The Vine Witch (Vine Witch #1)(40)

Elena stared dumbfounded at the vibrancy of the magic running through the shackles. The binding spell inscribed in the metal forced the cuffs to grip another inch tighter, zapping her arcane energy completely. She tried another spell, but the more she struggled, the weaker she grew. Defeated, she lowered her head to hide her tears. If the All Knowing had ever favored her, it was in another life.

Nettles doffed his hat and made a quick bow before the matron. “I’ll leave you to it, seeing as you have everything under control.” And with that he departed, abandoning Elena into the night bucket of the criminal justice system for witches.

She was led down a corridor ripe with the scent of mold and damp straw. A wall of empty cells lined the passage, the cages where the condemned from another era had once been housed. Curiously she could still hear the moans of the tortured and tormented reverberating within the bricks and mortar of the prison despite the shackles. But as her feet passed over the same ground where theirs had trod hundreds of years earlier, a chill snaked its way through her core to the space where she hid her deepest fear, and there it coiled, waiting to strike.

The matron stopped marching when they reached a set of iron bars at the end of the corridor. Inside the cell a chain rattled and feet shuffled in dry straw, as if a stall full of cows had suddenly awakened to the scent of an intruder. The smell that hovered in the cave-like space, however, was worse than a cattle pen. It was the scent of neglect and the absence of hope.

Elena looked up to see an impish face emerge from the shadows and press against the bars. Alert eyes stared out beneath greasy strands of unkempt hair. A crooked smile split a plane of pale skin.

The matron shooed the young woman away. “We have a new prisoner, Yvette. Stand back.”

The nymphlike young woman pirouetted out of the way of the barred door. Matron removed her wand from her sleeve and opened the lock with a manipulation spell. Elena knew it. She’d recited the words before when the wine cellar door had jammed, but now the words to the spell swam in her head, slippery as an eel, so that she couldn’t wrap her mind around the phrase. After a shove in her back, she entered the cell. The depraved space assaulted her senses with its pungency of unwashed bodies, the hard chill of stone underfoot, and the finality of metal clanging against metal as the door thudded closed behind her.

The runes on the iron bars glowed faintly as the matron poised her wand a second time from the other side. “Hands up,” she said, and Elena’s shackles slipped off her wrists. The wan young woman with the glittering eyes sprang to the ground to pick them up and then handed them, polite as can be, to the matron. “Shoes too.”

“What?”

“Remove your shoes and pass them through.” She tapped impatiently on the bars with the end of her wand. “Prisoners do not wear shoes.”

The waif greedily picked up the kicked-off shoes, turning them over to casually note the maker’s mark imprinted on the bottom. She raised her brow at Elena before forwarding the soft leather lace-ups to Matron.

“Thank you, Yvette. Take care of our newest guest.”

“With pleasure,” said the young woman, whose placid smile lingered as long as the matron remained within the corridor. Once the guard was gone and the door at the end of the corridor slammed shut, her eyes flashed bright as sapphires in the dim light as they practically devoured Elena.

“Well, well, what have we here?” The young woman circled her just out of arm’s reach. “I’d say you’ve got the look of one of Dubois’s light-fingered girls, but they don’t throw people in this pit for a little thievery. A Maison de Miel worker maybe? Hmm, no. Your clothes are well made, but they’re too plain for fantasy work. And you can’t be a carnival kink. I just come from there.”

Elena wasn’t sure how to respond to the interrogation. She was reasonably certain a “carnival kink” was akin to being a gentleman’s illusionniste, someone who used magic to carry out sexual fantasies for paying customers. The young woman’s black silk stockings with the embroidered fleur-de-lis running up the sides, though badly torn, were a dead giveaway. As was the trace of kohl liner smudged under her eyes and the lingering scent of male musk on her clothes. But the jagged scar along the young woman’s cheek suggested there might be a more violent side of the tale. A casualty of her trade? Life in the cell? What kind of hell had Nettles left her in?

“I’m not . . . that is, I don’t do that sort of work.”

“Oh, too tawdry for the likes of you, is it?” The waif turned puckish, leaning in close enough that her sour breath blew in Elena’s face. “Some of us are good enough to make a decent side living at it. Want to know how good I am?” she asked, stroking her finger along Elena’s jaw.

“Sit down, Yvette. Not everyone practices their magic while on their back.”

A second body, this one seated cross-legged on the floor opposite the only window, leaned forward in the single beam of sunlight. Long black hair framed a brown face and world-weary eyes offering little comfort. The woman wore a faded silk robe of red and gold over a linen tunic and small gold hoop earrings that pierced the lobes of each ear in three places. The scent of charred citrus and incense rose off her skin. Foreign. Old World. Like the spice emporium Elena had once visited in the city as a child with Grand-Mère.

“Oh là là, Sidra, I’m just trying to find out what kind of criminal they dumped in here with us. You’d think you’d be grateful I care about our safety.”