Not knowing exactly how long they’d been following was the worst part.
Stay calm, Roslyn told herself. Panicking didn’t help when a patient was crashing, and it wasn’t going to help now, either. At least they hadn’t attacked yet. Even if she was trespassing in their territory, they had to know that causing a scene in a public place like this wasn’t a very good idea.
“Afternoon,” the tall woman said. Her tone was pleasant enough, but Roslyn knew that was just window dressing. “Don’t think I’ve seen you around here before.”
She shifted her grip on the reusable grocery bags she was carrying, adjusting them so they hung from her arms rather than being clutched in her fists. That way, her hands would be free if she needed them. “Just passing through.”
“Must be a nice long visit, though,” the woman with the silver streak said. She had a smoker’s voice, low and raspy. “That house on Birch Street’s been putting out some interesting energy lately. Lot of activity for a place that’s been quiet for over a year.”
They knew about the house. Of course they did — Malachi had told her the Gibsons had been monitoring the property since his return, and the ward repairs would have only increased their interest. The dampening field he’d burned through most of his reserves to power was hiding what happened inside the house, but the outer perimeter wards had to project outward to function at all. Every clean, careful repair Malachi had made over the past week was a signature the dampening bubble couldn’t contain, because the wards’ job was literally to be felt at the property line. The Gibsons couldn’t see what was in the house. But they could absolutely feel that someone had been doing skilled, sustained warding work on a property that should have been dormant.
What she didn’t know was how much they’d been able to determine about what was happening inside, whether they’d detected her healing magic specifically, or if they even knew who Malachi was.
“I’m not sure what you mean,” she said, keeping her voice level and vaguely apologetic, the same tone she used with patients’ families who asked questions she couldn’t answer without violating someone’s privacy. “I’m just housesitting for a friend.”
The tall woman tilted her head. “Housesitting.” She didn’t sound convinced. “That’s a lot of warding for a housesitter.”
Wow, she’d come right out and said it. Obviously, they weren’t bothering to pretend that they weren’t all witches here.
“My friend’s cautious,” Roslyn replied.
“Your friend’s using massive shielding on a residential property in our territory,” the man said, not moving from his position near the alley. His voice was flat, not hostile but not friendly, either, and the emphasis on our territory was impossible to miss. “No one runs that kind of protection unless they’re hiding something. We’d like to know what it is.”
This was the moment where a different kind of witch — someone with an offensive gift, someone who could throw fireballs or lightning bolts, or even who had telekinetic powers — might have been able to simply force her way past, even though it was generally frowned on to use those sorts of powers anywhere that civilians might be able to see what was going on.
Unfortunately, Roslyn didn’t have that option. Her gift was healing, and healing magic was pretty much useless in a confrontation. It was designed to repair damage, not cause it. The basic gifts every witch possessed — the small, universal talents like popping a simple lock or sparking a flame from nothing — were all she had beyond her primary power, and they were barely enough to light a candle, let alone fight her way past three territorial witches on their home ground.
But they didn’t know that. They didn’t know what her gift was, and that uncertainty was the only advantage she had.
“Look,” she said, allowing a note of impatience to enter her voice, “I don’t want any trouble. I’m just picking up groceries, and I’d like to get back before my eggs get warm. If you’ve got a problem with the house, then you need to take it up with the owner.”
“We’re taking it up with you,” the tall woman said. “Since you’re the one who’s here.”
The three of them had tightened their formation slightly, the stocky woman drifting a step closer on the right, the man shifting forward from his position at the alley. It wasn’t quite a box — the left side was still open, blocked only by the parked van — but their intention was clear enough. They wanted answers, and they were prepared to apply pressure to get them.
All right, time for triage. She couldn’t fight, and she definitely couldn’t outrun three witches who knew this town’s streets better than she did. And she couldn’t use her healing magic offensively…even though doing such a thing went against all her training and core beliefs…without revealing what she was. Revealing her gift would tell the Gibsons far too much. A healer of her caliber working alone in a warded house with massive amounts of shielding implied a warlock patient powerful enough to need that level of care. That line of reasoning would probably lead them directly to Malachi.
So she couldn’t fight, and she couldn’t run, and she couldn’t tell the truth.
What she could do, however, was create a distraction.
The van. It was parked about four feet to her left, a white delivery van with the logo of a local bakery painted on the side. The driver’s door was closed but probably not locked…she knew from experience that delivery drivers in small towns rarely locked their vehicles during stops…and even if it was locked, a basic lock-pop was something every witch could manage, no matter how minor their talents. A locked door springing open unexpectedly wouldn’t cause any harm, but it would draw attention, and attention was what she needed right then.
She carefully set down her grocery bags, which had the secondary effect of making the three Gibsons focus on her hands, and then she reached out with the small, quiet thread of magic that every witch possessed alongside their primary gift. The lock on the van’s driver-side door was a simple mechanism, barely a challenge, and she felt it give way with a soft click that was louder than it should have been.
The door swung open just enough for the movement to register in the tall woman’s peripheral vision, enough to make her glance sideways for half a second.
But half a second was enough.
Roslyn snapped a spark from her right hand. It wasn’t aimed at anyone, was just a bright flare of orange that bloomed in the air between her and the stocky woman, startling enough to make all three Gibsons flinch. In the moment of confusion that followed — the van door swinging, the spark flaring, the instinctive recoil that even experienced witches couldn’t suppress when fire appeared unexpectedly — Roslyn grabbed her bags and ran.
Not toward the house, of course. She wasn’t about to do anything that stupid, since she knew that leading three Gibson witches directly to the gap in Malachi’s wards would be the worst possible thing she could do. Instead, she went left, around the front of the van, and cut down the first side street she found, a narrow residential lane lined with old houses whose overgrown hedges provided cover. Behind her, she heard the man shout and the sound of footsteps on pavement, but she didn’t look back.
Instead, she took the next right, then a left, working her way through the neighborhood in a zigzag pattern that she hoped would make her harder to follow, moving fast enough to stay ahead but not so fast that she’d attract attention from civilians. Her heart hammered against her ribs, and the grocery bags banged against her legs with every stride. One of the apples fell out and rolled into the gutter, and she left it behind.
She wasn’t stopping for anything.
Three blocks later, when she was fairly sure she’d lost them — or at least put enough distance between herself and the trio of Gibson witches that they couldn’t follow her without making a scene — she circled back toward the house by a different route, approaching from the south rather than the west. The neighborhood was quiet. A woman walking a small dog gave her a curious look, probably because Roslyn was red-faced and breathing hard while carrying groceries at a near-jog, but she didn’t stop.
