Dead Spots (Scarlett Bernard #1)(50)
“I’m up here.” He touched his right eye, mockingly. “Besides, it’s nothing you haven’t seen before.”
“But now I’m sober,” I said without thinking. Then I shook my head to clear it. Jeez, Scarlett. Focus. “Anyway, I’m gonna have Kirsten do a tracking spell with the cuffs, if you just let me borrow them.”
“Sure,” he said easily, tossing the towel over his shoulder. “But I’m going with you.”
My irritation overpowered my fleeting lust, and I scowled up at him.
He just shrugged. “I know you think Kirsten’s trustworthy, but there is someone out there who wants to get to you, and what kind of assistant would I be if I let that happen?” I opened my mouth to argue with him, but he shook his head, suddenly serious. “I mean it, Scarlett. I’m coming, or you can’t have the handcuffs. Forget...whatever this thing is between you and me. Will would kill me if I let you get hurt.”
We stared at each other for a moment while I weighed my options, but it didn’t seem as if I had any. Finally, I sighed and nodded.
“Good. So I’m gonna jump in the shower quick, and then we can go,” he said, starting toward the bathroom. Then he stopped and looked back at me. Huge grin. “Unless you’d care to join me?”
Oops. My eyes may have wandered again. I turned red again and shook my head.
While Eli was showering, I did a quick search of the living room and kitchen, trying to find the damn cuffs so I could just go. When that didn’t work, I plopped back down on the couch and called Kirsten.
If Will is an alpha and Dashiell a king, Kirsten is more like a publicist. The witches used to be completely disorganized, for the simple reason that they’re all very different. As I’d told Jesse, witches, vampires, and werewolves are all descended from the same human conduits, but the witches are from a branch that used as little magic as possible, which varied from witch to witch. So some of them have just a little specific magic, and some, like Kirsten, are actually really powerful. With such different talents and personalities, I can guarantee that if you got every single witch in Los Angeles into one huge room, they would not be able to agree on anything, even something as basic as whether magic is good or evil. Of course, the biggest conflict between them is almost always the question of offensive magics. Olivia explained it to me like this: After the vampires, the werewolves, and the witches split off from the same line, they were scattered peacefully across the globe for centuries, each mostly disregarding the others. But in the Middle Ages, the witches, who by nature did the most interacting with normal humans, began to be discovered. And then persecuted, and tortured, and murdered.
Their leaders went to the vampires and the wolves and begged for help, but both groups turned away, the vampires from apathy and the wolves from fear of meeting the same fate. Wolves are pack animals, and look after their pack before anything else. So the witches did the only thing they could: they looked to strengthen their magic. They didn’t know about evolution and magical lines back then, but during their research, the witches managed to stumble upon a group of plants that magic had bonded itself to, just like the human conduits. They were known as nightshades: belladonna, mandragora, Lycium barbarum (which also became known as wolfberry), tomatillo, cape gooseberry flower, capsicum, and solanum. The entire subspecies was rife with magic. The latter four plants could be used in hundreds of charms and potions, many of which helped the witches to deter the human persecutors. But the former three plants were unique; they interacted with the remaining magical beings in mystifying ways. Belladonna was poisonous to vampires—it took unbelievable amounts to actually kill them, but even a sprinkle of the plant would work as a paralytic. Proximity to wolfberry caused the shifters to lose control, painfully unable to stop from changing, again and again, which was very dangerous to anyone nearby. And mandragora, also called mandrake, was the key ingredient in a spell that could grant a very powerful witch the ability to communicate between living and dead. Which is how I ended up disposing of that naked guy’s body in Culver City, all those years ago.
This discovery was your classic Pandora’s box scenario. A small group of witches, furious that the vampires and the wolves had abandoned them during their darkest time, began to use wolfberry and belladonna against them—sometimes without much provocation. The balance of power shifted once again, and while the witches’ discovery didn’t cause a full-out war, it did spawn thousands of skirmishes, minor battles breaking out between the three major factions. Eventually, the use of those herbs was “outlawed” in the Old World, but it was done the way that marijuana has been outlawed in the US—basically, don’t get caught. The witches are always arguing about this among themselves; some of them think it should be open season, and others think the ban should be more strictly enforced.
But while they may not be able to pull together a majority vote, in Los Angeles Kirsten has organized the witches into sort of an informal union. I know it sounds crazy, but if actors and directors can have unions in this town, why not witches? As I understand it, the real benefit to joining the union is access: to chat rooms, newsletters, support groups, spell sessions—and me.
The witches’ dues pay Kirsten a small salary, and she uses the rest to organize the network and pay me. There are plenty of “non-union” witches in LA, too, ones who either haven’t heard about the group or don’t want to be a part of it. Kirsten has to deal with their messes, too, because a public witch problem is every witch’s problem.