Witcha Gonna Do? (Witchington #1)(21)
“Thank you.” Cheeks pink, she holds the bag of mushrooms close to her stomach like a shield as her gaze shifts from the house to the leaves dropping from the trees to the witches walking down the lane not so covertly watching us. “I really appreciate it and—”
Tilda lets out a high-pitched squeal and jumps back as Griselda’s pet squirrel leaps off the porch railing. Parsnip sails through the air, its arms extended and its squirrel-sized paisley tie flapping in the air over its tiny shoulder. Tilda dodges, but she’s not quick enough. The gray squirrel lands on Tilda’s right shoulder, grabs a handful of red hair, and yanks down hard enough that Tilda yelps.
“Parsnip!” Tilda hollers. “Stop!”
The squirrel pats her cheek, grabs the bag of mushrooms, and scrambles up Tilda’s head while Tilda whirls around and grasps for the furry tree rat. I rush over, but before I can get there, Parsnip springs upward, bites down on the string holding the bag closed, and grabs ahold of a tree limb. Then it’s swinging Tarzan-style from branch to branch until it gets to the white-painted gutter on the house. It slides down the drainpipe to the porch, offers up a middle finger to both of us, and scampers inside the house.
“Are you okay?” I ask, looking her over for scratches, not wanting but needing to make sure she is okay.
“Familiars are the absolute worst.” She eyeballs me as she rubs her scalp where Parsnip pulled her hair. “You don’t have one, do you?”
“No, they aren’t part of my family’s magical tradition.” Not a lie, not the whole truth either.
“Ours either, but that didn’t stop my sister from getting Barkley, the biggest asshole of a rooster you’ll ever meet.” She glances over my shoulder and groans. “Of course someone had to see that. My little dance with Parsnip will be everywhere before I even get home. Mom’s gonna love it.”
Turning around, I see the handful of witches on the other side of Griselda’s front yard fence. They’re giggling as they hold up their phones, no doubt ready to post the squirrel versus Sherwood video to WitchyGram as soon as Tilda goes inside. That isn’t what makes my blood go cold though—Cassius is standing just beyond the coven of bitchy witches.
Fuck.
My handler has never shown up at any of my other jobs. I’ve only ever seen him once, but there is no mistaking him. The man is pale enough to be confused for a vampire, especially with the way he wears his straight black hair down to his shoulders as if to silently encourage the misidentification. Then again, no Council spy is what they seem to be, it’s kind of the job description.
“Go inside,” I say. “I’ll distract them.”
“Are you sure?”
I give her a curt nod, already bracing for whatever fresh hell my evening is about to turn into. My usual glare back in place, I cross the street mean mugging the witches already walking away while typing on their phones—no doubt coming up with the perfect mocking captions for their WitchyGram posts. They aren’t my target though. I stop just outside Griselda’s gate and wait. It doesn’t take long.
“Connolly,” Cassius says. “You two look cozy.”
And just like that, I’m back in The Beyond, skating along the edge of disaster. I snort dismissively. “Just doing my job.”
“Of course,” he says, his smile cold enough to freeze the melting polar ice caps.
He laughs, a slimy, slithering sound that makes my skin crawl.
“We all break the rules every once in a while. I wouldn’t report you for a little diversion,” he says. “You can trust me, you know.”
Said the gator to the bunny riding on its back across the river.
Mom used to tell me that story at night when tucking me under the covers on short breaks from the boarding school at The Beyond. The bunny always thought it was in control of the situation, but the gator always bounced the bunny off his back in the middle of the water far from shore. The bunny asked why, and the gator told the bunny that he knew exactly who the bunny was when he got in the water and then he ate the bunny whole, not even leaving a tuft of fur from his bunny tail in the water.
It was a good lesson for a child trying to stay alive in The Beyond and the Witchingdom in general.
“Of course I know I can trust you.” I force my shoulders to lower a few inches and imitate a looseness in my body that I don’t feel, especially not when my Tilda-sense starts to tingle, letting me know she’s gotta be near even if I can’t see her. “We’re on the same side in all of this.”
“Exactly.” He looks past me to Griselda’s front door. “Any news on your hunch? The Council is getting itchy about this whole operation.”
I pivot, putting myself directly between the house and my handler, fighting to keep my usual cool and to not search for Tilda’s hiding spot when it feels like there’s a coked-up goblin rampaging through my veins. The Council can’t find out Tilda is a spellbinder. Griselda is right, not even the Sherwood name would protect her from the Council. That’s why Cassius is here checking up on me. Capturing a spellbinder wouldn’t only make his career, it would make him a legend within the Council and open up paths to power unobtainable otherwise. Cassius wouldn’t hesitate to do whatever it took to make that happen.
“She’s just an outré.” I shrug, ignoring the soft crunching of leaves off to my right that has to be Tilda because I need to sell the lie to one of the most consummate liars I’ve ever met—a task made all the more difficult by the flash of red hair I catch out of the corner of my eye. “There’s nothing to her beyond that: no magic, no something special, not a damn thing beyond a null sheltered by her family.”