Page 33 of The Nowhere Witch

He cleared his throat. “Because he hasn’t replaced Belinda yet.”

I stopped walking. Zab walked another couple of steps before he stopped as well. When he turned, his face was scrunched up tighter than a tinfoil ball, his eyes squeezed shut, as if he were scared my expression alone might scorch the ground he stood on.

“He didn’t replace Belinda, whose job was more important, but he went out of his way to replace mine, a job that hadn’t existed before?” There was only one thing that said. Hawk had wanted to wipe my memory clean from the place. Bibbi was his palate cleanser after a bad meal. He couldn’t wait to get rid of me because apparently I’d left a horrible aftertaste. And now he was forcing my hand so I had nowhere else to stay but there? Why?

Zab opened one eye a sliver. “It turned out that your position was very useful.”

“Did you ask for someone because I’d made your job easier?” A glimmer of hope sprang to life in the midst of a pile of crap. If Zab had asked, it would’ve been because he missed me and was trying to find a replacement for his good buddy. Seriously, he needed someone to go get cocoa and chat with. Musso wasn’t a big talker, after all.

“Not really,” Zab said.

My glimmer had a sledgehammer hanging over it. “It’s a yes or no. You either asked or you didn’t.”

“Then no.”

Back to the foul aftertaste for me. “How fast did he hire her?”

He looked away.

“Zab, how fast?” I asked, crowding him.

“I don’t know. Time is different here than in Rest. I think a week there is actually seven days here.”

“A weekisseven days. It’s the same. Now how fast did he replace me? Just spit it out.”

His shoulders went up, and it looked as if he would’ve tried to bury his head in them if he could. “I mean, maybe a day or two after you were gone, give or take a couple of hours?” He put his fingers to his temple, poised suspiciously close to his ears.

He didn’t have to worry. I wasn’t going to yell. I was beyond yelling. I had the quiet, boring kind of anger.

“Same day, huh? Didn’t even get a good night’s sleep, did he?”

“I know it looks bad, but—”

“I don’t want to hear about how he wasn’t the same after I left, because he didn’t skip a beat.”

I really was the Nowhere witch and Hawk was keeping me here because he needed me alive. That was the beginning and end of it all.

“It doesn’t matter anyway. I have bigger issues.” The immigration list, the wall breaking, and that was only the beginning of it. Forget someone taking over my table. I might not even be allowed in Xest at all soon.

“As to that, can you come by my place tonight? The sooner we get started, the better.”

“I’ll be there with cocoa in hand.” The less time I spent at the broker building, and around Hawk, the better.

15

As promised, I had a cocoa for each of us as I walked into Zab’s place.

“Good, you’re here,” he said. “We’ve got a lot to do in a small amount of time.”

“What’s that?” In the center of his apartment, on the top of his wood stove, was a black pot that looked like it might’ve come out of some fairytale, and then been reused for another fifty fairytales before someone left it out in the rain to rust over.

“It’s a cauldron for brewing potions. It’s part of your curriculum I’ve been working out. We need to cover all the bases with what those old crones might ask.” He grabbed a book lying on the table, flipped it open, and slid it over to me.

One quarter cycle each:

Cauldron and potions

Amulets and tokens

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