Witch's Bell Book One (21 page)

“
Yeah, you lie there,” Nate
crossed his arms and looked down at her, as if daring her to jump
out of bed. “You need to recover. Now, I know you're new to this
whole non-magical world, but when us humans are knocked down, we
need to rest for a bit.”

She shook her head
petulantly.
“No way. I know that saying: when you're knocked down, you
get back up again.”

Nate smiled through his
teeth.
“Yep,
but it doesn't tell you when to get back up again. Don't worry,
Ebony, you will get up, and then race around in your usual
sugar-filled craze. But it's just going to take time.”

Ebony felt a strange pang at
the way Nate had said her name, but she dismissed it with a loud
and obvious sniff.
“I don't know how you humans manage it.”

“
We humans,” Nate corrected her,
“for the next twenty-eight days, you're going to be just like me
and Ben.”

“
You mean I have to wear a tie,
and scratch my crotch when I think no one's looking?” she asked, a
cheeky smile spreading across her lips, despite the cutting pain
from her shoulder.

Ben snorted. Nate just shook his
head.

“
Okay, fine,” Ebony adjusted her
hair, making sure its length tapered off the pillow to one side, “I
accept the challenge. I'll be a human for a lunar month. But I'm
warning you, I'll do a better job than you do.”

“
You're on,” Nate uncrossed his
arms and nodded his head.

At that moment, Ben got a call. He
snapped his phone open, answering it quickly as he walked out of
the room.

It left just the two of them, Ebony
realized.

That silence came back, but it
was different now. Without her magic, Ebony couldn't tell why or
how it was different
– all she knew was that for some reason, it was
... and that somehow it was important.

“
Whose desk am I going to sit
at?” she said after a while, arching an eyebrow and trying to sound
as sassy as possible. But whether it was due to her new non-magical
status, or something else, Ebony couldn't quite manage her usual
aloof tone.

“
It depends if you want to sit
on anyone's lap,” Nate said, face blank.

Ebony sucked in her lips and
just looked at him askance.
“I think the police department would frown upon
that.”

“
Oh it wouldn't be mine,” Nate
kept his easy, blank expression going. Ebony was starting to think
that he must have trained as an actor, judging by the impossible
cool he'd sometimes assume while teasing her. And yet at other
times, the frustration would break through the surface, furrowing
his brow and drawing in his lips. The only possible analogy Ebony
could come up with was that Detective Nate had a lot of masks, for
just one face.

“
It would probably be Frank's
lap,” Nate continued.

Ebony rolled her eyes. Frank
was as old and brittle as bone left out in the desert. He was still
on the force because he was a juggernaut when it came to filing,
and could remember the criminal history of Vale better than any one
of Ebony's books. Still, the reason Frank could remember so much
about Vale was that he'd been there for most of it. The guy was
practically pushing eighty.
“If I sat on Frank's lap, I'd break it,” she said
coldly, trying to lift her chin, even though she was lying
down.

“
Your words, not mine. But are
you calling yourself fat?”

“
I would curse you, you little—”
Ebony said through gritted teeth.

“
But you can't,” Nate shrugged.
“That's the thing about being human, no hexes.”

“
Don't worry, I'll just
remember,” she used her good hand to tap the side of her temple.
“And as for whose desk I'll sit at, well, I'll sit wherever I want
when all you detectives are out of the office,” she stretched her
good arm and smiled.

The Detective's jaw dropped
slightly.

“
I wouldn't leave any doughnuts,
coffee, or anything else at all sitting on your desk, if I were
you,” she kept up her smile. “I've heard Frank gets peckish these
days.”

But before Nate could reply,
Ben walked back into the room.
“The color is back in your cheeks, Eb,” he
announced happily. “You're looking more and more like yourself with
every moment.”

More and more like herself?
Ebony tried to blink back the shudder. She was less like
herself
–
she had no magic, no point, no power – and yet somehow she still
managed to look like Ebony. How did that work?

“
We've got to go now,” Ben
motioned to Nate. “We've got something come up down-town, another
bust up between the Maldini brothers.”

Nate unfolded his arms and nodded
automatically.

“
As for you, Eb,” Ben's usual
smile was now back in force, “I want you to promise me two things.
Number one: don't check yourself out of hospital until you're
allowed to leave. If you do, I'm going to send Nate here to track
you down and drag you back. Even if he has to arrest
you.”

This brought an enormous grin
to Nate's face; one Ebony couldn't share for a moment.
“What—” she began
to protest.

“
Two,” Ben rolled on, “I want
you at work on Monday, 9 A.M. sharp.”

“
Nine in the morning,” she
repeated, incredulous at the very suggestion.

“
Yeah, regular hours for you
now. And you have to stay at work till five-thirty. No ducking off
because you'd rather have a nap.”

Nate gave a chuckle. Once
again, Ebony didn't join in.
“But—” she began.

“
No buts, Eb, you're human now –
and this is how we do it. Now we've got to go. You know what you've
got to do, and you know what will happen if you don't do it.” With
that Ben waved a short goodbye, and ducked out of the
room.

Nate followed, but not before peaking
his eyebrows at Ebony and smiling sardonically.

Just as Ebony was looking
around for something to throw at the departing detectives, Ben
ducked his head back around the door.
“One more thing, Eb.”

“
What?” she spat
back.

“
I'm glad you're
okay.”

Slightly disarmed, Ebony just
nodded at him. She listened to their departing footsteps echoing
through the corridor
– straining her ears till she could hear them no
longer.

Well that little visit had answered
some of her questions, but also posed others. She now knew what she
was going to do for the next twenty-eight days: hang around the
office looking through old files of magical criminals, and stealing
what scraps of food she could off the desks of others. She knew
what she was supposed to do, alright, but just how she was supposed
to do it still baffled her. Do humans really just throw on their
clothes in the morning, and go out to meet the day with no idea
what it will bring them, and no real way of changing what they
didn't like?

Another thing bothered her,
Ebony began to realize with a strange flush. Just what was she
supposed to do being beholden to the incredibly confusing Nate for
so long? She knew that he would hold her currently magicless state
over her
–
like a child ogling at the once proud butterfly trapped in a glass
jar.

Just how was she supposed to deal with
him? And how, Ebony gave an involuntary shiver, was she meant to
deal with Chalcedony?

Though Ebony wouldn't admit this to
Nate, or even Ben, she had a bit of a history with Chalcedony. And
that was putting it mildly. They'd once been best friends, after
all.

And when witches are best friends,
they tend to form the types of ties that can moor a relationship
through even the most tempestuous emotional storms. That being
said, it was now firm fact that Ebony and Chalcedony were no longer
on speaking terms.

It was a little thing to do
with a silly plastic toy. But Ebony felt herself fill up with
frustration just thinking about it. And she noted, with a curious
kind of detachment, how the anger seemed to pull through her,
making her shiver with fatigue. Maybe Nate was right, maybe she
really did need to rest up
....

And so with a whole month of
possibilities brimming through her mind, Ebony forced her eyes to
close. It would be alright, she tried to assure herself, as she
surrendered to the weakness at the edge of her consciousness. She
would make it through this month.

But would she be the same at the end
of it?

Ebony checked herself out of hospital
when she was permitted to leave. She'd resisted the urge to check
herself out early, even though she would have loved to see if a)
Ben would come good on his threat, and send Nate after her; and b)
if Nate would be good enough to track her down; and c) whether he'd
actually arrest her.

But now Ebony just sighed, trying not
to look too sheepish as her father pulled the car up in front of
the hospital doors. His face had worn precisely the same expression
since he'd come to see her yesterday. It was the same look he'd
given her when she'd wondered off into the city as a child; the
same look as when she'd fallen off her bike and broken her leg; and
the very same look as when she'd been magically mugged on her very
first day of police work.

He hadn't said a great deal to
her yet. He had always been a man of few words
– great words, when he spoke
them – but he never said anything needlessly.

When she finally piled into the
car, accidentally banging her shoulder on the door mirror, she
heard him take a sharp hiss. He sounded like a steam-pipe ready to
burst. And sure enough, as he started the engine and drove the car
slowly out of the hospital grounds, the pipe began to
rupture:
“you should have been more careful,” he said off-hand, as
if he was lecturing the traffic ahead.

She just grinned, her lips pressing
into her teeth. Unlike her mother, Ebony's father always meant
well. Not to say that Avery Bell was malicious, but you couldn't
always be sure what she was thinking, let alone planning. So
reading her was like reading the weather a year in advance: a
pointless exercise that always underestimated just how much rain
there would be.

Ebony's father was obvious: he
said what he meant, and he meant what he said. He was plain and
open in his intentions. And right now, he intended to give Ebony a
piece of his mind.
“I don't get it, I've taught you about combat – what were
you thinking letting that guy get a hold of his knife?”

“
I wasn't thinking, dad,” she
said in a small, but somehow cheerful voice. There was something
truly amazing about parents – no matter how old you were, they
would always still be older than you – and thus fully capable of
showing you the rashness of youth. Putting you in your place was
the perennial right of all parents everywhere. “It all happened too
fast, in the dark, and with Death in the room.”

“
No excuse,” he said briskly, as
if he were talking to a recruit. “If the guy has a weapon, you get
the weapon off him. None of this letting it fall to the floor – you
hurl it across the room, if you have to, but you get it out of
their reach.”

She sighed, breath rattling but
somehow refreshing.
“I know, I know. Things just happened too quickly. I'll do
better next time.”

“
Yes, you will,” he agreed. And
that was the great thing about Ebony's dad: yes he had rules, yes
he had standards – but he never set them at a height you couldn't
reach. And what's more, he never once doubted you had the courage
to leap that high. He believed in Ebony, with the type of strong,
hard, well-learned belief that only an ex-detective-inspector could
muster.

Ebony waited for the question that she
knew was coming.

“
So, you want to go home? You
know ... your mother would like to see you.”

Ebony just stared ahead,
pretending she was more interested in the traffic. It was a curious
thing, for sure, but her parents still lived together, were still
happily married, despite the fact Avery Bell was a witch of the
Coven. You make choices, her mother had always told her, and
sometimes they seem ridiculous to other people
– but you still make them, and
they're still yours.

And her mother had made the
choice. Even though she was always on call for the duties of the
Coven, she always came home to Ebony's father. They didn't go out
to the movies, to restaurants, or take short walks in the park any
more, though. Avery Bell was far too powerful a witch, with too
much magic coursing through her veins, to be able to walk down an
ordinary street. No, her mother's skin, eyes, expression
– the lot of it –
all showed the magic within. Symbols were etched into her skin with
magical glowing runes. Her once-dark hair now shone as if each
strand was made of pure strings of light. Her eyes glinted too –
sometimes blue, sometimes red, sometimes white.

There was simply no way Avery
Bell would not be recognized for what she was
– a witch – and as such, just
didn't go out much. But that didn't matter for Ebony's father; he'd
go out to do his shopping in the morning, and come back to Avery's
stories at night.