know who else might be in Lars’s employ. She wouldn’t put it past him to engage feral wolves as an offensive measure. Or human mercenaries. She’d hate to kill anyone, but faced with a choice between Lars’s flunkies and herself, she’d pick herself. She had a family to rescue.

  If the permabrand experiment didn’t bear fruit, her life was going to be forfeit anyway. Executed for her crimes at last.

  Katie bit back a bitter smile. Some of her companions wouldn’t miss her. She wondered if one of them was Marcus.

  Harry, who definitely wouldn’t miss her, escorted June into the shop almost as slowly as a grandpa with a cane. He forgot to stoop, though. Or shuffle.

  Katie and Marcus were supposed to remain in the car. Their masks camouflaged them as Caucasian teenagers. Marcus certainly fit the bill—the grouchy teen boy who sulked in the car with his tech rather than hang out with his grandparents. Of course, no witch worth half her kosher salt would assume another witch’s outward appearance was faithful, but every smidgen of subterfuge helped.

  As they waited, a muscle car pulled up at the shop, its motor a deep grumble. A tall, thin young man got out. He tugged on a ball cap to shade his eyes in the noonday sun and inspected the parking lot. His gaze paused on them before continuing.

  Marcus, engrossed in his phone, didn’t notice. Katie did.

  “We got a lookie loo,” she said in a low voice. The kid’s countenance had no wrinkles, but if he was a witch, there was no telling how old he was. The trick to deciphering other witches was in the body language, the tonal quality of voices, the personality and the vocabulary.

  Marcus, in wolf state today, glanced briefly at the newcomer. “He appears to be meeting someone. You’re in a high state of alert. Possibly higher than necessary.”

  “Disagree.” She’d racked up years on the council and years in hiding. Alertness was an old habit that didn’t need to die, hard or otherwise.

  The kid leaned against the driver’s door of the low-slung car and lit up a cigarette. Then he checked his phone.

  Marcus’s nose curled. “I can’t imagine a witch would voluntarily smoke tobacco.”

  “Let’s go inside,” she suggested. “Then you don’t have to smell it.”

  “We’re supposed to remain with the car.”

  “I might be needed in case June has to make substitutions.” That was true, not merely an excuse to get her hands on some monkshood. The supplies for tattoos weren’t intuitive. Permabrand artists guarded their recipes closely since the occupation was so lucrative. Luckily it ran in Katie’s family.

  “She’ll send Harry after us.”

  “You can stay. I’m going in.”

  As she unlocked the door, Marcus laid a hand on her arm. “Is there a problem?”

  “Why would there be?” His big hand restrained her with just the power of his touch. “I want to finish the supply run and get back to our project.”

  Not that she was enthusiastic about the idea of branding Marcus with multilayered cayenne that could blister a person down to the bone if you let it, but she’d also be branding him with heal-all. The hypothesis was that it would counteract the damage.

  “You haven’t spoken to me much the past several days.”

  “Funny thing for you to say.” He’d been chillier than winter in Wisconsin.

  “We have much to accomplish.” His thumb rubbed her forearm. “Are you frustrated with the lack of progress?”

  He wasn’t as clueless as she liked to tell herself. “Yes.”

  Now he needed to ask if she was frustrated with the lack of sex.

  His fingers tightened perceptibly. He wasn’t hurting her, but the strength in his grip gave her shivers. She wished they’d continued the sex trials. Why didn’t he want to? Was he done with them—with her? She should never have admitted she simply wanted to be with him. She’d probably disturbed the hell out of him with that bit of info.

  Who would want a convex alpha witch obsessed with him? She might start boiling bunnies next.

  “Are you planning anything rash?”

  She shot him a cocky grin. “Always.”

  “My experiment will succeed.” His brows drew together. His masked face was nothing like the handsome scientist she’d come to admire, but his expression was pure Marcus. “I’m not ignoring the importance of helping your family, Katie. Or the fact Lars could coerce the location spell out of Vernon. It’s also possible he killed Vernon so the spell won’t be a factor. Our time may not be that limited.”

  He seemed to be convincing himself as much as her. If he believed what he was saying, he wouldn’t be scowling. She’d barely known him a week, but she could interpret his facial expressions—through the mask of a pimply teen—like a memorized code. Or a grocery list of bad omens.

  “My family’s time is limited,” she said. “And it doesn’t thrill me to assume Vern might already be dead.”

  “Bad memories can be wiped. Your father and Tonya won’t necessarily suffer forever.”

  “It sucks that you realize they’ll need their memories wiped.” She raked a hand through her hair, wishing the discussion hadn’t swerved this direction. She should have insisted she had to pee and bolted into the store. “Can you imagine what Lars is doing to them? After seeing me again, after we got away from him, he’ll have so much rage it’ll choke him.”

  Lars had been censured for unnecessary violence numerous times during her tenure with the keepers—especially while Vern was the director. It was no surprise Lars had intended, all along, to hijack the council however he could. Though not frequently enough to raise suspicion, moderate keepers, such as herself, had tended to die on missions. She’d wondered if there was any way Lars had stage-managed her final mission into such a disaster. That disaster had nearly resulted in her death, two times over.

  Conspiracy theories hadn’t done her any good then and wouldn’t now.

  “I do know what Lars is like, and I’m sorry,” Marcus said gravely. He touched her cheek. The sweetness of the gesture nearly did her in. “I’ve had years to come to terms with my grief. I want revenge, but I can wait until it’s certain. I know delaying is harder for you.”

  She freed her ar
m. If she didn’t get away from his solicitous touch, she’d slump over in his lap and sob. “That’s why I’m going into the store. To make it easier. I’ll be doing something besides sitting here.”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  “No need.” Marcus hanging on her would make it difficult to snake some monkshood. “Guard the car.”

  “I’m not a dog, Katie.”

  She raised an eyebrow, Marcus-style. “Of course you’re not. Don’t you have some calculations to do?”

  He watched her for a long moment. Unlike Harry, she was an excellent actress. “Five minutes.”

  Katie nodded, as if agreeing. “Be right back.”

  She slid out of the back seat and flounced like a kid into the store. The young man with the muscle car regarded her through the haze of tobacco and tar. He remained relaxed, or more convincingly relaxed than Harry, but something about him spoke of watchfulness. His eyes were a pale shade of gray, almost wolflike, and his high forehead curved above his eyebrows so far, it resembled a receding hairline.

  He pinged her radar, and she couldn’t put a finger on why. If he weren’t smoking, she could have Marcus or Harry sniff him. But the chemicals and shit in human cigarettes clogged up wolf noses like seasonal allergies.

  Katie flipped the guy a playful smile as if she really were a teenaged girl. He raised his chin at her in acknowledgement. She bit her lip and feigned a giggle before she trotted up the stairs to the veranda. She wondered if he’d follow. Inside the store he’d have to put out the cigarette, and Harry could smell him.

  If the kid were a talented witch, his mask would be impenetrable and he’d read as human. That would be a clue in and of itself. Young human males in small Southern towns probably didn’t patronize gardening shops with great frequency.

  Chimes rang as she pushed open the front door. A frenzy of scents invaded her space the moment she entered. Because of her perpetual state of incognito, Katie hadn’t often had the opportunity to patronize actual witch-run herb shops. The subtle evidence of components, paraphernalia and recipes momentarily filled her with giddiness, like a kid in a candy store. Or her dad in a candy store.