“Hello?” he said as he ducked inside the little glass door.
“Back here!” a musical voice called.
He walked through the vibrant green oasis, the scent of flowers and dark dirt permeating the warm air.
Behind a group of fig trees he found Cora, the one he sought, and several younger witches. An orange tree behind Cora exploded when an errant spell hit it. Fragrant orange juice dripped down the glass wall.
The witches preferred to have their workspaces and living quarters on the farthest edges of the campus for this very reason. Practicing witches couldn’t always be sure where their spells would land, and the young witches he’d seen in the pub last night were currently destroying the orange tree.
“Hi, Warren,” Cora said, her American accent so similar to Esha’s that he had to shake his mind away from the soulceress. “Thanks for meeting me here. Sorry I wasn’t at the cottage. Why don’t we talk over there?”
He followed her to a more secluded corner, where they took seats on wooden boxes.
“You’re here about Aurora,” she said. The marmot riding on her shoulder stared at him, unblinking. He looked away from it to meet Cora’s eyes.
“Aye. Can you keep her locked up?” He asked it even though, selfishly, he wanted Aurora to be released so he could hunt her. But keeping her locked away was the right thing to do for the university—she was far too dangerous to be released. She was better off in the witches’ aether prison, that dark nowhere that kept her away from humanity.
“That’s impossible,” Cora said.
“Seriously? There’s nothing you can do about it?”
“We tried everything, but the barrier to our prison will break within the week. Aurora is too strong, and we just aren’t as powerful as we used to be.” Cora shoved her pink hair off her forehead and scowled. “She’s the only one in the prison, but we still don’t have enough power to keep her there.”
“Why not? You’re the ones who locked her up in the first place.”
“Sure, the Witch Council locked her up, but only a few of us were alive at the time. Calista, the one who created the spell that put the barrier on the prison, passed on to her afterworld a few hundred years ago. We’ve been struggling all these years to keep the boundary closed. Without her, and with the passing of several of our most powerful witches, it’s become too much. We have to recast the original spell, but without a Mythean like her, we can’t.”
“Like her?”
She nodded, reaching up to snag a lizard that ran across a draping petunia hanging above her head. The little creature scrambled across her knuckles before leaping onto her other shoulder and perching there. “Calista was a soulceress, the only kind powerful enough to lock up another of her species. With our help, of course.”
“Witches hate soulceresses.” The rivalry between the two most magical beings was legendary. “Why would you work with one of them?”
“Well, yeah. But she was different. She agreed to work with us in exchange for protection from the Burnings, which was great because she could do things we couldn’t. Haven’t had anyone as strong as she was in years.”
Warren nodded. Calista had been wise to join the university to avoid the Burnings. The mortal witch hunts had incited a similar frenzy in Mytheans. If witches were the bogeymen to mortals, then soulceresses were their Mythean equivalent because of their ability to siphon off the power of others’ souls. They’d fallen prey to the frenzy and used it as an excuse to hunt those they feared. The university didn’t support the Burnings because it was contrary to the law and order that had become their model for staying under the mortals’ radar, but most Mytheans didn’t care. They hunted soulceresses anyway. Nearly every soulceress in Britain had been killed during what had become known as the Burnings.
“So you need another soulceress to shore up the boundary to her prison,” Warren said.
“Exactly.”
Warren rose. “I’m going to see if I can take care of that for you.”
“I know whom you’re thinking of. Trust me, we’ve thought of it too. But she’ll never help us.”
“It’s her job.” He’d gone to the effort of getting her to work for the university, and damned if he wouldn’t make sure she did her job.
Though it wasn’t surprising that Cora doubted Esha. Ten years ago, when word of a soulceress come to Scotland had reached the university, they’d sought her out and watched her. She’d been a free-market mercenary, killing only Mytheans, and while she hadn’t killed any pregnant mothers or schoolchildren, she wasn’t particularly picky about her contracts. He’d invited her to join the university because she was too dangerous not to have on their side. When everything in him had screamed to leave her be, to keep her away from the university because of what another of her kind had done to him, he’d found the will to remember his vows to do what was best for his job.
“You really think she’ll agree to help us?” Cora’s words shook him out of his thoughts.
&nb
sp; “I’ll see to it that she agrees. She’ll come to you. Tonight.”
“All right, if you say so.” Doubt and hope warred in her brown eyes.
“I do.” Warren turned and left the sticky heat of the greenhouse, wishing there were any other soulceress he could ask for help.