Page 22 of Catastrophe

Thank God. I don’t want to do it all again another time.

My bones were jelly by the time I made it down the stairs, and turning human at the bottom only made the sensation worse. Admittedly, in my time as Winnie’s familiar, I broke into Charlie’s house similarly, but I assumed I felt weak because I was still recovering. That feeling compounded as I opened the door with a heave reminiscent of someone pulling up a drawstring bridge, and as Elizabeth slipped in seconds after, I took a moment to lean against the wall while my head spun.

Damp material pressing at my stomach made my eyes pop open. I flinched.

“Get dressed,” Elizabeth whispered and shook the handful of clothes at me again.

I reluctantly took them and, as I pulled them on, said, “You need to check for spells. They could be watching,”

She shot me a sharp glance. “I’ve disguised us so they won’t know who we are if there are spells.” She headed up the stairs. “There are active spells, but only upstairs. Stay down here and look around. Touch nothing.”

I couldn’t face walking up the stairs again, so I was grateful she’d made the executive decision as I hobbled into the huge open-plan kitchen, dining, and living spaces which were even more colorful as a human.

I couldn’t help but stare in awe at the space. Even if evil witches were renting it, they obviously had good taste.

I took a seat on the sofa and riffled through the coat. The pockets were empty, and the coat itself, a pink raincoat, revealed nothing about the owner.

Leaning over to the coffee table, I picked up a few books and flicked through them to make sure they were as innocuous as they seemed. They were. I then crawled over to the cabinets under the television and began searching for anything interesting but also found nothing.

Sighing, I pulled myself up against the dining table and searched the small square handbag, but other than a few bits of makeup and a dirty tissue I jerked my hand away from, there was nothing in there either.

I’m not thinking like a witch. Winnie used to put things in jars …

My head swung to the kitchen, and I limped over to those cabinets and started rifling. Doors slammed as each cabinet I opened revealed nothing out of the ordinary—just plates and bowls and cooking tools and utensils.

Not jars … Maybe … I scanned the room again, and as the sun set behind the trees outside, long and creepy shadows cast about the room. I shuddered as a chill seeped through me. My blood ran cold as I noticed something on the mantlepiece of an electric fire. I thought it was a decorative piece at first. It didn’t stand out in this space, which was probably why the witches felt so comfortable leaving it in such an open, obvious place.

It was a knife. Or maybe it was a dagger. Either way, I recognized it because it looked identical to the one that Mary had used to slit Winnie’s throat.

But I was sure it went missing. Mary gave it to Fafnir, and then that warehouse fell to pieces, so unless someone had gone back to retrieve it, this couldn’t be the same knife, right?

The longer I looked, the bigger it seemed to get, and the details expanded. The swirling, decorative pattern on the gold handle and the delicate writing engraved on the blade were … beautiful.

I want to touch it.

My feet moved without my permission and even though I knew this could have been the weapon that killed my witch and nearly killed me, I became less angry the closer I stepped. With my thoughts floating in a confused fog, I reached out to touch it, until a voice snapped, “Clawdia! Don’t touch that!” and the spell broke.

I gasped and quickly moved away from the mantlepiece, and Elizabeth pulled me back even further before grabbing my face roughly, turning my chin, and checking my eyes.

“That is dark magic,” she whispered. “It can be very seductive.”

I swallowed, my heart pounding in my ears, and muttered, “I thought you said there were no spells on this floor.”

She let my face go and turned back to the blade on the mantelpiece before pulling out her phone and taking pictures of it while she explained, “Spells are magic placed on or taken off items. Enchantments are magic that changes the nature of the item from nonmagical to magical. This blade is enchanted. I cannot break its magic unless I destroy it.”

I blinked and stepped back again. “Why would they just leave it on the mantelpiece?”

“They clearly don’t think anyone is looking for them.”

Peeling my eyes from the blade, I turned to look at her. “You said it’s dark magic, but I wasn’t aware there was such a thing. This enchantment is dark? And Karin’s ward spell was dark?”

“I will explain the details later.” Her gaze darted to the door behind me, and she tapped her pocket. “We need to go.”

“Go? Why?” I tried to clear my mind from the residual confusion. “Have you found something?”

“I broke the spell on a drawer and found a phone,” she told me as scanned the room once more.

“A phone?”

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