Page 16 of An Amateur Witch's Guide to Murder
CHAPTER TEN
Mateo gets Topher as far as the doorstep—wanting him out so that Ophelia and he can flip the fuck out about what just happened—but can’t work out a good way to hurry him along without sounding as deeply distressed as he is.
“Yeah. So. We’re gonna do some more research, and I’ll call you as soon as we’ve got next steps,” he tries, head a little swimmy now that he’s moving around. Not great, body.
Topher’s nodding intently, gaze flicking around Mateo in what Mateo hopes is deep trust in his overpromised abilities. “You don’t have to push yourself. I mean, if you need to take some time. I can wait.”
Not deep trust, then. How bad does he look? For all Mateo knows, he’s crusted in nose blood, bleary-eyed, and wan. Topher’s saying to take his time—which is great for billable hours—but showing weakness this early in the curse-breaking-process feels like a mistake.
“Really, I’m okay,” Mateo says, leaning on the doorframe in his best approximation of a very okay and casual guy. “Just need to get a little food in me. Maybe a nap. Do some laundry.” Shit.He hadn’t meant to joke about the wet underwear waiting for him, heat flaring in Topher’s pale cheeks in response. Grimacing, he tries to course correct. “Sorry. Too soon?”
“By a century,” Topher replies, surprisingly witty for how shell-shocked he looks.
“I’ll never mention them again,” Mateo assures him, but then—out of a spontaneous and morbid curiosity—is unable not to add. “Except when I hand them back to you.”
Topher’s gaze does that jittery thing, then he blinks once, hard. “I’m going to go before I do anything else stupid. Good night.” A suffering pause because it’s broad daylight, followed by a self-aware nod, choosing to double down instead of correct, and Topher flees.
What a weirdo.
Mateo closes the door, walking wearily back into the living room to meet Ophelia’s concerned gaze. There are so many things to deal with suddenly. Never mind the losing time, passing out, demon-speak thing—not that he shouldn’t be thinking about that—it’s just that he super doesn’t want to. But getting the same pull three times is cryptically fated.
All three of them pulling the death card requires some pragmatic troubleshooting. The death card doesn’t usually meandeath. It meanschange. But also, sometimes itdoesmean death. And the demon inside him sure had appreciative opinions about that card in particular.
Which is why a few minutes later Mateo is jogging in place, trying to warm up to his own bad idea.
In front of him is an office door.
Ignacia Luisa Reyes Borrero’s office door.
AKA: the office of the world’s most powerful dark bruja.
Not that anyone ever said it so plainly. A procession of scary people peppered his childhood, the sort of sordid individualsyou cross the street to avoid, even in broad daylight. No one element in common between them, except that force of presence that lets you know without words that you should avoid eye contact.
And every one of them walked into the living room and prostrated themselves to his mother, showing the deference only megalomaniac dictators with penchants for random executions require. Soft-voiced pleas for assistance delivered to the five-foot-one bruja like she might end them for a raised tone. Mateo hadn’t been allowed out and hadn’t developed a habit of sneaking off until he met Ophelia, so he eavesdropped a lot, and the conclusion was easy to draw.
Everyone was scared of his mom.
“This might not have anything to do with Dagger Lady,” Ophelia says, a few steps behind him. There’s a subdued quality to her words, a rare moment of raw uncertainty. For all of his suspicions about his mother, Ophelia’s actually Seen her magic. She’d tried to explain it once, expression like she’d chewed raw sewage. In the end, she’d shaken her head and said, “It’s bad.”
“Dagger Lady knows where the house is, tried to stab me, and saw Topher run off with me. Feels like she could three-way murder us all. And Mom had a who’s who of clients and associates,” he says, stalling. “Dagger Lady might be in that book, and any information about her could be useful. And I haven’t seen the address book floating around. It’s gotta be in here.”
The room’s sat untouched since the day his mother walked away. The threat of her coming back and seeing him in her stuff is an effective deterrent, even five years later. The door’s not even locked. She wasn’t the sort of woman who locked something when a ward that could maim or kill would do instead.
He flashes Ophelia a forced smile before pushing the door open.
The room’s been opened a dozen times since his mother stopped coming home, but Mateo’s never worked up the nerve to step across the threshold. Which feels both ridiculous and well informed. He isn’t allowed inside. She isn’t here to stop him. He’s worried about it anyway, like she’ll walk in just as his sock touches the naked wood floor. Which would be great and awful. She might know what’s happening. She probably wouldn’t help.
Sweating, Mateo steps in and fumbles on the wall for the light. Pitch shadow flashes into a dim orange glow that barely illuminates the corners. Blackout blinds block the two windows that would otherwise let in the early evening light.
Peering around, it might be an eclectic college professor’s office. There’s a heavy wooden table in the center that’s polished to a liquid gloss, marred on the four corners where the wax of a thousand candles has melted and been scrubbed off. Two squat, blood-red chairs hunch around it. They look comfortable, fat, and well-used, but he doubts anyone’s ever felt at ease sitting in one with his mother across from them. The customers she scammed got the living room. The real-deal clients got to come into this room, and they weren’t asking if their wives were cheating or if they should start a new Pilates routine.
He doesn’t go any further, half expecting her to leap into view like a cheap jump scare. Which isn’t a thing she ever did, so he’s not sure why the expectation’s there. She’d done so much worse. The memories are hazy, and like the dreams of cannibalism, he’s never sure if they’re real memories or products of his dually inhabited psyche being incapable of dealing with something he hadn’t understood.
Wood floor, on his back, and very young. He can never move, and there’s a yellowed smoke heavy in the air, making him choke. The pain is a single note piercing the haze of the nauseous paralysis blurring the world as she carves pieces of him away.
In the office, nothing moves except a bead of sweat rolling down his upper lip, and he bats it away.
One step and then two, floor creaking, and he reminds himself she can’t hear him. She’s not here. Wax and incense, Florida Water, with something beneath that catches in his throat.
