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Hell For Hire

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Chapter 1

The massive black cat crouched inside his plastic carry crate, fluffy tail lashing with indignity.

“I can’t believe you stuck me in the middle seat.”

“Would you rather I carried you in my lap?” asked the black-dressed man sitting in the window seat beside him. “And keep it down. Normal cats don’t talk, remember?”

The cat lowered his voice to an angry hiss, which wasn’t much of an improvement. “I’d rather not be on this flying death contraption in the first place. There’s no anti-falling ward, no safety charms, no magic of any sort! We’re just hurtling through the air in a metal cylinder powered by explosions.” He turned his green-eyed glare on the happy family sitting across the aisle. “I’m amazed there are any scalies left if this is how they travel.”

“Don’t be rude, Boston,” the man scolded, though he was secretly wondering the same thing as he stared through the window at the summer clouds drifting far, far below. He’d lost his fear of heights ages ago, but soaring through the sky on a broom you controlled was a very different experience from being strapped into a much-smaller-than-advertised chair while scale-eyed humans he’d never met decided his fate.

That was the part that bothered him most, actually. Some of his sisters hated the magic-blind portion of humanity, but he’d always tried to be open-minded. It wasn’t the scalies’ fault they’d been born with blinders over their eyes, and the things they came up with to compensate for their lack of magic were ingenious. He’d been legitimately excited for his first airplane ride—at least until they’d left the ground and he’d been thrust face-to-face with the reality that his life would be in the hands of someone who couldn’t see for the next six and a half hours.

“I’m sure it’s perfectly safe,” he said, as much for himself as for his cat.

“You could have at least sprung for first class,” Boston grumbled, settling onto the plastic floor of his carrier with his paws tucked under his chest. “It’s bad enough that we’re having to travel this way in the first place, but what sort of self-respecting witch flies coach?”

“The kind who doesn’t want to be noticed,” the man replied, tightening his grip on the pointed black hat resting in his lap. “Now pipe down before you crack my Nevermind spell.”

The people across the aisle were already starting to give him odd looks. The scales in their eyes kept them from seeing the delicate soap bubble of artificial unimportance that surrounded the man and his cat, but the witch could see the magic—and the cracks that were starting to spider across its rainbow surface—just fine. Fortunately, the captain chose that moment to announce they were beginning their descent.

The Nevermind spell seized on the interruption just as he’d crafted it to do, redirecting all the curious human minds toward checking their luggage, finishing their drinks, buckling their seatbelts, and anything else that wasn’t the man and his talking cat carrier. Satisfied that he wouldn’t have to fight a kick demon in the air today, the witch leaned back in his seat and gazed eagerly out the window for his first look at the city he’d gambled everything to reach—only to discover he couldn’t see it yet.

Apparently, mechanical planes didn’t go straight down like brooms did. Their descent was a long, slow coast, forcing the witch to endure thirty more minutes of white-knuckled anxiety before the winged tin can finally touched down, its wheels bumping so hard against the pavement that his cat carrier would have slid off the seat if it hadn’t been buckled in.

“I am never doing this again,” said the miserable voice inside.

The witch wanted to assure him this was the last time, but he didn’t dare. Now that they’d landed, the scalies were everywhere, grabbing their carry-ons and hunching their bodies like sprinters at the starting line as they waited for the plane to finish its taxi. The moment the contraption stopped moving, they shot out of their seats, pushing one another out for a spot in the aisle despite the fact that the door wasn’t even open yet.

It was clear foolishness, but the witch had to restrain himself from joining in. Now that the plane was finally on the ground, he wanted out of his cramped seat in the worst way. But patience was a core principle of witchcraft, so he blew out a breath and bided his time, waiting until the plane was nearly empty before he dismissed his Nevermind spell, tucked his pointed hat under his arm, and began unbuckling Boston’s carrier.

“Finally,” the cat huffed as they stepped off the plane into the strange, collapsible hallway that connected it to the airport. “We were so close to death up there, I practically saw the Holy City.”

“Pray to the Old Wives that you never see that,” the witch replied, slipping his hand into the left side of his long black coat. The right concealed over a hundred pockets, each of which was spelled to jump to his fingers with a thought, but the left was for quick use items—wallet, phone, that sort of thing. It was quite full at the moment with all the documentation required for commercial air travel, but a little digging turned up the small, flat object the witch was searching for.

It looked like an old-fashioned flip phone made of solid gold. He’d determined it wasn’t actually gold when the kobold-courier had delivered it last week, which was a bit of a disappointment considering how much the goblins had charged him for the privilege of carrying the thing. The phone wasn’t what he was paying for, though. That came next, making him tremble with anticipation as he flipped the gaudy phone open and raised it to his ear to trigger the only call it was designed to make.

The phone rang twice, and then a voice as buttery and expensive as the metal the goblins treasured more than their souls whispered over the speaker.

“Hello again, Mr. Client. I take it you’ve arrived at your destination successfully?”

The witch glanced at the colorful “Welcome to Seattle!” advertisements covering the connector hallway’s flexible beige walls.

“I’m here.”

“Wonderful,” the goblin on the other end purred. “Your purchase is already waiting for you at ground transport. Be sure to have your payment ready.”

“Payment ready, pah,” Boston scoffed from his carrier as the golden phone snapped itself shut, nearly taking the witch’s ear off in the process. “You’ve already paid that green gouger a king’s ransom.”

“That was just the goblin’s fee for setting up the deal,” the witch reminded him as he slid the golden phone back into his pocket. “We still have to pay for our actual purchase. Now be quiet. I can’t do a Nevermind while walking, and this place is packed.”

The cat grumbled but didn’t say another recognizable word as the witch began marching down the disembarkation tunnel toward the sunny, crowded airport terminal.

The next step was the riskiest part of their entire journey. Even deep inside their hidden forest, all witches had heard the chilling tales of lost luggage. The man followed the signs to baggage claim with growing dread, but his fears turned out to be for nothing. Since he’d taken so long to get off the plane, his luggage was waiting for him on the carousel when he arrived: an ancient-looking black steamer trunk with wheels screwed into the bottom, a metal security briefcase with a nasty curse etched into the locks, and, most importantly, his broom.

Despite the humans crowding all around him, the witch couldn’t help a sigh of relief as his fingers curled around the smooth, familiar wood. Even by his high standards, the broom was a work of art: an arrow-straight piece of lightning-struck oak with a raven carved into the top of the handle and a fine cone of broom grass bound to the bottom. It was also extremely angry with him.

“I’m sorry,” the witch whispered at the fury pouring into him through the carved wood. “You were too big for the overhead bins. I had to check you.”

The broom’s anger intensified as the image of a crowded, depressurized cargo hold forced its way into the witch’s mind. The baggage handlers had thrown the broom in there like so much trash. It had nearly been crushed.

“Stop being dramatic,” the witch scolded, pulling a leather carrying strap out of one of his spelled pockets and threading the broom’s handle through the loops at the ends. “You were crafted by the Witch of the Bones herself. Surely you can take a bit of rough handling.”

The broom responded with a stab of ire so intense, the witch had to check his palm to make sure he wasn’t bleeding.

“I know this process has been a trial for all of us,” he said patiently as he slid the strap over his shoulders to secure the broom to his back. “But we made it. This is what we’ve been working toward for all these years! If we can’t handle the airport, we might as well turn around and go home.”

“We could, you know,” Boston said, looking up at him through the holes in his cat carrier. “They sell tickets back to Massachusetts.”

The witch’s answer to that was to retrieve his pointed hat from where he’d stowed it under his arm and place it purposefully on his head. This plus the black coat and the broom drew some strange looks, but the witch didn’t spare them a glance. He simply grabbed his wheeled trunk and secured the metal briefcase atop it. When he was sure the luggage stack wouldn’t topple over, he picked up Boston’s carrier as carefully as he could. Then, broom on his back, luggage in one hand, and cat carrier in the other, the witch turned on his bootheel and strode away, his long black coat swirling behind him like a cape as he marched through the crowds toward the sign that read Ground Transportation.

In an effort to streamline traffic and promote public transportation, the private car pickup zone for Seattle-Tacoma International Airport had been squished down to a mere thirty feet of sidewalk. Since it was eight a.m. on a Monday, prime business travel time, the place was packed. Ten limos were crammed in along the yellow-painted curb, and their drivers had it even worse. They were huddled together like miserable penguins, desperately waving their paper signs with names written on them at every traveler who walked through the automated doors in hope of escape.

It was ridiculous. The cars might have been packed together like shingles, but there was plenty of room on the sidewalk. They should have been able to spread out as much as they liked, but none of the uniformed drivers would set foot on the other half of the pickup zone’s yellow-striped waiting area, where two very different figures were standing: a towering man in a ripped-up jean jacket that barely fit over his massive shoulders, and a short woman wearing a gigantic pair of black sunglasses.

If anyone had asked the humans why they’d given the pair so much room, they wouldn’t have been able to explain it. The scales over their eyes prevented them from seeing the foot-tall pair of black horns that rose from the woman’s forehead like spires, but they still knew. Blinded or not, there wasn’t a human in the world that would willingly stand next to a demon. A fact Bex was grateful for given how stuffy the summer morning was already becoming.

“I can’t believe we finally landed a good job,” said the giant man beside her, reaching up to polish his own horns, which were the same glossy black as Bex’s but shorter, thicker, and with a more pronounced curve, like the horns of a bull. “A witch! And not just any witch, a Blackwood witch!”

 “Not here, Iggs,” Bex said quietly, adjusting the paper sign in her hands, which did indeed say Blackwood. “Scalies barely tolerate us on a good day, and this batch is already looking jumpy.” She flashed the huddled knot of drivers what was meant to be a reassuring smile, but they just shuddered and shuffled closer together, making her sigh. “I swear to Ishtar, if your hormones get a kick demon dropped on our heads, I am leaving you to get eaten.”

“Relax,” Iggs said, waving his giant hand at the crowds streaming across the access road to the towering parking deck on the other side. “We’re at an airport. There’re always weirdos at airports. No one’s going to look twice at us, and I’ve got good reason to be excited. I mean, just look at this!”

He pointed at the back of Bex’s sign where her thumb was holding the informational card the goblins had sent over when she’d agreed to this job.

Adrian Blackwood, it read, Witch of the Flesh.

“Of. The. Flesh,” Iggs repeated, wiggling his eyebrows behind his own sunglasses, which were the same size as Bex’s but looked much smaller on his enormous face. “Those are the sexy witches. The ones that are all about fertility rites and Beltane fires.” His sharp-toothed grin grew almost giddy. “I hope she has a cat!”

“Iggs!” Bex snarled, swatting him with the sign. “This is a job, not a blind date. I don’t care if the client shows up in a bikini. You will conduct yourself professionally, or I am never taking you on a pickup again.”

“Okay, okay, geez,” he said, shoving his hands into the pockets of his nearly worn-out jeans. “I was just having a little fun. Don’t get your horns in a twist.”

  Bex rolled her eyes behind her sunglasses and turned back to the automatic doors, scanning the crowd behind the smudged glass for any sign of their witch. Felix, the goblin prince who’d arranged this job, was usually very punctual. The gold phone in her pocket had already chimed to let her know the client had arrived, so she didn’t think it’d be long. Then again, Blackwood witches were famous for being technophobic hermits who never left their forest. It’d be just Bex’s luck if their client had gotten herself detained by security for trying to slay the luggage carousel. She was pulling out her actual phone to check the port authority office’s location just in case they needed to start this job with a jailbreak when she felt Iggs stiffen beside her.

“Oh, come on,” he groaned in a despairing voice. “You’ve got to be kidding me!”

Bex looked up in confusion, and then a smile spread across her pale face.

A man was walking through the automated doors directly in front of them. He was tall and lithe with olive skin and thick, dark, curling hair that was barely visible beneath the wide brim of his pointed black hat. He was dressed entirely in black, actually, with a long, cape-like coat that swirled dramatically around his legs, a billowing black linen shirt, and perfectly cut black trousers that tucked into tall black boots, all of which looked custom-made just for him. He was strikingly handsome with his strong, dark brows, cut jaw, and quick, bright eyes that couldn’t seem to decide if they were blue or gray, but that was to be expected. As Iggs had just said, Witches of the Flesh were the sensual ones. Bex hadn’t realized they came in the male variety, but she’d worked too many jobs to let the surprise show on her face as she pulled herself up to what was left of her full height and waved her sign over her head.

“Adrian Blackwood?”

The man didn’t reply, which raised Bex’s opinion of him enormously. She couldn’t believe how many of her clients gleefully answered to their names before they’d even confirmed that she was their contact. Maybe this was going to be a good job, because the witch didn’t move any closer to her. He just set down his luggage and reached into his pocket to pull out a golden flip phone.

Bex did the same, handing her sign to a now very grumpy-looking Iggs as she held out her own golden phone.

The witch’s eyes lit up when he saw it, and a dazzling smile spread across his face as he finally stepped across the sidewalk to tap his phone against hers. Both devices shivered when they made contact, and then the gold melted together, shifting and stretching until they were each holding one end of an old-fashioned paper contract.

“Identity confirmed,” Bex said, giving the witch what was supposed to be a confident, professional smile. It was hard to tell with humans, but this one must have dealt with demons before, because he smiled back with genuine relief.

“Pleasure to meet you.”

Bex jerked at his voice. Not because of the power lurking inside it—she’d expected nothing less from a Blackwood witch—but because of how different it sounded. Most of the clear-eyed humans she dealt with were either sorcerers or warlocks who got their magic from chugging quintessence. Consuming all that raw power left their voices ragged and sharp, but this man’s voice was as warm and rich as a summer evening. It was so unexpectedly pleasant, she actually got lost in it for a moment. Fortunately, the witch didn’t seem to notice.

“I’m Adrian Blackwood,” he said, putting down his cat carrier so he could shake her hand without letting go of his end of the contract. “This is Boston, my familiar.” He nodded down at the carrier, which growled. “Are you my security?”

“We are,” Bex replied, snapping herself into business mode. “I’m Bex, and this is Iggs.” She pointed at the giant demon beside her, who was still glaring at Adrian as if his being a male witch was a personal insult. “The rest of my team is waiting off-site. I’ll take you to meet them as soon as we finalize the agreement.”

“Of course,” Adrian said, leaning in to read the golden parchment they were both holding, which boosted Bex’s opinion of him yet again. Finally, someone who actually read the damn contract before they signed it. Felix was her most reliable fixer, but he was still a goblin, which meant he was as trustworthy as a false-bottomed box. Bex had already read the contract twice when he’d sent it over, but this copy was the one that would actually become binding, so she read it again, tracing her black-nailed finger along the lines of tiny text to make sure she didn’t miss a word.

The contract had a lot of them considering how simple the job was. Adrian Blackwood was hiring Bex and her team to provide security for one month. Bex had no idea why a witch of his caliber needed security. Even the Eternal King Gilgamesh didn’t mess with the Blackwood, and he’d stomped out practically every branch of independent magic left in the world. If Adrian wanted extra muscle badly enough to go through the goblins, he must be either very rich or very in trouble.

Both possibilities were fine with her. Bex needed rich, and her crew needed trouble. Demons got destructive when bored.

Fortunately, it looked like Felix had decided not to screw them over this time. Every word of the contract was exactly as she remembered. The witch must have also been satisfied, because he pressed his thumb to the signature line the moment his eyes reached the bottom of the page, not even wincing when the contract bit him for the blood that would seal the deal. When he turned to watch Bex do the same, though, she kept her free hand firmly at her side.

“Payment first.”

He arched one of those dark eyebrows but didn’t complain. Just reached down to unhook the metal briefcase from the top of his luggage, which appeared to be an old steamer trunk someone had screwed wheels onto. That struck Bex as an odd choice, but when he undid the locking curses and opened the briefcase to show her what was inside, all other thoughts fell away.

The case was filled with packing cotton, and nestled inside the white tufts like robins’ eggs were four glass bottles of the bluest, most beautiful water Bex had ever seen. Even in the glaring light of the summer morning, they glowed like blue fireflies. She already knew they were the real thing, but she reached down to touch one anyway, closing her eyes as the soothing cool seeped through the thin glass into her skin.

“Those were very hard to come by.”

The witch’s voice made her jump, and she looked up to see him peering down at her.

“Water from the rivers of death is a powerful reagent, but I’ve never heard of anyone using so much at one time.” He tilted his head like a curious cat. “What are you going to do with it all? Is it for a spell?”

“Demons don’t cast those,” Bex said, pulling her hand back.

When it was clear that was all she was going to say, the witch’s smile turned sheepish. “Sorry,” he said, closing the metal briefcase and offering her the handle. “Didn’t mean to pry.”

Bex took the case and handed it to Iggs. When the deathly water was securely in their possession, she turned and pressed her own thumb to the contract. The goblin magic bit her instantly, staining the golden page with her black blood. The moment both agreements were in place, the golden contract split back into two halves that instantly faded over their now empty hands, locking them into the hard golden manacles of goblin contract magic.

“That’s that,” Bex said, pushing her sunglasses farther up her nose as she smiled at her new employer. “For the next thirty days, my crew and I are at your disposal. Would you like us to take your bags, Mr. Blackwood?”

“I’ll handle my own bags, thank you,” the witch replied, leaning down to pick up his cat carrier. “And just Adrian is fine.”

“Adrian it is, then,” she said, motioning for him to follow her across the street toward the massive parking deck that housed all of the airport’s non-limo transportation options. “Lys should already have our exit secured. Let’s get out of here.”

The witch nodded and fell into step behind her, looking over his shoulder at Iggs, who was sullenly bringing up the rear.