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  Publishedby The Hartwood Publishing Group, LLC,

  Hartwood Publishing, 400 Gilead Road, #1617, Huntersville, NC 28070

  www.hartwoodpublishing.com

  Tales from Null City

  ISBN: 978-1-62916-107-5

  Payback is a Witch

  Copyright © 2014 by Barb Taub

  Digital Release: December 2014

  Cover Artist: James Caldwell

  AND

  Just for the Spell of It

  Copyright © 2014 by Barb Taub

  Digital Release: December 2014

  Cover Artist: James Caldwell

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination, or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales, or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Payback is a Witch by Barb Taub

  Superpowers suck. If you just want to live a normal life, Null City is only a Metro ride away. After one day there, imps become baristas, and hellhounds become poodles. Demons settle down, become parents, join the PTA, and worry about their taxes. But outside of Null City, now that the century-long secret Nonwars between Gifts and Haven are over and the Accords Treaty is signed, an uneasy peace is policed by Wardens under the command of the Accords Agency.

  Claire Danielsen is a young witch whose goddess is house cat of unusual size. Peter Oshiro is a Warden policing a delicate truce between those who are human and those who... aren't.

  It just would have been nice if someone told them the angels were all on the other side.

  Dedication

  To the world’s greatest beta team: Amanda, Melinda, Jaime, Veronica, Georgia, Karen, and Susan

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks to Chuck Wendig at terrible minds.com for the prompt “We’re all human even when we’re not.” I didn’t finish in time for his flash fiction challenge, but it did become this story.

  Chapter One

  Seattle, 2011

  Claire Danielsen didn’t know he was tracking her until the trees noticed him. Despite Academy training, her fieldwork was never more than adequate. But her workout run today was through the home wood, where her family had been casting for the past hundred years. And after a century of Danielsen witches standing under these branches to invoke the bitchy feline goddess powering their spells, the small woods on the north edge of Seattle weren’t exactly…trees anymore. Behind you, rustled the leaves. He watches.

  She stepped into the cleared circle, where the connection was supposed to be strongest. Other than a bit of extra warmth from the amber pendant tucked against her skin, it felt about the same to her. Of course, at twenty-six she was young for a witch—it might be years before she could fully channel their goddess’ power. Pulling two sticks from her hair, she turned them to hold an athame in each hand, graduation presents from her roommate back when she was training for Warden at the Accords Academy. Wearing ritual daggers as hair ornaments was by no means the only bad habit she’d picked up from Carey Parker. But spelling them to hold her ruthlessly braided hair even while she jogged was her own contribution.

  Her spells never lasted long, but for a witch her age to be able to cast at all was even rarer than Seattle’s early March sunbreak streaking through the branches overhead. Claire squinted as splintered sunbeams dazzled leftover raindrops into opals and painted flickers of red-gold along the heavy chestnut hair now spilling over her shoulders. Around her the leaves quieted for a moment and then stirred overhead, almost covering the sound of an amused purr.

  Okay, I hear him now. She leaned forward, hands braced on her bent legs, as she pretended to catch her breath. You could come out and help, you know. It’s not like you’ve got a waiting list for replacement handmaidens if I don’t make it. Another, louder, purr from behind the screen of leaves. Well, just don’t blame me if nobody’s around to fix your tuna the way you like it. A luxuriously silver-furred tail hooked briefly into view before it was pulled back. This would be a lot less scary if I was strong enough to channel you directly. The purring stopped and the leaves stilled as Claire turned to the trail behind her. But since I’m probably years away from pulling any serious power, we’ll just have to see how much I remember from my Academy training.

  “I know you’re there.” Her voice was serene. If her heart was slamming out a flight-beats-fight message, there was no sign on her expressionless face. “You might as well come out.” A Danielsen daughter learned from infancy losing control of her emotions could mean losing control of her spell. It made for a powerful witch and a hell of a poker player, but she was the poster child of how much it sucked for personal relationships.

  Blood pounded in her ears. A heartbeat. Two. And her past stepped into the sunbeam lit clearing. Peter Oshiro. The catch and release she’d loved, hurt, and walked away from six years ago. She stared in blank shock, her body still thrumming with adrenalin-fueled need for action. Run! Run now! But her voice was calm. “Peter.” She knew every inch of the tall slim figure under the dark jeans and fleece jacket that most would see as casual. And she recognized in his absolute stillness the focused warrior she suspected very few ever saw at all. As he stared back, her adrenalin fizzed into fury. “Damn Director Jeffers. He had you tail me?”

  Fast, so fast she wasn’t sure if she imagined it, Claire saw something flash in his eyes. Hope? Hurt? Nodding cautiously, he pulled off his baseball cap with the Seahawks logo. One hand shoved through too-long black hair, only to have it fall back over his eyes—casually disarming, charming, even vulnerable. He wasn’t, she knew, any of those things. At the Accords Agency she occasionally heard other women gossip about the quiet, beautiful Warden who spent most of his time on field assignments for Director Jeffers. The were-badgers in Accounting had a theory his mother was a kami, a nature spirit. Their sows claimed that explained his uncanny tracking ability as well as the exotic tilt of his eyes and maybe even the golden cast to his skin. She never publicly contradicted them because—hey, badgers. They looked down on humans, so of course they’d want Peter to be something else. But Claire knew all too well how human he was. He once told her his family came to the Pacific Northwest from Japan a century ago, about the same time hers arrived from Norway.

  “He said with my tracking experience, you’d never know I was here.” Peter stood immobile, but she thought he was cataloging the movement of each leaf. His dark eyes fastened on that spot where the branches seemed particularly dense. She could feel the purring behind the leaves, a vibration tickling the back of her brain. But her eyes never flickered in that direction. If Bygul didn’t want to be seen, well—she was a cat. Most of the time.

  “This is private property, Peter. You’re trespassing.” Her voice might have been reciting a shopping list. “And yes, normally I would have no idea I was being followed. But these aren’t normal woods. I’ve lived in them all my life, except for a few years during the war.” She knew he’d fought for Haven during the last years of the Nonwars, so although two classes behind her at the Academy, he was a few years older than her twenty-
six. Of course, even though her family had allied with the Gifts in opposition to Haven, the Accords Agreement was supposed to put them all on the same side now. As an idealistic twenty-year-old Academy cadet, it had seemed so brave and sophisticated to fall in love with the man who only a few years earlier would have been shooting at her. Yeah, and look how well that turned out.

  “So, does Director Jeffers have you tailing me for a reason, or is this just a training exercise?”

  “Not training.”

  She waited. But he leaned back against a tree, watching her with his arms folded across his chest. She couldn’t help remembering how that sow Ellis down in Accounting claimed he had tattoos now, circling both of his shoulders. Goddess, but she liked herself some ink on a man. Focus, Claire. “And the reason was…?”

  “He didn’t say.” As she opened her mouth, he added, “And I didn’t ask because I wanted talk to you.” She raised an eyebrow. Instead of explaining, he frowned at her. “Why don’t you run like you used to?” She must have looked confused, because he pointed to the oversized T-shirt from her own Academy days and the sweatpants cut off at the knees. “You used to wear shorts and tight…tops.”

  And you used to run behind me, checking out my rear in those little shorts. “Maybe Seattle in early March is too cold for that. Or maybe I just have a different agenda now.”

  He appeared to consider it. “Are you about done with that?”

  “Near enough.” She pointed through the trees ahead. “I’m almost to my house. Do you want a cup of tea? Or do you need to get back to Jeffers?”

  He smiled. “I’d like some tea.” He doled out that smile, she remembered, like the most hoarded of wartime rations. It used everything he had—eyes, brows, mouth, maybe even heart. Now his smile looked interested, admiring, and determined. Damn him. Claire felt a warning, almost-pain twist low in her stomach. That smile still destroys every sane thought. Thank goddess he wasn’t smiling when I walked away six years ago. Her face revealed nothing as she led the way. But looking back to point out her house through the trees crowding eagerly along her old fence, she caught his eyes on her ass and wondered, just for a moment, what ever happened to her little running shorts.

  He followed her out of the branch shadowed trail, across the occasionally mowed strip of wild flowers and weeds she called a lawn, to the weathered gray bungalow in the center of the grasses. She climbed four steps where the green paint had worn away in the middle, up to a planked porch with square columns supporting the silvery gray cedar shake roof. Turning, she realized he was on the next step down, their eyes only inches apart. For a long moment, neither moved. Annoyed to catch herself wondering what he thought of her family’s old home, she waved him toward the high-backed rocker across from the porch swing, and went inside without a word.

  But as she boiled water and set out two teacups, she had plenty to say to herself. There was a lot about what a bad idea it was to remember his arms around her, the taste of his kiss, that heart-stomping smile. Hell, a little over ten years ago their families were still trying to kill each other. For the last six of those years, she’d done her best to remember what she owed Nana and Bygul. And she’d done her damnedest to forget the look on his face when she turned and walked away.

  Through the screen door, she could see him staring at something near the porch swing, just outside her line of sight. She had a bad feeling she knew what that something was. “Do you still take your tea without sugar?”

  “You remembered.” He didn’t turn around, but she felt his smile anyway. “You live here alone?”

  “Yes, unless you’ve turned into a twisted psycho stalker. In that case, I have several large homicidal brothers. And the world’s meanest cat.”

  “Witches don’t have brothers. But I see what you mean about the cat.”

  A purr, definitely amused this time, rubbed against the back of her brain. Damn it, Bygul. You stay out of sight for a thousand years, but you can’t stay off the porch for one afternoon? Sighing, she filled a small dish with tuna and placed it on a low table at the end of the kitchen. Why can’t some goddesses mind their own business? With a twist of lemon for her own tea, she set both cups onto a tray. Sniffing an open package of cookies that had been around a while, she dumped them onto the tray with a shrug. Before she reached the door, he turned and held it open, took the tray from her, and put it onto the little table between the rocking chair and the old porch swing.

  “You’re a witch, right? So is she your familiar?” He pointed to the porch swing and the silver-gray feline posed regally across its sofa-length cushion. “I never knew a cat could get that big.”

  “She isn’t my cat. She goes with the house and especially the woods.” Claire understood his surprise. You just don’t see a lot of house cats the size of Labradors. “I suppose you might say I’m her staff.” She took a seat next to the cat, who stretched and sat up, wrapping a tail thicker than Claire’s arm around her front paws. “Best we can tell, she’s a Norwegian Forest Cat. They get pretty big, but yeah. She’s big even for that. We call her Bygul.”

  “Bee-gool?”

  “In Norse mythology, Bygul was one of the giant cats who pulled the Goddess Freya’s chariot. Some said they were goddesses in their own right.” Bygul yawned and her eyes closed halfway. “Minor goddesses, of course…” The giant cat’s eyes snapped open, and she jumped off the porch with a noticeable thump.

  “Didn’t the Egyptians worship cats too?”

  Bygul growled.

  Claire laughed. “Bygul pulled a war chariot and fought alongside Valkyries. Those Egyptian pussies couldn’t fight their way across a coffee shop.” Tail held high, Bygul waited for Claire to open the kitchen door before stalking inside to the tuna offering. As Peter lifted his tea from the tray, he smiled again. She sat back too quickly and her own tea sloshed over the rim. Dear goddess, that smile.

  Chapter Two

  “Sir, why is a Warden tailing me?”

  Accords Agency Director Kurt Jeffers’ eyebrows pulled together in his trademark scowl, but he didn’t look up from the report she’d just handed him. As his Assistant Director for Operations, Claire should have been insulted when he ignored the first page, a review of current staffing levels. Instead she waited impatiently as he flipped to the handwritten sheet she’d slipped into the report. Her notes contained an update on the search for her best friend and fellow Warden, Carey Parker. A suspected target of the Outsiders, the shadowy group manipulating both sides in the recently-ended Nonwars, Carey had been missing for several weeks. Now, Jeffers believed, the Outsiders had infiltrated the Accords Agency itself.

  “Training exercise.” His voice barked, but his hand tapped a line on the report he was studying. “Boy’s the best tracker we’ve got but I’ve lost two of my top Wardens in the last few weeks and I’m going to need him on bodyguard duty pretty soon. He can practice on you.” Peter was right. If I’m a training exercise, Bygul is a lolcat. Jeffers met her eyes and the corners of his mouth turned up a fraction. “And anyway, he asked me if I could get him out of the office. Something about avoiding those badgers in accounting.” She looked over his shoulder at the line under his pointing finger. “Carey Parker—last known location: Metro Train to Null City. Current location: unknown.” He fed the page through the cross shredder under his desk and looked up at her. “I’d appreciate if you could let the boy carry on with the training exercise.”

  Claire knew Carey would have informed him in no uncertain terms that she didn’t need a babysitter. But Carey, the best field operative the Academy ever trained, had recently dodged two bombings and a full-scale assault team. And she was now missing. Claire nodded and left his office.

  •●•

  “Planet raper.” After parking at the end of her lane, Claire frowned at the finger-written words on the mud-splashed rear window of the second-hand Range Rover the salesman had optimistically described as pre-loved. Beneath them, in a slightly different hand, someone had added, “Also available in
silver”.

  “And it is so silver.” She rubbed out the words with a tissue. “I sprayed the alloy on myself when Nana warded it. It’s under that mud. Mostly.”

  She didn’t even jump when Peter’s voice came from behind her. “Don’t they get props for not just writing wash me?” He was leaning against the old fence lining the lane up to her house, as he had been every day this week when she got home from work. She knew his Paris-Dakar BMW motorcycle was hidden in the trees somewhere. An envious Director Jeffers called the bike the finest Beemer ever made, but unless it could also fly, she had no idea how Peter could watch her leave the office and still get here before her every time.

  Another thing she couldn’t figure out was why he decided it was okay to tease her. He had always been so serious at the Academy, and the only person who tried to tease her—then or now—was her roommate Carey Parker. But now Peter laughed about her cooking, her boring diet, even about her being too buttoned down. Just the night before as she headed to the bedroom to change out of her work clothes, Peter had called after her. “Don’t forget to iron your jeans this time. I have my standards.”

  Claire had paused in front of her mirror to study her slight figure. Ruthlessly tailored suit, jewelry, hair… She’d tried to explain it to Peter. When you’re shorter, younger, and physically weaker than most of the people you supervise, a little tailored confidence goes a long way. She didn’t tell him she’d even considered adding a pair of glasses until Carey said she might as well have her business cards reprinted with the title of Sexy Librarian. As she changed into flannel pants and her mother’s old Nirvana Bleach T-shirt, she could hear Peter prowling through her kitchen. She yelled back, “By your standards, business casual means wearing socks with your Birkenstocks and your baseball hat turned frontward.”