The Frozen Witch Book One (8 page)

The woman simply stood there and curled
her lip with disdain. “If you do that, there’s no way you’ll
complete this case. And if you don’t complete this case…” she
trailed off again.

Angrily, I let my hands drop. “Who the
hell do you people think you are? I haven’t done anything wrong,
and I certainly can’t go after a magical hitman.” My voice hit such
a note of indignant frustration on the word magical, I felt it
would tear the lining from my esophagus. “This isn’t possible. None
of this is possible,” I defaulted to saying.

The woman took several more steps until
she stopped right in front of me. She brought up her left hand,
clicked her fingers, and stared right in my eyes. As she did, that
same disc of magic appeared in front of her hand. She flicked her
fingers to the left and suddenly licks of water began tracing up
and down her hands. “It is possible, and if you don’t get used to
it and complete Vali’s orders, you’ll die. Now get ready; get
dressed.” She pointed to one of the chairs in my room, and I
suddenly saw there was a neat pile of folded clothes on it.
“There’s a bathroom through that door.” She jammed a thumb behind
me, and I noted an en suite. “Get washed. And for god’s sake, do
your hair. When you’re done, you’ll have your first meeting with
Vali. I suggest you are a lot less emotional and a lot more
thankful when you see him.”

I sat there, crumpled, tears streaming down
my cheeks.

“He’s an unforgiving man,” she said as she
turned hard on her foot and headed towards the door. Before she
bustled through, she paused, that same tiny flicker of concern
buried deep in her stare. A second later, she extinguished it as
she crumpled her brow low. “You wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t done
something heinous. Now is when you pay for your sins. Few people
get the opportunity to do that. So time to take responsibility for
what you’ve done and be thankful.” With that, she walked out of the
door, slamming it behind her.

There was an electronic click, and I could
tell that the fancy lock re-engaged.

I sat there, and I don’t know how long it
took me to finally push up. My thoughts were a broken mess.

I was no longer aware of the tears as they
streamed down my cheeks, trickled along my neck, and stained the
torn collar of my uniform.

Eventually, I managed to lurch into the
bathroom. It took my sweaty hand several tries to twist the handle
on the door. I staggered in, falling against the sink, clutching it
as I pressed my hot, tear-streaked cheek against the porcelain. I
hugged it as if it were the only comfort I had left.

As I heaved and sobbed, seconds turned into
minutes. Heck, maybe even an hour passed. It took me so long to
push back.

The en suite was generous and had a claw
footed bath. I pressed my back into it, locked a hand over my face,
and hid behind my fringe.

I breathed and breathed and breathed.

Slowly, achingly slowly, the fear and
sorrow gave way. Just there – deep in the center of my tummy – I
felt a flicker of curiosity. It was enough to force my hands to
drop as I stared at the heavy bangles around my wrists again. I
poked at them experimentally. When they didn’t explode, I brought
my fingers up and gently caressed them. Nails trailing down the
metal, it felt different somehow, smoother than any other metal I’d
ever felt. Colder, too. So cold, in fact, they should have been
freezing my hands off. Yet they weren’t.

I brought my head up and looked straight
into the mirror. I faced my reflection – my knotted, messy hair, my
torn, singed uniform, and my puffy red cheeks. “What the hell is
happening?” I begged my reflection.

She couldn’t answer. In fact, there was only
one way to find out. I pushed up, staggered into the other room,
grabbed my clothes, and had a shower. As the water washed over me,
I tried to let it extinguish my burning fear. It helped, but only a
measure. Enough that I managed to dry myself and dress.

I faced my reflection once more before
turning and heading back to the main door in my room. The woman had
warned that I should get dressed quickly and see Vali.

I felt numb, cold all over.

I reached out a hand, curled it into a fist,
and knocked on my door. I was surprised when it opened with a
click.

I jerked back as if I’d been struck, but the
door simply swung open. It revealed a long corridor.

Warily, as if I expected to be shot at any
second, I pushed out, shifting my head from side-to-side, my
freshly brushed hair trailing softly around my shoulders. I crept
out into the corridor.

When alarms didn’t blare and security guards
didn’t rush towards me, I let my shoulders deflate a fraction.

I continued forward. Eventually, I reached a
door. I could tell it was important, because it looked as if it was
made out of a meter of solid wood.

I hung around it for a full two minutes
before I gathered the gumption to knock.

It swung open without any warning.

I walked in.

The door opened to one of the most
opulent, fanciest offices I’d ever seen. Move over the Oval Office.
This looked as if it belonged to a king. Or perhaps a god, I
realized as I shifted my head and saw Vali seated behind a desk on
the opposite side of the room.

Instantly, I stiffened. Instantly, my
hackles rose. And instantly, my breath froze in my chest. Right
there underneath my sternum, I felt that storm of cold, that grain
of ice. It was lodged above my heart. I jerked a hand up to it,
clutching the fabric of my top as I stared at Vali in total, abject
horror.

He simply looked back, an expression of
calm control plastered over his face. He was working on something,
bent over a book as he wrote. He flicked his stare up to me several
times, but then returned it to what he was doing.

I began to back towards the door, realizing
I’d probably interrupted him. That’s when the damn thing slammed
closed. It shut with such force, it buffeted my hair over my
forehead.

I let out a pathetic yelp. Then I heard the
sound of a book being snapped shut.

Warily, slowly, I looked up, my neck as
stiff as sheets of steel.

Vali leaned back, arranged his hands on his
desk, and stared at me. He didn’t say anything.

With my hand still tightly clutched around
the fabric of my blouse, I managed a tight breath. “I was told to
come see you. I just knocked—” I began.

He brought up a hand. It was stiff, and it
was clear he was telling me to shut up.

I pressed my lips together and bit them.

“Megan would have explained the process to
you,” he said.

“Process?” My voice shook.

“You’ll be sent out on a job tonight. I’m
eager to find out what you can do. Just as you should be eager to
pay off your considerable debt.”

“Debt?”

“Your sins,” His voice rattled low. And
though, up until now, you could have confused him for an ordinary
human, what his voice did to the room revealed he was so much more.
Somehow his tone pitched through the very floor, shook up my legs,
and lodged hard into my stomach.

I took a nervous step backwards, but with
nowhere to go, I was stuck. Trapped.

He leaned forward, unclenching his hands,
shifting his shoulders, and cracking his neck. “Megan would have
shared the details of this case with you. You’ll see her for a full
case history on John Lambert before you head out tonight.” He spoke
like I had a clue what he was saying.

I clearly didn’t. I had absolutely no idea
what was going on here. And as more people threw useless,
unconnected facts at me, I became even more confused.

I brought up a hand and locked it over my
head. “What’s going on?” I asked in the most pathetic whimper I’d
ever made.

“What’s going on is that you are working
off your sins, and you will be working them off for some
time.”

“But I—” I began, my hand dropping as the
anger flared in my gut. I wanted to tell him I still had no idea
what was going on, but more than anything, I wanted to tell him
that my sins weren’t that bad. Whatever he was doing to me couldn’t
be justified.

But then I met his gaze, his dark warning
gaze. Somehow, right there in the center of his eyes was something…
different. There was a kernel of something….

My grandmother had once called me gullible.
She said I believed in people when they didn’t even believe in
themselves. Kind of like I could see the good side to Larry, I
usually found myself excusing and justifying criminals based on
their history. Maybe they’d grown up in a violent home. Maybe they
didn’t have the privilege others had. And as someone who’d grown up
in privilege, I understood what kind of an advantage that was.

So right now, even though I wanted to resist
what my heart was telling me, I got the sudden impression that
deep, deep under the surface of this god of revenge was something –
something kind, something good.

“I have already established your crimes,
just as you have already signed a contract indenturing yourself to
me. You must now work off your sins. And you will begin tonight
with John Lambert, the hitman,” he said so matter-of-factly, it was
as if he was talking about nothing more offensive than sporting
results.

“A hitman?” I could barely push my words
out. “How on earth am I going to catch a hitman? A magical hitman?”
My breath became shallow again, driving hard into the center of my
throat.

For the first time Vali’s gaze narrowed in
concern, but it didn’t last. He cleared his throat. “You will do so
by using your magic.”

“Magic?” I turned my head down, attention
falling on my bangles for the first time since I’d seen them. I
tried to take them off. I latched a hand on one, spying a lock in
the middle of the metal.

Vali punched to his feet. His chair
clattered behind him, thumping against the carpet with such a bang,
it was as if he’d fired a gun.

I jolted backwards.

“You will not remove those,” he said as he
swiftly walked around the side of his desk and stopped a half meter
before me, looming over me like a storm cloud.

I shuddered back. “What? What are you
talking about? What are these?”

“They are magical locks. And you will not
remove them unless under express instruction from me.”

“Why?”

He paused. Paused for such a long time, I
could tell he was quickly thinking of some excuse. “Because I
demanded it of you,” he defaulted to saying.

“Because you demand it,” I repeated
slowly, voice a jumble of breath. “But what… what were those
symbols that… covered me last night?”

He growled. “You will be told everything
you need to be told. So do not ask questions out of
turn.”

Ask questions out of turn? Last night I had
been completely covered by magical light.

I stood there and faced him. Half of me
cowered at the sight of the Nordic god of revenge. The other half
couldn’t damp down my curiosity. It couldn’t stop staring into the
center of his eyes, hoping to catch just another glimpse of that
kind heart.

I didn’t get a chance to see it again,
because Vali turned hard on his foot. He straightened his brass tie
pin before shifting around, picking up his chair, and sitting in it
once more. He sat there silently. And as every silent second
passed, I clammed up more and more, nerves climbing high over my
back and clenching around my throat like hands.

“I don’t get it. If I can’t remove these
locks, how exactly am I meant to use magic to catch that man, and
why exactly do I have to catch him?”

“You have to catch him because he is not
just a hitman, but a magical hitman. He uses his abilities – power
no ordinary human should have and powers taken directly from the
gods – to harm others. He has killed over 35 people, some of them
brutally, all in the name of profit. He is irredeemable,” Vali said
so matter-of-factly and so emotionlessly, it was like we weren’t
talking about a human life at all.

I shivered at the cold expression on Vali’s
face. But more than anything, at the thought of 35 murders.

Suddenly
that shiver turned into a shard
of ice that stabbed me right in the center of the chest. “You… you
honestly expect me to be able to catch this man? I only found out
about magic last night,” I began, getting desperate.

“Yes, I expect you to catch this man. Like
I said, it’s a test. A test to see whether you are ready to take
responsibility for your sins. You have, as yet, failed to
acknowledge them. If you do not do so by tonight and use everything
at your disposal to catch this man, then…” he trailed off. He
picked up his pen, opened the book, and scribbled something on one
of the pages.

Somehow I got the distinct impression that
it would be the ledger of my crimes.

I stiffened, letting my hands fall behind my
back. I curled them into tight fists. That was literally all I
could do. I couldn’t shout at him, and god knows I couldn’t beg. I
would have loved to turn on my foot and stride out of this
building, but I didn’t have that option, either. I was totally and
completely trapped, a magical slave of the Nordic god of revenge.
And yet I still faced him until he finished writing and closed the
book.

“Until you learn to control your…
abilities,” he said after a considerable pause, “you will be given
weaponry.”

“Weaponry?” My tone was dull,
dead.